If you would just have been different

Here's a sweet and funny and relentless
"fact" of life
to remember:

a 100% losing bet
is
that the past was different

Okay:
So it's split up time, separation,
divorce.
D I V O R C E
(remember the song)

and you've got the stories
torturing you:

We should have done better

We are a failure

I am a failure

He/She/ the other one
should have been different

And let's do something slightly different
than the usually
brilliant and powerful
Work of Byron Katie
( I Need your love, is that True?
is a book I haven't read,
and I'm sure it's brilliant, funny, and immensely helpful)















But let's play this game:
Mr Bad Guy/ Ms Awful has left,
or you have left them,
or you two have decided to end it,
or imploded

anyway:
the other is gone

And you have this story:
If just they had been like this.......

So, try this.
Imagine they were like ......

He's kind.
Or she's happy.
Or whatever.

And feel in you how that would make
you feel.

And now notice this is how you've made yourself
feel.

Get good at this:
make yourself feel just the way you'd feel if the
"One who should have been better,"
had been better.

Then you've got all the goodies
Inside,
and no
need to bitch and moan that they didn't do it
for you.

You can do it for yourself.

Right now.


Good,
have fun.

More Landmark thoughts, with Osho, Katie, Gurdjieff and Moshe

One of the cool things about Landmark
is they talk and very directly about the enslaved positon
of "ordinary life."


They talk of being slave to our worldview.
The beliefs we might have about: "I'm not lovable."
"It's hard to make money in this economy."
"I can't do...."

All this they are good on.
And they are good on bringing up the idea of transformation vs change.
But, as of yet, I don't think they have the tools to create
that difference.
Since to transform, to my mind, deep here in the Feldie/ Anat Baniel worlds,
you need to rewire the brain,
and only when awareness combines with variation combines with loose attachment to goals combines with discovery combines with mindfulness,
which could be the same as awareness, or a little different,
only with all that,
sensing and feeling in the moment the difference,
say between reading this page with your back arched
and reading this page with your back rounded,
the difference between reading this page with
awareness of your breath
and reading this page without awareness of your breath,
reading this page aware of the other sources, all the sources,
of light
in whatever space you are in,
vs reading this just "focused" (more like hooked) on
the page:
that can transform who you go about reading
this lastest posting/ rant/ ramble/ exploration of
mine

So, what's that go to do with Landmark
well, not just them:
any system that has as its learning model:
A. Teacher gives a bunch of information
B. students listen
C. students "get it" or don't "get it"
D. So what, no action is taken

They have break out groups:
you admit to a partner this or that "resistance"
(confession, I've only been to a promotional meeting,
but did live with a guy I like a ton, and we had
back and forth great discussions,
so the meeting I wen to was discussion of "resistance"
to signing up for the cause),
and that could help
IF
the talking was in an awake,
mindful,
variation
mode

But it isn't
same old posture
same old voice
same old "oh wow this is me making a discovery act"

So, no real change,
kind of like a lesson where you don't work of the ankle
a bit
and they stand up, and the ankles habit pulls the lesson
back into habitual mode.

Okay, but what's the drift on Osho, Katie, F and M:

Osho and G both say, and mabye O gets it from G:
O: the biggest fear, is the fear of disapproval of others,
and hence not "fitting in:

G: the biggest slavery of humanity is wanting approval from others

Katie: If I had a prayer, and I don't,
it would be : "God spare me from wanting love,
affection and approval from anyone outside myself....ever"

And our man, Moshe:
well, somewhere on my website
the always changing :
4BrainFitness.com
i've got that great quote from Awareness  thru movement
about:
most people keep busy enough to stay unaware
and hidden behind the Masks enough to avoid the
immense suffering that would come from asking their hearts
what they really wanted

And Potent Self is nothing if not a long
and sober view of human beings as conditioned animals,
and the huge burden of our long dependency
on more or less sleeping fools.

And so what's that got to do with Landmark:
who knows?

the herd thing:
you get approval by being in the club,
and joining up everyone you are vaguely related or associated with,
and then you are all in the club
and....

it's  a better club,
really

reminds me of something I read a long time ago:
about cults,
and how they are a substitute family,
especially useful for the young for whom army, school, marriage
can't/ wont' give the break from families:

and kids with strict families find strict cults,
and earthy families find earthy cults,
and spacy families find spacy cults
and no real harm done,
the kids get tired of it
and the only danger was those forcefully "deprogrammed."

Landmark more like a cult
of the mid-life crisis,
and the weariness of suffering and not "making it"
relationships and money,
and these are discussed at a hugely higher level
than "out there,"
and do people get tired of it and move
on:
seems so.

Anyway: back to approval or not:

Let's think about this:
our work as creating an opening
and huge and amazing opening
for people to discover how to
"be themselves."

Think about it:
what's the one thing you can do better than
anyone else in the world:
Be yourself

Ain't that sweet?

Awareness thru Movement


Potent Self
Meetings with Remarkable Men, Gurdjieff understandable

Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson,
Gurdjieff trying to make it hard,
really, he set out to "bury the bone" deeper











A thousand names for Joy: katie plus da Tao    In search of the miraculous: Ouspensky's pesky amazing take on G








Courage: the joy of living dangerously

The Learning Switch: Anat's Second Principle/ Essential

One: there is no learning switch.

Two: Anat didn't invent learning as crucial to our method

Three: without a constant awareness that a purpose of a lesson is
this:
the student/ client learns something
the lesson isn't a lesson

That's really all that needs to be said.

With a special needs child, with any child, with your lover:
what's the difference between the "this little piggy goes to the market" toe,
and "this little piggy stays home" toe

That's huge
That's delicious

and if we can hook that up
with the opposite hand's fingers,
little toe left to little finger right,
how much more delicious

and if we can sense
and they, the special needs child, any child, the lover
wakes up to the spine in between this two,
how useful

and then for a lesson:
what's a function this can tie into

for the practitioners:
you figure it out

for the parents:
stand up,
move around,
find something you do that noticing left big toe
and right thumb makes clearer, easier, happier,
more pleasurable, more potent

don't try to evoke that in your children
by movement or manipulation,
but have it in the back of your mind
when playing with toes and fingers

go slow enough so you can see that look
in your child's eyes,
you know the look when the learning switch is on

practice with your mate
who knows the delights that might led to

Good
Move into Life
 










The Potent Self



Mindfulness and Learning

The Joy of Divorce/ Separation, 2

Beautiful conversation with a wonderful woman
last night.

Several of us around, all with various takes on her suffering
vis a vis this quite wonderful man with a minor flaw:
he had rejected here.

Advice A: it's alright. We've all been there.

Advice B: We all love you. It's okay.

Advice C: Go through it.

Advice C is close, but not quite there.

The secret is that at every moment we can either be present to our
experience or identified with it.

She was feeling rejected.
Sad.
Embarrassed about crying.
Frustrated that she'd "tried so hard" blah blah.
Comparing all the others who'd wanted her and he, who hadn't.

All this is fine,
if felt in the present.
Felt as emotional feeling.
Felt as physical sensation.
That's just life, being lived, being experienced.

But who is watching this?
The real Self, who is empty and wordless and always
complete?
Of, the image/ mask/ socially conditioned self who has
to live up to various stories:

Stories like: relationships should last forever.
I had good intentions, so it should have worked out.
I was good/ kind/ open/ loving/ whatever so that other should have been.
The other should have been different.
The other should have blossomed with my love.
And so on.

Nice stories, and some people get their robots in line
enough to make these stories seem to come true,
but for this wonderful woman the stories were
dying,
and she took that personally.

Sorry, sweetie: the death of the story is good
news.
What's left in the emptiness?

You.
You breathing.
You experiencing your suffering when you attach to the story.

This is the glory of Byron Katie





Judge Your Neighbor
Write it down
Ask 4 Questions
Turn it around

Question 3: How do you react when you attach to/ believe the thought?

This is our chance to experience our experience. To watch and feel and confess and admit and realize: this is how my life is when I believe the story: X shouldn't have rejected me.

We can feel and experience our tears, or sadness, or frustration, or hurt, or disappointment.

But believe this?
Well: advice A is sure: Everyone buys into their story and suffers, so it's okay for you to suffer to.

Byron Katie and anyone who can come to the present would say:
suffering is optional.

Believe the story and suffer.

But what about question #4 : Who or what would you be without the thought? Without the story.

(If this is going too fast because you haven't done yet
the work of Byron Katie, look at all the postings with this label
The Work of Byron Katie postings in this blog
and/ or
The Work of Byron Katie postings in SlowSonoma.com blog
and/ or
Go to her Website: thework.com)

Back to suffering as optional:
Who are you without the thought?

Go there. And find out.
You won't have a thought to tell what it is,
because that's another story.

But you will have an experience.
Of your real self.

Adyashanti
calls this real self
Emptiness Dancing.

He's got a book of the same title:
It's worth getting.

And life is worth living there.

We really have only two choices:
Mindfulness
or
Mindlessness.

We can hide behind our masks, and pretend to be alive
in the mindless state,
but when divorce or separation or loss or death happens,
the mask drops.

Choices are like the advices above:
Feel bad that you are empty of your mask.

Or, the advice of mine, not listed above:
Discover your real self,
the one behind the mask,
the emptiness dancing and deeply gloriously grateful to be
along for this Earth existence ride.

Each breath is precious.

And now, just a bit more Byron Katie:

judge your neighbor/ parent/ ex lover
write it down
ask 4 questions
turn it around

One of the postings you'll get to in the slow sonoma blog
is the advanced use of the turn arounds.

For here, thought:
He shouldn't have rejcted me,
turns to
One: I shouldn't reject him.
And she was, vigorously: rejecting his rejection.
But if rejection was what he was,
then loving him
gives her only one choice
(the choice that ends all suffering):
to love his rejecting.

Second turn around:
She could stop rejecting herself.
This she "got," off and on,
and then went back to apologizing for how
she was being,
which means,
rejecting herself.
She shouldn't feel this way. shouldn't carry on. shouldn't have fallen for him.
blah, blah. one rejection after another.

Third turn around:
he should have been rejecting.
'
Why?
So she could learn what real love is
and
wake up to enlgithenment
not as a grand big ass thing,
but as the thought by thought
way out of suffering and into sanity.

So there.

Good.

Wake ze F... up!

this moment

fades
it is already gone

we don't know what the
next
will be
and
to surf that moment

is a thrill

an always available thrill

the ultimate cure for
boredom

and the only way to love

because if we love
we have to be seeing,
hearing,
touching,
smelling,
"getting"
the person in front of us,
right now,
otherwise we are interacting with
our story of them,
our mental construct

that's not love
that's the head
make a match
maybe even a "this is love"
match

but without the present,
smelling that rose,
you don't love
the rose,
just the idea of the rose

we are alive
this instant

that's an idea
until you experience the sweet amazing
wonder
of YOU
ALIVE

right now.

That's the new title page to me website:
SAVE THE WORLD:
WAKE THE F.... UP TO NOW!

The world is to the living

Without the Now
we are mindless creatures,
maybe in high grade automatic,
but still
mindless or mindful

and what's more fun?

wake up to this moment
and you won't even need to tell
me
or
yourself
or
anyone

the reward is there,
here
now

eternally
here
now

and...
hey, if we want a better life:

happier
more free in body,
thinking better,
contented soul

where to start?

where else can any action
come from
but
ze goot ole NOw

The Joy of Living Dangerously

Moshe and Osho and Gurdjieff and me

Who am I?

Same as you, a miracle of learning and discovery.

My latest discovery is this book:
by Osho: Titled: Courage, the Joy of Living Dangerously














While I'm at Amazon links, this Title Freedom: The Courage to Be Yourself (Osho, Insights for a New Way of Living Series)
 
reminds me of the Gurdjieff work I was involved in
for many years in Berkeley under the guidance
of a bad boy conscious fellow by the name of
David Daniels.

David was always boiling the work down to
this;
either you are yourself,
or you're trying to fit into what others
want you to be.





The first book, the top book, the one that I fell into by moving into
a new place where the old tenant let me borrow some of her books
(If you ever get a chance, this one
is amazing:
)
Anyway the Joy of Living Dangerous came to me
reading eyes heart and mind:
and it so reminded me of Moshe and his brutal and
fearless intelligence, lack of hesitation in calling the stupid
the stupid,
and their mutually blunt, and obvious, analysis of Society
as the mechanism for making drones out of one
and all.


Moshe has some marvelous quotes about the mask,
behind which we hide our lives,
and if we keep busy enough, we don't feel the pain
of not knowing who we really are or what our real heart's content is.

That's of course in
Awareness Through Movement
(what a new cover, eh?
but then again neither Moshe
nor Osho was one to hide from the
obvious joy, centrality and usefulness
of Good Sex
as a healing and nurturing aspect of life)

David used to talk about the human need for
warmth, and how sometimes you could satisfy that
within the usual codes, and sometimes you couldn't.

Maybe I "shouldn't" put that here.
Oh, well.

Life is good and long, and we all started like this story in the Osho book:
Two men are bragging about how far back they can remember.

One, quite huffed up, says: I remember playing with my kitten in my backyard
when I was just three years old.

The other nods, and then says: I remember going to a picnic with my parents.
When I went to the picnic I was in my father.
When I came home from the picnic, I was in my mother.

So be it.

The broad suggestion in Osho"s book
is to prepare for death by at all times
chose the unknown over the known.

The known is safe and what the mind wants.
The unknown is a risk and a thrill and what the heart wants.

Moshe was reputed to have a huge curiosity
and tolerance for ambiguity.

Katie, as in Byron Katie, sees herself as a woman
set free because she lives in and from,
"I don't know."

Our work, in the Feldenkrais and Anat Baniel method,
thrives from living and acting from the "I don't know,"
the discovering of just one little option for one little movement
in our client,
and linking that to a larger awareness,
and a bunch more of "I don't knows"
explored,
and connections found,
and all along brain cells and pathways are being created.

They come in for a lesson with one brain.
They go home with another.

This is the food of the new,
the food of the now,
the food of the unknown.

May we have happy eating today.

Shoulders with a Brain attached, vs Shoulders as a Car Door to Oil

A friend sent me to the blogsite of a kind of neat guy, who has
some pretty fun stuff to recommend now and then,
but the link was to one of these insulting;
Here's your body,
treat it like a machine and you can make it a better machine
kind of deals.

The big scoop: Raise up your shoulders, hold them there,
release. Do this a number of time,
daily,
and you can increase "Range of Motion."

Some other time I'll return to earlier rants
about how insulting "Range of Motion" is
as a goal for a real human being, but let's just think like
this for a minute:

We are one being.

We evolved from creatures living in nature
and needing to feed and defend and clothe and procreate
ourselves.

We have a brain,
perhaps the most amazing 2-3 pounds of matter
in the Universe,
and what is it concerned with as far as the amazing shoulder,
this joint that is barely a joint,
with the shoulder blades floating so freely on the back ribs:
bringing our hands to our mouth to feed ourselves,
throwing a javelin,
grabbing a tree branch to climb to safety,
reaching out to pick up our babies,
or hug and more our mates

or.....
"range of motion."

Can you begin to see how insulting it is
to
A. Our lives
B. our shoulders
C. our brains
D. our ability to learn and improve
to come up with some scheme to treat ourselves like a machine
that needs oily and improve
"range of motion?"

(Okay, there, I guess I didn't wait to rant,
did I?

If you enjoyed it, thanks.)

Okay,
so instead of shrugging up and releasing down,
what is the alternative for those of us with a brain
and the ability to lay down new neural pathways like crazy
(the so called brain plasticity,
that every live wire person who kept learning their whole
life knew about without knowing the name for it)

Okay, here goes:
I'll include some pictures,
and when I'm bored or something,
if that ever happens, add more, because it takes a long time to upload photos,
but here is a way of treating your shoulder
AND BRAIN
AND WHOLE LIFE TO IMMENSE IMPROVEMENT

So.
Just sit.
Feel yourself.

1. Then do the shrug thing, and lift both shoulders.
Okay that's the beginning comparison.

2. Intelligence and laying down new neurons only takes place
with awareness and noticing differences, so
Lift one shoulder
and then the other.
Do this several times and discover the differences
and what's the same.

3. Now pick one shoulder to improve.
Don't pick one that's in pain, but if it's past pain that no
longer is around, pick that one, if you want.

WHATEVER SHOULDER YOU PICK,
SO SLOWLY,
SO ABOUT 70% OF YOUR LIMIT,
SEARCH FOR AND FIND PLEASURE AND EASE THROUGHOUT
EVERY MOVEMENT.

4. Now just lift and lower the shoulder you picked,
noticing a difference between these two areas:
your shoulder blade
your ribs.
Go slow, slowly, slower.
Go gently. Notice the ribs not moving much,
and the shoulder blade rising and lowering.

Rest.

Notice differences one side to another just from that.

5. Now lift you shoulder, always this same one,
and very slowly turn your head to one side as the shoulder turns,
and then bring back to the middle as the shoulder descends.
Go back and forth,
notice differences.
Find pleasure to each side.

Time for a picture or two:

Here Vick raises his right shoulder, the one he chose to work with, and looks to the right.

Here he raises the same shoulder (through the lesson, always the same shoulder, then at the end, the perception of differences is the greatest)


6. Now rest
and notice a difference in feeling one shoulder to the other.

7. Now, and this is hard to show with a picture,
but LOOK STRAIGHT AHEAD, AND KEEP YOUR GAZE STRAIGHT AHEAD,
while turning your head first one way,
and then the other, slowly and gently,
as you raise the chosen shoulder gently.
As the nose comes back to forward, the shoulder comes down slowly and easily.

When doing this pay attention to four things:
your shoulder blade
your ribs
your neck
your eyes.

Rest after several times each way,
and feel differences,
in your whole being,
and differences
from one side to another.

8, Now while lifting, again
slowly and gently, the same shoulder,
one time tilt your head toward the lifting shoulder

and one time tilt your head away from the lifting shoulder

Do this several times, looking for pleasure and ease in your whole being,
and learning.

Rest and notice differences side to side.

9. Now shrug one shoulder and then the other and notice differences.

10. Just sit and feel yourself and notice differences side to side:
can you see differences here?

Here's Vick before the lesson: for starters:

You might be able to see differences side to side,
and in a general feeling of ease and relaxation.

But this is dynamic relaxation.
The shoulder on the right is a smarter,
more evolutionarily cool shoulder.
How to tell?
Well the pictures won't show much,
but you do it and you'll feel.

One at a time lift the arms forward and up
and see/ feel/ notice/ exult in which shoulder seems
like its younger and more vital and really part of "all of you,"
and which one's just "off on its own."

What would be a cool book to add to this lesson?
The Elusive Obvious, by Moshe Feldenkrais,
with its great section on "doing it right" as a dead end,
and "Doing it better," as a lifetime of improvement,
joy and discovery:

For a whole batch of movement lessons, click on the label below, there's sixty of so, I think












Anat's book, too, with its slightly watered down
but superb descriptions of the way we can keep improving our vitality
our whole life.

Low Impact, non drug help for all of us, including special needs children

One of the parents of my baby sweet client Harper, of whom you've seen many
a picture on this blog,
has discovered a wonderful store that I recommended in Austin.

It's called the Herb Bar, and it's near my old neighborhood in
the South Congress area of Austin,
the oh so cool 78704.

Here's the link to the Herb Bar.
THE HERB BAR IN AUSTIN ON MARY STREET, BETWEEN S. 1ST AND CONGRESS


Anyway, Penny Howard and her husband Dustin,
started exploring the Herb Bar to find alternatives
to their other daughter, Lilly's, quite heavy duty
allergy medicine.

Penny was recommended an herbal alternative for allergies
and it worked great.

( I suggested the Herb Bar when Penny came to Harper's lessons
all allergied out herself from being in Austin)

Penny kept exploring, looking for help for Harper.

She tried out Rescue Remedy,
which is from the Bach Flower Essence school
of very, very low impact herbal help.

This method of healing was discovered by Edward Bach
in the 1930's, and is basically:
put flowers in with some water,
let the sun energize the water and the flower "essence"
take this essence and put it in a bottle.

Various flower essences
seem to be healing/ soothing/ helping for various
ailments,
in sometimes an almost silly way
The flower Impatiens helping impatience

sometimes a somewhat mystical way:
Pine helping self-reproach and guilt

and Chicory helping with possessiveness
and meddling and self-pity.

Anyway, Bach came up with Rescue Remedy
for those undergoing trauma
and Penny found one drop of this helped Harper
with her seizures.

When she put this up on a website devoted to
CDLK5 she caught some grief because the Rescue Remedy
was in an alcohol base.

The picture at the start of this article shows that at Whole Foods
you can buy an alcohol free version,
and in a lesson yesterday
with a very, very irritable Maggie (also lots of pictures
of her on this site),
it took about 15 minutes,
but she turned into very relaxed
and very attentive
and extremely interested in learning.

Since the second of Anat's essentials
in the Turning on of the Learning Switch,
the use of Rescue Remedy (we went big time
and used 2 drops)
could be great news for both practitioners
and parents alike.

Here's some books that might get you very excited,
both for stuff bothering you,
and the overall soothing of Rescue Remedy:
(and what of those dealing with "trauma"
as in divorce,
or discovering they have the Cancer diagnosis?
This,
along with walks,
and mindfulness,
and honest communication,
and good sex,
and lots of play, could be wonderful)

which has the following 5 parts:
Star of Bethlehem    for trauma and numbness
Rock Rose                for terror and panic
Impatiens                  for irritability and tension
Cherry Plum             for fear of losing control
Clematis                   for the the tendency to "pass out," the sensation of being "far away" away that                                  often precedes unconsciousness

With both girls seizures is a big issue, and the controlling of them with as little drugs as possible seems very important to me and to the parents

Here's some books'

First take: My New Process, The Joy of Divorce, From Broken to Breakthrough

I am deepening and broadening my work.

I will be including the Anat Baniel / Feldenkrais method
of working in
groups and privately with people to upgrade their nervous systems
to undo pain,
transcend limitations,
become more young, free and intelligent in their bodies







AND

the work of Byron Katie



to transform
pain, hurt, anger, resentment and confusion
into
peace, freedom, joy, love and happiness










AND

the "not really work"
more the life path
of Being Present

to help us all recall the everypresent
present
as a way out of suffering
and
into pleasure, creativity, potency, and lifelong vitality

AND

some work/ play/ discovery I've taken
from Gestalt Therapy
and refined to make a marvellous path
to taking the juice away
from both our Inner Critic
and our Inner Victim
and bringing it back
to the calm, happy, smart and loving Real Self
who is us
without the baggage

AND

Conscious Communication
patterned on Speaking Circles,
with the goal and pleasure
of real talking
real listening
being present in both ends of the conversation
and the delight of all that

So, I'll say more on this here tomorrow,
but I wanted to get started

What's New is Your Life? What's good?

You know this question:
How are you?

And have you noticed in clunky conversations,
right after you've answered, the person will ask again,
How are you?

As if they wanted to know.

So what would be a nice question to greet people with?

What's good in your life?
I like that, though people often lazily just say, everything, and
these could be the people that say, "Okay," when you ask them how
they are.

Everything's good.
What good about something that's good?

What's exciting to you?

What's new in your life?

I've got a new place to live.
I'm creating several new businesses, all of which are going to
be
hugely useful
to lots of people.

I'm reading about dance
and Isadora Duncan.

I'm learning a new section of Austin.

I go to the rooftop cafe of Austin Whole foods
to write in the morning.

So, enough about me.

What's new with you?

What's good in your life?

What do you love, right now?

I love the feeling of the watermelon I just ate in my stomach.

This is more like a "normal" blog, sort of like chatting.

Oh, well.

This is new, a less serious blog.

Oh, well, hope you love it.
Or yourself.
OR something.

Good.

Additional thoughts about "Movement with Attention."

In Anat's book, there are some very
inspiring examples of people whose
lives made dramatic shifts when
they discovered Movement with Attention.

The main element I missed in yesterday's essay
was the usefulness
and importance
of realizing that thinking and "feeling" in the emotional
sense,
are also movement.

And if we pay attention to our emotions,
we can feel them either deepen,
if they are sweet emotions,
or begin to loosen and shift
if they aren't such pleasant ones.

With thinking, she didn't give any examples
of watching our thinking as motion,
but one of the great uses of journalling,
and the "three pages a day" of the Artist's Way,
is that we can go beyond the usual two thoughts
clunking through our nogans and discover deeper
and perhaps more stimulating and useful thoughts
as we let the thinking itself
get in motion.

I often discover that
in writing these blogs,
that one thought leads to another.

Speaking, too, my gal and I love to talk five minutes one,
five minutes the next,
and if we stay present with ourselves
and looking into the eyes of the other,
we often discover ourselves saying things at
a deep and profound and often very loving level.

So attention to thinking in speaking
can lead to love.

Actually, being present almost always leads to love
of one sort or another,
love of the sky or the tree you are seeing,
love of the walking you are doing,
love of the person you are with
or the music you are hearing
or playing
or humming.

The song of life.
The dance of life.

Moving into waking
is to move into joy.

Let's go.

From Anat's book, Essential One: Movement with Attention, for parents of special needs children, and ALL of us

Harper learning about gravity,

I'm going to do a series, writing about the Nine Essentials from
Anat's book.
Move Into Life

If you don't have it yet, it's certainly a fine addition to your life,
whether a parent of a special needs child,
a practitioner of Feldenkrais or the Anat Baniel Method,
or "just"
one more of that amazing group of human beings who realize:
hey, I'm alive,
and when I know I'm alive I can transform almost anything.

Actually, when we are alive,
and aware of the present moment, we can transform
the quality of our experience,
always,
though we may or may not be able to transform the effects
of our actions.

What's that mean?
You are trying to improve your tennis serve.
You become aware of the tightness of your grip,
and you try tighter, and less tight.
You place awareness on your feet, and add extra awareness
sometimes to your big toes, sometimes the baby toe,
sometimes the inside of your feet,
sometimes the outside.

As you do these variations,
which is another Essential down the line,
you have a better chance of being aware of just
how the whole swing,
the whole serve
the whole action takes place.

So: your experience of your serve will change.
Maybe more relaxed.
Maybe more powerful.
Maybe both.

Certainly, by shifting awareness in your fingers
and then in your toes, you will get a more global sense
of what this "serve the ball" action is about.

For you.
Now.

And this could be done without variation.
We could just keep serving the ball,
and shifting awareness from our toes,
to our ankles,
to our knees,
to our pelvis,
all the way up,
and with this awareness in the moment again
get a clearer picture, feel, sensory understanding
of how we do something that might have
been habitual.

And we don't have to be "into" sports.
We can walk to the next room, and pay attention to
that movement.

We can move our spine gently right,
left,
up and down,
forward and back,
and see how that "feels," where feeling can mean
both emotional (feels good, feels happy) and sensory:
the actual "feel" of the muscles and bones and movement
as it happens.

This is obvious when we do it,
and yet so often our movement is just
"getting it done,"
and we have wasted a chance to be present
and to give attention to ourselves in the moments of our life.

Think how rich making a meal,
or even washing the dishes could be,
if we took it as a meditation, a chance to be present
to the movement of our arms and spine, and the shifting
positions of weight bearing through our feet,
and our use of our spine and ribs and shoulders.

There is a reason for the famous Zen phrase about:
before enlightenment: chop wood and carry water.
After enlightenment: chop wood and carry water.

It's the everyday living attended to,
in the moment that is the path to
enlightenment
and
IS
enlightenment.

Good, I hope, so far.

And what about our children,
if you are a parent?

The usual, and the usual is so amazing as to be the miraculous
if you think and or realize about it,
that we aren't a tree, aren't a chair, aren't a fragment of star dust
drifting in the Universe.

The usual is that you can lift and hold and touch
and talk to your child.

In any of those movements,
see what happens,
become your own laboratory,
if you are sensing and awaring of your movements
as you lift, hold, touch or talk to your child.

And then, sometimes you will want to play
with them,
to caress them,
to move them gently and sweetly.

Then the slow and the gentle essentials
come in,
One: for the sake of the child's experience
of enjoying it
Two, for the sake of your child's being able
to pay attention as you are moving them,
Three, for the sake of your ability to feel the different
places your touch is transmitting through their
bodies.

It's like you are doing a dance,
the fox trot,
the tango,
something slow and sensual with your child.
This is a form of love,
and with awareness from you,
will help be one more of the learning moments
that they use to build their increasingly
proficient future.

Even the smallest amount of awareness
on their part
is a wonderful addition to the thousands
and perhaps millions of bits of information
that they are using and will continue to use
to move and thrive and learn and transform themselves.

So, it's a good, good, good situation.

You bring yourself more toward the state of enlightenment in action,
which will be relaxing and pleasurable in and of itself.

You increase the quality of your interaction with your child.

The child's experience of herself or himself as loved and nourished
continues and flourishes.

And your child's learning keeps going and growing.


Okay, that's enough for now.
I'll read the chapter, and maybe tomorrow add on an additional thoughts.

Happy attentive moving.



Chris

Potency, Difficulties, Sex, the Good Life and Moshe Feldenkrais

"The overcoming of difficulties 
is one of the essential parts
of the pleasure of living" 
is a part of the second to last sentence in The Potent Self.

This is a book worth reading,
either front to back
of bit by bit.

There are tremendous sections on the problems
of how most of us were raised, most specifically
the "oh, that's so good" praise/ conditioning when e
were "good". This seems so kind, and yet, the message is
always there:
Stop the rewarded/ approved behavior and you are
not so good
which can quickly and easily be felt and expereienced
as
you are bad.

Tremendous sections of how the central feature
of humans is that they learn,
here with the upside of becoming Pablo Cassals or Michael Jordan,
and the downside of become the same sort of neurotic that
Mom or Dad was.

And then, this is Moshe Feldenkrais, right?
Huge amounts of the book talk about real posture,
which he calls acture,
and the use of the back and spine to further
mobility and ease

and potency.

Sex is important to life
and to Moshe.

Good sex is one of the essentials of a good life.
He shows how his work compliments
and even transcends traditional talk therapy
for dealing with potency issues,
and gives examples of people who
under his guidance where able to go from
impotence to potency.

And then, of course potency
is potency is
potency.,

And one of the great and glorious things to do with potency:
dive into the pleasure of overcoming difficulties.

Good.

And, if the "overcoming of difficulity,"
was the Cancer thing,
how much better to go about this with the peacefulness
of a good sex life,
and the clarity of functioning in a potent
and mature way.

Late posting for special needs parents, and us all

In my larger work, I am creating what I call the Life Spark Process.

This is a process by which people may rapidly and with joy, clarity and awareness:

1. Get clear of old issues with Mom, Dad and any -ex mates in their life

2. Get clear with their present mate/ or get clear what they want in the next relationship

3. Deal with and leave behind the Inner Critic

4. Eliminate stress as a factor in ongoing daily life

5. Learn to live, think, write, talk and eat in the present

6. Radically improve the feeling/ sensation tone of their life,
by doing the Anat Baniel work, as private lessons, and as do it at home movement work.
Feel better, younger, taller, move easier, with more pleasure, skill and awareness.

What does this have to do with Special Needs Children.

Life can challenge any and all of us. We can lose a job, a friend or relation to death, we can get ill, we can lose a friend or lover to separation and divorce.
And in all of this, there are choices:
go numb
feel badly
stay awake, present, joyous and useful and loving  to others
even though the going is "tough" for us

Now, having a special needs child
creates an ongoing and relentless excuse to feel what people
like to call stress

Two of the best and most effective pathways out of stress are
being present
love.

You already know this, if you are a parent,
and maybe you forget,
and so this essay is a reminder:

And it is why the Anat Baniel Method,
and well done Feldenkrais work
works so well: Children are touched in the present,
and small improvements and variations
are created in the present,
we move slow
we move gentle
we move with curiosity as our guide rather than "trying to get something to happen"
the practitioner is always listening, "listening" with their hands:
what is going on in the child
Right Now

And this can be your secret as a parent:
you can touch the child,
no matter how fussy or limited your wonderful child
seems to be
but just touch, in the present
feel what you feel
sense and imagine and tune in on what they feel

move slowly
very slowly
feel what shifts in them from your movement

life is good this way:
when we touch another in the present
it is as if everything else in life is of no importance

we touch
gentle
moving slowly
we listen to what they feel like,
we notice what seems to be changing in them
we search for greater pleasure
and a bit of novelty for them,
for ourselves

we sense ourselves in gravity
we follow our breathing

we can do that right now,
reading these words

life is good

and then there is love:
love is just about what we are exploring above:
what is
sticking with
accepting
enjoying
liking
loving
what is

how your child feels to you right now
you know that's perfect
you know you child's perfect

and learning can and will happen

human brains are the most miraculous small package
in the universe

brains love to learn
to create order out of chaos
to bring meaning to the confusing

small movements
gentle

even now
this now now, right now,
we can arch our backs a bit and let our stomachs come forward
relaxed
and then we can round our backs, belly in,
sternum slumping down,
we can go back and forth gently
very gentle,
as if touching our spine and ribs and pelvis and sternum
with our movement

this is self love
this is a grand and sweet alternative to stress

go on,
be sweet to yourself
you deserve it

the present
of being present
is always here

love yourself by being present
and loving your child
even better than your already awesome level
that's possible

good

the purpose of "bad days"

suffering is either an addictive junk food,
or a very precise kick in the rear:

wake up, suffering says,
you are fighting Reality

looking around at What Is
look inside at your demand/ complaint/ whine/ judgment

see the difference

feel the suffering?

try this:
stand over here
stand in your belief
really, really believe reality should be, or should have been different
write down a big fat list of how
that makes you feel
in emotions
in body
in actions
in breathing
in being present

now,
move
stand over here,
a new place
and see what it's like
without the story
about how reality should be different
no story it should be what it
is
no story it shouldn't be what it is

just observe, taste, experience
reality

how is that

and if suffering gets you to compare the two
stand in the two places

it did a good job
for you
didn't it?


have a happy fourth
i'll be travelling all that day,
ferry from Orcas to Annacortes
shuttle from Annacortes to Seattle
plane from Seattle to Austin

this is good