Day Thirteen: Lucky Thirteen

Time is usually a mechanical construct, but there are real seasons to a year, and to a day. Taking a walk with sensing and tuning in to these seasons, is a sweet way to wake up to a different aspect of “now.”

Today, the thirteenth day of our sojourn, I’ll call lucky. I’m prejudiced, having been born on the thirteenth (Friday the 13, 1945, a while back, a war still going on, a great President having just died the day before). And who else thought thirteen lucky and significant?

The witches of Europe, who numbered maybe in the millions until the Church didn’t like woman having smarts, and didn’t like connection to natural life, and didn’t like people who discovered life from the Earth up, rather than from Authority down. So, a twelve month calendar was a necessity, instead of the witches 13 moon year.

The moon is full 13 times a year, and each moon month is roughly the same length, and all have nothing to do with some construct on paper, but with the real rotation of the moon around our planet. February is an idea. A full moon during the time of deepest snows and short days getting a bit longer, is a part of life’s natural rhythm.

So, hey, today, take a walk or two, and sense with your feet and your moving legs, and hands and moving arms, and spine holding up your head, and eyes taking in the world, and breathing coming and going in its own rhythm, sense how this season, whatever season you are in feels, at a subtle and everyday sensory level, to you.


And play with awakening also to the season of the day. Again, 5 in the afternoon is a construct that crowds the freeways of the world, but a time in the season of the day when the sun is setting, or moving toward setting, and coolness or darkness might or might not be coming according to the season in the year, this is all there, throughout the day.

Day a walk or two and sense the season of the year and the season of the day. Stay as happily present in sensation and sight and sound and awaring as you can. Enjoy.

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.

parenting, revolutions, devolutions, evolutions, revolutions

always something to do: planting bulbs, see more at marvelous marlie blog pics

new year
and tempting

resolutions:
i will
be
a better parent

better
at what?

well:
i'll say something nice
everyday
to each
child
i talk to
and will
talk to every child
that lives
in the same
house

that would be good

i'll say something
unexpectedly nice
something new
that i didn't say
ten thousand times
already
didn't say
once
already

that's more of a stretch

i'll forgive myself
for the moments
of anger
and confusion

i'll try out
the thework.com
when things get rough

i'll take a walk
take a breath
sense my feet
follow my breathing
remember i'm alive

love myself
laugh at myself

slow down

slow down and sense
and love
and look
and wait...

for what...

for coming
back
to
now

when things get
rough

all sorts
of possibilities

good

Walking and Living, both Good

WALKING AND LOVING LIFE

To walk is part of the miracle
of being human
in a planet where gravity
is one of the big three
influences,
along with sunlight, and air.

This is who we are,
long tall creatures,
ready to fall forward,
again, and again,
and if we stick one foot after another
out to catch us,
it's called walking.

Walking is fun,
and it's good for us.
Personally, I'm not that fond of walking on concrete
and asphalt,
my feet are softies
or spoiled by years working in a garden I created,
where I made the paths as moisture retaining
and weed supressing areas by
using cardboard covered with woodchips.

I like to walk on grass and sand
and dirt
and even gravel.


And that's my preference.

Be that as it may,
some people say that walking is the best exercise,
and I might agree.

Two other contenders for BEST
exercise:
Swimming and
Sex.

Both of the horizontal,
fish world,
more primative,
and certainly with their own spice and
charm.

More of this posting
at Walking Again
as part of the WakeUp-Feldenkrais blog.

Big Picture: Walking and Being Human

The Big Picture:
Upright bodies on little feet.

Most of us can walk. If we can’t walk easily, or suddenly have trouble, we realize how precious is this skill that so many take for granted. To walk on two feet, circus tigers and trained bears aside, is a uniquely human ability.

This ability is amazing.
If you attempt to make a sculptural model of a human being,
two little feet way down there holding up this long body,
with big head,
and ribs and arms to balance
and support,
this scupture will topple,
unless you give your figure a staff to hold,
or put a big pedestal gluing the feet
down..

But, two feet are unstable.
That means: a huge increase in mobility.
It also means walking is easier than standing

(we don’t need to go into that now,
but think of it this way:
since we are inherently unstable,
falling forward from one foot to the next
catching ourselves witht the moving forward
foot
as we fall,
a that's walking, folks,
more or less)

If we have a bum knee
or a hip trouble
or get old and creaky
or have had a stroke
or have a neurological difficulty,
we begin to appreciate
how miraculous
and wonder this walking gift
and ability of ours is.


And how does this fit into the Big Picture?
We are human beings.
We don't automatically scamper around
like a calf or a young goat.
We have a lot of learning to
come to walking.
We have a big brain,
that was designed to learn
by movement and discovery.

So,
how are we improving and learning
and using our big brains
these days?

Walking:
use it or lose it.

Ability to learn:
use it our lose it.

Wonderful brain:
use it or lose it.

Love:
use it our lose it.

Love?
What's that got to do with walking?

Can we love ourselves
and everyone we see
and all that we see and notice
around us
as we take a walk?

Doesn't that sound
like a powerful meditation?

I think so.

Ciao,
Chris