93: Upload your life: arch and round and twist with awareness, then do the Thich Nhat Hahn Meditation

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.

62: Down and up, rotation, enjoyment, coming to now

Lean down, reach up, breathe, twist, enjoy.

Sit in a chair or on a low bench of rock. Breathe and feel yourself in a more or less upright position. Now take your right hand inside your left knee and feel down your leg to the heel of your left foot, maybe even to the floor. Go up and down the lower left leg with your right hand. If your hand can go farther than the floor, let it scoot along the edge of your foot and around to the other side, and then come back up again.

Come up each time to a more or less upright position.

Rest.

Then try the whole thing the other way: lean down with your left hand on the inside of your right calf and head toward the heel, and maybe even around your foot, and then back up. Don’t strain or effort. Just do what’s enjoyable and each time come back to more or less upright.

Rest

Now get fancier, take your right hand down the inside of your left calf again, and when you bring the right hand up, keep bringing it higher and higher until it’s at face height, and then let it keep going up and to the right, rotating your spine to the right as you go, and watching your hand going up and to the right with your eyes and turning your head to see it, too. Then come back down, all the way to your left foot.

Go slowly and enjoy this, feeling your shape the whole time. Then rest.

And do the other side, left hand down the inside of your right calf and then up and to the left, as you arch and twist to the left and watch your hand with head and eyes. A number of easy and enjoyable times.

Rest.

If you want to get fancy, do this in standing, taking one hand down the opposite leg toward the floor, and then up and to it’s own side as you twist your spine and head to watch the hand. Go slowly, figure this out and enjoy it.

Rest and then play this game on the other side, left hand down to right foot, and then up, up and rotating to the left as your whole spine unfurls that way. Breathe and enjoy this.

Breathe and enjoy your day.

What would a day be like of “thinking” less (in the words in the head = “thinking” way) and sensing our arms and legs and spine more?