Somatikos

Emilie Conrad: We are Fluid Systems

2012-01-09T18:30:00.000-08:00

Anybody reading the book, "Frequency?"

2011-05-29T17:54:00.000-07:00

Gatathri Mantra

2011-02-27T01:36:00.000-08:00

Beyond

2010-11-14T16:39:00.000-08:00

Prayers & chants from the Christian & Buddhist traditions, inspired by the poetry of Rumi, & the musical healing work from Deepak Chopra_ music from Tina Turner, Dechen Shak-Dagsay & Regula Curti _in their collaborative CD: Beyond.

35 years chanting meditation practice!

How to Deal with (a) Difficult Parent(s)

2010-10-28T13:50:00.000-07:00

We Are Poetry Itself_ Each and Every One of Us ♡

2010-10-13T11:17:00.000-07:00

Connecting and repeatedly reconnecting with John Bradshaw's work throughout my life! How liberating and soul quenching! I am so grateful and so blessed to freely receive the work of one inspired human being free from the dogma, & (well-intended) grooming that ultimately promotes only intolerance and making otherness an object of negativity, of judgment in people not accepted for one conceptual reasoning or another_ however prosaic!
John Bradshaw's work stands tall and above the shoulders of all confusion, with a constant light on the path along with those whose presence in this world, says in effect, if you want to live follow (not just me), but the unfettered & pure truth that is not of this world while you are in this world, yet that is always within your very own heart.

*Can you separate this pure-toned truth from blinding passion rooted in the slippery nature of the (sometimes well-intended) ego identification?

The Mankind Project- South Africa

2010-10-13T10:30:00.000-07:00

I am still very wary of this project, having met two men in the past two years who are involved in it yet, who are perhaps early in their own life-healing walk. Then watching only a filmed glimpse into this work in another corner of the world, I am impressed to recognize what the experience must be like for the women sitting in (witness in)this group...
I know that I am not perfect in doing the parallel forms of deep healing work I've needed, to gain ground on the sanity and well-being my whole life has required of me since early childhood, when I began making plans to escape the (still) dreadfully dysfunctional, family-of-origin history.
Twenty years later, I am able to skillfully name the impact that a parent with mental illness can have on a family. Particularly when this truth remains in denial in the parent, and all other family members willing to remain in support of "the story," staying the way it always has been.
To this day, even as I have raised a beautiful child solo, and seen them launched quite well into the world, my own capacity to allow close relationships into my life, not only with other 'healthy' adults, but also in relationships of valuing myself in the world, where earning my own living is concerned_ is still developing, even as I too am a gifted visual artist & intuitive body intelligence healer.

Therefore, I offer the resource of the Mankind Project here on my own blog about healing through body intelligence_ as it may serve healthy (emphasis) healing tools in those lives who are ready to benefit most constructively from it.

Namasté

The Great Turning; a synopsis

2010-09-19T10:44:00.001-07:00

'The Great Turning: the work of an entire species shifting its entire historic human mindset of who and what we are in relation to the entire planet; recognizing deeply that we are a species that is A LIVING PART OF a LIVING PLANET.' (paraphrased) _ Joanna Macy

Gratitude

2010-08-30T13:41:00.000-07:00

Modest Needs, can you helps?

2010-07-15T09:21:00.000-07:00

Have you ever heard of Modest Needs?

Even though the link I have provided takes you straight to my particular grant request, you can go to the homepage to check out the whole Modest Needs story from the "Start Here" section on the menu bar, or really, from the top of any page_ including mine.

My own grant request is modest, as I transition back into new employment, after a recession lay-off 10 months ago. Your donation, of any size to my request, will be ever so appreciated! Just click on the link below and thank-you, very much!!

Application 159557: New Job - Rent Help - Modest Needs®

*Be sure to pass this information on to those you know who may need the kind of help available through a Modest Needs grant!!

Character is Destiny

2010-06-02T11:01:00.000-07:00

Eckhart brings to life 'Meditations' the 2,000-year-old writings of 'philosopher-king' Marcus Aurelius, sharing the perennial wisdom of this unique Roman emperor. Eckhart calls this book powerful and timeless and says he has loved it for many years.

All-new teachings also include Kim Eng on accepting the form of this moment and Eckhart addressing the following questions:

* How do I maintain a sense of presence when I'm in the company of another person?
* What is the role of being in service to others in one's spiritual development and in the overall evolutionary impulse of the universe?
* Can a person take psychiatric medication and still awaken?
* What would being present with anger actually look like?
* Are we the mountain or the valley?

Enjoy the pointers to spiritual truth that Eckhart shares with you. As Eckhart says, 'We are looking through the book at ourselves.'

'Love nothing but that which comes to you woven in the pattern of
your destiny. For what could more aptly fit your needs?'
- Marcus Aurelius

'If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due
to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have
the power to revoke at any moment.'
- Marcus Aurelius

Language for the New Paradigm

2010-06-01T23:00:00.000-07:00

Language for the New Paradigm from DreamingBear Baraka Kanaan on Vimeo.

Pass this on, it's quicksilver!

Ask For Help!

2010-05-23T16:12:00.000-07:00

Francisco Bujan

I post this video as a gem of information that can be used to reinforce your own intuition. It seems to me that the whole "coaching" trend is again just another cluttered path of busy activity for others to make money off your life... relationships are never dull, are they?! Try listening to this! Vicki Hannah Lein, Outrageous Visions Consider that the tools every facilitator has to offer are usually there as a basic schema for orienting the development of your own personal discipline-value.
In fact, they are there to remind that you already have these tools inside you!
Just know that we are all human and one may have to filter the facilitator's behavior in the process of teaching their message, while you are learning about the tools they ARE offering. We are all human in this process of living; just be aware and don't judge. Take what is of value in that moment with that facilitator, and adapt them for your needs in your life at that moment, then leave the rest. No person outside of you is the one, before you can recognize yourself first, as the true one! Whoever that one you may perceive them to be: the teacher, the employer, the lover, the parent, the child, etc. You are already home within your own heart/soul-self. Allow the tools you are attracted to in others, to help you lead your own conscious awareness where it belongs_ still, within the isness of THIS moment. And THIS moment. And the THIS moment. Moment, to moment, to moment. Always present, curious, interested, aware. Conscious attention in present moment awareness. Be patient with yourself, it takes time to grow/cultivate this balance within. You are (as we each are) worth the time it takes.

Women & Power "Our Time To Lead"

2010-05-11T08:51:00.000-07:00

My goal this fall is to attend this conference! Meanwhile, I am opening my own doors on a vision; my business as an artist/healer. The time has come. This is empowering work that starts in an intersection in body-centered psychology, nutritional healing and in my visual work.
Contact me, starting here.
I am looking for investors and adding additional clients.

May I Be Frank?

2010-04-30T19:11:00.000-07:00

I just discovered another impressive indie film today! It's wonderful to watch the trailer(s) on so many levels, so go ahead and do that now! Then, come back and let me tell you about my own physiological transformation experiences once mirroring the impact of parental mental illness on my own childhood!

About twenty-three years ago, I was a new client in the talk therapy game. At that time, I was embarking on the culmination of a journey that my whole life had been leading up to, since I was a very little girl. "Something" had always been wrong where I grew up in my mother's house. By the time I was age twelve, I had realized that if I wanted to survive, I was going to have to move as physically far away from my mother as I could get myself. I recognized at that point it wasn't an internal escape I expected, and time has certainly continued to show that internally is where the work must originate. What I was seeking in geographic distance was the opportunity to feel physically safe, to do the "work" that I intuitively knew I was going to have to do, in order to uncover the "something" that was always wrong in my mother's house.
Throughout life right up to the time I began talk therapy, I was not entirely certain that I was not the something that was wrong.

Suffice it to say that in the first years of my talk therapy experiences, there developed an increasing physically painful response to only talking about past history and patterns within emotional/psychological family structures. This unyielding physical pain up and down my spine resulting in continued extreme and frequent headaches, pushed me to find deep relief again. This time I found yoga and over a two-year period, worked with what I call a gifted physical guide. I transformed many things about the way subconscious responses had gradually built up life-holding patterns in the body; transformed how a digressed functioning had taken up residence. With a lot of hard work and an open willingness, I transformed the deep muscular holding that had for years impacted my skeletal alignment to the point that I held one hip forward and one rocked back and out to the point of chronic and frequent migraine headaches each month. I transformed near-sightedness and the need to wear prescription glasses to read. Transformed hearing issues that really interfered with the mind's ability to stay focused on what was being said at any one time, and instead kept the nervous system in a constant agitation. There was greater diet change, chanting, breathing exercises and meditation. There was also deep frequent tissue massage, and healing touch practices known as Breema, which I experienced as vehicular for constructing self-valuing on a cellular level, though this practice did not sustain itself in my life with right teacher/guides, as long as I needed. As for diet growing up, I was extremely under-weight until I confronted that at age thirteen with a marked common sense over a very focused and motivated thirty-day period. Without downplaying healing possibility within the human body whatsoever, all this is to say that physical transformations like Frank's are not really a miracle in the spiritual sense. However, in coming to consciously recognize what our bodies do and are capable of, on a regular basis and then cognizantly working with that, the first encounters with healing longtime, life-responses that do deposit themselves in our own physical frame and recognizing those results within our own selves on all levels_ deconstructing how they occur is mind-blowing! A set of transforming morhphological experiences of intimate proportions!

I want to say that in my own physiological experience, the tinnitus, near-sightedness and alignment all balanced out. Showing up throughout the entire frame of the body from the way my teeth closed, to how the hips, shoulders and knees all began to re-settle. Re-settle in ways natural to the earliest experiences in the body of a small child, when life was still a new experience over all! I could hear with no ringing at all, I wore no reading glasses anymore as there was no need for them, and I slept deeply and restfully again throughout the night.

Paradoxically, "May I be Frank" comes out at time when my life does again find me in need of transformation of these same proportions. Though, not for the same reasons to be sure. While it's true I did sustain the benefits I gained, and have lived now for over a decade and a half, simultaneously life has run away with my emotional ability to keep up, in the major transformation I seem to be experiencing at midlife. Yet, just like the opening lines in Frank's movie when he says, "I thought_ this is it! This is how to live life!" Unlike, Frank's mistaken association that drugs were the way, I do know the difference of deep healthy transformation in my own body. Yet simultaneously, I recognize that the last twenty-two, twenty-three years away from society, (remember needing safe space?!) away from community_ is the reason I find myself in this inner space of unbalance as I write this post.
During those years, some things about my own individual needs could not get addressed adequately. I pushed so much forward simultaneously for my daughter's benefit, during those full-time, solo parenting years. Now out from under earned exhaustion, I am looking for a courage that is reflective of renewed physiological energy deep inside the body again. Courage to get back in the saddle of life. To take a new set of paths out into the world of work and adult relationships, from inside a renewed body and frame of mind. If you can help, please let me know. As an artist and one who wishes to participate as a healer, I do need to hear from you. This is the remarkable aspect about the body; it is does begin again!

Now after reading my cameo life transformation in the body; in case you need to hear this let me recommend that you watch "May I Be Frank." Watch it for inspiration about a life full of possibility for you! This is the field of our birthright during this lifetime, each and every one. Share this film with everyone you love.

A Woman's Worth

2010-03-17T01:44:00.000-07:00

What a privilege to write about the struggle to become the best I can be.
When I consider my own female biological family history, contrasted on the canvas of the world of women's lives even today in the 21st C, it is a privilege to realize. A privilege to struggle to define a conscious life experience of (hopefully) becoming the best I can be!

I am making a small sound today, writing a post of this tender recognition that is weaving its way through my life this week. May it be of some help for your own valuable self-recognition, on your own path.

Namsté

Solutions

2010-02-12T18:51:00.000-08:00

You must check THIS out!

2010-02-08T10:28:00.001-08:00

This plain-spoken logo points to an AMAZING concept & network! Don't hesitate, if you are "looking" for answers on how to make the New Earth take shape, check out this link!! Check it out and discover this idea for yourself_ don't wait because transformational reality is NOW!!

Willem Janssen's Art: BIRTH

"Birth is a sign of inner transformation, a shift in consciousness that manifest externally as rebirth or renewal, the arising of a New Earth.

The sign is about the effortless balancing of inner and outer, the removal of resistance and the ending of struggle.

These are all aspects of the constant outpouring vibration of Birth."

This one's for me!

2010-02-02T14:43:00.000-08:00

Owning Pink! A community of support for getting your mojo back!!

This One's for You, Mom

2010-01-22T23:51:00.000-08:00

THIS Saturday, January 23rd., is Yoga Day USA

2010-01-21T18:35:00.000-08:00

10 Top Reasons to take Yoga

The reasons for practicing yoga as presented in this video, run the risk of elitism by tone inside the western (outside of India) yoga community. Yet, the contents in the video do however, present very valuable information for everyone. In particular, for those who have never taken a yoga class. Starting with a reputable teacher, trained in the traditional roots of this experience is VERY important, and the only place to begin. Otherwise one does miss what I believe is ultimately the intended context present, in the commitment: Yoga, is a way of life.

From the development of one's daily experiences, beginning with exposure to this discipline through a good teacher, one learns what is meant and yet cannot ever be fully explained in words. Why? Because yoga facilitates the journey into the vast internal mystery of which we all are.

Try a good class at your level of flexibility. Expose yourself to meditation and pranayama experiences, and keep coming back to the mat.

Remember, the only true guru is the internal one always, always, always.

Namasté

Namasté

2010-01-13T18:09:00.000-08:00

The Sanskrit word Namasté means ‘I bow to the Divine in you.’

Namasté is the divine spark in one person recognizing the divine spark in another. The life in me sees and honors the life in you. This is an especially deep expression of respect. Namasté recognizes the duality that has ever existed in this world and suggests an effort on our part to bring these two forces together; ultimately leading to a non-dual state of Oneness. In other words, it recognizes the equality of all, and pays honor to the sacredness of all (without exception). The whole action of Namasté unfolds itself at three levels: mental, physical, verbal.
I honor the place in you where Spirit lives; the Spirit in me meets the Spirit in you, I greet that place where you and I, WE ARE ONE. I honor the place in you, which is of LOVE; I receive the free spirit in you. I salute the place in you, which is of Truth; may the life within you be strong. I receive the place in you, which is of Light. I recognize the place in you, which is of Peace; within each of us is a place where peace dwells. I recognize that we are all equal. I acknowledge that everyone is valuable in they’re own way, and capable of expanding my horizons. When you are in that place in you, and I am in that place in me, then we are one. We are able to recognize the goodness in others; We can perceive the unique thread that connects us all with the universe and all its Beings. With the Universe, and all her Beings as well as to the source of that interconnection. Accepting Oneness, we are accordingly receptive to knowledge that comes to us in the form of examples, advice, and direct teaching. One may awaken to wisdom that opens our eyes to new worlds of possibilities; when we assume everyone we meet is special and Unique in their essence. We must always show to all people, the same generous level of kindness, care, compassion, and understanding without any thoughts of self-interest or ulterior motives above paying respect(s) wholeheartedly. The way we live our daily lives has an enormous impact on those around us. Instead of clinging to what separates us, practicing Namasté enables us to feel less alone in the world. We begin to understand that we must treat all people for who they are_ family. WE ARE ONE WITH THE COSMOS WHETHER WE REALIZE IT OR NOT.

Practicing ONENESS, we gain consciousness of the more subtle aspects of our being; the ultimate outcome being complete identification with the light body.

May all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness.
May all beings be free from suffering and the cause of suffering.
May all look into the mirror of self-reflection seeing all others looking back. May all beings realize oneness; living in oneness as one family, one heart of the bright light of compassion. Namasté

Charlottemarie

2010-01-05T22:36:00.000-08:00

M-m-m-m-m

2009-12-19T15:21:00.001-08:00

Writing out the details of this practice

2009-12-15T19:38:00.000-08:00

Thank-you, Rodney Yee. Namasté

Concern for Everybody

2009-12-14T18:59:00.000-08:00

The Charter for Compassion

No One is Saying Be LESS Materialistic!

2009-10-01T12:01:00.000-07:00

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!

Love, Truth, Beauty, Freedom

2009-09-17T05:28:00.000-07:00

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

A beautiful Ashtanga Yoga commitment

2009-09-07T11:44:00.000-07:00

AARP Video: Real Men Do Yoga!

2009-08-29T21:35:00.000-07:00

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!

Profound Affirmations

2009-07-30T23:07:00.000-07:00

A Free 2009 Solstice Yoga-fest in Times Square

2009-06-16T08:19:00.000-07:00

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.

Ayurveda

2009-06-07T13:42:00.000-07:00

Lissa Coffey; a true online friend!

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

2009-03-03T09:46:00.000-08:00

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.

Chi Walking

2009-02-26T11:50:00.000-08:00

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

Gabrielle Roth

2009-02-11T12:42:00.000-08:00

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."

Shedding those old skins of unhealthy loyalty

2009-02-07T12:47:00.000-08:00

yoga, breema, somatics_ the natural body

Is it Shame_ Really?

2009-01-31T13:31:00.000-08:00

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.

Mental Illness Impact on Families

2009-01-16T10:41:00.000-08:00

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!

Edgu!

2009-01-10T13:36:00.000-08:00

Even though the sequence is actually in fast motion, due to promo techniques_ the Edgu website is here.
I have had the honest privilege of speaking directly with Jeffrey Page Redman on the phone. In my experience Monsieur Page, has been living on the cultural edge of mainstream for many a year, this is not a negative, it just means that his presentation style is different in a good way; loving health support for the spine! Enjoy your discoveries and the journey of spinal health and liberation! Proceed with caution, descernment and personal responsibility; if there is pain_ stop.

Tolle TV

2009-01-08T22:55:00.000-08:00

Find out more here

Knowing Your Emotions

2008-12-20T20:48:00.000-08:00

A good read it appears!

A Life in Terror

2008-11-11T08:28:00.000-08:00

The impact on families from mental illness in a parent, is very complicated when this reality goes unrecognized or just plain denied over a lifetime. Then again, support in the broader community is sketchy at best in many places of our nation, making it difficult to find the support many families need, not only to cope, but also to become educated and familiar enough to accept naming what is wrong inside that family, to the benefit of every member.
My whole life until now, has felt the impact of this terror which is still only slowly lifting after twenty-one years of what has included personal therapy; such as in depth exploration in Eastern healing modalities such as Yoga, meditation and much more. Nutritional wellness, rooted in organic nutrition, and a growing awareness of Ayurvedic practices, which includes relationships is an area of health and balance study that is all-encompassing. I call this process: personal healing work. Am I the one who is mentally ill in my family? No, though possible acute PTSD has been prescribed. In context, this is understandable perhaps.
What I have very recently come to understand, is that it is my mother who has always been mentally ill. I suspect this state is the result of her father's abuse throughout her childhood and the youngest of two siblings. Abuse so horrific, she will not speak of it, except to vaguely refer to animal torture that she had to be exposed to, according to his behaviors... I knew him as a mean drunk growing up. Laughing it up with you one minute and without warning, slapping you to the floor the next. No one doing a thing to protect you or comment on the inappropriateness of such treatment or behaviors toward defenseless children. I do remember my mother having very heated conversations toward us kids when we were back home and he was not around. My father was never going to be there. He came from his own family history, drank a lot, and never returned from Viet Nam. Missing in Action for twenty-three years, he was posthumuously decorated (unknown to us during those years), as a brave squadron leader whose remains were ultimately returning home in an ammunition box. We had closure and the highest honors by which to bury his remains at Arlington.
I don't even want to speculate what not recalling her own memories might mean for my mother, out of an uneasy respect for her resistance to her own past. It has taken me most of my fifty-four years now to arrive, mostly peacefully, to a healthy ability to be consciously compassionate for her state of fragility, and the reality that unspoken, this history has been a shadow in the corners of my own life and that of the whole family-of-origin.
Eventually, I will write more on my own transition from the past twenty-one years of healing work, to the rough transition that is in fact transformative work with which my life is occupied right now, after raising my child alone full time, and as I return to the world of fulltime work, and healthier adult relationships.
I am an artist and there is cathartic material waiting for me to speak to, as I transition. For example right now, this link will take you to an interview to listen to, about the Ayurvedic perspective on relationships, with many insights into self. I am finding this informative perspective very enlightening!

This link provides some indication how new this subject is, as it very newly comes into its own!

Conscious noticing and body wisdom

2008-10-27T07:57:00.000-07:00

What is this life?

The opportunity for spirit to know itself consciously. I can only begin this entry this morning as I keep pace with all that I must accomplish in the course of this day.

How do we live consciously noticing in material life?

I do not pose this question simplistically. As a physical being, I am dominantly kinesthetic in emotional processing. I frequently seek relief from the course of the day through quiet stretching in alone time. Not realistic or easily feasible in this materialistic of all cultures on the planet. Perhaps the resources are in front of me and when I release the habit of taking responsibility that is not mine alone, I will free my attention to notice possibilities for the quality support my body craves.
Let it be so today_ may you consciously notice what you are truly needing to be your most well self.

Namasté

Remember... we are all connected. We may have to walk this earthwalk alone, but we are all connected.

2008-10-06T20:38:00.000-07:00

The Ginger Path Back

2008-08-07T08:50:00.000-07:00

I seem to be making steps back from the abyss of homelessness; a hard lesson in beginning to own other neglected facets of my own personal power. I am not quite 100% back on my feet, yet simultaneously, amazing acts of kindness and generosity keep showing up each time I renew my commitment to this developing stage of conscious attention to my own life. This has included a stay in the rural-side to doggy-sit my commission portrait subject, "Rufus." Yes, I have painted and made more progress on his portrait! I will upload photos of this stage in the painting when I can get a camera to do so. Meanwhile you can visit my main art blog here.

I will add that my life is ready to face my needs for engaged, meaningful, healthy friendships, and indeed online, this past year has seen some of that develop. I have traveled a long way on my own for way long enough now. Some of this history reflects flat-out wrong choices I made in earnestness and naïveté. I can say that I am more than ready to change this now. Stay tuned. Make contact. Do let me hear from you, won't you?

Homelessness

2008-07-24T13:35:00.000-07:00

I post for the time being as I venture into unchosen, unwarranted, circumstantial homelessness today, an essay on my own homelessness.
Many voices are sending their words of love and support to me. If you have such words, please post them here.
There is also room for other responses, especially to solution-find with me. Understand that within reasonable measure of my own endeavors along with your support, my conditions in this state will not persist for very long at all!

I will close by leaving a copy of a posting I submitted concerning my own impending homelessness to the local craigslist. It is confounding to me to realize what is happening in my life as the artist in America in the 21st Century. Arriving at this moment, I can see that in my future creative work, a book and a painting series will come out of what I've learned so far. For the sake of America's well being, invest your spirit and faith in what this country stands for in all her ideal by considering in your own communities, the pro-active ways you support the artists' fiscal access to an income much the way a plumber and electrician are enabled to support themselves:

My craigslist post of July 22, 2008:

A Call For Social Justice

Date: 2008-07-22, 4:28PM PDT

I am a fifty-three year old woman who has very recently completed 20 years of full time, single parenting_ yet not parenting itself, as one can never "complete" parenting. During that twenty years, I earned my undergrad degree and home-schooled my child. I built my foundation as a producing, exhibiting bartering/selling artist, while I negotiated all levels of cultural exposure, choices and access for my child through on-going activities and travel that has only added to the quality of experiences with which my child has grown up. I am skills-rich where work is concerned, and I have done more years of therapy, self-examination and spiritual enlightenment discipline, than many people my age it seems. In a nutshell, my child now a young adult, is doing quite well at a very good college with lots of scholarships. Likewise, I have finally been freed up to rejoin the world of healthy social connection and most importantly to work long and well! I relish this part of my path, except the on-going threat of homelessness that shadows my every step right now.
After many months of struggle pertinent to me, I have at last found wonderful employment. Yet, the benevolence of one who has housed me in my efforts to transition from a small town to the "bigger city" where more employment choices abound, has run its reasonable course. I must leave this coming week-end: 7/25/08.
I have titled my plea for reasonably supportive access, "A Call For Social Justice," because this seems to be all too common a scenario out here: women who have sacrificed willingly for the well-being of family to be faced with an uncaring society in large measure. This is simply a reality-based recognition. I understand the system very well, having made myself unfit for it by virtue of its challenges that a recipient better one's life. My own background of understanding, isolation and lack of traditional forms of support coming into this nature of experiences so many years ago, also plays a role. In effect, I am truly as unique as anyone in this world.
In greater advocacy for the well-being of our collective humanity, I do call on the greater community to cognizant(ly) recognize the wealth that is here in this society among everyone who is working, earning benefits, and able to care for a family. There are those among you all, who have gone without all those traditional mechanisms of support, courageously, ingeniously, persistently providing for self and family against all the odds, that have in other ways evolved by forced choice, yet have made it heroically nonetheless, most of the way to responsible social participation. I personally have done this in ways from which even the most materially successful, can learn. Creative business people take note. I embody those ways that can inform solution-building processes that do not have to leave human lives on the street with no place safe to live.
At this juncture, at this moment, I need your help to get into my own place to live in order to complete my return to responsible social participation. I may even have help for your own enlightenment on compassion, beginning with your own self. Simply. Not judgmentally_ that informs how others can also find solution for homelessness, for reasonable social access, education, and in natural health resources. Portland, you are not as enlightened or as organized or as motivated as you market yourself in the media. Please hear my in-earnest plea, for reasonably accessible support, to get on with my own successes for self and my child. Let us open a door together on possibility that can only result in what is always bigger than what any one of us can ever accomplish alone. My position of resource-lessness at this moment in my life, is truly only in-part, a reflection of my individual choice-making. Will you meet me in this opportunity where I am right now? To step into solution-building with me is to learn what is possible together for (your) own self and many more!
I am hopeful for this city and our country. I hope you will respond to my call for social justice, as compassionately as you know how. I am yearning for this in earnest.

Namasté

Look over my new blog. A calling card for a more streamlined manner to artistic employment, and to meet regular folk's incomes right where you are!

LOVE

2008-07-20T14:37:00.000-07:00

My generation! My generation, baby!

Creating my Somatic syllabus for teaching women inner, unshakable empowerment

2008-07-20T13:12:00.000-07:00

Beginning with some paraphrased words from Eckhart Tolle in his writing from, "A New Earth:"
'And there remains always a still yet intensely alive space at the center, a core of peace in the midst of activity that is both the source of all and untouched by all.'

Understanding Non-attachment

2008-07-12T11:50:00.000-07:00

Musho Sensei

Diane Musho Hamilton

2008-07-05T00:42:00.000-07:00

Diane Musho Hamilton
I just listened to this woman speak. Wonderful, compassionate mind! She is the third to participate in a series of conversations that is currently being hosted by Bill Harris of Center Pointe Institute. It seesm to be his follow-up response to Eckhart Tolle's 10-week webinar appearances with Oprah; teleclasses she hosted on his book titled: "A New Earth."
Diane Musho Hamilton's website is: here.
I understand this is Bill Harris' offering to new seekers, a more fleshed out exposure to all that is out in the world, concerning the path of enlightenment processes, many of which are rooted in the great and ancient healing traditions of the world.
Blessings on the path.

A Cool Drink from the Well

2008-06-19T14:59:00.000-07:00

PAMELA WILSON, like most of us, realized as a child something was amiss in the world. The human condition of discord, dissatisfaction, and unhappiness was not appealing. TM, the Sedona Method, and sheer exhaustion dropped her at satsang’s door. Grace liberated her from society’s hypnosis, and Peace remained.
Pamela accepts invitations from individuals and groups throughout the world to hold satsangs and retreats and give private sessions. Her vision is the nondualism brought into focus so luminously by the great Indian sage Ramana Maharshi. Her satsangs celebrate self-inquiry, clarity, and kindness. Fellowship of the Heart is the church that supports Pamela’s work.

Pamela Wilson in The Translucent Revolution:

“There is a difference in the feminine invitation to rest as one's true nature. It is about being kind inside, including the arising emotions and contractions and the senses rather than meditating them away. It is gorgeous because there is always this balance of the fiercer masculine aspect, and the warm feminine voice of 'this too, this too, this too.' I find that sitting inside myself, just allowing everything to come rest, to invite it all in as an honored guest works really exquisitely for me. I notice more and more, when I sit with my friends, that it is a lovely balance to have the cool inquiry of “to whom does this come” and the warm invitation for anything to arise, to come to rest, to give it clarity and kindness."

Consciously attending to major life-transtions well

2008-05-28T13:32:00.000-07:00

In transition from full time, single parenthood back into single freedom-hood after twenty years. Back, yet different. Better experienced, better skilled at living the intuitive life in this body, creatively!

During this transition, I recognize there are deep levels of physiological fatigue in this body after the length of time put in single-parenting. We_ my daughter and I_ have accomplished a fine job to date! I say it this way in recognition of my child's inner emotional/psychological well being, as well as my own. Yet in my 'case,' there is quite the distinctions between physiological fatigue simultaneously parallel to other states of health and well-being. This can be disorienting at times yet, I trust it is only an intermittent state during this major life-transition now!

Consequently, I am very interested in spending the next two years experiencing therapeutic spa treatment in many forms that are fully organic in their process(es) & ingredients. Supportive in quality to how one can regain natural-health & recuperation. It is a context of healing body-fatigue, that is rooted in ancient, provincial European common sense as I call it. An experiential context full of personal memory!

***Look for continuing discussion on Breema, Yoga, organic nutrition, as well as creativity as healthy self-expression. Likewise, I am intuitively attracted to a certain variety of process-centered possibilities in body and overall awareness that are recognizable as nurturing spiritual health! An expressed artist's perspective!
What I know of life in the body is, all is process as I continue to learn what it means to live the highest quality of health, consciously in balance. Stay tuned!

Take a Meditation Break with Me

2008-05-16T15:04:00.000-07:00

More than ever, this world of human experience is invited into greater and greater sanctioning to release all attachment and aversion, no matter how you may or may not understand this...

The invitation is to come into NOW each moment we are each in this life.

NOW and NOW and NOW. Drop everything else, literally. Can you see? Can you hear? Do you feel? Can you smell? Do you taste?

Yes! THAT. NOW.

Just that, right now.

Namasté

"The Wonder of You"

2008-05-01T18:53:00.000-07:00

In this prosaic overview, Deepak Chopra provides a synopsis on what science and human consciousness understand now as the mystery of your body. Your body and mind in (its) growth from a single cell to a symphony of activities, guided by an inner intelligence that mirrors the wisdom of the universe.

Only absolute stillness reveals this. Science merely confirms what already is.

Be still for even a moment and know this "thisness," as your own self. Not because being still and noticing is something new or trendy, but because this allness has always been that!
Not a "nature of," or a quality or an aspect of. Only NOW. The entire universe present in this single moment.

Every single moment.

Pay attention and know that you are that.

Namasté

An Article Worth Repeating

2008-04-11T01:22:00.001-07:00

As posted on my art blog, I felt it appropriate to bring this article over as I had originally posted to my culture blog. I am seeking financial support to move forward toward my dream in Somatics. Please read on:

"I have discovered a very cool idea today! Read about it here!

This concept looks like one of the many enlightened work-culture environments of our children. Hybrid workers! Boarder-walkers! Creative culture of which I have been dreaming for a very long time, to one day be actively inspired by, as I re-emerge to help and participate in the world-at-large again.

Now that the child-raising years have shifted to greater independence for all within my family, there is new life-opportunity available for me at last. Time available to explore syngergizing areas of experience, thought and vision under which I have been building a longterm career foundation over parallel time.
A skill-set foundation to satisfy through meaningful responses, strong life-long intuitions for new forms of work: Somatic-centered studio work that benefits overall individual (particularly women & girls) well being, in community cultural well being! A continuation of parallel time perspective.

I am actively seeking investors! If you are the financially supportive type, of an innovative entrepreneur, you've come to the right place. Begin your contact with me here. Thank-you!"

Dancer Jock Soto Looks Back on a Life in Tights (and Fishnets): Part of my own history and part of my own future health fantasies

2008-04-08T23:02:00.000-07:00

Photo: Gwendolen Cates / ITVS

When Jock Soto retired from the New York City Ballet three years ago, he'd spent a quarter-century becoming one of the most celebrated male dancers in the company's history. Half Navajo and half Puerto Rican, stocky and athletic, Soto didn't fit the danseur noble mold, but his grace and strength as a soloist and fame as the surest of partners (famously to iconic ballerinas Heather Watts, Lourdes Lopez, and Wendy Whelan) cemented his reputation as one of the most universally beloved dancers in New York. PBS's Independent Lens today airs Water Flowing Together, a documentary about Soto's career and rediscovery of his heritage. Vulture caught up with Soto, who now spends his days running a catering business with his partner, and talked to him about the dances in his past and the cooking show in his future.

Now that you're retired, is it strange to see all this footage from your career?
I first saw it in San Francisco at the gay and lesbian film festival there, and it was kind of shocking! I felt like I was watching somebody else. It was quite emotional.

There's a funny story in the film about your dad taking you to your first ballet class…
My dad, he didn't know what to do. My mother told him he had to buy me ballet slippers and tights, and I had a little T-shirt or something. I took them out of the little bag, I was changing in the backseat, and he had bought me blue fishnets! He sort of didn't look at the package. I was like, Oh, God, what am I going to do with these? But I had to wear something! I think I probably put shorts over them.

When you first came to the city, what were your first impressions?
We lived on a reservation outside of Phoenix, so we didn't have big buildings, and all that is here. It was such a bigger scale of everything, I was just in awe. You think back on a situation like that. It's like you walked into Alice in Wonderland. I just remember the doors at School of American Ballet were huge; the studios were huge. I’d been dancing in a strip mall outside Phoenix. I didn't know what I was getting myself into.

In the film, we see how you appeared on Sesame Street, in People … it seems like another era, in which dancers really were stars.
Well, I never considered myself a star, I was just someone who worked and worked and worked and did my job every day. And there were times we were slammed by the press too. I would think of Suzanne Farrell and Peter Martins, when I was sneaking into the theater, starting at the top fifth ring and sneaking down. By the time Chaconne was being performed and I saw those two, they were stars.

You're also one of the most choreographed-on dancers in the company's history. Did that make you feel like you were abandoning the company in any way when you retired?
You know, it was time for me to leave. I felt it was a good time. I was 40. Everything started to hurt in the last few years. I wanted to be able to leave the stage, put on a pair of shoes, and go out and have a nice dinner, you know? Without sitting there and having my knee hurting or my back throbbing. And of course it's a big loss. But it's not brain surgery; anyone can do it.

Well, you've mentioned a dream of having a cooking show. Any chance of that soon?
Still workin' on it. If anyone has any ideas, they can contact me! The dancing chef. I'll do anything.
–Rebecca Milzoff

After watching this particular subject on Independent Lens on PBS Television, I had to post this article and thereby return even briefly to a significant shred of my own childhood roots!

Is Seattle to be my new home?

2008-04-06T20:33:00.000-07:00

I am looking for work in a setting where I fit basically. Fit into a mutually friendly work environment as a hybrid with real knowledge and experience. A cultural hybrid who has pioneered work and life in "alternative culture" from studio artwork to a past in traditional dance to research work on Women in the Arts to my long passion for nutrition as health, etc.
Of late, it seems as though critical mass is showing up on the horizon as I have renew ed my long "Artists & Somatics" Google searches, Very lately, I have actually been able to make contact with other forms of intelligent hybrid life-forms out there!
I am discovering women who have been pioneering in parallel universes combining earth-centered, body-movement integration with sustainable living practices in all the creative and initially innovative voices as can be imagined and discovered by one person searches!
After reading an incredible body-centered manifesto (see the pdf file: THE BODYBASED ACTIVIST: A PATH TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY WITH BODY AS GUIDE!), I knew I had to make contact with its author. Which has since led me to this person's work.
My writing style is not meant to be misleading or too mysterious rather leading to the discovery, so click on the links where they are inserted in the text! It is part of the adventure; to discover what is there awaiting your own discovery! Especially when those discoveries concern work that is occuring on this scale.
Since all of the newly discovered links referenced in this post are in the Seattle and near vicinity, I am wondering out loud... as well as planning a little exploratory trip with résumé(s) in hand, next week-end!

Let me know what you are finding, and what your discoveries make you think about.

Reposting: Somatic community call for input

2008-04-03T10:13:00.000-07:00

Having just http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifreceived my first response to this post from October of 2007, I want to bring it forward for obvious reasons. If anyone out there is reading my blogs and can begin to see their interrelatedness, AND is interested in supporting me moving forward in my goals to earn my degree in Somatics, and/or my art projects, to make this bodysense awareness visual, please read on in an inspired manner!
My future posts will be an examination of the article: "Contents of the Somatic Practices and Dance: Global Influences," orignally printed in Dance Research Journal (2002) 34 (2) 46- 62, as written by: Martha Eddy, CMA, Ed. D. (Listed in the "Voice in the Disciplines" section of this blog!)
I invite you to respond to my inquiries and examinations, as well as, to the contents found in general in this blog as it motivates you.

The first response I post here to share: (Thank-you for this!)

April 2, 2008 4:09 PM

Santa Barbara Graduate Institute said...

Hello Somatikos,

My name is Alice from Santa Barbara Graduate Institute. Your blog caught my attention because we work with Martha Eddy and Moving On Center as well as other Somatic leaders such as Pat Ogden at the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute and Greg Johanson. I thought you might be interested in checking us out as SBGI offers the first doctoral program in Somatic. Christine Caldwell, Judyth Weaver, and Susan Aposhyan are some of our esteemed faculty. Our website is www.sbgi.edu or you can email me anytime for more information.

March-whoosh!

2008-04-02T10:50:00.000-07:00

WOW! A whole month gone and it has been a tumultuous one!

While I recently failed abysmally at being a back-up care-giver in the home of children with Sensory Processing Disorder, I have moved on. Wrestling with the return to art-making!

Reflecting back over my brief encounters, I know strong intuition crossed my path with this incredible family for many reasons. Reasons that that keep me moving toward my own goals. Goals that initially combine art with Somatics until I make enough credible visual/kinesthetic "noise," and accrue experience enough to combine together and begin the formation of a competent intuitive voice, attract resources that can and will help me put all combined to that point with education, to earn my degree in Somatic Psychology.

This is my field- body awareness, to exchange with the world and earn my daily bread, where the world is "conscious enough".

What more can I say until I know how?

A sudden flash of inspiration hits me! I am dancing my way to optimal health in the body/mind during this big transition time_ just the right resources are already appearing on the horizon! WOW! April, a whole new month! Stay tuned...

I have also wanted to reconnect with Breema recently. No better way than to start with the nine basic principles. Here they are:

The Nine Principles of Breema

Body Comfortable
When we look at the body, not as something separate, but as an aspect of a unified whole, there is no place for discomfort.

No Extra
To express our true nature, nothing extra is needed.

Firmness and Gentleness
Real firmness is always gentle. Real gentleness is always firm. When we are present, we naturally manifest firmness and gentleness simultaneously.

Full Participation
The most natural way of moving and living is with full participation. Full participation is possible when body, mind, and feelings are united in a common aim.

Mutual Support
The more our Being participates... the more we are able to support life and recognize that Existence supports us. Giving and receiving support take place simultaneously.

No Judgment
The atmosphere of nonjudgment gives us a taste of acceptance of ourselves as we are in the moment. When we come to the present, we are free from judgment.

Single Moment/Single Activity
Each moment is new, fresh, totally alive. Each moment is an expression of our true nature, complete by itself.

No Hurry/No Pause
In the natural rhythm of life energy, there is no hurry and no pause.

No Force
When we let go of assumptions of separation, we let go of force.

***A new fan to Breema.***

A New Path is Opening in My Life

2008-02-21T20:44:00.000-08:00

What I know so far_

2008-01-30T11:44:00.000-08:00

Right at the moment, I have been in the "big city" for all of seven months, after living in a small town for twenty-eight years. I am employed and seeking THE job. It was in that small town, to which I intentionally moved that I have accomplished what has brought me this far on my own in life. Sounds reasonable so far, right? It is important to note that, I have been intuiting an individualized definition to heal family history since before I ever was able to leave my mother's house at age seventeen. Because in my next posting I will begin exploring on this blog what seems to make sense to me now, concerning THE potential job I do from here. How I get there, is why I post. Stay tuned.

What is to now my own creative, personally expressive life-path has served development of an equally personal greater good. This development is what I describe as having taken shape and solidity over the past twenty years, with the benefit of different guides of varying expertise along the way. Rather than having chased the socially conditioned building of material security, my reason for being originates in a deep deep sense of magnetism to know the truth of love in the world_ for my own sanity, health and reassurance. This definition of self in western culture for now, frames the extent to which I simply grew up in an instinctive recognition for very high contrast to the contrary; that the material was the way at the expense of love. This recognition is true for me since before I was born_ I just have always been about recognizing reality concerning health and well being. A composition definition of living that can be consciously centered in love without judgment; one in which is normal for any human to flourish naturally. I feel strongly I understand this perspective for living possibly because of the family of origin from whence I came! A FACT I will continue to clear up more in the next post and the next, and continue to do as life work as long as it takes for more people to get that there are real resources within human wisdom to be accessed during one's own lifetime. To learn to alleviate many forms of hunger. To wake up to self and one's own life while alive!
My journey to know this instinctive path more consciously came when, I left home when I was seventeen having just graduated high school. Looking back, I feel I made this passage with noting more than the afore-mentioned desire to know what life means beyond even the basic knowledge of how to merely sustain myself. I started this journey with what I call 'blood money' for college_ a "compensation" from the government for my father's death in VietNam. I tell the reader point blank do not presume to know how much that truth has affected my reality, consequently, do not attempt to denigrate what I share here with any negatively spoken reaction, as that may only truly reveal your own unresolved anxst. These are my personal statements, the affect of which may unwittingly provoke in you what belongs to your responsibility to understand consciously, clearly_ for you, about you.
My own life and the experiences that I recount are what I know to talk about. The path I have walked thus far has been fraught with one obstacle-ridden impacted contradiction after another, as well as the years of unraveling the chaos of origin that ensued. What I feel empowered to share, are the benefits I have gained internally as a result of choosing a life that focused on conscious self-awareness work rather than material, the pursuit of which now ought not be as obstacle-ridden. I see taking my experiences public as furthering my solution-building way. A way that is less private, more in relationship with this world I love.
From this place of direct personal experience I can teach from a state of grace, where you might be available to learn for your own self, what healing is important for you. That you may learn by listening to, and considering my story.
After rising from the ashes over and over and over and over and over again since at least 1972, I have made it to a very important plateau. I have done so with one twenty-year-old daughter who is at one the West Coast's best liberal arts colleges, where she is a music major!
SHE embodies what I have accomplished on what I call our own family's two-way street. We have always been a team. I have never married. It has always been only the two of us. Social services programs have been the facilitation of every ounce of hard work I have put in on healing my life for both our benefit during twenty-years of a chosen social isolation lifestyle. I have also earned my bachelor's degree. Once pregnant with my child, I chose those services every step of the way that I needed them. Now, I am proud to say that I have done many good things with my life for the two of us, outside the box of social expectation. I share my story to say, you can also choose to be proud, as this is a voice of freedom. Nothing less. My offering to what is also possible for anyone who can look, hear, and adapt.
As I say, I am now a teacher by direct personal experiences. I am fairly specifically looking for ways now to accessibly plug those experiences in. Plug in to gain what credentials the marketplace requires, so not only am I appropriately empowered to continue contributing to national healing work, but I can finally make a living to take care of my daughter in her young adult development, as well as myself. I would like real access to credit which fits my history and reality now. Those goals include my abilities to think in terms of choices beyond only disciplined responsibilities for a change. We have nobly earned this.
Responsibly, I know that my story is representative of many other voices of varying hues that live and struggle in this rich, "free" country_ HEAR US, so we can save each other without exception! Not reactionism. This call is included for those who make enough money, who may have two point five children, who have colored inside the lines all their lives, etc., etc., etc. No one is excluded from healing to know that unconditional love exists in the world when we know how to find it. This hunger need not continue unabated America.

Today's posting is also a segue, to feature a portion of the work integral to my journey. The work of this incredible woman was suggested to me by my former mentor five years ago. It belongs to Karla McLaren. Karla, took a hiatus right after she wrote the work, "Emotional Genius." I consider it an amazing manifesto of healing that one simply cannot read. With every word one works what is being taught about comprehending the actual genius in ALL of the emotions. You will not practice unconscious judgmentalism against any of the emotions ever again! I found one can reach a liberation for the validity of all emotions we each feel because, one can understand they all exist for damn good reason!
No! this book isn't the quintessential silver bullet fix-all in one place, America. For me, it is one very solid stepping stone in my PROCESS. Healing, waking up, is a process_ one of the main reasons we are alive in the first place from what I can see.
So without further adieu, I give you Karla McLaren in her own words in her very recent re-emergence,(hint it is also a link under the "Searching for this Teacher" catagory, in my links section):

One caveat, or WARNING!

SOME, DISCOUNT HER CURRENT INTELLECTUAL GROWTH AS "DISCOUNTING SKEPTICISM." AAH! AHH! AHH! THAT WOULD BE UNCONSCIOUSLY REVERTING BACKWARDS AGAIN. EMOTIONAL JUDGMENTALISM AND ALL THAT UNCONSCIOUS SKEPTICISM/CYNICISM THAT SWALLOWS SO MANY AT THEIR COMING INTO ADULTHOOD. IT IS A WASTEFUL DISEASE OF CONFIDENCE AND COURAGE THAT KEEPS A HIERARCICAL SYSTEM IN PLACE, ALLOWING GATE KEEPING TO DO MAINTENANCE ON OPRESSION AMONG THE OPRESSED! WAKE-UP! WAKE-UP! EVERYTHING COUNTS!

In Karla McLaren's own words: Sup?

"Thanks for asking. It's 2008, and I'm living with my husband and son in California. I ended my career in spiritual healing and all that stuff back in 2004, and I went back to college to get a degree in Sociology, which turned into a degree in Social Sciences with a concentration in Sociology and a minor in Career Testing and Guidance. Long story. I received my BA in May 2006, with Honors and lotsa cool medals to go with all my scholastic awards. Bling! And Sociology is the stone cold bomb! Sociology (and Micro Sociology and Social Psychology) is the most fascinating way to study humans and their behavior. Indeed!

Sociology also helped me understand my entry into, and exit from, the new age. I left my new age career for the same reasons I entered it: I was really concerned about the number of trauma survivors there, and how they were being confused and pandered to and marketed to, but not truly helped. I saw too many untreated anxiety disorders and too many untreated depressive disorders, and too many untreated PTSD sufferers, and it just got to me. I couldn't ethically support what was going on. And though I was a voice of dissent and I got pretty far in my years of writing and teaching, I realized that in my 30-plus years in the new age, I had seen no one get truly well. They had a better vocabulary for their pain, and they had more ways to soothe themselves than regular folks tend to have, but that was about it. And while self-soothing is very important, I found that the new age made too many promises with no responsible research behind them. No money-back guarantees, and lots of blaming the victim if the promises don't deliver (you must have negative energy, you're not praying hard enough, it's your karma. Feh.) No checks and balances, no consumer protection agency ... unacceptable.

In response to my concerns about the ethical lapses and the many ways that the new age trains people (especially women) to be unquestioning, undiscerning, and totally pliant consumers, I've allowed all of the books and tapes I control through Laughing Tree Press to go out of print, and I'm in talks with my other publishers to do the same. I am just now reopening this website after years of silence. But I'm really pondering my next steps. Some people want me to write a book about my unusual transition, but the intensity people have about their beliefs makes me queasy, and I don't want to be out there as an apostate flag waver, since the place I've come to in my thinking and in my studies doesn't really square up with anyone else's ideas.

For instance, I've found in my research that the skills I and other psychics have ARE understandable from a scientific and rational standpoint. Intuition is real, and it doesn't have to be paranormal in order to be fascinating and valid. The sense that there is an aura is also real, and an understanding of neural body maps, proprioception, and interoception makes for a much fuller, deeper, and more worthwhile explanation than a merely paranormal one does. Empathic abilities, which were my forte as a healer and teacher, are totally intriguing because they are also quite real. But until you have an understanding of interoception, mirror neurons, non-verbal communication and cues, animal behavior, and the kind of behaviors humans without functioning mirror neurons display, it is very natural to think that strong empathic (or intuitive) abilities are magical. They're not. And they don't need to be.

Wouldn't it be cool to be able to understand these skills without needing to rely on fables? And wouldn't it be even cooler to be able to gently let go of superstitions and delve into a deeper understanding of what it is to be human, instead of having to jump off the freaking cliff like I did when I left the new age?

Well, I have to think a great deal about re-entering the fray. I didn't enjoy fame in even the smallest way, and I didn't find book writing to be a good living. I gotta have me a real job and some real benefits.

Leapfrog!

Right now, my husband and I are playing a game that I call "degree leapfrog." When I was doing my new age career, I helped put him through his first Master's degree, and he returned the favor and helped to support me through my BA in Social Science. Now it's his turn again, and I'm working, or trying to, so that I can support him through his next degree, which is an accelerated Master's in Nursing. Very cool. When he's done, it will be my turn again, and I may pursue a Ph.D. in Microsociology or Social Psychology.

But now that I've left the world of spiritual healing and have been living in the everyday world – going to school and dealing with hierarchies and bureaucracies, working in condo associations and dealing with hierarchies and bureaucracies, and getting back into regular work in a number of ways – MAN, do I understand why new age promises and the idea of the spirit world are so important to people. Things can be really crappy out here among the straights and the stiffs! Back when I was a writer and artist and free spirit, I could just move along when people got wonky, or businesses couldn't function, or bureaucracies got so rigid that they couldn't respond to market forces (or anything, really). But now I'm trying to stay put and sort of live through what regular people put up with all the time – and I really, really get why the magic promises of the new age are so seductive.

That's something so many of the skeptics don't understand (the skeptics are a group of people I got close to and then walked away from because they were trying to make me their favorite reformed sinner or circus monkey or something). As I was leaving the new age, I wrote an article for the Skeptical Inquirer about why I was leaving. You can find it if you google my name. When I wrote it, I unconsciously adopted the style of Shakespeare's "Friend, Romans, countrymen..." speech, where I came in under their defenses and told them I agreed with them, and then gently but persistently asked them why they were such complete failures at communicating their concerns. The response was amazing. I only got one crank letter, and the rest were from smart people who not only could take a punch, but actually suggested that I hit a little harder next time.

It was so cool to write for people who weren't thin-skinned, because my experience of the new age reader was that I had to be so careful that I almost couldn't write at all. It's lucky I was born dyslexic, because I always had to find ways around my struggles with language. Writing dissent material from inside the new age (where dissent, judgment, and discernment are not welcome) was a linguistic challenge, but I did it well all those years, or as well as you can for people who were trained to ignore their own judgment. When I wrote my piece for that skeptical mag, it was nice to take off the gloves somewhat, say some very challenging things, and then have readers take the challenge and run with it. It was fun to have people actually ask to be argued with and challenged!

I also met some very smart and excellent skeptical people who agree that the skeptical approach doesn't really translate very well. Many skeptics also understand that you can be skeptical and be a new ager or a religionist at the same time. For instance, I certainly was a skeptic in all of my books and tapes, and a dissenter from many new age tenets. Check out my work on judgment, which was heresy. But it made my work interesting and fresh, not to mention useful. I never walked the line with new age ideas, and I wasn't anyone's butt monkey. The cool skeptics I met did not look down on me for an instant, though some of them had to do some mental calisthenics to fit me into their worldviews. Bully for them that they did so.

But I didn't find a way to be comfortable in the straight-up skeptical world. I don't feel comfortable with groups anyway. I am very skeptical, and I always have been, but I don't need to be a skeptic. Do you know what I mean? I don't need the T-shirt and the coffee mug and the card with my picture on it. It's an entirely different social world, and they've got rules I don't agree with. For instance, in many cases, arguing is pretty much the focus of skeptical discourse. For the most part, research doesn't happen there, but arguing about research does. And a lot of times, it's surprisingly untutored arguing amongst people who haven't got degrees or work experience in the subject at hand. So it's kind of like a fantasy football league of science fanboys. I mean, I was all D&D Sci-Fi geekgirl in my youth, so I get the feel of it, but huh.

Until recently, I was on a skeptical e-mail list where the arguing got so absurd that you'd think it was a Monty Python skit or something. It was like watching whacked out computers play verbal street hockey until one of them exploded. Oh my word, going from the extreme of new age consensus to the extreme of argumentativeness in the skeptical world was too much for me! Too much consensus is a stone drag, because what you get at the end is so often tedious and stripped of any originality. But too much argument is exhausting, and I began to wonder if the people who enjoy it have developmental delays. I'm not kidding!

These people who love to argue don't seem very sensitive to me, but the arguing may just be a cover for feelings they don't know how to deal with. I don't know. But I do know that there's nearly as much trouble in the skeptical culture as there is in the new age culture. It's a different kind of trouble, but it's trouble nevertheless, and I don't need to belong to yet another group. Never was much of a joiner. I also know that my smart, sensitive, emotionally aware, and artistic friends don't like to argue just for the sake of arguing. I think I'll hang out with them instead.

Now, having said that, I have to contrast the skeptical world with the world of scientific research. I had the great good fortune to work with two of my professors on research projects and books, and oh my word, research is the most fabulous thing ever. You don't just stand around pontificating, or taking other people's word for things. You work and think, and think and work, and challenge yourself, and open your mind, and you get to do and read some of the most amazing things! I mean, stuff that is so much more fascinating than anything I've ever seen or heard before. It's just so cool to get your hands on real research. Oh my! And real researchers, real scientists, are neither skeptics nor believers, because both positions ask you to make up your mind and become concretized in your thinking. No. Great researchers are adventurers, and visionaries, and astonishingly humble people, because they have to be able to balance their knowledge and expertise with the information that comes from the world they are studying. They have to be able to change their minds when the data disconfirm their cherished opinions. Genius!

Great researchers are now my model for how to be an exemplary human being, because they are smart enough to do the work required to question the universe, and humble enough to listen to the answers they get. They're also smart enough to stay connected with others in their field, and in far reaching fields, so that their dataset is constantly changing up and being challenged. I call these idealized researchers a model, because as you can imagine, scientists can be just as silly, myopic, egocentric, power mad, and wonky as anyone else. They can be jealous of others, married to cherished ideas, confused by data they don't understand or can't accept, isolated by their own sense of importance, hypnotized by fame, money, or power, or stuck in the morass of bureaucracy and petty infighting that occurs in academia. But even though there are tremendous obstacles in their way, we have been blessed with brilliant researchers and scientists who have helped us know more about our world. Bless their hearts!

Street Smarts and Karl Marx

Okay, so here's the thing that many people in the arguing skeptical subculture really don't get. The new age, and religion, and spirituality, and tabloid mags with wild stories and super fantastic health cures, and the diet of the minute, and beauty and longevity promises ... these things don't exist and thrive because the purveyors are manipulative money grubbers (for the most part). And they don't exist and thrive because people aren't smart (for the most part)! They exist for the reason Karl Marx felt religion existed: They are opiates for the masses.

But remember that when Karl Marx was alive (1818 to 1883), opium was not used primarily for the high. It was used as a pain killer. Karl was writing before modern painkillers, and before antibiotics, and before regular dental care, and before many of the advances conventional medicine has made. Life in Karl's day had lots of pain in it, and opiates were necessary. Opiates are excellent pain killers.

So when Karl Marx wrote, "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people," he wasn't saying that the masses were hopped up on the Jesus. They weren't strung out on the Almighty. They were trying to assuage their pain.

I saw that pain when I was up on stage being the spiritual healer gal, or the empath. I don't even know how to describe it to you – the sorrow, and the fear, and the naked longing that I saw in people's faces. There was this aching hope that if they listened to me, or if I looked at them in the right way, or if I said the right things, or if I wrote the right words, their pain would be suddenly healed and they would be able to breathe and live more easily. It was oppressive up on stage for me – to see all that, and to try to do something, anything ... to make it better for people. But while I could do a great deal just by being a highly empathic mensch, I can't fix a broken world and make everything all right, or make racism and sexism and classism and greed and stupidity and warmongering and abuse go away.

I think we can all create little sanctuaries for each other, and be as kind as we can while holding each other accountable, but the magic promises aren't changing anything for the better – they're only providing temporary relief from the pain. That's nice and all, but it's no solution. And as I saw endlessly in the new age, dulling the pain only helps people learn to tolerate it. In so many cases, that pain relief actually stops people from changing things for the better, because they're so inundated with an endless, serial pelting of magical cures that they sort of forget to ask why they are in so much pain to begin with.

A new respect for competent research and evidence-based medicine, but ...

Besides all the other stuff I left behind, I also left behind the world of alternative healing and alternative medicine. And now that I'm dealing with conventional doctors and conventional medicine, I can see clearly why alternative medicine has taken such a firm hold. MAN, American healthcare is really falling apart, and the insurance companies are making everything very unpleasant and stressful for everyone. I don't go so far into unsupported sensationalism as Michael Moore does in Sicko – because even a small foray into responsible research will show that he's off the mark in many ways – but MAN, the healthcare system is in crisis.

When I go into my conventional doctors' offices, they're noisy and sterile, and you have to wait, and it's very impersonal. Some are better than others, but none of them have the warm folksiness of my old homeopath's office, or my acupuncturist's office, or even my old health food store. This isn't an original observation, but I'd say that a whopping percentage of the healing people get in alternative medicine comes from the atmosphere itself. Most alternative practitioners totally understand how to create a welcoming and soothing atmosphere. So many conventional doctors get a D or an F in atmosphere, while most alternative ones get As and Bs. The promise of feeling better is palpable in the alternative world. It feels like a guarantee. I haven't personally experienced or seen that guarantee delivered consistently, but I totally understand why people choose alternative over conventional care.

Having said all that, I also have to say that I'm happy to be getting evidence-based medical care that is backed up by actual research. I can be a much more proactive partner in my health care now. It's also lovely to just take an aspirin when I'm in physical pain, and have it relieved (I was very proud of never using pain killers, which is sad, because you should definitely reduce inflammation and let your body rest instead of always toughing it out, as I had been taught to do). If the pain continues, I can go see my doc, but I don't have to just tough it out all the time because I'm alternative.

Hmmm ... there's something interesting about my new age refusal to dull physical pain, in contrast to the new age lust for dulling all psychological and spiritual pain. That's something to think about.

I'm happy to be out of that mindset. I'm glad, for instance, to use Abreva and stop a cold sore in its tracks instead of overdosing on Lysine, getting a painful breakout anyway, and treating it with magic salves for seven days until it healed. Did you know that the lifecycle for untreated cold sores is seven days? Doh! I was just wasting my time with all that Lysine magic (also called an unnecessary overdose). It's nice not to have to do that any more. And it's nice to be in a healthcare system that respects intelligence and research. Sure, a lot of it is wildly dysfunctional, and they've got to get this insurance thing dealt with right now, but I still prefer it to the alternative.

But that makes me unusual, because the massive injustices and problems in conventional healthcare have sent millions of people running to alternative practitioners. The alternative only becomes powerful when the conventional fails. Duh.

So what's next?

That's a good question. When I left the new age, my thought was that I would write to the center of it and maybe take it down a little ... maybe help protect people from the more horrible parts. Because I know from the inside where the bodies are buried. But I see now that I was being naive. My sociological training really helped me understand the power of culture, and especially the almost overwhelming power of the gigantic, multi-tentacled behemoth called the new age. I, one person, don't have the power to effect much change, and now that I'm out here being a regular schmoe, I can totally understand why the new age exists and thrives. I don't like that it's necessary, but I see that the new age and many other forms of painkilling comfort are necessary. I'm sorry when crazy crap happens in the new age and alternative medicine and alternative spirituality, and I'm sad when people waste their time and money on stuff that has no validity. But I totally understand the powerful, seductive pull of all those promises.

The conventional world doesn't offer a lot that's better. It's sad, but it's true.

So I'm in this very Taoist place about all of it. Very perhaps ... I'm glad to be out of the new age, because after more than 30 years, and after getting to the top of the mountain, I saw enough to know that there was nothing there for me. I no longer wanted to cling to a dream, or to support a group of ideologies that were not worthy of the people who were drawn to them.

But still, I realize that organized religion has lost its meaning for many people. It has let people down and chased them into alternative belief systems. Because something is still necessary, and the religious feeling is an inborn longing for many of us. It's hardwired. Alternative spirituality, which I like to call "the pick and pull lot of the soul" seems to have become the new opiate. And I think it's a better painkiller than traditional religions in many ways, because people get to pick and choose spiritual traditions for themselves, rather than having to prostrate themselves to Bronze Age religions that espouse so many outdated, absurdist, prejudiced, and mean-spirited ideas. (And let's not even talk about the modern-day twin opiates of consumerism and the endless products of the advertainment industrial complex! Wow – if our comrade Karl saw that stuff, he'd be on it like lightning!) I am sad that we still require such massive infusions of opiates just to make it through our lives, but none of them, no matter how damaging or how helpful, is likely to disappear in our lifetimes. It's just something we all have to deal with in our own ways. And hopefully, those ways will be compassionate.

My challenge to anyone who is concerned about the reduction in critical thinking in America – and the seemingly overwhelming movement toward magical promises – is this: Instead of haranguing people who are trying to soothe their pain, do something to relieve it. Fight not against the myriad opiates. Fight against the things that make them necessary. It's a much harder job, but in the end, it's one that will actually make a difference. Research shows that in countries with adequate social support networks (such as much of Western Europe), religious observance is very low. It's not just the generally higher educational levels that make the difference, though proper education is certainly a factor in adequate social support. And it's not just because, as older societies with a remembered history of the church wielding absolute power, the people in those countries are hipper to the downside of religion. It's that the people in those countries don't tend to require as many opiates because their social structure tends to be more functional and supportive.

There are of course arguments against this conclusion, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and float it here anyway. Social support is incredibly important; therefore, the U.S.-based studies that suggest that religious observance has a beneficial effect on health and psychological fitness leave me with a whopping big question: What would these studies show if there were a way to factor out the social support aspects of churchgoing, such as the companionship, the socialization, the emotional (and often financial) support, the fellowship with people who share beliefs, and the knowledge that one is not alone? The problem is, you can't factor those things out, because there's nothing similar to the support structure of a church in modern-day America, where people are so busy that they can barely make time to visit their own extended families! I see an absolute correlation between the lack of social support in modern-day America and the movement toward group religious or spiritual activities. Which is sometimes fine.

But if you're concerned about the concurrent movement toward magical thinking and fundamentalism (and the movement away from science), do something about the social structure in your area. Work at your local humane society and love up some puppies and kitties. Tutor people in school. Find a humane way to reach out to the homeless. Teach people who are not in school to read (check with your local library). Support the families of our soldiers (and end the war). Dance. Support medical research. Share your expertise. Support youth in taking math and science classes and finishing high school. Paint. Tell the truth. Be kind to service workers and everyone who is below you on the social ladder. Visit retirement homes and see what's needed. Work with autistic people, if they want you to. Sing. Do your art. Work with outsiders. Volunteer for your political party. Strive for excellence. Visit people in prisons. Think. Love. Be a mensch! Be a voice of love and reason. Hold people accountable. Be courageous. And post funny stuff on the internet! Embrace da lolcatz!

As for me, I'm finding my way in the world without my magic slippers and rainbow glasses. We'll see how it goes. I hope that you are doing well in your life, and that anything I've written or recorded has helped you live more comfortably in the often painful culture we humans have created for each other. I also hope that you are in an environment where you can wield the power of your mind, your judgment, and your discernment, where you can feel your feelings without shame, and where you are welcomed and loved and valued. If I have any magical powers at all in this world, then that's my wish for you."

Blessings and peace,

Karla McLaren

Finding my way is the process

2007-12-29T11:28:00.000-08:00

The truth of the matter, in my experiences so far...

2007-11-21T09:36:00.000-08:00

The truth is, right now I am polarized in my mind, as to which direction to take my observations based on my own experiences with cognitive psychology and the world that is yoga.
This is probably the most legitimate starting point for a western someone attempting to bridge what seems like a chasm between yoga and psychology.

Somatics, in my mind begins to bridge obvious implications found in the deeply intimate healing nature of yoga, to a working partnership with psychological healing work.

How do I do this inquiry?

Where are the people to connect to, in this process?

More everyday people on this planet need the information inherent in these practices...

Yoga Workshop this week-end

2007-10-27T10:31:00.000-07:00

I am currently attending a yoga workshop which began last night. It is an all week-end focus on Tri-Yoga with Kali Ray.

This is a full-circle event of sorts for me, in that I have studied with Kali in the past as a direct result of studying with my first yoga teacher of many years_ many years ago.

In my own experiences, this particular encounter is one that I have intentionally chosen in order to bring up a lot of considerations, both personal and general with regard to how body intelligence work generally happens in American culture. I will begin to follow up on the week-end experiences with my own observations and thoughts as the workshop winds down.

Somatic community call for input

2007-10-14T14:32:00.000-07:00

My future posts will be an examination of the article: "Contents of the Somatic Practices and Dance: Global Influences," orignally printed in Dance Research Journal (2002) 34 (2) 46- 62, as written by: Martha Eddy, CMA, Ed. D.
I invite you to respond to my inquiries and examinations, as well as, to the contents found in general in this blog as it motivates you.

Links to the Hannasomatics branch of Somatic practice and discipline

2007-09-19T10:54:00.000-07:00

Hanna Somatic Educator,
Clinical Somatic Educator,
Somatic Systems Institute,
Somatics Professional Training Program

A verbatim inquiry from Martha Eddy_copied online

2007-09-12T10:11:00.000-07:00

Somatic Practices and Dance: Global Influences,
Dance Research Journal (2002) 34 (2) 46- 62.

Martha Eddy, CMA, Ed. D.
"reprinted by permission of the author"

...I often begin the first class by asking, "Where is your mind?" Usually, the students will immediately point to (or place their hands on) their heads. However, several years ago one person offered a different response: He placed his hand on his heart. He also happened to be the only one in the class who was not an American. He was an African student from Nigeria. (Seymour Kleinman, 2001, 1).
Introduction

My main focus is to reveal the existence of global influences on the development and teaching of somatic principles and disciplines and to discuss why these influences are not in the forefront of somatic inquiry. I hypothesize that the search for "the universal," or "the humanistic," or "the biological" as a through-line of body-mind investigation, has encouraged a mono-cultural approach to somatic pedagogy and to the promotion of the field. Secondly, it is of interest to me that it appears that it has been through the work of those founders of somatic disciplines who are women, that it has become possible to more easily retrace some of these global influences on 21st century somatic studies. It also posits that through the lives and experience of women leaders more of an emotional voice enters the holistic paradigm. This paper aims to raise questions. It does not presume to be exhaustive in its pursuit of data regarding all the intercultural complications of somatic practices, inclusive of questions emerging from gender politics.

At the joint conference Dancing in the Millennium in July 2000 (CORD with SDHS, DCA, NDEO, LIMS AND NDA among others), the program notes for the panel "Paradigms and Approaches: The Future of Somatics in Dance" read:

In the past decade "somatics" has burst onto the dance scene. With the recent proliferation of practices, somatics has become an accepted mode of dance learning. However, despite the recent popularity of the term and its growing practices, somatics is not a monolith. [Dancing in the Millennium program, 2000 July 23, 9AM]

Somatic work is often referred to as bodywork, body therapies, hands-on work, body-mind integration, body-mind disciplines, movement therapy, somatic therapy, movement awareness, or movement education (Eddy, 1991) and/or somatic education (http:/www.feldenkrais.com). Most currently those somatic disciplines that involve movement as a keystone of the learning process are now identified as part of the field of somatic movement education and therapy (http:/www.ISMETA.org).

This paper is a continuation of the inquiry begun during the Dancing in the Millennium panel regarding the dissolution of any potentially monolithic views of the history and etiology of "somatics" as well as somatic movement applications in dance (Green, 2001; Fortin, 2000) with a specific eye to examining how cultural and religious movement practices from diverse cultures have provided philosophical underpinnings and influential theories and practices to the field. My methodology has involved literature searches and interviews. In this paper I hope to discuss, through selected stories, with emphasis on the lives of two women who have been progenitors of somatic movement disciplines (Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen and Emilie Conrad) that in many cases somatic practices often perceived as western concepts and constructs actually also have formative roots from cultures beyond the Euro-American sphere.

One question that may arise immediately is why the historical lineage of each somatic movement discipline is not more evident in dance teaching, discourse, or writing. I conjecture that in part dance educators lost the art of history telling during the period in which knowing what the roots of a given dance form was evident by simply stepping into the studio (e.g., in the Graham School or with a Graham teacher, one studies the Graham Technique). Now lineages are more complicated. Sylvie Fortin (2000) makes a case for the current evolution of the field of somatics saying, "Indeed the field of somatics is growing in unexpected ways, as are its players who tend to eventually pursue a practice of their own design." (p. 1) From my experience in dance classes and in discussions about "dance and somatics" I have found that to take the time to cite one's more diverse influences is unusual.

While a part of the historical development of the field of "somatics" involved choices to acquire a type of meta-view; a view that stands back from distinct cultures and investigates the individual organism separate from any identity other than that of being human, the profound influences of Eastern and African movement concepts and practices have been seminal in the development of European and American somatic paradigms. And there has been, of course, a large degree of information flow between Europe and the Americas as well. As students now more often have the privilege of studying dance, martial arts and other movement practices from teachers around the world it becomes more important to understand connections between them.

Furthermore, somatic models within dance and education, as well as the "pure" somatic disciplines themselves, have been associated with diverse theoretical paradigms through the work of post-modernist scholars such as Jill Green (2000, 213-217) and Sherry Shapiro (1998). As I review the somatic literature, the most frequently noted paradigms are those characterized by an emphasis on a whole system perspective, ecology, feminism, spirituality, cultural pluralism, non-violent change, decentralization of decision-making, and a shift from outside authority to self-responsibility. It is also the intent of this paper to trace the global trajectories of some of these perspectives.
Hanna's Role in Setting the Stage for Somatic Inquiry

Thomas Hanna, so-called father of the term "somatics", brought attention to the "soma" emphasizing the soma's alive and changing status, replete with cellular intelligence and a capability of perceiving itself. Somatic awareness allows a person to glean wisdom from within (Hanna, 1986). "Living organisms are somas: that is they are integral and ordered process of embodied elements which cannot be separated either from their evolved past or their adaptive future. A soma is any individual embodiment of a process, which endures and adapts through time, and it remains a soma as long as it lives. The moment that it dies it ceases to be a soma and becomes a body.... At the center of the field of somatics is the soma--an integral and individual process which governs its own existence as long as it has existence" (Hanna, 1976, 31).

Thomas Hanna also made a case for somatic thinking as a necessary extension of Darwinism.

The Darwinian invitation was to explore the field of somatics, to construct a science of life that is founded on the model of life itself, to discover how the functions and structures of all living beings have emerged in this universe with a meaningful order that is their own and which cannot be reduced to lesser components.... The Darwinian goal was a science of living bodies with a theoretical foundation, which without compromising them, synthesized the established sciences into a general science of life....[T]he field of life has come about only to the degree that we have finally grown beyond the religious and metaphysical prejudices that have plagued the Darwinian view since its inception. Happily the advances of the sciences during the past century and the multidisciplinary sophistication of the past decades have allied with broad cultural changes to spur this growth beyond the prejudicial barriers of a time past. (Hanna, 1976, 30).

Hanna also notes that in the late twentieth century dualism has been challenged by the notion of the complementarity of structure and function. He adds that these relationships are in a state of constant change as is the soma and that this process of change is self-governed. The ever-changing and self-governing process of the individual soma is a given, which -- perhaps mistakenly, leads to a notion that an orientation to the individual versus its cultural context is central in somatic practice.

On the other hand, Hanna feels somatic inquiry has impacted on diverse intellectual and professional perspectives in western Europe and the United States. For instance he states "the gradual acceptance of Darwin's somatic vision of continual genetic mutation" (Hanna , 31) opened the pathway for the work of Lorenz, Tinbergen, Levi-Strauss, Lacan, Birdwhistell, Polhemus, and Chomsky. He goes on to say, "It is this same acceptance of "both-and" ambiguity of somatic process that allowed the gap between psychology and physiology, psychiatry and physical medicine to close up through the extraordinary therapeutic work of Wilhelm Reich, Raknes, Feldenkrais, and Lowen (Hanna 1976, 31). Continuing with this Eurocentric discourse, he goes on to argue that somatic theory has also allowed a greater Western acceptance of Asian movement practices:

It is the discovery of the functional and structural integrity of the somatic field that allowed Western scientists and scholars to make the belated discovery that the Asian martial arts and bodily disciplines of judo, aikido, t'ai chi, karate, yoga and tantra were predicated solidly on a somatic theory and not upon a religious pretense (Hanna 1976, 31).

This statement, while effectively making a case for the embodied nature of Eastern practices and the, at long last, appreciation of them by Western thinkers, indirectly strips each Eastern practice of its greater cultural and religious contexts, and thereby may have set a precedent to do the same for each related somatic discipline.

Much of what Thomas Hanna published was in the '70s. He then died in a car accident in the early '90s. It remains a question in my mind whether, given Hanna's definition of the soma as in constant adaptation, not in isolation, but in response to environmental constraints, he might have come around to a scholarly investigation of global influences if he had remained alive. However, in his book, Bodies in Revolt, he argues for the need to keep a somatic perspective separate from social analysis. Why? One of the features of his somatic discourse can be interpreted as aspiring to be purely of the mind and body. This view is devoid of social, relational, cultural and emotional context or correlates. In a lecture-demonstration I attended led by Hanna in 1989, during the Life in Motion conference at NYU, he talked about the somatic process as not involving any emotional content other than "feeling better" (Hanna, 1989). It seemed plausible that by not inviting emotional corollaries to mind-body experiences, clients did not share their emotions. Hence one seminal somatic voice contends that we can have access to wisdom through the body, however without social analysis, "religious pretense" or emotional response. I contend that it is easier to "remove" emotional content if we disengage it from cultural context (replete with "religious pretense"). Is there a fear that when the organism is recognized fully, inclusive of the social, relational and cultural details of life that its emotions may burst forth, or even threaten? I add to this query, might this be more of a male construct? It seems that it has been the leaders in the field of "somatics" who are women that now more often model, and thereby advocate for the importance of the "emotional body" in somatic engagement.

Voices of Women: Somatic Progenitors

It is my hope that through examining the biographies of some of the progenitors of somatic movement systems, we can reclaim more cultural context and history. I hope also to posit that numerous somatic disciplines are the direct result of the interaction of cross-cultural currents that then took particular shape in the Americas. Furthermore, I choose to give attention to the unique voice of women and their role in the development of the field. For instance, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen and Emilie Conrad have strong voices within the somatic community but often remain unheard in wider circles. Indeed it has been through the amplifying work of Don Hanlon Johnson and the organizational work of International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association (ISMETA) that their seminal work has become more known. For this article, as dance professionals and far-reaching thinkers, it is commendable that Bainbridge Cohen and Conrad have been willing to share more about the generative force of some of their voyages to other cultures on the development of their work.

In interviewing and studying the work of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen and Emilie Conrad, I absorbed numerous stories about experiences of embarrassment, of being shunned, of rage, of sadness, of isolation, of feelings of being bothersome, of feelings of being undervalued... Bainbridge Cohen's and Conrad's are the voices of women; as women have emerged as leaders of this field since the 1960's it is as if the emotional and expressive aspects of "the intelligent body" has gained strength.

Anna Halprin is one of the first women to use dance expression, together with touch to impact upon health and healing of physical as well as psychological imbalances. She uses therapeutic expressive tools to help people to move emotions into an integrative experience. To quote the website of her school, Tamalpa,

"Our focus on the body, movement and the expressive arts as a healing approachhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif is based on the premise that the imprints of life events are housed within the body. When remaining at the unconscious level, these imprints may lead to imbalance and conflict; when explored and expressed consciously and creatively, the connection between body, mind and emotion make a vital contribution to the artful development of the self (http:/www.tamalpa.org)

Feminist paradigms (such as the concept of matriarchal power and its transfer) vary across somatic practices. Certainly the attitudes women hold as they occupy leadership roles is important. It is notable that Anna Halprin, Emilie Conrad, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, and Sondra Fraleigh have not put their names on the body of work that each developed (vs. Alexander, Feldenkrais, Heller, Laban, Trager etc.). Bartenieff, Rolf, Rosen, and Rubenfeld do use their names as signifiers of their systems. It would be interesting to know more about the dialogue leading up to such a choice. For instance, Bartenieff fought against the use of her name and continued to advocate for the training of Certified Movement Analysts vs. for instance, "Bartenieff Practitioners" (Hackney, 2002). It was Bartenieff's students that finally insisted on the naming of her system as Bartenieff Fundamentals. She herself focused her career on teaching Laban Movement Analysis now often referred to by her protégés as Laban/Bartenieff theory in order to keep the bodily sensitivity of her work more alive.

In meeting the classic somatic model, emotional experience often times becomes neutralized or otherwise confined by the "universality" of bodily experience. And this approach is not devoid of politics; Don Hanlon Johnson [1995, xvi] notes that this basic focus on the body stands in counterpoint to a culture that has denigrated the body. However, by inviting diverse cultural views back into the discourse we may find that, in addition to the body, the body-emotion-mind-spirit continuum is more welcome, or at least more evident. It may be postulated that in a Euro-centric model we need to depend on women to more readily give voice to the emotional aspects of somatic work. As we examine specific experiences of leaders in the field of somatic movement education and therapy, we find that the emotional experiences occupy an important place in the subtext of the work of the female founders, leading the field to new insights about the soma. It may be this sensitivity to the emotional aspects of life that then influences their understanding of what type of impact is possible through the field - psycho-social change as well as body-mind awareness. Without challenging the pluralism of religious possibilities, time may now be ripe to also find how providing cultural context may also support lively discussions about the details of spiritual beliefs and practices globally and how each has contributed to the development and practice of the somatic experience of deeper self-awareness.
Cross-cultural Influences and Awareness

Unfortunately, the theoretical discourse has not reflected constancy in contextualizing somatic experience. However, Kleinman among others (see opening quote) does acknowledge multi-cultural sources and conceptualizations of somatics. He talks about how the process of teaching students from different cultures informs his understanding of somatics. To quote, "...the mind-body question, in cultures outside the Western world, is of little concern either on the practical or the theoretical level. As a result of these [teaching] experiences and my study of Western literature, I have come to the conclusion that the separation of mind from body in the West causes us to view persons in an "un-natural" way." (Kleinman, 2001, 1)

Asian Influences: Focus on the Development of Body-Mind Centering® (BMC(TM))

Asian movement practices have exerted the most obvious global influence on major progenitors of somatic movement practices. In particular, the work of Irmgard Bartenieff and Moshe Feldenkrais was influenced by each innovator's direct practice of an eastern martial art form. Bartenieff analyzed Tai Chi Chuan and studied Chi Kung (Bartenieff, 1980; Hackney, 2002), and Feldenkrais was one of the first Europeans to hold a black belt in Judo in Europe.

Feldenkrais practitioner and teacher Alan Questel writes about Russian born Feldenkrais, who at age 13 moved to Israel, and eventually pursued two degrees in engineering and a doctorate in Physics.

His own physical problems led him to a lifelong exploration of ways to improve our movement and functioning in general. His investigations reflected his various fields of expertise (physics, neurology, martial arts, cybernetics, body mechanics, and psychology) and resulted in a method that is a unique synthesis of science and aesthetics. (Questel, 2000, 2)

Rudolf Laban (1879-1958) was a Rosacrucian (also spelled Rosicrucian) [Preston-Dunlap, V. 2002]. Dozens of documents discuss the oriental roots of Western mystical traditions. (http:/smithpp0.tripod.com/psp/id8.html, 1). While Laban, Bartenieff, and Feldenkrais can be seen to have profited from exposure to Asian movement forms, I propose that rich sites for exploration can be found in the cases of two women who developed their views of somatic experience in part through dance. Each is now a sought-after leader in the somatic field -- Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, an east coast founder of Body-Mind Centering, and Emilie Conrad, a west coast founder of Continuum.

Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, an occupational therapist, Certifed Laban Movement Analyst, and dancer founded Body-Mind Centering® in 1973. Cohen works in a style reminiscent of complexity theory, with constants shifts in authority and awareness, moving attention from appreciation of the wisdom of babies and animals in exhibiting integrated movement, to the different cellular structures of the body and the diverse layers of tissue that we can experience. Spirituality is an unspoken but palpable component of her work. Body-Mind Centering is an in-depth exploration of experiential anatomy and physiology presented within a perceptual-motor framework. Consistent with Kleinman's discovery through his students Body-Mind Centering posits that "the mind" can be found in any and all parts of the body. The mind, or intelligence, includes emotional experience. It is of particular interest here that Bainbridge Cohen practiced Aikido both in the U.S.A. and in Japan where she was exposed to several other Japanese healing and meditative arts.

In an appendix to her book Sensing Feeling and Action, entitled "Lineage of BMC--Homage to My Teachers" Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen cites over forty individuals. This lineage includes professionals from the United States, Asia and Europe. They include The Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, childhood dance teachers, instructors from the Ohio State University Dance Department, Marion Chace (a pioneer in the field of dance therapy), Erick Hawkins, and André Bernard and Barbara Clark (all from the U.S.A.); Karl and Berta Bobath, Laban protégés Irmgard Bartenieff and Warren Lamb, and their colleague, Judith Kestenberg, and Adolf Haas (from Europe), and Yogi Ramira of India teaching in New York City (yogi and physical therapist), Professor Cheng Man-ch'ing of China ("master of t'ai chi, Chinese medicine, poetry and art"), and Haruchika Noguchi of Japan. Noguchi Sensai (founder of a Japanese style of healing called setai), "taught me a technique called katsugen endo, or Life-Force Movement," which Bainbridge Cohen has continued to practice daily for over 35 years. Bainbridge Cohen also cites Drs. Sam and Kuiko Inoue (traditional acupuncturists in Tokyo), Michio Hikizuchi (a disciple of Morihei Uyeshiba, the founder of the martial art aikido), and Eido Roshi (teacher of Zen).

One radical aspect of BMC is that it teaches that we can consciously access both sensory and motor awareness of even those body parts that are deeply internal. Much like yogis, BMC practitioners learn to become aware of and initiate movement from organs, fluids, and glands to bring balance to the organism. Sound, touch and movement are tools for this embodiment process. In a recent interview, Bainbridge Cohen expounded on the evolution of physiological systems work (1973 - 1982). Bainbridge Cohen began a meticulous process of investigating and teaching each system (i.e., skeletal, ligamentous, muscular, nervous, glandular, fluid, organ, and of fat, fascia, and skin) developing approaches to embodiment to each body system over about a two year period but knew that even with such care and specificity, "we still hadn't touched a fraction of what I perceived" could be experienced. She began teaching organ work while living in Cape Cod. She taught it in New York on weekends. In the development of the "organ" awareness of her method, her yoga training with Yogi Ramira was of particular significance.

Bainbridge Cohen integrated the movement practices she learned in Japan into her prior experiences with dance. In understanding the potential for embodying the nervous system her work with Naguchi Sensai was critical. Naguchi Sensai described his work as working with the autonomic movement system. Her initial dance study was improvisational, and in this sense related to Naguchi Sensai's system, Katsugen Endo. The Japanese practice "wasn't movement that was dance though, since it was without [focus on] external form. It involved being witnessed and experiencing energy without contact through touch." Bainbridge Cohen found the practice's resonance very powerful at various levels. Naguchi Sensai worked "off the body." She was fascinated in that "he was even able to turn a baby in utero," confirming the neuro-developmental aspects of her work (Bainbridge Cohen, 2001). Her time with Naguchi Sensai (1970 - 1973) also taught her numerous other lessons. She recounts the Japan experience:

It was a mix of formality and informality. In studying Katsugen Endo with Naguchi Sensai, when you first went you had a helper. They did their movement practice as they guided you. It was all done through magnetic guidance. It is in contrast to Authentic Movement in that you are being witnessed by the 'universal source,' except for the first few times when an assistant would stay near you. It was more like a prayer. With hands off the body they were guiding you, like in a dance. Once you found your own movement it was between you and the universe. Like Authentic Movement it was discovering movement from within rather than copying an external form. The way that you generally started was sitting in a vertical position, finding the movement of your spine; you could go anywhere from there.

Bainbridge Cohen also found that in Japan, there is a different sense of "public" and "private." Studying with Naguchi Sensai there was private space within a public space, a huge room with couches all around. People were always sharing the space; some people lounged. At the other end of the room was a stage and near it private, individual sessions were held. It wasn't totally private though either, other people were quietly present (Bainbridge Cohen 2001).

While Bainbridge Cohen notes that such general aspects of the culture inflected her learning there, she also notes that despite the notion of Japan as an island monoculture, she did experience regional differences in her travels throughout the country. And, this process of learning wasn't always an easy one. In her Aikido classes in Japan, Bainbridge Cohen recalls feeling "awkward because I felt I was in the way of the other students. I would stand and watch. I met Len studying Aikido in NY. The experience in Tokyo at the dojo was difficult because I was a beginner and a woman. I was not comfortable; I didn't understand the language, or the foreigner's "gaijin" experience." However, in Shingu Bainbridge Cohen felt incredibly welcome and invited to practice. In her little one-room home with shared kitchen and bath and only curtains as doors (where she and Len went to study with another teacher), she felt at home. Her comfort had perhaps less to do with movement systems and pedagogy than it did with a sense of cultural adaptation. She recalls about her life in Shingu:

There was sewage, no door, so little in terms of worldly goods. There was so much spirit and kindness, though, that we were so rich. You can't call it poverty because no one there was poor. It's just that we didn't have the modern way of living. In Shingu, [people] shared generously of the little they had. We just soaked up the kindness. There was a big contrast between here and Tokyo where I felt that I wasn't good enough. Here In Shingu I was embraced. [Cohen, 2001]

Bainbridge Cohen and her husband lived for several months in Shingu. She characterizes her period of living in Japan as challenging--"except in Shingu, [where] I was just in delight." In Tokyo, Bainbridge Cohen roles were complex, "I was a sensai, a wife and a mother." She also continued to dance. She experienced great joy while in Tokyo as she studied with Mieko Fuji, a modern dance teacher. During this time she helped to establish a school for occupational and physical therapists. Her role was to develop the curriculum for working with patients with physical disabilities. This curriculum became a foundation for her later work. While in Japan, Bainbridge Cohen often found herself having difficulty working because of

... my process oriented way, which is intuitive, creative and an improvisational style. There they were more interested in linear form and being able to answer the questions correctly. All had to be simplified to meet the ability to understand the English. We had to use a translator -- that takes more time, so I had much of my own and the Bobaths' articles translated. The people were all wonderful. It made me communicate verbally more specifically and linearly. This attempt to communicate in this more formal way became an important seed for the BMC work; it became more based in combining the anatomy or physiology and forced me to articulate it more specifically and in a linear way. It was a beginning for the work I do now, because it wasn't improvisation. I found I could 'do the structure.' It was a great springboard, bringing science and art home. [Bainbridge Cohen, 2001]

Bainbridge Cohen traveled to Japan with her husband, Len Cohen, who already held a black belt in Aikido, having studied with Yamada Sensai in New York City. When I asked Len to reflect on what influence his engagement with Aikido had on BMC, he humbly stated, "I did not create BMC; that is Bonnie's," but he did note that Aikido provided certain lessons that pertain to BMC:

[In Aikido] you are relating to someone as a whole complex of body-mind who has intention and attention. You have to start where you meet. You have to make it up as you go along. You can't have it all planned out. You don't know what you will come up against... In Aikido, you need to be prepared to put it all together. Unlike dance, your partner may be trying to do you harm, so it brings up other kinds of resources of attention that you might not have in other types of improvisation. [Cohen, L. 2001]

Len Cohen also cautioned me about the problems of generalizing Asian culture, though he added: "In the far east, there is a way of looking at things that is not just linear. The work in Aikido helps to shape how you start and where you go."

Sy Kleinman confirms Len Cohen's observation when he quotes another influential Asian thinker, Yuasa: "True knowledge cannot be attained simply by means of theoretical thinking, but only through 'bodily recognition of realization.'" Kleinman continues: "that is, [true knowledge occurs] through the utilization of one's total mind and body. Simply stated, this is to 'learn with the body,' not the brain." (Kleinman, 2001, 26 - 27). So far we have seen how the Asian experience establishes and confirms the body-mind relationship, all within the context of spiritually derived practices. As Bainbridge Cohen describes her experience of putting her non-linear thinking into linear form for a "just not linear" culture we learn of frustration, appreciation, delight and isolation. These emotions are also accepted and accessed through a somatic lens.

When she came back to the US, she also had a difficult time communicating to her peers what she had learned abroad. She continued to study with teachers from around the globe. Bainbridge Cohen was also trained by Irmgard Bartenieff, an émigré from Nazi Germany, and founder of the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies, among several other European influences. She met Bartenieff in 1966, six months after she had started intensive study with Erick Hawkins. Ultimately, the principles and techniques Bainbridge Cohen developed in Body-Mind Centering merged the intuitive and structural lessons from these diverse sources, European and Asian.
African Influences on the Development of Continuum

The migration of a holistic paradigm from the African diaspora is also critical to recent developments in somatic practices. Within the somatic movement field one discipline in particular is closely associated with African influences. That is the work of Emilie Conrad, called Continuum. Conrad grew up in Brooklyn, NY as the grandchild of holocaust survivors. Her childhood was gruesome and fraught with abuse. She found dance to be a liberating force, and when she found Katherine Dunham she retraced Dunham's path to Haiti. She developed a somatic system that is based in fluidity, much like the fluid forms of trance dance. However, in the publicity materials for her technique, this phase in her development is often excluded.

Emilie Conrad was influenced not only by Dunham, but also by the work of the anthropologist and experimental filmmaker Maya Deren. Conrad [2001] moved to Haiti, where she lived for 5 years (1955-1960), during a time of intense political upheaval. The post-coup militia reigned, and in 1957 the army organized the "election" of the brutally repressive "Papa Doc" Duvalier. Conrad remained in Haiti after Duvalier's installation, working as a choreographer for 2 years.

Conrad's time in Haiti marked her first exposure to a non-industrial society, and she was compelled by the history of a culture that had been recorded through movement forms. Both African and indigenous Caribbean movements had been sustained over time through dance, and her first-hand experience of these meaningful traditional dances changed her conceptions of the significance of dance. In her writings on Continuum and indigenous dance, she states that she physically internalized the influence of African culture during her years in Haiti.

After Conrad came back to the US, she studied with Valerie Hunt in 1974 at UCLA. Her goal was to make her accumulated knowledge universally accessible--to broaden it beyond a folkloric experience and make it the basis for a technique of communication of the organism in its environment. Conrad's work uses non-culturally specific terms such as the "cellular world" to describe a technique for the freeing up of bodily energy. In this respect, Continuum resembles yoga, in that it moves through physiological premises toward sacred movement and spiritual force. But despite the universalism of her terminology, in her biographical writing Conrad attributes her initial insights to the knowledge she gained through her Haitian experiences. Somatic exploration and application offers her a mode of communicating this knowledge to a wider audience, but she recognizes the importance of the culturally specific dance of the Haitian divinity Dambala in her internalization of embodied knowledge. Dambala's movement, Yanvalou, is reminiscent of the motion of waves, or of the rippling movement of a snake. This movement became an inspiration for her own work in biological movement.

Just as Bainbridge Cohen sought to make Body-Mind Centering accessible to a global audience, Conrad was moved to translate her Afro-Caribbean experience so that Westerners could understand it - focusing on the universality of the biological experience. Ironically, many people are now more comfortable with traditional practices from other cultures than they are with Western translation and integration systems. The International Somatic Movement and Therapy Association chose to identify the field of somatic movement education and therapy with "mind-body disciplines," inclusive of tai-chi and chi kung, as part of their work with the Federal Department of Education and the Occupational Network.

In a section of her self-published text Life on Land (interestingly, a section that is not included in Don Hanlon Johnson's [1995] Bone, Breath, and Gesture, a series of articles and interviews of founders or representatives of 17 different somatic systems), Conrad reveals a great deal about the Haitian influences on her thought:

1953. I am nineteen years old.

A friend told me about the Dunham School. Katherine Dunham, a dancer-anthropologist, had gone to the West Indies in the nineteen-forties and was enthralled by the sacred dances of Haiti. My ears perked as I listened. I shivered. I could feel a hand at the small of my back, pushing me.

Fresh from the streets of New York I entered the magic of the Dunham School and left my confused life behind. The blaring trumpets of Tito Puente melted into the drums of Yanvalou.

Oh yes.

I danced and danced. All my furies could finally shape themselves into the fast intricate movements of my feet. My angry back took on the arch of a wild animal and screamed out the pain that haunted me. My neck loosened, a snake seeking its den, and suddenly city eyes turned toward the moon...

My back arched and I was free! Myself! No past - no history - just me now! This life pulsing in me, these steps on the floor, knees bent, snakes are blessing the ground in ancient memory...

Yes!

I couldn't get enough. Every day, seven days a week I was there. Hours and hours of feet caressing floors_ hours of hearing drumming voices_ my life disappeared into the song of Damballah.

I was coming home.

1955. I'm twenty-one years old.

Inspired by Katherine Dunham, I arrive in Haiti to see for myself - hear for myself - smell for myself. (Conrad, no date)

Despite her initial sense of Haitian dance's ability to liberate her from her personal history, in Haiti she came to understand dance's capacity to communicate biological knowledge across diverse histories. To do this she chose to let go of the dance form itself and to implode it into equally powerful, microcosmic movement explorations. What remains problematic is how others can trace these roots to derive this knowledge. It is not atypical for cultural researchers to mythologize or dehistoricize the details of artistic expression (Campbell, 1997). However, I would like to suggest that it is more in keeping with the underlying empowerment principle of somatic learning to contextualize a learning process within its full cultural upbringing. This may be easier when the dance form itself remains central (consider Dunham) even if modified for new periods and locations. However as somatic inquiry finds more venues for discourse it seems plausible to include time to discuss historical antecedents in detail.

Pedagogical Implications

Both Bainbridge Cohen and Conrad were powerful dancers and dance advocates who absorbed and appreciated the lessons of other cultures. It therefore seems central to mine these contextual stories, the historical references, missing from the standard teaching so that students can have access to a wider understanding. This marked gap in the dialogue of somatic inquiry should prompt other questions:

• When and how is it most appropriate to credit the originating sources of somatic movement philosophy?

• What supports soma and somatic modes of learning in oppressed cultures?

• What supports healthy access to somatic practices in capitalistic cultures?

• How can we teach somatic practices and philosophy with intercultural sensitivity?

• Why don't we automatically teach with this sensitivity?

• How does this discussion relate to the place of identity politics in 21st century cultural discourse?

Surely some of the somatic silence is due to a lack of precedence, as well as a desire for the universality discussed above. This relates to the question of identity politics. When is it important to claim an identity even as only a trace relationship? Kuan-Hsing Chen says a performance artist

"is skeptical about the poststructuralist trend of cultural studies that has abandoned identity politics, because it is precisely the notion of identity that provides the foundation for political alliance in the Third World context" (Chen 1996, 41).

One might ask if Third World alliance is the concern of somatic educators. Taking a holistic view it certainly can be. Silence or minimal dialogue within the somatic field is also influenced by the current western cultural preference to exchange information quickly; an oxymoron when deeply investigating somatic processes. Nevertheless time and space remain constant criteria in the shaping of curricula and promotional materials (Eddy, 2000). We laud the emergence of full stories, especially those that arise out of a rich lifetime of exploration, such has occurred with BMC and Continuum. One hopes that we have finally arrived at a phase in which we can begin to take the time to uncover unacknowledged influences and hear the stories underlying each discipline. In my own experience there are creative ways to briefly recall our history.

Such range of investigation, however, begs the question: once we recognize the current potency and liveliness of holistic movement experiences across cultures, might we begin to question the necessity of somatic disciplines? Kleinman notes that some of his Asian students find the question of where the mind is located is irrelevant (Kelinman, 2001, 1). Mightn't we conclude that the best path would be a return to a true learning of, for instance, indigenous dance or healing forms? Or, as globalization comes full circle, and we find ourselves retracing these complex trajectories, we might in fact find that there exists the possibility of some true amalgam of East and West that is useful to preserve or develop. Such hope is indicated in the following incident I experienced in my own teaching: a student of mine from China who was skilled in Chinese traditional dances spoke of having had a rich education in the history and meaning of Chinese philosophy in relationship to dance. She had been performing ribbons dances since childhood, and now was with us training in somatic education at Teachers College as part of her graduate studies in dance education (Eddy, 2001b). In her Chinese dancing, the concept of center and centering was often emphasized. However, she shared that it wasn't until she studied the Bartenieff Fundamentals and the Body-Mind Centering approaches to movement that she had an experiential base for the philosophy. She claimed she finally felt "center" and "centered".

When we dig more deeply into the development of the various paradigms the somatic model has come to be associated with, we can gain more specific knowledge of global influences. I would posit that certain principles of somatic work are foreshadowed in a number of Asian and African traditional movement styles, however these remain to be researched:

• The whole system perspective is embedded in Afrocentric models, as reflected in the unification of mind-body and spirit, but more importantly the omnipresence of "the circle," the dance and communication formation that supports the communication in community.

• Ecological constructs emerge in such Eastern principles as the oneness of yin-yang, and the cycling of destruction and construction evident in the Shiva principle of Hinduism. Joseph Campbell, married to dancer-choreographer Jean Erdman often juxtaposed dancers and icons of Shiva to depict this phenomenon (Campbell, 1978).

• Spirituality is central to various traditional forms of Asian and African education, medicine, and philosophy, even if it is not articulated through specific religious forms.

• Female and/or matriarchal power is acknowledged in numerous cultural contexts in Asia (e.g., mother as controller of household economy) and Africa (e.g., matriarchal lineages).

• Nonviolent change is a concept central to a number of movement forms. For example, aikido epitomizes the development of a martial art that negates aggression. Self-defense is achieved when the attacked person transforms the attacker's energy avoiding violence as much as possible (Eddy, 2001a).

• Decentralization of decision-making can be found in various Asian and African movement practices.

It is my belief that somatic practice, characterized by a first-person experience within a cultural context, can encourage a move toward a more politicized stance that enables a critique of existing dance, arts, and educational institutions, as well as the agency and empowerment of individuals. In current practice, in my observation, some somatic disciplines are taught in a style that could be characterized as authoritarian. Indeed, many holistic, indigenous practices exist or co-exist within hostile authoritarian cultures. It is imperative that we begin to question whether these practices actually bring wholeness to the individual or to the group, given the structures within which they are taught.

As an educator I am moved to take some time with this last theme--the question of a pedagogical paradigm shift from outside authority to self-responsibility. A major part of the conception of internalized authority found within the somatic model, in contrast to the medical model, is the notion that wisdom emanates from the soma, and direction for decision-making can emerge from inquiry into one's own somatic experience. This notion (which necessarily puts into question the authority of the teacher, the system, and even the emotions communicated through the pedagogical encounter) is represented in numerous Asian practices. Ironically, part of the process of coming into self-responsibility is an educational process. Somatic education asserts the need to learn through active engagement in the body. This notion has global roots, with global political ramifications.

These questions can profitably be explored through somatic research--though they are by no means entirely new. In the U.S.A., the case has been made repeatedly that children across all class backgrounds have not necessarily been given the opportunity to learn how to activate their responsibly within a democratic society (Dewey, 1938; Block, 1997). A major educational proponent of the education of the democratic citizen was John Dewey. Kleinman makes a connection, with interesting pedagogical implications: "Yuasa's language [here] is reminiscent of John Dewey, who viewed every act as a 'bodying forth of the mind' and learning as a function of the entire organism." Dewey insisted on learning through doing and this insistence is attributed to his 35 years of study with F. M. Alexander (1869-1955) founder of the Alexander Technique. Dewey found Alexander's work both practical and scientifically sound, so much so that he wrote the introductions to three of Alexander's books. "Basic among these ideas was a thorough-going acceptance of the principle of mind-body unity, which Dewey--like Alexander--believed was the "missing link" in the current theories of both physiologists and psychologists." (Goldberg,2001 ) Alexander developed his work in England and also taught in Melbourne, Australia. While Alexander is not known to have been directly influenced by another culture's movement practices, his work has been compared with "practical Eastern spiritual philosophies" (Johnson, 88) and he his niece Marjory Barlow (1995, 87) shares many of his principles through the lens of Eastern spiritual traditions. She quotes him as saying "I believe in everything and I believe in nothing." And she goes on to say "To me, he was the most religious person, in the real sense, of anybody I have ever met." (88).

For Dewey and pragmatists such as Alexander there is an echo to constructs from other cultures,

"thought and action are inseparable; therefore, the mind cannot be located in a specific place, but is everywhere in the body. The implication of this position is that human behavior cannot and must not be subdivided into bits and pieces. We think and act as total, unified organisms. Therefore, our approach to teaching and learning should reflect this." (Goldberg, 2001)

Sy Kleinman, who above explicitly linked Dewey's philosophy to the teachings of Yuasa, insists that a full acknowledgement of the pedagogical implications of the education of the "whole" person is essential to achieving progressive pedagogy. Educator Alan Block (1997) concurs, going so far as to say that schools do violence by not allowing movement and somatic awareness to factor into the curriculum. Until we absorb and practice physical ways of learning, we might argue that we are not fully claiming our individual authority, that which underlies our democratic intelligence.

Concluding Remarks

Finally, what I am suggesting is that the erasure of non-Western cultural contributions to somatic inquiry has been linked to a failure to realize fully the progressive promise of holistic educational practice. What has been lacking is an acknowledgement of cultural pluralism in context. Separation of church and state do not mean we can't and shouldn't speak of religious practices across cultures or that we should avoid spirituality at school. Moving On Center, a somatic movement education certification program deliberately housed in Oakland, CA allows personal and group forms of spiritual exploration to emerge within the context of its "social somatic" work. (Eddy, 1995). Public school advocate Linda Lantieri (2000), in her book Schools with Sprit, espouses the importance of inner work within education and looks to the arts and socio-emotional expression, inclusive of physical movement as potent vehicles for such connections.

Whereas progenitors of somatic thinking may cite their influences with great respect, little is done in most classrooms to examine the political or historical context of these influences be they intellectual, physical, emotional or spiritual. It is incumbent upon us to dig up these histories. As somatic pedagogy stands, an understanding of holistic thinking and behavior as learned from non-Western cultures is not necessarily conveyed during the training process. Unlike dance education contexts in which guest artists are contacted and brought from around the world into full exchange, students and teachers in somatic education contexts do not commonly seek out opportunities to meet with professionals from other cultures in order to inform the work's development with a direct understanding. One might argue that by simply immersing in the body within a given somatic practice, the individual will discover what is important for the individual, inclusive of social and cultural insights. However in ending, I wish to suggest that when we explicitly investigate beyond the needs of individual, through a global lens, filled with the details of life, we bring awareness to the organizational systems, (e.g., ecological, biological and social) that are more able to meet the needs of individuals. Through global exchange we may find richer secrets to questions of authority, power, healing, and access to each of these. Furthermore, we need to establish precedents for the crediting of sources of thought and movement practice in classes, publications, and in performance literature. The choice to name who has taught us, clarifies our history. This is helpful as more practices are developed that blend influences. Respectful awareness of the influences of specific people and cultures on current somatic thinking is critical to the continuance of a healthy transmigration of empowered movement behavior worldwide.

Works Cited

Bartenieff, Irmgard. 1980. Body Movement Coping with the Environment. Philadelphia: Gordon & Breach.

Block, Alan. 1997. I'm Only Bleeding: Education as the Practice of Violence Against Children. NY: Peter Lang.

Bainbridge Cohen, Bonnie. 2001. Telephone Interview. August 30. Amherst, MA.

Bainbridge Cohen, Bonnie. 2002. Personal Interview. May 12. Chilmark, MA.

Bainbridge Cohen, Bonnie. 1995. Sensing Feeling and Action: The Experiential Anatomy of Body-Mind Centering. Northampton, MA: Contact Editions.

Campbell, Joseph. 1978. Lecture. May 8, 1978. "Shiva." NY: Theatre of the Open Eye.

Campbell, Joseph. 1997. The Mythic Dimension: Selected Essays: 1959 - 1987 . NY: Harper Collins Publisher.

Chen, Kuan-Hsing. 1996. "Not Yet the Postcolonial Era: The (Super) Nation-State and the Transnationalism of Cultural Studies: Response to Ang and Stratton." Cultural Studies Journal 10,1. New York: Routledge.

Conrad, Emilie. 2001. Telephone Interview. August 23. Santa Monica, CA.

Conrad, Emilie. 2001. Personal Interview. September 30. NY, NY.

Conrad, Emilie. n.d. "Barbara." In Life on Land. Santa Monica, CA: A Continuum Publication.

Dancing in the Millennium, 2000. Program Schedule: Dancing in the Millennium: An International Conference. July 23, 9AM. Washington D.C.
Dewey, John. 1909. Moral Principles in Education . Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.

Dewey, John. 1938. Experience & Education. NY: Collier Books

Eddy, Martha. ed. 2001a. Conflict Resolution Through Dance and Movement. North Chelmsford, MA: CustomBooks.

Eddy, Martha. ed. 2001b. Movement Retraining: Principles of Perceptual-Motor Development Experiential Perspectives from Bartenieff Fundamentals, Body-Mind Centering and Other Somatic Disciplines. North Chelmsford, MA: CustomBooks.

Eddy, Martha. 2000. "Access to Somatic Theory and Applications: Socio-Political Concerns." Proceedings of the International Conference: Dancing in the Millennium, 144-148. Washington DC.

Eddy, Martha. 1992. "Overview of the Science and Somatics of Dance." Kinesiology and Medicine for Dance. 14 (1) 20 - 28.

Fortin, Sylvie. 2000. "Somatics in Global Circulation." Paper presented at International Conference: Dancing in the Millennium July 23, 2000; 9AM.

Goldberg, Marion, 2001 , The Insiders' Guide to the Alexander Technique Web Site. Alexander Technique Center of Washington, D.C http://www.alexandercenter.com/jd/index.html

Green, 2001. Social Somatic Theory, Practice, and Research: An Inclusive Approach in Higher Education Dance. Proceedings of the International Conference: Dancing in the Millennium, 213-217. Washington DC.

Hackney, Peggy. 2002. Personal Interview; 9-19-2002. Oakland. CA.

Hanna, Thomas. 1976. "The Field of Somatics." Somatics. Autumn issue, 30 -34.

_______. 1985-86. What is Somatic? Somatics. 5 (4), 4 -9.

_______. 1989. A Primer in Somatic Education. Life in Motion, The Body/Mind Connection; Change, Optimal Health and Productivity; A Conference for Somatic Educators and Health Professionals. March 30 - April 2, 1989. NY: New York University.

International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association. 2002. http://www.ismeta.org/MemberOrganizations.htm

Johnson, Don Hanlon, ed. 1995. Bone, Breath, and Gesture: Practices of Embodiment. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.

Johnson, Don Hanlon, ed. 1997. Groundworks: Narratives of Embodiment. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.

Kleinman, Seymour. 2001. "Moving Into Awareness" http://www .coe.ohio-state.edu/skleinman

Lantieri, Linda. ed. 2000. Schools with Spirit. Nurturing the Inner Lives of Children and Teachers. Beacon Press.

Preston-Dunlap, Valerie. 2002. Personal Interview. August 3, 2002. Rio de Janiero. Brazil.

Questel, Alan. 2000. The Feldenkrais Method®. http://www.feldenkrais.com/questel1.html The Feldenkrais Guild, Portland, OR.

Schirle, Joan. 1987. "A Conversation with Marjory Barlow." In Bone, Breath, and

Gesture: Practices of Embodiment. Edited by Don Hanlon Johnson. Berkeley,
CA: North Atlantic Books.

Shapiro, Sherry. 1998. Dance, Power and Difference: Critical and Feminist Perspectives on Dance Education. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

Tamalpa Institute. 2001. http://www.tamalpa.org/HTML/Home.html

Yuasa, Y. 1987. The Body: Toward An Eastern Mind-Body Theory. (T. P. Kasulis, ed.) Albany, New York: State University of New York Press.

Σωματικóς - Somatikòs

Martha Eddy, CMA, Ed..D., is a co-founder of Moving On Center - School for Participatory Arts and Research in Oakland, CA, and a master teacher of Body-Mind Centering (BMC) and Laban Movement Analysis (LMA). In 1990 she founded an ISMETA-approved Somatic Movement Therapy Training that blends BMC and LMA approaches to somatic work, now affiliated with Moving On Center. She taught dance and somatic theory in the department of Dance and Dance Education at Teachers College for ten years. She currently is the Coordinator of the Wellness Center at the Riverside Church in NYC.
She frequently lectures nationally and internationally.

AGE

2007-04-29T13:29:00.000-07:00

The word "age" means, quite simply, "a period of existence." It is one of the more fascinating words in the English language, because it is significantly more complex than it sounds. First of all, it has a curious etymology. Its Latin root is aetus. Its form, aticus, meaning "belonging to" or "proper to," was commonly used as a termination to many words: for example, silvaticus, "of the wood" (silva), and viaticus, "of the way" (via). Later, aticus evolved into the French suffix, age, and silvaticus passed into English as "savage" and viaticus as "voyage." Age became a common suffix in many English words: language, village, marriage, postage, and so on.
Moreover, even though "age" means simply "a period of existence," it refers more broadly to that which characterizes a period of existence. It is particularly interesting when it becomes a verb- to age -for then it means "to grow old." What, we must ask does it mean "to grow old"? "Old," in its Latin root, alo, and in its ancient Germanic form, alt, means- quite surprisingly -"to nourish" and "to bring up."More generally, alo means to strengthen, increase, and advance. It means to become taller and to become deeper. In its root meaning, then, "to age," and to get older, means "to grow up." In view of the etymology of "old," it is fascinating to note that "growing old" has come to mean exactly the opposite of the original meaning of "old": that is, "old" has come to mean worn out, deteriorated, decayed, dilapidated, and no longer useful.
Thus, in plumbing the meaning of the simple but curious word, "age," we come upon a fundamental ambiguity: "To age" means either to decrease, decay, wear out, and become decrepit and discarded or to grow, increase, and become taller and deeper.
It is most provocative that a word as basic to human life as "aging" can mean either of two opposite possibilities: degeneration or growth. It suggests that what is characteristic to the period of existence of a human's lifetime is neither programmed or predictable. It implies that the direction of a human life is not fixed but open.
This fundamental ambiguity reflects an abiding human insight into the uncertainty of aging: A human life can unfold in the direction of decay and steady degeneration, or it can just as well unfold in the direction of growth and increasing strength.
From the layered depths of our language arises the tantalizing suggestion that aging might mean growth rather than decay. This linguistic implication is tightly interlaced with the etymological roots of "aging," almost like the expression of a "collective unconscious" of our 'homo sapien group,' wherein lies a collective insight into the authentic possibilities of human life. This insight has for millennia lain glowing within the heart of our language, awaiting full discovery and confirmation.
We now know enough about expectation and the way it mobilizes our bodies to realize that it is crucial, when we think of aging as a process, to distinguish between the two opposite meanings "to age" - that is, to decay, or to grow. If we think of the coming years of our life as a continuing process of wearing out and becoming decrepit, it is more than likely we shall experience just that. And it is just as likely that a constant, daily expectation of advancement and strengthening will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, focus on expecting continued growth!
Expectation is the leading edge of a belief system, and it has the curious feature of being self-justifying. As a leading edge, belief predetermines our future. (I would add in my own words this idea of one's belief system also determines the quality of our life!) It programs what is to come, so that 60 years later one human grimaces at his self-predicated decrepitude, saying, "That is just what I expected": yet another, who also says, "This is just what I expected," smiles and affirms the progress of her life. Both got what they expected. They could not imagine it happening any other way.
Time is the currency spent by life, so we cannot wait 60 years, wondering indecisively what to expect. Sixty years will be too late. As the saying goes, your life is your personal currency, so, invest it wisely...
We see in this situation an extraordinary truth about human life: whether we will degenerate or grow during the course of our lives is a question not of known fact but of expected possibility. Time, as the currency of life, is always futurity; it is not yet spent. How, we expect it to be spent predetermines the plan for its expenditure. Once we realize that the investment we make in our lives is parallel to many other investments, we may adopt a very different attitude about what possibilities we expect for our future years.
I do not think it improper to say that when we invest in life determines how much we get out of it. It is a question of whether we think that our lives are at the very least as important an investment as, for example, real estate or stocks. It is my observation that many humans do not value their personal bodily future as highly as they value the future of their material possessions. Undoubtedly, they get their reward, which is "what they expected." To expand slightly a famous comment on the situation: 'For shall it profit a human being, if that person shall gain the whole world, yet lose their own soul and body?'
However, life need not unfold this way. We now know enough about expectation and the way it mobilizes our bodies to willingly choose the expectation that our conjoint souls and bodies - our "somas" - will "increase," "advance," become "deeper and taller" - partly because they are "nourished" and "brought up" with this happy expectation. The human who knows that her or his being is growing, is a human who usually has the strength and endurance to prevail over defeats, stresses and traumas that occur in each and every life. Such a person knows that the inevitable pains and dysfunctions occurring in the body are not "inevitable signs of degeneration," but typical adjustments that all bodies go through in regulating and readapting themselves with life as it is occuring.
A human who knows aging to be a process of ongoing growth is a human who has the ongoing power to overcome ailments, surmount malaise, and triumph over the worst defeats. Not to countenance defeat, not to accept failure, not to give up, is to drink from the well of life's richest nourishment: the wisdom that, in its depth, life is ever redemptive and rejuvenating.

A Pride In Age

One effect of the myth of aging is that it induces us to despise old age and adulate youth. Worshiping youth is the inverse side of hating advancing age, or as it is appropriate here to emphasize, that of hating becoming "deeper and taller". It is regrettable that this attitude seems to have become steadily more popular, almost directly counter to the recent sudden expansion of our elderly population. Can the word "elderly" begin to be equated with growing into grace and wisdom?
Or is it only that there are more people now who see their advancing years as something ominous and catastrophic, hopelessly yearning for a state of youth that can never again be? Is this yearning so desperate that they will do anything to have at least the semblance of youth, masking (what is dominantly socially associated with) the shameful signs of age, so that at least externally, they seem to give lie to the inescapable fact of aging skin and hair? In other words, skin and hair in which are also inherent, the capacities for growing deeper and better.
Let me say this as emphatically as possible: To despise the fact of aging is not only to despise life but also to betray a pitiful ignorance of the nature of life.
Youth is not a state to be preserved but a state to be transcended. Youth has strength, but it does not have skill, which in the long run, skill is a most potent strength. Youth has speed, however it does not yet have efficiency, and in the long run, efficiency is the most effective way of attaining goals. Youth is quick, and does not deliberate, yet deliberation is the often the best way to make solid decisions. Youth has energy and intelligence, yet not quite the judgment necessary to to make the best use of that energy and intelligence. Judgment that is reflective of life-experience in the end, is more often a true guarantor of intelligent behavior. Youth has beauty of genetic endowment, yet not the deepened beauty of real achievement. Youth has the glow of promise, yet not quite the radiance of accomplishment. Youth is a time of seeding and cultivation, yet not quite the time of fruiting and harvest. Youth is a state of ignorance and innocence, not a state of true knowledge and wisdom. Youth is a state of emptiness awaiting fullness, a state of possibility awaiting actualization, a state of beginning awaiting transcendence.
In short, youth is a state to be released and left behind, as we grow taller, deeper and more full. Unless we understand that life and aging are processes full of growth and progress, we can never know the first principles of living. Nor can we understand what youth is all about: an explosive yearning to grow taller, deeper and more full in the transcendence of oneself. It is by losing this yearning to grow taller, deeper, and more full that we forget the first principles of living and begin to worship a false and superficial image of youthfulness.
The human species, possessed with a brain whose genius is unlimited learning and adaptation, is a species that is genetically designed to age by growing. To not expect to grow is to misunderstand what it means to be human. Not to grow is to fail in the divinely-given task of living a fully human life. To expect the opposite is, in effect, to act against life and its biological promise.
As we move toward a new moment in history when one-quarter of the population will be 65 years or older, we must remind and reeducate ourselves to the full possibilities contained in the entire human life span. In our worship of youth, and in our frantic scramble to falsify our age, we have blindly ignored a growing number of discoveries that can make life and aging a continuing process of growth, achievement, satisfaction, and pleasure. The author's primary concern here is to present scientific and practical information about discoveries that can free us from the fear of aging. Fear of aging is a product of ignorance, and this ignorance is no longer defensible, any more than the myth of aging is defensible. Laboratory and clinical research and Somatic Exercises are the instruments with which we can begin to reverse our traditional superstitions about aging. This reversal can come about, not with more doctors, more hospitals, and more nursing homes, but with more self-conscious, self-regulating, individuals who have educated themselves in the ways of consciously working with the processes of their own lives.
During this epochal upward shift in population, it is not more "hard" technologies that we need. It is new "soft" technologies, such as those we have discussed. The soft technologies are the somatic technologies that teach us internal awareness of our own physiological, psychological, as well as point to the emotional and considerations for the potentials also in our spiritual lives. Somatic Exercises- are not to be read with the "mind," but to be learned through both the body, mind and heart -are a soft technology.
In this age of "software," the "programs" for the machines are more significant than the machines themselves. Computers are totally useless without their programs. It is the right program in the right computer language that unlocks the magic of the cybernetic process. In this same consideration, it is the right method and the right understanding of somatic practice that is the key for unlocking the magic of the human central nervous system, and of keeping it unlocked during the whole of one's life.
Not only is it possible to overcome and avoid the effects of sensory-motor amnesia, it is also possible to have a body and a life that are lasting sources of productivity, satisfaction, and pride. I believe that, more than anything else, it is pride in age that must be restored to our era since to be happy with aging, is to savor age's promise and thereby enjoy its unfolding. Every human being must educate oneself in looking forward to aging as a promise to be fulfilled. If, we are to learn anything from youth, it is just this - that the burning essence of youthfulness is to look forward to aging as a beckoning promise of happiness and fulfillment.
This is the attitude of youth that we must keep from birth through maturity until death, for it is an attitude of positive expectation: to expect the best of our lives and to have the basic somatic skills to guarantee this expectation. Such an attitude and such skills can make for the most extraordinary gerontological event will not be the age shift in the population but the shift in attitude and accomplishment of the elderly, the deeper, the more wise.
I envisage the totally practical possibility of an emerging elderly population with the skills, efficiency, deliberation, judicious use of energy, measured judgment, and real abilities of achievement and accomplishment, to become the most significant portion of the population. Even the briefest reflection tells us that this is obvious: that the most experienced, skilled, and learned portion of our population must be the most reliable leadership, and most impressive abilities. It is my contention that, with the means of avoiding the old-age plague of sensory-motor amnesia, and with a positive expectation that creates pride in age, this event has every likelihood of coming about. The enormous capacity of the human brain almost guarantees that such a shift in the quality of mature human life can occur, once humans master the personal, adaptive skills of consciously learning from the internal processes of their lives.
To say that aging is an adventure is the same as saying that life is an adventure. Indeed, each individual life is the greatest adventure, and together, they are part of the larger adventure_ a life of community evolving on a blue and green planet as it spins its course through a measureless universe. The human race is changing, at the present moment this change is accelerating, and it is charged with the thrill of danger and promise. This is what it often feels like when the currents of futurity gather momentum and move us forward headlong into the future.
We must make our way through this great time of change, expecting that it will be good. We must make our future the way we want it to be_ that is what human freedom is for. If it is true that in the deepest reaches of the human heart, we all live according to myths we may find that, from the ashes of the old myth a new myth of aging is arising: that life is a continuous process of growth and expansion. Consequently in this process, we may discover that the myth of aging has been replaced by another brighter myth.

paraphrased from: Hanna, Thomas. Somatics, Reawakening the Mind's Control of Movement, Flexibility, and Health. pp 88 - 92. Former Director of the Novato Institute for Somatic Research and Training. Cambridge: Perseus Book Group, Da Capo Press, 1988.

Focusing conscious attention on_

2007-04-27T09:21:00.000-07:00

hand on body,

Soil on soil. Soul to soul.

checking in

Noticing, gently come out of the head_ shift attention to hara

Breathing in

breathing out

body comfortable

rocking

tapping

stroking

release...

notice

gently return to breath.

Experiencing arriving...

2007-04-12T10:28:00.000-07:00

As the teaching goes: there is no place to arrive. What I take this to mean, is that in turning one's attention inward, what is striking to understand is noticing that one is already where one needs to be. However, perhaps for me, it is explaining being present with what is that takes on great risk.
What I observe here in the West_ generally, no one readily notices one's own psycho-emotional/social/cultural grooming as distinct from self-trust_ self-belief.
We are a nation insecure about a multi-dimensional sense of self, until science validates everything for us first. Information and experiential knowledge are treated as non-credible in this ever-increasing, consumerist-centered nation. Now, instead of Buckminster Fullers' vision about a technological age providing a democratic balance to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the utilization of technology is at this point an assumed replacement for face-to-face conversation...

Paradoxically, like many unrecognized individuals, I hope to utilize the technology to reach out, in a healing intention, in my own work of creating connection that includes as well as reaches beyond my immediate surroundings. Therefore, I do invite all who may read this blog, even intermittently, to process personal/interpersonal reactions in a state of trust for process until arriving to that still small quiet space within, allowing all distractions, all attachments, all aversions to drop away_ allowing the experience of conscience personal attention to not only listen, but hear the essence of what is attempting to be spoken to here: the process of consciously noticing body intelligence.

Welcome to a Journey in Mind-Body Awareness

2007-04-10T13:10:00.000-07:00

This is the first post to my newest blog_ the focus of which is on (the movement of work sometimes known as) the body-mind connection. In my own experiences in this area, it is our general western assumptions of "alternative" body health modalities that most intrigue me.
I feel strongly that as inheritors of The Roman Empire, westerners live intellectually-centered consequences that result more in limitation about a conscious personal life experience. An internal working knowledge of cumulative historic human consciousness evolution, is in significant ways, missing in our collective references about what it means to just be. What DOES it truly mean to be alive in this life? Why are we REALLY here?
There is so much westerners individually presume to know and understand of life, principally from a view centered in the mind. Yet, we seem to continuously, completely miss an ancient wealth that is inherent in all other cultures of the world! So, I continuously wonder how might we be more integrative neighbors, if we but understood how to notice without being an embodiment of intimidation?

My own experiences of the body-mind connection begins in the dance at age five, studying and performing within various dance traditions off and on over the course of my life thus far. Those more traditionally western body-performance experiences ended on stage for the last time when my own daughter was three_ she is now a college freshman. Currently, my personal relationship with the body reflects being a student of thirteen years practice in Yoga, and Breema. I am also a visual artist, and organic chef_ meaning that looking, thinking, and nourishing the body is thoughtfully considered, and created with, in the presentations that will be offered here. What is the art of living well?

The idea in creating this blog, is to draw on my personal journeys thus far (including my roots in the dance) as that body awareness-relationship has moved on, evolving through studies in Yoga and Breema. To post my understandings on body intelligence, and intuitive logic. I aspire to speak eloquently on how that journey looks and feels for one to grow into a more fully conscious, empowered awareness on health in the body, particularly for women.
Over time I will be able to include my explorations in Somatics, as awareness becomes oriented in this field. Over the course of time, it is my hope that this blog will be of interest for those who may at first be drawn to my learning experiences, and eventually to me as a teacher about one's path on the conscious body-mind journey in health and well being. Additionally, I hope that a personal, and subjective writing approach will be experienced as inviting, and comfortable in one's own discovery process of the world of mind-body awareness.