The seduction of Stretching

some of garden
and the old barn back behind


Stretching is good
for teachers who want to lord
it over their students,
especially if the teacher is
more flexible than the students.


Stretching is a great way
to get the student
concentrating on self pushing
self pulling
self attacking
self violence
and then if they can't "do it"
then they can feel inferior
or bad
or worn out
or in pain
or all of the above
and won't have enough energy left over to realize
that the "teacher"
isn't "teaching" them anything,

that the so called
"teaching"
is just more of the
try harder
hurt yourself
breathe through the pain
"let it go"
stuff
that can be seen
at many levels
in our society

is that true?
i'm not sure.
it sounds right,
but anything can sound
right

in health clubs
and yoga places
the pushing a little more
and getting to the edge
as you hurt yourself
just a little bit
is way the norm

and is it part of our society
or are we moving toward
the fat lazies
at the end of Wall-e
unable to make any effort

these are all questions
that
are
far
less
important
than just coming to the present
this one
the only one
and being in our
bodies
and
in our
awaring
and if it
feels good
...
getting up from this silly
machine
and
going outside
to
walk
and look at the sky
and sense the fullness of us:
ten fingers, ten toes, belly, eyes, ear and nose

now that's a
stretch
that won't hurt!!!!

Waking Up and Feldenkrais

WAKING AND FELDENKRAIS
This moment comes once
and is gone.
We are here and awake to notice that,
or we are missing in action,
or missing in inaction.
Either way, if we are missing the moment,
our life is going on,
and we are not there with it.

To be awake is so simple and yet so
far
from how we mostly live our lives.
It is as easy as the slightest shift,
to noticing how we are sitting, standing or lying right now,
to noticing how we are breathing right now,
to noticing the five lines of two arms and two legs and one spine,
to noticing the ways we push against gravity,
to noticing the reflected light in the world
coming into our eyes and the sounds coming into our ears.

That shift, and these and
in its many other forms and possibilities,
is our birthright, our challenge, our gift.

The Feldenkrais work,
by allowing us to slow down
and actually put our attention on small movements, or sometimes large,
and by allowing the rests between the movements,
and by encouraging an attitude of experimentation rather than “getting it done,”
and by again and again playing with
variations that trick (wake) us into
paying attention
to something that before we took for granted,
all these aspects are a wonderful and
waiting training ground to
the opening of awareness.

As the lessons are called,
we have a chance to develop our
Awareness through Movement.

But not donkey movement.
Not crank it out exercise movement.
Not struggle and rush movement.
No, movement that is going to bring learning,
which is to say,
movement that is going to create
opportunities for us to change
and transform
and get more flexible
in our minds and our whole lives,
this movement has to call upon
and live in awareness.

So, at any moment
we can wake up,
and usually we don’t.
A Feldenkrais lesson is a chance
to open up to the pleasure
and expansiveness
of being awake to each moment.
It’s a question of living a life,
or being taken through one by…..?

Feet on Ground, Eyes Glued to the Computer

How do we stay awake
while in
this mode
(eyes on the monitor mode)?

Maybe awareness
that we are
doing what we
are doing
while we are
doing it.

and how
to get that awareness?

Practice.

Practice.

Get up walk around.

Break it up.

Remember the middle:
feet on the bottom
eyes and ears on the top

and in the middle:
air and breathing
pelvis and muscles
and movement
even micro mini
not much
movement
if done with awareness

is a lot

yes

Variety

We can "learn"
by doing something again
and again
and again.

And is that "learning"
or training?

Sometimes,
maybe language drills,
when we are older,
and that over and over
especially if it's in a song,
or something,
maybe over and over
is necessary.

And hey,
even here:
make the words in a song,
make them combine with moving,
make them into a game,
make it the way
it was
when we learned
the first language
first time around:
make it interesting,
make it fun,
give some variety.

Hugely interesting study
in a book called Mindful Learning.
Kids who had the usual boring school,
were divided into three groups.
They were given a complicated mural to look at.
Group one: sat and looked.
Group two: sat and looked and shuffled feet.
Group three: walked at diagonals toward and away from the mural.

In this study, the group that shuffled did second best,
and the group that moved,
and had a variety of viewpoints did the best.

Here's the interesting take.
With a group of Montessori kids,
used to milling around,
the kids who sat and studied the mural
did better than the kids who milled around and studied.
So,
even though my bias
is toward always letting kids move,
this study shows:
even the milling around
can become one
more way to be a robot,
and if you break the milling around
habit
and give a new
choice:

better learning
takes
place.

So, now:
sitting at the computer.
What are our (say that aloud)
habits,
and how can we shift?

You experiment
and let me know.
I'll experiment
and write about it in a couple of
days when I rotate around back to this blog.

Keep enjoying the other two:
SlowSonoma.com
and
Tai Chi Yoga Health Weight Loss

and maybe even sneak a peek,
though the rest of the gang is
way slacking,
as ananda2007.blogspot.com"

ciao
chris

One 11 minute "cure" for depression.

I'm writing a book of 21 short "cures" for depression,
shifts out of the funk
and into some other state.
I'll post one of them occasionally,
and beyond that, you get to wait
and buy the book,
or come to me
(or call)
for private sessions
that will involve a number of modalities,
including Feldenkrais, the work of Byron Katie,
connection to Nature, Gestalt Therapy, and more.


PRAYING, WITH OR WITHOUT GOD
This is the second 11 minute “cure” for depression, or distraction, or worry, or anxiety. Or, the second ongoing and wonderful meditation you can add to your life. You will learn more about yourself, how to be at ease, how to be present and how to shift your state by participating in this practice. Practicing what? Being alive, and having awareness and trying/ learning new things.

As before, use a timer, and sit on a firm chair or a stool. This time, if at all possible, sit outside in such a place that when you look up you will see the sky or some sheltering tree above you.

1). Sit comfortably at the front edge of your stool or chair. Click on the timer. For the first one minute either accentuate any bad feelings you have, or if you are feeling fine, dredge up something to feel bad about and go through the usual ways of making ourselves feel bad: Have a bunch of words in your head that go over and over about how something “should” or “shouldn’t” be different. Tense even more any tightness in your chest or jaw or belly. Notice any constriction in your breathing and make that worse. THEN STOP THESE AND SHIFT TO MOVING.

2). Fine. Now begin, as in #1 to look up and down. Do this now as a progression, adding on more and more of yourself in your awareness.
• Look up and down with your eyes.
• Notice and allow your chin to go up and down.
• Begin to arch your spine as you look up, and fold forward your spin as you look down.
• Let your belly come out and air come in as you look up. Let your belly come in and breathe out as you look and fold down.
• Allow your pelvis to rock to the back of the Sitz (sit) bones as you fold forward and look down, and allow your pelvis to rock to the front of the Sitz bones as you arch your spine and look up.
• Sense your feet on the ground as you do all this.

3) Keep doing all of the above, and see if you can hold them all in your awareness as well as the world that you are seeing as you look up and slowly look down and slowly look up.

4) Take breaks now and then. Just sit calmly, upright and follow your breathing and maybe even close your eyes. Then go back to the up down meditation.

5) Put your hands in prayer position, palm to palm, fingers to fingers. As you look up allow both hands to come first to face level, and then easily and slowly a bit higher each time, if this is comfortable. If it is not comfortable, imagine your hands coming higher and higher.
As your head and eyes come down, let your hands in this prayer position rotate so that they point to the ground. You can try variations on how far you’d like to go with your hands: just to your lap, between your knees, down toward the floor/ ground, and all the way to the floor. How far doesn’t matter, and what is enjoyable and useful is the your hands are in the up down rhythm of your spine and breathing and eyes and head and neck.

6) This can be tiring physically, and mentally, so take lots of non-movement breaks, but not breaks from an attitude of wishing continuous awareness of your breathing and your spine and your feet on the ground. (Breath and gravity, the everywhere all the time available meditation.)

7) If you want to add to this, then as you bring your prayer hands up, let them come once a little to the right as your spine rotates and arches in the going up, and then the other time let them go to the left as you come up.

8) As before, sometimes when everything is moving to look up, let your eyes look down toward your chin, and when everything is moving to look down (folding forward, nose and hands toward the ground, belly in) let your eyes look up as if trying to see your forehead.

9) Take breaks after you engage in the eye and nose separation. And then go back and feel more aware of your eyes when they easily and gently lead the movement. Sometimes you might want to just arch and fold without the hands, and then go back to using the hands. It’s your ten minutes. Keep them pleasant and interesting and full of gentle awareness.

10). When the timer says that ten minutes are up. Sit for awhile with your eyes closed. Enjoy that feeling.

11) Then, to come to standing, fold forward over your knees so your weight comes to your feet, lift your butt off the chair or stool and come to standing. Then take an easy and pleasant walk in as nice and as natural a place as you can get to on foot from where you are right now.

---

PLEASE BE WELL:


Pleasure
Ease
Awareness
Sensitive Strength
Enjoyment

BE

Waking up to now.
Embracing Change.
Learning to learn.
Loving to move, improve and transform.

CURRENTLY OFFERING THESE CLASSES

"To make the impossible, possible;
to make the possible, easy;
to make the easy, elegant."
Moshe Feldenkrais.

MOVING EASY
MOVING SMART
FOOD FOR BRAIN
BODY
AND
SOUL.

Mondays until June 18
at the
SONOMA BALLET CONSERVATORY
around the corner from the Post Office

Monday June 25
skipping July 2, and then
Mondays
from July 8 on into August,
at the Field of Dreams,
shady area between upper and lower levels,
(bring a mat or blanket if you don't
want to lie on the grass)
12:30-1:10 PM
Bring a Mat or Blanket
Dressed Comfortably
Be Enthusiastic about Learning, Feeling Better
and Expanding your sense of Enjoyment


Wednesdays
until June 20
OLSEN PARK
(west of W 5th, on bike path,
or on Linda St. just west of W 5th)
10-10:45 PM

Then August 8 on in Olsen
Park at 9 AM.

Cost: sliding scale : $10-20
Seniors (65+) sliding scale: $5-20.
First class: $5-10.

---

---

For amazing and transformative
and gentle
one on one lessons,
called
Functional Integration®
see
Individual Lessons
•

Happiness Now

HAPPINESS NOW
When's a good time to be happy?

Well, right now, that's a great time.

And if we are honest with ourselves, we'll see that we often are not so kind in when we allow ourselves to jump into that golden place.

No, first we have to do the dishes, or get the work done, or make the bed, or avoid making the bed, or make "enough" money, or "finish" whatever important "thing" we need to finish so we can stop worrying about getting done whatever it is we need to finish.

Does that sound like circular thinking?

Well, it is. Thinking about the "to do" list in the future is a great way to postpone happiness until some later time, which, not so surprisingly, like some rainbow toward which we are walking, always seems to recede into the distance.


Somewhere, over the rainbow, then we could be happy.

What a story? And is that a useful story, or a story to keep us stuck in a life of toiling away?

And what if we are happily engaged in our careers, and our pursuits, and our afterwork meetings. Well, if we are really "happily" engaged, then we aren't putting off happiness. If the career and the pursuits and the meetings are all with the price tag of … Happiness Later, Sorry 'Bout that, then we get to ask:

Is that price tag one we want to pay?

Is that a price tag we need to pay.

Pay. Pay. What do we owe. I've written before about happiness

( Happiness as a Choice),

and happiness now ( Happiness now),

talking about that sneaky feeling as if happiness now was some kind of sin, as if that was too easy, as if we really didn't deserve this.

But that's all a story, this set of words about happienss later and the pursuit of happiness and all that hoey.As the Work of Byron Katie part of Wake Up Feldenkrais behoves us to ask: Is that true?

Because these essays aren't about Feldenkrais per se. They are about Wake Up Feldenkrais. You can cure your back or shoulder or stroke or cerebral palsy, or vastly improve tennis, golf, skiing or yoga. And the deeper goal is to wake up to the moment. This moment, all moments.

And when we are really in the moments, though we don’t' talk about happiness, because chatter about abstract states takes us out of immediate experience, but because we are present, and aren't doing all the habitual things that keep us unhappy, we are back to the amazing default of real life on earth: happiness.

Believe me?

No. Don't.

Find out for yourself.

Experiment. Find the habits and thoughts that make you unhappy, and create variety and options and alternatives. Use the Work of Byron Katie to undermine and find the truth behind our stories. See what's left.

It may well be Happiness Now.

---

PLEASE BE WELL:


Pleasure
Ease
Awareness
Sensitive Strength
Enlightenment

BE

Waking up to now.
Embracing Change.
Learning to learn.
Loving to move, improve and transform.

Slow Down

In our rush to get so much done,
we forget a minor detail:
this now
right now
is our Life.

One of the sweetest and best ways to
return to now
and our life
is to slow down.

If you've already done Feldenkrais you realize how important this is:

If you don't SLOW DOWN,
you are going to be stuck
in always doing something the way
you always did.

THE BRAIN / SELF CANNOT LEARN
IF WE ARE DOING THINGS FAST,
OR EVEN AT THE
HABITUAL RATE.
(that's the word the keeps
us same old same old:
HABITUAL.)

Habit means
that the action,
like tying our shoes,
has gone on
"automatic,"
which is fine for lots of things,
who wants to re-learn shoe tying
or tooth brushing each day.

But to learn
and hence become more than
what we are now,
we MUST
SLOW DOWN.

Think about doing a rush job
of
learning to
TIE YOUR SHOES with the
opposite string first, in
opposite top down positioning,
and you'll realize it's impossible.

And yet,
when someone gets a system,
that is super powerful,
such as the Feldenkrais Method,
or the Byron Katie Work,
or my evolving
Wake Up Feldenkrais Work,
a system that fascilitates transformation,
(not just remediation)
by slowing us down,
and allowing,
that is ALLOWING US,
TO BE NON-HABITUAL,
the tendency is to rush through,
do it the old ways,
get it over,
feel secure,
and learn nothing.

That feels familiar
and even "comfortable,"
though often this is a miserable sort of "comfort,"
but it is the known.

See today's essay at SlowSonoma.Com
on learning and knowing.
On how,
if we already know it all, we don't need
to learn anything
and can
stay the same.

Alas the age old problem:
we say we want to change
the hell we are in,
but darned if we are willing
to change anything about ourselves
to help this take place.

We want to change
without changing,
and this often means:
rushing through something.

or
( a big favorite, stay the same strategy)
BEING TOO BUSY,
TO HAVE A CHUNK OF TIME
TO COMMIT TO DOING
SOMETHING NEW,
IN A NEW,
AND SLOW
AND TRANSFORMATIVE WAY).

So:
if you are doing yoga
or Feldenkrais
or Desk Trainer:

GIVE YOURSELF 10-40 MINUTES A DAY,
slow down,
breathe,
expand awareness,
do the work with
DELIGHT,
AWARENESS,
JOY,
DISCOVERY,
PLAYFULNESS,
AND NO AGGENDA TO "GET IT RIGHT."

Make awareness the core of what you are doing.

Do the thing twice
do the Desk Trainer twice
do the yoga pose twice
do the Feldenkrais movement "many times."

Slow down
it's okay to feel delicious
it's okay to learn
it's okay to allow the brain a chance to learn
it's okay to allow the new and vital
and real
and enlightened
in you
to have a chance to wiggle up to the light,
and
Shine.

---

---

CURRENTLY OFFERING THESE CLASSES

ONGOING POSSIBILITIES:

THE TWENTY TWENTY TWENTY PROCESS
Combine 20
Functional Integration® Lessons
( Amazing, Gentle, Transformative
Individual Lessons)
+
20 Minutes a Day of HomePlay ( not Homework)
=
Move, Think and Feel
TWENTY YEARS YOUNGER!

---

---

COMING WORKSHOPS

WONDERFUL RELATIONSHIP
April 29, 12- 6 PM


Amazing Parenting
May 20, 12-6 PM


• Improving Backs, Necks, Shoulders
Sports, yoga, health and Learning
June 17, 12- 6 PM

---

More Details
at
Workshops and Classes, Coming Up

---

---

INTRODUCTORY CLASS:
For the brain
for the "body"
for moving with more ease
for healing
for learning
for fun.

Monday lunch break class
12:30-1:20 PM

$20
includes touch guided and movement lessons
come wishing and willing for transformation
SONOMA BALLET CONSERVATORY
off Broadway
around the corner from the Post Office
and the Art Museum,
the little side street between.

---

For amazing and transformative
and gentle
one on one lessons,
called
Functional Integration®
seeIndividual Lessons
•

---

PLEASE BE WELL:


Pleasure
Ease
Awareness
Sensitive Strength
Enlightenment

BE

Waking up to now.
Embracing Change.
Learning to learn.
Loving to move, improve and transform.

Thursday, September 7: Change's weird requirement: We actually change

A letter I wrote back to a fine person
who is skitting in and out of being involved,
and who wrote

"I'll catch up with you some other time for another appointment"

and
I wrote:

" This phrase
sounds almost like the famous...."I'll think about it...."
which means... later to the point of infinity.

The ordinary part of us all wants
to always do
what we always did.
And then,
if that doesn't work,
and we stumble or crumble into
pain or trouble,
we want, magically, to
have the pain go away
and have the
"fix-it," "make it all go away"
change
happen
without our really doing anything different.

The human lot:
"Please let me change,
as long as I don't have to
change anything."


This is ordinary
and keeps us coming again
and again
to the stuck points that
the outside cures don't address.

On, the inner hand
I'm looking for extra-ordinary people
and the extra-ordinary person in you
who want(s) to change enough
to actually be willing to change.

Which requires
actually doing things
and thinking things
and organizing in
new ways.

More fun ways,
more efficient ways,
less painful ways,
more pleasurable ways.

But different.
Change requires change.

So, if you are up for that,
"catch up" with me more sooner than later.


ciao
chris"

Thursday, August 31: An Amazing Experiment

AN AMAZING EXPERIMENT
In the Feldenkrais Method, we can make amazing progress in
our thinking
and in our moving
and in our physical sense of well being
and in our connection to ourselves
by returning to a more exploratory and playful approach.

In the earlier lesson, Feldie Fun #1 we move our eyes one way and our heads the other. This is “hard” and also, if we slow down and don’t try for large movement, or instant perfection, “do-able.” We raise a challenge, which is to say, give ourselves a little stress. We slow down and don’t force and get interested, and by Jove, we can rise to the occasion.

Slight "stress" + awareness + going slower + going less forceful+ going smaller = a chance to change.

This change is called learning.

We learn.

We create new neurons in our brain.

We get the idea that we don’t always have to do things the same old way.

And to top it off: our necks and eyes and whole selves feel better.
*****

And now here’s the amazing experiment I just thought of early this morning in that warm in bed, follow the breathing, let the new and creative emerge time of day.

Have a happy face and feel happy.

Have a worried face and feel worried.

Now try more the differentiation: have a happy face and feel worried and have a worried face and feel happy.

That’s “hard,” too, isn’t it?

Then, of course, go back to happy with happy and worried with worried and see if there is a difference.

This is hella interesting, wouldn’t you say?