asking each day, to find out who is real and what we really are

if we are living right, we should be getting
at least one "No" a day
to some request we are making for something that
pushes some edge

"Would you like to OM?"
"Would you like to make out?"
"Would you like to make out for X minutes?"
"Would you like to have sex?"
"Would you like to spend the night together?"
"Would you give me your phone number?"
"Would you go to ..... with me?"

This kind of thing in the relationship world, and this:

"I offer ..... for $.......Would you like to buy?"

That's a good one, too.

That keeps things high sensation. And if we don't know yet how to ask and get turned on by our asking and let the yes / no chips fall where they may, we con't quite know how to live yet, don't you think?

Don;t you feel that that's true?
For you?s

The tired thing, and an obvious solution

This happens to me sometimes,
maybe to you, too.

Toward the end of the afternoon, and this Nap Urge
slithers out.

Now, the obvious solution:
set the timer for twenty minutes,
or in my case, since it's a favorite meditation time number
for me,
22 minutes.

Set the timer, 20, 22, 18,  and lie down
and see if sleep comes.

if it does,
great
a twenty minute plunge into reviving
ourselves

if it doesn't,
great,
we've calmed and let ourselves be supine and out of
the up and down world of chairs and walking and talking.

Back to the fish world,
the lie down and see what the body feels like
when it feels support over a large surface.

Ah, that could be nice.

So, I don't know about you, but I'm certainly talking myself
into a little 22 minute horizontal eyes closed, sense the arms and legs and
spine
and follow the breathing
meditation/ nap.

And if I don't know what will happen,
how much better,
how much like life as it always really is.

What's next?
We don't know.

Wait and see.

Breathe and see.

Sense the moment and see.

It's all a chance to be present.
And if we, or I, anyway, fall asleep
in this little interlude,
I'm going to be glad of that.

And if I don't,
wait and see if it perks up the old "tired"
thing,
that started off this late Friday afternoon ramble.

oh, well.

It's so uncool to live in the world of
"I don't know,"
and so peacefully powerful.

Good.

Day 41: Having Fun

More of the "Functional Integration" lesson, aka Neurological Upgrading


Ah, fun. Not a bad way to spend one’s time, and sometimes we worry we will waste our lives. What a pleasant dilemma.

Ah, fun. This can be an excuse to have a life where “nothing gets done,” and then again, from what I’ve seen of how Picasso went about things, or the Mozart of Amadeus presentation, having “fun” and being delightfully productive are not incompatible.

And, hey, I am trained in the Anat Baniel Method and the Feldenkrais Method, educational transformation modes wherein we use all sorts of slowing and awaring and using less effort and varying the how of something to create amazing improvement in function.

So, today, play at various things in various ways. What does that mean? You get up. Have some fun thinking of one or two things different you could do in going about getting dressed. And then some exercise or a walk: an obvious place to vary a little or a lot your usual routine.

Or, you have to rush off to work.

Oh, well. Rush with a whistle. Rush with following your breath. Rush with a smile. Rush with no cell phoning, or no radio, or whatever your usual diversion.

Have fun throughout the day noticing whatever is your habit, and then playing with two or three other ways of going about something.

I’m typing on keyboard. I can tilt my head one way and the other as I type. I can press one elbow into the surface it’s on and then concentrate on my pelvis on the side, then the pelvis on the other side, then the other elbow.

I can watch the screen and rotate my nose right and left, and follow my breathing as I type these words.

I can try to distinguish the different feel of different fingers as they type these words.

Driving a car you could sense the different fingers of each hand. Walking you could discover all the toes. Breathing in could you find something different than breathing out.

And this is fun?

Could be. Doesn’t sound like the act silly kind of fun, which could be part of your day. More life finding freshness and newness in everything you do. Give it a go.

day 103 , emotions as actions, so let's move toward free

this picture is New Year's Day, a bunch of us nuts went in the lake for about 20 seconds

Emotional freedom

Let’s play with options.

Let’s play with feelings.

Take someone you still aren’t that crazy about. Find some things “wrong” with them.

Imagine doing the Work, the four questions, the turn around. Maybe even do the Work.

But here’s the deal: play with your feelings toward them.

Try out anger, and fear, and amusement, and enjoyment, and curiosity, and love, and distain, and admiration, and respect, and scorn, and loathing, and being charmed by them.

Give yourself emotional elbow room.

You aren’t a robot, but people often have such stuck reactions to people.

Be free.

Be complicated.

Enjoy your options of feelings for lots of people today.

Valentines to you, day 102: Write yourself a Love Letter

Loving life, loving you

Send yourself a love letter. Think of things and aspects you love and enjoy and admire about other people.

Find them all in yourself.

In the letter today, write about how much you like these parts of yourself.

In your day today look around and enjoy seeing in others wonderful characteristics, and see that these are part of you, too.

Write paragraphs alternating: one paragraph written with your right hand, one with your left. This way, no matter what your favorite: both sides of your brain will get to write sweet words of you to you.



Praise yourself for little things, and for big things. Praise and love yourself for wonderful things you do and the not so wonderful.


Remember the Jesus, love your enemies, stuff: Love your not so great parts, and send, in words, paragraphs of love to yourself for your mistakes, or your bad days, as well as your learning and your good days.


Try to be the perfect lover, all accepting parent, total good friend, happy buddy in this letter. Treat this letter like the most wonderful possible Valentine’s card / letter you can send yourself.

P.S. If you want to, make a loving collage for yourself, too.

Think loving thoughts to yourself all day as well, and let them spill over to others, if you are so inclined. But keep plenty for you. Plenty, amusement, affection, love and appreciation, of you, all for you.

Good.

98: Getting it Straight

Getting it straight: we don’t run the show

Think of someone who has done you some “wrong.” In the past.

It is over.

Think of the statistical probability of your changing what they did in the past.

Think now, in a wishing and wanting and even whining sort of way, how “it” should have been different, how they should have been different, how Reality should have been different.

Wish/ want/ whine really hard.

Notice if anything has changed about the past.


Notice (as per question #3 in the Katie work, our reactions when we attach to the belief) how all that wishing and wanting the past to be different has made us feel.


Now, think of the same situation, as if it is over. As if we have zero chance of changing it. Consider not thinking about wanting the past to be different. Do this and bring your attention back to now, which is….? Sense, look, listen.

Feel how free this feels.

Notice how you can do something in the present, stand up, sit down, pay attention to breathing, sing a song, go for a walk.

And notice how all these things might be totally neglected if you are back trying to “fix” the unchanging past.


So, here’s today’s game: when the “past should have been different” thoughts come up, stop and realize it. Maybe even write them down. And then grunt and groan and strain and see if the past changes. If not, come on back to the present and see what is here for you.

Right now.

Day Thirty-two: Moving with the Back and Head and Arm

DAY THIRTY-TWO: GETTING TO KNOW US
Sitting and twisting in a probably new way
Sit in a chair. Let one elbow and forearm, your left, say, rest on your left knee, so you are bent forward and holding yourself up a bit with this left arm and elbow combination. Now take your right hand and place in behind your head, if you can comfortably do that. If not, put the back of your right hand on your check to the left of your mouth.

Either way, tilt your right elbow up toward the air, toward the sky, toward the ceiling and begin to make circles with this elbow. Imagine a long pencil or pen or feather dipped in ink with which you can paint on the ceiling or the sky. Make a nice circle from the elbow.

Go so slowly that your feel your ribs moving, so slowly you feel this in your pelvis, and so slowly most of all, so that you feel this in your back. Feel an arching when the elbow reaches a certain part of the circle and a folding in your back when the elbow comes to the other side of the circle.

Go slowly enough to notice where your circle gets away from a carefully and really round shape. Find the tension or hurry at those points and try to go even slower and with even less effort and see if that will help you draw the circle.

Bring your hands both to your lap and sit up and rest Feel any changes.

Now, same left elbow down, and right elbow up and make your slow and interesting and pleasurable circles in the other direction

Rest again;

Now, switch arms and do the circle one way a number of times, and then rest, and then the other way a number of times, and rest then.

Feel on this side to a way to feel and connect and as if direct these circles from deep in your lower back and pelvis. Don’t strain. Don’t hurry.

Hello Sonoma, hilarious findings

the sweet Sonoma
spring

the whine weedwhackers

the rush of cars

and our life
our life
now

it is always with
us

when can
we find time
to be out of time:
and into

I AM ALIVE?




;;;;

Hilarious findings:


this pal of mine
I called in Hawaii
to see if he could help
me set up a month travel
there
took the information
of Marlie and I
parting
and found
a way
to a love
that maybe
had been smoldering in the background

so now Marlie
and Ramaia
have a nice thing going

good

love is good

when you love someone(s)
you want them to be
happy

good


sweet,
eh?

Other People

even though
they preach the gospel
of love

some people

just don't have
time
or the bigness
in their heart
to be kind
to other people

especially
anyone who has
ever "rubbed them the wrong way"

oh, well:
that's their issue,
isn't it?

Jesus said it kind of like this:
"Anyone can love someone
who is kissing their you know what,

but when the other person
starts to be a jerk
then you get to learn whether
you can really love or not."


So, then the turn around gets really
fun:

can
we
love the people who
aren't big enough
(and that could be a fine
and
false
story, couldn't it?)
to love us

when we are jerks


and then again:
the real
super duper
inside out
and sweetening
into truth
turn around:

can we love ourselves
when we are jerks

and forgive

and come into the present enough
to "do better"
next time


not so shabby,
this learning ground of a life,
eh?

63 and I finally

finally learned how to do this.
Plus: last day as a Sonoma full time resident.


Through an hour long
wrist learning
activity/lesson/experience
taught by Anat Baniel,
the leading developer of the
Feldenkrais Method® to further
possibilities
in accessing our brains to transform
our "body" and
our life.

In this hour long lesson,
a bunch of us,
experienced and experimented
with all sorts of ways of
our wrists
and using our wrists
and pushing into the floor
in a way that respected and
was "real"
about gravity,

At the end
of this hour
I could do this yoga
"pose"
the "peacock,"
which before I'd only been
able to lift my feet a few inches for the ground,.


So, my back wasn't any stronger,
but my understanding of how
to support and lift myself
from my wrists had been way
upgrading.

And so:
I could do this


Fun

---

see TravelHeal.blogspot.com
for pics
of the last day
party
hosted
by the beautiful
Marlie
and the beautiful
Isa
for
the one called Chris

New Blog Cousin: Almost Enlightenment

I've written a 108 page
email
book manual
guidebook
to awakening

along with it
and helping to explain
and expand
will be a
new
blog

Almost Enlightenment

Five lines, happiness and death

Once we were born
Someday we die

long time
in skeleton-land

skeleton:

spine holds up head
arms off shoulder things

legs off pelvis thing,
at hip joints

if sitting:
we are sitting on the pelvis thing

sense that
now

enjoy,
move and
learn
and love
from there:

grab someone cute
and have some fun:

now we are alive

someday
we'll be dead

good

(for waking up)

Parties, parties, parties: what part do we wake up to?

Parties , parties, parties:
People like ‘em, some to give ‘em, most to “get“ 'em

Parties, parties:
a few people do
a lot of work

some people love
to come
and be wild

some to come and be quiet

and this can happen:

to come,
feel free,
enjoy others

and still remember
our breathing
and the sensing of our feet as
we touch the ground,
our spines
and arms
as we dance and move

to lose ourselves is
one thing

to stay "with" ourselves
another

both

good
in a way

Love

when is the best time
to love
the person you live with?

a) when they are being so wonderful
and adorable you just feel thrilled
to be sharing a life with them

b) when they are busy and distracted
and hardly know you exist

c) when they know you exist and have
this interesting idea
that you are a big pain in the ....

d) when they are busy and distracted
and think you are a big
pain in the ....

e) none of the above

f) all of the above


You know the answer,
and the question helps us remember:
if it's marketing,
we love 'em when they "put out"

if it's love
we love 'em
when they are alive
(or dead)

ciao
Chris

learning

learning
and
love

if we can be
in one
or
the
other,
we've got a great life

if we're
hanging out in both
we've got
an
amazing life


this is my wish for
you
and
hey, why not?,
this is my wish for me:
an amazing life

....

and so:
learning

yesterday,
in spite of working
quite a bit
on the various
"issues"
my mind
has decided to "struggle"
with,
and having fairly
fine success
in this work
since i was doing the
grand
and glorious Work of Byron Katie,
I found myself
a bit depressed
as I was
driving down
for a supervision / advanced
class in the
Anat Baniel Method

and getting there a bit
late
I got thrown right into the lesson:

sit on a chair,
put the left ankle on the right knee,
hold the left foot with the right hand
and the left knee with the left hand
and come from sitting
to standing

this is fun
and in my funk
I couldn't quite do this

which was good

because then when we got to
the floor
and did this and that
for the wonderful neurological
upgrading that happens when
you do the Feldenkrais work
or the Anat Baniel Method work

and the upgrading
which is about learning
and
realizing ways of connecting I'd forgotten
and
expanding my options
and
softening parts of me that were interfering by overworking
and
coming to the sweetness
of now
and the sweetness
of
learning

and double rainbow:
learning takes place
and when
we go back to the chair,
I can stand with one leg folded up
as described above
and

that other rainbow:
no more depression

life is
always
fun
when we are learning

(and even if John McCain
is trying to ruin
the word "fun"
by describing his campaign
as fun,
since maybe lying and being
in a completely delusional world
is fun
still
fun
is a good sign we are doing
something right,
especially if it isn't the jump
up and down
and thrash around fun
many confuse
with fun)

la
la

my and my opinions

oh,
well

Is it true? The Work of Byron Katie, 1st Question

The Work of Byron Katie
is an amazing system
for helping us
get out of the unhappinesses
we occasionally carved
for ourselves.

It goes like this:
Judge Your Neighbor
Write it Down
Ask Four Questions
Turn it Around


the questions are:
Is it True?
Can I absolutely know it's true?
How do I react and what do I do
when I attach to believing the thought?
Who or what would I be without the thought?

So, let's start with the first:

IS IT TRUE?

This is a very kickass question,
though
the temptation
to say
yes
to various thoughts like,
"So and so should have listened to me better."

"So and so should support me more."

"So and so should answer my phone calls."

"So and so shouldn't call me so much."

"So and so should like me better/ treat me better/ respect me more, ..."

and so on.

We feel they are true, yes.

And we could get other people to agree,
which creates a weird gossip level truth:
if five other people can agree that your
mate is a bastard/ bitch,
then it must be true.

And so
sorry,
but the Work of Byron Katie
like any real work,
is about truth,
not social opinion.

So true,
means
true
like gravity is true.

All my friends can disagree
with gravity,
and it will still pull the rock
to the ground when I let go.

So Is it true?
Means, is it true like gravity is true?

And even clearer
and more bracing way to put it,
is,
"Is it true like gravity is true,
or is it true like Chris Elms (fill in your own name)
is true?"

This is a whole other discussion,
but that name
and a whole series of images and ideas
I have around
it,
that's not "me."

So to ask the question
like that
gives it at least double
the kick.

Hmmm.
what a kick.

Fall Classes, starting Saturday Sept 13, four weeks

Classes for the Fall
Access Your Brain to
Become
an even more Amazing Person

No actual classes
in motion:
get a group together
and a place
and some mini miracles
can happen

below,
just a few
ideas
of what can be done..




Yoga & the Brain
Mon. 12:30 PM, Sat. 9:30 AM

Backs, Necks, Shoulders,
Mon. 2:30 PM
Sat. 10:30 AM

Injury, Surgery Recovery
Mon 6:30 PM

Musicians, Surgeons, Hands
Thurs, 6:30 PM


Increase Skills and Enjoy Life More

• Think more clearly


• Anti-Aging


• Move with more ease


• Re-discover how much you love to learn
  and
  be alive


• Decrease and Make Irrelevant Various
  Aches and Pains


• Recovery faster from Surgery


• Perhaps avoid surgery


• Recover from Strokes and falls and accidents


• Rediscovery how much of you there is



Starting the Second Week in September
(on the weekend of September 13
and running for 5 weeks,
to end the week of October 4-9)

Group lessons

Yoga & the Brain
Mon. 12:30 PM, Sat. 9:30 AM



• gentle, healing, vastly expansive


• "working out" the brain
  as our "body" learns to love itself more


• anti-aging as we learn new patterns,
  increase thinking and
  problem solving abilities
  and
  come to greater ease








Backs, Necks, Shoulders,
Mon. 2:30 PM
Sat. 10:30 AM


• also hips, and feet and hands


• finding joy, connection and learning
  in areas of ourself to which
  we may
  have lost a sweet and useful connection


• come to a higher level of functioning
  in anything you wish to do


• understand the spine, brain connection


• move in ways we might have forgotten for years,
  or may
  never have known


• learn to "love ourselves in
  gentle
  specific
  and non-efforting
  ways


• feel better


• have fun




Injury, Surgery Recovery
Mon 6:30 PM

• gentle, easy, on the floor


• working toward better than ever


• learning, not performance


• feel better


• have fun





Musicians, Surgeons, Hands
Thurs, 6:30 PM



• opening the ribs, shoulders hands


• letting more air in


• freeing our mobility


• delighting in easier touch


• delighting in easier movement

---

These lessons are all
my own inventions.
You will find them no where else.

They are based on my 127 days of training
in the Anat Baniel Method,
including certification in her Mastery Programs for
Special Needs Children
Vitality and Anti-Aging
and
High Performers

as well as
200 days of training
in the Feldenkrais Method

These lessons
can appear to be "movement lessons"
and are really
brain lessons,
anti-aging lessons,
regaining vitality lessons,
regaining our skills lessons,
and rediscovering discovery lessons

---

Costs:
One class a week: $80
two classes a week: $100
three classes a week: $120
four or more classes a week: $140

drop in rate:
$30

yoga teachers:
add 50%

enjoy
learn
love each moment
and
smile

the idiocy of stretching, 33

barn in morning


a muscle can contract
it can stop contracting and release and return to loose

if a muscle is chronically contracted
and you try to "stretch"
it
the body has an automatic "stretch reflex"
to tighten against that,
so if you do succeed in
"stretching," you will be
actually only succeeding in tearing
the muscle

ah, so what to do?
find the muscle on the other side
use it
and
as you use it,
see just how much
easily
and honestly
you can uncontract
which is to say let go
which is to say release
which is not to say stretch
the muscles on the other side

so "stretching" hamstrings is cruel
and useless
and using the quadraceps
and honestly stopping when hamstrings bind
and honestly seeing about letting go
as the effort goes into softness at hamstring side
and appropriate use
(to lengthen leg, not to stretch anythng)
of the quads

make
sense?

if not,
come get some lessons,
amazing results in
all sorts of areas of ones
life
from this:
use effort where it should be used
let go where it should be let
go

good

Monday ramble: new thinking via new approach

From now on,
an essay will come to slowsonoma.com
each Monday

and an essay to WakeUp-Feldenkrais.blogspot.com
aka Brain Plasticity, Learning, Love and Vitality
on Wednesdays

and an essay
to Tai Chi / Yoga / Health / Weight Loss / Everything
on Fridays

sometimes
the "essay"
will be more a poem
sometimes
an "essay"

sometimes a bunch
of questions

hope you'll come by and visit

here's today's "essay"

THINKING IN A NEW
MODE

Most of us don’t think.

We have a bunch of words running in our heads, often rehearsals of something we plan to say ( and usually don’t.). Sometimes we replay old conversations and give ourselves better lines. Again, sadly, we often spend our mental chatter time complaining about someone, often the person we live with, and hopefully we don’t get around to dumping this load, but even if we don’t, what a waste of a mind.

And then sometimes we think radically true thoughts:
I am alive.
Or,
I have not been aware for the last couple of hours.
Or,
I didn’t need to say what I just said.
Or,
This isn’t working, what else can I try.
Or: This isn’t working, how can I slow down and observe what I’m doing to learn a more useful and effective and easy way to go about this.
Or,
(This close to the first one) I’m going to die someday. Is this really how I want to be using my time and energy and thinking and emotions?
And more.

Later, I’ll have a chapter full of possibly useful or life opening questions to mull in a day, or in a life.

For now, though, I have a proposal.

Let’s go about thinking in a way that the movement activities are actually encouraging and developing: thinking without words.

You’ve had the experience. Suddenly a thought, an answer, an insight just pops into your mind. It’s about something that’s been troubling or fascinating you, but you really haven’t been grinding away at the “issue.” You were doing “something else” when the newness of real thought popped into your mind.


So, today, let’s go about this.

Get a couple of sheets of paper. Look at the first blank page and allow your mind to be as still as possible.

Then, allow yourself to write down four or five words that you would really like to think about. Love. Fear. Freedom.

Many, many more.

Just single words and no more than five.

Write them down, and look at them and follow your breathing and do a little bit of a pelvic clock and have as few words as possible in your mind.


Then, circle one word.

Don’t think. Just pick.

Now, write that word on a new blank piece of paper. Look at it, again, sensing yourself, following your breathing and doing a little arching and folding of your back as you look.

Have an empty mind, as if silence is a vast field of quiet wisdom there just for you to dip into and mine.

Breathe.

Relax.

Don’t think.

Look at the word.

Look away into the distance.

Wiggle side to side.

Get up, walk around. Look at the word.

Turn over the page, forget the word, and go take a walk, again with the walk to be a time to be wordless. Walk and watch. Walk and breathe. Walk and notice your feet touching the ground. Walk and notice light coming in your eyes. Walk and notice sounds coming in your ear.

Come back to your paper. Look at the word once more and start to write for a couple of pages, without stopping, or “thinking,” or punctuating anyway other than what comes easily, about this word.

Let the words and images and ideas just pour out.

Do that until a couple of pages are full.

Take another walk.

Come back, do NOT yet read what you’ve already written, but check in with your intuition and see / feel/ guess if anymore words want to come out. If they do, spill them on out.

Then rest a bit. Or walk.

And then read what you’ve written, and decide if this “thinking” can lead somehow to some wonderful, even if ever so slight, shift or change or improvement in your life.

slowing down, part twelve

SLOW DOWN

Like how fast we are driving?

Like how fast we are talking?

Like how fast we are eating?

Like how many things we are doing?

Yes.

And even better, spend a day not being in any cars.

And talking less than usual, say letting the phone kind of take care of itself, and letting other people talk, but not feeling compelled to tell them all our brilliant and wonderful ideas.

In keeping with that, I won’t tell you a bunch of wonderful ideas about the slow food movement, or just the slow living movement, or any of that.

You are smart enough to be curious about what would this day be like if you took plenty of time between things to sit and do nothing. Or sit and contemplate what you’ve just learned and experienced.

To sit and sense yourself.

To lie down on the floor and try the day one activity, the pelvis clock.

To sit in a chair or on a log and try the pelvic clock.

To sit anywhere and follow your breathing and have an empty mind and see if you can allow to percolate up in you what you really want to be doing next.

Yes, yes, of course you have your obligations, and a little slowing and not rushing off might surprise you about how much or little you really want to do the next thing that is on the “to do” list.

What would it be like to be present in our transitions from one activity to another?

What would it be like to not know for awhile, or even for big patches of time, what we are going “to do” next?

What if we veered off on a walk, or a stroll, or a roll around on the ground, or a roll in the hay, or took a nap?

Would the world fall apart?


Who knows?
What will we discover when we slow down to the level of life lived in the present moment?

Who knows?

You will, if you do it.



Danger, though: this could become a habit, and a very pleasurable and life shifting one, at that. Ah, well. That wouldn’t be so bad, would it?

la, la