Move as If Your Life Depended on It: Movement #4, toward the floor

This is too hard for you
But it's to show off something for certain people
Don't worry
The lesson below "just" gets your back twice as easy and your brain three times as smart and adds at least half an inch to your height and has you feeling five or ten years younger

That's all


Movement is life

Lean down toward the floor

DO NOT STRETCH
Just reach for the floor
Let your knees bend
This isn't yoga, you aren't trying to be good, this is just reaching down for something on the goddamn floor

It's fun

Try NOT to reach the floor
Just down


Good

2.
Put your hands on your knees
Bend your knees
Have your arms straight

Do the cat and cow,
the most intelligent "pose" in yoga,
since it's not a pose
it's a movement

Goes like this:

Arch your back ( belly forward)
As you tilt your asshole toward the ceiling
As you bring your eyes toward the sky

As if your head were going toward your butt
and your ribs and pushing the other way: forward

That's the cow:
Mooo

It's also the lion:
ROAR

3. Alternate that with the cat
Hiss hiss

Ribs up and back
Middle back toward the sky
Belly in
Head down
Nose toward your crotch
Crotch toward your nose:
Pelvis rotating under

4. Back and forth
Slowly
Deliciously

Do it a couple of times
Simple feeling the pelvis and lower backs'
participation in this

Do it a couple more
noticing the ribs going up
and the ribs going forward

Oh, wait:
Notice and enjoy

Oh, wait
Notice and enjoy and
FIND SOMETHING DIFFERENT AND INTERESTING EACH TIME

Oh, wait:
Go slower
slower than you want to go

And then a couple of times
The neck and your head
Do all the "oh, Wait's" with that

And now the whole back:
Enjoy it
It's you
Alive
In motion

5.
Then stand up straight

Feel how you feel

6. Reach down for the floor again
Notice the difference

Enjoy the difference

7 , Put both hands up in the arm
above your head

Rotate them in a circle

Feel this in your heels
Watch with your eyes
allowing your head to move as it follows
your hands

Feel this in your pelvis
Which goes backward when your hands go forward in the cirlce
and
the other
way around

Stop
Breathe
Do all the "oh, wait's"
And reverse the circle

8.
Hands down
How do you feel

9 Touch the floor again,
No wait,
Reach down toward the floor

Easier?
Farther?
Funner?

10. Stand up and skip around the room or lawn or park or riverside

You are moving
You are using your brain
You are enjoying having more attention

Good

Love and Money and Amercia

The other day, there was something in Austin, called the Big Sing.
A man who leads a world famous choral group in Austin, led a couple hundred
strangers through a series of songs.

He made us work, go deep, let our voices resonate, come forth,
express the fullness of life.

All this in a church with amazing acoustics.

And one of the songs was America, the beautiful.

Which, having been burned in the loving our country
disillusion in ... Vietnam, assassinations, pollution, politics, etc
etc, I didn't want to sing

And loved it when I sang,
and had this feeling like America can just break your heart,
the potential, the land, the people, the good side of our history,
and yet,
and yet...
so squandered and endangered and ...
you know,
it's a mess,
this beautiful country

God shed his grace on thee,
indeed.

we need it


and love's like that, too, sometimes
it can break your heart

and there I'm clear,
there's a way out,
a simple way:
be present
or a difficult way:
be enlightened
or an enlightening way:
learning unconditional love,
and anyway you slice it,
love's pain,
is medicine for waking up
to how to really be human


and money,
ah money,
kind of like America:
so much potential,
so squandered,

and is it possible to be kind
and loving
and conscious
and creative
and do lots of good for the planet
and participate in abundance

I think so.

What about you?

Love poems to and from God

if we forgot what we were
doing
and just
"just"
remembered the glory
of
I AM

would that be enough?

I don't know.

But I suspect that it
Would

Let's try for a while
and see what
happens....
shhhh
no words in the head

ah, peace, empty
can't even say it
can we

and...

pretty nice


Chris

And from Kabir:

I sat one day with a priest who expounded
on the doctrine of hell

I listened to him
for hours
and then he asked me,
what I thought of what he'd said.

I replied:

"This doctrine seems an inhuman cage.
No wonder all the
smart dogs
Run Away."


And from Mira:

I tried controlling myself
but it did
no good.
My senses are aflame.

I heard You singing.
that started all this blessed madness.

I openly made love with everything in sight
last night
and this morning.

The constable showed up and wrote over twenty citations.

I guess I shouldn't have jumped
naked
on him
in front of his wife.

the hypocrite,
he wouldn't have complained at all

if we were
alone.

St Catherine of Siena:

If you cried in Heaven,
everyone would laugh

for they would know,
you were just kidding.




Poems are pointers
where do they point
for
you
today

and what if you read
them again
tomorrow

would the arrows
have sprouted branches
and the branches
leaves

and the leaves
shimmer
light every which way?

Who knows
but you
and your experience
of this
existence

just
now

Chris

the non me ones,
slightly shifted around,
from
Love Poems from God