Tai Chi :: Yoga :: Health :: Weight Loss :: Transformation

2011-05-30T07:40:00.000-07:00

MINDFUL EATING, published first at SlowSonoma.com
and included here, as a compendium of the food/ health/ weight loss/ yoga / tai chi postings

The tongue has the biggest representation in our brains compared to its size in our body.
Why?
Eating.
Talking.

And, guess what? If you are in the mood to “wake up” in the enlightenment sense, and are on the pathway to being present and aware at every moment, you might or might not have noticed that these two times are times when we often go back to “sleep.”

So here is today’s game, so simple and so deep and so off the normal track as to appear almost impossible.

And in the words of Moshe Feldenrkais, the goal of an amazing life is to “make the impossible, possible; to make the possible easy; to make the easy elegant or pleasurable, or both.”
The end is a bit of a paraphrase.
Oh, well.

Eating.

Look at your food as your prepare it. Find your feet on the ground, and your eyes bringing in light and images, your fingers touching the food, your breath coming in and out.

Notice your arms and legs and spine.

Breathe.

Prepare your food so that it looks and smells good to you.

Sit somewhere that is conducive to feeding yoru body, and your heart and your spirit.

Sit up somewhat straight.

Take three breaths before you take a bite. If you live with other people, hold hands with your eyes close for many breathes, and then look around at each person before letting go. Maybe say something meaningful to you. Listen to what anyone else has to say.

Before the first bite, follow three breaths.

After the bit, put down the eating tool, or the bowl or the cup. Down, hands free.

Chew and savor and taste.

Take a breath when the food is “gone.”

Then pick up the eating tool, cup or bowl, and resume, one more bit, again setting this down while you chew and savor.

If others are there are you going to talk?

I don’t know.

Find out, and if you do, see if you can put attention all on eating and then all on listening and/ or talking, but make them separate.

Make the attempt.

Slowness and awareness will feed something deep in you.

Try it and feel, see, experience;

Good.

The book can be purchased over the internet as
a pdf that I'll email you.

You pay pay pal, they email me,
I email you your pdf.
You can print it up,
or read it off the computer.

This unique collection
of 108 games/ actions/ learning practices
costs
$54
fifty cents a game.
Do one activity a day for ten days
and the book will have paid for itself.

LOW COST OPTION:
This book is about changing your life
by doing AT LEAST ONE NEW ACTION A DAY
do this
and see if it changes your life.
Meanwhile, here's the honor roll book.
Pay $27 now
and after the 108 games you feel so transformed
you feel like buying it again, go right ahead.
For now: get involved.
Do 1 a day,
or even better four: moving, emotional learning, thinking and "soul"
Change makes for change.
Have fun.
Wake up.
Meanwhile, I'll send you the pdf.

Here's the struggling and wanting to transform option:

And here's the full fair fare,
go for it,
you are this valuable,
signal your value to both you and me:

2011-05-18T07:32:00.000-07:00

Tai Chi for learning, amazement and deepened meditation
AND
improving your brain
balance
and
sense of humor

If you know tai chi,
and want to radically improve the awareness/ mindfulness
benefits
try this:

start the form as you usually do
with extra attention on whether your weight is on
your left foot
or your right foot

gradually expand your awareness
so that each time you weight is on your left foot,
you add on as well
attention to your right hand,
and vice versa

do this as fully as possible:
all fingers, all toes,
the meat of the hand, the fullness of the foot
the wrist, the ankle

and in the foot
attention to where your weight is being placed

keep doing this and then add on:
selecting one digit of the "lit up" hand ( which is the
hand opposite the foot pushing down into the Earth)
select one finger of the "lit up" hand
and put attention on that finger and the equivalent toe
of the opposite/ weight bearing foot

And switch in the next posture
as your weight shifts to the opposite foot

Like this:
left foot on ground, right hand lit up: chose the thumb and the big toe
right foot bearing weight, left hand lit up: choose the little finger and the little toe

toward the middle of the foot,
those toes are "harder"
but that is the fun of it
in a way

and you'll forget to keep this
awareness game going,
maybe,
and just come on back
and "light up" your brain
as you do tai chi

2011-05-16T10:44:00.000-07:00

Going Beneath and Beyond Feeling Bad

How to lose weight, by realizing that your unhappiness doesn't have to run and or ruin your life.

I'm going to start posting almost weekly in this blog, too. To the right you can find a list of my other blogs and the days on which they are published.

This blog is going to return to it's original aim: Tai Chi:: Yoga::Health:: Weight Loss

And I'm starting my return here by talking to the core of overeating:
Using food as a way to cover "feeling bad."

In later essays, we can talk about eating mindfully, and shifting radically the "kinds" of foods that you eat.

But if you can't begin to shift out of slavery to "getting rid" of unhappiness, the freedom that can come from real health and healthy eating will always be just "beyond the beyond."

So here's the essay, a chapter in my new book on Real Health:

The Importance of Feeling Bad

Sometimes, and with awareness

Sometimes we feel bad. Or, we could say, sometimes we feel like shit, or poorly, or unhappy. Mad, angry, depressed, worried, stressed, overwhelmed, sad. Bad.

We don’t feel good.

Now, this book is about waking up to real health by being present to whatever is going on.

If we feel bad, the “normal” way of reacting is:

Oh no, help. I feel bad. Get me out of here.

So we call a friend to rescue us from our loneliness, or going to a bar or a movie to distract ourselves, or even do something “good for us,” like jog, or write in our journal.

Some of these modes will move our life forward. Some will leave us stuck. And this book is about creating a life of ongoing happiness, health and learning. Of creating conditions where we can be helpful to ourselves, and to others and to the planet.

So, how can we “use” a moment, or a day, or a period of unhappiness to create a life of ongoing happiness, to create conditions where we can be useful to ourselves and to others and to the Earth.

Good old Earth. What does that have to do with being unhappy?

A lot, it turns out, since we can look around and see how much destruction is being melted out to our planet by the ravages of people rushing out to buy all sorts of stuff they don’t need, to coat and cover and “bad feelings” that might be creeping up.

That “shop until you drop” is considered sheik and cute rather than the ethical ecological equivalent of obscenity is testimony to how “normal” the habit of consumption is. And consuming stuff, consuming the Earth, here does the “stuff” come from?

Okay, okay, eco preaching yeah, yeah, but what does that have to do with unhappiness?

When unhappy: A. Don’t shop. B. Don’t get in a car and go somewhere. C. Don’t shop online.

When unhappy, don’t speed up.

Slow down. Slow down to the present.

Don’t avoid.

Feel, in the sensory sense, whatever sensations come up with “feeling bad.”

In your chest, breathing, jaw, neck, ribs. Wherever you constrict and contort yourself when you feel mad, afraid, weird, angry, sad, bad, notice as pure sensations.

There is almost always a bunch of words accompanying “feeling bad,” and try this: shift your attention to the present.

If you feel something in your stomach feel it. If you are sitting on a chair, sense that. If you are sitting upright, or walking, or lying down, sense your five lines (two arms, two legs, one spine) in whatever position you find yourself. Unhappy, let that be the background noise to this job, this job that pays a huge dividends, the job of being present.

Sense your five lines, and let the sensations of your unhappiness add to that.

And listen to the world. If the world outside you is saying, “You poor thing, Mary Lou should have been nicer to you,” then listen. But if those words, and any other ones that carry and justify and fuel your unhappiness are coming from inside your brain, pay them as little attention as you can.

For now.

Later in this book, and always to be recommended is to write down what the “should” and “shouldn’t” statements that are throbbing underneath your unhappiness and “doing the Work” on them. The Work is the work of Byron Katie, and that can be found online at http://thework.com, and she, Byron Katie’s her “stage” name, has books out with titles like “Loving What Is,” and “I Need Your Love, Is that True,” and “A Thousand Names for Joy.”

Also, in my previous book, available online, “Happiness in 4 Modes: 108 Ways of Moving, Feeling, Thinking and ‘Soul-ing’ to transform your Life,” I have a number of sections giving step by step pathways to take advantage of the Byron Katie work.

And for now, we are practicing giving so called “unhappiness” a bigger container by coming to the now.

And a specific set of ways of coming to the Now.

1) Sense the “feel bad” sensations that go along with your unhappiness, without the words, just as sensations

2) Sense your five lines

3) Pay attention to real sound in the “real” world outside of you

4) Pay attention to real light coming into your eyes from the world outside your body

5) Follow your breathing

6) Feel the totality of your experience in the present

7) Find the happiness that is always there when we “wake up” to ourselves in the present.

So, this is subverting “unhappiness” by going Big and going now. Sure you are suffering, but is your big toe suffering? Is your breathing? Is your right elbow? How is the sound coming in your ears? The light coming in your eyes?

Your unhappiness can stick around, if it wants to, but your Life is bigger than that. Can you remember that the next time you are unhappy?

And guess what? Except for “sensing the feel bad” sensations in the list above, all the other avenues toward the Big and Present and Real you can be jumped into and enjoyed, right now.

And will that be good for the Earth?

Yes.

And will that be good for others around you?

Yes.

And will that be good for you?

Start practicing now, either six or seven of the above list, and find out.

All you have to lose is your slavery to
1) Feeling Bad
2) Fear of Feeling Bad
3) Having to "get rid" instantly of Feeling Bad

Good.

2011-02-09T10:59:00.000-08:00

Cheng Man Ching
decided that he didn't want to do the "long" form, so he invented the
short form

Through some charming mistake somewhere along the way
this is called the "shot form."

Oh, well. If we watch this for a bit
(and in this day or Internet rush, rush, do we actually
have 7:41 minutes?
But surely we can hang in there for 3:33,
so let's see what we can see....
Be back in 3:33 (notice the simple minded rhyme scheme
creeping up on us.
Good, eh?)

Well, actually, he moves a bit fast for my taste,
kind of like I do on days I want to "get the form over."

However, he wasn't rushing, more like moving
seamlessly from one pose to the next
with no
"look at me, I'm here now"
feeling.

His weight shifted slowly and completely
like sand going from one foot to the other.

His hands seemed to float,
and knowing what I do of the form as taught
by his pupils, I'll guess that he had a great deal of
attention
in his hands

and feet

and spine

and feeling of soft arms

and knowing exactly where and how
his feet where.

Have you ever noticed that tai chi is a lot like walking,
weight on one foot and then weight on the next.

Unlike walking, but like some of the work we do in the Feldy/ Anat worlds,
his arms don't have a stable pattern vis a vis his legs.
In walking left leg forward pairs up with right arm forward.

In tai chi, many of the moves are like that:
in the punch (here right handed), the right fist is forward and the left foot

in brush knee, left foot and right hand and then right foot and left hand

However, many are right right and left left

the single whip is such a move

the kicks, which come later

and fair lady shuttles, again later, has same foot and same hand forward

And so it goes;

move slow

put attention on gravity and both arms and both legs and spine

create variation in patterns of arms and legs

It's a dance, don't you think?

And what's the other half of my roots for the Feldy/ Anat work.

Well, maybe I should have been dividing into thirds
with one third good old fashion NOW

and one third the Gurdjieff meditation of keeping attention
all day in both arms and both legs (plus light and sound)

Or maybe four:
add to Tai Chi
and Now
and Gurdjieff
a love of nature, and how natural can we get by being attentive to slow and novel and delicious movements
movements
learning
awaring
in the so called "body"

Waking us to Now.

Tai Chi can do that,
and it can be a "thing" we do.

So can reading.

So can writing.

It's all the dance: am I awake now,
and if so what is my experience.

Is that a good question for you?

I hope so.

Chris

on Wednesday in Austin, where the cold was last week
and then it got warm and toasty this weekend
and now the cold is back.
Cold means 40s, sissy winter for most of the county,
and "too cold" for the spoiled Texans and all the immigrants.

In May I'll be back in the Northwest,
and in March visiting No. Cal.
If you are interested in connecting,
let me know.

2010-12-22T23:11:00.000-08:00

INDEX OF ALL the POSTINGS IN THIS BLOG: 130 so far

You might enjoy re-reading some of these or perusing them for the first time.
Good.

MAY 2011

130. May 30, Monday: Mindful Eating, originally in Slow Sonoma, SlowSonoma.com, over a thousand postings there, if you are energetic and don't mind practicing reading in wakefulness

129. May 18, Friday: Tai Chi made "harder" and even more amazing with a foot/ toe connection to the opposite finger/ hand

128. May 16: Going beneath "feeling bad," essential to weight loss, and happiness

DECEMBER 2010

127. December 22: Tai Chi and Potency:
Wake up,
push out your belly,
thrust into life
smile, get off the computer: live, it's the solstice

NOVEMBER 2010
126. Weeds and Seeds: Wild Amaranth in issue of Edible Austin

APRIL 2010

125 April 17: movement with attention in a chair

124. April 13: "Getting older" = turning 65, blah, blah
MARCH 2010

123. March 8, Orcas Island and a year later:
every day is a good day to restart everything
How to Be Healthy, a less sure but hopefully useful compendium

FEBRUARY 2009

122. February 5, 2009: back to some thoughts on tai chi and yoga

NOVEMBER 2008

121. Nov. 28, Friday, 2008: Day after Thanksgiving, Time to change Habits???

120. Nov 22, Sat. Essentials of Real Health, My take

119. Nov. 14, Friday, Maybe raw, maybe more greens, maybe healthier

118. Nov. 7: Friday, finally got to it: Learning, failing: Real Health

OCTOBER 2008

117. Oct. 24: things ending is a chance to live more fully

116. Oct 3, 2008: 3 L's for a Good Life

SEPTEMBER 2008

115. Sept 26, 2008, third blog of day: what to say: loving all of life

114, sept 19: how to eat better, simplified:

113. Sept. 12, 2008: losing weight is easy

112. Sept. 5, 2008: happiness and heat

AUGUST 2008

111. August 29, 2008: Health, Stress and Undoing the Marlie/Chris thing

110. August 25, 2008: Fall Classes, Sept 6 thru Oct 9

109. August 8, 2008: Thoughts toward health and anti-aging

JULY 2008

108. July 18: have a wonderful day, it's good for your health

107. July 12: bee sting and sweet healing and the joy of gardens

106. July 6: what is love? an approach to discovery

JUNE 2008

105. June 28: Upgrading Your Life, Private Sessions, expensive

MAY 2008

104. May 8: Lose Weight, Get Smarter, Be Happier

103. May 2: Tai Chi, Yoga, Health, Weight Loss: Beyond Boredom, a beginning

APRIL 2008

102. April 21: Class Times: Wake Up Tai Chi/Yoga Brain and Learning Fun; Waking up to Movement and Flexibility and Learning; Waking up Thursday Nights

MARCH 2008

101. March 31: Loving Yourself More, Undo Emotional Pain, Improve Emotional and other skills

100. March 22: tai chi for non-dummies

99.March 10:Recovering from Surgery

98. March 7SOUL AND SOIL, sort of?? Maybe: health is...

FEBRUARY 2008

97. Feb. 24: rains and reality

96. Feb. 20: importance of fresh air to health, mental and otherwise

JANUARY 2008

95. Jan. 5: How to Lose Weight, part 44, or is it 7?

DECEMBER 2007

94. Dec. 31:
how to lose weight and stop waiting for..

93. Dec. 20: Free New Years Day Yoga Çlass

92. Dec. 20: Sufia Yoga: Strength, Unification, Flexibility, Intelligence, Awareness & Anti-Aging

91. Dec. 10: Life is good, even when you are tired

NOVEMBER 2007

90// Nov. 29: Waking Up on Friday Nights

89. Nov. 28: Workshop in Waking, Jan. 5, 2008

88. Nov. 21: Clear Skies and the Waters of Inner Peace

87. Nov. 9: eating, waiting, real food, souls of life

86. Nov. 6: What is Health, and Love is just around the Corner

OCTOBER 2007

85. Oct. 29: Monday Yoga: Clarifying Tree Pose, 1

84. Oct. 22: Tadasana, Mountain Pose

83. Oct. 15: Yoga for a Monday, Vira 2

82. Oct. 8: Yoga for a Monday: Cat and Cow

SEPTEMBER 2007

81. Sept. 28: Waking Up to the Call of Health in the Moment

80. Sept. 21: Season's Change, Now is always

79. Sept. 17: Benefits of DNA Yoga

78. Sept. 12: Eating Less, and Habits, Ahhhhh

77. Sept. 11: Nine Eleven, did the Bad Guys get to Heaven?

76. Sept 6: Global Happiness

AUGUST 2007

75. Aug. 30: Joy to the Word, Joy to the World, Joy to the Weird, Joy to the Now

74. Aug. 23: Weight Loss and the Ongoing Sleep Or, to robot, or not to robot. This is the REAL question.

73. Aug. 21: How to be healthy with windfalls and weeds and a good hearth and mind

72. Aug. 18: Shitty Food

71. Aug. 13: Transformative Yoga, DNA Yoga, Feldie Yoga, Yes Yoga, Yes

70. August 12: Classes for Fall 2007: Transformation and Illumination

69. Aug. 8: An experiment in regaining Break Fast each morning

JULY 2007

68. July 21: What is Yoga?

JUNE 2007

67. June 13: Weight Loss, Water Increasing, Gout routing Diet

66. June 4: Body Ecology Diet for radical healing

MAY 2007

65. May 23:

64. May 4: Real Health is Ours to Be Lived, Each and Every Day

APRIL 2007

63. April 26: FDA up to their usual tricks

62. April 21: Relationship Improvement and Movement Waking Up

61. April 9: Wonder Full Relationship, Workshop, and Private Sessions.

60. April 7: Health is our wealth

MARCH 2007

59. March 30: Eat in Season, or On Sale, and Go Cave Person for the Yum of it

58. March 18: Save your back, save your neck, breathe easier: Raise your computer.

57. March 7: Green Drink, Plus Organic Fruit = Nutrition and Fluid to Start the Day

56. March 3: Food and Fat: Loving Life vs. Self-Dislike, and 4 things to do, if you want to experiment.

FEBRUARY 2007

55. February 28: Eating in Three Levels.... Yes

54. Feb. 27: Walking in Three Levels....Ah

53. February 22: Walking, and the beginings of Heaven

52.5: Feb. 20: Currently Offering These Classes

52. Feb. 19: Get in Shape, Race a Bicycle, or Less, and have Fun

51. February 16: Beautiful Day

50. February 13: The Importance of Happiness

49. February 10: Soaked Seeds and Nuts , a good idea.

48. February 6: Raw Chocolate Smoothie Porpoise of Life

47. Feb. 3: Jokes, Good for Hearth, Health, Soul and Brain

JANUARY 2007

46. Jan. 31: Cave Man/ Cave Woman Diet::: A Possibility?

45. Jan. 28: Differentiation and a Headache 'Cure'

44. Jan. 25: The Joy of Healthy Eating, and Thinking

43. Jan. 22: To be Human, to be Healthy: Make Choices

42. Jan. 19: Enzymes and real Health

41. Jan. 16: On the fear of being cold

40. Jan. 13: Supper to end the day, as in... making it light.

39. Jan. 10: Food Combining, Healthy Lunch, Main Meal = on the way to health.

38. Jan. 7: Start the day off right with a Super Smoothie

37. Jan. 4: Food and Health

December 2006

36. Dec. 31: The Glory of Today

35. Dec. 25: Talking with Jesus on Christmas Day

34. Dec. 22: Overeating and Choices: Self-attack, self-love, curiosity

33. Dec. 19: Unconditional Love. What a concept, eh?

32. Dec. 16: Full Spectrum Lighting, for Health, Mood and Happiness

31. Dec. 13: Beyond Sugar: Raw Fat plus Raw Sweet = Great Taste, Great Health

30. Dec. 10: Food is Good

29. Dec. 7: Offerings, Classes, Workshops, Fees

November 2006
28. Nov. 26: The Glories of Feldenkrais

27. Nov. 22: Eating Healthy

26. Nov. 21: Functional Integration®: Amazing and Transformative (and feels great, too!)

25. Nov. 18: Raw Foods and Feldenkrais

24. Nov. 17: Learning by Healing, and Healing by Learning: Deep Tutoring for Real People

23. Nov. 15: Healing by Learning

22. Nov. 14: Tai Chi and Feldenkrais

21. Nov. 13: Super Wheatgrass for Your Health

20. Nov. 13: The Imortance of Sky

19. Nov. 12: Enhancing Excellence, Learning Acceleration and Waking Up

18. Nov. 11: Fitness, Health and Weight Reduction

17. Nov. 10: Mindfulness and Stress Reduction

16. Nov. 9: Neck, Shoulder and Back Pain

15. Nov. 8: Gifted and Athletic Children

14. Nov. 7: What is the Feldenkrais Method?

13. Nov 7: Who Was Moshe Feldenkrais?

12. Nov. 6: Longer Lists of Movies and Books

11. Nov. 4: Tuesday Night Mindfulness and Health and Stress Reduction

10. Nov.2: Children and Learning Difficulties

9. Nov.1 : Parent and Teenager Communication

October 2006
8. Oct. 26: Walking is Good for You

7. Oct. 24: Ericksonian Hypnosis

6. Oct. 21: What is Wake Up Feldenkrais?

5. Oct. 19: Ten Week Radical Health Improvement and/or Weight Loss Program

4. Oct. 18: About Marlie Wesner and Yoga and More

3. Oct. 17: Wake Up Feldenkrais Offerings

2. Oct. 16: Byron Katie work, Happiness Work, Relationship Work

1. Oct. 15: More Bio

2010-12-22T07:32:00.000-08:00

TAI CHI AND POTENCY
Or: the joy of two arms
two legs
a smile
a spine
a pelvis
ten toes
ten fingers
a belly
two eyes
two ears
and
AWARENESS

On November 22, 2008, I wrote in my Life Potency blog
about tai chi,
and had some nice pictures
of going through the tai chi form
as a series of tucking in, coiling and rounding
as a pulling in and getting ready to strike

alternating
with
arching the back, pressing from the ground through the
lengthened spine,
uncoiling
striking

Here's the link: Tuck and Coil, then Unfurl and Strike

So what more is there to say?

Tai Chi is fun.

I have another essay on why Tai Chi is grand for you,
with the usual suspects:
going slow,
connecting to yourself,
finding and knowing the use of all four limbs in space,
use of the pelvis,
use of the spine

And here I must interject that tai chi,
like yoga,
is often taught as rigidity
in the sense of demanding a "tucked in" pelvis,
which requires a tightening of the abdomen muscles
which feels like "strength"
and isn't

its a tightness that prevent injury
sort of
by preventing any movement

but, the minor problem
is
preventing movement
is preventing life

(he says, rigidly sitting at a chair
typing into his computer,
okay,
okay,
life
is funny:

and hey you: reading at this computer,
get up now
and do a little tai chi
make it up

any position will do,
just know where your arms and legs are
and then have an idea of the next position of your arms
and legs
and move there

hint:
tai chi is fancy walking
it's always shifting
from right to left to right foot

okay
up,
you and me and all of us and
play the tai chi

game

))))

okay
this is life: moving the legs,
moving the arms

and life is nothing
without being awake

and this is the real trick in standard tai chi
with its obsession with the form

perfection is death in a way
getting better and better and better
even by taking the detour of making it worse for awhile
is life

so how to be awake in tai chi:
feel the power from feet to finger tips in each
pose

feel the coiling in
and preparing for power in each transition

feel the softness in the power
feel the power in the softness

this could be mumbo jumbo
or
it
could be a lot of fun

shut down your computer and do tai chi
or pretend tai chi
for the next half an hour

treat it all as a breathing
and skeletal awareness meditation
and
be aware of everything you see
and hear
as you do
all this

good

and maybe this as the final treat

round,
breathe in,
get ready

breathe out
push out belly
push into ground and hands

brush knee this is called,
one hand pushes forward
one by the other knee

2010-11-05T10:16:00.000-07:00

Waking up in Austin, One TURNING AND LEARNING, AGAIN, SURE, WHY NOT??

A bit of bio and a sweet turning while sitting opportunity to “wake up” to spine, life, movement…and more.

From October 17, 2009 to October 16, 2010 I lived mainly on an amazing island in the Pacific Northwest by the name of Orcas Island. I will write about it again in April when I go back for the summer.

Now it is fall, turning into winter. I am in Texas and a supposedly magically part of Texas, by the name of Austin. Austin was reputed to be the Berkeley of Texas, and many people said it would be amazing, and I came knowing two people who couldn’t get back to me and stayed three nights with a wonderful couple who didn’t know me but where willing to take a couchsurfing chance on me. This was Bridgette and John. We liked each other and I weeded their garden and gave the Bridgette “lessons” I teach, a form of gentle and awakening body brain movement from the Feldenkrais Method® and the Anat Baniel Method.

She and her husband found me my next stranger with whom to stay and marvelous raconteur and permaculture activist and Texas good old boy if someone who was an MD and PhD and threw them away because of wanting real healing outside of allopathic medicine can be called a “good old boy.”

Anyway. That was Ted. I cleaned Ted’s refrigerator, a more daunting process than you might imagine, and gave him some lessons and he was grateful and pleased and we turned out to be kindred and brotherly friends.

And Ted led me to Sonora, a bright transplanted star from Missouri, who raised four children in Austin and teaches voice and piano out in southwest Austin right next to the Waldorf school (where she sent all her kids). And Sonoma has room to store me for the winter, a teenagers’ house with the teenagers gone and some land we are going to turn into a garden and now I’m ready to stop talking writing about me and let the focus be on you and how you can wake up to your body and ease and pleasure and learning in the moment.

That’s our life. This being in the moment is our life, whether we notice it or not.

Many enjoy noticing it and find freedom and pleasure and ability to love and forgive and be creative and discover the joy of the new when they are present.

We’re all going to die, and each moment is a gift and a miracle, and moving slowly and with attention can wake us to that miracle. And if the movements are designed to pattern and reawaken natural “functions” that make our life full and vital and easy, as the movements are in the Feldenkrais Method and the Anat Baniel Method, then this waking up can be not only a coming to the present, but an upgrading of your whole nervous system so that we feel younger and taller and lighter and more at home in our “bodies” and brains after the little lesson.

And here’s one.

Here’s a game in which you can begin to come back to you.

What a gift.

One: sit at ease at the forward edge of your chair. Feel your arms and legs and spine and pelvis and ribs and head. Sense yourself. Sense your breathing. Be aware of being alive. Be aware of being aware.

Two: turn your head to the right and to the left, slowly and easily and less than the limit Go for pleasure and learning and awareness. “Range of motion” is a strange and awful trap. Don’t fall for it. Slow into the delicious present of each time you move being brand new. Notice differences in turning right and turning left. Notice differences as you slow and ease into paying more clear and curious attention. Notice the moment.

Notice being alive.

Rest. Feel what slow and attentive movement can do for your mind and body.

It is good.

Three: turn your head, in sitting more or less upright, just to the left and back to the middle. Several times. Each time slowly and with pleasure and learning.

Rest.

Four: put your hands each under the opposite arm pit, so you feel your ribs. Now slowly turn to the left and back to the center. Sometimes just turn “the head.” Sometimes pull the ribs to the left so that your torso and head are a team.

Go slowly. Gently. Pleasurably. With learning.

Notice your spine in all its 24 vertebrae glory.

Notice the difference in “just head,” and head neck and torso and ribs as team.

Rest. In the middle. Eyes closed. Sensing the all of you experience: head spine arms legs pelvis ribs feet hands breathing.

Five. Take the hands the same way as above and rotate your ribs to the left, not to the gosh darned “limit,” but over there comfortably, and leave your ribs and torso and sternum facing that way.

Now like this, rotate slowly your head back toward the center, and then a little to the left of where your chest is pointing.

The usual: slow, gentle, pleasure, learning.

Come back to the center and rest.

Six: Take your head and eyes to the left and let them rest comfortably there. And now, hands on opposite side ribs as before, rotate your ribs to the left and back to the center, keeping your head to the left.

Slow, gentle, pleasure, each time new and a learning.

Rest in the center.

Seven. Tilt side to side as you sit, so that your weight is sometimes on your right “sit bone” and sometimes on your left. Enjoy this. Think of the “sit bones” as the two feet on which you stand when you sit.

Enjoy this.

Slow, gentle, etc.

Rest.

Eight: Tilt to the left sit bone and stay there , and with your weight over there, begin to bring your right knee forward, by pushing your right hip forward. Go gentle. If you don’t get it, just imagine something, anything. But go slowly, and keep your right foot on the ground, and slowly push your right knee a little bit forward and then back and then forward again so you feel your hips rotating to the left.

Go really slowly. Go really gently. Don’t demand you “get it” if you don’t. Find the pleasure. Find the learning.

FIND THE PLEASURE. FIND THE LEARNING.

Rest.

Nine: Take your hands to the opposite arm pits and rotate the torso to the left and when there, tilt to the left sit bone and bring the right knee forward, and stay rotated in both hip and torso, and now bring your eyes left and right while your head stays pointing where it’s pointing. Many times. Slow and easy.

Rest.

Ten: sit in ease and awareness. Turn your head to the left with maybe knowing your ribs can help, maybe knowing your pelvis can help, maybe knowing your eyes can help.

Take lots of time to enjoy this.

Take a mini rest.

Turn both right and left and notice the difference.

Rest.

Eleven: stand up and walk around and see if somehow life isn’t lighter and brighter and more clear and happy and easy for you.

Good.

2010-11-01T18:47:00.000-07:00

One of the healthiest ways to eat

is to harvest wild greens:

On Orcas,

I had an abundance of Nettles and dandelions

In Sonoma,

pigweed and mallow where in glory

Coming to Austin,

things have been slim

except that one garden plot at the Sunset Valley Community Garden

was full of my old friend:

pigweed,

aka,

wild amaranth

Imagine my surprise and delight to discover a magazine

called Edible Austin

in the summer issue of which

had a full page spread on the glories

of eating wild amaranth;'

Here's the link: Eat Wild

And here's the glorious "weed" itself.

Mix in some soaked sunflower,

pumpkin,

almond,

flax seeds

and a little Celtic salt,

and sweetener:

honey, fruit, stevia, agave

and you have a high powered,

super nutritious feast in your hand,

soon to be in and nourishing

your body

2010-04-17T06:29:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-04-13T06:51:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-03-08T16:05:00.000-08:00

Essentials of Health, part two,
coming back to this blog

Today is Monday
and it's March in 2010.

I'm on an island,
far north
and moderated weather by water all around.

Of name, Orcas Island.

One, of my last posts
was a pious little piece
about real health.

I'm in the mood to start this
up again,
having connected with a grand group
of people
who are interested in Nutrient Rich
eating
and deep health
with a lot of help
from the ideas of Weston Price
and the book,
Nourishing Traditions,
and their own
natural instincts.

Based on associating with them,
and some slight humility
in my great, but not perfect health,
I'll play at these "what to do, what to eat fields"
again,
in a little less dogmatic way.

I hope.

Here's the ideas/ opinions of one person
in this day
or this year
this springing season
2010, March.

How to be Healthy:

Spend a fair amount of time
in the present.

Spend a fair amount of time
Loving What Is.

Help the Earth and your own health
by growing the food and meat you'd like to eat.

Eat mainly raw,
if you enjoy that.

Follow the Weston Price logic for at least awhile
and see what high quality fat,
from high quality milk, cheese, meat, fish, eggs
will do for you.

I like to eat these raw.
You discover what's good for you.

So far:
be present.

love what is.

eat mainly raw, and a lot of high quality good raised
on grass.

Adding on:
do something physical each day,
walk
tai chi
yoga
garden

add on underneath
The Feldenkrais Method
or
the Anat Baniel Method
to discover
how to learn
again how to move and learn
and discover
as you did when you were younger

Learn to think and feel
as a chance to have options>

Someone is "mean" to you:
options: fight
feel sorry
feel hurt
feel compassion
feel curious
step aside
fight
write a poem, story, play
put yourself in their shoes
put yourself in the present and see
"who you are without the story"

Thinking:
you have a "problem"
What are five ways to "solve" it.

Do the work of Byron Katie.

Links to all this are readily
available on this and my other sites.

Enjoy.,

2009-02-05T13:28:00.000-08:00

tai chi and yoga

a chance to wake up
or a chance to troll away
in the stale waters of

"this is how to do it"

"this is the RIGHT WAY"

"pay attention," which really means: be vigilant for
'not doing it the Right Way'

but
can, I must admit, at least have the advantage
of helping us be aware of how often
we just make random
movements
and think we know what we are doing

so what's the point of tai chi
and yoga
if it isn't to "do 'em right" ?

the point:
do them
and discover how many slow
and varied
and connecting to gravity
and breathing freely
ways
you can do
each and every
"posture"

the posture is
the start not the end:

the real learning:
how to get to the posture
and
transitioning to the next
and
how to be near and beyond
and just off
the posture in a whole lot
of fun, useful, interesting
and possibly amazing
ways

and this isn't improvization:

it's experimenting
and awaring
and
learning

good

2008-11-28T12:17:00.000-08:00

Eating and Finishing

Thanks giving
is a sweet
and wonderful
chance to see:

ah, I can stuff myself.

And then:
how do we sleep.

How do we feel
the next day?

A possible
switch:

do all stuffing before 2 or 3
in the afternoon

and then stop eating
until
the next morning.

Dali Llama does it
Ayuruvedic recommends it

when I do it:
I sleep better
wake up fresh
and untired

a nice shift of
habit
I'm looking forward
more and more

to making

2008-11-22T12:14:00.000-08:00

The Essentials of Real Health and Healing:

My Take

1. Meditate Full Time
Not on your butt, though that twice a day 10-20 minutes
would be nice.
All the time, while living.

2. Spend a couple hours a day outside.
Do walks.
Talks.
Writing.
Gardening.
Thinking.
Commute on your bike or feet.
You figure out how.

Enjoy these minutes/ moments.
Meditate in them.

3. Re-learn to learn how to move
with ease, grace, pleasure,
creativity and awareness.
Deepen sensing, body comfort, skill
and learning.
Vitality and learning at center of life.

4. Eat only raw foods.
(If you want to stop getting sick
or heal something
or lose weight
or increase radically overall vitality.)

Raw fish, meat, cheese, milk, keffir, eggs
okay/ good.

This puts you way out of social norm.
Oh, well.
Doing morning and evening raw
is fine wonderful great, too.

And being present,
you can love
those around you,
even as they look at you
like you are some sort of scary freak.

When you start to glow,
lose huge amounts of weight,
stop getting sick,
and look ten to twenty years
younger,
they might get a little more interested
and respectful.

Then again,
they might not.

Their business: see Work of Byron
Katie, below as stress undoing
part of real health.)

5. Write three pages a day.
Dreams, wishes, ideas, wondering,
exploring, undoing, investigating,
letting go, diving in, loving, gratitude,
creative ideas.

6. Undo all grudges, resentments, regrets.
All of them
The Work of Byron Katie
is supreme for this.

7. Care for and be of use
to
Other People
and
the Earth.

This is a lot.
This will do almost anything.

Again:
my opinion.

2008-11-14T10:14:00.000-08:00

Maybe Raw,
Maybe healthier,
Maybe more greens,
Maybe healthier

You can read
books
saying to eat this,
eat that.

One of the set of books you can read
is some fun stuff
that lets up
know about losing weight

or ending sickness

or even stopping heavy hitters
like cancer
and whatnot

by eating raw

me,
I don't know

think it's fun
easier

easier to digest
food tastes
better

simple

if I don't eat too much at night
have tons
of energy
even with little sleep

who knows

might work
for you

and if you do it
go
all raw

messing around
with "trying"
it

really isn't going
to give you the glow

so
go slow in your breathing
your eating

but,
make the shift
all the way

if you want to try
an amazing experiment

2008-11-07T08:49:00.000-08:00

failing, learning, loving

What is Real HEALTH????

health
could mean:
never get sick

and a good path
toward that is two of
the things Mom should have told us:
get good
sleep
and
go outside and play

and the third
and this is to
NEVER
get sick:
eat raw
foods

Mom probably didn't tell us that,
though she hopefully pushed
bananas and carrots and celery our way

Anyway:
another version of health
is
a Feldenkrais definition:
springing back from setbacks

can be physical:
get sick
then get well fast

can be emotional:
get whacked by someone's unkindness
or insensitivity
or just plain forgetting that we
want to be as important as we want to be

and springing back

can be
life path:
setting out to do a business
or a project
and various
rejection/ failure along
the way:
and picking ourselves up and
going
do
with the show

good

and spiritual:
setting out to be present
or loving
or whatever
failing
and getting back to it
instead of trashing ourselves
for "failing" "again"

la,
la

easier
to write/ give
this advice

than
sometimes to remember it,
myself

see today's essay at
slowsonoma.com

love
and happy
ungradings
to
you,

Chris

2008-10-24T11:10:00.000-07:00

Friday and the Week ending

Everything ends

Weeks end

Life ends

Relationships end,
either by death
or parting

Tomato season ends

Winter ends

Summer ends

This blog
entry ends

I bet you knew that,
and breathing in,
that ends,
pause,
breathing out,
that ends,
pause.

Someone says something to us.

What about a pause.
A breathing.
An opening.

What if we spoke and responded from emptiness,
rather than the old chatter tapes.

Ah, wouldn't that be interesting.

Giving life
our minds
our lives
a pause

some space

after one thing
ends

and the next begins

And what, to do with yoga, weight loss, tai chi,
and health,
has this to do?

Actually a lot,
and I'll pause
and maybe you will, too,
and then you can pursue how yoga and stop pause
tai chi and stop pause
health and stop pause
even weight loss (take a bit, and stop pause)

can be great and wonderful
ways
to improve the sweetness
and now-ness
in your life.

Ciao,
Chris

2008-10-03T09:55:00.000-07:00

3 L's for a good life

Laughing
at ourselves,
especially when we have taken ourselves
into unhahttp://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifppiness by
our hatred/ anger at/ annoyance at
other people.

Why laugh?
Do The Work
and realize:
we do the same damn thing
that bugs us in them.

Learning,
something new,
about moving with more ease,
about plants,
about the person we live
with and might be taking
for granted
about the
joys of silence

Loving:
this is big.

Find something "hard" to love,
and see
what's stopping you.

More to come

2008-09-26T10:34:00.000-07:00

What to Say on Friday?

I got up early today

usually wake up way early
and getting out of bed
is another story,
usually wait for the sun

but friends
at the Sonoma Ashram
like to meditate at 6:30 AM

so got on the sweet bicycle
still dark

went and meditated

good:

here is
what I
want
to be
and assist others to be
in life:

happy,
present,
loving what is,
learning,
healing of our moving, our thinking, our hearts, our Earth

Earth
love
happiness
learning
awareness

there was something more

real health

okay:

happiness
being present
real health for me, others, and the Earth
love, and letting for all unlove (forgiveness)
learning to move, think, breathe, live with Ease

ease
awareness
love
happiness
healing
health

good

fine,
that's enough

good

2008-09-19T16:13:00.001-07:00

How to Eat Better,

It's an easy
step this one
and helps the Earth
have less junk
and your body
have less sludge:

Don't eat anything
from a package.

Get it in bulk,
get it at the butchers,
get it from your garden
and your farmer's market.

Sometimes I slip
on this, usually
sweetners:
Agave in a plastic thing,
and organic free trade brown sugar
to feed my kumbacha

and chocolate raw
in plastic

and raw milk
in containers

that's a lot,
and still
it could be more
lots more

do the best you can

and see how much better
you feel

oh, yeah,
and the stuff
you do get:
organic

2008-09-12T08:55:00.000-07:00

Lose Weight:
Eat Less, Eat Better,
Eat Different

losing weight
is easy:

stop
the stuff in packages

stop
the sugar
and refined flours

only have grains
if soaked
over night

only have organic food

eat a couple
or all your meals
as raw foods

don't mix protein
and grain

better
yet
stop all grains

and eat less at night
and
a lot
as much as you want
in
the middle
or
middle-ish
of the day

2008-09-05T13:07:00.000-07:00

happiness and heat

it's hot today
and
often
hot
around here

what are you going to do?
go out into the heat a little, with
a hat
walk
ride a bike
don't stay too sheltered

and still:
nice to cool
the house
off at night
by opening the windows,
and then
keep the house
more or less
cool
by
shutting the windows
in the day

everyone knows
that

some still use
air conditioners

oh, well

global
warming:
we all try
to do a little bit

and what is good
for our health:

loving what is
always
takes the stress
way
away

so:
some way to love
the heat
seems a grand idea

I say:
plant tomatoes

then even when we are hot,
at least they are charging forward
into something delicious
for
us
to eat

2008-08-29T09:47:00.000-07:00

Friday, hot Friday
Undoing Stress
and
Real Health

the news yesterday:
Marlie and I are going to work
toward moving apart

this could be stressful

this could be sad

this was "hard" yesterday

and to "deal" with stress
is one of the great gifts
of the Byron Katie work

to have stress
means to be at war
with What Is.

to have stress
means not to be comfortable
now

it usually means being
lost to
now

and on the contrary:
to be now
is the end of the Byron Katie work,
usually

and to be now
is to
re
turn to a state of ease
and clarity
a feeling
an experience
of our being-ness
right now

and so,
the Marlie and Chris
thing

what a nice story
and she's wonderful
and I'm wonderful

and "it" was hard yesterday
and will probably be hard
at times in the future

and here's what we did:
talked
talked with one talking
the other listening,
five minutes at a time
no interrupting

if someone interrupted,
they had to finish out the time
period

talking
listening

and then
for me,
two sets of 22 minutes
doing
the work:

the beliefs:
"This isn't a good time for this to be happening"

Is that true?
I don't know.

How do I react when I hold to the thought/belief that
"This isn't a good time for this to be happening"?

Hell, is how I react. Feeling bad, sad, mad,
victim, cheated, fooled, afraid
and more.

Who or what would I be without the thought that
"This isn't a good time for this to be happening"?

I'd be someone sitting here
now
breathing
and curious:
how is this going to play out?

I'd be alive
and grateful
to have a friend I can talk
while we work
out what all the stories
say is a "hard thing"

I'd be in love.
In love with Marlie,
and excited to have a love
that rises to the occasion of loving
her when she wants her path and my
path to go different directions.

I'd be in love.
In love with me,
and excited to love me, even in
the scary place of wants my path
to go in a different direction
than someone I deeply cherish
and love.

Good.

And the turn around to the statement:
"This isn't a good time for this to be happening"

This is the best time for this to be happening.

A weird
wild
wonderful world.

Over and over the choice:
control
or
love.

Over and over the choice:
going into War with What Is
or
Loving What Is.

Ah,
life.
a hot Friday,
a future that will go ????
a love that is here,
right now.

this is one
way
one amazing way
out of so called "stress"

2008-08-25T10:26:00.000-07:00

Classes for the Fall

Increase Skills and Enjoy Life More

Think more clearly

Anti-Aging

Move with more ease

Re-discover how much you love to learn
and
be alive

Decrease and Make Irrelevant Various
Aches and Pains

Recovery faster from Surgery

Perhaps avoid surgery

Recover from Strokes and falls and accidents

Rediscovery how much of you there is

Starting the Second Week in September
(on the weekend of September 6
and running for 5 weeks,
to end the week of October 4-9)

Group lessons
Monday and Wednesday
11:30 AM Discovery and
Anti-Aging Yoga
5:30 PM Backs, Necks, Shoulders
and Anti-Aging

Thursday
5:30PM Musicians, Surgeons, Hands
6:30 PM High Performers

Saturday
9:30 AM Discovery and
Anti-Aging Yoga
10:30 AM Rolling & Relationship
11:30 AM Backs, Necks, Shoulders

Based on my 127 days of training
in the Anat Baniel Method,
including certification in her Mastery Programs for
Special Needs Children
Vitality and Anti-Aging
and
High Performers

as well as
200 days of training
in the Feldenkrais Method

These lessons
can appear to be "movement lessons"
and are really
brain lessons,
anti-aging lessons,
regaining vitality lessons,
regaining our skills lessons,
and rediscovering discovery lessons

Costs:
taking one five week series
(Monday 5:30 PM Backs, Necks, shoulders and Anti-aging, say)
$100

taking two series:
$160

taking three series:
$200

drop in $30

yoga series:
one class a week for five weeks: $80
two classes a week for five weeks: $140
three classes a week for five weeks: $180

yoga teachers: add 50 %

drop in for yoga classes: $25

high performer series:
five week series: $200
drop in: $50

enjoy
learn
love each moment
and
smile

2008-08-08T09:57:00.000-07:00

Something to say for August.

August has been hot.

August has been cold.

It rained a bit the other night.

Sleeping outdoors, Marlie and I got some raindrops
on our faces.
In the eye and it's kind of a zinger.
Still, we fell asleep with the rain,
and it was light,
and didn't last long,
and the next day things were damp
but not down to our layer.

Why mention that.
Rain in good, I think.
Sleeping outside is great, I think.
I'm getting more and more jazzed on eating totally
raw,
having had just one meal at the local Ashram on Guru Purnama
of cooked food
and gotten first cold
in a
long,
long
time.

What you do.
Up to you.

Though if you want to stay
slim
and have extra energy
and not
get sick,
this,
combined
with not eating much if anything
at night
and being
present
and moving
with awareness
and joy
and ease

all
are great
anti-aging
pathways

hope
you find one for you.

2008-07-18T09:08:00.000-07:00

Have a wonderful day....
it's good for your health

Here's Marlie
we're back in the digital cam nonsense,
fun nonsense

and now
let's have some words...

i like visitors
to come here
on a bike
and with the intention
of working in a garden
and following
their breathing

could that lead
to a wonderful
day?

well,
less visitors and more peace
and quiet
in the garden
for me

what creates a wonderful day
for you?
maybe you like a bunch of folk
around
or maybe you like
some time to yourself
or maybe both

maybe you like time
with your kids
or your pet
or your garden
or your feet
or your yoga
or your tai chi
or your music
or your walking

and
dancing
singing

and
hey
what about
eating

and all this can be done mindfully:
and then the real health can come in

eating slowly and with awareness
will lead to real nourishment

eating in the yum yum stuff
it in mode
is fun
at the time
and then...
sometimes the consequences aren't that
sweet

and if we are
here
right now
even reading this

then the possibility
of ongoing happiness
is available

and ongoing happiness
as opposed to thrash around
happiness

is what we were meant to
have
as living beings

happiness
and helping
others
and discovering the truth
of what a life
is

lots of possibilities
for a
wonderful day

wouldn't
you
say???

2008-07-11T12:43:00.000-07:00

Friday and Alive
and what a morning

a bee sting
a little way into the morning
after some fun times in the garden
transplanting this and that

transplanting
is one of the secrets to health:
having a garden and taking little bits of
this plant and spreading it
out somewhere else fun

healing:
the garden
being outside
puttering and experimenting
co creating with nature
taking a chance on something new
going for even more wonderfulness

and then the bee
in left hand
palm side, near where left thumb articulates
ouch
took sticker out
watched it
had idea of "sending love"
which seemed too vague:
so sensed the area
with interest
and curiosity
which is pretty close to love: attention, interest, curiosity
even a little fascination

didn't go off into emotional
poor me
didn't get worried about the sensation
which could be called "pain"
but as pure sensing
just was what it was

a stinging and a heat inspired me to walk to plants
that seemed cooling:
a basil leaf
a mint leaf
a purslane leaf and press them easily to the place

for awhile
then
since i'd alread made juice
and had the hand juicer out,
juiced the leaves and a little more
drank liquid

looked at the place
realized,
as i had earlier: temptation
to close everything down
and not move the ouchy part
so did little moves
like in the neurological work i do with others
and myself
if painful,
slower
find another route,
make it a path of ease
keep things moving

got into a whole nice game
with how the thumb moves
and how it moves with and in relation
to the other fingers:

try to touch your thumb and first finger
and have them together make circles
and then try this with the thumb and second finger
interesting puzzle

so looked at
loved
leafed
learned about
my left hand and the stung area
and
then
an urge to rip up some more of the
plant i'd been transplanting
and go the "wound" all nice and dirty
(oh, somewhere in there,
as playing with moving thumb and other fingers,
taking a walk down to check of recycled garbage
at bottom of driveway)

so anyway
using the hand as if it was okay
which is was
and dirty
and planting
and having fun

and then making some phone
calls
and a sister calling
with falling apart Mom stuff
and
i get to do
loving what is
work on that one

a grand morning
of this
challenge
and that
and rising to seemingly
enjoy
and go
with life

life is well worth
going with
it seems

and when i started this essay
though i've had bee stings that hurt and swelled
for several days,
i had to search to remember where
this one, a few hours ago, was

la
la

life
and learning
and staying
soft an loving:
worked today

who knows
about the rest
of the day

2008-07-04T14:59:00.000-07:00

what is love?

and can it help
to make us healthy?

yes to last question,
and the first one.....

love is....

write it down on a piece of paper

look at the paper without words in your head
for five or ten minutes,

take a walk
and vaguely have the question in the back of your mind

and come back
and write
for a page or two,
without punctionation
or perfection
or even total clarity

just write to explore
and see
what love
is
getting to mean

for you

2008-06-28T02:12:00.000-07:00

Life
Upgrading
Sessions:

Action Coaching
in
Loving More,
Moving Better,
Functioning with more Ease,
Doing even better at anything
in which you
are already skilled and amazing

Sessions
combining

Talking
to clarify and improve

Writing
to clarify and expand

Neurological Upgrading Lessons
to move, think, feel
better

and

Movement with Awareness
to consolidate learning, joy
and a pathway
of creative life opening

2 hours or more per session:

$250 per hour

4 session minimum

give a call
to set up
an appointment:

707-996-1437

2008-05-08T07:59:00.000-07:00

Lose Weight, Get Smarter, Be Happier

Lose Weight:

eat mainly stuff with lots of
water in it:
veggies and fruits
uncooked

eat high quality meat
that has been range feed
or is wild
and is organic

maybe cook
it
maybe not

don't eat after six
in the evening

better
don't eat after five
in the evening

no fat after five

no flour
no sugar
no junk

okay:
how to get smarter:
learn five new ways
to do everything
you do:

come from sitting to standing
roll over
walk
talk
listen
write
worry
smile
eat
brush your teeth
and
so
on

okay
how to be happy:

breathe
learn to be present
learn to forgive
(the Work of Byron Katie
will take care of that.
i'll hire out to do that,
or you can do on your own)

basically:
if we are awake to now
we are real

if we aren't
la
la
either
high functioning robot
or not so high functioning robot

oh
well

2008-05-02T14:32:00.000-07:00

Tai Chi, Yoga, Health, Weight Loss

Life is good.

In Tai Chi, you move slowly,
from foot to foot,
and move your hands and arms, too.

Most fools
teach it in a very strict
and anal way:
do just this,
do just that.

Boring.

Bad for the brain.

Good for getting people up off the couch,
and out of the car,
and away from the computer
(yeah, this one, right
in front of us!!!!),
and
still:
boring.

Think about moving your weight,
from foot to foot,
when do you do that?

When we walk, eh?

And Tai Chi is fun
or should be fun
because we change directions
as we are pretend walking
and waving our hands
into this shape
and that.

But it's still this:
using the pelvis to rotate,
shifting the weight from one foot to the other,
noticing our breathing,
noticing our spine.

This is
or could be
way fun.

Fun to be present.
Fun to notice two arms and two legs
and gravity
and breathing
and moving from foot to foot.

Balance.
Awareness.
Rotation.
Shifting.

Fun.

Okay,
and what about yoga?
There you don't get to move
around as much.

Oh, well.
It's more popular in the West,
it would appear, by the vast number
of yoga studios "helping"
and torturing vast numbers of people,
most of whom are desperate to like
themselves and their bodies more,
torturing again
with the same old:
do it "just right"
stuff.

Boring again.

And, truth, to be told
beautiful when you "get it right,"
and sometimes
fun
to try for the various contortions,
like crow, or Warrior 3,
good for balance,
good for figuring out how
we work.

And still:
how to make these two
potentially ahttp://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifmazing activities
and turn them into learning
and enjoyment and discovery.

If you thought
http://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifI might mention the Feldenkrais Method
and the Anat Baniel Method
you are right.

and that's all
for now.

they are mentioned.
plenty of other essays,
especially in Wake Up Feldenkrais blog
to shed light on these
amazing ways
to improve
thinking
feeling
learning
knowing
discovering
and
moving

and what about health
and weight
loss??

maybe tomorrow
or the next post,

ciao
for now

chris

2008-04-21T13:37:00.000-07:00

Classes Happening

Would you like to
Upgrade
and Transform
Your Level of Ease,
Vitality
and
Creativity?

to say nothing
of improving

Thinking,
Relaxing,
Sleeping,
Anti-Aging,
Posture,
and
Breathing

SEPTEMBER CLASSES

Classes Happening

Group lessons /
September and first week of October

Friday 4 & 5:30
Vitality & Anti-Aging

Saturday 9:30 & 11 AM
Backs, Necks,Shoulders, Hips

Sunday 1
Musicians, Singers

Monday 6:30
High Performers

Most classes,
for all levels,
and you can make amazing
changes in each session.

$20 per class if doing a series
$30 drop in, most classes

First Saturday class
and High Performers
will be more involved, complicated lessons
cost $30 per class by series
$40 drop in

Each class will contribute almost as much as a day's
workshop
in any other method.

We are at 19262 Carriger Road
near Solano

long gravel driveway going towards
the hills in the West
second driveway south of Grove

if it's light out:
park at top of
Solano
walk north on Carriger to first long gravel driveway
on left
(sign might say 19260)
fields on both sides
small palm tree across from driveway:

walk up the driveway to your class:

one: less car noise for people here

two: you integrate your lesson by walking back
to your car for five minutes or so after the lesson

three: you get in the habit of
doing things in ways other than your habit

p.s.
don't bring a cell phone to the class

Phone:
707-996-1437

email
is chriselms@vom.com

thanks

and these classes
will
transform
your life

hope
to see you there

2008-03-31T11:34:00.000-07:00

Eliminate Pain (Emotional)
Improve Skills
Love Yourself more,
Wake up to Now

What could be more?
Ongoing enjoyment of all the "ups"
and "downs" of human existence.

Is this possible?

Of course.

Combining what I consider the most
powerful tool
for emotional change
improvement
and happiness,
The Work of Byron Katie

and good old
connecting to now
(see many essays at
SlowSonoma.com Now essays)
and
connecting to Nature
via gardening
and
walking
and
breathing

and
connecting
to now
via
the WakeUp Feldenkrais work,
which is a method
of knowing
how wonderful it is to
learn
and to
have a nervous system
and
to
move
and
to improve
moving and learning and being
present

we'll combine that
with Gestalt
and active listening
and communications skills
and

clean up relationships
with Mom, Dad, kids, ex-mates
and so
on

and get
back to
what you were meant to be:
alive
knowing you are alive
happy
and loving
of yourself
and others
and
the Earth

good

Sessions are $120 per hour the first day
and $90 per hour on the second consecutive day
if you wish to up the speed of learning
and $60 per hour on subsequent days of learning
and
change
and
transformation

enjoy
even
the idea
of more
ease
calm
peace
love
and
happiness
in your
life

starting,
of course,
right now

love,
chris

and call me
at 707-996-1437
if you wish
to begin
now
changing
for the even
sweeter
life

2008-03-22T08:48:00.000-07:00

Tai Chi for Non-Dummies

Tai Chi is good for you.
Right?

Isn't that what everyone says?
And if everyone says it,
doesn't that make it true?

Well,
no.

And Tai Chi could be good for you
and it could be a nice way of doing
something better than sitting around
on your couch
and it could be a way of obsessing
one more time
with "getting it right"
and thus hurting your spirit
while perhaps improving your body.

So: what would the intelligent way be
to go about learning and practicing and enjoying
Tai Chi?

What would be a way of Tai Chi-ing,
if that is a word,
which it now is,
tai chi-ing yourself to improvement in
body, mind, spirit and breath
and
brain?

Well, for readers of my various blogs,
it will come as no surprise that I will
recommend a Tai Chi that blends in the awareness
and playfulness and experimentation
and discovery of the Feldenkrais Method
and my own take on that
which I call, Wake Up Feldenkrais.

And how would this look?
Well, best to come to classes,
on Saturday mornings at 9:30 AM and Thursday at 5:30 PM.

But here's a hint:
Tai Chi
is about moving the weight intelligently
and gracefully from foot to foot.
All the hand stuff is nice
and a way to pay attention to two legs
and two arms at the same time.

What's in between?
The spine.

Find two or three tai chi moves,
really learn the feet and pelvis
and arms and hands.

And then:
let the pelvis move in the opposite
of "supposed to."

Let the hands move in the direction the
head isn't moving?

Let the weight sometimes shift the same
way the pelvis is moving,
sometimes the oppostie.

This is a lot harder to describe than
to do.

and so: begin
to experiment and learn:
when am i learning
and when am i just being
a mechanical robot?

This could be
an amazing learning.

2008-03-10T15:15:00.000-07:00

Recovering From Surgery

We all of us live lives that could be a lot more aware.
Sometimes, through habit and accident, we move in clunky ways that are inefficient, and sooner or later, even painful. Human nature is not to slow down and learn how it is that we are moving and being that is creating this pain. Human nature is to

One: just want the pain to go away. Or:

Two: ignore the pain, and learn to work and live and function around it. Or:

Three: plow through the pain, get the think of how rough and tough we are and actually get to enjoy the agony, if nothing else, for the bragging rights.

And here’s the neat thing: with the work of Wake-Up Feldenkrais and the Anat Baniel Method, we can have the pain become irrelevant. It will not only disappear, but we will become organized in our brains and bodies, so we move in ways that keep this pain from coming back.

For those who take the surgery route, many are surprised at how traumatic this is to our system. And many are disappointed at how little actual improvement takes place, though sometimes we have literally “cut through” the problem. Even so, our bodies need to mend, and the easier and more graceful our movement can be, the easier and quicker will be our healing.

This work is premier in helping us to learn again as we did when we were infants, and hadn’t a lot of muscle, how to move in the easiest and most useful way. This work appears to be “body work,” but is brain work.

This is about reorganizing and upgrading our nervous system.

It’s fun.

It works.

And if we can create pathways in our brain and in our functioning of moving in easy, efficient and pleasurable ways, we can set up a life for ourselves where we won’t need another surgery to patch up the complications we create in our reaction to the last one.

So, if you want to heal without surgery, or if you’ve had surgery, and want to recover in the easiest and a smartest way, come try this work and discover how good you can be at learning. Learning to live life with more ease, more pleasure and more discovery.

You’ll like it.
Your body will like it.
Your life will like it.

Yes..

2008-03-07T20:32:00.000-08:00

soul and soil

what is the soul's purpose
on this planet?

what is the soil's purpose?

what is the purpose of organic
life?

what is the purpose
of our life?

there is a certain glory to life,
and the soul's purpose
is to find
and dwell in that glory.

This,
I think,
is real health.

Many people think of health as the absence of sickness.

Others think of it as a certain vitality, an ability
to get out and live life fully.

Others think of it as the ability to spring back
from stress and setbacks. (This was how Moshe Feldenkrais,
a judo dude from a troubled country clawing its way onto the stage
of world history) saw health.

I see health as that sort of glow
you feel inside when you eat an apple
or a carrot or a piece of celery
and that was just what you wanted and needed to eat.

Or maybe I see health as that sort of glow
when you are working in your garden,
and that feels like life's great gift
to you
and your gift to life.

Or maybe i see health as all those moments
when,
peaceful
and alert
and happy in
the present,
we go about making our lives
and the Earth a nicer
place to live,
and certainly that can mean,
just smiling at someone
as they pass us on the street.

Lordie,
lordie,
what am I talking about in here?

Health,
I guess.
Or a good life.

Somewhere in here,
by the title,
I "should" talk about soil,
and the dirt that becomes soil
when it is left alone,
or favored with attention and care
and good organic nutrition,
a little manure, a little bit of leaves,
some straw, some old rotten food, some new
young worms, some bright wild seaweed, some
happy seeds,http://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
some smiles,
just like for our friends and neighbors,
maybe some paper
and cardboard,
so many ways to feed
the soil.

is that good,
feeling the soil?

Probably.

And how do we go about feeding
the soul?

Ah, maybe that we'll talk about tomorrow
at Slow Sonoma dot com.

2008-02-24T13:08:00.000-08:00

The Rains and our Inner Well Being

In this part of the world, on many a day, if the year is good, and the weather is kind, we have a good drenching rain. Today and last night has been that way. Last night the wind could be heard wild and whipping and this morning on our wide front porch, even boots and gloves supposedly “protected” by the overhang, were drenched. This cut a little into this morning’s fun, since without the big waterproof boots, I can’t frolic and stomp and work around so easily in the wet and mud and rain.

This, a shame. Yesterday’s pushing of wheelbarrows full of compost and horseshit in the drizzle, not only kept my body warm, and gave me pure and free exercise, but lifted my spirits as well. Who can feel poorly when the full fresh wetness of winter is all around, and you can march and stomp through it in your high boots, like some happy child.

Children know that rain is fun. Adults think it’s a bother, as if the wetness will somehow dissolve us.

When did we learn to be so fussy and frightened of a little discomfort? And is this really discomfort, a bit of wetness in our socks, or around our knees, and even, seemingly the worst of it, dripping down our neck? We can tell ourselves it is a drag, or that it’s yucky, or that it’s whatever we like to label experiences we want to avoid, but much like the emotional discomfort we were examining in the first section, physical discomfort, at least short of real miserable cold or hot, is often a mental story, a set up in our mind to be unhappy about the way things are going.

So we have the dampness, which as an experience is just a little .., well, damp. And then we have the story about the dampness, about how we really are uncomfortable, how we have to get back indoors, how we have to “fix” whatever is happening right now. We use the dampness as an excuse to dampen our own experience, to clamp down on our joy in living.

And now, this now as I write, the sun has come up between rain showers, and the clothes that I washed and hung around the house to soak up extra house heat and dry that way, the clothes beacon: put me on the line, they say. And, of course, the story: that’s too much work. And the story: it could rain again and I’d have to go out and bring them in. And the story: why can’t I just be like everyone and put my wet/damp clothes in the dryer? Well, I could, and prefer not to use the electricity. And anyway, the sport of hanging up wash is one I enjoy.

So rain not only gives me a chance to get outside and learn the difference between the experience of getting a little wet (after all there are coats and sturdy shoes, even when the boots are down and out of commission) and real suffering. It also gives me the chance to play with my clothes, the see if the skies will stay clear of rain long enough for some drying to take place.

And by the time these last two paragraphs have been written, the clouds and grayness has come in again. The wind is still strong, and by the end of this paragraph, the rains could be back. Time to put on my boots and take a walk. Maybe they’ll still be wet inside and my feet will get a little wet.

Maybe it will start to rain on me. Maybe I’ll play part time gambler and hang some of the clothes on the line.

If I’m present, it’s all a gift, isn’t it?

2008-02-20T19:34:00.000-08:00

the importance of fresh air

sweater on plant on piano

to breathe fresh air:
our bodies like to do this
and when riding a bike along
a beautiful road today
i saw some people taking happy walks

other people work
outside

still others
do chores
for their animals

others garden

some just go
outside
and sit

this is
all
a nice way to
live

and
does
it make
any money?

ah,
the big question

somehow: you can build gardens
and talk to people
and write books
and think useful thoughts
and think no thoughts in a kind
of enlightened
state

all this
you
we
i
you
us
can do
outside
breathing fresh air

2008-01-05T13:57:00.000-08:00

How to Lose Weight, part 44:

Don't Wait to move around,
not "exercise,"
call it Life

>
"half backbend," (head under gap) from Chris' SUFIA yoga (Feldenkrais/yoga/tai chi) mix

Moving is fun

to lose weight:
take twelve to
twenty minutes
set a timer
and dance
or walk fast
or lift rokcs
or do push ups
or all of the above
in some mixed
and awaren
and fun
way

and then
eat

eat slowly
and in
awareness

but earn your food
by joyfully being
in the life
of movement
and awareness,
first

2007-12-31T17:36:00.000-08:00

How to "Lose" Weight

stop waiting
to
be present
and
pay attention
to
the eating

the food
the tastes
what you put in
how fast
how you chew
shallow
what do you love about eating

how do you
know
when to stop

that's the start
and then:

eat lots of raw foods
maybe all

and then:
eat most
in the middle of
the day

and then:
combine starches with greens
and proteins with greens
and fruits alone or with raw protein

go slow
eat less
wait
and have
a snack
that has no
flour
no sugar

oh yeah:
drop flour
and sugar from the eating

lots to change

discover the thrill
of changing

why
wait???

2007-12-20T11:49:00.000-08:00

Sufia Yoga Class

(no longer offered on
Mondays
instead:::
on Friday afternoon
and Saturday mornings
at the new
Waking Up
Cottage
on Carriger Road:

call for location
and times
and to reserve:
707-996-1437

Sufia Yoga=
Strength
Unification
Flexibility
Intelligence
Awareness & Anti-Aging

A new invention
an evolving and wonderful
combination of
yoga (I was certified at the 200 hour level this summer)
Feldenkrais (I have trained 183 days, not hours, beyond the required 160 days)
Tai Chi
Pilates
and
More

Anti-Aging?
Yes, using our brains
as we did when we were first learning
to walk, roll over, talk and crawl,
reactivates a youthful and discovery
oriented approach to being
that brings us younger in feeling, movement and spirit

Strength of many sorts:
arms, shoulders, backs, abs, legs
and most of all:
brains, awareness and delight

Following the patterns of life:
expansion and contraction
Rotation and lengthening of our spine
Balance, coordination, and novel patterns of moving and learning
Discovery as intrinsic to a spontaneous, joyful and creative life
Loving now as intrinsic to a peaceful, rich, creative and loving life

Just show up.
Please bring a mat, and one (or more) for a friend(s), if you have extra.
Thanks.

Questions???
707-996-1437
or
email me at: chriselms@sbcglobal.net

2007-12-20T07:50:00.000-08:00

Feldenkrais® + Yoga + Tai Chi + Awareness
= SUFIA YOGA

Strength
Unification
Flexibility
Intelligence
Awareness & Anti-Aging

A new invention
and
an evolving and wonderful
combination of
yoga (I was certified at the 200 hour level this summer)

and
Feldenkrais (I have trained 183 days, not hours, beyond the required 160 days)

and
Tai Chi
(studied five years in Berkeley with
Lenzie Williams)

and
core work

and
turning on the learning switch
(see Anat Baniel Method,
where I have studied for 92 days)
applying body brain learning
to golf, tennis, baseball, skiing,
eliminating back, neck and shoulder pain,

and
More

......

Anti-Aging?
Yes, using our brains
as we did when we were first learning
to walk, roll over, talk and crawl,
reactivates a youthful and discovery
oriented approach to being
that brings us younger in feeling, movement and spirit

Strength of many sorts:
arms, shoulders, backs, abs, legs
and most of all:
brains, awareness and delight

Not just stronger,
but :
Get
Smarter ( using your brain, learning new and non-habitual ways of moving, and problem solving)
Sexier (connect to vitality, to the pelvis, to breathing, to loving yourself, to Life)
Stronger

Following the patterns of life:
expansion and contraction

Following the human construction:
rotation is what we are built to do most easily
being on two legs makes us uniquely unstable and capable of all sorts of mobility

Following the world in which we swim:
the ocean of GRAVITY: pelvis, legs, rooted, grounded, balanced, strong, back muscles to hold our head up

the ocean of AIR: torso, breathing, open hearts, rib basket not rib cage, flexible and aware ribs and sternum

the ocean of LIGHT and sound and smell and taste: free and mobile neck so we can turn easily and see the world

P.S.
We won't do this:

But if you could
this yoga would help you be even better at it

THREE TYPES OF CLASSES:

One: this mix:

Yoga, Feldenkrais®, Tai Chi
“Smarter, Stronger, Sexier;
More flexible, more aware.”
Fri 4:30 PM, Sat: 9:30 AM

Two:
tai chi, as I learned it in Berkeley
though
as it's never been taught:

Tai Chi (the Feldie way): Sat. 8 AM

Three:
on the floor,
easier movements
for greater learning,
ease
and pleasure,
though,
not strength
building

BRAIN ACCESS MOVEMENT
“Smarter, Sexier;
More flexible, more aware.”
Monday: 7 PM Fri 3:30 PM, Sat. 10:30 AM

see Current Class Schedule

2007-12-10T21:03:00.000-08:00

Living Life is Good,
Even when you are tired

written by a tired
chris,
oh
well

to be healthy

walk

to be healthy

smile

to be healthy

try something
that you think is "hard"
to do

this could be:
being present when
unhappy

this could be:
making a phone call you are
afraid,
or reluctant to make

this could be:
loving someone who is
giving you a hard time

even yourself
if you are giving yourself a
hard time

this could be:
going to bed when tired

this could be:
taking a walk when
tired

this could be:
walking in silence
when you are wired

this could be:
writing
in the present
following the breathing
your breathing
me breathing
anyone's breathing
while writing
or reading or
reading (that's a hard one,
every tried it:
if not,
hey:
another hard thing to try)

why try to hard things:
like to breathe
and know you are breathing
when your chatter mind
wants you unhappy?

because
life is a rising up
through the muck
an exploration
of possibilities

any moment
in the
real
now
kind of place:
is impossibly wide open

even
this
silly
wonderfu
one

wonderful
one

won der full
one

one dear full
one two three

there you be

2007-11-29T14:56:00.000-08:00

Waking Up Now

Friday Night wake up Group:

for some folks, Friday night
is pizza
or flake out
or party
or all three

for others:
what a grand party
to gather with others

and stay present

talk in the present
listen in the present
move in the present
sit in the present
to be silent
in the present

nothing fancy
everyday
magic
of waking
up to now

as we get "advanced" we will
talk of the immense topic:
How to Heal the Earth
and
staying present
as we speak and
listen,
we will experience
this discussion at a whole different
level than the usual
feeling frantic, cynical, distraught
or whatever emotional
habits grab us
when we aren't present

and,
it's possible to feel "bad"
when present
except
except that underneath
that
there is always a feeling of peace
and supportness

impossible?
no.
difficult?
perhaps.
Come and give it a try
of easy effort,
attention,
and delight
in the
Now.

Friday nights:

7-8:30 PM

$10-15 per person

$15-25 per couple

call for location
and to clarify
your wishes for yourself
in such a group

707-996-1437

2007-11-28T15:43:00.000-08:00

Waking Up
in the New Year

January 5
First Saturday in
the "New Year"
2008
Saturday
1-5 PM

every moment is "new"
if we are "now"

easy to say
to write
to blah, blah about

easy to "do"
easy to forget
a delight
an absolute delight to
be there
and stay there
as long as we can

yes

Come together
to sit in silence
to speak from the present
to move with awareness
to learn about learning
to be present
to find the peace
that is
always there
when
we are now

$50 before Jan. 1
$60 after

2007-11-25T17:55:00.001-08:00

Modified Head stand

Upside down
and the legs off
to the side.

Does this look
fun
or
hard
or both?

Yes.

2007-11-21T17:17:00.000-08:00

Clear Skies
and the Waters of Inner Peace

Gurdjieff once said that most people's idea
of happiness

was to eat themselves
into a stupor

well,
tomorrow's a
good chance to do that

or to
go for the real gold:
awareness as we eat
awareness as we open
our mouths to yap, yap

awareness as others speak
and we are tempted to fill our
mind with what we are
going to say, "next."

all that next
stuff
next thing to say
next bite to gobble in

and food,
yum,
one of the few moments we
are
now
when that tastes hits our nervous system
yum
yum
and hey,
one bite
needs
another
and another
and another
and
the tastes in the mouth,
and that social permission to plunge
in
and take it in my the shovelful

and soon the now
of tasting
the deliciousness
has gone into the glog
of stuffed
stupor

ah, happiness

of a sorts

oh, well
it's a sweet life

wonder ful
to wake
up
any
moment

even
now

2007-11-19T09:18:00.000-08:00

Healing and Enhancing our Relationships

From poor to good
from good to great

it's always fun to improve

Relationships are core to a happy
and sweet life

and we sometimes
either
go numb in them
or get so busy we don't see the other
or get locked into combat
or suffer in silence
or act in ways that are highly "asleep"

This work is for anyone who wants to
wake up to now,
to live with more pleasure,
awareness,
and love.

For themselves
and others.

Couples,
parents and teenagers
grown adults with issues still with their parents
anyone holding a grudge and having forgiveness hard to come to
anyone estranged from someone they once loved:

this work is
for you.

Sessions
last from one to two hours
and cost $60-120 per hour,
you chose the amount.

2007-11-09T19:46:00.000-08:00

Eating Less

To become a sweet and fine
weight
just for you

sometimes
you have to wait
until you eat
again

do a little
something first
a Feldie lesson
a twenty minute walk
or yoga
or tai chi,
or meditation

it's good
to do
a little something
when we think
we "have" to have
something
just now

breaking fasts
means
to explerience
the joy
of letting the stomach
wait
a little bit

no big deal
to our body
huge deal
to our robot
mind

don't believe me?
Okay.
don't believe me

or come in
for hereandnow
consultations
and see
remember
learn what you once
knew as a child:

there is a food
much
dearer
and deeper
than
food

and
of course:
enjoy the heck
out of your food

and
of course:
eat slowly
enough
to
WAKE UP
whilst thou eat

2007-11-06T18:40:00.000-08:00

What is Health

Resiliancy
and the
ability
to thrive
when setback
or set forward
or set down
or set up

love
is always
around the corner
and bursting
out of
real
health,

or so it seems
and
at any
moment
we
can be
healthy
and now

or something else

why not
be healthy

ciao
chris

2007-10-29T15:33:00.000-07:00

Clarifying Standing on One Leg, #1

Human beings can do a lot of things,
many of them fairly stupid,
and some
marvelous and we don't even know it:
such as standing on two feet.

Lo and behold,
why stop there:
How about standing on one leg?

Turns out
yoga
in its quest to help us clarify what this
body thing
body mind thing
focusing and attention thing
is all about
has a bunch of one legged postures.

And great:
every time we walk
we are one legged
for a little while.

But
in yoga,
we hang on one longer.

So, let's take the simplest
and make one set of clarifications
this week
and some more next week.

The pose:
Tree
Vrikasana

How to do it:
You know,
but just in case:

Stand on one foot,
bring the sole of your other foot
to your ankle
or your calf
or your thigh,
or bring your ankle of the up foot,
across the standing up leg thigh.

Anyway: there you are on one foot,
and the hands?

In prayer pose:
at heart
or above your head.
Or arms parallel above your head.

Okay,
then you stay there awhile,
and if you want to get fancy,
close your eyes and stay there.

Good:
the affirmation:
"I am calm. I am poised."

Fine.

And to clarify:
try this.
First experiment with your two legs
and discover which side does Trikonasa better.

Then do it on the "second best" side again,
and see how it is,
and specifically notice:
where is your hip joint.

Then lie down.
Stand the foot on the ground/ floor,
of the "second best" balancing leg.
Leave the "first best" leg lying straight and
it will just do nothing for awhile.
So we'll call this "second best" leg,
the Leg.

Now: imagine where your hip joint
is for the Leg.
Hint: it's not at the outer edge we
call our hips.
Nor is it in the crease where our pants
make a fold, in the groin area.
So where is the hip.
Find out.

Move the Leg, with foot in place,
the knee to the right and left.
Slowly.
Search for where the hip joint is.
Really slowly.
Take rests.
Do this again.

Let the Leg down, and rest like that.

Now bring the foot of the Leg
to standing again, and do this interesting
movement:
once breathe out, and lift that knee, and bring it
closer to your head
and then breathe out,
and push your belly out and
press that foot into the floor/ ground so that
side of the pelvis raises a little.
Go very slowly.
Search for the hip joint
in all this.

Take another rest.

Do that again.

Take another rest.

Now combine:
Bring the Leg to standing,
and rotate that knee in a circle
in such a way that sometimes the belly
is going out and the knee is going away
from your body
and sometimes the knee is to the right,
and sometimes the knee is coming toward you,
and sometimes the knee is going to the left.

Slowly circle.
Rest.
Slowly circle the other way.

Search for the hip joint.
Rest.

Come to standing.

See now which leg stands
more easily in tree pose,
and what knowing about
your hip joint
has to do with helping this.

ciao,
chris

2007-10-28T21:15:00.000-07:00

Marvelous Marlie

plan B

don't need one
yet

will post here
if we do

2007-10-22T10:55:00.000-07:00

Yoga on a Monday:

Tadasana

This one is
"simple"

and oh, so beautiful

Stand with your feet firmly planted
on the ground

bring your eyes to the horizon
go a little below
and a little above

see if you can find a position for your neck
that leads your eyes to being directing parallel
to the Earth

horizon
horizontal
spine up and down
eyes at right angles to that

search
and
if you want:
play

play a little with eyes and nose:
eyes up as your nose goes down
nose down and eyes up
and then find the two together
and pointing to the horizon

horizon
horizontal,
directions we learn and learn and learn
as babies
and then forget about

how are we doing now
at the computer:
is the screen such that our backs
can be upright
and our eyes looking neither up
nor down at the screen????

okay
back to tadasana:

feet
rock a little forward,
feel what happens in your back

rock a little back
feel what happens in your front

notice the tension in your back
when you rock forward,
the tension in your belly
when you rock back

find the middle ground
neither forward nor back
(minimum tension, front and back)
and then
come back to your eyes and neck
and let them line up with the earth

this is good

try this, too,
which is a bit like the above
and a little more advanced,
and very toning to the brain
and the nervous system:
pull your belly in just a little
and rock your pelvis so the top goes back
and your tail bone (the bottom of the pelvis, in a way)
tuck under

alternate that with pushing your belly out
a bit (this can be done to sweet effect
at our chairs in front of the computer)
and rolling the pelvis so the top part comes forward,
and the tail comes back
as if lifting your butt in the air

back and forth

then make it bigger,
letting the arms come up and back when your
belly goes forward,

and the arms come a up and a bit forward
when your belly comes back

feel the rocking on your feet as you do
this

what is different
if you do this with your eyes open
and with your eyes closed

search for the middle in
all this
the place neither forward
nor
backward

and you'll have a sweet
tadasana

The affirmation here is:
I stand ready to... connect with my Highest Self
or
I stand ready to obey Thy least command
or
I stand ready to live in the Here and Now
or
I stand ready to live life to the full

you pick

enjoy

2007-10-17T12:50:00.001-07:00

Parenting, and Love in Action

PARENTING: A GUIDE TO LIFE
Parenting is not something our children ask for. It’s something we do, and they live with. They suffer with, they put up with, they thrive with. Parenting is our job. In some systems, the soul decides to come back, chooses the parents, blah, blah, and maybe yes, maybe no, and most children have the complete right to say, “I didn’t ask to be born.”

So what’s our job as parents?

Easy.

To love.

That’s it, and on the “good days,” this is easy, and on the rest of the days, it’s a job.

A good job.

The best job in the world.

Have you stayed with me: on the “bad days,” parenting is the best job in the world. Why? Because when they are being little turds, then we have to get our …together and learn what loving really is.

You know the thing from the bible, where Jesus, almost with a sense of humor, says “Anyone can love really groovy people, but can you love them when they are sinners.” Something like that, and He has to drag in the old sinners thing, or maybe it’s just the translators. Over the eons.

Doesn’t matter.

The point: when they are good, they are very, very good, and when they are “bad,” they are horrid. (Little curl in the middle of the forehead, and so on.)

And when they are “bad,” we get to discover that “bad” is in the eye of the beholder, even if they are breaking our really great stuff, or hitting their innocent angle little sister/brother, or saying “No,” for the ten thousandth time to our Wise and Reasonable Rules, Demands, Requests, Pleads, and Barks.

So, how to do that?

Well, the Work of Byron Katie is the way to go at night, later, when we aren’t on the battlefield and we need to get clear about where IS the obstacle to love: in the little horrid child’s behavior, or in our mind that doesn’t know how to unconditionally love?

Loaded question, eh, and the Work, never posits one right way. It does allow us to get into our mess (Judge your neighbor/child), and slow down the mental mess (Write it down), and sort out the mess (Ask four questions), and bring the wisdom on home to our own hearts and minds (Turn in around).

But no rules: Thou Shalt Unconditionally love the little angels/beasts.

Nope, it’s all about understanding our suffering when we don’t love.

And then: back to the battlefield. What to do there, when we are ready to blow our stack, or at the very least, throw away love and get into Boss gear?

Same thing: Know what our habit is. Listen inside our minds to the voice and the words we are about to hurl out. Notice the habitual actions we want to take.

Slow down. Which is kind of already required, isn’t it: since we’ve slowed down enough to notice, instead of charging ahead in the old habit.

So, maybe way near the beginning is this: knowing we are going into the judge, anger, reaction mode. Then watching it.

Then, without the questions, raising the idea of the results of the questions: we have options. What else could we do than what we usually do.

But here’s the key, or one of the keys: follow our breathing. Look at the child without a story of how they should be different. Come to a calmness inside our own bodies, and look, look, look. And wonder: what is going on? Wonder, if I were this child, what steps could the Giant make that would make it easier for me to shift out of my doo doo? Wonder, about what the child imagines the world is and should be at that moment and see if you can help the child make sense of it’s anger or fear or stubbornness.

“If I were you, I’d want to stay here all night, too. You are really having fun. And it makes you angry when I take you away when you are having fun. And you really don’t like me when I take you away and you don’t want to be taken away. And it doesn’t seem fair that I get to tell you what to do all the time. Is that pretty much how it seems to you?”

Something like that.

Hmmm. Come to think of it, this wouldn’t be a bad way to be if a mate or parent of co-worker or friend got angry with us, would it? (Notice or don’t notice, that I stay out of the non-truth land that NVC gets you into when it starts talking about the “needs” of another. The child/ mate/ coworker doesn’t “need” to stay, or to feel in control, but they certainly “want” to.).

So, anyway: if we slow down, find peace in our own bodies, look at the child as someone who has real and valid and deeply felt reasons of their own. Maybe these reasons are understood, probably not, and that’s our job, too: to help them make sense of why they have good and righteous reason to hate us for a moment or a day or an hour.

So love is….

Something to learn. And learning how to slow down, give them their fury or “badness,” help them see what’s going on, work from a framework of listening, and paying attention and deep concern for “their side” of the deal: wow, that’s a long way toward love in action, isn’t it.

And if love isn’t in action, it’s probably not love.

Ciao, for this Wednesday’s parenting essay.

2007-10-15T12:11:00.000-07:00

Yoga for a Monday

Warrior II
or Virabhadrasana II
or
Vira 2:

Ah, hello Monday,
and how about a little Vira 2
to start the week.
Let's skip the warrior name,
just go for the gusto,
eh?
Strength,
down and into the ground,
open heart,
up into the sky,
looking forward,
rooted backward,
tooted
to
life
and all its wonders.

And so,
yippie,
let's go:

slowly
and with depth
and exploration
and joy
and discovery:

DNA yoga, Discovery, Nature, Ananda/Awareness

In DNA yoga,
we are up to all sort of variations:
lean "too far" forward,

lean "too far" back

arch you back "too much"

fold and round your back "too much"

try it out
find what feels real
and good
and strong
for you

find the power of connecting to the ground
find the freedom and joy in the upper arms,
feel them floating free,
whether palms are oriented up

or
down

try different depths of the pose,

find what's right
and good
and strong
and happy for you,
for YOU,

find the power and the joy
and affirm
while in this pose
and then
in a resting pose before
the next one:

"I joyfully manifest the power of God."
or
"I joyfully manifest the power of Life."
or
"I joyfully connect with the power of my Higher Self."
or
something else
of your own chosing

have fun
go deep
be strong
clear
and present

that's yoga

you are yoga

2007-10-08T15:05:00.001-07:00

Cow, belly down, ready to Moooo about:
Yoga for a Monday

Cat and the Cow

Cats, when they hiss, round up their backs, raising up their belly
and creating something like a half circle from
front feet to the back.

Cows, when they stretch out for a big old loud mooooo,
arch their backs, so the belly gets lower,
and the head gets higher.

Now, if a person did that,
we could have something like this:

1) For starters. Come to your hands and knees. Do this the normal mindless way, and then, hmmm, what would it be like to do it with awareness? Just how do your hands feel on the floor or Earth, and your knees? Are your feet flat to the ground or do you have your toes bent, in what they call the “for running” shape? Where are you looking? How does your spine feel? Are your hips over your knees, your shoulders over your hands? Fool around, play around, shift around, find what feels right for you today.

2) Breathe easily. Notice your breathing. Notice a happiness in breathing. See if there is any way that this simple act, the act of breathing can be easier and more pleasurable for you.

3) Now begin to arch your back and push out your belly as you breathe in. As you do this, lift your butt toward the sky, by tilting your pelvis so that your tailbone, too, is lifting. Do this each time you breath in, let yourself push forward with your belly, arch your back and tilt your butt to the sky. On the out breath, just come to “normal,” whatever that is.

4) Now try the opposite. As you breathe out, pull up your navel, lift the middle of your back toward the sky and tilt your tailbone under, as if you are going to tilt the front of your pelvis ( your sex) toward your face. Look down as you do this, so you are becoming nicely folded, with the center of your back being the high point of the curving you. This is the cat.

Cat, belly in, ready to hiss and ???strike

5) Alternate cat, with belly pulled in and back toward the sky, and cow, with the belly pushed forward and back arching so that shoulders and butt are the high points. Notice the tilting of your pelvis as you do this, and allow your head to come up when your butt comes up (the cow gives a big Mooooo), and allow your head to come down, looking between your legs when your pelvis tilts the other way.

6) Rest on your back and feel how you feel in your whole self. Notice your spine. Notice your breathing. Once again concentrate on being present and the happiness that comes from simple being at the moment with yourself.

2007-09-28T08:25:00.000-07:00

Waking Up to the Call of Health in the Moment

to be healthy
is wonderful
and often
neglected
until
something
"goes wrong"

probably way before Ben Franklin
people knew
and forgot
that an once of prevention
was worth a pound of cure

and how
can
waking up
to the moment
help us with real health

in the moment
we can notice:
ah,
i'm a bit sluggish:
time to move

instead of the habitual:
i'm a bit sluggish,
grunt,
throw in some food
or stimulant

and again
in the present
when
we are eating
we can go slow
enough to follow
our breathing
while we eat
to taste slowly
while we eat

that way,
the meal
almost each bite
will be a feast

and we won't be
shovelling it in
and doing something else:
thinking
reading
talking
watching tv
while we
treat our bodies as mere
machines
needing a fueling stop

and this now:
if we sense
and breathe
and get honest
and clear:

what would
feel healthy and fine
to do
with ourselves
right now??

listen
listen
the answers are within

2007-09-22T13:17:00.000-07:00

Season's Changing?
Or just a little early rain?

Now it's wet,
time to love water.

Now it's getting cooler
time to eat more fat.

Now's it's going to be darker
earlier
time
to eat more light,
or the
lighten
up
or en
lighten
up
or all three
or just
two

Now's it's Saturday
and that means....
whatever it means to you.

What do you love,
now?

What do you like,
now?

What would you do,
now,
if you didn't do
what you usually do

inside
outside

what habit
would it be fun
to explore
the shifting and undoing
and new variations on?

what is
it about now
that will
always be
and is
gone
even as
we notice?

ciao,
now,

chris

2007-09-17T12:36:00.000-07:00

SUFIA YOGA

Strength
Unification
Flexibility
Intelligence
Awareness & Anti-Aging

Fun, Expansion,
Learning, Love,
Ease and Clarification:

Move better
Feel Better
Think Better

Combining
Feldenkrais (10 years study, 165 days training beyond the 160 days required)
Yoga (7 years learning, 200 hour yoga certification)
Tai Chi ( 5 years studying with national push hands champion)
Pilates (not trained: this is code word for : Core Strengthening, back, abs and sides,
near the pelvis)
Plus ( strengthening the real core: Our Brain)

To understand the essence
of yoga
as a movement system
to connect to
Now
to connect to
Learning
to connect to
Joy
to connect to
Ease
to connect to
Power and Ease

Taught as group sessions
(see Current Classes and Workshops or call 707-996-1437

Private sessions at my
house
or yours.

Benefits:

Increase flexibility
without strain
or efforting

Increase awareness of
your body

Increase pleasure
in moving
your body

Increase
pleasure of
being in the present

Make "regular"
(i.e. non-discovery, Do it Right Yoga)
easier

Access your brain

Make learning central to
yoga
and to your life

Increase skills in other areas:
dance,
walking,
sitting

Heal and transform
back pain,
shoulder pain,
hip pain,
neck pain.

Learn to learn

Increase abilities
to slow down
to pay attention
to go inside

Connect with your higher self

Connect with nature

Connect with now

Connect with your humaness

Enjoy your life

Breathe better

Be happier

Improve creativity

Discover areas of yourself
that delight
and amaze you

Move as you
did when
you were
young
and
frisky

Discover how delightful
going slow
and aware
can be

in everything

2007-09-12T13:45:00.000-07:00

Eating Less

In Ramadan
people eat
only after sundown

the stomach rests
all day

they don't even
drink water,
the Muslims,
following
the dictates
of their religion

resting the stomach is good

fasting from dinner
is another way
to give the stomach a rest
make break-fast
a really amazing meal

and gain
an new appreciation
for how
much
we get pushed around
by our sensations
and our beliefs about
what we have
to do
the minute
the "hunger"
sensations
come

2007-09-11T11:45:00.000-07:00

Nine Eleven,
did the bad guys
get to Heaven?

Six years ago,
some "bad" guys,
flew some planes,
they wanted to stir up
a hornet's nest,
they did.

They wanted to kill some people
and themselves,
they did.

The wanted to stun
the Mightly America.
They did.

And what can that all teach us
about health?

What goes wrong
when love
goes wrong?

We marry someone,
highly in love
(if planning the wedding wasn't
too fractious),
and then x years later,
we can 't stand them.

Where did the love go?

A religion sets out to teach
people
to
"love thy neighbor,"
to
"love thy enemy,"

and then,
down the road,
decides
that it's time for a Crusade,
time to go kill some infidels
and take over some real estate.

The Crusades.
men,
with their big muscles
and reptile brains,
and iron
and steel
and horses,
and ideas of God
twisted into
reason for killing
go
off the War.

Killing, looting,
all the usual,
not very "holy"
these Holy Crusades

and guess
what?

big surprise:
revenge ideas
from the "infidels"
who now have their
own ideas about who
is an "infidel"

To love the Infidel
or kill him,
what a strange question
and to realize,
many, many answer it
is the least loving way

Some people say that all healing
requires forgiveness.

There are fun stories
like this:
woman on death bed,
just about to expire,
has the realization
that she doesn't need to hate
the guy
who jilted her at the alter
on their non-wedding da,
and when she forgives,
she wakes back to life,
is healed,
gets up and walks
into the rest of her life.

forgiveness
of others,

forgiveness of
ourselves.

they haven't been perfect.
we haven't been perfect,
and
ohmygod,
that's perfect.

does that mean we should
stay asleep
to our lives
and the present?

nah,
it's far easier
to love
and forgive
and be happy
in the present,

so we might as well
come on back home
to now
and life
and love
and laughter.

ciao,
chris

p.s.
did the bad guys
get to heaven?

this requires other
prior questions:
what is bad?
who are the bad guys?
is their heaven?
what is heaven?
what is the function of heaven?
what is this idea:
the kingdom of heaven is within (J.C.)?

2007-09-06T08:58:00.000-07:00

Red Sun,
Fires, Global Warming,
Happiness

Happiness is one of the reasons
we are alive

Love is another

Find someone to love
say,
yourself,
and then find someone else,
say,
whoever is nearest to you,
spatially

And love
you
and them

And then
try strangers

and then
enemies

enemies?

Sure.

See the essay
a couple of days
ago

in slowsonoma.com

and what about global warming?
take a walk
send out some love
see how little you can do today
and how happy you can be
doing that little

la
la

ciao
chris

2007-08-30T09:46:00.000-07:00

Joy to the
World

The Light has come.
The Night has come.
The smile has come.
The breath had come.

The Ford has come.
The Chevy has come.
The Prius has come.
The Lord has come.

What is the Lord?
Something important
inside us.
Or.....you give it your meaning.

And as for food,
I'm interested in the Body Ecology Diet
not to lose weight
don't need to do that,
but the clear up some fiesty
yeast inside
who feast
on the summer fruits.

Alas,
alas:
lots of greens.
Lots of vegies.
Lots of seeds.
Some good meat,
that I like to eat raw: buffalo in the freezer two weeks first,
wild caught Alaska salmon.
Some raw cheese.
Raw keffir made from raw milk.

Lots of water.
Some wheat grass plus power weeds juice.

Some super smooties.

On the BED
she allows three "grains"
millet, quinoa, amaranth,
and does the usual food combining
only grains by selves or with vegies

and meat and protein by itself
or with vegies

who knows
if this would be a way
you'd want to go

she,
of course
has a web site,
and has discovered that all autistic kids
have candida

hopefully i'm not autistic
but rocking back and forth,
with awareness
can be fun
but only as long
as the awareness keeps it fresh
then
time for something else

joy to the world
and this moment

looked at desk trainer lately?
see link to side
it's pretty darn amazing

but then again
you have to get out of the
good old rut
for ten minutes or eight or something

the terror of human life:
billions of people
running around
more or less asleep
to anything but the program
that they are stuck in
and that they
never really got to chose

and this isn't about
"limiting beliefs"
this is about
ongoing sleep

how to wake up

sing
experience now
joy to the world
the .... has come

keep close to the breath
keep sensing
and keep listening for the ....

ciao,
chris

2007-08-27T08:56:00.000-07:00

Love, Mindfulness, Humor, Nature

Now, Nature, Love, Laughter

Especially
laughing at ourselves
and how we can make ourselves
so tense and worried
and constricted

Love:
of ourselves
and others
and nature

now
is when our lives take place

nature
is the sky and air we breathe
the earth we stand on
and grow our food in
and the trees
and the flowers
and the oceans
and waters
we
are bones
and two legged
and big brained
and stand and sit
and move in
gravity

gravity
and breathing
now
almost every now

the earth is always here
the sun is somewhere

a laugh
is just around the corner
waiting to bubble up

love is
in our hearts
flooding out
or
wanting to

it's a
good
world

2007-08-23T08:17:00.000-07:00

The Ongoing Sleep,
and Weight Loss

In our wonderful world,
there seem to me
to be
three choices
for us
human beings

so called
human
beings

one:
low functioning robot.
always do the same thing,
complain a lot,
in a lot of conflict
unhappy
making others unhappy
not able to do, very often,
what they (we) set out to do

two:
high functioning robot:
almost always do the same
thing
think the same thing
say the same thing
but these things
tend to be more upbeat
more positive
more "happy"
useful to others
and ourselves.
able to do what we set out
to do
some of the time
(or even all the time,
if a really high functioning robot)

and
awake
to this moment
yes, this one right now
and the next
and the next.

no real room for "negativity"
because in the present,
we just see what is,
and if we can make something better,
we ask or offer
a possibility

this is scarier land
this awake
place
because we might not say
the "right" thing,
and might not do
what "others" want us to do

we won't need the drugs
that bond people,
the coffee and
the sugar
and the wine
and the stress adrenaline
and the fear of the Bad Guy adrenaline
and the fear of Something Bad happening adrenaline
and the fear of the Enemy adrenaline

we aren't in a hurry
we are sometimes "late"
we smile when people insult us
we laugh at our own misconceptions

anyway
it's a fun place
and with a story can be lonely
and without a story
is sweet
sweet
peace beyond understanding

and what's that go to do with weight loss:

if we are, say,
eating only fruit in the morning:
and we have a "starving" story,
or an "I have to have what I always eat" story,
we aren't free
to just enjoy the energy
and the freshness
of just fruit in the morning

if we are, say,
not eating after five in the afternoon,
and are "starving,"
we can be present to the "hunger"
and drink some tea,
or take a walk,
or write something that is important to us,
or we can panic
and want to do
have to do,
be compulsively compelled to do
what we always do:
stuff our face
when feeling a little "off"

which might be
when we feel "alive"
and "full of energy"
these feelings might be so strange to us
that they feel "off"

oh, well:
it's a good life
and at
any moment
we can wake up
to
now

any
moment

even,
of course,
now

ciao
(rhymes)

2007-08-21T07:21:00.000-07:00

hand juicer plus celery and windfall apples, and hard to see wheat grass

How to Be Healthy, 22

To be healthy
is
to be present.

To your breathing.

To your body.

To your thinking.

To your feeling.

Present
and
in love.

Also:
some practical tips:
find a friend with an organic
orchard.
Pick up the windfall
fruit
wind
fall
free
a little dirt on it
can't sell
it,
take it home
eat it
juice it
talk to it
smell it

and
find a friend
or plant
an organic garden
grow or pick
lots of weeds
mallow
pig weed
dandelion
lamb's quarter

pick them
eat them
juice them
talk to them
listen to them

be healthy

get a hand juicer
put the weeds
and the windfall fruit
and if you've grown some
wheatgrass
through

grind
smile
breathe
sense your feet
sing a song
laugh
juice

drink

and then
walk
or if you can't walk,
take a ride
in your wheelchair
outside
fresh air

breathe
smile
sense
feel
move
be aware
be aware of awareness

this is
a healthy
one
healthy
way
to start
your day

say
hey

love
and
laughter

chris

2007-08-18T09:33:00.000-07:00

Shitty Food.

At a lovely meeting
yesterday
of some lovely teachers,
they were busy eating salted nuts,
and crackery kinds of things,
and then those frozen ice cream sandwich
things,
you used to get at roller skating rinks.

I guess it's possible to
be healthy
and eat shitty food,
but only if you exercise about
six hours a day.

These lovely
teachers
didn't look like the six hour a day
exercise types,
and so
seemed to be missing
a chance
to have been eating food
that was making them healthy,
instead of food that was most likely
making them unhealthy.

Oh, well.
Who am I?
the food judge?

oh well,
again,
still:
tis summer
apples are just coming in,
tomatoes,
figs,
nectarines,
grow some sugar in
your yard

one woman i once read about
cured herself of breast cancer
by only eating food she grew herself
or bought in bulk.

her rule:
no packages
or boxes
or jars.

one way
to get back to healthy
food,
eh?

2007-08-13T08:58:00.000-07:00

Transformative Yoga.
Classes Soon starting.

One way I've started to call it is
DNA yoga.

Discovery, Nature, Aware/ Ananda Yoga

Discovery,
for taking advantagege of my training
(4 years of the "basic" training,
and then another 700 hours beyond that)
as a Feldenkrais Practitioner.

The Feldenkrais Method®,
is a method of learning to
think,
move,
feel better,
via
being more aware,
and taking the emphasis
off of "getting it done,"
or "getting it Right,"
or "making progress,"
and bringing us back to a state
of learning
and discovery,
the state we were in when we were young
and a genius, say from birth to a couple of
years old.

See my
What is the Feldenkrais Method? One word, two word,,, one sentence, two sentence, and so on, brilliant little collection
of ways to look at the method.

Anyway,
working with me
in either DNA yoga,
or "regular" (which means wildly creative and transformative)
Feldenkrais "work,"
or in the Work of Byron Katie,
and Discovery will be there
deep and firm in our joint unfolding.

Okay,
that's discovery.

And N.
NATURE.
I'll be having classes outdoors as much a possible.
All this hiding inside four walls,
cutting ourselves off from blue skies
and real earth,
and grass and
soil
and wind
and the elements:
nonsense.
Insanity.
How can we be sane
in a world
when we are always cut off from the world.

that's part of the NATURE part.
Another part:
Discovering what our human nature is.
To feel.
and to sense.
and what is the difference?
To make sense of something,
what does that mean?
To live in gravity.
What does that mean?
To have breath of which we can be conscious
or unconscious,
what does that mean?

A
is Ananda Yoga
or Awareness Yoga.
Or both.
Ananda yoga
is how I was trained
and certified at the 200 hour level
required by yoga alliance.
(compared to 800 hours for the "basic Feldenkrais" training).

Ananda yoga is about
being relaxed
and sending spiritual energy up your spine.
If that doesn't make sense,
it's about being relaxed,
even in the midst of efforts
and continually bringing awareness inside of yourself.

One way it does this is with affirmations.
For example,
the affirmation in what's called "Child's Pose"
(Balasana)
is
"I relax from outer involvement
into my inner haven of peace."

This not only accentuates and deepens
the posture,
but gives a big hint at what Ananda yoga is about.

Another posture,
warrior 2, Vira II,
Virabhadrasana II,
is a strong and joyous pose.
Its affirmation is,
either
(my version)
"I open gladly to the strength and glory
of being Alive."
or
the official version,
"I joyfully manifest
the power of God."

So
A
could be about Affirmations.

So, come to a class,
you'll love the affirmations.

And between poses
you rest,
and say the affirmations again.
This isn't about getting sweaty
and using yoga like going to the gym.

This is using yoga
for spiritual and emotional strengthening.

Though,
with the Feldenkrais
and awareness emphasis,
A
for
Awareness,
you will get more flexible,
much more readily
and EASILY,
than in normal,
do a bunch of postures
and always fuss with DOING IT RIGHT,
and never slow down
and really learn yoga.

This is yoga to learn,
to transform,
to enjoy,
to connect.

Deeply.
To yourself,
to others,
to the Earth,
to Spirit,
to your Higher Self.

2007-08-12T09:06:00.000-07:00

Classes and workshops:

Transformation
Change
Improvement
Fun
Waking up to Now

Back Pain
Weekend Workshop:
May 10-11
Sat and Sunday 1-5 PM
Cost:
$200 on bike or walk
$220 carpooling
$240 in car alone
10 % off if paid by May 3

enlightenment Tai Chi:
Learn a form forward and backwards
and to both sides.
the idea is learning and body brain awareness,
not "doing the form."
The idea is waking up to now.
Four Saturdays,
if at least eight people interested:
May 3, May 10, May 31, June 7
9-10 AM

COST: $50 on bike or walking
$65 if carpooling,
$80 if in car alone.

Transformative Movement Lessons:
Based on my training in the
Anat Baniel Method.
Many uses:
pain transformation
yoga and sports improvment
vitality and anti-aging
fun
curiousity
waking up to now
Four Saturdays,
if at least eight people interested:
May 3, May 10, May 31, June 7
10:30-11:30 AM

Cost as above.

Waking up to Now
meditate
walk
move
doing nothing
talk
all from and in
the present

Thursdays
7 PM

To register for classes and workshops
, call 707-996-1437
or Email Chris Elms, M.A.

2007-08-08T17:37:00.000-07:00

Eating and Fasting

We have this word
break
fast,
as in breakfast.

And if we eat at night
the fast isn't much to
break.

And if we don't eat at
night,
like the Dhali Llama,
say,
then the morning
finds us empty
and ready
and able
to truly
enjoy
a break
fast.

Ramadan
coming
up.
A different
kind of fast:
No eating in the day.
No water in either.
Breakfast comes after sundown.
Starts Sept 12.
Maybe this is of interest
as an experiment.

Not eating after 2 or 3 in the afternoon
is an interesting
experiment
for me
just now.

Ciao,
Chris

2007-07-27T12:37:00.001-07:00

The Power of Feldenkrais Plus Ananda Yoga

The Feldenkrais Method, and Wake Up Feldenkrais
is superb at this:
allowing us
to come to the moment,
allowing us to train
and improve our awareness,
our brain,
and alongside that:
our grace and ease
in moving.

Yoga, of the traditional sort,
is pretty good at giving us
a guiding path of
how to place of bodies
in positions
that allow us to feel more full
of life,
a little more flexible,
more in tune
with how great it is to be in a body.

Ananda Yoga,
with an emphasis on affirmations
that accentuate and hone the poses
into arrows of direction,
directing our energy in
and up the spine
to our brain,
directing our attention
to higher emotions
(One, for example is,
"I radiate love and good will
to soul friends everywhere.")
and to
the Higher Nature in either ourselves
or some Higher Spirit (God??)
in the Universe.
(for example:
"With calm faith,
I open to Thy light.")

So with Ananda Yoga,
with not only have the body
and mental awareness of most yoga,
but we have a deep confirmation
and accenting of
the emotional
and spiritual basis of yoga.

And with a Feldenkrais companionship,
we have a deepening of
the immensely easy
and pleasurable
improvements in
awareness
and thinkng
and moving
that can come from a system based
on learning and discovery
rather than that old trap
of "Doing it Right."

2007-07-21T22:00:00.000-07:00

What is Yoga?

Yoga is an ancient system of self
evolution,
that involves mental, physical, and emotional
development.

What we in the West often call yoga,
is the body physical part,
sometimes called Hatha Yoga.

Well, usually called Hatha Yoga.

A really sweet way to cut to the core
of what yoga is,
is to go to the second sutra
of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras,
196 short and often very tense
statements on how to come to
the highest human states.

The second sutra
goes like this

YOGAS CHITTA VRITI NIRODAH

yoga is the stilling
of the fluctuations and whirlpools
(of emotional likes/dislikes/attractions/repulsions)
of consciousness.

so: yoga is coming to the quiet place
in the center of all the fuss.

And then again,
some people like to explain yoga
with the idea of YOKE,
as in that thing that ties two oxen
together,
or even wedding vows perhaps,
but yoga here can mean union.

Union with what?
With your Higest Self.
Or Union with God.
Or Union with the Biggest Quiet at the Center of Life.

Or union of feet and head,
front and back,
left and right,
outer involvement and inner awareness,
movement and stillness.

Once you start going for harmony
and union,
the possibilities are almost endless.

Isn't that nice?

Ciao
for now,
Chris

2007-06-13T07:13:00.000-07:00

Weight Loss and Gout undoing Diet

GOUT DIET, LOSE WEIGHT DIET, GAIN HEALTH DIET
Core to this way of eating is to replenish and wash ourselves clean. We are 76% water and we need lots of water in our food. Gout is a condition of huge amounts of uric acid in the system, according to books. The cure: lots of cherries and strawberries and less or no meat. I’ve modified this so, you can stay super healthy, lose weight and wash the system in huge amounts of water.

Here goes:

Breakfast,
and all eating before noon:
Only fruit, ORGANIC FRUIT, fruit in season. Which now means strawberries, cherries, peaches, apricots and so on.
Tea, herbal tea.
Water, filtered (not bottled, let’s get beyond plastic) water.

Lunch
1. Main option: huge ORGANIC SALAD, at least 80% of the meal.
Along with the huge salad 20% of high omega three animal protein: hardboiled organic egg; salmon; buffalo.
(Cook the fish or buffalo as rare as you can stand it.)
2. Or: just a salad.
3. Or: just fruit, some more.
4. Or: any raw meal, get a raw foods book and find a recipe you like.

Afternoon snack:
1. Carrots, celery, any veggies
2. Or: A seed smoothie, and always first soak the seeds (okay kinds: pumpkin, and sunflower; hugely good kind: flax, though put them in fridge after soaking a couple of hours, they getting slimy don’t be scared) or a nut smoothie, with only almonds, again soaked overnight first. Add a little stevia to sweeten, or a small amount of honey.
3. Or: Plain fruit.
4. Or: Tea or water.
5. Or: Nothing, exercise and breathe.

Dinner.
1. All the lunch options.
2. Or:, 80% salad with 20% whole grains. Not whole grain bread (no bread, pasta, bagels etc, nothing from flour on this diet). But the whole grain of rice or millet or quinoa or buckwheat. With a little raw butter. A little.

Salad dressing:
All organic: cold pressed olive oil.
Raw unpasteurized apple cider vinegar (Bragg’s)
Flavorings: unpasteurized miso, garlic, ginger, Celtic sea salt, Dulse (seaweed, really good for you), turmeric, any other herbs,
Make your own though. Anything that isn’t crap is way too expensive and not as fun as making your own.

More to come, but this will change your life.

P.S. The usual medical disclaimers. You have a mind. Use it. If you want medical diagnosis, go
to a medical doctor. This diet will probably make you feel great and far healthier than
you've been in ages. Show it to your doctor, and have him or her come learn from me.

Remember: 4 days it takes to adjust to something new in the eating habit realm.

No: sugar, coffee, and little alcohol (one glass of red wine a day) or none.

No stuff from cans and bottles and boxes.

No stuff with pesticides, i.e. non-organic.

No dairy for awhile, and then only fermented (i.e. yogurt, or kefir, and raw if at all possible,
i.e. make your own).

Shop farmers markets, have fun, eat slowly, taste every bite and follow your breathing and think grateful thoughts while you eat, preferably eating outdoors.

Enjoy, learn.

Change requires change,
but you are becoming a new person.

Enjoy the discovery.

PLEASE BE WELL:

Pleasure
Ease
Awareness
Sensitive Strength
Enjoyment

BE

Waking up to now.
Embracing Change.
Learning to learn.
Loving to move, improve and transform.

CURRENTLY OFFERING THESE CLASSES

"To make the impossible, possible;
to make the possible, easy;
to make the easy, elegant."
Moshe Feldenkrais.

MOVING EASY
MOVING SMART
FOOD FOR BRAIN
BODY
AND
SOUL.

Mondays until June 18
at the
SONOMA BALLET CONSERVATORY
around the corner from the Post Office

Monday June 25
skipping July 2, and then
Mondays
from July 8 on into August,

at the Field of Dreams,
shady area between upper and lower levels,
(bring a mat or blanket if you don't
want to lie on the grass)
12:30-1:10 PM
Bring a Mat or Blanket
Dressed Comfortably
Be Enthusiastic about Learning, Feeling Better
and Expanding your sense of Enjoyment

Wednesdays
until June 20
OLSEN PARK
(west of W 5th, on bike path,
or on Linda St. just west of W 5th)
10-10:45 PM

Then August 8 on in Olsen
Park at 9 AM.

Cost: sliding scale : $10-20
Seniors (65+) sliding scale: $5-20.
First class: $5-10.

For amazing and transformative
and gentle
one on one lessons,
called
Functional Integration®
see
Individual Lessons
•

2007-06-04T16:36:00.000-07:00

Kefir and Kombucha
in the afternoon sun.
Fermented foods = good for you.
Probiotics that keep making themselves
again
and again
and again.

The Body Ecology Diet

RADICAL HEALING VIA CHANGING THE MOUTH INPUT
I was just recently reintroduced to the Body Ecology Diet, via Acres, USA magazine, a radical agriculture and health magazine. Acres, in and of itself, is a great read, not just on organics, but on a whole movement necessary to take the economy back from the people who make all the profit moving money around and giving back a rightful return to those who work the land. And that’s another story.

The Body Ecology story is a way of clearing on a Candida epidemic, common to many of us who have used antibiotics and not added yogurt and other probiotics at the same time, or who have had too much sugar in our diets at one time or another.

Basically, it’s a great way to get back to the basics and unhook yourself from sweets and grains and sugar and start to radically heal, as well as lose weight.

Here are the key elements:
Eat lots and lots of non-starchy, non-sugary vegetables ( leaving out potatoes, cooked corn, yams and sweet potatoes and beets). This is all for awhile.

If you eat grains, only eat millet, quinoa, buckwheat or amaranth.

No fruits until symptoms clear up. Except lemons, limes, unsweetened cranberries and one other thing. This is the hardest for me, and surprisingly, you (I) just start eating more greens.

No sweeteners except stevia. No sugar, nor honey, nor maple syrup, nor anything along those lines. Only stevia.

If you eat anything, eat organic if you can.

Food combine: veggies with meat and protein, or veggies with the four permitted grains, but not grains with the meat or protein.
Seeds, soaked, and almond seed, soaked, are great sources of protein, as are eggs.
No dairy except kefir, and it a bit into the cleanse and healing.

It sounds strict, and yeah, yeah, it’s the cave woman or cave man diet, basically, minus fruits. It won’t kill you. It’s a great break from habit, and it might save years and years onto your life.

See Body Ecology dot Com
Ciao,
Chris.

PLEASE BE WELL:

Pleasure
Ease
Awareness
Sensitive Strength
Enjoyment

BE

Waking up to now.
Embracing Change.
Learning to learn.
Loving to move, improve and transform.

CURRENTLY OFFERING THESE CLASSES

"To make the impossible, possible;
to make the possible, easy;
to make the easy, elegant."
Moshe Feldenkrais.

May 7- June 20

MOVING EASY
MOVING SMART
FOOD FOR BRAIN
BODY
AND
SOUL.

Mondays
12:30-1:10 PM
Wednesdat
1:15-1:55 PM
Bring a Mat or Blanket
Dress Comfortably
Be Enthusiastic about Learning, Feeling Better
and Expanding your sense of Enjoyment

SONOMA BALLET CONSERVATORY
around the corner from the Post Office

Cost: sliding scale : $10-20
Seniors (65+) sliding scale: $5-20.

• Increase moving ease

• Get smarter

• Increase pleasure

• Transform Pain

• Discover Habits,
Learn new ways of
Moving,
Communicating,
Being,
Pleasure,
Learning

• Re-learn to learn again
as you did when you were a child

• Have fun

• Learn ways of being
that bring pleasure
in many aspects of your life

To Sign up or get information,
Call 707-996-1437
or Email Chris Elms, M.A.

For amazing and transformative
and gentle
one on one lessons,
called
Functional Integration®
see
Individual Lessons
•

2007-05-23T08:16:00.001-07:00

Secondary Gain, and the Path to Deep Healing, Happiness and Life

SECONDARY GAIN
My father, blessed his heart, used to work too hard. In his forties and fifties he could not allow himself a vacation. Also, he wasn't very good at the family thing, where people didn't salute and take orders and understand the Hierarchy, with him on top, giving orders and the rest of us obeying. His work was with the famous military industrial complex, making jets and then missiles and whatnot for the great competition with the bad guys things that kept him and many others at work in both this country and the bad guy bloc. And he functioned best in a semi-military, top down world. The family, especially our nutty family was topsy turvy, not top down.

That's a bit of an aside.

The point: no vacation.

Lots of fighting with my Mom.

Not much peace in the family.

Okay: how to solve these problems. Well, one way would have been to take vacations and figure out how to communicate in a listening and give and take and mutually respectful family atmosphere. But that would have required real inner change. That wasn't the route my father took.

He took the route of secondary gain and got heart attacks every several years.

These solved all the above problems temporarily.

He got a break from work.

The family became deeply solicitous and realized how important and wonderful he was.

My Mom and he stopped fighting, and she assumed a Florence Nightingale role vis a vis him. (They met when he was sunburning at a country club pool an d she came to his rescue with sun tan lotion.)

So, this happens a lot. We don't know to sit down or lie down, so a disease comes along and brings us to our knees.

We don't know how to get the attention and gentleness we want so we fall apart and then it's forthcoming.

Or maybe, it's different, less linear: we have been attention starved for years (all the attention to our real arms and legs and moving and breathing and whatnot that we do in Feldenkrais and in slow and conscious yoga is that much less attention we need from outside ourselves.) And we've eaten a diet full of pesticides and sugar and refined flour, the three main elements Western Price discovered in the 1930's were the crucial difference in native cultures health deteriorating into the land of cancer and heart attacks and degenerative diseases. (See my prior essay: Food and Health.) So we come down with something heavy.

The disease is real. And a shift in our stress level and our eating and caring for ourselves has to take place, but we've got the secondary gain thing going, because now that we are the Diseased One, we are suddenly getting the attention and pampering we've been craving forever and ever.

So what's the Way Out?

I have other essays on what to do if you have cancer, which can be a start for those with any serious setback illness. June 24, 2006 essay. And June 26, 2006 essay. All sorts of ideas in there. This is part of the way out. (Reading those essays, they aren't quite as good as I'd like, so next essay in this blog will be a series on Radical Healing, but they are a start.)

And another part is getting a sense of humor about how part of us is a big baby and is using this illness to remain a big baby. Talk to those who are taking care of us and come to realize: they will love and pay attention to us even if we aren't ill.

Get well by shifting all sorts of things. (See the index of all the essays blog, at Health Blog Index.)To change we have to change. And, of course, the rewiring of the brain and improvement of the entire nervous system that comes from the Feldenkrais Way, and the coming to the present that comes from Wake Up Feldenkrais are tremendously useful in this.

Mainly though, we need a commitment to loving life, to being present, and to enjoying the journey of change that we are going to need to take to get healthy again. And part of that journey is going to have to be a humorous and honest understanding of our secondary gains.

Love and healing to us all.

2007-05-04T12:39:00.000-07:00

Create Joyous Health for Yourself, Starting Now

REAL HEALTH
In the town of Sonoma, we have a rather big mess with the situation of replacing the existing hospital. One radical solution, and one that takes the responsibility back, is to keep our health in such fine shape that we never need to use the hospital.
How can we do this?
Well, from a discussion at the Farmers' Market this morning, here's some things we came up with:

Do some aware moving. Yoga with awareness. Feldenkrais, which demands and centers around awareness. Walking or dancing with awareness.

Eat fresh, organic food.

Grow the food yourself, which is to say: garden.

Get outside, and move consciously: which is to say: garden, or walk, or take a hike, or a stroll, or even a run.

Forgive. Find a way that works for you. If you haven't found one yet, the Work of Byron Katie will enable you to give up and move beyond all your grudges. I use it daily, to relieve the little complaints before they create a groove in my brain, and waste my life, happiness and health.

This we didn't discuss, but I believe it is crucial to health: eat a lot of raw food, preferable one or two or even all raw meals a day.

Go to bed early. Sleep happily.

Do something that is either meditation, or like meditation. This could be gardening, or yoga, or Feldenkrais, or walking. Or sitting and looking at the stars, or lying and look at the sky. Spend some quiet solitude, just you and your sense of being present and alive.

There's probably more. Ah, yes: keep learning. Learning in the way of the most recent essay at WakeUp-Feldenkrais.blogspot.com. Learning that is organic, and easy, not forced and artificial like most book and school learning is. Slow, joyful aware learning.

Slow, joyful, aware living. Isn't that a nice way to be?

PLEASE BE WELL:

Pleasure
Ease
Awareness
Sensitive Strength
Enjoyment

BE

Waking up to now.
Embracing Change.
Learning to learn.
Loving to move, improve and transform.

2007-04-26T15:57:00.000-07:00

FDA Up to their usual support the Big Drug Company Tricks

Real Healing Comes from the Likes of This: Natural Mustard,
Happy in the Sunlight, and
yet, we have the other world:;;;;;;::::

What follows a friend send me
It's a lot of links and the one that works to protest is this one
Protest Email Link

WE HAVE UNTIL APRIL 30, so this says at the end... that is just around the corner !
link to sign petition is at the end.

let's pass this email on... quickly...

go to
www.healthfreedomusa.org

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT
Press Release

FDA Attacks Complementary & Alternative Healthcare
by John F. Gilbert, Ph.D. - President/NTCB

I just spent three days reading, re-reading, researching and discussing the
proposed FDA guidelines for "Complementary and Alternative Medicine" with
two FDA attorneys. You can download a copy of this proposal for yourself at:
_http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dockets/06d0480/06d0480.htm_
(http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dockets/06d0480/06d0480.htm) .

When I first heard about this FDA attack on complementary and alternative
health care, I considered it another "Chicken Little" rumor. On further study,
I'm appalled at the speed with which the pharmaceutical companies are
implementing Codex Alimentarius in the USA. If you don't suspect the
pharmaceutical companies control the FDA, you may want to research that further by
visiting _http://www.HealthFreedomUSA.org_ (http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/) .

This insidious proposal is designed to redefine every complementary and
alternative health care modality and product as "medicine." This has direct
implications on the services and products provided by every alternative health
care professional. There is no facet of complementary and alternative health
care that is not affected. If the FDA adopts this proposal, all natural
health care would be illegal even for medical doctors.
Essential oils, herbs, herbal remedies, homeopathic remedies, minerals,
nutritional supplements, plant enzymes and vitamins are redefined in this
proposal as "medicine." Very simply, medicine is under the jurisdiction of the FDA
and, by law, only licensed medical doctors may prescribe "medicines."
Anybody else who advises, advocates, counsels, distributes, markets, recommends or
suggests anybody use "medicine" is practicing medicine without a license.
This is a felony in the USA punishable by fines and incarceration.
Aromatherapy, auricular therapy, biofeedback, color therapy, homeopathy,
hypnotism, naturopathy, neurotherapy, nutritional consulting, reflexology,
sound therapy and wellness consulting are among the alternative health modalities
being redefined as "Alternative Medicine." This subtle change of vocabulary
from "alternative health care" to "alternative medicine" makes all of these
industries subject to control by the FDA as medicine. Only medical doctors
would be allowed to provide, prescribe and supervise the delivery of these
services. Anybody else who provided any of these services would be practicing
medicine without a license and subject to incarceration and fines.
That's the bad news. The good news is we have until April 30, 2007 to voice
our opinion against this proposal to eliminate complementary and alternative
health care in America. Almost 100,000 people have already filed their
objection. According to Dr. Rima Laibow, medical director of the Natural
Therapies Foundation, we need 50 times that many people to respond by the end of the
month.

Please stand up and be counted. Go to Protest Email Link

Natural Therapies Certification Board

Jackie Olsen

Executive Director

Natural Therapies Certification Board

John F. Gilbert, Ph.D.

President

Natural Therapies Certification Board | 848 N. Rainbow Blvd. #662 | Las
Vegas | NV | 89107

2007-04-21T19:52:00.000-07:00

Relationship, Learning, Moving and Transformation.

RELATIONSHIP AND LEARNING
The easiest way to wake up the brain to the learning mode is moving with attention. This, if you think about it, was the brain's job when we were young geniuses, i.e. babies. We lay there, and explored the world, and learned about gravity and our evolutionary gift of the human body and put the two together in ways that allowed us to roll over and to bring our hands and feet to our mouths, and to sit upright and to crawl, and finally, to walk.

We learned talking, too, which moved the tongue and the vocal chords, and involved a ton of experimentation and play and discovery.

This is key to a good Feldenkrais lesson: discovery.

This is key to a good Wake Up Feldenkrais lesson: being present and enjoying the discovery.

This is key to the work I do with couples, or with parents and their relationship with their children: discovery.

If things are going great, fine.

And if there are areas you wouldn't mind improving, then hey: let's discover some options to what we usually do.

Like in Feldie work, there is no "bad," there are just habits that aren't getting us as good a result as we wish.

Let's try some new habits.

One of the key habits that wrecks parent/ child communication, and couple's communication is the habit of defending ourselves.

This defending ourselves often comes in the wake of another relationship wrecking habit: interrupting the other person before they have a chance to finish what they have to say.

What is common to both these habits is: not listening.

And: Not being in the understanding of what the other person is about, which is really what good listening is about.

So, in a workshop on improving relationship, whether it be from poor to fair, fair to good, good to great, or great to greater, we'll work on waking up the brain/ body/ whole self to learning and discovery through movement lessons.

And then, having gotten into the learning and having fun mode, we'll learn new and enjoyable ways to listen to our partners and our children. We'll get real and happy.

These workshops will always be with a money back guarantee if you don’t' feel liberated and transformed in your life and in your relationship.

Ciao.
Chris

2007-04-09T15:24:00.000-07:00

WONDER FULL RELATIONSHIP

Improvement can be delightful
and clear
and wonder
full,
as can you.

The goal of the Feldenkrais way, is to help people, in Moshe Feldenkrais' words:
"Make the impossible, possible;
the possible, easy;
and the easy, elegant."

COMING IN APRIL
SUNDAY, APRIL 29, 12-6 PM
WORKSHOP IN WONDER-FULL RELATIONSHIP,
WHETHER SINGLE OR "IN RELATIONSHIP"
$120 per person, $200 per couple before April 20
$150 per person, $240 per couple after.
10 person minimum.

How is this done?
The goal of Wake Up Feldenkrais, is to include all the wonder full ideas and pathways and experiments of the Feldenkrais Method, with an ongoing commitment to happiness and being present.

This is what the workshop will be about:

Being present to yourself, in each instant.
Liking yourself in each instant.
Coming free from our stories, stories about the partner, or stories about the potential partners.
VERY IMPORTANT: COMING CLEAR OF OUR STORIES ABOUT THE EX-PARTNERS.
Getting free of stories about the wrongs we've suffered.
Moving in easier and fresher ways.
Thinking in easier and fresher ways.
Breathing in easier and more pleasurable ways.

To listen without interrupting.

To say what is going on in us.

To end the putdown and criticism thing.

To be at peace with oneself and those we live with.

To be happily engaged in life.

To be at peace in the moment.

To exchange "hard" things to say,
without the usual meltdowns and blowups.

To use conflict as a chance to change oneself, not the other.

A sense of humor.

The Work of Byron Katie in order to clear up the past,
clean up relationships,
get clear inside and outside.
(See thework.com)

A deeper and more pleasant connection to yourself.

Improved breathing and happiness.

Happier and more clear thinking.

An appreciation for each other.

A deeper and clearer commitment to being outside and in touch with nature.

Individual work may be scheduled by phone at 707-996-1437
Or email at Email me

Sessions are $120-250 per hour, with a 2 session initial commitment.

2007-04-07T13:14:00.000-07:00

HEALTH

Health is our wealth and it come from within. There is a lot of fuss around town about the new hospital, and if people really want to be healthy they could be walking and riding a bike to all these meetings.

Health comes from a balanced and happy life. Lots of time in the present. Lots of time outdoors. Lots of time doing what we like and love. Lots of time learning and loving.

And moving.

A life of sitting around all the time and driving around the rest, with standing just something to do at shops and waiting in lines for the next place to sit down: that's not really a life to me.

Our bodies were designed to move.

If we've forgotten, that's what Feldenkrais and yoga and tai chi and dancing and walking and sex are for. Get out there and experience the joy of being a human being.

If not sex, go for hugs. If you have no one to hug you, ask a stranger. Say, "I'd like a hug." We'd all like a bunch of hugs a day, a bunch of laughs, a bunch of learning.

To live in the present, to connect to nature and to love, I call these three the core of happiness, and that's one of the core's of health. Happy mind, happy body, connection to nature, we can live wonderful lives. The only thing that might be in the way could be some habits.

So we experiment.

We come to the present so we aren't bustling around like a robot.

We try new things, we learn how to learn again from Feldenkrais and from our own joy in discovery.

Life is wonderful.

In that frame, it's almost impossible not to be healthy.

PLEASE BE WELL:

Pleasure
Ease
Awareness
Sensitive Strength
Enlightenment

BE

Waking up to now.
Embracing Change.
Learning to learn.
Loving to move, improve and transform.

2007-03-30T14:15:00.000-07:00

EAT IN SEASON (OR ON SALE), AND HOW ABOUT LIKE A CAVE PERSON WHILE WE'RE AT IT?

Here's some yummy food that was on sale a couple of weeks ago at Sonoma Market. By far the best way to eat, is what's in season, which means now: cabbage, greens, celery, and whatever fish is being caught just now.

The sale food had an item that might have been in season in Hawaii, the pineapple. It also had some delicious sushi grade tuna wild caught from Alaska. Spinach, is in season. And the pumpkin seeds, well, what can I say, they've been in storage since the fall, though, since they have a preserving mechanism that keeps them fresh unless they get wet, they should have all their oomph. ( The preserving mechanism, once again, is an enzyme inhibitor for unsoaked seeds, which is why we can get so much more value from the raw seeds and nuts we use in various sauces and dressings and dips if we soak them overnight before using them).

So here we also have a nice cave person diet: some fish. Some vegetable. Some seed. Some fruit. Stick to those four groups, add some olive oil and lots of spices and you'll grow leaner and stronger and healthier, the more so the more raw you can keep it all.

If the food is fresh and yummy, and you aren't eating out of boredom, your body will be so happy when you just give it simple and good and organic and raw and seasonal (or sale) food.

Ciao
Chris

2007-03-19T12:54:00.000-07:00

Save your back.
Help your neck.
Breathe easier.
Raise your computer to eye level.

Bring the center of the screen to the middle of your eye level,
so you can sit straight,
and look ahead of yourself as you type
or read.

And remember the
ten
ten
ten rule:

every ten nimutes
look at least ten feet away
for at least ten seconds.

ONGOING POSSIBILITIES:

THE TWENTY TWENTY TWENTY PROCESS
Combine 20
Functional Integration® Lessons
( Amazing, Gentle, Transformative
Individual Lessons)
+
20 Minutes a Day of HomePlay ( not Homework)
=
Move, Think and Feel
TWENTY YEARS YOUNGER!

COMING WORKSHOPS

WONDERFUL RELATIONSHIP
April 29, 12- 6 PM

Amazing Parenting
May 20, 12-6 PM

• Improving Backs, Necks, Shoulders
Sports, yoga, health and Learning
June 17, 12- 6 PM

More Details
at
Workshops and Classes, Coming Up

INTRODUCTORY CLASS:
For the brain
for the "body"
for moving with more ease
for healing
for learning
for fun.

Monday lunch break class
12:30-1:20 PM

$20
includes touch guided and movement lessons
come wishing and willing for transformation
SONOMA BALLET CONSERVATORY
off Broadway
around the corner from the Post Office
and the Art Museum,
the little side street between.

For amazing and transformative
and gentle
one on one lessons,
called
Functional Integration®
seeIndividual Lessons
•

More Details
at
Workshops and Classes, Coming Up

PLEASE BE WELL:

Pleasure
Ease
Awareness
Sensitive Strength
Enlightenment

BE

Waking up to now.
Embracing Change.
Learning to learn.
Loving to move, improve and transform.

2007-03-07T09:31:00.000-08:00

GREEN DRINK PLUS FRUIT
Here's one way to start the day that keeps the fluids going: lots of fruit and a green drink with a little bit of seeds and lots of protein care of the Synergy (See notes at link on sidebar).

Fit for Life has a whole program based on starting the day with just fruit. This is a great way to go.

Also great is to have a raw green drink: water, and ginger and spinach and kale and good weeds if you've got them, some pineapple and enzymes and maybe an apple.

You can see it all in the picture.

Of course, everything is organic.

And all raw: no dairy, no soymilk, no juice that you get in some container. Start it all from fresh ingredients, raw ingredients, water and sun saturated ingredients, then you are pouring health into yourself in the morning.

Good.

2007-03-03T13:43:00.000-08:00

FOOD AND FAT
Life is good, and then we think we should weigh a different amount. This is a funny issue, because it needs to be looked at in terms of how we really want to live versus how we think we "should be."

Sometimes people don't like their weight because it's a social thing: they don't like how they imagine other people are perceiving or judging them. This, of course, is one of life's great lessons: how to be who we are without caving in to the pressure of the herd.

And then sometimes people would like to weigh less because it might feel better, or be more fun to move, or put less stress on their various parts. They might want to do things that it's hard to do unless they were less heavy. Okay, that seems different, doesn't it?

How to separate the two?

Make a list of all the self-disliking reasons you have about your weight. And then do the work of Byron Katie about them. Just the good old : write down your judgments, ask four questions, write down the answers, examine the turn around.

And then look at the life enhancing reasons that might be left. If they still make sense to you, then there are some habits to break that can help lose weight.

If you are interested, here are a few of the best:

1) After 5 in the afternoon, either eat nothing, or only eat vegetables and fruits that are raw, and organic and without fat. That means salad after 5 doesn't have oil in the dressing, nor do you munch on avocadoes or figs or dates. Lots of teas, or nothing, or carrots, or kiwi. Only fresh: no canned, packaged or frozen stuff. If you eat a nice big meal in the middle of the day, and go slow, you won't be that hungry, though the habit will still be interesting as something to change, for awhile at least.

A Night Snack. Kiwi (Ed at Farmers' Market), grapefruit (friend), spinach (Laguna Farms at Farmers' Market), mango (on sale last week at Sonoma Market). With green, no fat, high potency smoothie, of cilantro (F. market), Synergy, ginger, cabbage (Oak Hill Farms at F. market) and stevia.

2) Eat one raw foods meal a day that has lots of raw fat in it. This raw fat, will be full of enzymes that will help dissolve the extra fat in your body. If the meal is a salad, make it all raw: and have lots of avocadoes and olive oil, and a nice smoothie dip alongside full of soaked nuts and seeds. Enjoy having a feast in the middle of the day.

3) Learn to eat without hiding or hurry. Look at the food. Look at the sky. Look at the people around you. Breathe while you eat. Smile while you eat. Stretch out your meals and take a lot of time between bites.

4) Find some outdoor exercise you love, and do it, or even better, just go from point A to point B on your feet or on a bicycle, then it isn't "exercise," it's just moving around and living life. That's enough for a start.

P.S.

2007-02-28T12:36:00.001-08:00

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?

2007-02-27T10:45:00.000-08:00

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.

2007-02-26T19:08:00.000-08:00

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.

2007-02-22T19:03:00.001-08:00

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.

2007-02-20T12:41:00.001-08:00

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.

2007-02-19T19:50:00.000-08:00

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?

2007-02-16T18:38:00.000-08:00

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.

2007-02-13T09:38:00.000-08:00

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?

2007-02-10T15:28:00.000-08:00

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.

2007-02-06T10:29:00.000-08:00

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.

2007-02-03T21:46:00.000-08:00

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."

Tai Chi :: Yoga :: Health :: Weight Loss :: Transformation

INDEX OF ALL the POSTINGS IN THIS BLOG: 130 so far

tai chi and yoga

Eating and Finishing

The Essentials of Real Health and Healing:My Take

Maybe Raw,Maybe healthier,Maybe more greens,Maybe healthier

failing, learning, lovingWhat is Real HEALTH????

Friday and the Week ending

3 L's for a good life

What to Say on Friday?

How to Eat Better,

Lose Weight: Eat Less, Eat Better,Eat Different

happiness and heat

Friday, hot FridayUndoing StressandReal Health

Classes for the Fall

LifeUpgradingSessions:Action CoachinginLoving More,Moving Better,Functioning with more Ease,Doing even better at anythingin which youare already skilled and amazing

Lose Weight, Get Smarter, Be Happier

Tai Chi, Yoga, Health, Weight Loss

Classes HappeningWould you like to Upgradeand TransformYour Level of Ease,Vitalityand Creativity? to say nothingof improvingThinking,Relaxing,Sleeping,Anti-Aging,Posture,and Breathing

Eliminate Pain (Emotional)Improve SkillsLove Yourself more,Wake up to Now

Tai Chi for Non-Dummies

Recovering From Surgery

soul and soil

The Rains and our Inner Well Being

the importance of fresh air

How to Lose Weight, part 44:

How to "Lose" Weight

Sufia Yoga Class

Feldenkrais® + Yoga + Tai Chi + Awareness= SUFIA YOGA

Living Life is Good,Even when you are tired

Waking Up Now

Waking Up in the New Year

Modified Head stand

Clear Skiesand the Waters of Inner Peace

Healing and Enhancing our Relationships

Eating Less

What is Health

Clarifying Standing on One Leg, #1

Marvelous Marlie

Parenting, and Love in Action

Yoga for a Monday

Waking Up to the Call of Health in the Moment

Season's Changing?Or just a little early rain?

SUFIA YOGAStrengthUnificationFlexibilityIntelligenceAwareness & Anti-Aging

Eating Less

Nine Eleven,did the bad guysget to Heaven?

Red Sun,Fires, Global Warming,Happiness

Joy to the World

Love, Mindfulness, Humor, Nature

The Ongoing Sleep, and Weight Loss

How to Be Healthy, 22

Shitty Food.

Transformative Yoga.Classes Soon starting.

Eating and Fasting

What is Yoga?

Weight Loss and Gout undoing Diet

CURRENTLY OFFERING THESE CLASSES

The Body Ecology Diet

CURRENTLY OFFERING THESE CLASSES

Secondary Gain, and the Path to Deep Healing, Happiness and Life

Create Joyous Health for Yourself, Starting Now

FDA Up to their usual support the Big Drug Company Tricks

Relationship, Learning, Moving and Transformation.

WONDER FULL RELATIONSHIP

HEALTH

EAT IN SEASON (OR ON SALE), AND HOW ABOUT LIKE A CAVE PERSON WHILE WE'RE AT IT?

Save your back.Help your neck.Breathe easier.Raise your computer to eye level.

What is Wake Up Feldenkrais?

WALKING

CURRENTLY OFFERING THESE CLASSES

Get in Shape. Race on a Bike

BEAUTIFUL WEATHER

THE IMPORTANCE OF HAPPINESS

SEEDS AND NUTS: Soaking a Way Good and Healthy Idea

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

Raw Smoothie for the Health Nut:

Jokes Are Good for Your Health

The Essentials of Real Health and Healing:

My Take

Maybe Raw,
Maybe healthier,
Maybe more greens,
Maybe healthier

failing, learning, loving

What is Real HEALTH????

Lose Weight:
Eat Less, Eat Better,
Eat Different

Friday, hot Friday
Undoing Stress
and
Real Health

Life
Upgrading
Sessions:

Action Coaching
in
Loving More,
Moving Better,
Functioning with more Ease,
Doing even better at anything
in which you
are already skilled and amazing

Classes Happening

Would you like to
Upgrade
and Transform
Your Level of Ease,
Vitality
and
Creativity?

to say nothing
of improving

Thinking,
Relaxing,
Sleeping,
Anti-Aging,
Posture,
and
Breathing

Eliminate Pain (Emotional)
Improve Skills
Love Yourself more,
Wake up to Now

Feldenkrais® + Yoga + Tai Chi + Awareness
= SUFIA YOGA

Living Life is Good,
Even when you are tired

Waking Up
in the New Year

Clear Skies
and the Waters of Inner Peace

Season's Changing?
Or just a little early rain?

SUFIA YOGA

Strength
Unification
Flexibility
Intelligence
Awareness & Anti-Aging

Nine Eleven,
did the bad guys
get to Heaven?

Red Sun,
Fires, Global Warming,
Happiness

Joy to the
World

The Ongoing Sleep,
and Weight Loss

Transformative Yoga.
Classes Soon starting.

Save your back.
Help your neck.
Breathe easier.
Raise your computer to eye level.