Day One: Two LOVE games
GRATITUDE…. the first Magic Carpet toward Love
Gratitude is a magic carpet ride. The brain can be in fear, or in gratitude, but not in both.
You can discover this by experience.
And that’s the purpose of this book: taking your life from whatever level it is to a more bright and amazing level.
This is a book for people who want fabulous love at the center of their life, whether they right now have “the one” or not.
This is a book for people who want fabulous sex, if they have a partner, and fabulous lust/goal connection to your biggest and deepest dreams whether with or without a partner.
This is a book for those who want “enlightenment” as ongoing happiness, ongoing awareness, and ongoing joy (and ongoing service to the Big Picture).
One way to start with love is to up our gratitude practice.
This is essential to loving, to expanding our love, to fighting the mess of American politics without becoming a mess.
Day One has games for all three of Love, Lust and Enlightenment.
Let’s play two gratitude games today, as our first two love games.
We’ll express gratitude, NOW, two ways.
1, Saying it aloud as we sit.
2, Writing it down as we sit.
Gratitude Game #1: SAY ALOUD three gratitudes.
Simple.
Start these three sentences and finish them, and say them aloud:
“I am grateful….”
“I am grateful…”
“I am grateful…”
Gratitude Game #2: WRITE down, in handwriting, three gratitudes.
Any paper will do, any pen or pencil.
The writing is handwriting, not typing onto a computer or thumbing it into a smart phone.
Not dictating into said smartie phone.
Old fashioned, and so useful.
I am grateful….
I am grateful…
I am grateful…
Finish the sentences.
This can be a chance to be present to your arms and legs and breathing as you write. (Which will be a later, enlightenment “game.” Just a foretaste now.) Carve those gratitudes into the world by feeling your hand move across the page.
WRITE, RIGHT NOW, THREE GRATITUDES.
Not later, alligator. Not when you’ve read a bunch of the book and “have the time.” Right now, write now, and FEEL what begins to shift in you as you do this.
Breathe in.
Smile.
Do the writing three gratitudes now, if you haven’t yet. (even “air writing” if you have no paper)
This is no small thing.
This is a huge thing.
See, notice, be aware of how you feel, as you are doing this.
Does anything shift?
Get ready to have a gratitude journal, one that you write in at least twice a day, once near the beginning and once near the end of the day.
And many more times in between, if you wish and if you like the shift you notice when you slow down and write these gratitudes.
Day One: Two Lust Games
The PELVIS is the Center of Good Movement, Good Breathing and Great Sex
Sit easily somewhere on a relatively firm surface. Sit so that both feet are on the floor and your back is not slumped back into anything.
A soft couch is not so great for this, but a firm chair, or a bench, or a rock are simple great.
Note for those without a partner: If you want to feel better in your back, do these games.
If you want to breathe easier and be more full of life, do this games.
If you want to be healthier and live longer and be mobile up to a hundred years old, do these games.
If the nonsense and depravity in our national politics is “getting to you,” do these games.
You have a right, maybe even a duty, in these awful times to be happy.
And, YOU CAN’T BE HAPPY IF YOU CAN’T MOVE YOUR PELVIS AND BREATHE EASILY AND DEEPLY.
Lust Game One: Rock Your Pelvis and involve Your Whole Spine
This is so simple that you can do this in small amounts at a boring meeting, or in small amounts at a non-boring meeting.
You can do this while eating alone, or eating with friends.
You can even do this while driving.
The curse of modern life, is our disconnection from the body below the neck. We aren’t even aware of what we are hearing or seeing right now, much of the time.
Lost in “thought,” we are marvelous beings trapped in a bunch of words in our heads, which we imagine are “thinking,” but really aren’t.
That can be discovered as this books helps you reconnect with your fuller and more real self.
And for now,
One: Feel your pelvis against your sitting surface.
Two: Begin to push your belly forward, and shift your weight farther forward on your pelvis. Forward means the direction you are facing. Forward on the pelvis means your feel your weight shifted more towards your thighs.
Three: As you push your belly slightly forward, lift your sternum just a bit.
Four: As this belly pushing forward, and weight shifting forward on your pelvis is happening, feel the arching in your back, so that someone looking at you from your left side would see a slight C shape in your spine.
Five: As part of this C shape let your nose and eyes raise a LITTLE, and let the back of your head come back a LITTLE, as if you are looking slightly higher up the wall or window or whatever is in front of you.
Six: And then come back to “normal,” whatever “normal” is to you.
This may seem like a lot of words.
Read them twice and try them out, and see if it comes to you.
Here is the short version
One: Shift forward on your pelvis against the chair or bench or rock
Two: Push your belly forward
Three: Lift your ribs and sternum a little bit
Four: Arch your back
Five: Let your eyes point up a little and the back of your head come back
Six: Come back to “normal”
Do this five or six or ten times. Each time feeling the shift in weight on your pelvis and how that connects to your spine and ribs and sternum and belly and neck and head.
This is a lot.
All good movement lengthens the spine.
All good movement involves the pelvis.
All good sex involves the pelvis.
All good health involves the pelvis.
We are starting slow.
This will calm and enliven your day, no matter where you are.
And now, let’s rock the other way with our spine, again originating the movement in your pelvis.
Lust Game Two: Pelvis Rocking Both ways and your Spine is part of the
“Real Body You” Project
“Real Body You” Project
Do all the steps in the prior game, and instead of coming back to normal, add on the opposite direction of pelvis, belly, back, sternum and head.
Like this.
AS you come down,
One: Roll your weight on your pelvis more toward the back, more toward the tail bone, more as if you wanted to actually get the very bottom of your spine to touch the chair or bench or rock.
Two: Pull in your belly.
Three: “Slump” down, and let your sternum come down.
Four: “Round” your back, which means that from the left you now look like a backwards C, and from the right your back is folded forward at the top and the bottom so you look like a C from the right side.
Five: Let your neck come forward, and your nose look down a bit. This one you can let your head move all it easily can do, up to the point of slumping your chin all the way to your chest.
Six: As part of this slumping and rounding forward, let your eyes point as if to the floor or the ground or even down toward your crotch.
Again, here’s the short version:
One: Weight rocking back on your pelvis.
Two: Pull in your belly
Three: Sternum down toward the legs
Four: Rounding the spine.
Five: Nose curving in toward the crotch, which is moving toward it.
Six: Back to the midpoint, and then continuing to the arching movement.
So you are going back and forth
Belly in/ belly out
Sternum down/ sternum up
Head down/ nose us
Weight to back of pelvis/ weight to front of pelvis
Back rounded/ back arched
Do this slowly, so it feels good.
Do this even slower, so this feels really, really good.
Do this with the delight in moving your spine and head and pelvis and ribs as a delighted and unified and happy whole.
Do this “many” times.
Which means up to twenty.
Feel the huge shift in
SPINE SHAPE
WEIGHT ON THE PELVIS
BELLY POSITION
STERNUM POSITION
EYES AND HEAD ORIENTATION
And, best of all: do this slowly enough to feel PLEASURE.
LOTS OF PLEASURE, in the movement of your pelvis and spine and ribs and head.
Do this many times a day.
Let your mind be empty of all those yammering words, and let the pleasure of movement centering on your pelvis be your game and your gift and your transformational delight.
Day One: Two Enlightenment Games
Breathing is Life.
“I am alive” is the core of deep enlightenment
This is so simple.
Life is so simple.
This is so glorious.
This is so glorious.
You are so glorious.
How do you know you are alive?
This may or may not seem complex.
And…
if you hold your breath for a couple of minutes, you know that you will die if you continue that for much longer.
If you are alive, you are breathing.
If you follow your breathing, you reconnect with the part of your deep self that is alive, and knows it is alive (and really, is deeply grateful to be alive.)
So, now, we are going to add on to the pelvis games with two wonderful additions.
I won’t go through the whole arching and rounding scenarios. You can read them again above.
But in the first game we “simply” add on
breathing in to the belly out phase of shifting our weight on our pelvis and
breathing out to the belly in phase.
It is as if you are filling the belly as a balloon as you breathe in and arch up, and
your are pushing the air out by constricting the balloon as you breathe out and round your nose toward your pelvis.
Breathe in and expand.
Breathe out and release.
Feel the truth: you are breathing.
You are ALIVE.
Here’s the full set of steps, if you’d like the whole series of instructions, and it is very good for your mind and body to see how different words are from the reality of life in the moment and in the body
ARCHING
One: Shift your weight forward on your pelvis
Two: Push your belly forward
Three: BREATHE IN TO THE BELLY MOVING FORWARD. As if your belly is a balloon expanding to fill up with air.
Four: Raise your sternum
Five: Arch your back so that it looks like a C from the left
Six: SLIGHTLY lift your nose and eyes toward the sky or ceiling
ROUNDING
One: Shift your weight back on your pelvis
Two: Pull your belly in
Three: BREATHE OUT AS YOU PULL YOUR BELLY IN
Four: Lower/ “slump” your sternum
Five: Round your back so that it looks like a C from the right
Six: Lower your nose and eyes and head down toward the floor, or your crotch, even to the point of letting your chin, if it can easily do so, slump down on your chest
Do this many times.
Each time enjoying it.
Each time feeling the fullness of being alive as movement.
Each time feeling the fullness of being alive as breathing.
Each time feeling the fullness of being alive as shifting your shape and your weight and your spine head body.
Many times.
Smile while you do this, if you wish.
Stand up and walk around a bit and, if you can, look at something pleasant outside before finishing this next enlightenment game. As you walk, notice your breathing.
Enlightenment Game #2: One fundamental truth: “I am alive.”
Do all the first game.
And add on, as you breathe in and arch up, say aloud or to yourself, “I am….”
As you breathe out and round down, say aloud or to yourself, “Alive”
Many times enjoy this simple and most basic truth of our existence: “I am alive.”
See how much of your body you can feel this in.
See how many of your cells can soak in this reality, this miracle.
Day Two: Learning is What makes for anti-aging and transformation
And…
Beginning to learn how to shift out of happiness
Here’s one of life’s weird and wonderful secrets.
You do not have to “try” to be happy.
You do not have to “learn” happiness.
You do not have to “pursue” happiness in the chasing it down meaning of pursuit. ( The pursuit of happiness as a pastime, like say, the pursuit of garden mastery, or the pursuit of classical music, this is the original meaning and big chunk of what we in this book are calling “enlightenment.”)
You are happiness at your core.
We have all learned a bunch of ways to hide this and block this and destroy this, and become unhappy.
It’s as if “ease” is who we really are.
And we have a bunch of bad habits that we use to shift to “dis-ease”
So, on day two, we are going to do everything we did on day one, with the addition of using the games of each day to experience how we can begin to easily and quickly shift out of unhappiness.
As the book develops, this is what we will all be attaining: an ability to have almost continuous happiness.
Don’t you agree: WITHOUT BEING HAPPY, LIFE IS PRETTY MUCH NOT WORTH LIVING.
And of course we aren’t talking ice cream cone, lollipop indulgence happiness. Nor even get the great job happiness.
We are talking the waking up and doing your movements and meditating and eating breakfast and going to work and all that, all that, in a state of ease, grace, flow and happiness.
And here’s how we start.
LEARNING IS ESSENTIAL TO A GREAT LIFE.
LEARNING IS NOTICING A DIFFERENCE THAT MAKES A DIFFERENCE.
Without going into that, you can begin to experience some differences right now.
Day Two, Love Game #3:
Unhappiness contrasted with gratitude
A huge part of the transformations that will take place in this book will be created by your awareness, in different locations, of what goes on when you chose one thing, and what goes on when you chose another.
For this game, have two chairs. One that doesn’t have to be near a table on which you can write. One chair is at a table on which you have your “gratitude journal” if you have one yet, or any piece of paper if you don’t have one.
Have the non paper/ journal chair be the “unhappy” chair.
Start there.
Sit in the unhappy chair, and let your mind dwell on something that “makes” you unhappy. ( We will learn soon who really “makes” us unhappy). Pick something mildly stressful for starters.
Think about it just a little and feel this as emotional, too, usually in your mid body, and almost always as a slight or huge constriction of breathing.
Don’t overdo it. But do get a sense of the thought/ emotion/ body components of unhappiness.
Now, switch to the gratitude chair.
Take a deep breath.
Feel your pelvis on the chair.
Put a smile on your face, whether you “feel” it or not.
Write, slowly, allowing the opening that gratitude creates, write three gratitudes.
Slowly.
Feeling the pen/ pencil in your hand.
Feeling your aliveness as you write.
Remembering at an emotional and intellectual and even physical level what the gratitude was about.
Notice the two.
Feel the contrast.
This is learning about gratitude. Not in theory. But in your real experience.
Day Two: Lust/ Pelvis vs wallowing.
One reason most people are unhappy most of the time is that they are so busy living about the neck, and most of the so-called “thinking” that is going on their is words of war against either themselves or another or the world in general (“It’s not fair”)
In this era of “Trump-ism” you can follow the “news” and drive yourself crazy with all the thoughts of “it shouldn’t be this way.”
And it may be well that there is a lot, a huge amount if fact, that could be done far differently and with a radically more kind and intelligent set of values, and we all need to be able to stop wallowing and come back to the present just as it is.
One of the best ways to come to the present, for those of us at the computer too much and sitting in meetings two much and driving too much, is to MOVE OUR PELVIS. WITH BREATHING. AND A SMILE.
Later: there is a side of “lust” that is about goals, and big goals, and desires, and big desires. What we lust for in life. Our dream.
And the body is always the place to start if we want to be more present and sane and happy and kind.
(And sexy, if we have a partner.)
Game #3 for Lust/Pelvis.
Have two chairs. One chair is once more the worry/ wallow/ unhappy chair.
The other chair is the COME TO FULL LIFE CHAIR.
Start out in the wallow chair, and do just that. Wallow in some small matter that we can use to make yourself unhappy.
Get a rough idea of the thoughts involved (almost always a “should” in there). Feel a bit the emotion and probably some bodily constricting and shutting down.
Now, shift to the COME TO FULL LIFE CHAIR.
Here do the pelvis shifting back and forth, with the back arching and rounding, and the breathing coming in fully and going out fully, and the head and eyes going up and down, and the sternum rising and collapsing.
Do this a lot.
As the place you put all your attention.
Count this breathing and pelvis and movement game so that you do it at least twenty times.
Go for pleasure.
Go for awareness.
Go for noticing the difference in your spine and your pelvis and your ribs and your head position as you go back and forth.
Go for noticing how breathing as a part of full body movement makes a difference in your whole level of well being.
If you get “bored” it just means that the part of your mind that likes to control you with it’s yammer wants to get back in charge.
Counter-act that with the fullness of sensing your spine and your arms and your legs all the way out to your fingertips and all the way out to your toes.
As you enjoy the breathing coming in and filling you up as you expand your ribs and lungs, and the release of your air going out as you collapse your sternum and allow yourself to round your back and curl in to yourself.
Don’t worry about my words.
Have your experience.
As experience.
This is enlightenment: feeling your experience, right now, as experience, without words describing it, or commentary or judgement.
Just your life, your experience, right now.
This is always ours.
This is always huge.
Day Two, Game #3 for Enlightenment.
Wallowing vs “I AM ALIVE” with movement/ pelvis and breath
Again two chairs.
One: Wallow a bit in the wallowing chair.
Two: In the FULL YOU CHAIR, do all the pelvic and breathing movement you did just now, and add on what you did in day one:
Breathe in
Lift sternum
Shift to front of pelvis
Arch back
Look up
SAY TO YOURSELF OR ALOUD: “I AM>>>”
ROCK THE OTHER WAY
Breathe out
Lower sternum
Shift to the back of your pelvis
Round/ collapse/ release your back
Look down
FINISH THE SENTENCE….”ALIVE”
Do this a number of times.
Feel your aliveness.
Experience your aliveness.
Notice the shift.
This is learning that is creating real transformation.
You never have to “fight” unhappiness.
You can always chose to go back to the wallowing chair.
Indeed, you might need to go back and forth a number of times, to feel deeply the contrast.
This isn’t about the intellectual you, “supposed” to chose the chair that relieves the suffering.
This is about the real you noticing that you have options.
Sooner or later the real you will take the option to leave unhappiness behind. For a short while. Or a medium while. Or a long while.
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