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

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.

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

DIFFERENTIATING AND HEADACHE “CURE”
If you have been following the essays in the WakeUp Feldenkrais sections, you have seen that this work is not about "fixing," but about finding greater unities and connections, by bringing back into awareness and actions parts of us have atrophied or been forgotten or never discovered.

We don’t fix.

And yet, when the headache comes on, we want it to "go away."

And, as Anat Baniel made clear in the recent training segment I attended: if we have something going "wrong," the problem is almost always in insufficient differentiation.

What does that mean if you haven't been to a Feldenkrais or Anat Baniel Training of late? It means that things are too simplified and tied together, that there is not enough subtly and complexity.

Say Iraq. Bad Hussein. Good USA. Solution: get rid of bad Hussein. And what has been the result?

Or in a marriage, when one partner gets stuck on some idea that the mate should "listen to me more." And that becomes the mantra, the demand, the complaint. None of the subtlety of when do they listen, when do they not listen, how do I make it hard or easy for them to listen, when do I listen, when do I act closed to them in just the way I complain they are closed to me. The Work of Byron Katie is nothing if not the differentiation of our fixed and enslaving "thinking / feeling" habits.

Anyway, with a headache, differentiation can often evoke amazing changes. This is just something I invented along the way.

The first and amazing idea, is to let the headache be, and get interested in it. This is the first and greatest differentiation: headache as something of which we can be aware, vs. headache as something being imposed on us from Beyond.

So here we go, on an awareness and differentiation parade.

On the in breath sense the headache on the right half of the skull and head, and on the out breath the left side. Then sense the exact contours of the headache while doing that, what is its size and shape. Its exact size and shape and texture.

Then begin to give the left half, now sensed as an exact shape, a certain color during the out breath, and the right half, now sensed as an exact shape, a certain color during the in breath.

And while doing this, sense the larger body and its shape as containing this smaller, two part, two colored, exact shaped headache.

So we have all this differentiation in the headache: right and left. Inside the contours of the headache and outside. The headache itself and the larger body. Our breathing in and our breathing out.

With all these to pay attention to and follow, and become interested in, the pain is often forgotten, and even when it is there, it is just in the headache contours and not in the rest of us, and is half the time in the awareness of one side of the head and in a certain color and shape, and half the time the pain is over on the other side in a certain color and shape.

Under this onslaught of interesting possibilities for attention the "pain" almost always dissolves. Our attention passes from out of our control victimhood, to in charge intentional exploration. We are no longer run by the "headache."

We are free to watch the headache, and to discover the awareness that is much closer to who we really are than this pain. We are the doer and the awarer and the explorer.

This is good.