new blog, special needs children

new blog, on Monday's replacing the 4 brain fitness one.

it's called specialneedschildren-chriselms.blogspot.com

1010: Reflections on Movement in Life of the Journeying Sort

Twenty two minutes to begin the journey
of talking about
journeying

I am at the Oakland Airport, familiarly know as OAK, and am in the Southwest Line.
Medium sized suitcase, normal. Duffel bag, pretty full over one shoulder: sort of unusual.
Very full backpack: normal, but usually for the young travelling suitcase free.
Duffel bag to carry on, not so unusual, though no one else ever has one.

And this stands out: a table of some sort, massage, or something, folded in half it's
about this high,
gesturing to three feet high,
and this wide
same

There are ropes around it, and the ropes hold a packing blanket,
that provides it some protection.

This is a lot in the line
and it's October of 2010,
and I'm in Oakland, and on my way from a year living on Orcas
Island,
with three times off in Northern California, coming in and out of OAK,
though before without the table,
whatever it is

A year of living on Orcas Island,

this tiny jewel Brave New World, amazing social microcosm
beautiful cedar and apple and eagle and wild happy book reading eco loving
funky smart artist hardworking sort of hippy folks mixed with retired
people like Richard Bach of Johnathan Livingston Seagul and Richard Donner of Superman
and blah blah
names

A year of living on Orcas came October 16 2009
and left OAK to go to a new supposedly amazing place Octover 16 2010

And this new amazing place is.....
going to be....
I've never been there

know only two people there, both of whom don't answer phone
calls,
nor email,
nor have interest in helping me establish there

but supposedly amazing place

which is....

Austin, Texas

Ah, so.
We are in Austin now, listening to me,
if you are in the living room the first Saturday of March, 2011
and now you are .....

and in the story I am on this journey,
from a year of living on Orcas Island, Washington
to trying out winters in Austin, Texas

And in the year before living on Orcas for a year,
I'd living a month or thereabouts in
Tucson, Arizona
Atlatnta, Georgia,
Arcata, California (the real notth, of redwoods, and pot growers and endless rain, fog mist ecological correctness to put even Berkeley to shame)
Gunnison, Colorado,

And I'm 65 years old, standing in line with 5
items, three to check,
but it's Southwest and I only have to pay for the table

And what's that table about,
is that a journey?

Yes.

And am I a lifelong vagabond and this is just the shaggy
last one two or seven chapters of that story

Well, not really
or yes,
depending on young youth
of slightly mobile parents:
Ohio, Pasadena, Newport Beach, Denver, Cincinnati, back to Newport,
to college firss So Cal, then No Cal
that is movey aroundy

and then the 22 years in Berkeley
some call it the new Vienna, comparing it to the fermenting years
of Einstein and Freud
22 years in Berkeley, raising two children, they actually live in the same
house all through their public school years,
and
then 12 years in Sonoma California,
where I settle in enough to create a still ongoing 3 acre public
garden,
and run for city council and still visit and live with a friend
when I come to No Cal
and fly in and out of OAK

So, 22 and 12 years in two places
and then I get older and take to the road
to do what i couldn't
and didn't really want to do when I was younger:

to ply my trade at different places
to meet new people
to keep writing my book
to discover what is grand about living in other locals

to tell you the truth:
or, my truth,
okay:
to tell you my opinion;
the people in Sonoma were sort of narrow minded in
their idea that Sonoma was "the perfect" place
to live in the world

true is was an hour from grand culture
true it is a growing place among the best in
the world
true the hot summer days always cool down into the fifties at night
and the winters of rain, rain, always have scattered weeks, even
in january and February in the 60's and 70's
and...
the ocean is nearby
and....

but I wanted to discover a bigger world

and there where relationship 'reasons"
and
the trade,
that has something to do with the table, which is called a Feldenkrais table,
and the skill I had gained,
called either the Feldenkrais Method
or the Anat Baniel Method
or
both

and that's 22 minutes

and the talk is "supposed to be 10"
and we haven't even glanced at why Austin,

or what is the journey
to get to the table

or what is the journey of someone on the table

alas,
more torommow me thinks,
this same blogspot

ciao
for
now

Chris

Thinking and Walking: Words, Gibberish, Silence

Don’t worry, be happy

In the Bible, Jesus urges people to think of the lilies of the field, urges people not to worry, counsels: Who by worrying has added an hour to their life.

And Mehr Baba said the famous: don’t worry, be happy.


And, easier said than done, though I’d venture that a vast percentage of drug and alcohol and over eating is based on trying to get the worrying to go away. Which means: it’s not easy.

Good. Something to learn.

Here’s the ticket: take a walk today, three times. That will spring you from the rushed schedule you think you have to maintain.

And on that walk, look at what is present, and listen to what is present and feel your feet on the Earth.

And notice: when does thinking as worrying creep in. When it does:

One: say hello.

Two: shift the words to a sort of gibberish that conveys the tone but not the particulars.

Three: See if a no thinking/ no word option is briefly available.

Four: one all three walks compare: empty, worded, gibberish. Enjoy.

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.

Twenty Seven: Toward Heaven, one way: Awakened Movement

The easiest motion for humans is rotating around our central axis. As if you want to turn around and see someone beside or behind you. This game today clues us in to at least 4 levels of our selves that can cooperate and become easier and more clear in rotating to the left.

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.

(Mini-sermon: to experience and look forward to and delight in the new is to stay young and vital throughout life, especially if this involved discoveries in our bodies and in our emotional and spiritual habits, not just our intellect; to stick to, cling to, be afraid to leave the familiar is to ossify into a more and more narrow “aging,” which may be nothing more than the loss of zest of all the newness and nowness that our lives could embrace, and could be embracing our lives.)

Rest from rotating your head. Breathe and sense your spine and be aware of gravity and enjoy all three. 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 a 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. (At this point, and even earlier if you do this again, you might enjoy taking our any glasses you are wearing.)

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. Notice at what your eyes are directed; keep your eyes in this direction and move your head, slowly, slowly, gently right and left. Feel a softening in your neck as your neck and eyes are allowed to not be in their usual coupled pattern.

Rest. Close your eyes in the rest and move them gently left and right. Feel something like a soothing in this..

Again, turn halfway left with ribs and head. Now, you’re your eyes one way and the head the opposite. Eyes to the left and head to the right. Eyes to the right and head to the left, and they match up and point the same way at this ‘halfway to the left” position. 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.

Think about your pelvis, your bottom, the base of your spine, the whole area “down there.” If it’s “large” smile. It’s just you. Think about how to rotate, in sitting your pelvis to the left.

Then try out whatever you thought. Did it work? Good.

Try this: push your right knee forward and a bit to the left and see if that help rotate your pelvis to the left. And then do this many times. Slowly. Enjoyably. Learning about your spine and pelvis. Ease. Pleasure. Even a little skill maybe.


Then rest, and feel yourself as a many leveled movement maker. You can move and rotate your pelvis, your ribs, your head, your eyes. Think about rotating them all, either at once, or in some sequence, to the left.

Be patient. Learning takes coming out of the daily rush long enough to be present to what we are learning. Enjoy even the “frustrations” in this activity, but most of all enjoy the opportunity to sense yourself, and be present and learn about how you can move and BE with more ease, pleasure and skill. (Ease, pleasure and skill are my new wish for the phrase ESP.)

Now, rotate to the left in this sequence: 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.

Rest.

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 105 sitting and side bending, spine awakening, spine fun

Sitting and side bending.

Sit comfortably on the front edge of a chair. Breathe easily and do just very slightly a rounding and arching of your spine, to feel your pelvis more clearly on the chair, and the lengthening of your back when you arch.

Come to a sitting position with a slight arch, and your belly a bit forward and soft and free. Breathe in and out a number of times this way, and then interlace your fingers and bring your hands behind your head.

Now, keeping your nose pointing forward, tilt to the right, so your left elbow goes toward the sky/ ceiling and the right elbow comes toward your right hip. Notice what is happening with the weight on your pelvis. Is it going to your right “sit bone” or your left? Probably the right.

Now learn how to do this: as you tilt your head and elbow directly to the right, raise you right hip toward the right elbow, as they come closer, and allow your weight to shift to the left side of your pelvis.

Do this many times. “Easily.” And then rest.

Now, bring interlace your hands the “non-habitual” way, bring them behind your head, and tilt to the left. Two ways: first, shifting your weight left as you tilt, and then, many times, shifting the weight on your pelvis to the right. Feel the shape of your spine as you do this. Many times. Rest.



For today, play with remembering your spine and playing with the ways the spine, the ways your spine moves.

Folding and coming into a ball.

Arching and lengthening and rising to the sky.

Twisting.

Side bending.


See if you can discover a movement that will combine them all.

78: Hopping in a New and Non-habitual Way

Hopping and paying attention.

Yes, yes. This is “movement” again, and again, this is the simplest and quickest way to activate real thinking, rather than our usual verbose roundabout not-really thinking “thinking.”

Stand some nice place. Hop your legs wide and back together. Many times.

Rest.

Slowly, combine this hopping with having your arms go out when your legs go to the side and arms back in when your legs come together. Not as many as the usual “many times.”

Rest.

Now, go slowly and figure this out: do the opposite with your arms: when your legs go out, your arms come to your side, when your legs come back together, your arms go out.

Take it easy.

Start over.

Breathe. Get an ease to this.

Let your attention and awareness get more clear.

Rest.

Now try the thinking/ awaring version, like this: as you hop your legs out, have your arms at your side. As you hop your legs back together, let your arms go to the straight out, outside position. So, this is like a reverse jumping jack, feet out, arms in, and then: feet in, arms out.

Go slow.

Catch yourself and smile when you get confused and go back to the “normal” way.

Rest.

Then do it the “normal” way on purpose.

Rest.

And the backwards way, and see if you can do two or three of one way and two or three of the other without stopping completely in between.

Have some fun. Sense your five lines all the rest of today.

68: Breathing out two ways

More breath, now some variation.

Breathe out and see if you have a tendency to bring your belly in or push it out.
Play around and see what you like best.

Now breathe in and see which way, belly in (and chest expanded) or belly out is the way you like to breathe in.

Now lie on your back, and breathe out and pull your belly in. Do this slowly. Don’t think about the in breath, just let it happen. Each out breathe, pull your belly in and push the air out through your nose. Don’t move any part of your spine, for now, nor your pelvis. Just push the air out and pull your belly in a number of times.

Rest.

Now, again letting the in breath take care of itself, push the air out, but in rapid little bursts. Then rest a bit and do another rapid series of belly in out breaths.

Rest.

Now try the opposite: push your belly out as you breathe out. Again don’t worry about the in breath. But you might wan to “practice” with sucking the belly in and expanding your chest on the in breath a few times, if you need some help figuring out how to push your belly out on the out breath.

Then just forget the in breath and push your belly out, slowly, as you push your breath out.

Rest.

Now, do this fast, in spurts, belly out breath out. Several times.

Rest.

Now play with opposing: three times belly out on the out breath, and three times belly in. Do this back and forth.

Rest. Play with your breathing off and on during the day.

66: Pick up Sticks

Pick up sticks

Lean over and touch the ground.

Did you keep your legs straight?

I hope not. We don’t need to “try” so hard when we move in ways that are fun and interesting as we do them easily.

That sentence is worth reading a few times.

And again, bend your knees, and lean down and touch the ground and let your hands hang out on the ground and let your head flop freely. And here, straighten your legs just a little, just as much as is easy, not any more and go from more bent to back here to easy.

And as you do this, slowly, easily rotate your head right ad left. And enjoy this. And aware this.

And rest, standing up “straight-ish.”

Then bend toward the ground again, and in the leaning over position, rotate your hips right and left, in a slow and easy and gently way that makes sense to your spine, feeling the vertebrae twisting more down at the bottom of your spine (which is higher up in the air) and less at the top of your spine (which is closer to the ground.)

Do this awhile and rest just leaning/ hanging over like this and play with the possibility of turning / rotating your head in one direction, while your hips rotate in the other.

Then come to a standing rest.

Now, come near a wall, or a chair to balance, and lift one knee towards your chest and take it with one hand, and pull it towards your chest. Do this slowly and experiment with a way that just seems to move the leg and a way the seems to let your pelvis curl in as if it, too, wanted to come nearer your head.

Notice your breathing, and see what form of breathing would make this most easy.

Undo and rest. And then play with the other knee and leg like this. Rest. And then touch the floor again. Feel good. Notice spine all day. And if you see any sticks, pick up a few.

Day 58: Getting Straight by moving with our learning

On the back, on your back, learning with your head, using your brain

Lie down on a firm and comfortable surface. A firm bed, a wood or plywood floor with a rug or carpet, a yoga mat or two, a grassy area, some sand. Lie down and start to notice differences:

1) What is the difference between the world before you lay down and the world of laying (lying???) down on the horizontal surface? How do you feel calmer, or more connected to yourself, or more able to slow down and come to who you really are? Or put it this way: what feels good about this way of being for awhile, that you were missing out on before.
2) What is the difference between your right side and your left? Maybe this is obvious, maybe not.

3) What is the difference between putting your attention on yourself, and “just resting” on the floor?


We’ve done this before. Good. Good it is to do again, and now in lying on the floor, play with these:

Turn your head right and left, very easily.

With feet so the soles are on the floor (standing the feet, knees toward the sky), let your hips go right and left.

Turn your eyes right and left.

Take your own time and initiative and playfulness and create all the possibilities you can with the three: the hips, the head and the eyes.

Sometimes all can rotate the same way, sometimes two one way and the third the other, sometimes just two move and the third stays in the initial position.

You figure, you play, you learn.

Keep playing with head and hips and eyes all day. Enjoy.

Day 56: Up and down, for brain and body and FUN

Touching the Earth, or at least, the floor

Stand somewhere, outside if the weather permits and invites in.

Touch the ground. Easily. Realize that if you kept your legs straight, you don’t have to. Bend your sweet knees and touch the ground with both hands and feel yourself in this primitive and “strange” feeling position.

Play around with lifting one at a time, a hand, and a foot.

Then see what pairs of hand-foot work best to lift.

Then rest.

Come down to this position (“four points”) again, and start to walk forward. As if crawling, but with knees not on the floor. Discover the two ways to go about this. Go back and forth between the two many times.

Rest.

Now, back to this position. Get fancy: both feet up, both hands up, everything up. Rest.

Back again. Come down to the ground like this: take the right knee and place it between the left hand and the left foot and let the right leg come to the floor/ Earth. See how that rotates/ spirals you down. Come back up in the opposite spiral. Do this many times, just to this side.

Rest.

Now do it the other side, left knee between right hand and right foot and spiral on down to the floor. Make this kind of fun.

Rest.

Now go back and forth, once to the right and once to the left. Get a feeling for lifting your rear to come up from sitting the way this ends you up when you sit. Get a feeling for lowering your rear when you go down.

Notice head and pelvis and how they are both you throughout the day, feel the connection, enjoy. Wake to more.

Day 53: Arching, rounding, sitting, breathing with variation

Spine and breathing.

Sit on a firm and comfortable chair and don’t lean back. Sit near the front, feet flat on the ground. Begin to arch so that your belly comes forward and your sternum lifts and your pelvis tilts forward.

And then from there, round so your belly goes back and your stomach comes in and your head comes down and the front/ top of your pelvis rotates toward your head. (Sex toward you, or: pelvis tucking under).

Go back and forth, gently and with pleasure on this.

Rest.

Now, begin to breathe in and fill your belly with air on the parts where you bring your belly forward and arch.

On the rounding part, pull your belly in and exhale.

Do this with pleasure and feel if something like “relaxation” happens for you.

Rest.

Now, round and pull your belly in, but as you do this suck in the air, and fill your chest with air.

Then as you arch and push your belly out, push out your breathing, so you are exhaling, as if via your full belly.

Then round again, with belly in and breathing in, and arch again with belly out and breathing out.

Many times. Explore. Pleasure. Rest.


Then do the arching and rounding with three rounds of breath so that you breathe out when you arch and three rounds so that you breathe in when you arch. Back and forth. Get the hang of this.

Enjoy.

Learn. Watch your breathing all day and switch it around between belly in for in breath and belly out for in breath.

Day Forty-nine: More spine, more "acture"

Why do conductors live longer? Raising the arms to joy, intention and music could have something to do with it?

More spine, more "acture"

Here’s the deal today: stand up when you stand up. Sit down when you sit down.

Be something like in “acture” when you are standing. Be something like in “acture” when you are sitting.

Remember acture. It’s the word Moshe Feldenkrais, physicist, judo master, scientific explorer of brain based learning, invented for the state of being ready to move easily in all directions.

So when you stand, hop up and down on your heels in sets of three or four. Plop, plop, plop, plop. Leave your toes on the floor, raise your heels and drop down to the floor. Feel as you do this, as if you could jump to the right and the left and forward and back equally easy from this “on your toes” way of standing. Also, at other times, do the plop, plop practice to feel / sense from your legs and feet all the way up to your head, feeling the spine in between.

Good.

In sitting, spend some time with your bottom near the front of the chair, so you could plop, plop your bottom right and left a little bit, hopping up just ever so slightly and then landing a bit to the right and a bit to the left.

Enjoy this.

See if you can feel how this plop, plopping requires that you sit leaning a little bit forward from “straight up.”

And experiment as you sit, let your belly sag in and head hold forward, and do the curling into yourself thing we’ve do a number of times.

Then unfurl and push out your belly a bit and arch your spine just a little and rotate your pelvis just a little and feel your back holding your head up. Experiment.

Find a Feldenkrais® practitioner, or an Anat Baniel Method practitioner and join in their group or private lessons, if they are in your area. Whether that can happen or not, play and learn and discover about standing and sitting today.

Day 45: Moving Head and knees in side lying

Lie on your side again, knees and legs on top of each other. Knees in front of you with the thighs more or less straight out from your body. This is not, NOT, not about “doing it right.” This is about going slow and being present and getting easy feelings in you as well as the excitement of learning.

So, pillow again under your head.

Bring both knees toward your chest, sliding them along the floor. And then bring them back to the “neutral you started in.

Do this slowly and feel the backs of you involved in this, feel your stomach, feel your spine, feel yourself curling in.

Rest.

Now, put your hands behind your head and elbow point roughly the same way your nose does. If this doesn’t work, put your bottom hand under your cheek. Here, bend and bring your head toward your knees, and back, many times, feeling chest, ribs, stomach, back.

Rest. And then combine the two: knees toward head and head toward knees and back to “neutral.” Rest again.

Now, bring your knees backward behind you, leaving your legs in the bended position. Feel the using of your back. And return back to “neutral.”

Rest.

Now using head in your hands, bring your head back many times and return back to “neutral.” Rest.

Combine these last two: head and knees both back and keep returning back to “neutral.” Rest.

Now, do the curling in with head and pelvis forward and unfurling with head and pelvis back. Feel the all of you involved in this.

Rest.

For the day, remember this in imagination and play with stomach in and using your back to round and arch yourself.

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 Thirteen: Keep Rotation with Learning and Waking

DAY THIRTEEN
Keeping moving, but with awareness

Animals move. People move. Gyms are full of people “getting in shape” by moving and lifting and all sort of groovy things. And in this book, we are after waking up and being happy and living useful and alert lives.

So, let’s move some more, with lots of awareness. As a chance to increase and improve our awareness. As a chance to improve and create ease and understanding in our movement. As a chance to be happier in the moment and feel younger and better in our bodies.

As a way to be in the present.

Sit again, and turn to the right a few times as the starting move. Go only as far as easy and then back, and do this just a few times.

Now put your hands on your ribs, right hand on the left side, left hand on the right ribs. Turn now to the right, letting your ribs join the fun. Ribs to the right; head to the right.

Now just go an easy distance to your right, and let your head stay pointed that way, and bring your ribs to the left and back to the middle, as if head and ribs were two friends that needed to learn about being separate and equal. From here, bring your ribs to the right and your head to the left, so they pass each other and your head ends up pointing the way you are sitting, and your ribs and chest ends up pointing to the right.

Do this awhile, softly and as easily as you can, noticing your ribs and your sternum and your breathing and what your head wants to do and your spine. Go back and forth, head one way, ribs and chest the other.

Then rest and feel and sense yourself.

Then turn ribs and head together to the right, noticing both of them and see if the turning is more clear and easy.

Try something like this a number of times today, to both the left and the right. Notice your spine all day. Good.

Happy, or What?

DAY ELEVEN: TAKING STEPS TO HEAVEN

Studying Happiness


Sometimes we are happy.

Sometimes we aren’t.

What if happiness were more or less our birthright, and when we are unhappy, we have a grand and glorious chance to learn just how we take away ourselves from our birthright?
How we throw away our happiness?


So today, make a study: when are you happy?
When are you unhappy?

Notice three things:
1. What kind of thoughts you are having when happy and unhappy.

And:
2. What is going on in your body in times of happiness and times of unhappiness.

And:
3. Are you present when you are happy and are you present when you are unhappy.

Actually, notice four things: when you discover yourself unhappy, do you get more unhappy about this, or do you get curious?

how to get smarter

Christopher plus two angels, Bella and Mona.


How to get smarter?

Pay attention to reality.

Look at what is out there.

Get interested. No words, just perceptions.

And then start to perceive differences:
if I look from this way,
and that,
what is the difference?

If it is morning or
night,
what is the difference?

What is the difference in
me
if I am breathing in
or
breathing out?

How is the bird I am looking at
different than
that bird over there?

If I put my weight more
on
my right foot
than my left,
what could I learn about how I stand.

This easy life
is all about learning
and learning is all
about delight
delighting
in the little differences
details
joys
distinctions.

Yes.
Life is good;.

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

Thinking without "thinking". Realization.

From a 108 chapter book,
108 ways in 27 days
to achieve
simplicity,
happiness
and almost enlightenment:

EIGHTY: SOUL

Asking for an answer.

Ask yourself a question that is important for you.

Stand. Do tap, tap, and some of the movement lessons in standing that get you clearer about your standing in gravity body.

Take a walk.

Ask your mind to mull over the question, telling it, explaining that you won’t be using “words” to “think” about the question, but will just allow some deeper and quieter part of you to work on the question.

Take the walk.

Have the question “back there,” but don’t word-think about it.

Follow your breath and look for beauty in your walk, and sense your feet touching down and pushing off the ground.

When you come back from your walk, get a pencil/pen and paper and quickly, without “thinking” write whatever comes to your mind, about the specific question, or about “anything.”


This, as can be all your life, is an experiment.

See what happens.