A simple "weight loss" diet

At the end of yesterday's blog, I got a bit fancy
in the eating/ food thing,
and then I had the thought
today
that it might be more useful to people
to have a sample eating path
without all
the no this
and no that.

And what does alternative eating
have to do with this work?

Well, any experiment in the non-habitual
is a pathway to waking to ourselves.

And eating
is a mess in our society,
the bombardment with chances to eat
non-food,
and this work is about escaping the planned
and programmed roles and places
in which society wish us to be confined.

And...
well, this work is about moving toward more
optimum feeling
and moving
and "health"
in both the "Bouncing Back from Trauma" sort,
and the "Getting on with Achieving your life Dreams, vowed and unawowed."

Have good fuel in us might
help with all that.

And this, of course,
is my recommendation
for a pretty good
health gain
or weight loss eating program.

Not a "diet" in the sense of torturing,
but a treating ourselves to really fine
eating.

Okay:

In the Morning:
Green Smoothies.

The simplest form
is greens, like kale, chard, dandelions, lettuce, beet tops
and
some fruit: bananas, frozen this or that,
even better: in season and local.

A dash of celtic or Himalayan salt.
A dash of cinnamon or ginger.

And that's it.

To give it more "umpf" and get in some morning fat
plus protein,
with the incentive that raw fat helps burn away
fat in our bodies,
and feed our brains,
we can add :
soaked pumpkin, flax or sunflower seeds
or soaked almonds.

Anyway: lots of liquid chlorophyll in the mornings care
of green smoothies.

if this gets boring, add on some cooked or raw eggs later
in the morning,
or even add some raw eggs to the smoothie.

Real eggs
= chickens out on pasture
and only eating grains that are non genetically modified.

Lunch:
1. Any raw meal

2. Cooked fish or meat plus salad.
Use raw stuff and a blender to make your own sauce for the fish/ meat
and salad dressing.
Use cold pressed olive or flax or coconut oil,
organic.
Add soaked seeds, garlic, or rosemary, or whatever you'd like.
Vinegar if you like that.
And so on.

3. Cooked whole grains, quinoa, millet of buckwheat.
Salad and homemade dressing.

Not grains and protein, although avocado goes with everything.

Dinner:
Big salad
with think smoothie/ like dressing.

Or, any raw meal that appeals to you.

Make lunch the big meal.

If tempted to binge or cheat once or twice a week,
do it at lunch, after the green smoothie morning,
and before the salad dinner.

If you want occasional steak and salad
or fish and salad dinner,
go for it.

Soups:
with lunch are great.

With salad for dinner are great.

Mainly vegetable.
No dairy (later add raw dairy, especially raw keffir and raw yogurt)

All along: raw butter is fine,
if you can get it.

What about desert?
Make the morning smoothie your sweet treat.
Make the night time salad dressing thick and sweet
with honey or stevia.

Eat carrots, beets, sugar peas, apples.

What about snacks:
Hard boiled eggs if you aren't doing raw.
Just about anything if you are doing raw.

When you eat raw you can graze all day
and still lose weight
or be healthy as all get out.

Or so it seems to me.

Okay,
have fun with this and hop on these three books from yesterday:
Nourishing Traditions















And for Raw eating,
this chick is 50 and hasn't been sick in 14 years,
eats raw meat, cheese and milk,
and has a lot of fun:
Raw Fifty




And these people
found at RawFamily.com
are sweet, amazing,
and the inventors of the
extremely useful and delicious
and life changing
GREEN SMOOTHIE:
Green Smoothie Revolution

Friday Extra, #300: Smart Fitness, Smart Weight Loss, using awareness and variation, and taking it fun/ easy/ awake

Barefoot rock lifting

for the brain

spine

ribs 

pelvis

arms

breathing

awareness

brain

joy of it

Let's say you or anyone wants to:

lose weight and be healthier
or
just plain be healthier, their weight is fine and they know
they aren't really feeling "fit" as a human being
or
improve an ongoing skill in tai chi, yoga, music

How could we/ they/ you/ I
go about this?

Let's take some steps from the Anat Baniel Method
and
the Feldenkrais Method
and
a whole lot of other things that say:
Do something, no matter how small,
to get the ball rolling.

And the Buddhist and other traditions
that hint either subtly or not so subtly:
either we are mindful
or
mindless.

So:

If you keep being and doing the same thing,
nothing will change, so let's start with some small changes:

One:
In moving, I'd like to suggest ten minutes worth of "moving"
with awareness that could make a huge difference in
somebody's life:

One five minute package,
and set the timer, and quit at five minutes,
you can work up to more,
or do another five,
but for three or four days,
quit at the buzz or harp or marimba of the timer:

Go outside if you can
Get barefoot if you can
and do this:
Touch the ground (bend your knees all you want)
in whatever way comes easiest to you
and then
lift one or both hands up toward the sky.
Find a pattern and repeat what you have picked
for five to twelves times:

As you go up and down notice:
the shape of your spine
your breathing
(go very slowly on this, so you can feel/ sense and
savor yourself at every point of the movement)
where is the weight on your feet

which foot has more weight
what's going on in your ribs
are you keeping your neck soft
where are your eyes focused
are your fingers and toes and jaw soft and relaxed
what is the "five line" shape of you, two legs, two arms, one spine
how is your pelvis shifting in this


After a number of times,
stand up and just notice yourself,
and then pick another way of going down,
maybe a little twist
or just touching with one hand
or touching between your legs, or out to the sides
and as you come up
find another variation on what to do with your arms
and then
feel
sense
savor
learn from and enjoy doing this a number of times

Then stand and rest

Now, if you want to get a little strength from this
get something,
a rock
a broom
a gallon jar partly filled with water,

and touch that object to the ground,
and lift it up overhead

Have a pattern that you decide on
and repeat it
slowly
and with great awareness
a number of times

You can lift the object with one hand
lower in with the other

Lift it near your body
or farther away

Make circles in your lifting

many many choices

Pick one at a time
and enjoy really feeling and sensing this in yourself

Do all this for five minutes
and then stop

BIKE RIDING WITH "LAZY" INTERVAL TRAINING
And what of the other five minutes:
get a bicycle and go ride it somewhere uncrowded

Play around with what is about 50% effort,
what is 30%, what is 80% and so on.

Then start at 20 % and increase up to 80%,
keeping your back easy
your jaw relaxed
your arms relaxed
your breathing through your nose

When you get tired,
slow to any amount of effort you pick
less than 50%,
keep breathing and recovering
and making sure the rest of you that isn't pedalling
is as relaxed as possible.

Then, when you pick, speed up to something above 50%,
you pick the amount,
you pick the duration,
but don't go until you are panting and unable to easily
breathe through your nose.

You pick when to slow back down to
less that 50% effort.

Notice where your attention is.
Can you look out at the world and sense inside yourself
as you do this.
It's only five minutes.
Enjoy.

And if you don't have a bike:
walk out of your house,
this has to be something you can do
as often and easily as possible,
walk out and
walk like this,
alternating less than 50% of what you feel like your
maximum effort could be
alternating that with some figure/ guess you pick
above 50%

This again: with looking
and breathing through your nose
and keeping all the places not involved in walking (neck, nose, jaw, fingers,
even toes except to push off and press into the earth) keeping
all of you as soft and aware and relaxed as you can
while you change up your speed and effort

Again, just for five minutes.

Later, a longer essay on eating,
and you can see the page at my website:
Food, Health, Weight Loss: Discoveries and Suggestions
from halfway decent shape 66 year old

Here's a gift from tomorrow's blog entry:
a simplified:
try this and this a this
morning, lunch and night
program of the positive sort,
link is SIMPLE DAILY EATING PROGRAM
FOR OPTIMIZING HEALTH AND/OR WEIGHT LOSS

Here's more of an overview on
a non-habitual
pretty darn healthy
eating pattern:

A green smoothie each day

Consider a diet without these:
flour products,
pasteurized dairy,
fruit out of season,
sugars like sugar and agave and the fake stuff,
soy that isn't fermented
nuts and seeds that aren't presoaked

Figure out what sort of high grade protein
might be wonderful for you

You can eat lots and lots of what's left:
high grade meat, eggs, vegies, soaked nuts, smoothies,
beans if that's your thing (not mine), butter, especially raw,
fish

Lots

a study went like this:
people of semistarvation diets
of 1000 calories:

90% fat lost .9 pounds a day
90% protein lost .6 pounds a day
90% carbs gained .24 pounds a day

raw fat,
in a raw meal,
will lose you weight
and build your body
and feed
your brain

(see Nourishing traditions, below)

Think about how a meal or two a day of
raw eating could figure in with the above ideas

Don't worry about it.
Make one shift today
and see how fun that could be.

Consider a "cheat day" per week where you go out,
buy and consume out of your house,
the various "left behind" elements.

Alight

Here's some "Eating a cooler and smarter way books:



For non raw this is amazing, and cured me from the vegan trap:
Nourishing Traditions



And for Raw eating,
this chick is 50 and hasn't been sick in 14 years,
eats raw meat, cheese and milk,
and has a lot of fun:
Raw Fifty



And these people
found at RawFamily.com
are sweet, amazing,
and the inventors of the
extremely useful and delicious
and life changing
GREEN SMOOTHIE:
Green Smoothie Revolution

Twisting in Sitting, Chapter 25

TWISTING IN SITTING

Sit comfortably in a chair. Feel how this is.

Move to the front edge of the chair and look around behind yourself to the left and to the right. Notice the difference. For this learning we’ll just go to the left. So, just look to the left five or six times and notice how easy this is, and how far your head turns. Rest.

Now, put your left hand on the chair to your side or behind you, and put the back side of your right hand on your left cheek. Now turn to the left, using the ribs and the upper spine as well as your neck.

Do this a number of times, at least twenty, “easily,” and learn about your spine.

Rest. Rest means, to deepen your connection inside. To feel at ease. To feel in the sensation way of feeling what learning and awakening is happening inside of you. To notice changes in your breathing, your sense of length, your ease in sitting, your sense of aliveness. And anything else that comes to you.

Be present.

Give yourself, over and over, in all these lessons, be they moving, thinking, feeling, or soul, the present of being present.

Even reading or hearing this, just now, if you aren’t “doing” the lesson, breathe, close your eyes, feel your spine, and be with yourself, right now.

Come to the above position (right back of hand on left cheek), and turn about half as far as you go to the left. Then take your hand from your left cheek and put it about a foot in front of your face. Now, “easily,” and “many times,” move your right hand in a circle around where your face is pointing.
Watch the hand with your eyes and let your head turn with the watching. KEEP A SMALL DISTANCE BETWEEN THE HAND AND YOUR NOSE AND KEEP THIS DISTANCE FIXED. So when your hand goes up your nose comes forward and up, when you hand comes down your nose stays the same distance away.

Even more, use your back, as if you are “looking” at your hand with your whole spine.

Go slowly with this.

Have someone read the directions to you, or do it small, small piece at a time.

When your hand goes up, arch your back a little and push out your belly, as if your whole spine is lifting your nose.

When your hand goes down, fold and round your back a little, bringing in your belly, again as if your whole spine is bringing your nose down.

When your hand circles to the left, come to sit on the left side of your pelvis, and when your hand comes to the right, shift your weight that way.

Read these directions a few times and really get it, going back and forth between the hand circle and the head/ back/ spine/ pelvis circle.

Feel the pelvis’ rotation in all of this. This is huge to notice and will change your life forever if you do something like this every ten minutes when you are at a computer.

Come back to the middle and rest.

Rest deeply as per all the above suggestions.

Come back to the first position, with the back of your right hand on your left check. Again turn halfway to the left, and this time make the head/ hand/ back/ pelvis circle in the opposite direction, but this time with the hand touching the face.

Feel the circle your elbow is making as well as the circle your nose is making as well as all the shifting in your vertebrae and your pelvis.

Slow down.

Really enjoy this. There is tons to learn and love and like and discover and enjoy.

Feast on it all.

Rest, again, fully and deeply, with pleasure, presence and learning.

Then simply turn left and right and notice whatever learning and ease has come to this simple human action.

And then get up and walk around with whatever new feelings and sensations are in you.

(the book is for sale as pdf,

see link at top of the page)

this is chapter 25


In case you want the book
without looking at the table of contents that
this link will get you to,
here's the pay pal
thing:

108 Paths to Awakening

4 Brain Transformation

Thinking and Feeling about Death

 While we are alive, live. 

Grand advice, and our work is about 

"more life" 

for ourselves and others, isn't it?

In the Feldenkrais work, the group lessons especially,
you move in a pattern,
you slow down and wake up to yourself
and discover things about yourself
and your patten
and your possibilities in new patterns,
and then
you
REST.

This is like a little death in a way:
a death to the rush ahead,
a death to the "try, try, try"
a death to the "crank it out" schools
of living
or of physical exercise.

The goal isn't to wear ourselves out
it is to wake ourselves up,
to learn
and then give the brain (you)
a chance to integrate.

We go to sleep at night.
Death to the day,
and a chance to slow down, stop thinking,
let go of bodily tension,
stop striving,
give up identification with all the
"I am this" and "I do that" verbal categories by which
we label and limit ourselves.


We die to that.
With good breathing, and maybe some Feldie-ish moves before we
go to sleep
or some nice sex
or a good book
we drift into a recharge zone.
We wake up the next day,
as if reborn.

In Friday's http://slowsonom.com blog
with it's cleverish title: Taxes are taxing, death is relaxing, love is everylasting,
I explored around this idea,
the Sufi idea,
and I think all the mystics really,
this idea of "die before you die."

Think about the "death" at night:
no thoughts,
no "I am the person who is ...." so many years old, owns this,
is related to that, works at this, is successful or unsuccessful at this
and at that.

A sort of emptiness.

Now, death as an activity in life has, to my mind,
one huge disadvantage over many other activities:
it is not reversible.
So you can't try out a left leaning death
and a right leaning death
and a breathing in death
and a breathing out death
and an indoor death
and an outdoor death
and a death by water
a death alone
a death in a crowd
and so on.

Little room to play.

Oh, well.

The advantage seems to be that it is a big sleep:
and end
to
all the identifications by which
we tie down
and limit and
define ourselves as so much less than we really are:
they are gone.

And then again
we can do all that by
meditating
by being present
by doing movement lessons
by joining our awareness to now in nature
by love of another, or our work, or some sweet activity
like dancing or swimming or making love

So, here's a funny place I've come to:
one way to "die before we die"
is to live fully in activities that bring us so much
joy
and require enough attention
and even better create opportunites to play
into new areas we didn't even know we could explore
that we
"die" to all the nonsense that makes life such a drag

Here we are back to the old Buddhist thing:
suffering.

I don't want to explore that much,
now,
except to point out the obvious,
for those who have done the Work of Byron Katie,
almost all suffering that doesn't involve physical pain,
is about our story about reality.

Her (Katie's) question number four
is an ongoing invitation to test out what life
would be like if we just let the story die.

So death of the story is a way out
of suffering.

And deeply immersing ourselves in life
is a way of dying
to the junk with which we often clog our lives.

And I don't think "being busy"
is the same as deeply immersing ourselves in life,
unless we can be busy and present
at the same time.

As I could have been while typing/ thinking this up.
And wasn't much.

However, immersed in the flow of ideas,
I certainly wasn't suffering,
it's just that another layer/ dimension/ gift
would have been had by following my breathing
and sensing my skeleton, spine, arms, fingers, feet on the
floor,
as I went along.

And then again:
returning to the now
of doing that now
and I'm free,
even freer of anything that would be/ could be called suffering.

So death:
a one way street
that comes to us all.

Nothing to get too tweaked about,
if we like falling asleep at night,
unless we have a story about:
"how it's supposed to be."

And Lord, oh Lord,
don't we have lots of stories about "how death should be."

Basically:
it's okay if you are old
and aren't in too much pain
and have lots of loved ones around,
and all the other kinds
are bad/ wrong/ unfair
and so on.

This seems a story worth examining on
any death,
even a death of a relationship,
which seems, almost always at least to one of the people,
to be
"at the wrong time."

So, life goes on for the living.
For the dead, we don't know.

We can think of the dead
and feel badly if we want,
though I'm almost certain if they had a say
they'd want us to be loving life as much as possible,
cherishing every moment.

Back to where we started:
the Feldie world
and the importance of rests
between actions,
the importance of as little as possible,
the importance of something like a death
to our old patterns,
or at least this:
a death to our being stuck in just that one pattern
that isn't working so well.

It's about expansion.

One of the wonderful things Anat brings to this work
is the idea of
emotions as actions,
and in that we can create variation:

feeling bad?

okay: how long do you want to feel bad?
how big?
where is you is the sensation?
can you make parts of that sensation more?
parts less?

can you feel that feeling and add on another?
(she doesn't say that, I do,
I've found huge breakthroughs can be made
by
allowing and sensing a "bad feeling"
say
and adding
on feeling happy as well
and adding on:
sensing our fives lines
and following our breathing

so now the "bad feeling"
(like a shoulder pain,
for which this could work, too)
is a subset of a huge and miraculous deal:
we are alive,
with awareness
and choice )

alright:
buy my book if you want daily experimentation
with ideas and paths to newness

or don't buy it
and go through this day
with a joyous
and curious
and amazed attitude
to how much joy and learning
and awareness
the fact of death
and the story of death
and the thrill of "dying before you die"
can bring to you

good luck
good awakening
happiness and usefulness to you and your day

ciao
Chris

Day early, and powerful information for Parents of Autistic children, and fragile X

At my special Needs Children Blog
I have a posting that consolidates some feedback from an Anat Baniel Practitioner
and mother of an autistic boy
and some of my beginning understandings.

Just for pictures sake,
here's a link to a book that's crucial to what I have to say.
I think you'll love it and be inspired by it, as well as realizing what we,
of the ABM and Feldenkrais world, have to offer beyond it's amazing insights
and grand hearted efforts and glorious results.

Son Rise

A day late, and a dollar short

Water to heal the soul

Change of impressions to move our lives forward

My "excuse" for "missing" yesterday's blog posting

What does that mean?
"A day late" I get,
a dollar short, I guess it's a kind of poor me thing.

I'll skip that sentiment,
the poor me stuff,
and say:
rich me

a day late because I played hooky
on my birthday

a dollar short
and a smile breath soul
long,
since I grabbed my
time
which is my life
and did something I haven't done since I
moved to Texas:

got out of the amazing and thrilling
town of Austin.

Yesterday was my birthday
and I was whisked away from exciting
yet noisy and polluted Austin to a state park
full of quiet and oaks and cedar and a tree I didn't know
and
WAter
WATER

not the ocean,
but a river,
and at places a swim in able river

my gal friend and I

ate, walked, water painted,
talked, slept, lolligaged,
paddles around in the water
and had a grand time

And what's that got to do with ABM or FM?

Well, what's it got to do with the importance of a
"day of rest" in almost every spiritual tradition?

lots.

To slow down is to find ourselves, and
going to a new place,
and giving ourselves a new pace,
and seeing things we don't ordinarily see,
and doing things we don't ordinarily do,
this is
Good.



At least according to me,
and I guess that's one function of blogs:
to spout off one's opinion.

So, this can be,
as always a model in
our going about our days.

In a daze of always doing what we always do,
how can we
RIGHT NOW,
take a small mini vacation
and give ourselves a
different set of impressions than
we usually have
plowing away reading stuff nonsense brilliance bile humor and
recepies
on the Internet?

Well,
the eyes
for start.
Let's take our nose in a sweet circle all around the computer screen
looking as far is we can in a circle of directions.

Then let's realize we have a bottom
and are sitting our our pelvis
and turn our head to the left
with the help of shifting to the left side of our pelvis
and pushing our right knee forward
and feeling the look to the left starting all the way in the bottom of
our spine

Several times

and then looking to the right
with a shifting to the right side of our pelvis
and bringing our left knee forward

And that's good,
and
now
our hands

could they say hi
and touch each other behind our backs
and maybe caress our kidneys as our bottoms/ pelvises
do a little hoola hoop circle on the chair below.

Don't get it right,
unless that comes easily
(and there is a "right").

Just go around with your pelvis and let your belly swing in the same direction,
and
have your hands touching each other behind
your back
and kind of caressing your kidneys
as you do this.

Then close your eyes and rest

Open your eyes enough to read this
and
read:
imagine going the other way in your cicle
and then "do it,"
and then imagine again, and then
"do" again, back and forth,
seeing each time if you get closer to your "doing"
in your imagining

Then rest

And imagine getting up from your chair and taking
a
small
or
a medium
or a
long walk.

And then do it,
imagining what you will see,
and then discovering the world of the future
is all fresh and unknown

and have some fun with that

and one your walk
think
(without words)
about a few areas of your life you'd like to take little
breaks in
and how this
could help your over all life of now until 30 years from now

and then the final notes:
this is what i'm seeing as offering people when they come for lessons:
an amazing next 30 years

good

here's some more birthday pictures:

The basic "Swiss Army Knife" movement: for backs, necks, ankles, hips, knees, brains

Last Friday's essay at SlowSonoma.http://chriselms.blogspot.com/com was on "Weird and Strange" and even being the "Fool" all just were about being in a new world other than our accustomed programming.

 Monday's essay in my special needs children blog was about ways of using a child's habit/ wiring of "hand to mouth" as the basis for "connecting not fixing" in action


Today's essay here is going to continue with the movement I find
most useful to recommend to people who are willing to slow down,
pay attention
and get huge benefits from being out of gravity and into awareness.

I call it the "Swiss Army" knife movement,
because it has so many uses.

I've touched on in many times.
Most recently, on Wednesday, March 16, I published in here
an essay on using the foot, foot standing on the table
while you are lying down,
to push into the table
and
rotate your hip
and
arch your back.

Here's the link:  Hip, Back and Brain blog entry

Here's a reminder picture:

You don't see his foot on the table, but imagine it there.

Notice the chain of action:
foot pushes into "ground"
things happen
in
ankle
knee
hip joint
pevlis
back
ribs
neck

So, let's say it like this: this simple movement,
especially if you experiment with how
HARD IT IS IF YOU TIGHTEN YOUR BELLY
and
how sweet and liberating it is
when you release and PUSH FORWARD YOUR BELLY
(which is to say, use your back muscles)
can help ease and clarify all the above "parts" (hip, knee, ankle, back)
and can
help you understand how your back works,
since this movement involves:
1. ARCHING
&
2. ROTATING
our back,
which is two out of the four things a back does.

So, here we go with the rest of the lesson,
the 2 more things that the back does,
which are:
3. SIDE BENDING
&
4. ROUNDING/ FOLDING

Okay: You bring one foot to standing,
and this time you interlace your fingers and put your hands
behind your head

Then as you push with your foot
and
rotate your pelvis
and
push out your belly as you arch your back,
you also
slide your head along the floor, table, ground,
toward the pushing foot.

Feel what happens in the ribs as you do this.
I have a picture here,
taken at night, so it's lousy,
but maybe you'll get the idea,
and later I'll put in a better picture:

Let's try again with a day picture,
noticing the left elbow heading toward the left foot

Two variation are
One: to bring the knee toward the center,

Two:  is more to push the knee away from the head
and keep it as much as possible pointing toward the ceiling/ sky

This second variation creates a more interesting opening
at the hip joint

Anyway:
here's 3 out of four for the back:
arch
rotate
side bend;

Notice here, the ribs on his left (the right as we are looking) are shortening together,
and his ribs on the right side (left as we look) are expanding out.

Imagine his belly pushed forward,
and how the lower back has to rotate more than the upper back.

Now,
to get the final use of the back:
bring the knee that is forward/ toward the sky/ ceiling
toward the head
and the opposite elbow toward the knee,
now using the famous "abs" which are cool,
but only about a quarter of what "core strength"
is really about

Here's the elbow to knee,
ROUNDING/ FOLDING/ FLEXING THE BACK
part of the movement:

Now you know
and I know
you can "crank" through this movement
and it will still be a hell of a lot better than
nothing
or
most yoga,
but
but
but:
if you go slowly,
and really feel the vertebrae
and your ribs
and notice how your ankle
and feet
and toes are working
and really let your back
alternate between using the muscles in the back
and the front
and the sides

discover two ways of breathing with this:
which I won't even describe

take lots of rests

do it "many times"
on one side
and notice the differences

then imagine it on the other side
and just
do it
a few times

with huge
delight
learning
and
awareness


good