Day 51: What's new under the sun?

cutting up magazines to make collage "soul" cards, one of many 'new' things we can create


What’s new under the sun?

There is a saying, that “There is nothing new under the sun,” a saying that was spoken before computers and airplanes and global warming and raw chocolate pies.

So maybe there are new things under the sun, but whatever the phrases validity, you and I can both find some new ways of doing what we usually do.

Say brushing our teeth, another hand, standing on one foot, eyes closed, one side of the mouth first, singing while we do it, if any of these are new ways.

Sitting down into a chair. Hmm. That’s harder to discover new ways, and good, hard is good, it just means we have to think and even more, to pay attention, as we sit down. Maybe put a hand down first, or the other hand, or sneak up to the chair sideways and sit, or stand directly in front and cross one leg in front of the other and swivel down.

Don’t listen to me, discover some ways yourself.

Ways to read a book, standing, sitting, holding in one hand, lying down and it’s hanging from the ceiling, who knows?


And what about pathways to get across town.

Ways of introducing yourself.

Ways of reacting to another person who isn’t doing things that you want.

Ways of cheering up yourself or others that you haven’t thought of before, or haven’t tried.

And then: what ways have you played with before, so they aren’t totally “new under the sun,” but you’ve forgotten for a long time to pull them out and use them as variations and explorations in your life?

So today, play and explore and enjoy and learn and smile.

Friday to You, Friday to Me

the sun came
out
and
big baby that I am
i am happier
now that
i am
warmer

National November Writing Month
continues,
la, la
another 3000 words

Someone else doing this
and her reasons it's a useful
deal
at Klosekraft nyc blogchick

a piece of today's

Therapy as hints and suggestions for a little shift here, a little option there. Milton Erickson sending people on hikes up Squaw Peak. To get a larger view. To use their big muscles. The breathe real air and connect with Earth.

“When’s the last time you been to the Overlook Hike, Ronnie?”

“Do I look like I need a camp counselor?”

She waits. The smart ass answer is, ‘Yes,’ and she’s wondering what the answer will be if she slows down, waits and really looks.

Slow down she tells herself.

Slow down, she tells him, inside. Who knows if he is listening. It would be wonderful if he would listen to the quiet secret voice she sends out. Sometimes to clients. Sometimes to friends. Sometimes to troubled and needy folks around the world.

Soldiers in Iraq. Iraqis in Iraq. Women if Africa and the rough cities of America. Hungry children. Species on the verge of extinction, having no idea that they are their kind are about to be the last.

A wish for peace and fairness in the world sweeps over her.

“You look worried and afraid, Ronnie. What can you tell me about what you’d like to have happen today.”

“I want a better Elaine.”

“Can’t do.”

“I want her to shut up with her criticism and blaming and complaining.”

“Can’t do.”

“What the hell can you do?”

Really, this could change your life

And you've heard that before

and
to move better
and think better
and rewire the brain
and create an atmosphere of
joyful learning
and improvement in your life

do check out

New Site for Anat Baniel Method

The shift

Are we going to go under
as a species,
or are we going
to rise
to the opportunity,
for a sweet and amazing
resurrection of human,
humane,
earth centered,
love oriented,
now is great
values?

This movie, is a great start: The Shift

4 minutes.
Take them.

Awareness + Look for the New + Forgiveness = a Start to Wonderful Relationship

WONDERFUL RELATIONSHIP
This month, on April 29, Sunday, from 12 to 6, with an hour off for lunch at 2, I'll be hosting a workshop on how to have or move toward (if you are single) a Wonder-Full relationship.(See Current Offerings) To build background for this workshop, the Monday essays in Slow Sonoma will be on relationship this month. .

(The blog essays will now be once a week, on Mondays in here, on Wednesdays at WakeUp Feldenkrais, and on Fridays at The Health Blog).

So, let's start with three fine ingredients in having or attracting a Wonderful Relationship.

BE PRESENT.
This sounds so simple, and is the key to a wonderful life as well as a wonderful relationship, and yet we forget this so often.

When we are present, we actually listen to, look at, enjoy and pay attention to the person with whom we are spending time. If this is our partner, then we will be allowing them to be themselves, and will be giving ourselves a chance to enjoy the miracle of their being alive and in our life.

If we are single, to pay real attention to others is to allow them to show themselves at their best, and who knows, one of these people might show themselves to be someone we could really enjoy.

Notice how in speaking we so often lose the present by talking inside our heads the words we want to say next even while the other person is still talking. So we aren't in the moment, we aren't with them, we are stuck on ourselves and don't know them, and can't really learn about them. By not being present, we lose the ability to listen, and when we can't listen, we can't really connect.

No listening = no love.

Also, and this is HUGE:
if we are present, we can be giving ourselves attention, attention to our breathing, attention to being in our bones and skin and shape and connections, attention to the sights and sounds and delights of now. And, when we are giving ourselves real attention, especially when we are sensing ourselves, we aren't going to be in the oh so pitifully normal state of humanity
of striving to get attention from others outside us.

If we can have our attention on ourselves, then we can love another, or enjoy another, instead of just wanting, waiting, scheming and demanding of their attention for us.

So, be present.


BE EXCITED ABOUT NEWNESS
Now, in an old marriage or relationship, this can be greatly underappreciated. We can take the other for granted, or even worse, only be looking at them to do the same old wrong thing again. We have them pegged, and all we do is look for proof that they are going to show their rotten colors again. This obviously is a recipe for hell on earth, but taking each other for granted is a recipe for a dull and lifeless life.

What is new?

What haven't we noticed?

What is unique and alive and excited in the person with whom we are spending time?

Again, if we are single and this is a "new person," this search for the new and unexpected and the fresh could pay wonderful dividends.


LEARN A WAY OF FORGIVENESS
OR: LEARN TO LEAVE BEHIND THE STORY.
This is the Work of Byron Katie, or any other system you know of forgiving, and that forgiving can't be of the snobby, I'm right and you're wrong and I'm going to deign to let up a little on my barrage of hatred and criticism. Forgiveness to be real has to come almost to a smile or a laugh of joy that the so called "bad" thing, wasn't the thing, but was our own inner reaction to this.

In other words, someone says some harsh thing about us. If they are bad, evil, on our poop list for this, then we are carrying a burden in our heart. If we have phony forgiveness and decide to like them even if they are bad, we are still separated from and feeling superior to them. If we do the Work, and see that those were just words, and our reactions inside to the words is what is causing the pain, then we can laugh and be free.

And love again.

This could be theoretical, but isn't if we doing the Katie work. See the many essays herein, or go to thework.com.

---

PLEASE BE WELL:


Pleasure
Ease
Awareness
Sensitive Strength
Enlightenment

BE

Waking up to now.
Embracing Change.
Learning to learn.
Loving to move, improve and transform.

Slow Sonoma, Slow Food, Slow Glow

SLOW FOOD
Sometimes people ask me if I'm in the Slow Food movement because the main blog site I put on my business cards is slowsonoma.com.

Well, yes and no, that's the answer.

Yes, in the sense that slow Sonoma started as my campaign slogan when I ran for City Council 2 years ago. This town, this small and wonderful and very asleep to the inner life town of Sonoma, is full of people who imagine they are living a life that is high quality. A big campaign issue is always Quality of Life. With caps.

And then, people rush around through their lives as if they have to get so much done that there is no time to stop and smell the roses, no time to stop and look at the sky, no time to walk down the block and see who's home and how their neighbor's gardens are doing, no time even to cultivate their own gardens, instead leaving the job to some mow and blow and go guys ( the lawn janitors, I call them.)

So my campaign was: slow down. Build less houses. Drive slower, slow down the speed limit. Walk and bicycle more, slow down the rushing around. Turn off the televisions and talk to each other and your family.

Slow down and know this great wonderful truth: this is our life, right now, and only right now.

All else is a dream.

And so food, slow down when you are preparing a meal, slow down while you are eating a meal, talk to the others, look at them, look at the food, be quiet and taste more deeply, take a breath between bites, stretch out the meal and the companionship.

And how do I differ? Eating raw food, the cooking isn't slow, because it isn't. A salad can be easily and sweetly made, a dressing smoothie can be easily made, food can be fresh and natural. Fruit as fruit is heaven, no need to ruin it in a pie. Go for the real thing.

Slow down and touch and taste the food. If you want to cook, cook as little as possible and slowly and with love. If you don't want to cook, savor the richness and the flavors and all those enzymes and the sun kissed water in your food.

Life is good. Food is good. Now is good.

Yes.

Practicing

PRACTICING
Sometimes, you’ve set out to do something, and it’s getting so late, you are tired and don’t want to do it.

Thus for me, tonight I don’t want to do my one blogero a day and yet it was one of my new year’s resolutions, as was doing the work of Byron Katie ( coming to Sonoma on Feb. 6), so here’s the short posting and also the work.

The thought: it’s too hard to write this late.

One: Is it true that it’s too hard to write this late.
Answer: The good old standby: I don’t know.

Two: Can I absolutely know that it’s too hard to write this late.
Answer: No, I can’t.

Three: How do I react when I believe that it’s too hard to write this late.
Answer: I get even more tired. I feel weak. I feel persecuted by my own previous enthusiasm.

Four: Who would I be without the belief that: it’s too hard to write this late.
Answer: I’d just be a tired man as a keyboard, having some fun, learning once more that reality is what it is and my suffering comes mostly from my ideas and thoughts and beliefs about reality.

So: what’s the turn around to it’s too hard to write this late.
Answer: It’s not too hard.
My thinking is too hard this late.
Life is good this late.

Night, now.

Happiness and Inner Quiet

Yoga in the living room

HAPPINESS AND QUIET
This is all it takes to be happy: stop being unhappy.

The trick is, this isn’t a matter of “trying” to be happy. This is a matter of turning off the juice that is lighting up the unhappiness.

Now, the essay on Byron Katie shows a simple and direct route toward turning off this juice.

Here is another route and, as in the Katie work, it is both “simple” and profound all at once.

This is it: feel the pain as sensation and separate out the words about and around the pain, and stop paying attention to them.

Some examples. Someone does something that makes you really angry. Okay, fine, you are angry. Sense where in yourself that anger resonates. Discover where in your body you feel tightness, or a muscular readiness to strike out, or a changing of your breathing. Sense each and every particular of this conglomeration you call “anger.”

And then drop all the accompanying words about how bad, stupid, selfish, awful, f….ed up, and so on that so and so is.

Just sense the anger, and skip all the words. In a way, this is exactly question four of the Byron Katie Work: who would you be without the story? Except that this is not even an answer, this is just a pure sensation of yourself in the moment, with whatever feeling you are feeling minus the usual words that keep your misery fueled for hour after hour (or, year after year – don’t we all know someone, if not ourselves, who has nursed a grudge for decades?).


Another example. One day, I was working in the community garden and someone told me that a friend of ours, one we knew had been struggling for quite a while, was dead. The immediate effect was as if a small blow to my heart area and a sort of pressing in our myself from all sides. As I sensed this and walked in the garden, looking at the flowers and feeling this pain, I felt, wordlessly sad, and at the same time, immensely happy to be alive and to be sensing this “pain.”

Then, the words kicked in. I should be visited. I should have written and sent a poem. I should have….. And then I felt awful.

And why not? All these shoulds are impossible to do once the time had past. The here and now sensations in me where real, but the “should have…” story was completely unreal.

In reality I could be both sad and happy and full of life at the same time. Out of reality, it was just more of the everyday unhappiness that we can get anytime we blast ourselves with a bunch of words of shame or blame or guilt.

So that’s it: sense whatever you are feeling and leave the words out of it and experience what that is like. If I tell you what will happen, I will be denying what this is all about: sensing our own reality, for ourselves, in each and every moment.


(Note. The essays are rotating through the three blogs, more or less one per day.
So you might want to check:
WakeUp Feldenkrais®
and
Tai Chi Yoga Health Weight Loss Joy

for the last two essays.)

Happiness and The Work

HAPPINESS AND THE WORK
The importance of happiness.

This seems obvious, doesn’t it? That it’s important to be happy?

And then, when we aren’t happy, we have all our reasons that we cling to like a magnetic poison: it is so and so’s fault. If only this had happened. If only they hadn’t done that. If only….

Which is to say, we are so sure that our happiness (and unhappiness) is the fault to something, someone, somehow outside of ourselves.

Then along comes the woman who goes by the name of Byron Katie , holding out this possibility: our suffering has one cause and one cause only: our relationship to our thoughts. And she doesn’t expect us to believe or accept her interpretation. There is no prescription in what she calls, the Work, to “let go” of your thoughts, to “let go” of your beliefs.

(Katie is coming to Sonoma on February 6 c/o our own wonderful...Readers' Books...)

She opens up options, and that leads to freedom. (Interestingly enough, this is what Feldenkrais work does, too.).

Her first gift, is the gift of setting us back into honesty. We don’t have to pretend to be “above” all the petty nonsense with which we drive ourselves crazy. Her first injunction is : Judge Your Neighbors.

Her second is: Write it down.

So, off we go, writing down the stuff we dislike and hate and are annoyed with in others: Dad shouldn’t have judged me. Mom should be nicer. Son should be more….. Daughter shouldn’t….. This person should have …..

And actually, you work through one person at a time, so you make a whole laundry list of all the things Dad or Mom or daughter or son or ex-mate should and shouldn’t do or have done. You judge. You write it down, writing being a way of slowing down the chatter and the obsessive swirl of thoughts. ( Interestingly enough, Feldenkrais works with slowing down, there of moving; again: go slower if you want more awareness.)

So Judge Your Neighbor, Write it Down, and then what? Ask Four Questions and Turn it Around.

Aha. The famous four questions. Which are: (see as well: thework.com.)

1) Is it true?

2) Can I absolutely know it’s true?

3) How do I react when I believe that thought?

4) Who would I be without that thought?

Seems simple enough, and yet, these are questions to bring us to and even amused and sometimes horrified self awareness. Let’s take an example, someone has a ex-spouse and the spouse is saying nasty things about them.

So the thought could be X should stop saying nasty things.

Question One asks: 1. Is it true that X should stop saying nasty things? Now, social convention and good manners and positive psychology and Oprah would all say Yes indeed, but we are talking reality here, as in: who is in charge of X? If we are in charge of X (i.e., are the God we imagine/wish to be), then fine, we can turn of X’s bad mouth. But that mighty force Reality says, X is X and at this point in time X is into the nasty thing saying.

Oh, well. The reality is X is saying nasty things. So that’s it. The reality truth, not the be good truth, not the world as we want it truth, is that X should do what X is doing.

Second question, if we can’t get behind that way of seeing things, we can ask: 2. Is it absolutely true that X should stop saying nasty things? Absolutely, as in: we understand the higher meaning of the Universe, and we know that it is in the Higher interest of the Universe and our life, and we absolutely know this, that X should be behaving better.

This is pretty hard to say yes, to.

Okay, enough of that.

Now the consequence question: the third question: 3.How do I react when I attach to the thought that X should stop saying nasty things?

Well, we react with anger and sadness and distraction and worry and ….You know the list. And also: we glare at X, or say bad things about X, or refuse to speak to X, or yell at X. These, too, are part of the consequences of my attachment to the thought.

So, here’s were the self realization comes in: this trouble is coming from our attachment to our thoughts about X’s behavior. Not from X's behavior. Our thoughts are cauasing all that pain, and this isn't theory: bad feeling by bad feeling, judgment written down by judgment written down we ask number 3 and come up with the consequences FOR OURSELVES OF OUR ATTACHMENT TO THE THOUGHT.

Hmm.

And then question four: Who would I be without the thought that X should stop saying nasty things?

And this is not saying: drop it. This is not saying: let it go. This is not saying: thought is bad and we must rise above it, or stiffle it, or go to silence/ peace and Realization.

No.

This is saying: imagine for a second or two, or more, what and how we would feel and be if we just looked at or visualized X, but without any thoughts in my head that X should stop saying nasty thing? Just saw them as a blank slate as it were. This is a way of trying out the world without my thought, without my attachment to our thought.

(This is about giving our brains options, which, interestingly enough, is core to how the Feldenkrais Way gets such dramatically better results than all the systems telling you the "right way" to do things.)

So, we see how and who we are with the thought, which is question three. And we can see and test out who and what we’d be without the thought, this is question four.

So, that’s three fourths of the four part deal:

Judge your neighbor.
Write it down.
Ask four questions.
Turn it around.

The turn around is just to take the sentence: X should stop saying nasty things about me and "turn it around" in two ways:

One: I should stop saying nasty things about X.
(This is saying to me: can I practice my own medicine?)

Two: I should stop saying nasty things about me.
(This is why I feel bad when X says nasty things about me. When I believe these things since I'm saying the same thing to myself, it's going to "hurt" when X says them.)

So, that’s the Work: Judge. Write. Ask. Turn around.

Sounds simple, or too easy, and it’s not. It’s work, and it requires time and paper and intelligence and going inside to our real heart intelligence, to real honesty.

And the pay off is this: we can be free from our suffering, one thought at a time.



(Note. The essays are rotating through the three blogs, more or less one per day.
So you might want to check:
WakeUp Feldenkrais®
and
Tai Chi Yoga Health Weight Loss Joy
for the last two essays.)

13 New Ideas

NEW IDEAS
In Joan Huguenard’s January 13 column, we were invited to come up with some new ideas. This is the type of invitation I like. Here goes:

1) In city elections, when a PAC (Political Action Committee) donates money to support one or more candidates, they be required to match that amount in contributions to local non-profits.

2) In city elections, if a candidate spends more than $3000 on their campaign, they be required to match dollar for dollar the amount above that $3000 with equal contributions to local non-profits.

3) Notice which leg you put into pants first. See what it’s like to start the other way around.

4) Imagine what it would be like to have this non-habitual response: someone is rude to us, and we reaction with curiosity, amusement or delight.

5) Declare partial independence from the entrapments of the industrial/technological world. Spend one day a week car free and television free and computer free. While we're at it, go sugar free and cell-phone free. What's left, just a hell of an opportunity to be present, to love and to live.

6) Think of something you want to write down and then print it out upside down.

7) Think of something else you want to write and write it out with the non-habitual hand.

8) Pay all the teachers in the district twice their existing salaries and fire all the teachers who aren’t fluent in Spanish within two years ( since kids are expected to become fluent in English in about that time).

9) Subscribe to ( and/or bug Reader’s Books to carry again) Ode Magazine. In the recent issue are idea such as balancing the present 3rd world economic debt with a 1st world ecological debt for the resources we extract and the pollution we create; an article on the rekindling of faith in someone who abandoned organized religion; an article on the connection between soccer fervor and women’s liberation in Iran.

10) And this idea, which could save the world: end the legal status of corporations as bodies of limited liability. Put them in the same boat as anyone else who ruins something: they have to pay to fix it.

11) Learn to stand from sitting by shifting weight from pelvis to feet without any use of the arms and without using the back until the weight is fully shifted.

12) Ponder this possibility: both a “problem” with another person and a sore back have the same source: the organization of thoughts and understandings between the two ears.

13) Think of thirteen as a lucky number, the number native European shamanesses (a.k.a. “witches”) considered sacred because it was the number of moons in a year.

Chris Elms
996-1437