THE GLORY OF TODAY

Today is the end of the year.

Tomorrow is the beginning of a new year.

This is bogus and this is wonderful, a chance to remember how amazing a day can be, how amazing it is to be alive, how wonderful is the miracle of always, always, always being able to come to the present.

In the present we can begin anew.

A new year, a new day, a new moment: when we are now, we are alive. Sometimes we are stuck in our habits of what to do next, so: do nothing. Or stay present and move slowly, think slowly, feel slowly, allow the newness of now to inspire you to discovering a new way to move, a new way to feel, a new way to think.

Each moment is a gift.

Each moment is a present.

What a nice day, today, to move slowly and ponder and wonder and feel and smile in and about all the possibilities of a full and wonder-ful and aware and love filled and happy life.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

(Note. The essays are rotating through the three blogs, more or less one per day.
So you might want to check:
WakeUp Feldenkrais®
and
Life on Earth ::: Slow Sonoma
for the last two essays.)

TALKING TO JESUS

Me: Hey, Jesus, what do you think of this Christmas thing?

Jesus: This is a trick question, right? I'm supposed to say it's too commercial and ridiculous and way off from the simple, "give all your worldly goods to the poor and follow me," kind of thing I'm purported to have said.

Me: Well, what did you say?

Jesus: Love your brethren. Love your neighbors. Love your enemies. Love God.

Me: Some people get into a loving spirit at Christmas time.

Jesus: Well, I was kind of hoping for an all life commitment. As in loving your neighbors on Christmas day and on the Fourth of July, whatever that is about, and in traffic jams, whatever they are all about. What is this world all about, anyway?

Me: Making money and looking good in someone else's eyes. I think that's kind of what turns the wheels. And being comfortable, if you are in one of the rich nations.

Jesus: We didn't have so many nations back then. We had the Romans, kind of the Big Guys and everyone else, in that part of the world, didn't count for much. Seems like your country is kind of like the Romans, eh?

Me: So. Our country should give everything away to the poor?

Jesus: You know. Back in those days, I knew everything, but it was just some villages and Pharisees who didn't understand the true meaning of love and living a God-ly life. Now, you guys have created such an amazing mess.

Me: But are you all powerful and whatnot.

Jesus: Doesn't look like it, does it?

Me: But God is supposed to be omnipotent.

Jesus: Well, there's the whole: let them have free will and make as big a mess as possible and maybe they'll turn to God and find a way out. But, you know, the Osama Bin Laden people kind of think the same thing: destroy the modern world because it has strayed from God. Which it has. But the solution isn't God and destruction, it's love.

Me: Don't you go for that I am the Way thing anymore?

Jesus: I'm the Way of love and healing and accepting all classes and women and poor and lepers and prostitutes, and worst of all, tax collectors, and that's the way. It's not about getting on the Jesus team.

Me: You mean Buddhists might get into heaven?

Jesus: They go for rebirth, don’t' they? So they really don't need heaven.

Me: Where do all the extra people come from if there's rebirth.

Jesus: I'm not a Buddhist. Ask them.

Me: So do good people go to heaven?

Jesus: The whole eternal life promise. That's the big lure, isn't it?

Me: It's not what you offer?

Jesus: Well: it's not working very well to get people to love the guy next door and to stop blowing up the people in some other country. This after you die, heaven is going to be your reward thing, gets people out of the now.

Me: The now's my thing.

Jesus: The Kingdom of Heaven is within. When you get there, you are so Now, there's nothing left.

Me: So, do you have a message for people on this Christmas Day of 2006?

Jesus: Don't drink and drive. Listen more than you talk. Be quiet for awhile every night and morning. Think about the vastness of the world and the miracle of life. See if you can make a difference. And… love yourself and your neighbor and your doggone enemy. And God.

Me: What is God?

Jesus: God is the waking up to now and to love and the way you are when you are so easy with yourself and kind to other people you don't have a care in the world, and you feel great to be alive.


(Note. The essays are rotating through the three blogs, more or less one per day.
So you might want to check:
WakeUp Feldenkrais®
and
Life on Earth ::: Slow Sonoma
for the last two essays.)

OVEREATING AND CHOICES:

Self-attack, self-love, curiosity.

These mean that I have options. Options mean I am free, I'm a real human being, I'm not stuck, I can learn and change and enjoy my life even if I'm not perfect or things around me aren't perfect.

Now to the eating thing.

One of the weird and wonderful parts about eating a raw/ living foods way, is that you can eat tons and tons of food and never gain weight, and never be sick. One of the downsides, though, is that you can eat and eat and get a very full stomach that aches and pains you in the middle of the night.

That's what I had last night, my yummy-too-much-to-eat-at-night, too full and aching stomach complaining bitterly of my abuse of it.

I could have gone into the "I should not have eaten so much story," which seems true enough on the surface, but after you've done the Byron Katie work for awhile you realize that these "shoulds" always carry an undercurrent of implication: you are wrong. There is something wrong with you. The should is a shaming word, as are all the should nots.

So, what am I to do?

Love what I am in the ache. Sense myself deeply and love and appreciate who and what I am right then. Just to do that is to begin to relax and the pain then has a better chance of healing away, since my poor overstuffed body now isn't constricted and can use its energy digesting.

Love that I have a chance to be curious about what to do with this "eating too much at night" habit. What variations can I try on it? Eating with more attention at night would help, since lunch is the meal Marlie and I sit down together and pay happy attention to food, and night is kind of a get this and that a enjoy while reading a book or watching a video.

Hmm. That would be a nice shift. And I can chant before I eat.

Or eat standing.

Or ( and this is great, if, if, if I remember) sense myself, taste each bite and follow my breathing as I eat.

Or do yoga after I eat so I will want to be light in order to do the yoga.

Or do the Byron Katie work before I eat, in case I'm filling up some sort of emotional holes.

Lots to be curious about and explore.

Which is a way of loving myself.

So these are the choices:
1) To go into a war: Thou Shalt Not Eat This Way any More. This is dreary and it doesn't work.

2) To invoke curiosity and self-love, slowing down, shifting habits and upping awareness. This seems like a good strategy to me.

Happy solstice, Christmas, Hanukkah and all the rest.

( Note: I'm back on a one a day essay/ thought/ contemplation/ posting per day,
and
am rotating them through (roughly in this order)
slowsonoma.com,
then wakeup-feldenkrais,
then taichiyoghealthweightloss,
if that interests you.)

UNCONDITIONAL LOVE

What a concept, eh?

Is it really possible? The boys come in with mud on their feet and wreck the floor you spent hours cleaning, and you still have to love them?

Your wife talks all night on the phone, making jokes about how fat and stupid you have become, and you still have to love her?

The guy runs off with the twenty year younger secretary. Love anyone?

The borrower blithely purchases luxuries you would never grant yourself, and then just as blithely, "forgets" to repay, and then acts shocked when you ask for your money back. What a good excuse to not exactly love this one, eh?

Well, that's that lot of it. We're a bunch of selfish and thoughtless and oftentimes mean scoundrels.

Hard to love.

Hard as hell to love.

And how hard is hell to love? I don't know, but there are a lot of places on earth right now that could give that phrase a go for its money, and just to realize how great it is not to be living in Sudan or Iraq or some slum in Brazil/Africa/ Chicago/ Mexico City/ anywhere, is to begin to see that maybe things aren't so bad when the hubbie runs off with the hottie.

But to love him, the scoundrel? Love her, the bitch? Love them, the selfish and thoughtless one? Love It, the Mean Thing?

Well, well, well. A deep subject, as a former friend of mine used to say, a friend who won't speak to me and whom I love. From a distance of necessity. And joy. Loving her while she's still got a bug up her ass is a lot of fun.

That's a weird concept , but try it out.

All these people that fill the shadow edges of our phone books, who we don't really want to talk to, who we can't feel good inside when we think about them, what if they were a source of joy rather than the kind of undercurrent grind of dissatisfaction that they are?

This is the hoot of unconditional love: you don't have to wait around for the impossible, for the liar to be honest, for the scoundrel to be straight, for the rat to be unselfish. You can just love and enjoy your loving while they are still waltzing around in their lives of small minded slop. Or worse. Large minded larceny. Whatever. They are the mean and the selfish and the unfaithful, and that's their job in life.

And we ARE NOT THE MARTYRS. NO. NO. NO. NO.

This isn't about suffering. Suffering is not unconditional love. Love is really digging and appreciating them as they are, in a way that feels good inside us. We feel good.

Now, another thing here, and this is the rathole down which many people send their minds to avoid this brave new world of unconditional love. This other thing is that unconditional love does not mean condoning something you wish to stop. If someone is abusing a child, you can love this person, and separate them from the child. Call the police. Talk to them firmly. Wrap your arms around the child.

And love this person.

Yuk.

Well. So be it. Hate the person, and how do you feel inside and what good does that do anyone? Perhaps it shows the child it's okay to hate, which gets tricky, since it's fine to be angry, if you are a child and you are being pushed around unfairly. Or if you are an adult being pushed around unfairly.

It's just not fair to your own life to allow that circumstance, as an adult, get you pushed out of your happiness. Change the circumstance. Leave. Say no. Call the police. Put up your voice and strength to stop something that needs to be stopped.

And still: keep loving.

How?

Well, that's a Byron Katie essay, which this isn't, and here's the good news: you don't keep loving by Trying to love, or by Being Good, or Being Full of Love. You keep loving by doing the Work and discovering : this is who and how I am when I hold to my thoughts of condemnation, and this is who I am when I see and love What Is, for being What Is?

Is that still complicated?

Yes. It is.

This is one of the most complicated and wonderful things in life, this chance, which comes from the work of Byron Katie, or the work of being purely present, or the work of not grasping and not avoiding (sometimes called Buddhism) or the work of loving your enemies (sometimes called Christianity), this chance to not fall into misery, sorrow, resentment, angry, victimhood or hatred, just because someone else has decided to play out the not so wonderful side of human nature.

For now though, this: this is about making choices, not about being good. It's about feeling good for the love of ourselves and the love of life and the love of feeling love, and not letting other people set up the conditions for when and how we can shine and glow and be free from within.

This is about freedom and the glory of being alive and having awareness and making choices.

Wow.

And it's about now.

Full Spectrum Lighting

.....
For health and happiness and keeping up the winter spirits and reconnecting
what we really need as human beings,
it may be very important to feed our eyes and minds
real light.



Pathway in garden I designed in Sonoma. See bottom of sidebar for longer story.
Photo: R. Dale


FULL SPECTRUM LIGHTING
If you are feeling a little blue this time of year, part of it could be the sugar overload
of "the season,"
and the last essay in here will help break that habit.

Part of it is all the expectations to do all sorts of things that other people
think you should be doing,
and that requires some
sweet and delightful work of the Byron Katie sort.
Either see thework.com, or
do a search of my other sites for Byron Katie for numerous essays.

And, it may be a light deprivation, too much time indoors and that indoor time your mind and self being fed by artificial light that is a big offshoot from the real light with which the human species evolved for millions of years.

Worst of all, living your days under fluorescent lights, and you know, at least at some level what that is doing to your mood. Guess what? It's also undermining your health.

I'll give you some web addresses, including one that right away starts to give you lots of information.

And that's it for now. Just think about it. Remember when you were a child and how free and happy you felt when you got to get outside into the real light. That child may well be starving now.

Go outside more.

Get yourself full spectrum lights.

Enjoy.


Here are a few sites. You can google all the more that you wish.


natural lighting

full spectrum solutions


Mercola reports. Starts off telling about this and that, as per below, and then has lots more::::

BENEFITS OF FULL SPECTRUM LIGHTING:
• Improved mood
• Enhanced mental awareness, concentration and productivity ...
• Superior visual clarity and color perception ...
• Better sleep ...
• Super-charged immune system ...
• More energy ...
• Reduced eye strain and fatigue with a glare-free and comfortable reading environment ...
• Greater learning ability and intelligence ...

Sunlight Starvation Starts in Your Brain

To begin with, when light enters your eyes, it not only goes to your visual centers enabling you to see; it also goes to your brain's hypothalamus.

The hypothalamus is so important to the body's functioning that it is known as the brain's brain. This means that it controls the part of the nervous system regulating automatic and metabolic processes in the body. The hypothalamus controls body temperature, hunger and thirst, water balance and blood pressure. It links the nervous system to the endocrine system.

Read more at: Mercola reports

SMART EATING
If you want to be healthy, you need to eat healthy, to exercise and to get outdoors. And to be happy.

OR: BEYOND SUGAR.

Let's just start with eating healthy.

The first step to eating healthy is to substitute things that are good for you for things that are not. We'll start with this: get rid of all artificial sweeteners and sugar.

Gasp.

Yeah, yeah, and this is about becoming a new person, transformation, and that means: see if you can find a way to get excited about coming undone from stuckness in habits.

So, the sugar thing. Well, hell: people like the sweet taste. Fine, give yourself the sweet taste: apples, bananas, sweet potatoes, carrots, dates, mangos, pears, apricots and so on. If that isn't enough, use some raw honey, or raw agave syrup, or maple syrup.

Go sweet that is raw and natural.

But what about ice cream and cakes and all that food that people eat on their ways to cancer and heart attacks and obesity?

Skip it all.

But it taste good.

Sure. Think, look, figure it out: why does it taste good?

FAT PLUS SWEET = THE DESERTS AND TREATS WE LOVE.

Okay. So let's make two lists, all of raw ingredients. You mix and match and make yourself something, either in a blender, or a bowl, or right together ( the tahini spread over the date, the almond and the raisin put into your mouth at the same time) to give yourself fat plus sweet = health.

Here goes:

Apple ........ Pecans
Banana ........ Walnuts
Figs ........ Tahini
Apricot ........ Sunflower seeds (soaked overnight)
Cherry ........ Pumpkin seeds (soaked overnight)
Tomato ........ Avocado
Date/ Raisin ........ Cashews (soaked overnight)
Grapes ........ Filberts (soaked overnight)
Persimmon ........ Flax seeds (soaked overnight)
Peaches ........ Coconut "Oil"
Berries ........ Almonds (soaked overnight)
Any fruit ........ Any nut or seed (soaked overnight)
Maple syrup ........ Raw nut butters (expensive )
Raw honey ........ Brazil nuts
Raw agave syrup ........ Macadamia nuts

It's straightforward. Mix and match from the left and right columns. Think of classic candy bars with almonds and chocolate (which you can add to any of the above mixes, using raw organic cacao nibs). Keep it raw. Since we are not only getting off of all the damage sugar creates, but moving toward all the health that raw promotes, go raw in the new habit.

Think of another classic, the Waldorf salad: celery, apples and walnuts, and think about doing that with your blends: adding some green to the fat and sweet to make it a salad, so some lettuce or spinach and some soaked seeds or almonds and some raspberries, say.

Your taste buds will love this and your body will too.


Why all the soaking? Seeds have natural enzyme inhibitors to keep the seeds from starting to grow until the seed is nice and wet. So a batch of sunflower seeds on a counter won't sprout. But they won't digest that well either. Soak them and the enzyme inhibitor will dissolve and you'll get one of the things you eat raw for: the enzymes.

The other reasons are flavor, simplicity and connectedness to nature and yourself. And immense benefits for health.

So, throw out everything with sugar in it. And start to mix and match and delight in your own raw and organic and wonderful fat and sweet combos.

FOOD IS GOOD

Food is good, food is God if you are hungry, really hungry and want to stay alive. Food is the fuel that keeps us moving, so we can move around and grow or harvest or hunt more food. And moving so we can touch each other and make love and make more of the species, which, at this point in the human / Earth dance seems not so necessary.

But, hey, skip the babies 'n make love, or make love and make (not many) babies, moving is good, moving is God, food is good, food is God.

What the hell is this chapter about?

Connecting to the present is one sort of food, the food of awareness. If we connect to our breathing as a way of connecting to the present, we are connecting to air, to the food of the middle of our beings. And when we eat food, especially healthy food, we are feeding the body part of our Selves.

Awareness for the mind, breathing for the lungs, food for the body. Or is it awareness for the Self, thinking/ learning for the brain, breathing for the middle and food for the body?

Doesn't matter.

We have many ways of feeding ourselves, and maybe these words will feed something in you, strike some chords, stimulate something that you already knew, and were close to knowing, or forgot and now remember: this life is precious, and to feed ourselves in an aware and healthy matter is a means of worship in a way.

And what is healthy food?

Fresh.

Local.

Organic.

Organic and grown with love and good soil, soil that has been treated like God, like the creator that it is, like the miracle that it is. Soil that has been loved and feed is the soil we want our food from.

Food that we grow ourselves this way and wild food, that has to be the best for us. Fresh as in we pick it today and eat it today, if we can pull that off.

And if we can't have lots of fresh homegrown by ourselves food, we can perhaps have at least some flats of wheatgrass growing in a section of our kitchen or yard, and be perking up the soil of our wheatgrass with kelp and minerals from oyster shells and our own compost.

Food is good, food is god, food is fun, food is work, but this is work to create the fuel to live. Living is good and eating is good when we take in with love and pleasure what we need to have a healthy and wonderful life.

This is going in circles. Fine. So is life a circle. Eat, love, live, smile.

Offerings, Classes and Fees:
Wonderful to be alive.
Wonderful to be now.
Wonderful to return to love.
Wonderful to connect with earth, and body, and others and breath and now.

Coming up:
FAMILY COMMUNICATION
Saturday, January 13: 10 AM to 1 PM
Communication and enhancement of relationship
Parents and teenagers
Parents and children of any ages
See: For more details.Parent and Teenager Communication
Cost : $100, one parent and one child. $50 for each additional parent or child.


COUPLE’S HAPPINESS AND COMMUNICATION
Feb. 10: Saturday, Feb. 10
10 AM- 1 PM, 3- 6 PM
Radically improving the Couples’ Thing.
Fair to good, good to great, great to amazing
Communications, sensuality, happiness, return to now
Change and wonders
Tasting the impossible: unconditional love
$160 per couple.
SEE:
Family and Couples' Communication

MOVEMENT HAPPINESS
Saturday, February 24 and Sunday, February 25
2 PM to 5 PM



( Learning How to Learn.) Photo by Rosalie O'Conner.

Move with joy
Move with ease
Move with awareness
Move with learning.
$100 for both days. $75 for one.

See, if you wish,
What is the Feldenkrais Method®?

---

ALSO AVAILABLE:


PRIVATE WAKEUP FELDENKRAIS LESSONS:

Functional Integration®: Amazing and Transformative (and feels great, too!)

PRIVATE SESSIONS, SOME SPECIFIC POSSIBILITIES

CHILDREN WITH SPECIAL NEEDS:
SEE:
Children with special needs

BACK, SHOULDER, NECK PAIN, CARPAL TUNNEL
SEE:
Back, Neck, Shoulder Pain

(Many, many more Possibilies.
Such as recover faster from surgery and stroke, improve mood, tennis, skiing, golf, yoga.
And lots more: SEE: GLORIES OF WAKEUP FELDENKRAIS)

---

Functional Integration®:
Amazing and transformative
(and feels great, too!)
One to one individual lessons:

Anat Baniel demonstrating the hands on transformative work.
Photo: Josie Davenport, josiedav@mac.com

In these lessons, you lie, fully clothed, on a comfortable and firm low table while you are moved with extreme gentleness and precision.

Classmate doing the work.
Photo: Josie Davenport, josiedav@mac.com

This not only feels great, but provides opportunities for your mind/ brain/ body system (i.e. you) to learn new
and
easier
and
sweeter ways of functioning.

These new ways not only
begin to undo and transform stress
and our old habits of tensing and contracting and limiting ourselves,
but
you begin to function in better ways
in other areas of your mind/ body
and your life.

This work is transformational,
enjoyable
and almost miraculous.
You deserve this, I believe.

My training consists of the "normal" 160 days
to become a Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner
and
an additional 115 days of training
including 38 with Anat Baniel
and
years of training in Gestalt, meditation,
nature centered healing, hypnosis, and more.

---

The initial commitment will be for at least 4 lessons.
If, after the initial four sessions, you aren't experiencing
2 to 10 times the improvement
any four sessons in any other system
has brought you,
I will cheerfully refund all your money.

The rate is $80-160 per lesson. $50-130 per lesson if on consecutive days.
Thursday morning is a low income, low fee clinic, lessons are $30-50.

Give yourself the gift of improvement,
from fair to good
or
good to great.

---

Call for an appointment 707-996-1437

Or Email me


Thanks, and I hope this is a beginning of a wonderful transformation in your life.

Chris

---

LIFE TRANSITION AND TRANSFORMATION
WORK:

HAPPINESS AND LIFE TRANSITION
AND BYRON KATIE WORK
SEE:
Byron Katie / Happiness Work

TUTORING AND COACHING:
SEE: Learning by Healing, and Healing by Learning: Deep Tutoring for Real People

ENHANCING EXCELLENCE and AWARENESS,
SEE: Enhancing Excellence, Learning Acceleration and Opening to Now