Saturday, April 17, 2010


Dogwood in bloom in Sonoma, Ca, in April


Brendan, my son, at the Anat Baniel Method training, Special Needs Children, Segment 4, as part of some 60 people doing grand learning

Movement with attention
is one grand path to feeling
younger,
to sharpening up the brain,
and
waking up to now


Try this:

1. Sit in a chair. Don't lean back. Feel your pelvis against the chair, and your spine holding up your head. Enjoy that. Close your eyes, and sense two arms, two legs, fingers, toes, breathing, and spine.

2. Do this for awhile, as if a meditation.

3. Imagine doing this sensing and awaring all day long.

4. Now, begin to move the toes of your left foot back and forth,
rotating at your heel. Go slowly. Go so slowly that each time you
do this, and do it many times, you can feel and sense and learn something new about your nervous system and your bones and your feet.

5. Take a rest.

6. Now, move the heel of your left foot back and forth (to the left and to the right),
slowly, pivoting on the front part of your foot. Many times, slowly, pleasurably,
learning.

7. Take a rest and feel the differences, left to right, and before to now.

8. Come back, if you've forgotten, to being present.

9. Lie on your back, and put both feet "standing," which means the foot is on the floor and the knees are pointed toward the ceiling.

10. In this position, a number of times rotate the toes of the left foot to the right and left. Rest. Then rotate the heel of this same foot. Rest.

11. In the rests, come into a deeper meditation.

12. Bring both feet to standing again, and push up your pelvis into the air. Do this a number of times, more and more arching your back, and pushing out your belly.

13. Rest with awareness and pleasure.

14. Again, feet standing, pelvis up, and bring the toes of your left foot as if for running. Toes on the floor. Put your hands behind your head on the floor, and tilt your whole upper body toward the left, and then back to the middle. It is as if the ribs on your right get longer and the left elbow comes closer, staying on the floor, to your left hip.

15. Rest.

16. Do all of 14 again, and use that to get your left hand to your left heel. Once there, rotate slowly your left heel right and left. See if you can feel the toes pressing the floor most clearly between the big toe and the second toe.

17. Rest. Imagine other moves you could make. Imagine being aware of your ankles and which toes press into the ground as you walk forward today.

18. Get up to standing and go forth to a life of slowing and awaring and happying.

Good.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Getting "older"
and
so what?


Life moves along.
We are present.
Or we aren't.


i couldn't do this in my forties,
can do it in my sixties
and
actually: so what?
am I present
the rest of the time

this moment
is my life

and yours
too

really fair
life
is
that way

To me,
being present
is like
four times
more sweet
than not being
so.

How is it for you?

I love the Anat Baniel Method
for Waking up to Now

and true thinking,
which means
creating brain concepts and solutions
of a "new' sort.

New is now.

And no matter how
many years,
the calendar
says we are

And mine says
65
today

we are always as young
as our joy
in life
ability to love
and enjoy others
and our
learning to
be think feel create enjoy serve
in new
ways

even slightly new
is amazingly
potent

good.