Feet

FEET
We have two feet, most of us, and these feet are small. Really, you can have size fourteen feet and compared to the rest of you, your feet are small.

Have you ever tried to make a sculpture of a human body standing? It is more or less impossible to get the thing to stand unless you have the feet stuck to a large base, or have the sculpture either leaning against something or holding a staff.

Which is to say: standing on two feet with as high a center of gravity as we have is almost a miracle.

And what's the benefit of this miracle? We are mobile. We can move quickly in many directions. We have made an evolutionary trade off: mobility we get, stability we sacrifice.
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And here we sit, as our desks or our computers all day, or for big chunks of time. Our feet out of sight and out of mind. Mind-less of our feet touching the earth below us. Mind-less of all those wonderful toes. Mind-less of how long and amazing we are.

How much of us is in our legs? How much of our length? How much of our body mass? Can you sense both legs now and get a sense of how long they are and how much of you is in there. This is a big part of us, and seems worth being mind-full of, don't you agree?

Even at the computer, we can be mind-full all the way down to our toes. Nose with the air coming in and out. Belly coming forward slightly and back slightly as we breathe in and out. Toes down there touching the floor. Sit bones on the chair. Spine holding our head up, holding our eyes up to look in the computer, and to look out a window and to look around the room: where could we walk? How would we walk if we were to get up and take a walk outside, where we could look into the sky miles away and off into the horizon.

Feet on the ground, spine holding up head, breath coming in and out, eyes looking out into the sky and the horizon. This could be a wonderful meditation, couldn't it, taking a walk in the outdoors.

Ten fingers, ten toes, belly, eyes, ears and nose.
Ten fingers, ten toes, belly, eyes, ears and nose.
Ten fingers, ten toes, belly, eyes, ears and nose.

A little chant for our walk, or for right now, what our right Now is.

Feldie Fun,#5 Eyes and Tongue

EYES AND TONGUE
These are important to life on earth and to mammal life and to human life. We have a tongue that tastes like the other animals and licks the wounds sometimes and plays in kissing ( do other animals do that?) and we talk.

The human tongue talks.

This has an up side: we can communicate, we can say hello, we can write poems, we can explain our trip to Mexico, we can share our feelings and our dreams and our vision of a healed planet or a just world.

It also has a downside: we forget the dog as a shaggy smelly moving and loving and wiggling organism and boil it all down to "dog." We have someone frown at us and instead of someone frowning at us, we have a big story on how they don't like us, and how we should be treated better, and how this/life isn't fair and on and on, the words making us more and more miserable.

No, not the words; our believing in the words.

We have eyes and stand upright, when we aren't latched into a computer or a car seat, and we can see farther with these upright eyes and huge parts of our brain are connected to vision.

Good for the eyes.

Good for the tongue.

And now: let's play a game. A head and eye and tongue game.
The game will go like this. Roll your head gently to the right. And back to the center. And back to the right. And so on. Easy, with awareness and enjoyment. For example: what would it be like to follow your breathing and sense how you were sitting or standing while you did this? Can that awareness make this moving of yourself more pleasant?

Fine. And rest.

Now roll your head gently to the right and back to the center and let your eyes move to the left. This is either easy or difficult or something in between. Go so slowly that you can feel an almost pleasant, if not pleasant, difference between the nose going one way and the eyes going the other. Feel this personally: your nose moving one way and your eyes moving the other.

Rest.

Breathe.

Wonder.

Enjoy.

Now roll your eyes to the right and your tongue to the left, and back and forth, with your tongue going right as your eyes go left, and back and forth and back and forth, again, so slowly that you can't help but enjoy this a little or a lot. And rest.

And do this some more, tongue one way, eyes the other and at the same time roll your head from facing ahead to facing toward the right and back to the center.

Which is to say, as your head goes front and to the right and to the front, have a little windshield wiper thing going with the eyes one way and the tongue, your eyes and your tongue, wagging away merrily in opposite directions. Have your eyes and tongue wagging back and forth more quickly than your head is turning right and back to the center, and this can be a very slow "more quickly."

Is there a way to enjoy this?

I imagine so. I feel so, sense so when I do it. Give it a go. See what happens and what you learn.

Raw Foods and Waking Up and Feldenkrais

RAW FOODS AND FELDENKRAIS
There are lots of reasons to eat raw foods:

• They taste good.


• They give your body a wonderful feeling.


• They help you eliminate sickness and colds.


• They help you transcend all sorts of "diseases."


• They are fun.


• They are fast. No faster food than apple from tree to mouth.


• They are fresh. No fresher food than tomato from vine to mouth.


• They are amazing.


• They are fun.

And what might be a Feldenkrais reason?
Well, to my mind, a core idea in Feldenkrais, especially WakeUp Feldenkrais, is that we are in habits in our life, some of which are so deep and unknown to us that the Gurdjieff understanding that we are going through our lives in a state of "sleep" is not too strong a way to put it.

And one of the greatest sleeps going on is around the mouth.

SLEEP #1: TALKING.

SLEEP #2: EATING.
We put food in, we shovel it in. We taste maybe the first bite of each forkful. We think, talk, read, worry, hurry, stress while we are eating.
We eat what we are used to eating, what everyone else eats, what we were trained like baby seals to eat, when we were babies.

So, Feldenkrais and WakeUp Feldenkrais could say this, or does, via my versions: Stop eating cooked food for a couple of weeks.

Examine your habit.

See what happens.

That's all: do it for the love of learning and change and discovery.

Is It Right Yet?

IS THIS RIGHT YET?
All our lives we are told, "No. That's the wrong way. Do it this way. Do it the right way."

Well, fine, if the "right way" really is the best? But what if it's just the parent or teacher or big brother or smartass friend's habitual idea of the way they like to go about things. Or, what if it's just the way their teacher or parent or blah, blah has taught them or forced it down their throat.

Add to this the greatest human weakness: our fear of disapproval and almost desperation for approval. To get this, we'll do it some imposed "right way," even if it wouldn't feel "right" if we were to sense ourselves and really pay attention to what is "right" for us.

And along comes the Feldenkrais work. Try it this way. Try it that. No, really. Slow down and sense and notice and feel deeply the difference. Try it at least three ways. Make it better. Make it worse. Make if different and even if you can't tell if it's better or worse, just enjoy knowing options, and learning about possibilities.

And along comes WakeUp Feldenkrais. What is the difference when we are aware and when we aren't aware. Being aware can be one more "right" thing to do. To hell with that. Just notice: what's the difference?

Back and Shoulder and Neck Pain, Or Elsewhere

Pain is a pain.
and
Pain is a signal, we aren't functioning the way we are meant to function.

WHETHER THE PAIN IS NECK PAIN, BACK PAIN, SHOULDER PAIN, OR SOMEWHERE ELSE,
the story is the same:
the brain and the body have forgotten
how to work in an easy and elegant manner,
the manner in which we evolved
as human beings,
and have lost.
We have been educated and conditioned away
from our natural ease and elegance and grace
by our sedentary and stressful and
un-nature oriented lives.

For an immediate
experience of shifting out of
the pain
via learning and repatterning of your brain
and your body use,
try a free lesson at
(don't be scared,
it's a very messy site:
Desk Trainer

Pain is an opportunity:
to learn,
to improve,
to come to a level of moving and functioning and being
that is better than any
since we were youngsters and rolling and jumping and skipping around all the time.

The human wish, is to
"get rid"
of the pain as fast as possible.
This makes "sense,"
and in the Feldenkrais Method,
we have almost miraculous results.

But we are after something bigger,
something more profound:
an understanding of how we
can move and feel and think
and act creatively
in better
and easier
and fresher ways.

As Moshe said, this about,
"Making the impossible possible,
the possible easy
and the easy elegant."

See if you wish, an essay on a three day, three session Miracle lesson, in working with the shoulders as an examination and illumination of this. Healing by Learning.


And for a much longer examination of this, you could enjoy Anat Baniel on Pain, which has links to videos and research and related articles.

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I offer group lessons called
either Awareness Through Movement® lessons,
or Transformational Movement Lesson.
I also teach a style of yoga mingled with tai chi
fun
nature and a
lot of exploration, called,
DNA yoga.

See the schedule at Fall Schedule

and See Feldenkrais.com on Awareness Thru Movement

Whether DNA Yoga
or Movement Lessons,
benefits and healings to back, breath,
mind and spirit
are huge.

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I offer individual lessons,
called Functional Integration.

This is not massage. Not physical therapy. Not chiropractic oriented.
Not body work.
This isn't about "fixing."

This is brain food, and body learning, and heart food, and soul food.
This is about transformation

This not only feels great,
maybe better than you could imagine,
but provides opportunities for your mind/ brain/ body system (i.e. you) to learn new
and
easier
and
sweeter ways of functioning.

These new ways not only
begin to undo and transform stress
and our old habits of tensing and contracting and limiting ourselves,
but
you begin to function in better ways
in other areas of your mind/ body
and your life.

This work is transformational,
enjoyable
and almost miraculous.
You deserve this, I believe.

My training consists of the "normal" 160 days
to become a Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner
and
an additional 165 days of training
including 78 with Anat Baniel
and
years of training in Gestalt, meditation,
nature centered healing, hypnosis, and more.

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Lessons cost $60-$150 per lesson
you pick the amount

for staggering changes
start off with three times one
week
and then three times the next week

Lessons last thirty minutes.


If prices are out of your range,
let's talk:
we can do shorter lessons,
20 minutes ,
for less,
and you can still get huge benefits.

If you combine 20 lessons
with 20 minutes of HomePlay ( not HomeWork)
a day,
You can expect to Move
Think
and Feel
TWENTY YEARS YOUNGER.



You can keep learning up to almost as many lessons as you are
years old,
depending how far you want to come on the path of
poor to fair,
fair to good,
good to great,
great to greater.

In large and small
areas
of your
Whole Life.



Give yourself the gift of improvement,
from fair to good
or
good to great.

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Call for an appointment 707-996-1437

Or Email me


Thanks, and I hope this is a beginning of a wonderful transformation in your life.

Chris

Undo Deficits, Enhance Excellence, Wake Up to the Present

UNDO DEFICITS, ENHANCE EXCELLENCE, WAKE UP TO THE MOMENT
This is my idea of WakeUp Feldenkrais.

Because Feldenkrais work is modeled on how we, as genius babies, learned from blobs to crawling and walking and talking, it is the premier approach for people who want to come to a higher state of organization and use of themselves. This could be the undoing of deficits. Deficits could be in childhood, as with cerebral palsy, autism, or various learning difficulties. Dyslexia and the normal reaction to the confinement and rigidity of even a ‘good’ school system create possibilities for waking up to options to learn and grow.

Deficits could be in adulthood, strokes, pains in the back or neck, shoulder, hands, stuff that happens from accidents, recovery from surgeries. These are troubled times, with one good aspect: people decide it’s finally okay to do something besides what they’ve always done.

In desperation they return to one of the most wonderful aspects of human life: learning.


But this work is not just bringing back of deficits. We want people to recover from a stroke or an accident or a sore shoulder or back and keep learning and end up functioning better than they have since they were a child.
This is learning, not fixing.

So, another use I’m interested in is the enhancing of excellence,helping people who are already good at teaching, or some sport like golf or skiing, or are excellent at an instrument or singing or acting, helping them, by getting them to tap into learning and learning about learning in new ways, to become even better at what they are already good at.


And finally: my work, the work of WakeUp Feldenkrais, is about Waking Up into the moment.

This is where we learn, this is where we are happy, this is where we love, this is where we love life.

A good place.