Life Notes: The Yoga of Midlife
The trick in midlife is to keep moving, to breathe through it, allowing the muscles to soften, the mind to begin to rest, and the heart to begin to open. Keep practicing. As I dedicated more and more time to my own practice, sadness began to move through my body and into consciousness with each hip opening. Fear fluttered in my belly as I kicked my legs up the wall in my first handstand since I was 12. And joy! So many moments of joy as my body had another “aha moment” of recognition. Asanas, the funny shapes we make in yoga, were a secret portal. Yoga had invited me to feel all my feelings, and here they were. I didn’t have to talk for hours; I didn’t have to “share.” I owned my experience, embodied my feelings, maybe for the first time in my life.
The Embodiment of Primary Respiration: Order, Organization and Transparency
I want to share my perception of PR within the context of what I call the Long Tide Model of Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy. I teach several biodynamic sensory awareness principles regarding PR. These principles transform into stages of sensory exploration. The first basic principle of sensing PR: It is the highway upon which embodiment of the whole moves.
EMBODIED APPROACH TO HEALTH AND FITNESS: THRIVING MINDFULLY
As humans we are resilient creatures. This makes us great survivors, and it can also create a blind spot in our approach to our wellbeing. We can go to extremes without realizing. For instance, we enjoy the taste and feeling of a soda, we end up drinking it every day. We can work till we get too sick or have all work with no play, or all play with no work. We can get obsessed with an exercise or let go of any healthy movement because we can survive anyway.
THE THREAT RESPONSE CYCLE AS A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE ON MINDFULNESS
When I talk about mindfulness, I’m talking about everyday mindfulness as opposed to something esoteric: Mindful as the opposite of mindless. Doing something mindlessly means your mind is not engaged in it: there is a mechanical, or a passive quality to it. It’s not that “mindless” is synonymous with “passive” and “mindful” with “active”. It’s more like giving a sense of some broad circles of meaning, with one that encompasses notions like “active”, or “engaged” (the “mindful” concept), and another that encompasses notions such as “passive” or “disengaged”.
Salutogensis and Well-Being
Today the Body is cast by neuroscience, to put it phenomenonologically, in Life's project, in all its visibility and evidence, so as to be revealed to prevailing disembodiment, in a liquified society at risk of rarefaction, by the acceleration of external cognitive time, with the consequent theft of people's internal, affective, relational time. It is a society which, absolutely, must meta-communicate with its own dominant Trait Mind (as defined below) about the role of mankind and our place in existence.
Moving Towards Freedom: Effecting Optimal Health Through Reichian Inspired Exercises
Wilhelm Reich is an important influence in what I am about to share so all aspects of our being are part of the process. The gentle movements that I’m writing about help me feel present in my body and ready for the day before I even step out of bed. They loosen segmental blocks that have occurred and continue to occur during my life and keep me lubricated and open from the inside out.