Thursday, August 30, 2012

rules and Rules and Love



there are many rules in life one of mine is "do tai chi before computer stuff"

and here I am breaking the rule

we'll see if lightning strikes me down

(almost all rules are untrue,
and then again:
please mainly stop at red lights,
car people)

life is so simple, isn't it:
one now after another

and I couldn't wait to announce
the ridiculously obvious news

ah, me
ah, my
the dancing in the streets
that is God's preferred way of wasting time

and in God/ Life/ Yes
time is brightly un-wasteable
(you heard that word first here

maybe)

so good for you
dancing in the streets of your heart
or busy
or suffering

all is food for the alchemy of
now

we have so little to lose
by embracing the impossible

what does that mean?

break some rules
dance in the streets
make some more money
love more that you are supposed to

see what happens

we think it "just can't get any better"

and then it does,
when we ask:
"It that True?"

so far,
no lightning


wow

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

meditation on reality or on self image



back in the days when I used to give a hoot
about meditation

I'd do this:
have a "wow" moment
and then spend the rest of the meditation
preparing and rehearsing the description
of my "wow" moment to someone else

ah, ego:

since it doesn't exist
does need constant propping doesn't it

and let's dance:

hello, God
not the beard one,
but the shimmering Life stuff,

hello Life stuff
in us all
slithering and wiggling
and lusting for out
for union
for play

God let us have each
day
our daily silliness
love
touch
dance
and
de
light


Good

Monday, August 27, 2012

Don't think, realize: All Moments are Equal



Time to get back
to a love poem a day

a love poem
to God
who is
What Is

who is
Now

who is
You

who is
Me

who is Life

who is
Yes

............

I once had a rascally fine teacher,
who said:
Don't think,
realize

He also said:
Time is for beginners,
breath is for finishers





..........
As my own teacher,
I had this realization in Dancing Together:
When I let go of the story that
any moment
is better than any other moment....

whoosh,
I'm free

the bottom falls out
the skies upon

what is embraces me
and I embrace what is

whoopie

Thursday, August 23, 2012

Special Needs Children: 3 ways to go with a heel that won't touch the ground

 

Change from outside vs. change from inside:
Or: Fixing vs. connection


This happens: a child with cerebral palsy, through great inner desire and perseverance, comes to walk. And yet, the putting their heel to the floor eludes them, so it seems as if they are walking on their toes all the time.

There are at least three ways adults can react to this, three routes to take.

To the rescue: the knife
One route is the surgeon's scalpel, cutting into the Achilles tendon, to allow the heel no recourse but to lower. If we discount what a child goes through in surgery, this seems to solve the heel down problem. But…

Push, prod and correct
Parents and various professionals can try to soften the tissues by “stretching,” or massage, or both. They can try pressing the heel forcefully down to the floor. They can “remind” ( nag, usually, unfortunately) the child with some range of possibility to do what she or he is “supposed to do.”
Braces can be put on the foot, to mold it to “how it should be.”
Again, a step in the right direction it seems, but…

The problem with these
These are all outside forces. They demand and force the change. Not only are they teaching the child, One: there is something wrong with you, and Two: only by outside initiation can any change happen, they tend not to work very well. Stretching, botox, scolding all wear off. Even the surgery often begins to undo after the foot begins to heal from the trauma.

Calling on….the brain.
What if the child in this story is not missing a foot that defaults to a 90 degree angle with the leg, but she is missing a representation in the brain, totally missing a feeling and idea and body awareness sense of what it’s like for a heel to press against the ground? That just doesn’t compute for her.
And if pushed and stretched and prodded, the feeling of touching the floor is always vastly diluted by all the stress and effort going on.
So, here’s the solution in the Anat Baniel Method and the Feldenkrais Method®. The child lies on her back, already a great start from the complexity and demands of walking. And then, instead of pushing and efforting the foot to 90 degrees, a false floor is brought to the foot.

The false floor
A book is held against the child’s foot, exactly at the angle of the foot. Slowly pressing the book against the foot, the whole foot more or less touches at once. Other things are done that make sense from having had a 4 year training, to help deepen this, but you get the idea: the foot feels the way it would if it were “normal” in terms of the contact of the entire foot with the ground.
The brain = the child is now in the picture
Now, the foot, and the brain and the child all begin to expand her idea of what a foot is, and how the heel really is part of the same “story.” Connections with the whole foot and the rest of the body are made.
Ideas and pathways are laid down in the brain with this “whole foot” feeling of the thing at the end of the leg. It’s a delight and a revelation, and the child is smarter, and has one more experience of creating change by creating more awareness.

Awareness is life. Awareness is freedom
This learning will spill over to other movement improvement the child is ready to make.
This learning will “work” not just in movement, but speech and school and play and life. The more differentiation and awareness we have, the more freedom to become and do something different.

What can a parent do?
Bring the child in for lessons.
Watch the lessons, be enthusiastic about small changes, encourage the What Is, of even the most minute improvement. All improvement that involves the brain spills over to almost everything, as mentioned about.

How about the book on the foot?
No, not really.
But parents can remember not to scold. IF THE CHILD COULD DO IT DIFFERENT, THEY WOULD.

And the parents can play with variations of many other things: directions of bringing foot to the mouth, pitch and length and texture of sounds, ways of moving a ball or a toy or a small chair.

Kids Beyond Limits, Anat’s new book!
Read and reread Anat’s book. It’s full of small and non demanding activities that don’t take much time, that create pathways for learning, and maybe best of all, create time and quality for bonding and love between you and your child.

My kids' blog, specialneedschildren-chriselms.blogspot.com/, too, has many examples of small but significant actions you can take. For example: do anything you usually do at half speed, and make this a game.

Another: follow your own breathing, for your own relaxation, and to create a "vibe" of inner awareness for your child. As above: awareness equals freedom. For you and for your child.

If you haven’t signed up for lessons recently…
Now is a great time to do so.

Monday, August 20, 2012

Is Anger a Bad Thing? an article this time



 
Is anger a bad thing?


You ever had this happen to you? You’re apparently minding your own business and your partner tells you, “You know what? You’re really angry?” And, since nobody likes to be told what they are feeling, you argue.
Or not.
And later, the thought plagues you: Am I angry? And there’s often this underthought: What’s the matter with me, anyway?
Ah, anger. Is Anger a Bad Thing?

I was at a bookstore a few days ago and in the stairwell (Book People for those in Austin), there are bunch of kid toys. A kid event had just ended, and going up, I passed a Mom I know coming down, so we stopped to talk.
I sat on the top stair and as we talked her son decided to use a punching toy to punch my shoulder. No pain. No insult, of course, and I thought it might be good to help him redirect.
So I said, “I’m a real person, and real people don’t like to be punched. Would you please say my name and pretend that box over there is me and punch it.”
He’s a kid. He had some fizz and aggression. The box was a fine outlet.
Notice I didn’t tell him he was angry, or to cool it.

Anyway: this isn’t going to be a long treatise on anger. I’m going to attempt to send out an article three weeks a month as part of my newsletter. The idea will be to give you a few useful tidbits to reward your time in visiting this newsletter. There will be many more articles dealing with anger and special needs children, anger and making money, anger and healing from divorce or perking up relationship and so on. (As well as articles on the gamut, which you know if you read my blog)

And back to anger: It comes with the human territory. Anyone who’s had frustrations, or learned to cork things in, or hasn’t reached full enlightenment, is going to have moments of anger. Or big reservoirs of anger. (In some later article I’ll tell of my father’s amazing way of teaching me to stuff my anger when I was in high school).
We come from cave men and cave women.
We are geared for aggression, at certain times.
Obviously, one bit of understanding toward an amazing life, is to pick our times, and pick our usage of anger. And to cut ourselves a break for being human.

So, the anger is there. And “WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT?”

One: Realize, as per above, this is part of who we are. Stop the second level stuff, of being angry or judgmental at ourselves for being angry.

Two: Realize other people have it in them, and take the giant step and be curious: what’s really bugging them? Asking is good, too, if the time and relationship is right. And to merely go beyond, “Man, they are full of anger. Bad news.” To “I wonder what’s the grating inside their psyche” is to be on the road to compassion and good relationship.

Three: As with the little boy: Find benign or even useful outlets. A benign and humorous one: Write the name of someone you are angry at on a piece of paper and tape it to the bottom of your shoe and walk around with that all day. A biggie: write a song about it. And anything in between.

Four: Spend some time finding the depths. Where were you frustrated in the past, and how can you come to the present and move on in ways that delight you and move your life forward? For Entrepreneurs, channeling the anger into work and making money, as they discover compassion for themselves and others, talk about win/win. For a musician this can be writing the above song, or creating the melody of the anger stripped of all that endless “story.” For lovers it can be, shutting up, coming to the present and finding the love that’s always here, always now.

Five thru 200: To be revealed by me and discovered by you. Any deep coaching has fun, not agony, with this powerful energy, and for starters and to end the article let’s wrap up with the starting question:

Is anger bad?
Answer: no.

Monday, August 13, 2012

loving the down, loving the up


life
ah
 life can have moments of...
ugh

feeling like sh..
feeling
 bad, sad, mad
the usual suspects

and then the
fun
begins:

loving ourselves
which is not so fancy
it means
being present
to ourselves
and that's

feeling towards ourselves
and our "ugh"
one: that's good enough
two: that's pretty great
three: that's wonderful
four: I love you

five: (you go there)


and so it's a weird inner
spiral,
and i know,
i've been forgetting
and then remembering
and then forgetting
and then remembering
this a lot lately:

the spiral of
being happy to be alive
and loving
all of the now-ness of life,

...
including
the ugh

including the
feeling bad
being mad
glunked in sad


it's me
it's you
if it's now

wow:

a chance to love
"even that"

and "even that"
is total bullshit
which means we're still comparing
the now to some better imagined
future now

it's so sneaky
and wonderful
and forgiving
this now thing

it's always here
love is always here
happiness
"even" in our unhappiness
is always here



so we dive in
and stand at the edge
and complain

what a sweet choice
free will
gives us

the power of God:
to create love in
each
and every moment

good

Friday, August 10, 2012

If someone rejects you....la, la... how to love life, then



Bill was rejected by Janice who thought he was too eager and Carol who thought he was too intellectual and Diane who thought he was too earthy. This got to him and he started to feel badly about himself.


The hint about the way out:

Other people's ideas of us, are their juice/ karma and right.
An, "oh, well," goes a long way
Semi poem:

if you can love  your cancer,
says Bryon Katie,
you can love me

if you can't love your cancer,
she says,
then the first time I annoy you,
you'll reject me

people like to reject
if they are uncomfortable

getting comfortable with the uncomfortable
is not their game usually

the uncomfortable scares
and the fear seems more real
that looking in to what set up fear,
and the default mode becomes:
stay away from scary areas

and there is
another possibility,
if we are on the route to freedom:
 go to the scary
and see how it's set up inside

this is good in the money world
the relationship world
the God should have done something different (not brought death to....,
for example) world

And hey, Bill can even start with another thing
Byron Katie says:
when someone leaves or rejects you,
you've been spared

you've been spared
being around someone
who doesn't want to be around you

Wednesday, August 08, 2012

Sneaky Marriage/ Sullen Divorce.... then what



I'm going to try something new in August.
This mode: story
antidote
poem

We'll see.
Here it goes.
Like this.

Joe and Sally have a sneaky marriage, both having affairs, and, of course, 
blaming the other for their unhappiness.
This leads to a sullen divorce, which exhausts them, but...
they feel free..
liberated.

At last the green pasture is wide open. And they find someone SOOO much better.

Except the pattern is their: problems can be so sweetly avoided by a little side sex,
and then bigger problems can be avoided by a torrid affair and then this green
pasture wasn't so great after all.

And must be left behind.
As is the next.
And the next.
And the next.

Antidote/ teaching:
Clean up this mess, or the green pastures we see will turn into one more gravel pit.

And a poem:

if you are wrong
and I don't have to listen
and I can get so much fun
in someone else's bed

why should I learn
how my thoughts and actions
help you be a worse you
that you want to be

how can I learn
what I could have done and known
and tried
to love you better

even if we need to part
if I can't love you
(the famous, "love your enemy" schtick of either
Christianity, or the Work of Byron Katie...
in one a preaching
in the other a result)

then I haven't really figured out how
to love myself
and so the next one,
the sooooo much better one
will eventually
(what with sex not forbidden
and communication not learned
passion burns out
and intimacy
which is what relationship is all about
doesn't grow)
that one falls apart

and the next
and the next

and it's the same
old
thing
again
and again


alas:


and the way out:
Clean up this mess.
Don't finish your divorce,
or better yet,
even start,
until you can
"love your enemy."

You don't have to live with them,
but if you don't love them,
you'll never really leave them.

Aha.




Good.

Saturday, August 04, 2012

life is beautiful and so what?



tis a crazy hot morning in Austin
I want the windows open and then
the steamy heat comes leaking in


so be it

life is beautiful and
so what?
means....

i don't know
that's the fun of writing what comes
up
and then seeing what comes up

and so what
so what?

can be angry
or
it can be amused

I'll pick amused
and I rememmber
times I've been all swamped
worried depressed by the story

and done the Famous
Work of Byron Katie
and what bothered me
before
went through several stages of liberation:

--so what?

--hmm, interesting


--charming

--I love it



this can be something simple:
a person doesn't return a phone
call
which is a pet peeve
(which means  conditioned route
to unhappiness )

or something so called tragic
a girlfriend "leaving"
or someone angry at me
or rejecting me
for some interesting/ wonderful
offer
i have made

( and aren't all my offers
wonderful?

well, yes to me
and luckily
for the world
and the Universe
I don't run the world
nor the Universe
so 
when people say "no"
they have their own reasons)

life is beautiful
and so what?

the goal
maybe
and i guess we get to pick
day by day
moment by moment

is to live

and what does that mean?

leave the computer behind and discover 
what 
is next?

and i might not do
"the right thing"

and,
so what?

if i'm conscious
i'm doing the life
thing
and that seems 
just hunky
dory
so what or so great
or
????????


GOOD good good

Wednesday, August 01, 2012

joy and learning

the day is long our attention can be lost
or found

best yet:
enjoyed,
our own inner light
shining out,
and in,
on what,
and then what
and then what?

and if we are lucky,
we don't "understand" something
or aren't as skilled at something as
we want to be

and we can put attention
on the now
of how

the now
of how
we are going about
whatever it is

and,
guess what:
try something else,
anything else?

see the effect

have fun
learn

notice in the now

wow

what happens

and do nothing
and
notice

what happens

wow


....
have a good day