112: To be present to eyes and legs and feet and gravity, hmm

What does it mean to be a human being?

Some people say that we are never our “real selves” except when we are in the present.

This may be true, or true for you, or not true, or not true for you.

And surely there is a difference in the quality of your experience when you are in the present.

So this could be one aspect of what it means to be a human: we can be present and aware of that, or we can be lost in the past or the future.

This can be our experiment today: to be present and feel what the difference is, and if, in this difference, we feel something more like “our real self.”

And to be present, I’ll suggest a top and bottom approach. We have two legs and two feet and they carry us around the world, baring accident or disease or some in born problem. The legs and feet carry us from one place to the other, and as we walk or sit, or even lie down, we can feel how our legs are interacting with the world via gravity.

And these feet and a pelvis and a spine carry a head at the top of us. Two eyes in this head, looking out, letting light in.

Play with being present to feet and legs and head and eyes and light today. A big game.


Feel, sense and notice the difference when you are present this way.

Day Thirty Seven: Learning can take us to Heaven, especially waking up learning

Dogwood in bloom in Sonoma, Ca, in April


Brendan, my son, at the Anat Baniel Method training, Special Needs Children, Segment 4, as part of some 60 people doing grand learning

Movement with attention
is one grand path to feeling
younger,
to sharpening up the brain,
and
waking up to now

Try this:

1. Sit in a chair. Don't lean back. Feel your pelvis against the chair, and your spine holding up your head. Enjoy that. Close your eyes, and sense two arms, two legs, fingers, toes, breathing, and spine.

2. Do this for awhile, as if a meditation.

3. Imagine doing this sensing and awaring all day long.

4. Now, begin to move the toes of your left foot back and forth,
rotating at your heel. Go slowly. Go so slowly that each time you
do this, and do it many times, you can feel and sense and learn something new about your nervous system and your bones and your feet.

5. Take a rest.

6. Now, move the heel of your left foot back and forth (to the left and to the right),
slowly, pivoting on the front part of your foot. Many times, slowly, pleasurably,
learning.

7. Take a rest and feel the differences, left to right, and before to now.

8. Come back, if you've forgotten, to being present.

9. Lie on your back, and put both feet "standing," which means the foot is on the floor and the knees are pointed toward the ceiling.

10. In this position, a number of times rotate the toes of the left foot to the right and left. Rest. Then rotate the heel of this same foot. Rest.

11. In the rests, come into a deeper meditation.

12. Bring both feet to standing again, and push up your pelvis into the air. Do this a number of times, more and more arching your back, and pushing out your belly.

13. Rest with awareness and pleasure.

14. Again, feet standing, pelvis up, and bring the toes of your left foot as if for running. Toes on the floor. Put your hands behind your head on the floor, and tilt your whole upper body toward the left, and then back to the middle. It is as if the ribs on your right get longer and the left elbow comes closer, staying on the floor, to your left hip.

15. Rest.

16. Do all of 14 again, and use that to get your left hand to your left heel. Once there, rotate slowly your left heel right and left. See if you can feel the toes pressing the floor most clearly between the big toe and the second toe.

17. Rest. Imagine other moves you could make. Imagine being aware of your ankles and which toes press into the ground as you walk forward today.

18. Get up to standing and go forth to a life of slowing and awaring and happying.

Good.

Monday yoga learning: One foot and the other: Balance

1.slight flaw
in yesterday's diatribe:

bugs

lots of bugs
in park
doing yoga
today

there is a reason for the
saying
that something
"bugs" you

still: if you are going to go
wild
i guess bugs
are one price
you pay

better than death

2. NaNoWriMo pals
the site down
again
too many of us
my word count is too
high to reveal,
but is a wild ride,
don't have day job
all the offerings in here
want clients to come

and the lessons on Monday
and the lessons
in the WakeUp Feldenkrais blog,
under the label movement lessons
give lots and lots
of things to do
that activate your brain
give a welcome distraction to writing
and the critical or weary voices,
and keep you thinking at
the same time
just not thinking in words
and your body/brain/mind unity
will feel better

also the monday yoga things
might be nice
writer's block unblockers

good luck

3. now
to Monday yoga:

this is a no picture
day
monkey see monkey do
is a lower level
than hearing
or reading
and figuring that to the real world:

so,
here
we go:

Balance

BALANCE

Balance

1. Stand somewhere beautiful.
Look ahead, sense down, listen to feet and eyes and head.
Shift weight to the right foot, right heel.
Slowly.
Notice what happens in breathing as go to right,
and come back to middle.
Slowly.
Rest.

2. Do the above and bring weight to right heel.
Again, watch, listen to breathing. Going and coming back.

3. Do these two to the left.

4. Rest between all. Walk around, sit, lie down.
whatever.

5. Cross Right foot over left, i.e.
in front of and a bit to the left of left foot.
Now, shift weight right and left,
with the feet on the opposite than usual side.
slowly.
watch breathing.
rest.

6. Do this and keep weight mainly on the heels.

7. Do this and keep your head in the middle, so pelvis/ butt
goes side to side
and weight shifts,
and your head stays in the middle.

8. Now, like this:
as you shift weight to your right foot, which is over to your left,
let your head flop to the right,
as in right ear toward right shoulder,
gentle,
not rotating neck,
tilting, easy does it
slow and follow breathing

9. As you shift weight to the left foot, which is on your right,
let your left ear tilt down easily and
sweetly
toward your left shoulder.
Notice breathing.
Weight mainly on heels.

10. Do this other feet around,
if you are so inclined.

11. Go back to beginning,
shift weight left and right,
now keeping head more or less in the middle
and weight more or less on your heels
and noticing
and being calm in
your breathing.

ciao
chris