What would an intelligent, brain and heart happy "exercise" and/ or weight loss program look like?

Barefoot rock lifting

for the brain

spine

ribs 

pelvis

arms

breathing

awareness

brain

joy of it

Let's say you or anyone wants to:

lose weight and be healthier
or
just plain be healthier, their weight is fine and they know
they aren't really feeling "fit" as a human being
or
improve an ongoing skill in tai chi, yoga, music

How could we/ they/ you/ I
go about this?

Let's take some steps from the Anat Baniel Method
and
the Feldenkrais Method
and
a whole lot of other things that say:
Do something, no matter how small,
to get the ball rolling.

And the Buddhist and other traditions
that hint either subtly or not so subtly:
either we are mindful
or
mindless.

So:

If you keep being and doing the same thing,
nothing will change, so let's start with some small changes:

One:
In moving, I'd like to suggest ten minutes worth of "moving"
with awareness that could make a huge difference in
somebody's life:

One five minute package,
and set the timer, and quit at five minutes,
you can work up to more,
or do another five,
but for three or four days,
quit at the buzz or harp or marimba of the timer:

Go outside if you can
Get barefoot if you can
and do this:
Touch the ground (bend your knees all you want)
in whatever way comes easiest to you
and then
lift one or both hands up toward the sky.
Find a pattern and repeat what you have picked
for five to twelves times:

As you go up and down notice:
the shape of your spine
your breathing
(go very slowly on this, so you can feel/ sense and
savor yourself at every point of the movement)
where is the weight on your feet

which foot has more weight
what's going on in your ribs
are you keeping your neck soft
where are your eyes focused
are your fingers and toes and jaw soft and relaxed
what is the "five line" shape of you, two legs, two arms, one spine
how is your pelvis shifting in this


After a number of times,
stand up and just notice yourself,
and then pick another way of going down,
maybe a little twist
or just touching with one hand
or touching between your legs, or out to the sides
and as you come up
find another variation on what to do with your arms
and then
feel
sense
savor
learn from and enjoy doing this a number of times

Then stand and rest

Now, if you want to get a little strength from this
get something,
a rock
a broom
a gallon jar partly filled with water,

and touch that object to the ground,
and lift it up overhead

Have a pattern that you decide on
and repeat it
slowly
and with great awareness
a number of times

You can lift the object with one hand
lower in with the other

Lift it near your body
or farther away

Make circles in your lifting

many many choices

Pick one at a time
and enjoy really feeling and sensing this in yourself

Do all this for five minutes
and then stop

And what of the other five minutes:
get a bicycle and go ride it somewhere uncrowded

Play around with what is about 50% effort,
what is 30%, what is 80% and so on.

Then start at 20 % and increase up to 80%,
keeping your back easy
your jaw relaxed
your arms relaxed
your breathing through your nose

When you get tired,
slow to any amount of effort you pick
less than 50%,
keep breathing and recovering
and making sure the rest of you that isn't pedalling
is as relaxed as possible.

Then, when you pick, speed up to something above 50%,
you pick the amount,
you pick the duration,
but don't go until you are panting and unable to easily
breathe through your nose.

You pick when to slow back down to
less that 50% effort.

Notice where your attention is.
Can you look out at the world and sense inside yourself
as you do this.
It's only five minutes.
Enjoy.

And if you don't have a bike:
walk out of your house,
this has to be something you can do
as often and easily as possible,
walk out and
walk like this,
alternating less than 50% of what you feel like your
maximum effort could be
alternating that with some figure/ guess you pick
above 50%

This again: with looking
and breathing through your nose
and keeping all the places not involved in walking (neck, nose, jaw, fingers,
even toes except to push off and press into the earth) keeping
all of you as soft and aware and relaxed as you can
while you change up your speed and effort

Again, just for five minutes.

Later, a longer essay on eating,
and you can see the page at my website:
Food, Health, Weight Loss: Discoveries and Suggestions
from halfway decent shape 66 year old

Here's some starter ideas:

A green smoothie each day

Consider a diet without these:
flour products,
pasteurized dairy,
fruit out of season,
sugars like sugar and agave and the fake stuff,
soy that isn't fermented
nuts and seeds that aren't presoaked

Figure out what sort of high grade protein
might be wonderful for you

You can eat lots and lots of what's left:
high grade meat, eggs, vegies, soaked nuts, smoothies,
beans if that's your thing (not mine), butter, especially raw,
fish

Lots

a study went like this:
people of semistarvation diets
of 1000 calories:

90% fat lost .9 pounds a day
90% protein lost .6 pounds a day
90% carbs gained .24 pounds a day

raw fat,
in a raw meal,
will lose you weight
and build your body
and feed
your brain

(see Nourishing traditions, below)

Think about how a meal or two a day of
raw eating could figure in with the above ideas

Don't worry about it.
Make one shift today
and see how fun that could be.

Consider a "cheat day" per week where you go out,
buy and consume out of your house,
the various "left behind" elements.

Alight

Here's some "Eating a cooler and smarter way books:



For non raw this is amazing, and cured me from the vegan trap:
Nourishing Traditions



And for Raw eating,
this chick is 50 and hasn't been sick in 14 years,
eats raw meat, cheese and milk,
and has a lot of fun:
Raw Fifty



And these people
found at RawFamily.com
are sweet, amazing,
and the inventors of the
extremely useful and delicious
and life changing
GREEN SMOOTHIE:
Green Smoothie Revolution

Goodnight Jesus

Easter came and is almost gone
and I didn't make it to church

but I was around a lot of people
in states of sharing and touch and love

dancing together

what would Jesus think?

Good
Life is good celebrate life

What was Jesus for?

To remind us to wake up
from the sleep of unforgiving
the sleep of resentment
tbe sleep of forgetting to love
our neighbors

Why is that a sleep?

What's not to love about the one
who lives next door?

They do what you want:
easy love.

They do what you don't want:
harder love
and you can love them for developing your love
muscle

and who can we love right
now
who is a bit hard

that's the Easter game
the egg to hunt

who are we holding out on loving
and what is the story
by which we are protecting ourselves
from loving
the "boundary" behind which our castle/ kingdom
can stay at war with theirs

give up the war
give up the kingdom
the kingdom is within

we are all one

hallelueh

ciao
and happy bunny

Chris

This moment of our lives

Go slow.

You've heard that here before,
you'll probably hear it again,
and for now:
go slow.

It's good Friday.
It's hot.
It's Friday.

People are dying, right now,
people are being born,
this is the moment of this moment of our life.

I just gave a "lesson,"
in the Anat Baniel Method.
I was
"tired"
and hence forced to go slower than usual,
and guess what:
going slow I could notice even more than
I usually do
(which most would say is a lot)
and noticing more,
and using an even lighter touch than usual
and smaller movements,
and letting myself find the laziest easiest way
to come up with the next improved movement,
the lesson went
extremely well.

And what about Good Friday.
There is a death story.
Go slow about what we are supposed to think
about a death story,
even though tradition
and habit
and culture all say:
think and feel X about this,
go slow.

Just breathe.

You are alive.

Slow down enough to savor that.
From that think about the death that comes
before resurrection,
or not.

Mull over Katie's third question:
Who and how are you when you attach to and believe the thought
and
the resurrection question:
who and how are you when you don't have the thought, or don't believe it?

Go slow with even these thoughts.

Take a walk.

Read a book you love.

Take a nap.

Go slow.

This is the moment of your life to be at one
with this
moment of your life.

Good,
April 22, Friday, 2011.

Taxes are taxing, death is relaxing, love is everlasting

taxes come
taxes go

the time of year
so near my birthday

and we can be taxed
or vexed
or tweeked
or rushed

or just sit down
and do
what we have to do
and follow our breathing
and look out the window at the birds
and take a walk
in now
(see my book, for many a "soul" chapter
in "walking in the now")
and remember:

we are alive
now
no matter what rigmarole life
is seeming to require of us

and then
we die

which,
with a story
can seem sad
scary
unfair
weird
whatever

and without the story:
it could be like going to sleep
at night

the hurry and worry and rush
and demands
all disappear

and the Sufi's
say: die before you die

have that death to the worrier
and the controller of others
and the unhappy one

have the death to stress
and trying to hard
and even
to being bored

die to the "later it will be time
to be happy"
and
just be happy now

on the way
to whatever is next

and when we do the Work of Byron Katie
and judge our neighbors
write it down
ask four questions
and turn it around

that turns into a little death:

the death of :
"so and so should have been better/ different/ more
the way I I I I me me me wanted"
and what's left after that?

freedom
love
release

love can be what's left when we
"die"
to the stories about how x and y and z
should be different

and we can improve
that's what huge amounts of my work is about

but let's love ourselves along the way

and working with the children:
love them exactly as they are
so we can be there with them
as they discover
as we help them discover
what can be next in their skills
and increased
love of life

and how does that incease?
noticing more

noticing more differences

noticing more of the glory of life
to be in love with

helping the children
to love more of themselves
and more
of life

what a nice job

what a nice job for anyone

helping ourselves and others
to love
life
more

good

happy April

Chris

spine, head and eyes in the "now" at our computer

Recent blog postings at the other two locations:

Monday, Hints for special needs parents with a child that likes/ habituates with a hand in the mouth
at  http://specialneedschildren-chriselms.blogspot.com/

Wednesday: the "Swiss Army Knife" movement for all 4 of our backs movements
at   http://wakeup-feldenkrais.blogspot.com/

Friday: here, Hi.

I sit at the computer, realizing, as sometimes I don't,
that sitting at a computer
is
sitting
and
looking.

So, reminders to you reminders to me:
is the screen about at head height.
Mine isn't though I have 7 books under my laptop
(I have an external keyboard, otherwise you end
up typing like a dog swims),

The top of the monitor is just above eyelevel
so I get to "so what"
and "it's too much trouble"
this awareness,
or actually get off my rear
(the sitting part of this)
and fetch a few more books, so the computer will be such that
the middle of the screen will be at sitting upright
eye height.

Oh, well,
up I go

And, I'd forgotten the pitfalls of gathering books
especially from a house wherein most of the books
are not "mine," and hence
full of rare jewels that I haven't gotten around yet
to perusing,
so many books, so little time


AND
I found just the right 4 more,
and of course, 4 or 5 "have to look at/ read' books
that didn't get used as props.

Okay,
eye level screen

and now
the sitting part


well, you know, I imagine
that leaning back in the chair is
nice for napping
and even for low grade yapping (when our mouths work
and we forget we have a body)
but for thinking clearly
and writing,
hey; try it and see,
sit forward on the chair,
both feet on the floor

feel your spine easily holding up your head

how to find today's nice placement
for your spine

round down, middle back back, nose
descending to the desk,
chin coming toward your chest, feel your weight shift to the back of your pelvis,

then un slouch by coming forward on your pelvis
and bringing your head to upright

leave the shoulders out of this
your spine with the attached ribs hold
up the shoulders easily and all on its own
but do soften and maybe bring your belly
forward a bit
so you feel your back muscles
holding up your spine
with the head at the top
a pumpkin on
a broom handle

(Need a haircut, but waiting until Monday to trade
with worlds's best slackline female,
Faith Dickey,
see their website: http://somewhereelseland.blogspot.com)

now you are have a good 20 minutes or so
on the computer

and it is legal to shift side to side a bit
and rock to mini slouch
and mini arch
to keep your spine happily in motion,
since we tend to lock into positions
that might not be exactly where is
best and easiest for us
just now
just today

good

Loving Life, Weird or Not Weird, or The Big Sweet Unknown

Sometimes things are boring
sometimes we are bored
sometime we bore ourselves
by not being present to the ongoing amazing
brightness of now

Oh well

And then
sometimes
people are strange or
make us
"uncomfortable"
or strike us as
"weird"

And that's an interesting place,
eh?

Because sometimes "uncomfortable"
means we are cluing into
something that would be clever
to avoid

but more often it means:
this is my program
and this behavior isn't what my program is used to
and instead of being
curious
and realizing we are out of the
present
we want to "get out of here."

And this all has something to do
with being in Austin
with it's slogan:
"Keep Austin Weird."

Which means:
let the people who don't
"fit in"
be honored citizens
or the sort that
the holy fools
once were

and it's April Fool's day
and
no fooling:
fooling around is good for
us
but since we don't know what we're doing
when
we
fool
around
then, it might edge out into weirdness

and other people can take this as
entertainment
or
food
or
possibility

or they can take it
as
some strangeness to be avoided

and
"strange" too
like all the above
weird
and uncomfortable
can just tell us:
hey,
this isn't in the robot's programming

calm down
make sure you are physically safe
and the other stuff
look at like this:
your rut/ ego/ pattern/ conditioning
is
a bit frightened

oh well
take a deep breath
and think of how much fun
YOU
could have if you were a bit
foolish
silly
strange
weird
unpredictable

today

or
any
day

good