Lots

Day One: Awaring our Life
We are alive. Miracle. Gift. Burden. Curse. Blessing.
Call it anything you want, and still this is the fundamental of being who we are: we are alive.
This is a book of 108 ways to feel more alive, to connect to joy and skill and learning and ease and pleasure and happiness in our lives.
Today we’ll start with the basic: see how often and how enjoyably you can waken out of your ongoing set of activities and remember: this is me, this is my life, I am alive.
In this moment, I am alive. In this moment you are alive.
Feel what it feels like in this moment (yes, this one, while you are reading this page, or listening to this page.).
Both kinds of feeling: the emotional feeling, how do you feel.
The sensory feeling: what can you sense in your breathing, or torso, or arms or legs or spine or eyes or smile or toes or fingers about how it is to be you right now.
HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE ALIVE, TO BE YOU, RIGHT NOW?
This is the game of today: wake up to the now of being alive. Sense and notice and feel what it is like, how the experience of you being you is going.
Notice yourself as a living being.
As much as you can, remember yourself. Do this in pausing to come back to awareness. Do this as an undercurrent of awaring while you are going about your daily life.

This is a wonderful start, and it could carry us all the way to an amazing new life, or an amazing deepening of all the wonder and joy in our present life.
Day Two: Breathing, Feet & Eyes
To be alive is to be in an amazing world. A world very different from the world of the womb, where there was no gravity, no light, we didn’t breathe air.

And so this is today’s game: to sense our feet. If we are walking or standing, we can feel our feet pressing into the ground, the floor, the Earth. If we are sitting, we can have our feet on the floor and sense them pressing even a little into the ground. If lying, or all comfortable in some laid back position, we can still sense our feet.
What does sensing mean? To feel the physical sensations of a certain part of ourselves, the bones and the muscles and the blood and fluids, and even the nerves if we can. The skin, and what’s inside the skin and what the skin is touching.
Sensing is the basis of movement and all the learning that was so crucial in our transition from more or less helpless baby, to walking and talking and functioning child. Sensing is why we like a warm bath, or a sunny day, or love making.
Sensing helps us make sense of our lives.
Sensing brings us back to the non-verbal experience of ourselves in the present.
So part one of today’s game: sense our feet.

Second part, we can feel and notice and enjoy our breathing. Try this right now, feet being sensed and breathing noticed and sensed. It’s a lot, and boy does it bring us to now.

Third part, add on the light coming in the eyes. What are we seeing, not as words about what we are seeing, but as pure sensation now.

This is a lot, these three are a miracle. Enjoy the miracle. Give it a sweet go and be nice to yourself when you forget, and very happy when you remember.
Day Three: Look at a Tree
Nature is out there, waiting for us to take a walk and enjoy her.
Or, nature is with us every moment, since each breath we take in brings the good old familiar to the point of being forgotten AIR into our lungs. Air is the environment, we breathe the environment, we breathe the air.
We are nature, our bodies are part of nature, and out there, outside, we can see a tree.
We can look at a tree.
We can enjoy this.
If we slow down and just look at the tree, we very often find a calm and sweet place in ourselves.
Why?
Because we are nature and looking at a tree reminds us of the life that we are gifted with.
Because a tree might slow us down and remind us that we are rooted in the Earth and rise to the Heavens.
Because we don’t have any expectations of a tree, we can love it easier. What does that mean? We don’t want it to love us more, or respect us more, or lose ten pounds, or “be there for us.” We are pretty clear that it just is what it is.
So we can love it.

Today’s game: look at some trees and feel, sense, realize how letting the tree “be what it is” makes loving it so easy.
Do this a little.
Do this a lot.
Enjoy the trees in your world, and if it’s winter and you are in some place with no trees, find anything else living, and see it as “just what it is,” and see if the love rises in your easily.

Good.
Day Four: Lying on the Floor
Gravity is a constant in our lives, until we do into outer space, or maybe when we have lucid dreams and can fly.
And on two feet gravity is amazingly complex and we have amazingly figured it out, and most of us have no idea of how amazing that is.
And if we sit down, gravity is a little easier to negotiate.
And if we lie down, say on our backs, it is as if our whole back is our feet. It’s easy. We can’t fall. We are safe. Our brains are free to pay attention more easily and clearly.

What are brains for?
Learning.
The perception of differences.
Creating order out of disorder.
Creating pathways of action that can enable us to fulfill our intentions.
Brains are amazing, perhaps the most amazing thing in the Universe.
So today’s game: notice little differences in your life, differences that you might otherwise have missed.

Start this way: lie on your back. Raise your left foot, so that the foot is “standing” near your right knee, but over to the side a bit. Left foot on the floor or ground, left knee toward the ceiling.
Begin to rotate the left side of your pelvis to the right, keeping the right side on the floor. Do this three ways: starting this movement in your pelvis. Starting by push your left foot into the ground. Starting somehow from your lower back.
Push your lower back and stomach forward (toward the sky) as you do this movement many times.
Go slow. Notice differences in your spine and ribs and breathing as you go through the movement. Rest after a number of times and notice the difference in your two sides. Notice the difference in your sensing of the floor. All day, notice differences.
Day Five: Five Lines, Fully Alive
Double day, amazing day, dig in, learn, thrive, fail or not fail, learn. Love the learning. Thrive.
Here’s one half of the game: feel your life. Feel being alive. Contemplate and see if you can sense at a deep and non-verbal level what it feels like in you, in the present, to be Fully Alive.
How does this feel in your breathing, and your eyes and your brain and your legs and your spine and your arms. How does this feel in your heart? Soul?
I’m pretty sure fully alive doesn’t mean being good, but it could well mean feeling of good cheer, even underneath almost anything else.
Check it out for yourself.

And two, let your love of now, and love of life expand to sensing your five lines. Which are?
Think of yourself as a children’s drawing of a person: stick line for the spine, nice round head at top, with smiling face, two lines out for the arms, two lines out for the legs.
This is your five lines: two arms, two legs, spine plus head.
That’s the double yummy for today of being fully alive: add to this feeling and exploration of this feeling, an ongoing sensing of both legs, both arms and your spine and head.
Sensing your arms can start at the shoulders and come all the way to each finger tip.
Sensing your legs can start in your hip joints (one leg at a time is the best way to fill in this awaring), and sense all the way out to each toe. We often forget our wonderful and amazing toes.
Hip joint to toes, knees, bones, two in bottom leg, one in top. All that stuff. Sense and enjoy.
Paying real attention to yourself, enjoy. This is you being deeply kind to yourself. You are worth it. Enjoy the learning and the peace and power this might bring.
Day Six: Pick up Sticks
Sit in a chair.
Sit up more or less straight. Feel your pelvis at the chair or bench or rock or log below you.
Breathe and feel what that’s like and how that involves or doesn’t involve your ribs.
Lean over and move toward touching the floor. Easy, go a few times, breathe, explore.
Sit up again and rest.

Now, put your right forearm on your left knee, and prop yourself a bit, and from this lower your head and right arm toward the floor. And then come back up, and slowly lower your right hand to the floor, letting your head hang free. (If you are confined to a bed, bring your knees toward the ceiling from lying on your back, and gently move your right hand down your left thigh and then calf.). Take your right hand down your left calf, caressing this and letting your head and eyes look to the left and right , while your neck hangs freely.
Go up and down, and then after twelve or so times, come upright and rest.
Imagine doing this on the other side.
Now do this on the other side.
Now: take your left knee in your left hand and put your right hand behind your head. Gently, gently bring your knee up toward your head. Gently, gently bring your elbow toward your knee. Take turns, elbow down, knee up, both together. Sometime take the hand from behind your head and press on your sternum so it goes down and you lean forward and lower your head and bring your knee up.
Rest. Imagine doing this on the other side.
Put both elbows on both thighs and alternate pushing your belly out and arching your back a bit, and pulling your belly in and letting your sternum go down, and rounding your back as if the look between your legs. Easily. Rest.
Reach down as in the beginning and play with spine and eye awaring all day.
Day Seven: The Kingdom of Heaven
Jesus says, the Kingdom of Heaven is within.
Thich Nhat Hhan says the Kingdom of Heaven is either now or never.
You are alive.
You are here, and each moment of your life is now.
What is being present like for you?
Can you almost as if taste the difference when you are present and when you aren’t?
Is that difference as if you are entering the Kingdom of Heaven, and forgetting it?

Is it for you as if the Kingdom of Heaven, and our true self is always there, waiting for us to return home to it, when we return to the present.

Search this out today, which might require more slowing down and being quiet and going a little or a lot out of the “normal” routine.

See what kind of day a Kingdom of Heaven is found through the door of now day could be.

Good.
Eight: Undoing Hate
Sometimes we hate things, or don’t like them, or get angry, or wish fiercely that someone would get the …. out of our life, or at least out of our “space.”
Oh, well. That’s human, if we aren’t perfect yet, and let’s grant ourselves the great joy of non-perfection.
So we hate/ dislike / are annoyed with someone.

Good.

Byron Katie, a gal who had a wake up experience from her life as alchoholic, chain smoking, overweight, depressed screaming mother, has developed something called the work of Byron Katie.
The first step is not to be good. To actually get into the judging of others. Get into it and write it down.
Judge your neighbor.
Write it down.
Ask four questions.
Turn it around.

Hmmm. This apparently is not about pretending we are “above” making judgments, since we are asked to judge and write it on down on some paper.
And how do we know we are judging?
When we feel stressed or unhappy.
So, anytime you are stressed or unhappy, write down a should or a shouldn’t about someone else. Forget that you “shouldn’t” have judgments. Just write it down.
And then read it. Slowly. Look at those words.
Are they true, or are they just an opinion.
Begin to play this game today, the write down any judging thoughts and asking: IS IT TRUE? And, hey, why not: sense your five lines today, too. Good.
Day Nine: What to Leave Behind
The house is on fire. You have five seconds to grab two things and get out. What do you take?
The ship is sinking. You jump off. What do you take?
You are leaving this life. You have an hour to look back: what is it you love and are thankful for and cherish as you depart this sweet world?
What are we when our stuff is gone?
Who are we without the words and stories we tell about ourselves?
What is good and sweet and easy and always there for us, with friends, without friends, with money, without money? Who are we?

Who are you?
What is the essence of your life, your You-ness in each and every moment of your life?

This is all today. This is everything today, and any day: who are we, deep and wonderful and miraculously at our core?

Inside.
Inside.
Clear and present and sweet inside.
Who are you?

Ponder and sense and breathe into this question today. If the answer comes in words, see if you can find the answer even deeper than words.

Go slowly, even in the midst of all else.
Go slowly, and feel with your being: when you’ve left all the other stuff behind, who are you? Who are we?
Good.
Day Ten: 4 questions and a turn around
So we’ve started this game, the Byron Katie what to do about suffering and stress game.
It starts like this: Judge Your Neighbor, Write it Down, Ask 4 Questions, Turn it Around.
The game goes deep, though it lacks the usual complexity of most systems that bring you to freedom (except the BE PRESENT system, the ultimate in simplicity). The Katie game though, goes on like this, with 4 Questions about the thought/ story/ belief/ opinion that is always there behind and tied up with stress and suffering. Take this thought/ story/ belief/ opinion and ask 4 ways:
1. IS IT TRUE?
2. CAN I ABSOLUTELY KNOW THAT THIS THOUGHT IS TRUE?
3. HOW DO I REACT, FEEL, BE IN MY LIFE AND BODY WHEN I ATTACH TO THIS THOUGHT?
4. WHO OR WHAT WOULD I BE WITHOUT ATTACHING TO THIS THOUGHT.

That’s it for the questions. The turn around is grand, and that’s for another day.

For today play with setting out to be happy and stress free and honest and present all day. From the present and honesty, notice when you aren’t happy, or are in stress. In those moments write down your complaint about reality, preferably in a should or shouldn’t sentence. Write the thought, a sentence, short.
Look at the sentence. See how believing it and being miserable are part of the same package.
Then ask the first two questions: Is it true? And, Can I absolutely know that this thought is true?
So and so shouldn’t have died? Can I absolutely know this is true? I shouldn’t have made that “mistake.” Can I absolutely know this is true? Ask all day, for any and every thought hooked into any and all suffering. Good.
Day Eleven: Back to Heaven
What if heaven is loving What Is?
What would that mean?
Who knows? You will know if you stay in the present and do the work of Byron Katie when we get out of loving the Now.
So let’s learn on forward, like this:
Stay happy and present if you can. And when you can’t, notice the stress and notice the suffering and WRITE IT DOWN.
Look at the sentence you’ve written. Feel and sense your suffering. Begin to get very clear how the two are married.
And today’s game: WRITE IT DOWN each time suffering comes along. Write down the thought/ concept/ idea/ belief/ story. Make sure the sentence is in some way a clear opposition to What Is. A should or shouldn’t in the sentence make this most clear.
And ask the first three questions: Is it true? Can I absolutely know that this is true? And three: HOW DO I REACT WHEN I ATTACH TO THIS THOUGHT?
The reaction is good to write down, writing down a laundry list of all the “benefits” to this thought.
Like this: “So and so should appreciate/ love/ respect/ accept me more.” And the first two questions, True? Absolutely true? Then, the third, when I believe this, I feel….. How? Bad, sad, mad, depressed? What ? And my body gets this way…. And I avoid this person, or snap at that person, and what? And do or don’t do what in my life?
Have the thought written down. Write the list of all the effects of believing in that thought. This is quite the liberating bit of inner knowledge. Here’s what so and so does. Here’s my belief about what so and so did. Here’s my list of suffering from believing that so and so should have been different in that instance.

Start to enjoy how good we are at making ourselves suffer when we attach to certain thoughts.
Day Twelve: Trying out Freedom.
Judge your neighbor. Write it down. Ask 4 questions. Turn it around.
Question 4: Who or what would I be without the story?
Question 4: Who or what would I be without attaching to the thought?
Do it today.
Not “let go” instantly, but do the write down, do the first 3 questions and then go to number 4: test out in imagination how your life would be without the thought, or if the thought is there, without believing in it.

Someone treats you poorly.
Write it down: “So and so shouldn’t have treated me poorly.”
First two questions: Is this True? Can I absolutely know this is true?
3rd Question: when I believe this, what goes on in me and my life.
4th Question: When I don’t believe this, even though “so and so” is still “treating me poorly,” who am I? What am I? What happens inside? How do I feel? What can I see and understand that I couldn’t when attached to the thought?
What openings happen physically when I don’t attach to the thought.

And check this out: there is no rule, as in: “get rid of the thought.”

It’s more like this: notice the difference: You have the story about the world.
One way to go, question 3, believe the thought and….. happens
Another way to go, question 4, don’t believe the thought and …… happens.

Compare the two.
All day: notice, write, ask and compare: Who am I with the story believed? And, Who am I when I don’t believe the story.
Enjoy, learn, thrive.
Good.
Day Thirteen: Turn Around One Way
Sit it a chair, on the forward edge of the chair, so that your back is upright and not leaning into anything.
Breathe and feel your feet on the floor and your bottom/ pelvis on the chair and your spine holding you upright.
Now turn to look to the left and to the right, a few times, easily, and slowly, comparing the two directions.
Now rest. Then turn your head just to the left a few times and notice how far you turn by noting what you see at the end of your turning. Go slowly. Don’t strain. Then rest, and turn to the right and see how far you go that way.
Rest again.
Now put your hands on the opposite shoulder, so the right hand is on the left shoulder and the left hand on the right shoulder. In this position, turn your head just left and back to the middle , but allow your chest to turn as if it wants to look to the left, too. Do this a number of times, slowly and without effort.
Rest. Lean back in your chair if you want to in the rests.
Now, come to the front of your chair and put the back of your right hand on your left cheek, and your left hand on the chair behind you. In this position, turn to the left and back to center a number of slow, gentle times. Feel the spine and ribs helping your turn to the left. Rest with hand down and eyes closed and feel yourself in the present.
Now, come to the front again, put your hands as above, and turn to the left and stay there. Begin to turn your eyes left and right a number of times as you stay slightly twisted to the left. Rest.
Now, come to the front and shift your weight from the right side of your pelvis to the left a number of times. Rest.
Now come to the front and put the back of each hand on the opposite cheek, and turn slowly to the left and back to the center a number of times. Then stay to the left with your hands and ribs, but rotate your head a little to kiss first the back of your right hand, then the back of your left hand. Rest.
Now turn both ways and compare the ease and distance to the beginning.
Day Fourteen: Another turn around
Judge your neighbor, write it down, ask four questions, turn it around.
Take any judgment and write it down in a should or shouldn’t form. So and so should be nicer. So and so shouldn’t lie to me.
Do the four questions.
Learn today and play with the turn around.

Like this:
So and so should be nicer to me.
One turn around: I should be nicer to so and so.
Another: I should be nicer to myself.

So and so shouldn’t lie to me.
One: I shouldn’t lie to so and so.
Two: I shouldn’t life to myself.

And for everything:
So and so should love me more.
I should love so and so more. (And you don’t have to live with a person, or even invite them to dinner just because you love them.)
Two: I should love me more.

And this:
So and so should be more present.
I should be more present.

Love and live and learn this.
Have fun, laugh at how human we all are, and come on back to the present, if that feels right and beautiful to you.

Good.
Day Fifteen: Turn around again
Sit in a chair and turn easily right and left. Rest. Now just turn to the right and see how easy that is, and how far you turn.
Now, lie down on the floor, ground or a firm bed. Turn your head easily to the right here, and see how easy it is and what is your range. Rest.
Raise your left foot so that the left sole is pressing into the floor, and the left knee toward the ceiling. Push your left foot into the ground and rotate your pelvis to the right and turn your head to the right at the same time. And come back to the middle with both pelvis and head. A number of times, very slowly and very gently.
Rest, which means bring your leg down next to the other one. Feel what is going on inside you.
Now stand the left foot again, and make the same movement, but this time move your head to the left each time your pelvis rotates to the right. And bring them both in synchronous timing, back to the middle and repeat a number of times. Each time try to learn a little more about yourself, and feel and little more ease and pleasure. After many times, rest.
Again stand your left foot, and put your arms toward the sky or ceiling, what we call forward, because if you are standing, this would be forward. Touch palm to palm and keep the arms straight. Now push again the left foot and rotate your pelvis to the right, pushing out your belly as you do this. After a few times with the arms simply pointed forward/ skyward, begin to take your arms three times to the right as your pelvis goes to the right, and three times to the left each time your pelvis goes to the right. Feel the differences.
Go slowly. Don’t push. Feel each time as different. Do many times, and rest.
Now: left foot standing, arms forward as above, and do all this: pelvis to the right with belly pushed out, arms to the left, and head to the right, then slowly bring everything back to the center. Many times. Easy. Joyous. Learning.
Rest.
And now come to sitting again and turn your head right and left and see if awaring your pelvis and ribs and eyes make this different than before.
Sixteen: Turn Around Again
Someone loves you.
You love them.
Times get tricky and they begin to act in ways that bother and disturb you.
Write down a big list of all the things they are doing wrong.
Read t his list four ways: one, with big seriousness and annoyance at how “bad” and “inferior” they are.
Two: with delight at how human and imperfect they are.
Three: with curiosity about the pain in their lives, or the patterns they are stuck in.
Four: with clarity about how stuck and limited we all are when we act from our patterns rather than the present.

Then do the Work of Byron Katie on each and every flaw of theirs and re-write the list in turn around mode:

So and so is selfish, careless, passive aggressive and sneaky becomes: sometimes at least, I am selfish, careless, passive aggressive and sneaky.

They are you.
You are them.
The trick: to wake up to now, and change ourselves in the moment and have enough humor and wisdom and honesty to ask them in ways they can hear to consider changing. Admitting we do the same nonsense will probably make it a lot easier for the other person to hear.

Love is slowing down.

Learning is slowing down.

Spiritual wisdom often comes from slowing down.

Chair lesson, for back ease and neck clarity, and joy of learning

Sitting and twisting in a probably new way

Sit in a chair. Let one elbow and forearm, your left, say, rest on your left knee, so you are bent forward and holding yourself up a bit with this left arm and elbow combination. Now take your right hand and place in behind your head, if you can comfortably do that. If not, put the back of your right hand on your check to the left of your mouth.

Either way, tilt your right elbow up toward the air, toward the sky, toward the ceiling and begin to make circles with this elbow. Imagine a long pencil or pen or feather dipped in ink with which you can paint on the ceiling or the sky. Make a nice circle from the elbow.

Go so slowly that your feel your ribs moving, so slowly you feel this in your pelvis, and so slowly most of all, so that you feel this in your back. Feel an arching when the elbow reaches a certain part of the circle and a folding in your back when the elbow comes to the other side of the circle.

Go slowly enough to notice where your circle gets away from a really round shape. Find the tension or hurry at those points and try to go even slower and with even less effort and see if that will help you draw the circle.

Bring your hands both to your lap and sit up and rest. Feel any changes.

Now, same left elbow down, and right elbow up and make your slow and interesting and pleasurable circles in the other direction

Rest again;

Now, switch arms and do the circle one way a number of times, and then rest, and then the other way a number of times, and rest then.

Feel on this side to a way to feel and connect and as if direct these circles from deep in your lower back and pelvis. Don’t strain. Don’t hurry.

Learn and enjoy.

Moving Toes and Heels and hey, what about nowing???

Dogwood in bloom in Sonoma, Ca, in April


Brendan, my son, at the Anat Baniel Method training, Special Needs Children, Segment 4, as part of some 60 people doing grand learning

Movement with attention
is one grand path to feeling
younger,
to sharpening up the brain,
and
waking up to now

Try this:

1. Sit in a chair. Don't lean back. Feel your pelvis against the chair, and your spine holding up your head. Enjoy that. Close your eyes, and sense two arms, two legs, fingers, toes, breathing, and spine.

2. Do this for awhile, as if a meditation.

3. Imagine doing this sensing and awaring all day long.

4. Now, begin to move the toes of your left foot back and forth,
rotating at your heel. Go slowly. Go so slowly that each time you
do this, and do it many times, you can feel and sense and learn something new about your nervous system and your bones and your feet.

5. Take a rest.

6. Now, move the heel of your left foot back and forth (to the left and to the right),
slowly, pivoting on the front part of your foot. Many times, slowly, pleasurably,
learning.

7. Take a rest and feel the differences, left to right, and before to now.

8. Come back, if you've forgotten, to being present.

9. Lie on your back, and put both feet "standing," which means the foot is on the floor and the knees are pointed toward the ceiling.

10. In this position, a number of times rotate the toes of the left foot to the right and left. Rest. Then rotate the heel of this same foot. Rest.

11. In the rests, come into a deeper meditation.

12. Bring both feet to standing again, and push up your pelvis into the air. Do this a number of times, more and more arching your back, and pushing out your belly.

13. Rest with awareness and pleasure.

14. Again, feet standing, pelvis up, and bring the toes of your left foot as if for running. Toes on the floor. Put your hands behind your head on the floor, and tilt your whole upper body toward the left, and then back to the middle. It is as if the ribs on your right get longer and the left elbow comes closer, staying on the floor, to your left hip.

15. Rest.

16. Do all of 14 again, and use that to get your left hand to your left heel. Once there, rotate slowly your left heel right and left. See if you can feel the toes pressing the floor most clearly between the big toe and the second toe.

17. Rest. Imagine other moves you could make. Imagine being aware of your ankles and which toes press into the ground as you walk forward today.

18. Get up to standing and go forth to a life of slowing and awaring and happying.

Good.

Getting to the toes of the matter, joy life love learning, backs and back to the present, which is always here, just waiting

We walk each day, many times pressing down into the floor and Earth with our feet, and this pushes goes through us all the way up our spine. We usually don’t notice this. We have five toes on each foot. We usually don’t notice this. Today is as good a time as any to begin more and sweeter and happier noticing of these things. And more.

Lie on your back, please on a firm but comfortable surface. A lawn, a wood floor with a carpet or blanket on it, or a very firm bed. Feel your back pressing down. Feel the Earth pressing back up. Feel each leg in the sensing way, sensing the bones and muscles and blood and everything of each leg, one leg at a time.

Then sense your arms, one arm at a time, from finger tips to shoulder blades.

Now sense your spine, along the floor, where does it touch, where does it lift up? Sense the top and bottom and back side and front side of your spine.

Sense your arms and legs and spine and see if your had your toes, as part of that. If not, add them in, and your head and ribs. Sense your whole self on the floor.

Good.

Just that much, if you stay present with it, can change your life if you do it a few times a day.


And let’s do more.

Please raise one knee toward the ceiling, so that one foot is as if “standing” on the floor, sole pressing down. Pick either your left leg if you are right handed, or right leg is you are left handed, unless one leg foot toes ankle are in some sort of pain. Then pick the un-pain leg and foot, or the less pain if both don’t feel so great.

Good. Now begin to press this standing foot into the floor, and use this push to raise your pelvis on that side, so it lifts and rotates. Go slow. Only have half the pelvis coming off the floor. The side of the pelvis on the straight on the floor leg side stays down.

Do this slowly, many times, push the foot down, feel the pelvis rotate, feet your back arch.

Many times, each time with a sensing of a different part of you: toes, ankle, knee, hip joint, pelvis, spine, ribs, neck, head, arms. Feel different parts and all of you at the same time if you can.

After many times, say twenty to thirty, take a rest, let your leg down and feel the difference side to side. Rest long enough so that you feel your body and brain integrating what you learned, then raise your same foot to standing.

Throughout this lesson, if will always be this foot. At the end, you can get up and walk around, and feel some big differences and ten or twenty minutes later come back and do all this on the other side. Or right before you go to sleep is a great time to review and redo this lesson on the other side.

So stand the same foot again, and press again, first three times so the your knee falls in toward the middle as you press, and three times so that your knee head out over your foot as you press. Go back and forth three times each way, and sense how this is very different in your hip joint and in your toes.

Rest again and integrate.

Now, stand the same foot again, and from now on in the lesson, press your foot so that the knee is heading toward over the standing foot. Begin to press, and as you press, raise one side of your pelvis, rotate, arch your back, and push your belly out.

Really notice your belly going out on the pushing and arching phase of this movement. And now practice sometimes breathing in as your belly goes out, and sometimes breathing out. Feel the difference. Enjoy both ways.

Rest and integrate.

Always find pleasure and learning in each movement.

Standing your foot again, and press a number of times, knee toward over the standing foot, and belly out, and add this on: for three times, as you press, start the press as you have been all along, in your heel but now for three times, as the back arches and the knee moves a bit down toward the foot, push through the big toe of that foot. Three times. And then three times through the next toe, the index toe. And then three times through the middle toe. Then three times the ring toe. And three times the little toe.

Rest and integrate.

Stand the foot again. Always move slowly, with learning and enjoyment, and finding out about all parts of yourself, not just the toe that is pushing, say. Now, go through the previous movement, but the other way: 3 times the little toe, and so on working your way back to the big toe and sensing ribs and spine and breathing and pelvis as you press through your heel and then the selected toe.

Rest. Enjoy. Breathe. Feel yourself on the floor. Feel differences side to side. Feel differences in your general state from the beginning of this short lesson.

Roll to your side and get up and walk a bit, feeling the lopsidedness and the learning and the amazing results from going slow, from being present, from giving yourself the present of learning.

Good.

Enjoy your day, sense your toes a lot, and sometime during the day, go through this game on the other side.

Anti-aging, a beginning discussion, with some personal history stuff

Anti-Aging: What the heck?

What is “aging?”

Obviously, the calendar year keeps moving along and we can only say we are so many “years old,” and this number keeps growing. Fine, but while that happens is it necessary….

• to become more restricted and “creaky” in our body?

• to increase accidents and illnesses?

• to cut ourselves off from new ideas and activities?

• to live in something like a “rut” of established patterns of what we do, who we
associate with, and worst of all, the “thoughts” in our mind?

• to become more limited in our vocal range?

• to no longer skip, hop, jump or run?

• to have habits so deep we don’t even know they are habits?

• to be annoyed by and shy of the “new?”

• in general to narrow the range of movement and thought and feeling and activity to a tight and unchanging range?


The answer is obviously no. No we don’t have to narrow in. No we don’t have to get creaky.

But, even among people who are excited by the new in ideas and the arts, there is often the idea of the body getting more and more “clunky,” if not worse, unless one is willing to engage in endless and strenuous exercise and discipline.

This, luckily, is not so.

I’m a fairly good case study for this. Here’s me, at the top of the page, at 63, doing what I couldn’t at 43. In fact at 43, I could not walk down a wooded hillside where my son and I were camping without his help. My knees were hurting and not functioning that much.

One knee is still in pain in certain positions, but I can do stuff I wouldn’t have imagined back in the wee young days of my forties.

Changing my diet helped.

Doing tai chi helped.

Discovering again Feldenkrais in my 50’s made the huge difference, though. I had gone to Feldenkrais group movement classes in my 30’s and 40’s, often to great benefit, but by my 50’s, “good enough,” as a sort of steady undoing seemed my lot. I was active, even spending a few hours a day creating the 3 acre public garden that became the Sonoma Garden Park, but when I started up yoga in my 50’s, I kept it up as an exercise in doing something I was “bad” at. Lots of pain. Not much gain.

Then, one weekend, I attended a workshop with my yoga teacher girlfriend, where we did 3 movement lessons a day for two days in a row. The girlfriend, who could do almost anything “movement-wise,” felt as if her whole brain had shifted and woken up. I felt, hurrah!, as if I were ten years old again.

Needless to say, when I discovered this weekend was a lead in to a 4 year training to become a Practitioner in the Feldenkrais Method®, I signed up. I discovered things about movement and learning and neck and eyes and ribs and pelvis and knees, yes knees, and feet that I hadn’t even known I’d been craving to relearn. I keep going to what seemed like the source of anti-aging, and though the process was far more complicated than any I’d ever encountered, the joy and delight in how I felt, the enjoyment in learning “thinking” again at a non-verbal level, the delight in so much time spent with other people, all of us present and attentive to ourselves in the moment, was wonderful. Also re-activated was my general enthusiasm to try the “unthinkable,” like running for city council in Sonoma.

Five years later, still hungry to learn, I enrolled in another 4 year program, this time with Anat Baniel. And guess who joined me? The son who’d had to help me down the hill. Anat is an amazing teacher, who some think has taken this work to a new level.
Whatever, this kept my “youth-ing” going, and in my sixties I came to abandoning my Sonoma life and taking an adventure around the country where I lived in Tucson, Arcata, Atlanta, and western Colorado (Gunnison), as well as Orcas Island, while meeting people, practicing my work (this Feldie/ Anat Baniel work, and the Work of Byron Katie, plus coaching in being present and in forgiveness.)


Alright, enough about me.

How could this help you? Whatever age you are, whether you feel like the idea of “anti-aging” and vitality or not, these two methods, Feldenkrais and Anat Baniel can help all of us in all these ways, and more:

• By giving us, over and over, gentle and learnable nonverbal problems to solve (thus skipping all the mental humdrum we’ve accumulated at any age), we reactivate our brains to the learning mode.

• By creating “problems” and helping us discover not one, but a whole range of “solutions,” we begin to learn again about the joy of learning and it’s centrality to our well being.

• By working in the range of ease, and less effort (babies have very little muscle), and slowly, and with attention, we start to re-experience life at the level when we were all pretty much a genius: when as a baby, we went from blob, to rolling over, and sitting, and GI Joe lizard crawling and “normal” crawling, and walking and talking. All actions of immense complexity, that we learned by making lots of “mistakes,” which just means going down pathways were the learning is “this doesn’t work.” This is sweet territory to which to return.

• By creating movement patterns, in movement lessons, where DISCOVERY is everything and “Doing it Right,” is learned to be a dead end, we tap into the learner/ explorer/ discovered in us every night when we dream those crazy dreams.

• By the emphasis on staying with pleasure in our learning, and the pattern of doing something many times, but each time with pleasure and awareness in a different part of ourselves, we activate the joy in life that is our birthright

• By acting and resting and acting and resting over and over in an atmosphere of presence and ease, we come to another aspect of our “real selves,” the one who lives and thrives in the present.

• Learning is fun. Moving in new ways is fun. Fun breeds fun, and in an atmosphere of exploring and discovering and being present, we heighten our sense of fun as something easy and available, not an activity when we use a lot of substances and blow off a lot of steam.

• The process of learning and learning and learning retunes us to a life of vitality, and we somehow rediscover patterns of movement that are easy and pleasurable, patterns of thinking that are easy and pleasurable, and if we are lucky, even patterns of feeling that are easy and pleasurable. And then we are a bit ruined to the falling apart and creaky world of normal “aging,” and find ourselves in the world of learning, and being present and vitality and “anti-aging.”


Good.

A game of learning: rotation to the left in sitting

The easiest motion for humans is rotating around our central axis. As if you want to turn around and see someone beside or behind you. This game today clues us in to at least 4 levels of our selves that can cooperate and become easier and more clear in rotating to the left.

Please sit more or less upright at the front edge of your chair, sensing both arms and both legs and your spine and breathing, and slowly and deliciously turning your head to the right and left quite a few times, each time feeling it as if it were brand new.

(Mini-sermon: to experience and look forward to and delight in the new is to stay young and vital throughout life, especially if this involved discoveries in our bodies and in our emotional and spiritual habits, not just our intellect; to stick to, cling to, be afraid to leave the familiar is to ossify into a more and more narrow “aging,” which may be nothing more than the loss of zest of all the newness and nowness that our lives could embrace, and could be embracing our lives.)

Rest from rotating your head. Breathe and sense your spine and be aware of gravity and enjoy all three. Feel the depths and details of who you are, in the moment, in your body. Now. Feel the thrill and ease of being in the now.

Begin to turn your head to the left a number of times. Then rest. Then using your ribs with your hands on them, turn to the left a number of times with the head and the ribs as “friends.” Then rest. (At this point, and even earlier if you do this again, you might enjoy taking our any glasses you are wearing.)

Now turn to the left about half way, and stop. Keep your head and chest pointed this way, and move your eyes slowly right and left. Breathe. Be easy in this. Come back to the middle and rest.

Now, again, turn ribs and head about halfway to the left and stop. Notice at what your eyes are directed; keep your eyes in this direction and move your head, slowly, slowly, gently right and left. Feel a softening in your neck as your neck and eyes are allowed to not be in their usual coupled pattern.

Rest. Close your eyes in the rest and move them gently left and right. Feel something like a soothing in this..

Again, turn halfway left with ribs and head. Now, you’re your eyes one way and the head the opposite. Eyes to the left and head to the right. Eyes to the right and head to the left, and they match up and point the same way at this ‘halfway to the left” position. Make it small. Very slow. Very gentle. Make sure you are breathing.

Take it as a learning game. Do this many times, and then rest.

Think about your pelvis, your bottom, the base of your spine, the whole area “down there.” If it’s “large” smile. It’s just you. Think about how to rotate, in sitting your pelvis to the left.

Then try out whatever you thought. Did it work? Good.

Try this: push your right knee forward and a bit to the left and see if that help rotate your pelvis to the left. And then do this many times. Slowly. Enjoyably. Learning about your spine and pelvis. Ease. Pleasure. Even a little skill maybe.


Then rest, and feel yourself as a many leveled movement maker. You can move and rotate your pelvis, your ribs, your head, your eyes. Think about rotating them all, either at once, or in some sequence, to the left.

Be patient. Learning takes coming out of the daily rush long enough to be present to what we are learning. Enjoy even the “frustrations” in this activity, but most of all enjoy the opportunity to sense yourself, and be present and learn about how you can move and BE with more ease, pleasure and skill. (Ease, pleasure and skill are my new wish for the phrase ESP.)

Now, rotate to the left in this sequence: turn your eyes to the left and then your head and then your ribs, and then your pelvis. And come back in the same order, eyes, head, ribs, pelvis.

Rest.

Then try pelvis, ribs, head, eyes and back the same.

Notice these all day, the pelvis, head, ribs and eyes. Notice turning and being you in the middle of all this.

Notice your noticing. Enjoy that.

Why Be Aware?

Why Be Aware?

This is a silly question,
except if we are running around
in one of our usual
daze
days.

And then, in a pause say,
or walking across a lawn,
or talking to someone
and realizing we are just pumping
up inside getting all ready
to spring our next
over used download,

or putting off someone
who might love
desire
need
real
attention
in the real moment

and suddenly,
we realize:
OMG (I learned that recently,
teenage talk, slang: Oh MY God,
said as one word, OHMYGOD)
I have been on autopilot
the last...ten minutes,
hour,
day,
week.

And then we are aware
of ourselves,
in this moment.

Something shifts.
That can be our game today:
what shifts,
how?

Does moving slowly
in the Feldenkrais
patterns
help that
waking to now?

Try it:
connect to gravity
and from awaring of that,
moving some part of you,
gently, easily
and see what else that shifts,
and how it involves
and possibly shifts
your use of gravity.

Rest.

Move another part of you,
thinking
and awaring of the first
while you move and aware
on
the second.

Rest.

Play with combinations.

See what happens.

See how awareness
and awaring
come into your life
while you do this.

Enjoy.

And then,
see how awaring can be the
main game of your day,
today.

Good.

5 lines, folding on the back, a couple of variations, a good start

We can do something in sitting and then again on our backs, and experience the way life can be amazing when we try things out in a variety of ways.

A few posts back, we went into an exploration of sensing our five lines and of folding forward from the sitting position. Today we’ll lie on the floor or a firm bed or table, and do the same sequence, again as slowly and we as much awareness, enjoyment and playful discovery as possible.

First lie down, and simply sense yourself on the floor or table. Where is touching? How big do you feel? Can you feel each leg, and each arm and your spine, the five lines of you? Can you notice your breathing?

Can you notice a difference that come to the floor and leaving gravity behind makes in your ability to release, so called “relax,” and not so called, but for real, pay attention to yourself?

Now. Lets go through the same sequence.

1) First feel down your left leg, from knee toward your foot with your right hand.

It is of no importance if you “get there” or not, just take it easy and feel each part of your back and ribs and pelvis that is available for you to pay attention to.

Go back and forth slowly, and without any effort to “go to the limit.” And each times you aren’t folding in, come all the way back to the table or floor and release any effort.

2) Rest. Feel yourself on the table, and what is new in your awareness.

3) Bring your right hand behind your head and your left hand behind your left knee, and bring your right elbow toward your left knee. Slowly, not trying to “get there,” any there. And coming back to complete release between each movement. And each time feeling a little more in your spine and ribs and pelvis.

Keep your neck and breathing free. See how to make this pleasure, not “crunches.”

4) Rest again, fully and enjoyably. Not look to the left and put your right hand behind your left ear, and your left hand behind your left knee. Bring elbow toward knee again, each time allowing yourself to twist a little as you fold and each time coming back to the table and completely releasing any efforting.

Do this many times, with ease, slowness and curiosity. And pleasure.

5) Rest again. Last variation (though you can invent ten or twenty more, if you wish). Hold your left leg as you did in sitting, left hand at the left knee and right hand and the left ankle, and bring your leg and head toward each other.

Many times, releasing, folding, releasing, learning. Enjoy.

6) Rest.

7) Go back to the original move, or exploring down your left lower leg with your right hand. Enjoy.

8) Lie back and sense the differences, in feeling/ sensation in your back, in breathing, in length of your spine, in internal ease. Enjoy.

And today, if you wish, fold and unfold in sitting and lying down, and sense your five lines all you wish.

Good.

Acture, a friendly and useful concept

Beyond and smarter/ most useful than posture: “Acture,” a word that hasn’t caught on yet

Moshe Feldenkrais was a fun and feisty genius of a guy. He had a saying about posture, that “Posture is for posts.” Which is to say, only posts in front of a building, or at the corner of a fence are “supposed” to stand up perfectly straight and unchanging.


Life isn’t shapes and poses, it is motion. So here’s the word fun and feisty Feldenkrais came up with to talk about what our bodies needed: “acture.”

Acture is the optimal shaping of ourselves so we can move easily and freely, without preliminary shifting around, to another position. Six directions. We are ready to move easily in six directions when we have fun and feisty and fine acture: up, down, right, left, front, back. Obviously we could scoot off on the diagonal either in a forward diagonal of many possibility trajectories, or a backward one.

In sitting, if we were to sit so we could hop on our bottoms a couple of inches to the right, and a couple to the left and a couple forward and a couple back, this would begin to clue us in to our sitting “acture.”

The usual slumping to the back of the seat would definitely not do, and yet what most people usually call “sitting up straight” might have us too far back in this rigid idea of “vertical” to move easily in this bottom hopping way.

What works best in coming to standing from sitting?

Life is about being present, and one of the things we do a lot and don’t notice is transition from one set place or position to another. These transitions, lying to sitting, sitting to standing, the other way around, we usually take for granted until something goes wrong.

But they are amazing.

Spend the day noticing transitions and thinking and sensing what feels like it would be good “acture” for you.

round and arch, in standing, using arms to clue in

Getting straight

Many of us, at one time or another, get the idea into our head that we want “better posture.” Often this idea was drilled into us in teenage years, with some adult saying, in usually not so pleasant a voice, “stand up straighter,” or “stop slumping.” Or some such commandment.

Whatever the baggage and past conditioning, it does feel better to stand with a fuller and longer spine. Much of yoga works toward this, and we’ll go for a sort of brain yoga as this book unfolds. I am trained in what is called the Feldenkrais Method®, named after a man, Moshe Feldenkrais (1904-1984) who was a physicist, engineer, judo master and student of babies and human development. He wanted to heal something in him that medical surgery couldn’t repair at the time, and he did, discovering along the way a system of attentive moving that awakened awareness and propelled people into all sorts of improvements in their life.

I’m also trained in the Anat Baniel Method, developed by, not so surprisingly, Anat Baniel, a student of Moshe Feldenkrais who has spent 30 expanding and deepening his system.

Be that as it may, stand in your socks or barefoot on some comfortable floor or ground.

Feel the you of you in standing.

Now, hold your arms straight out to your sides, begin to roll your arms forward, so the thumbs orient from up, to forward to down. And as you roll your arms forward, bend your knees, and let your whole upper body round toward your pelvis, as if you were curling up in a ball. Then uncurl yourself and rotate your hand and arms backwards, so the thumbs come back to up, and rotate to point to the back. While this is happening, arch your spine and let your head look up a little and soften your belly and let your belly come forward as your lower back comes in a little.

Don’t worry if this isn’t obvious right away. Give it a try. Go slowly. See if it can make “sense” to you and deeply, pleasurably and full of pleasure, sense and learn about yourself.

Go back and forth like this. Read the directions several times, and figure it out. Go beyond reading about it. DO IT. SENSE YOURSELF IN MOTION, SENSE THE SPINE ROUNDING AND ARCHING. Breathe as you do this. Sense both arms and legs.

When you finish doing this, sense your “posture” all day.

Easy bending, a start, and 5 lines, a deep meditation, one or both levels, go for it, or not

More alive: sensing five lines

This is “hard.”

Or not. Who cares? Do we have anything better to do than wake up completely to each moment?

I don’t.


You decide for you.

And if “hard” is still okay, give this a go: sense both arms and both legs.

And then add on your spine.



Try this : five lines in sitting.

1) Sit, not at the back of the chair, feel your five lines: two arms, two legs, spine.

2) Move your pelvis back and forth a bit, and sense the shifting shape of your spine, like this: belly in, weight to back of your pelvis, head and chest a little down and forward; now rocking to the front of your pelvis, belly a little forward, back arched, head upright. Sense your 5 lines in this.

3) Take your left hand at your right thigh, and lean forward and caress your right leg, with your hand going toward the foot, and back up again. Many times. Sense your five lines and other parts while you do this.

4) Rest. And then, take the right hand behind the right knee, and left hand behind your head, and lift your right knee a little and bring your left elbow toward your right knee. Go gently, slowly, easily. Many times. Sensing your five lines.

5) Rest., Now, look to the right and put your left hand behind your head and near or over your left ear. Hold again your right knee with your right hand. Letting your head and spine turn even more to the left, and sensing your five lines as you do this, bring elbow and knee towards each other again.

6) Rest. Now pick you right leg, with your left hand holding your right ankle and right hand holding your right knee. Lift the knee and leg toward your face and let the chest and head come forward, and then back, slowly, sensing your 5 lines. A bit, shift your held leg right and left, again sensing your five lines, minimizing effort and maximizing pleasure and learning.

7) Rest. Do the original movement of left hand down the right leg and see if this is different, all the while sensing your 5 lines.

8) If you want to do the opposite side, 5 lines, all the steps go ahead.

Today’s game: five lines, and feeling how to make bending more interesting and variable for ourselves.

easy wake up, and then all day: the lines, or not

Moving all ways and sensing our five lines

Here’s one way to get the spine, your spine, going through all it’s possibilities.

Stand, easily and tap your heels for a warm up.

Smile and look outside yourself and find three or five things to like about what you see.

Then take your right hand down along your left leg toward your left shoe. Fold and twist a bit as you get smaller and smaller and lower and lower.

Now unfurl, bringing your hand up in front of your chest and then on up toward the sky or ceiling on your right side, look up and watch it, and twist to the right with your hand and body.

When you are as far as you can go here, stay and enjoy and then begin side bending to the right and the left in this position/

Don’t worry if this isn’t obvious reading it on the page. Go piece by piece and really enjoy this.

Find different ways to breathe as you do this.

After many times, rest.


Then go left hand down, and up and twist and arch and side bend.

You’ll get it.

Go about the rest of your day full of spine and possibility.


And be of good cheer.

Why not, it’s your life.

sitting and side bending

Sitting and side bending.

Sit comfortably on the front edge of a chair. Breathe easily and do just very slightly a rounding and arching of your spine, to feel your pelvis more clearly on the chair, and the lengthening of your back when you arch.

Come to a sitting position with a slight arch, and your belly a bit forward and soft and free. Breathe in and out a number of times this way, and then interlace your fingers and bring your hands behind your head.

Now, keeping your nose pointing forward, tilt to the right, so your left elbow goes toward the sky/ ceiling and the right elbow comes toward your right hip. Notice what is happening with the weight on your pelvis. Is it going to your right “sit bone” or your left? Probably the right.

Now learn how to do this: as you tilt your head and elbow directly to the right, raise you right hip toward the right elbow, as they come closer, and allow your weight to shift to the left side of your pelvis.

Do this many times. “Easily.” And then rest.

Now, bring interlace your hands the “non-habitual” way, bring them behind your head, and tilt to the left. Two ways: first, shifting your weight left as you tilt, and then, many times, shifting the weight on your pelvis to the right. Feel the shape of your spine as you do this. Many times. Rest.



For today, play with remembering your spine and playing with the ways the spine, the ways your spine moves.

Folding and coming into a ball.

Arching and lengthening and rising to the sky.

Twisting.

Side bending.


See if you can discover a movement that will combine them all.

arch, round, twist, meditate: if you wish

Mind and body and learning: rounding and arching in sitting, with a twist.

Sit in a chair or on a log, or bench, near the front so both feet can be on the ground, and your back is not leaning on anything.

Interlace your hands and put them behind your head, and in this position, do the arching and rounding we have described several times. Do this for a bunch of pleasant and aware and waking and learning times.

Sometimes have your eyes going the way your head is going. Sometimes the opposite.

Go slowly.

Know how you are breathing.

Feel really good.

Rest.


Now try this, when you round, bring your elbows forward, as if they want to touch or straddle your knees. When you arch, widen your elbows out, and one time twist to the right and up with your right elbow, following it with your eyes. Then bring elbows forward, come down, round, and breathe out. Then go to the left, breathe out again (you figure that one out), push your belly out, and lift your left elbow up and backwards, feeling your whole back involved.

Do this a number of times.

Go slowly.

Feel the whole shifting that is going on in your spine.

Enjoy this.

For the rest of the day, simple be present to breathing and to being in your body. You might want to try a famous Thich Nhat Hahn meditation: breathing in, I sense my body; breathing out I smile.

This is a good one, and today, and do sense your spine when you sense your body.

spine and rotation, easy, fun, learning

Rotation, not standing, but oh well

Playing in our spine

Stop somewhere and stand. Stand on your own two feet and feel what that is like. What one foot feels like, and the other, and both of them, and the toes and the ankles.

Breathe.

Begin to ever so slowly turn yourself to the left and then back to the middle. Notice whether you started at the feet, or hips, or shoulders, or head or eyes.

Turn again, starting ever so gently from the head and neck. turn to the left and then back to the center several times, as if a little dance. Now add on some shifting in your weight and bringing your pelvis into the turn. Left and back. Left and back.

Rest.

See if that woke up something in you.

Now put one hand on the center of your chest and one hand low on your belly and turn a bit to the left, Keep your head facing whatever direction this is, and begin figuring out how to gently and easily move your belly one way and your chest the other. Feel the twist, the gentle, enjoyable twist in your spine. Feel good.

Rest. Notice how you feel.

Hands as above, turn to the left, and back to the middle, feeling what it is like to start with the belly, start with the chest, start with the head. Play, turn, enjoy. Rest.

Hands as above. Turn to the left. Stop. Let your eyes go more left and back as your head goes the opposite way. Do this very slowly. Enjoy this.

Throughout the day play with head and eyes and chest and pelvis in turning. Make standing around a meditation in movement today.

As part of the game, experiment with hips one way, chest the other and head the same way as the hips. Make it easy, pleasurable and turn to the right later in the day.

Sense your spine all day and give it movement it likes.

Arch and round in sitting, head connected to the lower back, hopefully

Bending and arching in sitting, hands on face

Sit near the front edge of a chair, or bench or log or rock. Feel your spine and arms and legs. Feel breathing and gravity. Feel your feet on the ground and your head at the top of your spine.

Now take your hands and hold your head like this: with each hand place your thumb under your ears and your other fingers above the ear, and the fingers point toward the back of your head. And with this unity of head and arms and chest, fold forward: stomach in, sternum sinking and back, pelvis rocking to the back edge, head lowering.

How does breathing like to go in this mode?

Then come back to neutral and do this many times, and then rest and feel and sense and learn yourself.

Then, take the same hand head position and push your belly forward and arch your spine and rock forward on your pelvis and bring your head back a little and raise your sternum. How does breathing like to go this way? Enjoy and come back to neutral and do this many times and go slow and observe and enjoy.

Rest.

Now do, go, learn, discover enjoy both ways, rounding and arching as a back and forth game. Go slow, feel one part at a time, the spine, the ribs, the pelvis, the head, the sternum, and then all the parts together.

Really enjoy.

If any pain, go less.

A lot less.

Enjoy.

Learn. Do this a bunch of times today, and stay knowing and awaring of your spine all day.

Good

Hopping in at least two ways, side hopping

Hopping and paying attention.

Yes, yes. This is “movement” again, and again, this is the simplest and quickest way to activate real thinking, rather than our usual verbose roundabout not-really thinking “thinking.”

Stand some nice place. Hop your legs wide and back together. Many times.

Rest.

Slowly, combine this hopping with having your arms go out when your legs go to the side and arms back in when your legs come together. Not as many as the usual “many times.”

Rest.

Now, go slowly and figure this out: do the opposite with your arms: when your legs go out, your arms come to your side, when your legs come back together, your arms go out.

Take it easy.

Start over.

Breathe. Get an ease to this.

Let your attention and awareness get more clear.

Rest.

Now try the thinking/ awaring version, like this: as you hop your legs out, have your arms at your side. As you hop your legs back together, let your arms go to the straight out, outside position. So, this is like a reverse jumping jack, feet out, arms in, and then: feet in, arms out.

Go slow.

Catch yourself and smile when you get confused and go back to the “normal” way.

Rest.

Then do it the “normal” way on purpose.

Rest.

And the backwards way, and see if you can do two or three of one way and two or three of the other without stopping completely in between.

Have some fun. Sense your five lines all the rest of today.

Round and arch in a simple way: one more awakening activity

On our back, letting ourselves arch and round in the back.

Lie on your back, and enjoy just this as a break from the busy “business” of upright, and often uptight, life.

Sense your five lines, two arms, two legs and your spine.

Smile and follow your breathing.

Now, raise your feet to standing, which means your feet are on the ground and your knees toward the sky.

Push your belly out and arch your back a little so that your lower back comes off the floor a little more.

Do this a number of times. Notice your breathing.

Rest.

Then return to feet standing, knees up. Put your hands behind your head and gently, not trying to go very far, raise your head to look at your knees. Pull in your stomach as you do this and feel the lower back for toward or to the floor.

Do this a number of times, and then rest.

Now raise your knees again, and tilt them slowly side to side. Two ways. Both legs at the same time. And one leg first, and then the other.

Do this a few times and then begin to arch your back and push out your belly as you do this.

Then for a few times tighten your belly and tilt your knees in the two ways to the side.

Which makes it easiest for the knees to tilt?

Rest.

Now, as you go side to side with your knees, push your belly out when your legs go to the side and when they come back in to the middle, lift your legs a little toward the floor as if to bring the knees toward your chest. Feel this a slight rounding in the back. Then, put the feet down and tilt your legs to the other side, push our your belly.

Do this is a number of times, each time seeing if you can discover something new about how you move, what it’s like to be present, how to move easily. Keep it up discovering all day.

Belly out, belly in on breathing out

More breath, now some variation.

Breathe out and see if you have a tendency to bring your belly in or push it out.
Play around and see what you like best.

Now breathe in and see which way, belly in (and chest expanded) or belly out is the way you like to breathe in.

Now lie on your back, and breathe out and pull your belly in. Do this slowly. Don’t think about the in breath, just let it happen. Each out breathe, pull your belly in and push the air out through your nose. Don’t move any part of your spine, for now, nor your pelvis. Just push the air out and pull your belly in a number of times.

Rest.

Now, again letting the in breath take care of itself, push the air out, but in rapid little bursts. Then rest a bit and do another rapid series of belly in out breaths.

Rest.

Now try the opposite: push your belly out as you breathe out. Again don’t worry about the in breath. But you might wan to “practice” with sucking the belly in and expanding your chest on the in breath a few times, if you need some help figuring out how to push your belly out on the out breath.

Then just forget the in breath and push your belly out, slowly, as you push your breath out.

Rest.

Now, do this fast, in spurts, belly out breath out. Several times.

Rest.

Now play with opposing: three times belly out on the out breath, and three times belly in. Do this back and forth.

Rest. Play with your breathing off and on during the day.

Up from down

Up from down

So yesterday, we played with coming down to the floor, hands and feet on the floor, and then spiraling down by putting our knee between the opposite hand and foot.

Today we’ll play with spiraling up from the floor.

So please come down to the floor, maybe the way we played with and (maybe) learned yesterday.

Sit cross legged, so one leg is in front of the other. Notice which foot and leg is the one in front. Then take the other hand (if the left foot and leg is in front, take the right hand; if the right leg and foot is in front, take the left hand) and put that hand on the floor beside yourself and slightly to the side.
If it’s your left hand, to the left side and slightly behind. Right hand, the other way.

Then begin to move your head in a spiral toward your hand as if your nose is going down toward it, and as you do this, do three things: one, put weight on the hand you have down; two: rotate the front foot so it is pressed down and standing on the floor; rotate your bottom up to the sky.
.
From this position, one hand with weight, one foot coming to standing, keep spiraling toward the down hand, and keep your head low and spiral your bottom up in the same direction that everything is spiraling.


This may sound like nonsense or “too hard to figure out.”

It isn’t.

Go really slowly. It’s the reverse of spiraling down yesterday, so you can play with yesterday’s game/ learning to get clarity on this side.

You can learn this.

Do it.


And for the rest of the day, every time you get up and down from sitting to standing, do something like a spiral. And notice your head and pelvis all day. Again. Yes. Again

Up to down, 4 points briefly

Touching the Earth, or at least, the floor

Stand somewhere, outside if the weather permits and invites in.

Touch the ground. Easily. Realize that if you kept your legs straight, you don’t have to. Bend your sweet knees and touch the ground with both hands and feel yourself in this primitive and “strange” feeling position.

Play around with lifting one at a time, a hand, and a foot.

Then see what pairs of hand-foot work best to lift.

Then rest.

Come down to this position (“four points”) again, and start to walk forward. As if crawling, but with knees not on the floor. Discover the two ways to go about this. Go back and forth between the two many times.

Rest.

Now, back to this position. Get fancy: both feet up, both hands up, everything up. Rest.

Back again. Come down to the ground like this: take the right knee and place it between the left hand and the left foot and let the right leg come to the floor/ Earth. See how that rotates/ spirals you down. Come back up in the opposite spiral. Do this many times, just to this side.

Rest.

Now do it the other side, left knee between right hand and right foot and spiral on down to the floor. Make this kind of fun.

Rest.

Now go back and forth, once to the right and once to the left. Get a feeling for lifting your rear to come up from sitting the way this ends you up when you sit. Get a feeling for lowering your rear when you go down.

Notice head and pelvis and how they are both you throughout the day, feel the connection, enjoy. Wake to more.

arch round breathe learning

Spine and breathing.

Sit on a firm and comfortable chair and don’t lean back. Sit near the front, feet flat on the ground. Begin to arch so that your belly comes forward and your sternum lifts and your pelvis tilts forward.

And then from there, round so your belly goes back and your stomach comes in and your head comes down and the front/ top of your pelvis rotates toward your head. (Sex toward you, or: pelvis tucking under).

Go back and forth, gently and with pleasure on this.

Rest.

Now, begin to breathe in and fill your belly with air on the parts where you bring your belly forward and arch.

On the rounding part, pull your belly in and exhale.

Do this with pleasure and feel if something like “relaxation” happens for you.

Rest.

Now, round and pull your belly in, but as you do this suck in the air, and fill your chest with air.

Then as you arch and push your belly out, push out your breathing, so you are exhaling, as if via your full belly.

Then round again, with belly in and breathing in, and arch again with belly out and breathing out.

Many times. Explore. Pleasure. Rest.


Then do the arching and rounding with three rounds of breath so that you breathe out when you arch and three rounds so that you breathe in when you arch. Back and forth. Get the hang of this.

Enjoy.

Learn. Watch your breathing all day and switch it around between belly in for in breath and belly out for in breath.

Day 45: Moving Head and knees in side lying

Lie on your side again, knees and legs on top of each other. Knees in front of you with the thighs more or less straight out from your body. This is not, NOT, not about “doing it right.” This is about going slow and being present and getting easy feelings in you as well as the excitement of learning.

So, pillow again under your head.

Bring both knees toward your chest, sliding them along the floor. And then bring them back to the “neutral you started in.

Do this slowly and feel the backs of you involved in this, feel your stomach, feel your spine, feel yourself curling in.

Rest.

Now, put your hands behind your head and elbow point roughly the same way your nose does. If this doesn’t work, put your bottom hand under your cheek. Here, bend and bring your head toward your knees, and back, many times, feeling chest, ribs, stomach, back.

Rest. And then combine the two: knees toward head and head toward knees and back to “neutral.” Rest again.

Now, bring your knees backward behind you, leaving your legs in the bended position. Feel the using of your back. And return back to “neutral.”

Rest.

Now using head in your hands, bring your head back many times and return back to “neutral.” Rest.

Combine these last two: head and knees both back and keep returning back to “neutral.” Rest.

Now, do the curling in with head and pelvis forward and unfurling with head and pelvis back. Feel the all of you involved in this.

Rest.

For the day, remember this in imagination and play with stomach in and using your back to round and arch yourself.

Lying on our side, learning the spine by moving our knee

Learning about the pelvis and spine

Lie on whichever side is most comfortable to you. Put a small pillow or rolled up blanket or sweater under your head to keep your neck comfortable. Put your knees on top of each other and bend them, as if you were sitting, more or less. So your thighs are out from your body, and then your knees bend and your lower legs are more or less parallel to the top part of you.

Begin to play with moving the top hip forward, and the top knee forward. “Forward” in all movement lessons means the way your torso is facing. Lying on your back, forward is toward the ceiling or sky. Lying on your belly forward is into the floor or ground. Or your side, it is the way your face and chest are pointed.

So, begin to take your top knee and hip forward, so the top knee goes ahead of the other knee as if it were going to look over a ledge. Do this a bring it back.

Now, here’s the fun, here’s the learning. Learning is noticing differences that make a difference.

Roll your hip as you bring your knee forward, so that you feel as if you hip and pelvis are simply swiveling to make this happen. Do this five or six times. And then rest.

Now bring your knee not only forward, but somewhat down, as if pointing to a place in front of your feet. As you do this push out your belly and arch your back a little bit. This can feel quite wonderful. Do this and return to the start position a number of times.

And then rest.

Now bring your knee forward and a bit up, as if pointing to a place in front of your chest. As you do this, pull your belly in a little bit and round your back as if your were going to curl into a ball. And then come back to the beginning position. Do this a number of times. Then rest. Now, do these three different ways one after another.

Throughout the day notice your pelvis and spine.

Lots happening at Life on Earth

Over at ChrisElms.blogspot.com

aka

Life on Earth

formerly

SlowSonoma.com


lots is happening

including short versions

of movement lessons

(here's a link to what's labelled as "movement lessons" over at that site)

and lots of waking up
practices / games / activities




this started Nov 1
and one activity gets added,
more or less,
each day


here's a listing from today of the possibilities,
but if this link stops working,
just go to the site ChrisElms.blogspot.com
and find the index about six or seven days into the
blog


see you
there

maybe


((while I'm at it,
here's a link to what's labeled as movement lessons on this site)

Benefits, once again, always good to resay these

Improve awareness

Improve connection to the moment

Transforming back pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, wrist pain and so on

Transforming and undoing "getting older" creakiness

Transforming accident, injuries, recovery and over-all vitality

Recovery from strokes.

Improve awareness

Improve mobility

Transforming mechanical behavior to freedom

Transforming and undoing stuck and boring patterns

Transforming your life

Recovery from all sorts of setbacks, real or imagined.

More flexible brain

Encouraging a sense that "Anything's possible"

Younger brain

Smarter brain
Healing of brain from accidents

Slowing down and maybe even reversing MS, Parkinson's, dementia

Learning how to learn

Feel better

Feel taller

Better love making

Reverse inflexibility and narrowing down of so-called "aging"

Transforming cerebral palsy, autism, MS, other neurological challenges

Increase sports abilities

Improve awareness

Feel younger

Feel lighter

Move, think and breathe better

Better posture

Better acture (ability to move gracefully in any direction)

Move, think and breathe better

Expanded horizons and abilities to embrace change in life

Transform unhappiness and depression

Avoid Surgery

Heal Much, Much more rapidly from Surgery

Improve/ transform anyone's back.

Move better than you ever have before

Increase creativity

Increase skills in teaching yoga, tennis, golf, any sport, music, singing and so on

Learn quicker and more enjoyably in golf lessons, tennis lessons, music lessons, equestrian lessons

Sing better

Public speaking

Acting

Improvization

Improve inner connection

Improve/ transform "tennis elbow."

Improve/ transform " tai chi" knee.

Improve/ transform musician's elbow, hands, back.

All repetitive stain injuries transformed as the whole you gets
better and better at sensing, moving, being at ease, skill, pleasure (a new ESP)

Improve/ transform gardener's back.

Deepen abilities to "relax," release and de-stress

Transform and cure insomnia

Help tradespeople keep injury free as they get older

Increase abilities to be present

Deeper connection to yourself

Clarity of thinking

Better walk, limp transformation.

Better circulation, lymph transformation.

Walk better, run better, sit better, sleep better

Transform dance, running, balance

Increase studying and learning abilities in children and adults

Decrease depression, anxiety, confusion

Increase life clarity

Transformation of dyslexia, reading abilities improved, math abilities, too

Undoing stress

Natural Vision Improvement

Transforming injury

Reverse carpal tunnel, repetitive strain

Learn to work at computers without wrecking ourselves

Improve scoliosis

Learn how to go about "problems" as glorious opportunities

Increase and enhance yoga, Pilates, martial arts

Return to youthfulness

Increase Learning

Improve breathing

Improve health

Improve balance

Increase confidence and curiosity

Become more Present

Moti Nativ interview, in Hebrew, Enlish subtitles

Moti was the one teacher
at the one Feldenkrais Guild conference
I went to
who got right into action
right into movement lessons
and
gave the lessons
with the same excitement and urgency
and umph
that Anat does

Here's an ">INTERVIEW
WITH SOME MARTIAL ARTS ACTION

This is my life

River near the house I'm staying in Gunnison, CO


DAY SEVEN: THIS IS MY LIFE, 1
This is my life in gravity, this is my life in…

This is my life right now.

This is today’s game/ exercise/ meditation/ activity. Throughout the day, say to yourself, aloud or not aloud, “This is my life.”

This moment, while you read or hear these words: This is your life. The moments on the toilet, in the shower, getting into your car, getting out of your car, “thinking” about what you are going to or “have to” do, this is your life.

The time spend worrying or arguing or regretting or planning or gossiping or talking mindlessly, or mindfully, on the phone or in the grocery store: this is your life.

At work, you are looking at a computer, talking to someone, pounding in a nail, lifting a rock, soothing a child: this is your life.

And let’s make it bigger and more concrete: as you say, over and over, “This is my life,” sense your skeleton, especially arms and legs and spine, in gravity. And sense your breathing in air. And notice sounds coming in your ears. And light coming in your eyes.

This is our life.

Now.

What is the tone of it, as we say this each time? Shock? Delight? Horror? Gratitude? Fear? Anger?

Those feelings are an indication of something, of a lot.

Don’t analyze them during the day but you might want to journal a bit about your discoveries as you go through the day saying, “This is my life.”

Good.




And what does this have to do with
the Waking up Feldenkrais Work
the Anat Baniel Method work,
the work
of being real humans
on this planet
Earth,
humans in bodies
that can ride bikes
and create gardens
and clean up streams
and make love
and walk to our
neighbor's houses
and sit in a chair
and be happy in our bodies
"doing" nothing?

The question,
posed like that,
more or less answers itself,
no?

this is also on chriselms.blogspot.com

1. NOW
Breathing, sensing, 5 lines

As long as I am alive, I am breathing. Can I have the richness of life, where many times in the day, I know I am breathing, when I feel the sensation of my breath coming in and out.

Sensing.

This is the word for feeling myself physically. For you feeling yourself physically. Can you sense right now where your right arm is, and the shape of it and the feel of it from the inside and outside, the bones and muscles and skin and aliveness of your arm?

Sensing.

This is the way to wake up to now. To sense our breathing while we are breathing, to sense our body in its particular shape. Right now.

What is the shape and sensation of my arms and legs and spine?

What is the sweet feeling inside my spine that connects my two arms and two legs.
Can I sense the five lines of myself, two arms, two legs, and spine?
And follow my breathing while I do this?


There is more to being an awake human being, but this is a good start. Would you like to join me on this journey?

The journey will last 108 days. Each day will offer something small or large to follow in our awareness, in our waking up to now.

Today is one of sensing: two arms, two legs, our spine, our breathing? Can we do this while eating and working and reading and resting and even talking?

Even a minute or two of this can change our lives forever.

the call of the heart, listened to, or not

Are we being real
to what and who
we really are
and really could be?

Sometimes yes.
Sometimes no.

Moshe has an amazing quote




"The great majority of people
live active and satisfactory enough lives
behind their masks
to enable them to stifle
more or less painlessly
any emptiness they may feel
whenever they stop
and listen to their heart."

Moshe Feldenkrais,
Awareness Through Movement, Preface

the awkened life

what a fancy idea,
the awakened life?

and yet:
hey
what is the alternative?
the
asleep life?
the
normal life?
the
staying out of trouble
life?

then again,
ordinary
life is
a brilliant gift,
and we double
triple
quadruple
it
by
"being there"
as
we go
as "it" goes
as time
which exists.
or doesn't exist
flows
through
the day
as the sun
rise
and sets

all is
good

when lived
in the almost awakened
state
and
or
the awakened
one

good.

how to get smarter

R/L differences after a lesson




How to get smarter?

Pay attention to reality.

Look at what is out there.

Get interested. No words, just perceptions.

And then start to perceive differences:
if I look from this way,
and that,
what is the difference?

If it is morning or
night,
what is the difference?

What is the difference in
me
if I am breathing in
or
breathing out?

How is the bird I am looking at
different than
that bird over there?




If I put my weight more
on
my right foot
than my left,
what could I learn about how I stand.

This easy life
is all about learning
and learning is all
about delight
delighting
in the little differences
details
joys
distinctions.

Yes.
Life is good;.

balancing the latest Feldyforum tempest in a teapot

What if "balance" were to be seen
as what it is,
somewhat of a non-existent
approximation of
not falling over.

Then, would not Judo,
or physics,
or the study of infants learning to sit up,
or even raise their heads,
perhaps be useful to this
action of
not falling over.

Hmm.
We seem to have lucked into a "system"
developed be a man
who excelled in Judo,
was a physicist/ engineer,
and had a profound interest in how
babies move bodies into new
phases of learning.

What a pleasant state of affairs.

And then there is "learning,"
as in gifting another person
with a one sided lesson,
so they are "out of balance"
and get to rise to higher level
of organization.

In their somewhere,
the brain,
what Moshe called the most precious
material in the universe.

Good.
Good.
Good.

What's the difference?

Between what Moshe
seemed
to have taught and the
stuff that is going on in
the Feldyforum?

this question
presumes
i read the damn forum
which i rarely
do,
and that i read it with a mind
to really deeply understanding
each
point of
view,
which
i don't

so,
what kind of answer
might i provide?

something like this:
moshe developed a system
to change, heal and transform
people by improving
their intelligence
and function

and what goes on
on Feldyforum
seems to stray from that often

is that bad?

no
life is good

life is really
really good

and usually,
i think
feldyforum
is a grand
waste of time

amusing though
and who am
i to say
how anyone
but me should spend
/
waste their time


time is all
we have
and in
the end
we die


good

taxes and death and other possibilities

garden park in spring. 5 years of work there, and maybe it'll last
and
endings have their own amazing sweetness, too




TAXES AND DEATH

both good
in their own way

even better:
death
as a reminder:
we are alive
NOW

as i write
as you read


even better:
taxes
a
reminder:
it's complicated to live in
a society
and this one
this whole civilization
is.....

fill in your story


but
let's just say this:

not geared around
happiness
or now
or nature
or love


oh, well


we get to point ourselves
wherever we want to

and sometimes that's a lot
of work
and with the ease
and learning of being
present

can be done

How "the method" Works, Part One: Teamwork, part one

WHAT IT IS ABOUT, THIS NEUROLOGICAL UPGRADING/ FELDENKRAIS/ ANAT BANIEL METHOD WORK: ONE, HIP BONE CONNECTS TO THIGH BONE, THIGH BONE CONNECTS TO SHIN BONE
OR
TEAMWORK.

How many on the team? How many are coming to the party?

A party of one: not a real party.

A soccer or baseball team of one or two, again, not so great.

And one way of seeing this work is to think of it as reminding the various parts of us that they aren’t in this moving and living thing on their own.


Let’s explore this example.

Sit at a table or desk.

Put your right hand on the table and slowly move it out and away from you, thinking just of your hand. Go out and back slowly, just paying attention to the feel and sense of this.

Now rest.

Now, do the same back and forth movement, and think of your elbow and your hand moving forward and back.

Rest.

Now, think of shoulder and elbow and hand. Go slowly and try to notice as much as you can and make the movement slightly new and interesting to you.

Rest.

Now use the other hand to discover and feel where your right shoulder blade is. See if you can feel the top, the edges, the bottom. With your left hand still behind you and on the bottom of your shoulder blade if you can do this comfortably (or have someone else touch there lightly), move your hand and arm forward and back, feeling the involvement of your shoulder blade.

Go very slowly, and try to sense the movement, no matter how small in the shoulder blade.

Rest.

Now do the same movement, but with your left hand on the ribs underneath the shoulder blade. See if you can feel some movement in them as the hand and arm and shoulder and shoulder blade come forward and back.

Rest. In all the rests, feel the difference right arm to left, and the greater awareness of that whole side of your body. Notice differences in your breathing and other areas in your right side.

Now. Leaving the hand alone, just move your right shoulder blade and ribs forward and back. And then go back to moving the hand and arm, the whole teams.

Rest.

Now, leaving all the arm stuff alone, think about moving the right side of your pelvis forward, as if you are rotating your belly bottom to the left. Perhaps moving your right knee forward will get this going. Go slowly forward with your right hip, and then back, and feel perhaps what happens in your spine and ribs.

Rest, noticing as above.

Now, move hand, elbow, shoulder, shoulder blade, ribs, spine and right side of the pelvis in one cooperative movement, forward and back. See if the movement is clearer and easier and fuller with the “whole team” taking part.



Now let’s expand the party to include two people, to do this exploration with another person, or a special needs child. Have them sitting at a table or desk, and very easily move their hand forward and back along the desk or table.

Now, very very gently have your hand underneath their shoulder blade and more following along than guiding, and the other hand on their elbow, help the shoulder blade and the hand feel as if the are part of the “same team” of moving the hand forward and back.

Rest.

Now, with one hand on their elbow, and one very very lightly on the ribs under the shoulder blade, again, more just going along for the ride, help them feel the ribs and shoulder blade and elbow as all part of one “team” moving the hand forward and back.


Don’t push.

Don’t demand.

Just explore and help them explore how their team works together at this moment in their lives. The better this feels for them, and you, the more the learning and ease-ing and increasing of awareness and ease and skill.

There is nothing to do “right.”

There are tons of little details and sensations to learn and explore, for both the people in this dance.