May you be happy

May you be safe
May you be happy
May you be healthy
May you live is ease

May I be safe
May I be happy
May I be healthy
May I live is ease

May someone I really like be safe
May this person be happy
May this person be healthy
May this person live in ease

May someone I don't really know be safe
May this person be happy
May this person be healthy
May this person live in ease

May someone who bothers me be safe
May this person be happy
May this person be healthy
May this person live in ease

May my enemy be safe
May this person be happy
May this person be healthy
May this person live is ease

May I be safe
May I be happy

May you be safe
May you be happy


This is the lovingkindness meditation

Someone has said that another translation of lovingkindness
is friendliness feeling

How can we have friendliness feeling toward everyone we meet?

What would our life be like if we did?


Seems worth a try, don't you think/ feel/ intuit?

Become More Amazing

Being alive is amazing, right?

And then, within that, we all have our amazing talents, quirks, and inclinations. We are all amazing.

And just as perfect as we are, we can get even better. If we want.

Sometimes riding the contentment of exactly who we are is just what we need to do.

Sometimes these words ring true:  Life is Yes, and can get Better and Better and Better.

I work with high performance musicians who don't mind going to higher and higher levels of ease, learning and performance.

I also work with children who have either cerebral palsy, or autism. They are amazing. They can become more amazing.

This is what is amazing about them, and why they can make so much progress with the Anat Baniel Method. They can learn.

Many other systems teach them, but those systems unfortunately often teach them that they are failures, by over and over giving them tasks they can fail at.

However,  a sensitive Anat Baniel practitioner, by moving in ways that are slow and clear, and creating small differences that the child can feel and notice, creates actual rewiring of the brain.

Learning is the noticing of differences that make a difference.
A slight new movement of the hand, in awareness, in learning, is vastly more important than being sat up because that's what the child is "supposed" to be doing at a certain age.

A child that can feel the difference between a little finger and a thumb, between a shoulder moving this way, and moving that, between the arm moving with connection to their back, or moving without connection, is a child on the way to learning the vast array of distinctions that allow functioning to happen.

Training and learning.
Training vs learning.

This is a big subject.

Even "regular" kids are so much better off if the parents and the teachers are setting up conditions about learning.

And relationships, ah. how much time to we waste trying to train our partners, when what we really want is love and connection.

And how does that happen?
Learning what that other person is really like, how they are different from every other person in the world.

Including us.

What a thought?
What a joy.

Alright. Have a good evening.
Chris

Shoulders

What is a shoulder?

That stuff up at the edge of the torso, right?

But, what is that stuff?

Take one hand and feel around on the other shoulder. See if you can find the ribs below your armpit, and then if you go around to the back, there's something over the ribs.

That's your shoulder blade.  See if you can feel where the ribs start being covered by the shoulder blade. Wiggle the shoulder a little to help.

See if you can feel the shape of the shoulder blade. It's kind of like an upside down triangle, a bit far fetched to become an angel's ( or bird's) wing, but hints of that.

It just floats, on the ribs, this shoulder blade, and comes up over the top, and has a part of it that we call the collar bone, and that attaches to the sternum.

Gad. Is that too much anatomy?

Well, wiggle it around some more. That attachment at the collar bone and sternum is the only place it's not free, so the shoulder theoretically has a lot, a lot, a lot of possibility for movement.

If you play tennis, golf, a musical instrument, dance with a partner, hug, this move-ability comes in handy.

And shoulders are extremely easy to improve via the work I do. 

The left shoulder above, was that of a quite lovely lady carpenter, who was bed ridden in back and shoulder pain, and after a series of lessons, got up and build herself and her daughter a house, while working other jobs. 

Do you have shoulders, or another part of you, that would like to be better in ease and action?

Forgiveness, Friendship, Kinship, Family ---- Fun

This is just a start

Let's say you got divorced

You
"moved on"

You
"got closure"


Which means, usually, you left behind the other,
the problems, the connection

You might still
"be friends"

but it's not really a friendship, because all the stuff that bothered
you
still bothers you,
and you don't have to deal with it

so you are friends with benefits,
but not THAT way,
the way, of friends with the benefit of having judgment about

WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU,
AND
IT'S SO GREAT NOT TO BE WITH YOU,
WHEW

And this goes both ways,
they think you kinda suck,
and are glad to be free

And there you go

This is pale friendship

And here's where forgiveness comes in
and I'm going to just start the conversation about forgiveness
because there are many layers

All the way from
forgiving someone for not returning a phone call
to
forgiving someone for murdering one's child

And there is an inner freedom,
always
in any forgiving

You are giving up
that clinching to the story
that reality
in some past moment
"should"
( the famous SHOULD)
have been different

And there are layers of how you can feel
about the other person's behavior

You can relax about certain types of "sins"
and actually be charmed by them in retrospect

Someone murdering your child
will never be charming
But you can let go of hatred
You can let go of anger
You can let go of wanting to punish

And you can
become the friend of the one you have given up
on holding the invisible hammer
in your hand,
always available to whack them upside the head
for their crime

And what does friendship mean?

And kinship?

And Family?

And can you have fun, with someone you divorced because they
were awful in their language toward you ,
or their behavior?

Well, if you've got children,
you not only can figure this out--
it behooves you to,

because then your children grow up
to be free
to see
that real alive and mindful
and
happy
adults

can take quarrels and judgments
and let them go
and see the best in each other
see it so well,
that they can set up a situation
so
Sally and Ben,
the new couple,

And Joe and Betty the other new couple
(it was Joe and Sally to start with)
can get together and enjoy each other
and all the merged kids can feel
loved
and can
have
fun


This isn't going to be easy.

And it's going to be worth it,
don't you think?

Much more on this in days and weeks to come
Cheers
Chris

High Performers to Higher

Let's say you are really, really good at something
and you wouldn't mind getting better.

What could you do?

1. Think of, invent, play with
play with
play with
ten new ways to do something, your sport or music

2. Dew something wrong

3. Do it with the other hand:
In violin, say, this might take a few days
In piano, having each hand play the other's music might be a gas
In golf, switch the hand on top, or get clubs for the whole other swrng
Tennis: hmmm. Could get interesting

Ping pong on the other hand, a piece of cake

4. Doooooo it veeeeeeeeeeeery sloooooooooowly

5. Doittoodramedfast

6. Do order it out of

7. Eyes closed/ looking the wrong way/ crossed

8. Breath held, Oh wait, many do that any way.
Well: gradate the breathing: all held, part held, half held, mainly free. all free

(Read the above those five ways)

9 Link up the toe of one foot with the finger of the opposite hand
As in right ring toe and left ring finger.
For a certain period, then the pinkies, big toe/ thumbs and so on

10. Add in some spice .

11. Due it wrong another way

12. And dew it rong still a nother way

13 Dew due it rong enuff so that one of there wrung ways turns out better

14 Furget how to count to ten

From Special Needs Kids Blog: Limitation, vs Possibilities, the power of the Anat Baniel Method

This is from my Special Needs Children Blog

.....

The Anat Baniel method uses Brain Plasticity,
and the incredibly
wise
kind
and effective
philosophy of only working with a child, exactly where that child is at

And always working for a small
but real change
in the brain

Which means a new perception
of
a
new difference


And when children are shown small differences,
that they can feel,
they learn

And when they learn,
small step
by small step

miracles happen

One step at a time

And this all adds
up

Into huge breakthroughs.

Here's a six minute video, with various parents and their special needs children,
telling the benefits that they found for their children.

As Anat explains an overview.

The most potent remark is that of a mother who says, essentially:
"Going to the neurologist, is going to the office of limitation.
Coming to the Anat Baniel method, is coming to the home of possibilities."

Come to the home of possibilities,
for
you
and your children