Waking Up Twice in the Morning

STARTING THE DAY
We wake up and then we have another wonderful chance: to wake up.

What does that mean?

To be aware.

What does that mean?

To know where we are, what is the shape of us, what is the movement of us, what is the breathing of us, what is the comfort and discomfort of us, what it feels like to be us. Right now.

Recall the Gurdjieff morning meditation: right leg, right arm, left arm, left leg. First up, then down. Add on hearing. Then add on light.

And my Feldie meditation:

Find our relationship to gravity in the five lines (spine, arms and legs).

Add on breathing and our relationship to air and the heart lung area of ourselves.

Add on hearing and / or light coming in our eyes to be aware of the relationship of our upper story (head) to ongoing life.

Add on an awareness of our awareness.

If we want to make it even better, move slightly in some slow and enjoyable and highly aware way that involves our pelvis, our spine and our head and pay attention to breathing, gravity and the five lines and light as we move.

And then feel the pleasure of being alive and the joy of having awareness.

That's a lot.

Yeah, that's why it's called Waking up.

Talk at Pharmaca coming up

Undo depression; heal sports injuries; enhance abilities and flexibility

1)Ten minute cure for depression,
2) becoming flexible without pain or strain,
3) healing sports injuries,
4) increasing dance/ yoga/ sports abilities.

Free talk and useful/ fun explorations
by Chris Elms, M.A.,
Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner,
Work of Byron Katie facilitator,
and Bones for Life presenter.
At Pharmaca,
June 7,
Thursday,
4:30-6:30 PM.
For more information call 996-1437.

---

PLEASE BE WELL:


Pleasure
Ease
Awareness
Sensitive Strength
Enjoyment

BE

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

Car Free Day, Bike to Work Day, New Habit Day

BICYCLES
Bicycles.

Bikes.

Two wheels.

Fun.

This is part of being a real human: to have fun on a bicycle. To move our legs and have the wheels spin and we almost float, almost effortlessly to somewhere else on this beautiful planet.

Today is Bike to Work day.


Sam Turner helping to get all the Bike to Work
stuff there,
(there this morning was Olsen Park,
a lovely little hideaway park on the bike path)
on a Bike.
Yeah, Sam.
Yeah, Ken for organizing.
Yeah, Chris (me) for handing out the stuff.

Big deal. Little deal.

Who would drive a car if they could ride a bike and enjoy the fresh air and the exercise and the smells and seeing things close and slow and clear?

Pity the poor robot fools locked away in their automatic automobiles and trucks. Some, of course, need to haul around tools: ah, cars are good for that.

Some need to haul kids, and I'd say: get back to school buses, put the kids on their feet, get a bicycles trailer, but again: hey, hauling kids is sometimes part of life.

But, if you don't have kids or tools, lucky you, you can walk today or ride a bike a stay out of the earth destroying, awareness robbing cars and trucks. Good.

Enjoy your good fortune.

Enjoy your bike.

Enjoy you now.


Enjoy being in the small nature of your body and wheeling across the large nature of our Earth.

Enjoy.

Now

BEING NOW
I just got through not being present for about the last forty five minutes. Where was I?

I was in the future, wanting something to "go away,' so I could give myself permission to start breathing and enjoying life again. What I wanted to "go away" was a mistake I'd made on my tax form, which had resulted in a letter from the IRS, requesting some money which I didn't owe. But since I'd made the mistake, it appeared as if I did.

What good places to lose attention: money. The IRS.

Just to have them on this page is probably a temptation even to you, gentle reader, to allow your attention to go scurrying away to those little fear pockets into which we drain our happiness now and then.

But now, you and I can come back to simple truth. We are breathing. You can notice your breathing. I can notice my breathing.

We are in a body.

We have awareness.

We are on this beautiful planet Earth, which is in need of our help and our co-operation, and is always there for us. Always there with gravity, and we can breathe and feel that shift when we notice our breathing, and we can sense where we are connecting to gravity, and enjoy the shift in ourselves when we notice the weight of ourselves in our bones, on our bottom, or our feet if reading this standing, or perhaps even on your back if your are mellowed out somewhere and reading this lying down.

At any rate, we can come back to the pleasure of being now. We can look at the sky if we have a window, or visualize the sky if we don't. We can look at a flower or a tree in there is some nature outside our window, or visualize a flower and a tree if there isn't.

But breath is always here, we are always here, gravity is always here. And we come back to now and notice, we spark back into that amazing state of awareness when we know this wonderful truth: I am alive.

This is always a good start.

I am alive.

*** *** ***

In Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, it is said that Yogas chitta vritti nirodah. Which means, yoga is the stilling of the thought fluctuations of the mind. This is the yoga of coming into the present: Can we use Now as the simplest and most direct way of stilling the thought fluctuations of the mind?

I think so. Let's try, you and I gentle reader, with toes and eyes, and flowers and sky, a whole world of Now and Nature to view with Love.

---

PLEASE BE WELL:


Pleasure
Ease
Awareness
Sensitive Strength
Enjoyment

BE

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

Happy Global Warming

Well, the weather is,
what it is,
whether we like it
or not.

Hot
it is
and that's nice for getting
up barefoot
and lying in bed
naked

the flesh is good
the mind is good
breathing is good
life is good

and it's a hot day
and it's good

if you are free
today
come by
and lie on the floor
for forty minutes

come back to awareness
refine your attention
be happy
by being now
and learning

and connecting to
nature
the nature
of being in a human
brain/mind/body
all one

kind of like Dr. Bronner
soap
all one

and then Nature
outside
take some walks
of course
you do that anyway

love the sky
and the Earth
of course
you do that anyway

learning and being now
wow
come on by
and enjoy the Monday lessons.

they'll just be around for six weeks
then i'm off to
San Rafael for more Anat Baniel training
and to Ananda in
the Sierras
to get a certificate in Yoga
and then to Seattle
to attend the yearly
Feldenkrais Guild conference

so
come now
and enjoy
and learn
and love yourself
of course
you already do that

and to know yourself more
is to love yourself more

good

---

PLEASE BE WELL:


Pleasure
Ease
Awareness
Sensitive Strength
Enjoyment

BE

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

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

May Day

May Day
in Nature terms
is Beltane:
Halfway from the spring Equinox
to the Summer Solstice

May Day
in playful
celebratory Europe terms
is the time to dance around the
May Pole

May Day
in working class
rise up
and throw off your chains
terms
is the day
of proclaiming solidarity
with the workers of the world

And finally
May Day
is now the day
for the Immigrant Rights
folk
to bring their cause
to the public
to march and mark
the wonderful and vital
contribution
of these people
to our lives.

So,
lots of good things on
May Day.


and May Day
in my terms:
ah, heck:
time to take a walk
and breathe in the fresh air
and get away from the computer
and things under a ceiling 8 feet high
and get out to the ceiling 5 miles high

nature,
liberation,
solidarity

and waking back
up to how
wonderful
life is
when I do The Work
and
come to the Present
and
get back into Nature

Picture above is the Flannel Bush
Fremontidendron
a native to Southern California

and one of the plants I put
in at the Sonoma Garden Park

ciao
Chris