EATING IN THREE LEVELS
We sit down to a meal. Our belly is hungry, and that is a good reason to eat, though oftentimes we are really thirsty instead of hungry, so that's worth checking out.

And, if we eat mainly raw foods, the foods themselves will be full of water, so we'll quench our thirst for water as we eat.

At this basic level, we bring food into our organisms.


If we go slow, and taste as we chew, we can sense and feel if this food is really nourishing us.

If we go slow, we can be aware of our middle level as we eat.


We can breathe in air, and feed our lungs, and our blood. If we eat slowly we can follow our breathing as we chew and taste and feel our food turning into wonderful nutrition inside of us.

Breathing and aware, tasting our food and aware, we have two level active while we eat.


And then looking and listening. Are we near someone we like, and are we being free enough from chatter to look at and enjoy that person? If we are eating alone, do we have something pleasant at which to gaze, a candle, a view out into the sky, or best of all: sitting outside and watching trees and sky and birds and flowers as we eat.

What are the sounds? If someone is talking, can we hear the melody of their voice and free ourselves from the urge to speak up and tell our oh, so important little bit of whatever yammer we just "have" to get out?

Can we have music in the background, or the wind, or some soft pleasant sound of life to feed our minds, our selves, as we feed our bodies?


Eating food.

Eating air.

Eating impressions.


Can we make them all slow and aware and peaceful and happy to be alive as we eat?

WALKING IN THREE LEVELS

Our feet walk along the ground. Left and then right and then left.

Can we notice and love the touching, the pressing, the shifting, the lifting and the leaving of each foot?

---

Our breath goes in and out and has pauses.

Can we notice the going in and the pause and the going out and the pause?

---

Our eyes have sky and earth and path and clouds and people and stuff to see.

Our ears have birds and cars and wind and trees and planes and voices and music to hear.

Can we notice the light and sound coming in and can we smile at all these gifts?

---

Ah. To take a walk. Yes.

What is Wake Up Feldenkrais?

In Wake Up Feldenkrais,
I add
to the Feldenkrais Way
my knowledge and skills in the fields of
human learning,
happiness,
group and family communication,
permaculture,
ecology of systems,
and general processes of change,
to include the transformation of
poor to fair,
fair to good,
good to great,
and great to greater,
to ANY ACTIVITY
in which people wish to change.
any pathway,
via which people wish to
improve and make their
life more wonderful.

This could be organizing

• a change in a business,


• clearing up a decades' old family issue,


• assisting people in losing weight


• or achieving life goals,


• organizing land on Permaculture principles,


• fascilitating businesses and groups
  and families
  and parent/ child relationships
  to be happier,
  more creative and functional together,


• assisting people in admitting and defining new and sweeter life goals,


• and just old fashioned: being happier.


• And the somewhat esoteric:
  being more present and awake to our lives.

---

And now:
HOW IS WAKE UP FELDENKRAIS AVAILABLE?

This is available as personally designed programs
to meet your needs and the needs of your organization.
It could include clearing up old family issues,
becoming happier with your weight,
learning to discover how to reinvent yourself for the next part of your life,
building teams that function happily and organically
(in the growing, and changing and adapting sense of the word),
to "simply" discovering how to
be happier
and
more creative
in your ongoing life.
This work with always include elements of my passions:
the Feldenkrais Method,
the work of Byron Katie
(and other amazing communication tools),
and team building creativity work,
and
connection to nature.

.

WALKING

Many steps to heaven, all waiting to be taken.


What is Tai Chi if you boil it down?

Paying attention.

Slowing down.

Moving with so called "relaxation."

Rotating your center, your pelvis when you change direction.

And, at the core:

Moving from weight on one foot to weight on the other.


And what is that like?

Walking.

Walking is so good for you, especially if you do it with love and awareness.

There are many ways to do that and I hope you have at least three that you really like/love for yourself.


Here's another possibility:

Walk outdoors, and look at the sky. Walk with enough speed so your arms swing and you can notice how the left arm goes forward as the right foot does and vice versa.

Walk slow enough to pay attention to which foot, right or left , is pressing into the earth.

Follow your breathing.

Time your breathing to your steps and have some spaces between your breathing.

Huh?

Four steps, breathe in, four steps no breathing, four steps breathe out, four steps no breathing.

This is what works for me.

Any number of steps with any of the above will be yours to enjoy and experiment with.

Enjoy your walk.

Enjoy your life.

CURRENTLY OFFERING THESE CLASSES

Back from becoming Certified as a Yoga Teacher,
200 hour Yoga Alliance Level,
in Ananda Yoga.

No classes scheduled,
just yet.

Get in Shape. Race on a Bike

Racers today slogged against strong winds up the coast from Saulsalito
to Coleman Valley Road,
then up the long grade,
then
down into Occidental
turning a speedy left,




and then
Occidental Road on a
20 minute sprint (from Occidental)
into Santa Rosa.

A 93 mile day.

Tomorrow,
Tuesday,
they take off on Bennett Valley Road,
zoom through Glen Ellen
up another killer, the Trinity Grade,
over to Rutherford,
and then over another grade
at Lake Berryessa
and down into Sacramento,
a 115 mile day.

Then then go Stockton to San Jose

Then Seaside to San Lous Obispo

Then a round down race near Solvang

and then Santa Barbara to Santa Clarita;

then some sort of deal in Long Beach.
(Official scoop at Amgen the Race )

These guys get around.

Wonder where's a nice flat town
to get down
with some bicycling in beautiful weather?

BEAUTIFUL WEATHER

Today was a beautiful spring day, though it is not yet May. Nor even March. The winter months march on and the rains don't come and life is strange, and then each day is a gift.

Can we allow ourselves to accept this gift of a beautiful day. Some other day we will have a challenging gift of a cold and stormy day. And then our job will be to love that day.

Hmmm. Anyway, today was nature's little Valentine to us in the Sonoma Valley, before the grape growers get out with their…. Hey, let's not go there.

Beautiful day.

Thanks.

THE IMPORTANCE OF HAPPINESS

Happiness is how we like to be, and yet many of us spend big chunks of our days, and hence our lives, either unhappy, or in some sort of busy trance where we are neither happy nor unhappy, but mainly just "busy." On the way to the market, thinking of what we will buy. In the market, thinking of what we'll make for dinner. Eating the dinner and thinking about wishing we didn't have to clean up afterwards. After dinner some sort of event to rush off to, or perhaps a time to blotto the mind with television.

Oh, well.

And what is it about happiness that is so good for us?

When we are happy we are not striving and complaining and wanting for something else. We are here, now and in a state of fullness and joy about being here and now. This is good for our health, and good for our soul, and good for the people around us, and good for the world.

Let's bypass all the arguments that might say you can't be in bliss all the time, and just think about this: when was the last time we were just here and now and happy?

And when were we happy today?

And when were we happy yesterday?

And what did those moments of happiness feel like? And what did we do, or forget to do, that helped create those moments of happiness?

You know, so much of psychology, so-called, is pouring over our unhappiness. What if we just took the other approach and put awareness on recalling and increasing our moments and times and hours and days of happiness?

Wouldn't that be a step toward a sweeter life, a life that would be nicer for ourselves and easier on those around us, and also, since we wouldn't need to rush and buy so often, much kinder to the Earth as well?

SEEDS AND NUTS: Soaking a Way Good and Healthy Idea

If you want to eat raw

Or
You want to lose weight

Or
You want to have rich yummy smoothies that are way good for you

Or
You like real protein and fat and want to lessen or avoid animal stuff

Then:
Eating soaked nuts and seeds is essential to great health.

In my opinion.

You, as always, get your own opinion in the food wars/ opinions/ ideas.

Anyway: if you go for seeds:

Soak them before you eat them. How ?, someone asked yesterday.

Like this: get a quart jar (canning jars), add half to three quarters of organic seeds or nuts (they expand when the water comes), add filtered water and let sit overnight.

The next day, pour off and use some of the water and some of the seeds in any smoothie you wish, or eat them straight on, or in salads.

Then keep rinsing them once of twice a day.

If the seeds are sunflower, rinse a lot and start to refrigerate after a couple of days if you haven't used 'em up. They get funky after that long.

If they are flax, refrigerate after the first couple of hours, cause they start to mold.

Why soak? To undo the enzyme inhibitors in seeds and nuts the way nature does: by soaking them and starting them off to being living and sprouting entities.

PORPOISE OF LIFE, Raw Chocolate, Pleasure Anyone???

This is the food blog, the health blog, the backpages and reference blog. It's the more experimental, in a way, though they all have a great variety of articles and approaches.

If saving the Earth, is one of our jobs in life, saving the earth and saving the oceans, and saving the porpoises for their swims of delight through their lives and their waters, then how we eat has some impact on all this.

Some of the things we do, we have no idea the impact until someone like Bill Mollison, the co-creator of Permaculture starts to talk about cat food, and huge areas of the Gulf of Mexico being denuded of shrimp for the cats. Should we stop having cats? I don't know.

Children will end up taking a lot more of the Earth's resources than a cat will, and an army tank, charging down some desert in some foreign land may consume more than any child will.

So, who knows.

And, back to food: if we eat meat, let's get our meat from places where it got to be on pasture or wild most of its life. If we eat meat let's look at the living conditions and the food these animals were feed.

If we eat fruit, let's see if the fruit is from Earth and trees that haven't been harmed and weirded out by pesticides and other chemicals.

You know all that.

Okay.

Raw chocolate.

You can buy it in the store, raw and organic and sustainably grown. It keeps you up a little at night and is bitter and is a lot of fun.

Here's a high class way to get a hell of a lot of nutrition and still be okay for diabetics or those with Candida.

Raw Smoothie for the Health Nut:

Get yourself a blender or a Vita Mix.

Add some good filtered water.

Add some healthy weeds (dandelion, mallow, chicory) or health greens: cilantro, endive, parsley).

Add some Synergy.

Add some soaked sunflower and pumpkin and flax seeds.

Add some raw, organic chocolate nibs.

Add some Stevia, ginger and any other herbs, like cinnamon, cayenne, maybe do one at a time and see how it's coming.

Blend it up. Make a lot. Drink slowly, outside, standing up and sensing your feet and your breathing and looking at some trees and clouds and blue sky in the distances.

This is good. This is life. Yes.

Jokes Are Good for Your Health

And your happiness.

And, sometimes, your brain.

JOKE
Jokes, like dreams, if grabbed soon after the experience, can much more readily be kept alive and in memory. Tonight was the joke show on Prairie Home Companion, and if you don't know Prairie Home Companion, 'tis a shame, indeed. But let's see what I can remember after a bit of a doze from eating too much, an occupational hazard of the raw foods world and the Chris Elms mind, I've mentioned before.

Some bears come down from Canada into Minnesota, and they are a bit strange, sometimes very happy and charming and entertaining, and sometimes extremely unfriendly and savage. Bi-polar bears.

A bunch of thieves steal some Viagra and take off with it, hardened criminals.

A man goes into a party and spies a curvy and beautiful woman. He goes up to her, "I'm so glad you are here. What's your name?" "Carmen." "Carmen, that's a nice name? Did you always have that name?" "No, I gave it to myself for the two things I like best. I like cars. And I like men." She smiles at him. "And what's your name?" "Golftits."

Albert Einstein goes to heaven and St. Peter says, "You look like Einstein, but can you prove it?" So Einstein writes a bunch of formulas and St. Peter nods and lets him in. Then Picasso comes, and St. Peter again says, "You look like Picasso, but can you prove it?" So Picasso reproduces one painting after another, and St. Peter lets him in. The George W. Bush arrives ( a stretch, perhaps) and St. Peter says, "You have to prove who you are. Einstein showed he was Einstein, and Picasso showed he was Picasso." George W. Bush says, "Who's Einstein? Who's Picasso?" And St. Peter, satisfied, says, "Okay. You've proved it."

Did you hear about the paranoid dyslexic who was afraid that he was following people all the time?

And the cannibals, who tasting a clown they were stewing up, ask each other, "Does this taste a little funny?"

Now I'll go ask Marlie what she remembers.

The bra that says to the hat, "You go on ahead and I'll give these two a lift."
A snail has an operation to removes its shell. Afterwards they ask it how it's feeling and it says, "Fine, but I'm feeling a little sluggish."

And now, trying to bring up a couple of more. Can't. Maybe they'll come in dreams.

Well, their website is a big help. Here are some I liked: From tonight's joke show:

Nancy Pelosi is the Speaker of the House. That's the farthest anyone who wears a dress has gotten since J. Edgar Hoover.

Nancy Pelosi was visiting Iraq. President Bush said he was against setting any timetables for her to return. He said to bring her back prematurely would send the wrong message.
There on my computer are the two buttons representing the things I can never have: Control and Escape.

I'm having a problem with my computer. When I type in my password, all it shows are those little stars.

Right. Little asterisks. That's for your protection. So if someone were standing behind you, they couldn't see what your password is.

Okay, but they show up even when nobody is standing behind me.

The blond got a present from her boyfriend, a cell phone, and the next day, while she was shopping, the phone rang and it was him. He said, "How do you like your new cell phone?" She said, "I just love it, it fits in my purse, and your voice is so clear. But how did you know I was at Wal Mart?"

Two men took the test to qualify for a job and both men answered nine out of ten questions correctly, but they gave the job to the first man: he answered Question No. 10 "I don't know" and the other man answered it, "Neither do I."

I needed some time off from work so I decided to act crazy. I hung upside down from the ceiling and when the boss asked me what I was doing, I said, "I'm a light bulb." "You're going crazy," he said. "Take a few days off." I left and my officemate followed me. The boss asked where she was going. She said, "I can't work in the dark." ---- Did I mention she was blonde?
What's the difference between "Congress" and the "Library of Congress"? n the Library of Congress you can't mess with the pages.

The minister raises his hands and says: "we are but dust..." The little girl turns to her mother and says, "mother, what is butt dust?"

If you don't go to other people's funerals, then they won't come to yours.

Bill Gates died and went to heaven and was given a little cottage in the woods and next door was a mansion on a hill with a golf course and tennis courts, and there lived the captain of the Titanic. "Why does he deserve better?" Bill said to God. "Because the Titanic only crashed once."

How many Christians does it take to change a light bulb?
Three, but they're really one.

How many Catholics does it take to change a light bulb?
CHANGE?! Did you say "change"?

Third Grade Jokes
Why did ancient Romans close down the Coliseum?
The lions were eating up the prophets.

Is it true that an alligator won't attack you if you carry a flashlight?
Depends on how fast you carry the flashlight.

Religious:
Q: Why did the Unitarian cross the road?
A: To support the chicken in its search for its own path.

The children in the Unitarian church school were drawing pictures. One girl said, "I'm going to draw a picture of God." The teacher said, "But nobody knows what God looks like. "They will when I get done with my picture."

A woman went into a fabric store and asked the clerk for nine yards of material to make a nightgown. The clerk said, "Nine yards is way too much material for a nightgown." The woman said, "I know, but my husband is Unitarian and he would rather seek than find."

A priest, a Pentecostal preacher and a Rabbi challenged each other to a preaching contest. They would all go out into the woods, find a bear, preach to it, and try to convert it. Two days later, they got together to discuss the experience. Father Flannery said, "Well, I read to him from the Catechism and then I sprinkled him with holy water and Holy Mary Mother of God he was gentle a lamb. The bishop is coming out next week to give him first communion and confirmation." Reverend Billy Bob said, " Well I read to my bear from God's HOLY WORD! And I took HOLD of him and wrestled him down to the creek. And I DUNKED him and BAPTIZED him and he became as gentle as a lamb. We spent the rest of the day praising Jesus." They both looked down at the rabbi, who was in a body cast. The rabbi said, "Looking back on it, circumcision may not have been the best way to start."

Others:
Q: What do you get when you throw a hand grenade into a French kitchen?
A: Linoleum Blown-Apart!

The statistician lay with his head in the oven and his feet in ice, and on the average he felt fine.

Did you hear about the mechanic who was addicted to brake fluid? He said it was no problem -- he could stop any time.

Why did the urologist lose his license? He got in trouble with his peers.

An Irish priest is driving down to New York and gets stopped for speeding in Connecticut. The state trooper smells alcohol on the priest's breath and then sees an empty wine bottle on the floor of the car. He says, "Sir, have you been drinking?" "Just water," says the priest. The trooper says, "Then why do I smell wine?" The priest looks at the bottle and says, "Good Lord! He's done it again!"

What did the Earth say after the Earth quake? ----Sorry, my fault.

How can a woman rid her apartment of cockroaches? ----Ask them for a commitment.

Have you heard about the new existentialist breakfast cereal?
It's called Raisins D'etre.

A B-flat, a D-flat, and an F walk into a bar. The bartender says to them, "I'm sorry we don't serve minors here"... So the D-flat leaves and the B-flat and the F have an open fifth between them.

Q: Why do Jewish Mothers make great parole officers?
A: They never let anyone finish a sentence.

Jewish mother sent a telegram: "Start worrying. Details to follow…

An elderly Jewish man was brought to the local hospital. A pretty nurse tucks him into bed and says, "Are you comfortable?" He replies, "I make a nice living...."

Chinese civilization goes back 4000 years and Jewish civilization goes back 5000 years. So what did those people eat for a thousand years?

These two I didn't hear, but are pretty good, which shows how easily I'll take my laughs:

A cop sees two kids parked in a car late Saturday night on the edge of town and he walks over with his flashlight and shines it in the window. The boy is listening to the radio and the girl is knitting a scarf. The cop says, "What are you doing here?" "Just listening to music and she's knitting." "How old are you?" The boy says, "I'm 22." The cop says, "And is she 18?" The boy says, "She will be in about fifteen minutes."

A wagon train got lost crossing the Plains and they're low on food and they see an old Norwegian sitting under a tree. They stop and ask him, "Is there food around here?" He says, "Well, I don't know, but I tell you, I wouldn't go that way ---- there's a big bacon tree over that hill." "A bacon tree?" "Yeah, so I wouldn't go that way."

The wagon train talked about it and a bacon tree sounded good to them so they went over the hill and over the next hill and a thousand Indians were waiting for them and attacked them from all sides and took them prisoner except for the leader who went crawling back to the old Norwegian and said, "There was no bacon tree there, just a mob of Indians who took everybody captive."

The Norwegian said, Vait a minute. He picked up his Norwegian-English dictionary and looked through it, and then said, "Oh, it wasn't a bacon tree. It was a ham bush."