healthy animal, physical/emotional connection Dec 13/2010

A short session after a long time of no work like this

gorgeous... just stretching and committing to staying in the physiological moment. I released so much pain and tension. Often always in virtually a yawn... long ones, imperceptible ones... but lots of release in my tongue and breath when I do this with
sounds like animals. It is so simple and yet takes real discipline to keep in the real physiological moment and move through as much of the body as I can feel. The pain and pleasure as guides as to what to follow, gravity is so easy to lose. I didn't feel much of blood today- mostly trying to stay balanced in gravity and muscular skeletal and pain release- going to just the beginning of sensation where there is pain and then breathing through until my right hip (I think gluteus minimus and medius -didn't want to get the anatomy book out today- not enough time and didn't want thought) which I was able to release- I should watch how long it stays released- it is so chronic- can't believe I have 'fixed it'. IF I were to do this regularly- as I will in April - June (can't wait !!!!!!!!!) it might really stay open... but it has been that way for years... but to know that if I chose I can go to sensation and breath/stretch it out...
why do I not do this every day - even for 10 minutes - that is the real mystery to solve!

I was taken as always to scriptural - not words exactly--- no thoughts... images? The seas of loving kindness moving within me... in this place- certain images in scripture are not abstract but 'mystical hard science'...

had music on (Sigur Ros/Album Leaf stuff like that) it helped me

also... really got how so much thought is just idle fancy and vain imagination... and being in the moment and waiting for deeper... again, not sure the word is thought- and image is not right either - and neither is it sensation

something soul ish - but that is hard to name

feels REAL and something I trust...

figures I was able to go to this place today as yesterday I collapsed in tears in a very good friends arms- a woman who I deeply respect and admire... in tears feeling my sadness at being not in the 'good pleasure of Baha'u'llah'

my body and my spiritual emotional blocks are completely linked and one. If one is blocked- so is the other... seems obvious and yet, why then do I keep moving forward when I am numb? why do I not stop and wake myself up?

Numbness, deep, old numbness is the hardest place to stay in this work- because there is so little to go on- so I often just skip it and I am sure there is so much I skip that I am not aware of- as I see my students skipping whole chunks of their body and having no idea that they are doing so and places I have some vague awareness where I manage to stay long enough to find the emotion first and then some sensation
like the tears awaken the nerves, which awaken the sensation in muscle... must study this... the body/neuro science of this...

not pushing

I managed to find an hour in the studio and I was able to really move from a deep visceral place. I was also able to see how much I push from the muscular system. It is an old habit that is hard to break. I wrote some notes to another faculty member about an older- very mature actor, who is afraid of confronting old patterns, and what I wrote could easily be a prescription for myself. I want to make real change, but i can see how deep the old patterns are. It takes a great deal of vigilance to begin from a new place. I also realized, however, the advantage of age... there are less big bogs of emotional muck to get through as I feel my internal viscera... i do not seem to run in to as much cathartic emotional release (unless that is because I am working so rarely- but I don;t think so.) It feels like when i manage to work authentically and follow the real 'guts' of my impulses they lead me to:

-releasing physical pain and stiffness (although I have to be careful not to head for pain, but sit just before sensation and feel through the blood/breath etc... inside the muscles etc)... the healing aspect of the work

-a real desire to move towards 'God' and all that that means... no good words for this... 'the realm of being' versus 'heedlessness' (BUT I have to be careful here to sit in 'powerlessness' as this can lead to an INTENSE desire to ACT- which is GREAT!!! but I can then get hooked into superficial responses to this that still feel old... so I must be patient and go deeper... but this is SO useful and can spur me on to great things... IF I can maintain faith and purpose... that is the tough part... the follow through

- the simple pleasure of oneness ... where the two things above come together...

I very much look forward to daily practice- which will not start again until end of April... tomorrow I will check out a studio space on Toronto Island where I hope to work for 6 weeks almost daily and I cannot wait!!!

Notes to a student asking me about meditation as a part of their warm up and daily routine and feeling like she wasn’t able to be present in stillness

try movement meditation... (the slow walk we used in class, walk on a rope, take 5-45 minutes to stand up)

try using music.(one song over and over or get some music intended for meditation.. I don't have any great selections off the top of my head)

try calligraphy... (write one important word over and over again)

try a mantra (saying something over and over)

a yantra (something you look at like a mandala- can be used as meditation – or any image you like)

try holding a stone or any object and seeing it, feeling it for a long time....

there are lots of different kind of meditations...

every culture has used all of these above and many more in different forms-
make meditation as fluid and fun as you are allowing your warm ups to become!!

experiment!!

also make sure that your spine/heart/breath etc are really warm BEFORE you meditate (like a yoga class, which is ultimately getting you ready for stillness but our contemporary materialistic culture has turned it into fitness alone) and do the work from my class (which is pretty basic- and is part of yoga, part of mindfulness meditation, is pretty simple and universal and actually, to do for real, quite difficult...)

HAVE FUN!