Thursday, May 11, Chapter 10: A Mini-Lesson, a Vacation

JUDO AND SCIENCE
This is just a short piece of a longer lesson, which takes 40 minutes to an hour. This is part of the glory of these lessons: you slow down and get in touch with who you are when the center of you is your paying attention. Not getting things done. Not performing. Not hurrying on to the next thing. Not putting up with boring other people. Not stuck in some car or office.

This is you, in the moment, learning what happens when you move slowly and with attention. What happens different when you try different things: that’s science, that’s curiosity.

So, here’s the piece. Sit. In a chair or better on the floor. If on the floor, put the soles of your feet together if you can, or close to this is you can’t.

Now begin to protrude your belly forward. First just figure out that you can do this, and then slow down and do this with awareness. This is you moving you. Notice the changes in your back, and in your pelvis’ contact with the floor or ground or chair. Most fun, of course, to do this outside, on the Earth.

Protrude your belly and come back, back and forth, feeling the change in your spines and ribs and sternum and neck and belly, belly, let it out.

Now, not just noticing this, but notice breathing as well, and try this experiment: sometimes breathe out as you protrude your belly, sometimes breathe in. Notice the difference in sensation, and the difference in feeling tone. Notice which is “easier” and which is less easy, and see if you can discover why? It’s probably just habit, since both ways of breathing with belly out and extremely useful.

Now, create more variation and experimentation: sometimes when your belly goes forward, let your head come back a little. Do this both breathing in and breathing out. And other times, and this will be more difficult, as your belly comes forward, let your head tilt forward and down, as if looking at your navel.

Do these variations, and add back in awareness of your spine and ribs and sternum and especially your pelvis. Notice the pelvis and your back and how the shape of you is moving with a certain elegance and grace in this movement. Enjoy this. Enjoy you. Take a vacation from all the stress of getting things done and doing things right, and fall back in love with now and with learning and with yourself as an aware and learning being.