"May I write words more naked than flesh, stronger than bone, more resilient than sinew, sensitive than nerve." _ Sappho

Thursday, October 1, 2009

No One is Saying Be LESS Materialistic!




Materialists WILL and are decry/(ing) this movie, like well-trained DOGS!! Yet, if materialists will go here and learn about the cycle of reusing materials in more healthy ways that ARE being developed, then maybe slowly, the average materialist will begin to understand stuff is still possible to attain, just the way your little pavlovic-driven unconscious is addicted!! WooHoo!! Sorry, I couldn't stop myself from the initial criticism of the reactionary...! Get over it and LISTEN until your neuro-transmitters make the connection!! Sorry!


Severn Cullis-Suzuki

These stories of stewarding national consumerist habituation, are NOT perfect, yet, they ARE beginning the change for the better! Can YOU help? Add to this? Come up with a BETTER way?? Then DO IT! The world needs your contributions too, NOT reactionsm which is so CHEAP anyway!! Listen to your own fundamental human values and learn to recognize them in other people "across the isle" from you. We aren't in a competition to win! What? Life on the planet... you stay... you go...?!! Whose death panels? Whose grandmother gets it in the chest?!! Come on, CHEAP, HABITUAL REACTIONISM IS what is DEAD!

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Love, Truth, Beauty, Freedom

An honorable human relationship_ That is, one in which two people have the right to use the word 'Love'_ is a process. Delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other. It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation. It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity. It is important to do this, because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us. _ Adrienne Rich

Saturday, August 29, 2009

AARP Video: Real Men Do Yoga!

This video is very inspiring to me, as I am climbing over all sorts of temporary obstacles in life right now. Not enough money, certainly there was a huge lack of friendships in my life for a long time. What I have done is hand-build a history of personal accomplishment; grafted a new limb on the family tree, the results of which are now embodied in my young adult daughter.

As I return to a life of my own in the world, I have missed those parts of me that have had to go on hold for years, while I did my own solo task of leaving dysfunctional unconsciousness, rooted in mental illness in a parent & the denial that continues to sustain avoiding change-for-the-better_ behind.

Right now, I am fragile and strong. Out of shape, yet with a lifetime of choices in my own foundation. Tonight, I watched this video on the AARP website. I am turning 55 soon. It really inspires me to get back out there in my own health commitments again and enjoy this life I am living right now!

The video code is not available to embed and thus spread around, but the links are in here, so you can click on them and watch it for yourself. Enjoy and good health!

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

A Free 2009 Solstice Yoga-fest in Times Square


WHAT: A free yoga-fest in the heart of Times Square. Both experienced and beginning Yoga enthusiasts find tranquility and transcendence in the midst of the urban energy of the world's most commercial and frenetic place.

WHEN: Sunday, June 21, 2009

WHERE: In Times Square, at the intersection of Broadway and 7th Avenue between 43rd and 44th Streets

ADMISSION: Free.

HOTEL ACCOMMODATIONS: Visiting Times Square for the Summer Solstice and need a place to stay? Click Here to browse these special offers and packages from Times Square hotels.

PRE-REGISTER NOW!

We are currently accepting pre-registration to participate in the following yoga session(s):

8am - Instructor Douglass Stewart (click for bio)

Class full, waiting list now open

10:30am - Instructor Paula Tursi (click for bio)

Class full, waiting list now open

1pm - Instructor Patrick Lynch (click for bio)

Class full, waiting list now open

3:30pm - Instructor Tim Tompkins (click for bio)

Class full, waiting list now open

6:00pm - Instructor Elena Brower (click for bio)

Class open

(CLICK HERE TO PRE- REGISTER)

PLEASE NOTE: Due to overwhelming interest in this event, each participant may sign up for one session ONLY. Sign-ups for multiple sessions will not be honored.


Mind Over Madness Yoga

ABOUT SOLSTICE IN TIMES SQUARE

The Times Square Alliance invites you to join us at our Solstice in Times Square, a celebration of sun, summer and creativity.

For tens of thousands of years and across diverse cultures, the Solstice has always been a key time in our collective human calendar. The Winter Solstice - the shortest day of the year and the point at which the days finally begin to be longer rather than shorter - has been the natural phenomenon underlying some of society's most important rituals, like Christmas and of course, New Year's Eve. The Summer Solstice - the longest day of the year - has not held quite so prominent a place, at least in Western consciousness. Some historians have argued that public recognition of the Summer Solstice has faded because some of the ideas with which the date was associated in early cultures - femininity, fertility and creativity - were deemed subversive by the then powers-that-be.

Whatever the explanation, we at the Times Square Alliance, as custodians of the world's best-known Winter Solstice celebration (a.k.a. New Year's Eve), decided to do our part to revive the Summer Solstice. The underlying natural metaphor may be different: we are not turning from dark to light, from night to day, with all the implications for hope and renewal that those ideas encompass. But we are, on the longest day of the year, drawing on the full force and energy of the sun and are ideally at the height of our creative powers. We have more potential to draw strength from nature than on any other day and, perhaps, like the ancients thought, we are even more fertile (Times Square has always been about sex, right?)

SUMMER SOLSTICE: HISTORY, SCIENCE AND CULTURE

An overview of summer solstice traditions, facts, themes and controversies. More>>

CHECK OUT AN ARTICLE FROM YOGA JOURNAL ON YOGA CLASS DOS AND DON'TS.

Use these tips to get the most out of the yoga classes you attend.

By Tim Noworyta

Here are some ways to get more out of the yoga classes you attend:

DO arrive early. Getting to class early can help you settle in and align your attitude with the purpose of the class. While you're waiting you can practice a pose, do a few stretches, or just sit or lie quietly, breathe, and get centered.

DON'T eat for two or three hours before class. If you practice yoga on a full stomach, you might experience cramps, nausea, or vomiting, especially in twists, deep forward bends, and inversions. Digesting food also takes energy that can make you lethargic.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

An Open Letter of Request for Support- To the Body/Mind- Somatics Community

I am inviting the experts and professionals who have and who are currently working in the wide field of somatics, to respond to this blog. I have been tentatively posting my explorations and discoveries about this field and its ever growing resources here since 2007, with the naivété of a seventies child who might be taken in an open, spontaneous embrace. That hasn't happened.
Today, I am knocking on this door because I know I belong in this universe. I am hungry to learn, to grow in the teachings in order to also carry this healing knowledge forward into the world as a teacher and therapist.
I am seeking community, a program in which to study and a home in which to live and create my own practice. It is my goal to teach and counsel for the benefit of all who also seek to heal.
Please, I hope you will respond here with the wisdom of your experiences.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Chi Walking



This is further practice for developing core body strength and awareness. Take care of your body temple!

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Gabrielle Roth

I am no longer in the trenches of full-time, single parenting and a difference a year and a half can make! I have been bouncing around way too much after leaving my home of seven and a half years, in June of 2007. I am trying to find enough employment to stablelize a life had far more assumption that I could just move and set up, than has actually been possible. A big part of the instability I am experiencing is reflective of part of the country from which I knew I needed to move. A small college town, the job market is a tiered economy and I am an artist. I don't want to just clean houses anymore because I do have other skills and an education!
But what is the social fabric of this country anymore? I find I don't know how to understand Americans very well. I have lived my life facing the scary stuff in my family history and have emerged from those years with skills to cope, but I live with others in their environments and I have literally bounced from one situation to the next mostly out of reaction on the part of others. Is it something I am doing? This is the easiest place to start, huh? Is it the correct place to start? I don't believe so. Courage is really missing here in this land. It seems to have been trumped by reactions of all sorts_ negative, fear-centered reactions.
How does this happen across an entire country like a silent cancer, eating away at the self-confidence of a people?
I gave up active connection to many areas of my own true self while parenting, as paradoxical as that sounds. But I think this is part of what happens when one parents alone full-time. But those years are over now. So, why should I continue to have these sorts of responses with other adults? It doesn't make any sense to grow into the maturity years with such narrow navigation ability for life! Yet there are many, many adults who truly seem to have little to no tolerance for what they do not expect, who may in turn also not even be conscious of this truth! Hello! A little life-training is good for everyone. But maybe people need a little time and space. I may also be assuming to know it all_ afterall, I am the one who has been a wee isolated socially for far too long!
One area I myself off from has been to dance! So, this morning I rediscovered my Gabrielle Roth videos_ I put the one in the VCR (yep!) that I recently checked out from the local public library, which led me to re-look at the ones I already have but have not moved my frame to, in years and years! So, I found myself moving this morning in ways that were quenching to my bones, literally! I have to do this more just for me. You can treat yourself to this!
I also have been dreaming over this definition of "Somatics" that sits in front of me when I am at the computer: "The art and science of the interrelational process between awareness, biological function and environment, all three factors being understood as a synergistic whole: the field of Somatics."

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Is it Shame_ Really?


After decades-lost to family ties, in my organically intuitive search to know love in this world_ I have finally reached a significant moment of liberation. Now comes the plea to that family left behind. A family I hope will not just continue to be at risk_ of remaining in chosen ignorance.

All past socially geeky, explosive expression aside_ I am breaking the codes of family silence. I am breaking the codes of family shame. I am walking away from the hold that terror has held in a lifelong mysterious domination on my life, because I have finally learned its name. I am relieved in the belief that I have very carefully finally learned, what you have always seemed to not want to know. I am relieved after doing much of the work to know that has always belonged to you to do_ for your own healing; for your own empowerment.

Consider: how might your life be from here?

That it is entirely likely that you are mentally ill and have always been, my whole life! Can you please stop hiding from this historically unnamed and possible truth now, and go explore it in open mindedness? In open "heartedness?"
In those experiences that are found in the empowerment of knowing_ wouldn't you want to get well? Explore to know!

Many years ago when I was in high school, the possibility of you being mentally ill was suggested by family members. I remember at that time, you more or less reactively asked for my validation that such a suggestion was ridiculous. As a daughter desperately wanting to be accepted by my mother at almost all costs, I agreed. Yet even at that time, my teenage gut held a twinge the possibility could have been otherwise. This twinge I recognize was my inner signal for the unnamed and terrorizing domination. Just as paradoxically it is that domination that has intuitively guided my entire life. Intuitively guided me to leave in order to survive. After decades now, slowly learning to finally name this mystery, I am at peace. I know I have finally learned, it is your mental illness that is and always was the reality we all tried to survive then, the best we each knew how. The not knowing years was a time in all our lives that was "every man for himself."

Now, the only veil between you and exploration of this potential, is the shame about being mentally ill and the habitualized support called family love that in its best intention, may actually prevent you from looking into this further for your own self. That shame is only ignorance! Ignorance that labels illness as shame!!! Ignorance does not know any better.
Mental illness CAN be cured. Check out this website, because mental illness is an illness! It is NOT shame!! It is an illness that is curable.

I am wishing you wellness because it is very possible for you. The explorative impact alone is also very beneficial for our family as a whole. Without an informed exploration, the continuing habits of reacting, labeling and negatively judging_ are only that.

I am also wishing you deep inner peace because I have always wanted to know who you really are. I am wishing that deep healing in you will be a reality for us to experience together in this lifetime, because nothing else can ever be otherwise between us.
This, albeit estranged lifelong searching, devoted to understanding what it would take to name a family member's illness and thus, begin to point to a family member's wellness_ is also what love really is. I truly feel I now know a significant piece in the "something is wrong here" that I feel strongly always has been... can you begin to explore letting this identity of not wanting to know_ go now? Can you find the strength and courage it will take, to know better?

I have no shame in you. Right now, I just cannot ever live near you as you are. I would however, be proud for you to know this very likely truth for your own self.

I have even found this info on the website that I know will be enlightening for you to explore:

TIPS FOR HEALING
The following tips for seeking forgiveness and making amends come from Daniel L. Buccino, a licensed clinical social worker and clinical supervisor at the Adult Outpatient Community Psychiatry Program at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center and assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University.

* Bipolar disorder is what you have, not who you are. You still must live with it, stand up to it, accommodate yourself to       it, resist it, accept it, manage it. Separating yourself from the problem in       this way will allow your true character to help you decide how you want to live       with your illness and its consequences. Stability begets stability.
* Apologize—genuinely, sincerely, deeply,       specifically, and directly.
* Make reparations as best you can.
* Try to accept responsibility.
* Redouble your efforts to do the right and       virtuous things to show that whatever behaviors you exhibited were the       exception, not the rule.
* Remain humble and well-connected to treatment       and find the best treatment providers you can.
* Everyone makes mistakes, but avoid repeatedly making the same mistakes.
* Strive to demonstrate good character by       being responsible, reliable, trustworthy, competent, and focused.
* Recognize that rebuilding trust is a       process, a staircase to climb at times, not an event.

The Obsessive/Compulsive disorder is another story_ it is part of your story. OCD is part of what is going on in you and behavior-wise, it remains unchecked. Find out about OCD for your own self.

Friday, January 16, 2009

Mental Illness Impact on Families


This video is part of a theme on Mental Illness for which I have discovered a voracious interest. The theme: "Mental Illness Impact on Families," is part of a series of resources with different focuses I am posting on all my blogs, for the empowerment of everyone who needs to hear this information and may want to tap into it! For example, check out this website for a wealth of knowledge and information!
I won't just focus on the impact on families_ I will also include resources (such as this video: "In Our Own Voices") for the individuals in our families and our communities who may be internally trapped by mental illness in one way or another.

I am doing this because I know that I am a family member impacted by a family member with mental illness, and I know how long it has taken me to uncover this deeply denied truth. A truth denied out of ignorance. A truth denied both by people once in charge who did not want to know and by those well-meaning care takers now in charge within the family who perhaps in the beginning unwittingly by virtue of historic patterns, nevertheless, still choose not to know. A truth denied out of a huge lack of socially accessible educational resources that belong more commonly available in all of our communities, throughout this entire country! Education that already does but still has room to inform many more Americans, about acceptance of the truth that mental illness is a disease that can be managed as so many diseases. We all need to learn more through education about, training in and contact to resources for this truth who's time is WAY overdue!

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Edgu!


Even though the sequence is actually in fast motion, due to promo techniques_ one can adjust the playback speed under the settings icon under the video. Sadly, the Edgu website no longer appears active. Even so, I have had the honest privilege of speaking directly with Jeffrey Page Redman on the phone. He is a very gentle soul. At this time, it has been a couple years since I've exchanged emails with him. Yet, it is my impression Jeffrey Page Redman, has always lived on the cultural edge of mainstream, meaning that his style is different in a very good and gentle way; loving health support for the spine! Enjoy your discoveries and the journey of spinal health and liberation! As always, proceed with caution in discovering new self-care techniques, as descernment is a valuable and personal responsibility in the independent and personal health care experience; if there is pain_ stop. Gently, gently, is the way.