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

119: Practicing thinking, practicing options

what fun it is:

Notice your head in space.

Notice what can notice that.

Turn your nose to the right and your eyes to the right.

Now turn your nose to the right and leave your eyes looking ahead.

Now turn your nose to the right and turn your eyes to the left.

Alternate among these three a number of times, sensing and noticing the difference.

Then rest, and think about noticing differences and how that is crucial to learning, or maybe is learning.


Now take an emotional bothering thing, and play with thinking about it, in alternation, almost as the nose head eyes thing (I.e. don’t take too long on each one): the problem is big and bad and awful. And, the problem is Oh, Well. And the problem is interesting. And the problem is some sort of gift in disguise.


Now rest, and take the inner tone of your thinking words, and come up with three or four difference voice tones for them, and again, in fairly move it along style, practice rotating the reality. Keep playing all day.

113: Moving

Pelvis, head, spine, eyes

Sit in a chair, and do whatever you “naturally” do. Lean back, or not, sit forward in the chair or not. From that position, see if you can sense your head and pelvis and spine, and begin to do these two motions:

One: bring your nose toward your pubic bone (sex area) and tilt your pelvis (pubic bone/ any other name) toward your nose, and let your belly come in and your back round out behind you.

Two: unfurl from this, and bring your nose up, maybe toward the sky or the top of the wall or window in front of you, and push your belly out and arch your back and tilt the back of your pelvis, aka your rear end, toward the back of your head.

Go back and forth on with these two end points, looking for an easier and more interesting and pleasant way to do this movement each time you do it.

Rest after six or eight or ten or twelve times.

Then come to a sitting at the front edge of your chair, and do the round and arching, slowly and pleasantly a number of times, while moving your eyes, slowly and as continuously as you can, in the opposite way as your nose (up when nose down, down when nose up).

Rest and consider eyes and head and arching and rounding all day.

Day 109: We have a spine

We have a spine.


This is good. And how often are we aware of this amazing piece of our architecture?


Think about the two ends to this flexible stick of ours: the head at the top, up high to see things and hear better, and at the base the pelvis, rooted in our legs, with Seitz bones on which to sit. Either way, standing or sitting, the pelvis is there, here now, at the bottom of 24 vertebrae, holding up our head by giving the base to our back.


The back is a collection of muscles and ribs and our spine.


Can we play today with noticing whether our spine is more in the rounding position, or the arching?


Can we feel the shape of our spine, and feel how it is holding up the head. In sitting, is the push from pelvis up through the spine, or is a back of a chair propping up part of our back, so the weight is somewhat down into our pelvis, and somehow down and back into the chair?


No right or wrong. Just notice: spine more as if stomach in, or spine more as if stomach out? Spine somewhat upright, way upright, curled in, or arched deeply?


This is a big part of being human, the pelvis spine head thing. Let’s notice it, sense it, aware it as much as we can enjoy today.

Day 39: The Pause that can Change Everything, or Just some little thing

Daughter and now dead Dog. Life moves on. All loving is its own reward.


In between the thought and the action is a space where you can realize: this action could be hard, soft, fast, habitual, new, tight, soft, “right,” “wrong,” and so on.

We often lunge from one thing to the next, forgetting that pause, that place where we can go forward, can progress, but don’t have to.

Don’t have to.

This is the present of being present and unhurried at moments of transition, and a good martial artist learns to be present and awake and unhurried even in moments of “hurry.”

What does that mean?

Ponder a bit, and let it be something you experiment with today: to be unhurried, even in your hurry, and if you don’t “need” to hurry, be unhurried in you unhurry.

And this is our game today: to watch the pausing points, the points when we are tempted to lunge// rush/ fall / clunk forward into the next event and be pulled along in our lives as if we have no say.

So watch for the pausing points.

Find the pausing points, or some of them.

Pause at them in some experimental way. Sometimes a little longer than usual. Sometimes a lot longer. Sometimes actually taking a break of the walk, sit and meditate, little nap sort. Watch your fears that if you don’t keep your nose to the grindstone you won’t “get anything done.”

And if you let little breaks take over your day and it ends of true that you “don’t get anything done,” take pauses and breaks inside the diverting activity and see if they can give you a chance to divert back to your original path. So go slow, find the pausing points. Use them to open to ?????

Day Thirty: Waking to the Life we are living each moment

To be reborn, this is our birthright, as any moment when we wake back to the realization: I am alive, right now. This is my life.

To be alive—this is true. And we forget. Luckily, in every moment, including is famous one and only one right now, we can wake up to this miracle—I am alive, right now.

We can remember our breathing. Ah, yes, a good sign that we are alive, this breathing thing. We can remember our breathing and sense the breath coming in and out, the shifts in our ribs and lungs and back and sides and diaphragm area. We can notice something more profound: the shift in our sense of who and how we are, when we return home to following our breathing.

Knowing we are alive as a felt experience. Not just, “Oh, yes I am breathing.” Not just noticing the breath come in and out and sensing how our bodies are going about that. But sensing at an awareness level, how something like “Who we really are” wakes up when we bring our attention to the felt and experienced NOW.

Shift happens when we wake up to now.

This can be another set of words, another set of rules, or it can be an experience we find delightful, and uplifting, and calming all at the same time.


This might be our central “job” in life, for without being present, we are condemned to always re-acting (over and over, re and re and re acting) in the ways we’ve been programmed and taught ourselves to act.

And with awareness, we can take that little step back, that little awareness induced pause, and in that pause we can notice: now my urge is to be angry, or now I am tensing myself as I type, or now I am rushing with my food and not really tasting each bite, or now I am not listening when someone is talking but am busy preparing my next little speech.

But from the wakefulness of now, we can feel these tendencies, and in that space and time that the pause and our awareness give us, we can decide: do I really want to express my anger now? Wouldn’t the food taste better and my health feel happier if I tasted each bite? What would it be like to actually listen to this person for who they are, and not as the lead in to what important me, me, me has to say next?


This is life. A happy choice: to wake up to now.

From this wakefulness, certain Christian concepts, like praying ceaselessly, or loving your enemy, become not a tough burden, but a delightful route to being Fully Alive.

We can be what we’ve been programmed to be, or we can wake to the moment and act from what we really see and hear and notice is going on. This is huge. This is delightful.

This can be our “game” today, and is it a game or a necessity to remember we are alive in all situations, and to look out on all the others in our life and remember: they are alive?

Maybe both.

You decide, and not in words, but in your hearts while you experience yourself treating yourself as you treat yourself when you are present and you experience yourself treating other people as you are present. Experience the difference. Learning is noticing differences. Go ahead and learn. This is everything.

And if God is beyond words and concepts and limitations, what would loving God be like from the present? Maybe very different than that we’ve been programmed to believe. The discovery is yours. The experience is yours.

And start small. One breath at a time. What is the experience of coming home to yourself in the moment. Taste it, savor it, learn from it, live from it.

Good.

Day 16: Why Wake Up, part one

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.

day 87, heaven, of a bit of a "hard" sort, but WORTH IT

the body thing, why not sense ourselves?

The heaven of attention

Try this game today, and it “ain’t” so easy.

One time as you breathe in, sense your left foot and as your breathe out, sense your right hand.

The next time you breathe in, sense your right foot and as you breathe out, sense your left hand.

Keep doing this, all the time, if you can.

Like now, reading this book, or hearing it.

Like when you put the book down.

And so on.

“Thoughts” will come in and take over our attention. Are they really so important? Can we sense the foot and hand and follow our breathing underneath our thoughts if they are important?

Can we let them go if they aren’t.

Don’t try too hard, and keep your effort smiling and see what happens.

It’s just life.

It’s just a day.

It’s just getting our attention back for ourselves.

86: Playing in rotation

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.

Day 44: Pelvis and spine, on our sides, moving and learning

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.

Day Twenty-four: Moving with Attention

DAY TWENTY-FOUR: MOVING WITH ATTENTION
Movement meditation and learning #4: Turning to the left, with eyes moving habitual and non-habitual


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.


Rest. 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 and 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.

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. This time keep the eyes in this direction and move your head, slowly, slowly, gently right and left. Rest in the middle in a way you feel is a way to learn about your learning.

Again, halfway left with ribs and head. Now, eyes one way and the head the opposite. 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.

Now, 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.

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.

Day Twelve: Coming to Ease via Aware Moving/ Learning / Waking UP

DAY TWELVE
Coming to “Ease”

Lots of life can be made so much sweeter by finding an “ease” in anything and everything we do.

The quickest way to start this is to learn to move in easier and more clear ways. We have been moving since we came into existence, in the womb and out; and along the way we stopped increase the skill and ease of most of our movements.

So let’s take a simple movement, and get some ease and awareness and clarity and enjoyment as we go about it.

Sit or stand and turn your head right and left. Do this only a few times, and notice if you try to “crank” to some imagined limit, or you just flop, flop back and forth to get it over.

Now, again, just once, slowly and with awareness, turn your head once to the right and once to the left and notice what it is like and what, if any, difference is there, right and left.

Now, again just a few times with slowness and awaring, turn your head just to the left and back to the middle.

Rest and bit and see how you feel.

Now put the back of your right hand on your left cheek, and thinking of the hand and right shoulder and ribs as “friends” of your neck, turn your head and its “friends” to the left and back to the middle, a bunch of times, Go slowly. Don’t go to any limit. Find out about your ribs.

Rest.

Now, take the same position as above, and turn to the left with head and hand and right shoulder and ribs, and come back a bit and stop. Now let another set of “friends” turn to the left. Let your eyes go to the left and right from the nose pointing direction, many times.

Come back to the middle and rest. Not from fatigue, but to rest your brain and allow it to integrate any learning. And to sense yourself after movement and notice any changes.

Now turn to the left with your ribs, and your head and your eyes. See if this is a different experience than the first time. All day, be aware of turning and ribs and eyes.

Day Ten: "Acture" and living the real life

“Acture,” ah, good old "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.

Movement and Love, helping our knees, please

we've been dealing with Knees
around here

a sweet and amazing
joint
the knee is really amazingly
designed to do not very much,
but it's a huge responsibility:
to transfer the power of the center
down to the feet
to transfer the information and
grounding from the feet up to the pelvis
and from there
to the spine

and it's the feet
and the hip/ pelvis that are supposed
to have lots of mobility,
and the knees
just kind of do not very much
going this way or that
as they bend and straighten
and transfer the force

so:
how to improve your knees?

lie on the floor,
one foot standing on so that one knee is
up toward the sky
and one leg long

if one knee is "iffy"
start with the first best
knee as the one
pointed to the sky

and with the foot pretending to be walking,
or doing yoga,
or standing around,
push a little weight into the standing foot,
and experiment
play around with
discover
the different ways you can
push into the ground:
side of foot
other side
toes
heel

then do easy
feel good
and
interesting circles with your pressure thru
the foot into the ground

and reverse

and rest

and same, first best leg:
come to foot standing again, and press into the ground
a bit,
so the pelvis is rotated,
and circle the knee,
but think of this as coming from the hip,
and feel as part of the circle, a nice sweet
arching of your back during big parts of the
circle

and reverse

and rest

and then
maybe,
in imagination or "reality"
do the same thing,
gently
with your second best leg/ knee

there's lots more
and lessons are cool,
see links to right
on neurological upgrading

and what about the "relationship?"
well,
things are sweet,
and good to dig in the sweet times
so i'll do something today over at
108 days

and on what?
the first troubling thought that comes to mind is
"I don't know what's going to happen"

that's an old familiar source
of suffering,
isn't it

so jump on over
and join
the undoing fun, if you wish

ciao
Chris

what is gurdjieff meditation, fast funky version

like this
get up in morning
sit at edge of bed
sense right toes, right foot, right heel, etc up to right hip
keep whole right leg in sensing awareness
add on right arm, like this:
start with fingertips, and up to shoulder, each part of arm (and leg earlier, bones, muscles, blood, whole thing)
keep both in awareness
add
on left arm, shoulder to fingertips
now we are three
add on
left leg, hip to toes
sense all four limbs, as long as want
add on outer world
first:
sounds coming in ears,
plus four limbs in awareness
second:
light coming in eyes
(good idea to open eyes to do this)

get up
go about day keeping four limbs
sound
light coming in eyes
in "continuous" awareness

very sparky
and amazing
and hard
and good for doing with anything

waking up and Feldenkrais

Feldenkrais is a name
and it's a shorthand for a method
and it's a way of exploring how
to improve

improving is an improbable thing:
most people don't want to change
unless things are really horrible

this is good
and
it's not so good

we all know those few people
who are running themselves raggedy trying
everything under the sun to cure this and that
and the other

most people
however could improve
their connection to their
bodies
and the grace
and ease of their movement
by taking advantage of the Feldenkrais Method®
which is what the simple word "Feldenkrais" implies.

Feldenkrais is
really a man's last name ( Moshe Feldenkrais,
physicist, judo teacher, inventor, 1904-1984)

So , how could someone get a taste of the Feldenkrais Method?
Come to one of my classes.
Okay,
but quicker than that:
Try to link to the right
that says this:

FREE intro lesson:
Desk Trainer
(actually,
you can link right here)

That's the quickest way.

Another way might be this

1: Notice that you are sitting on two sit bones, Sitz bones,
the part of your pelvis that is for sitting

2: Lean to the left enough so that you can feel
really feel
that the weight is mainly on your left side

3: When your weight is over there on your left side,
breathe easily,
and after your breath is easy, rotate your head to the left
and to the right.

4: Notice which way seems to be easiest to rotate your head
when you have your weight to the left

5: Come back to the center. See if you notice anything different
from side to side

6: Shift most of your weight now
to the right side
to your right Sitz bone
and become comfortable with your breathing here

7: And in this position rotate your head
right and left
and notice which was seems easier.

8: That is a beginning exploration:
what is our pelvis
where is our weight
how does our head move in space
how can we try something new and be at ease
what is there to learn in some new configuration

And if you want to go further,
there is more:

9: Sitting upright
rotate your head right and left, gently
and notice how your nose moves from pointing to the front
to pointing to the side.
This is rotating your head.

Now: slightly tilt your head to the right
and the left
which means this:
when you tilt to the right, your right ear
goes closer to the floor
when you tilt to the left, your left ear
goes closer to the floor.
In both tilts your nose stays
pointing forward.

10: Practice the difference:
rotate your head right and left
tilt your head right and left

Go slowly and be gentle with your neck
and your nervous system

11: Now:
shift your weight to your left hip,
to the left side of your pelvis

and come back to the middle

and now
as you shift your weight to the left
alternate between tilting your head to the left
and tilting your head to the right

See if when you tilt your head to the right
as you shift your weight to the left side of your pelvis
if you can let your shoulders help a little
as the left shoulder comes up a little
and the right shoulder comes down

This is easier with pictures
and my digital camera is broken

desk trainer
above mentioned has a little cartoon guy to follow
oh well

so anyway

12. Now try the other side:
weight to the right side of your pelvis
and tilting your head
right and left,
letting your shoulders
and maybe even your ribs
help out with this

If confusing,
try desk trainer
or go slower
or give me a call
or buy the book:
Awareness Heals

soil and soul

start of a new circle garden. different now, but camera's broken. alas, or la, la, depends on awake on not, eh?


SOIL AND SOUL
Sometimes we are walking down a sidewalk, lost in our thoughts or daydreams, our plans, our regrets, rehearsing some future conversation or rewriting a past one in our head to our advantage, and a dog rushes a fence, barks, and suddenly a surge of adrenaline pumps through us and we wake up from our lostness. Not exactly enlightenment, but we do yank our attention to what seems really important all of a sudden: is that a fence there and is the dog really safely restrained on the other side.?

We might feel a little giggle of awareness. As, in, oh my, was I lost in some other place. And from that giggle we might look around and enjoy the trees, or flowers, or sky, or the feeling of our feet pressing into the sidewalk as we walk, the swinging of our arms in the opposite pattern of our thighs, the freshness of the air, the quality of the light.

And this, this waking to our natural world, and our own moving and alive bodies in that world, we could call a little bit of enlightenment after all. Shocked into the present by Mr. Mean Barking Dog, we sail forth into trees and footsteps and sky and the feelings of being a walking being on this planet earth.

It’s a pretty amazing thing, this planet Earth, and as we live in our Sonoma spring, and are either about to have or just have had both Easter and the Equinox, we have all sorts of springing into life images and feelings and maybe even thoughts in us. The plants all around are blossoming, the pears and jasmine and daffodils and tulips and Ribes and even some California poppies are shouting out their glory. But winter this year has been such a strange blend of intense storms and then warm spring-like days (or, sometimes fooling my system, Indian Summer like days), that sometimes I can forget it’s spring and how amazing and beautiful it is.

It’s as if we are spoiled here is this part of California, getting a pretend spring in the fall, especially if the first rains are followed by the “real” Indian summer. And then between the winter storms, more spring weather. And now, by spring, except for the blossoms, maybe we are becoming a bit too nonchalant about our “perfect” days, with their sunny warmth and 70 degree comfortableness.

Of course, come mid summer, we’ll wish we had appreciated the cool clear warmth when we had it, but that’s human nature, isn’t it?

Still, no matter how many “false” springs, this one now is the time of the garden, the time to harvest the weeds of winter and turn them somehow into soil. The soil calls out for a turning fork, as the hills call our for walks. Walking, the blue sky reminds us, like Andre, struck down in battle in War and Peace ( the new translation is fantastic), that something infinite exists, within and without us.

Soil down, rich, deep, call us to plant some seeds, start some roots down into its nutrition. Soul up there, in here, who knows exactly what or where, but that feeling is nice, isn’t it? And to actually look into the vastness of the blue is always some kind of reminder for me.

That feeling of something infinite and beyond words and deeply worth experiencing. As if we are being kissed by life. Or are kissing it.

Or both.

more mess, more movement

to move
our arms
and legs
with awareness
and then
add on
the central exploration
from pelvis
and ribs
and brain:

amazing

and to
move the books
and stuff
and furniture
and the cars
and muscles
and people
and boxes:

hmm

that's a bit
"hard"
to do
with awareness

and
is there
any
better game
in
town

this town
called
Life???

What is the Real Work?

well,
any foolish semi-wise person
will answer:
the real work is
....
and fill in whatever
they really like to
work on
and/ or have found valuable
and/or are
struggling with sincerely
with or without "results"


and that is fair enough

sometimes the real work
feels like this:

be be awake to the moment
the "worse" the moment,
the more useful and necessary the
being awake

sometimes to real work
appears to be thus:
keeping a good heart and good humor
in the light and evidence
of massive human greed stupidity, violence
and the breakdown of a marvelous ecosystem

sometimes the real work
seems to be
to be aware as
someone
me for instance
does whatever they are going
typing onto a screen via a keyboard,
for instance

sometimes
the real work
seems to be
to love the people
including ourselves
who seem like they need it the most

sometimes the
real work
seems to to
forgiving all those fools cretins and bad guys
who didn't realize that their job
in life was to
flatter us
answer our phone calls
agree with us
say nice thing to and
about us

and
so on


maybe it's all
real
work
if we go about
it in a certain way

cold, wet, happy

"half backbend," (head under gap) from Chris' SUFIA yoga (Feldenkrais/yoga/tai chi) mix

to be cold
is odd
and often
"unfriendly" feeling

and i/ we
can crank up the heat

in three ways:

on the wall

in the awarenesss
(just noticing where our bodies
are cold
where they are warm,
what the mid zones are where the change
takes place)

in get moving,
and the heat
can come from within:

five pushups
(head loose and free,
pelvis tilted and lifted,
breathing free
as we go)

five squats
one leggged
or two

a little hopping,
skipping
dancing
tai chi-ing around

fun

come to class
Monday
11:15 at Sonoma Ballet Conservatory
and learn at least ten
really fun
ways to get
hotter,
smarter
sexier
stronger

funner

love
chris

oh, yeah:
learning to love
all of
you
more

Yes