What Can Neurology Show Us About Forgiveness? First Installment…

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“The heart is an instrument, once broken, never repairs the same. Yet, although it can’t be cured, it can be healed and you can love again. But that heart is not the same heart that was broken the first time…A loss is a loss, whether it’s a heart, a limb, or a person…” -Kevin Kling

This is a concept I have related over and over again to my clients in terms of physical injury: that we can never go back. You can, however, learn a new way to move after injury, a new neural pattern that can bypass the pain, or use muscles in a new configuration that allows you to be fully functional, but not the same as you were. Awareness Through Movement is a means of teaching yourself how to do this. But, I never thought about it in terms of the heart.

And, in my heart, it feels right. It feels as if, not only nothing will ever be the same again since this monumental loss, but I, too, am not the person I was. My voice is different, my attitude about time is different, my sense of what matters is different. Grief has set up house in my throat. I speak in a lower register. The concept of hurry seems a waste of life force. I will no longer fritter away my remaining time on earth with worry; it will all be over sooner than we think, why worry? Control is an illusion, a costly one, at that. Hopes dashed crash on the rocks of indifferent fate scatter like pieces of a ship broken by the storm in the night.

I wonder why we are here. What’s it all about? So, I went to the Being Human 2012 Symposium in San Francisco to see if the latest science could shed some light on the process of being human, and what’s different about it in light of all the new findings in neuroscience, for example, given that there are so many new ‘toys’ to study the brain now, than there were ten years ago…

The event was promoted as a conversation about, ‘how of feeling, thinking, and believing invite us to redefine who we are as human beings.’ That seemed eminently appropriate, since that’s what I’m already engaged in. It also spoke about presentations by pioneers on the frontier of human understanding. Ironically, have been seeking out these kinds of thought leaders and interviewing them since before all this happened, so it seemed appropriate in terms of searching for some sense of continuity amongst the debris of my former self as well.

It was an inspiring conversation. Imagine a public conversation between molecular
biologists, artists, tibetian lamas, mindfulness teachers, psychologists,
sociologists, linguists, and philosophers, affirming the relationships between
awareness, sensations, perceptions, moral behavior, improvements in how we run
our social structures and consciousness…Imagine the hard sciences meeting and
having an open dialogue with the humanities, the scientific method meets
objective experience and they are happy to share their findings with each other!
This is a new kind of university. It’s a conversation I think will take a long time to complete and so it’s one we need to continue, daily. It needs to be nurtured, endorsed, cultivated and given the honor of our attention.

Since it was a lot of information at once, I will not even attempt to cram it all into one article. I will take it bit by bit over time, because, as Beau Lotto stated, “Data is inherently meaningless without context.” I could give you a full recap of each presentation consecutively, but what’s the relevance of all these findings to every day life, to being more human in a world that seems to be getting more dominated by technology minute by minute?

Neuroscientist, Beau Lotto, runs the Lottolab Studio, the world’s first public perception research space, in collaboration with the London Science Museum. Their mission is to ‘advance personal and social well-being through perception research.’

The following illusion is called the “brightness contrast illusion”, which proves that context is everything when it comes to what we see. He uses color, because it’s one of the simplest perceptions to work with. But here’s the kicker, he’s not merely amusing us with optical illusions. He is extrapolating from the perception of color to perception in general to say that we do not see/hear/understand the meaning of information itself; rather, the meaning we see is what’s familiar, it’s what we’ve been primed for by past experience, or by context. Not only that, but two people can be looking at the exact same thing, and see it differently and neither one of them is wrong!!! Check out the illusion below to get a sense of how two people could possibly be looking at the same thing but seeing it completely differently. (To get the full impact of this concept watch Lotto on this TED talk video.)

On the left, a grey floor with alternating white and black tiles Notice that the tile in shadow under the table looks much brighter because the brain thinks it is in shade. The tile to the right looks as if it is much darker; it’s not, it’s just under bright light so the brain assumes it is darker and tells us so.

The illusion on the right is much weaker. All tiles are grey, yet they appear to be different because of the background: one set on a black stripe the other on a light stripe.

This is has huge implications on many fronts. What was emphasized at this symposium was that knowing this about ourselves, we know it about others as well. Knowing that we ALL see things through the filter of our own past, our own assumptions, our own cultural mores, we can be more compassionate with ourselves and others when we disagree about things. Currently, the we are living with a global backlash of fervent righteousness in response to the rise of terrorism. This new understanding, when it gets under your skin, when you really get, not just the concept as an idea, but the visceral awareness that your perception of BEING RIGHT is just as true as the next person’s and you are both looking at the same thing, but seeing two different things – the difference between right and wrong seems almost laughable.

I got this on my daughter’s deathbed. May you get it without that level of suffering. I am gratified to find that neuroscience has made such huge inroads into how we perceive things, inroads that can alleviate conflict, improve communication and lead us all towards the ability to be more compassionate, more able to see our differences without violent emotions intervening or erupting into a death knell for humankind both inter-personally and globally. This is truly what was conveyed to my understanding during that interminable vigil, hoping against hope that my baby was not actually at death’s door, but the die had already been cast. Let’s not wait that long for humanity as a species to get our act together. I offer what tools I know of, there are others. The bottom line is understanding. It can take us places we’ve never been before.

 

-Gabrielle

Browns Valley, CA

3 thoughts on “What Can Neurology Show Us About Forgiveness? First Installment…”

  1. Hello ;

    Thorough and well-spoken from the Heart.

    Another aspect of the “healing” process I have discovered is acceptance of all that is you both on a physical and spiritual level.
    To actively begin to grasp what it is you state eloquently in your words is to begin to delve into what it is you are.

    To lose a child , as in your case, after living with it for its
    allotted time is truly “heart-rending”.
    My compassion can only be correlated through accessing my own “feelings” of my daughter’s similar experience. I cried for myself, for the young one gone on, for her husband, for my wife and most especially for her. In doing so I once again accessed that “me” that is
    immortal, the Spirit that connects “me” to the Source.

    If one is able to “go there” to the Heart by just letting go
    of the shackles connected to “me”, then really super things can occur. As you have intimated there are “different strokes for different folks”, yet there is commonality in the perceived difference.

    To be human in this set of clothes I wear is to be continually discovering what the similarities are “spiritually” that allow for an electric connection to be made. Once connection is made, I have joyfully verified EVERYTHING takes care of itself.

    Thank you for “connecting”.

    May the Spirits continue to guide you on your path.

    Bryan Dozzi.

    Reply ↓

  2. As a person who grew up with the shadow of emotional abuse and neglect ever present, I am slowly starting to realize that I have long exhibited an inability to relate to the heart, or to sense how thick the callous is, that has formed there. Yet, what is interesting is that I have inadvertently come to work with myself in ways that address this without my realizing it head on. This is especially the domain of iRest meditation, and it has opened my heart enough that I can even see this as an issue for me and appreciate what you are saying. As you say, ‘Another aspect of the “healing” process I have discovered is acceptance of all that is you both on a physical and spiritual level.’ This is exactly the methodology of iRest.

    Elsewhere in the news, I have yet, again, encountered the research that substantiates Heartmath, a modality that is about alleviating stress and helping people relate in ways that improve social and personal outcomes in a recent viewing of the movie, ‘I Am,’ by director Tom Shadyac. In it he refers to the research that shows how the heart directs the brain more than the other way around. Interesting stuff which I plan to look at in further detail. But for now, just at the level of common sense, I can see how easily this could work: the brain merely makes decisions about input and responds. So, just as with sensory input from the hand to take your fingers away from the flame of the stove, the brain will respond with signals to remove yourself from a person you find toxic. This implies that the heart is acts like a sensory organ, which of course it is, in addition to being an organ that helps muscles regulate and move blood flow. Most people don’t realize the heart cannot function as a circulatory organ without the help of the muscles to pump the blood through the venous system. Perhaps we are mistaken in thinking this is it’s primary function. Perhaps it’s primary function is to be a sensory organ of the highest order…

    Unfortunately, for people who have lived with low level abuse for so long it’s a part of their identity – even if it’s been many, many years since it’s been an active issue – the sense of self is incomplete. The ability to recognize toxic behavior may be compromised by the habitual assumption of the role of being culpable. They cannot recognize the feeling of toxicity because it’s so familiar its indiscernible. FELDENKRAIS helps address the issue of learning to notice habits that occur below the radar of conscious awareness over time, and bring them into awareness. iRest addresses it by helping people learn to identify feelings and affording a way to program intention to challenge or respond to unconscious behaviors in new ways spontaneously, without conscious awareness. Quite a lovely complement to each other they are.

    Proofs that we may have it wrong about the heart as subsidiary to the brain also lie in history over centuries. The heart, in Traditional Chinese Medicine, as well as in the soft Martial Arts of Qigong, is considered the master organ over the brain. Examples abound also of native peoples, who, for centuries have shaken their heads at the blindness of white colonialists for making mind more important than heart. I think this is the century that will see the remedy of this confusion in western thinking, offering a more compassionate, viable way to live.

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  3. Hello:

    A very interesting method of accessing the Heart has been put forward by a learned voyager by the name of Drunvalo Melchizedek in a book entitled: Living in the Heart.Its subtitle is :How to enter into the Sacred Space within the Heart. I made a “floodgate” connection when I came across this short passage in the book. Please allow me to quote it:
    ” Now it is clear —– when one creates from within the head using the mind one is using a polarity instrument, the mind to create with. And even though the intention is to create good in one way or another, the mind will always create both good and bad because that is its nature.
    “I suggest that you try to create only from within the sacred space of the heart, for the heart only knows unity and will create the intention as it is conceived without its dark side.”

    The above is what he was told by his mentor.

    To create from within the Heart is my on-going
    experiencing through trial and error. When the “creating” works, it is as stated above, “without its dark side”. When it does not, I can actually “feel” the polarity and I have to accept the consequences of the created polarity without reservations, BUT most importantly without blame.
    So much empowerment to be a part of this “creating” thing. It enables one to truly see who one is in this reality: a creating Spirit utilizing a physical construct.

    And another thing which astounds me is the sense of gratitude that wells up for actively being a part of the creating process that is the Source. It is not only a thanking of the whatever connective “help” given, but also a thanking of one’s own sacred Self as part of that creating process.

    I am very lucky to have chosen to have so many winter’s stamps on my passport here on this journey.
    My luck is allowing me to truly learn what creating is
    using this current set of apparel and understanding
    the capabilities of the apparel.
    So I am where I am and creating to the best my current abilities.
    Thanks for your creating. I EN-joy it as it is meant to be.

    May the Spirits continue to ride with you.

    Bryan Dozzi.

    Reply ↓

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Unraveling the Ties That Bind Us to the Past

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“The look of surprise and joy as expressed in his face tells an important story. He is having an ah-ha moment. He has discovered a dynamic he has not known before and has accomplished an act, that while not intended particularly, fills him with the feeling he has done something significant. He can look around himself in a new way. He has a new perspective.”  -Carl Ginsberg, on A New Look at Infancy: Self-Learning, in his new book, The Intelligence of Moving Bodies: A Somatic View of Life and its Consequences.

I have been off doing a lot of inner work. Inner work, it seems, is not just the domain of adults, but in fact the way babies learn. They be with what is. They try this and that, moving over, rolling around, reaching, touching, seeing. They are observers of the first order. They take that experience and spend hours processing, thinking in a free-fall without grammar; creating connections between action and the response of the people they encounter. I, too, like an infant, am taking exactly such baby steps towards a new life, one in which I can find spontaneous enjoyment, in spite of a lifetime of loss.

For, I, too, have been processing, making connections and seeing that this great loss is just one more heaped upon many that goes back in time, that extends over generations, that is an explicit sampling of infantile means of survival, retribution, denigration, and ways of maintaining a relationship within the structure of an extended dysfunctional family come what may. For that’s what we do. That’s why we do the things we do to each other and for each other both. In the interest of being a part of, at any cost. In the beginning, for small children, it’s a means of survival, by any means, given that we are intensely aware that we know we cannot survive without this, our family of origin.

And so, gradually, over time, we develop a web of ties that bind us to each other and to actions and perceptions that rule us for the rest of our lives without our active awareness. For trauma, especially in the experience of a child, is a time of intensity that is dominated by a physiological fear response that makes the synaptic connections in the brain relating to that memory a dominant force, cemented neurologically, and augmented by the body’s own chemistry. Conclusions are drawn about why it happens (usually the child immediately assumes fault, given that they live in a world where they seem to be either the center of attention, or the central reason things go bad. They make decisions about who they are based on the trauma, about life in general, and about what they will and will no longer do in perpetuity. Some of it is conscious, or at least fleetingly so. Much of it becomes buried in the on-going experience of keeping up with the latest crisis as life seems to become a journey of jumping from one momentary sense of peace and belonging to another, amidst a sea of contagious toxic emotion.

This is the sea I have been catapulted back into, in spite of years of shifting perspective, growth and irrevocable recreations of myself. I see it through these new eyes of mine now, whereas when I was small, I had no frame of reference, nothing else to compare it to for it was all I ever knew.

It’s these kinds of monumental decisions and perceptions, made in extreme duress, that come back to haunt me now, as I begin my journey over this new sea of sorrow. All the adornments here are relics from the past, and my vision is clouded, but for the few islands of certainty I was able to nurture with great attentiveness – by cultivating attentiveness itself as a heightened ability with the practices I espouse, awareness of the physical, presence to the extended environment around me. This is my greatest asset on this trip. In the wake of the boat, I see the detritus of broken lives fan out behind me as I scan the horizon for the lighthouse I know is there, but can only see every few hours or so.

I became aware of this phenomenon of the power of decisions made under the influence of an emotional charge years ago. Probably the first time it happened, actually. Even as a small child of about six years of age, I could sense that I needed to live in perpetual readiness, in a state of preternatural sensitivity to the possibility of crisis. Still and small,I sat next to my mother on this gigantic king size bed as the tears streamed down her face in rivulets of agony. Surely there was something I could do to stop her crying! Surely there was something I could do to stop them from taking the house, moving our furniture and evicting us from the place I grew up and the place she so seemed to love. But, there was nothing. Hence, it was my fault.

Obviously, as an adult, I realize it was not my fault. My father had left, and the university housing was only for faculty, not divorced housewives with 3 kids in tow. But the conviction of culpability I owned at that moment has never left me. I have walked the face of this earth now for 50 years taking on whatever free-floating blame for the family dysfunction was currently raging, a willing scapegoat in the dance of anger, resentment and vengeance that was the formative fabric of my everyday life. This is my shadow, that my role in relationships is to take the blame for all that goes wrong. It’s not conscious. It just happens. It’s what I do, and, apparently, who I am.

I am about to embark on the task of clearing the emotional charge of that wound, that monumental decision with which I have inadvertently given myself a lifelong handicap. I have struck a few fragments from this monument to a child’s misperception of self and circumstance before, but never with the level of understanding I have now. It’s horrific.

I have handed this awful role of martyrdom on to my daughter. For in retrospect it’s clear that she took on the role of the scapegoat within the immediate family circle she lived in and it never left her. Granted, in the same way that I took this on myself, so did she. But the sadness of it all is not diminished at all by this knowing. We can only role model what we know, by example. In moments while it was happening, it was clear, but the horror of acknowledging it soon submerged recognition into a subconscious state. The horror of it was that I knew there was nothing I could do about it. I could not call her on it. She would have denied it, vehemently.

I can bow to her in gratitude for her loyalty (by virtue of imitation), and the love she bore us all by being the keeper of family secrets and a virtual Pandora’s box of blame. I thank her and am grateful that she now is free of the complications engendered by humanity in personal relationships. For this I AM grateful, and happy to be able to feel gratitude for something this big. Mostly, I can only feel a fleeting sense of it now and then for a warm cup of tea when it’s cold, or a chance to lie down after I’ve worn myself out. I am cultivating this as a proficiency too. But more on that later.

What gives is that in my research of this issue, I realized there is a bigger theme at work here. Happily, it’s much less socially acceptable for society at large to have scapegoats to expiate them of their sins. Thankfully, the ancient practice of sacrifice is frowned upon. Even Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac was a test of his faith, not a belief that one life could atone for the sins of others. Perhaps it was meant to get us to realize that it’s a futile endeavor to imagine that blame or sacrifice is what is required. I would hope desperately that the gift to posterity left by the Nazi regime is that to use an entire race of people as a scapegoat for the ills of society is unacceptable, and doesn’t work anyway, not to mention the cause of endless generational suffering and, you guessed, more familial dysfunction, survivor guilt, the embodiment of fear, shame and blame. So, now that the public version of the scapegoat is more or less taboo (we still have work to do as a society, make no mistake), it’s gone underground. It’s evident in the family dynamic where one poor soul takes on the damages for the entire group. Why? To be able to survive, to be accepted at any cost, out of love and loyalty.

So, for those of you who cast a distracted eye on this blog from time to time, stay tuned for more on this topic of resolving the scapegoat. iRest is a perfect resources for untangling this web of dedication that is so debilitating, and even more debilitating in the face of grief.

 

-Gabrielle

Browns Valley, CA

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Trying to Protect Ourselves Doesn’t Work

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Nobody likes pain. It’s a normal reaction to try to inhibit the feeling. That’s what compensation patterns are all about. It’s true for physical pain, and for emotional pain. But what happens, instead, when we give in to the impulse to try to protect ourselves, is a distortion that leads us down the garden path in the wrong direction…towards a prolongation of the pain.

I hurt my ankle. I start to walk differently. I avoid hills. I use my upper leg muscles more. Eventually, I create a new strain in the knee. With time, I find a way to compensate for that by using my hip in a different way. The problem with this average scenario, is that as time goes by, I’m merely layering one compensation pattern over another. I may well be protecting the initial area of injury, but I am setting as my ‘default mode’ a set of habits that are dysfunctional in that they disable normal mobility around the injury.

In the same way, when I’m stung by the sharp arrows of emotional pain, and feel as if my heart is about to break perpetually, I naturally shut down. I stop opening to myself and others. I shut people out. I ‘harden my heart.’

Somatically speaking, the cost of this protective mechanism is that I sacrifice the very air I breathe by compromising my ability to move in the region of my heart. There is a literal, concrete price to pay for the imaginary protection I find in debilitating my ability to feel emotions that make me feel vulnerable. It’s not just a touchy-feely, psychological holding pattern that prevents me from feeling love, joy, acceptance, friendship, sympathy, compassion and awe. Nor is it merely an energetic holding pattern that shuts down the heart-center so that I incapacitate my own access to the part of myself that is spirit, or love at it’s most refined, pure and simple. It’s also a physical holding pattern that compromises my breathing, the movement in my ribs and lungs, and the expansion that allows me to move forward in space and time.

The price of self-protection diminishes my sense of self, my identity as a free and independent person who can make choices without inhibition. Unconsciously self conscious of my wound, I begin to move in the world in a new way, one that is but a limping distorted image of the self I once was.

Allowing myself to feel is the only way to counter this madness of ever diminishing options. But where do I find the courage? The answer is in the soma itself, in allowing myself to connect with the entirety of myself and my experience in a state of relaxed awareness. There are two doorways offered here: one is through the door of perception that is altered by full participation in the iRest process of meditation (experience the meditation on the resources page). Another way to move through this inevitable phase of self restraint in the face of loss is to go through the door of finding physical ease in the breath itself.

A FELDENKRAIS approach to working with the breath expands the capacity to breathe quite literally, thereby connecting us to a more salient sense of self and back into a new relationship with safety, freedom and choice. As Alan Questel notes in his recent article in the FELDENKRAIS JOURNAL (No.24  2011), “One of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais’s biggest claims to fame was how he could make the abstract seem concrete.” He goes on to elucidate the unique and progressive possibilities that Feldenkrais offered people in their thinking: what if we take the time to inhibit the tendency towards inhibition that stifles our whole self, the Soma that includes all levels of human experience both internal and external? To inhibit inhibition gives us a more neutral starting place, he states. This counteracts the impulse to protect ourselves in ways that don’t work, effectively diminishing our aliveness. With regard to the patterns we get into to protect ourselves from pain, he says, “By protecting themselves, they frequently stay connected to their pain.”

This is another major principle of FELDENKRAIS thinking, this idea that if we start from a neutral place, then we have more access to choice. By contrast, if I start from an agenda, an intention to protect myself, I have less ability to perceive what’s possible because I have already weeded out certain options by default. I’m not going to look at how to be more comfortable, for one thing, because I’m too threatened to believe it’s even a possibility. Ah, but it is. The choice is mine. Choice as a doorway to freedom is another major principle that Feldenkrais worked with to move people away from self-imposed limitation and towards spontaneous aliveness, even in the face of great adversity.

Feldenkrais knew adversity. He was not afraid to work with people in states of severe physical disability such as multiple sclerosis, the aftermath of stroke, autism, as well as people with spinal injuries. He himself lived through a time in the Ukraine when the pogroms swept the country. He survived the formation of the nation of Israel during it’s inception when Jews were not allowed to carry arms in an extremely hostile environment. He lived through the Nazi invasion of Paris, escaped to England before the occupation took complete control of the city. He knew firsthand that sometimes, all we have is choice.

Yesterday, I interviewed another amazing FELDENKRAIS practitioner, Elinor Silverstein. I love her opening statement, which, in truth, is my own belief as well. She said, “To me FELDENKRAIS is much more than a ‘method,’ it’s a philosophy, a way of thinking, a way of living.” Stay tuned for the interview. (See the next issue of SenseAbility on www.feldenkrais.com) In it, she talks about how she has raised her sons this way, about how this thinking can improve both our ability to be safe, and our sense of safety in the world, and what it means to have choice, to have options, and the freedom it allows, even in difficult situations.

But back to breathing. There is a reason it has been the subject of meditation technique for over 4,000 years with hundreds of methodologies. It’s a bridge. The breath is a bridge to the present moment, to intuition, to finding ease, to getting focused. Therefor, breathing seems a good place to begin. Breathing lessons to follow. Let’s start with ease, expansion, appreciation and allowing in the grace we all have access to. I assume you can breathe, otherwise you’d be dead, or attached to a breathing machine, as my daughter was for the last 48 hours of life. But enforced breathing is akin to death. Living to breathe is no freedom at all. Let’s breathe to live, instead.

Meanwhile, where does it all begin? With birth. And so, it seems appropriate to leave you with the comments of some of the pregnant women Alan Questel has worked with using FELDENKRAIS breathing lessons to create ease in ways that were not entirely obvious until they were, in fact, a part of the experience of the participants. Which just goes to show that you never know what’s possible unless you choose to allow that maybe, just maybe, there is more to it all than meets the eye…

 

-Gabrielle

Browns Valley, CA

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Avoiding the Void

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- between Self and Spirit
- between Gentile and Jew

“I will be still an instant and go home.”
-A Course in Miracles

Perhaps it is not this way for everyone in this situation, but for me, going home has been the hardest thing I have had to do since the Crisis of Conscience began. What I mean by that is that the mind goes on autopilot after news of a death, examining facts, memories, ideas, beliefs, dearly held values and the most minute instances of experience. And, here, at home, is where the most detailed of memories reside. In retrospect, looking so different that that perspective is like seeing through the eye of a kaleidoscope into a world that seemed to be fantasy before, but that seems, at times, to be more real than endurance can bear. I have always loved fantasy, for the basics, like safety, support, compassion, respect, these were only rarely present, at least for me, growing up with my mother. Not because she is bad. She could provide those things in sober moments, but usually, drunken bitterness was the rule. From this I formed a strong aversion to anger, blame and bitterness, which, when awareness dawns, is, in reality, an equally strong attachment.

For paradox abounds in the human psyche. (This is why it has been so refreshing for me to behold the straight communication of animals. We may not always understand them, but they are usually pretty direct, very in the moment, and not at all prone to holding grudges the way people seem to do.) After a week or so at home, dealing with the inevitable return-from-being-away piles of mail, the buildup of escaped bills, and the questions formed by all the physical STUFF that is left over to remind me of the bad decisions, the unexpressed love, and the things I could have done differently…This is truly the dark before the dawn, the hardest part. All the sympathizers are busy elsewhere and my inability to be consistent and calm with everyone (except my horse), has made people not trust me. They fear for their skins, because I cannot always separate my projections from reality, so caught up am I in the emotions that arise at the effect of all these triggers in my ‘home.’ Ugh. I would rather be anywhere else on earth.

And yet, no one is attacking me. No one is there rubbing my nose in it, the way you would if potty-training a dog, but that’s how it feels. Another quote from A Course In Miracles, is in the same lesson, Lesson 182. It reads, “Take time today to lay aside your shield which profits nothing, and lay down the spear and sword you raised against an enemy without existence.” The problem, ever since coming home, is that I cannot seem to be still with myself or even slow down here. I am overwhelmed by things to do, stuff to sort through, things I want to get rid of, a desire to repaint the whole place and to rearrange the furniture. All good things to do for sure, but too abundant to do and still get in the work I would like to be doing, and the riding I need to stay on top of since we have made such tremendous progress in the last 12 weeks. It’s what grounds me in a schedule that keeps me connected to a purpose, a love, a passion; instead of wandering, aimlessly throughout the day, unable to focus, meandering slowly into madness.

Kenneth Wapnick, in his interpretation of A Course In Miracles, speaks of the body in terms of it being ‘made to be insatiable.’ This is the language of addiction. Stomach full? It’s made to be filled again a few hours later. Feeling the love? It’s never enough, just once, the next day, it’s time to be loved again, just like it’s time to do the dishes, only more so.

Here again, another paradox, this time, perhaps, a spiritual one. For the body is not the enemy, no matter how much I fear to be in it. Last weekend I attended a two day FELDENKRAIS workshop for the public with FELDENKRAIS Trainer Dennis Leri, a man after my own heart in that he rarely let’s himself be hypnotized by the droning voices of the mainstream that cow tow to concepts of limitation as inevitable…’poor me, pour me, pour me a drink,’ as they say in A.A.

I was so relieved to be there, even after the first 45 minutes I noticed a huge difference. I was struck by the experience. In stead of living in my emotions, the way I had been doing for the past few days while dream walking through the memories that inhabit the house where I made all the choices that led me to this moment, suddenly I was transported, by the medium of the AWARENESS THROUGH MOVEMENT lessons, into a state of wanting nothing more than to be where I found myself. I had no desire to talk to anyone, but because I was so enjoying this non-verbal, or preverbal state of noticing, of seeing, and feeling, as if for the first time. Body as source of pleasure. Present as only moment in awareness. What a relief. It lasted the entire weekend, and then some.

I imagine that this is where animals live, not being in the future or the past. What a gift. That is why they are my personal Buddhas. Since the past no longer exists and the future is but a figment of my distraught imagination, based on my own personal history, the illusion of knowing what’s so is how I allow my mind to torment me. Thus, I am fascinated by this Tibetian Buddhist concept that if I catch my first thought, I can stop it in mid-stream, before it escalates into me driving myself into a charged frenzy of upset, anger or abject hatred. I am clear that for the average Joe, what they call, ‘Mind Training,’ might seem like a dull task, but for me, it’s a matter of survival, lest I allow my demons to demoralize me into demoralizing everyone around me. Their additional concept of loving kindness and compassion becomes more than a nice thought; it’ becomes a matter of life and death, heaven or hell, clarity or madness.

I am so isolated here, ‘at home,’ where I am lucky to live in the complete silence of the Sierra Nevada foothills, but risk being unable to maintain my poise by my own fear of – what? What does the stillness hold that so terrifies me? Here’s another paradox: I have come full circle. Again, back to Wapnick’s interpretation of the Course: “The answer to our problems, then, is simple: we return to our home, there to live, grow, and recognize that suffering comes from giving the power to the world outside – yet, there is nothing outside.” This speaks to me because I am so clear I was so caught up in giving my power to the world outside. I was trying so hard to be a good person, to give to others, to provide really good work for my clients, to be a good citizen, after all those years of addiction growing into adulthood, yet it was just another trap of the Ego. Love me, fill me, stroke me, please. Gag me with a spoon.

What Wapnick is saying, if I’m not mistaken, is that my fear is that God holds me responsible for what happened, and that I am afraid of this to such a degree that I am unable to face being in the presence of it. Interesting idea. I think it’s true for me, but, in general, I’m not sure what’s up with God. I am sure I feel angry and abandoned by God. I did plenty of ‘good works,’ and I was so intent on being positive come what may, and I was deliberately grateful for all that I had – to what end? The Lama at the Buddhist temple asked me, ‘Would you not have done it if you knew? Would you wish you hadn’t helped those people?’ Food for thought, or thought for food.

I so crave some meaningful human interaction out here in the wilds of the ‘Gold Country,’ where the favorite ‘safe’ dinner discussions are about tractors and what the irrigation district is up to, that I agreed to join a book club. Guess what we’re reading? In the Garden of the Beasts, by Erick Larson, a non-fictional account of a family of ‘Americans living in Berlin during Hitlers rise to power.’ There are no coincidences, right? I thought it might be interesting, given that I grew up looking out my window over the Lake of Constance into Bavaria, wondering about the German psyche for most of the nine years I lived there. The synchronicity of it all did not occur to me at the time.

I have spent a lifetime going between Jews and Gentiles, wondering where to find the common ground that we could befriend each other on, sometimes with success, sometimes with unexpected consequences. More about that later, I’m sure. But for now, suffice it to say that my goal for this site is to shed some light into this particular cavernous void. Why? Because I believe that one of the lessons learned from the ultimate sacrifice of my daughter’s life is that we are not here to hold these grievances. It’s the holding of grievance as real that kills. I grew up in the shadow of a lapsed Catholic who was all about grievances. I may not technically be a Gentile, but it’s my heritage, and as such has influenced my thoughts and behavior, probably in ways I’m not even aware of most of the time.  And holding on to grievances was a dominant theme of my childhood. My daughter’s father grew up in the loving, if neurotic embrace of the Brooklyn Jewish experience. (I won’t attempt to quantify that, but let’s just say the Old Testament has a strong hold there, and Yaweh is not a God to be trifled with).

There’s a deja vu quality to reading this book, because it’s about a reality that defies understanding. Larson quotes author Christopher Isherwood who lived in Berlin at the time of Hitler’s rise to power. He quips that, “The trams moved as usual, as did the pedestrians passing on the street; everything around him had ‘an air of curious familiarity, of striking resemblance to something one remembers as normal and pleasant in the past – like a very good photograph.’” This is a good description of my perception of ‘reality’ at the moment. I am not comparing the horror of my experience to the horror of being a Jew in Hitler’s Germany, I am merely stating the common ground: trauma begets a sensation of disembodied experience, no matter what the source.

It is well documented that at the time, even within the first six months of Hitler’s rise to power, before he had absolute power of state, denunciations of Jews were prevalent. This denunciation fever, once unleashed stunned even the Nazi officials. They had to circulate a pronouncement to be more discriminating about what circumstances might justify a report to the Gestapo. Larson states that the issue was so prevalent “that one study of Nazi records found that of a sample of 213 denunciations, 37 percent arose not from heartfelt political belief, but from private conflicts, with the trigger often breathtakingly trivial.” Talk about the pot calling the kettle black, Hitler is said to have quipped, “We are living at present in a sea of denunciations and human meanness.”

In Tibetian Buddhism, it’s referred to as ‘Shenpa.’ It’s not the initial emotion that is so dangerous, it’s the charge behind it, that’s generated by allowing the thoughts to escalate that can be lethal. Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron speaks of it in terms of pouring kerosene on a fire. In an interview with Bill Moyers, she says, “It’s this charge behind them that’s the Shenpa. It’s this hooked quality this difficult to let go.”

In the same interview, she talks about having an epiphany, a spiritual experience, which led her to become a nun; one day, out of the blue, when her then husband told her he was having an affair, etc., etc. She describes it as having one of those moments of clarity, “a genuine spiritual experience that happens to people at a moment of shock, Like car accidents and things. Which was time stood still. There was a completely timeless moment where all I saw was a light and heard the sounds. And it was like an eternal moment.”

Well, call it what you will, this is what happened to me while I sat at my daughter’s deathbed. I became completely, instantly cognizant that I had made the choice to fan the flames of my inability to forgive her father, and she had paid the price for my lack of understanding, this same understanding that has been around for four thousand years among Buddhist masters in Tibet. Chodron calls it ‘being hooked by Shenpa.’ Whatever you call it, it’s high time it became clear to the masses, don’t you think? This is what led to Hitler’s rise to power, the ability to fan that flame in people who were too busy being in fear to ‘mind’ what they were doing inside their own heads.

Another paradox: here I spend all this time training my body, when it’s my mind I need to train more stringently. ‘Loose lips sink ships’ alright, especially when they run rampant inside your head, fanning the flame from irritation, to annoyance, to anger, to outrage, to insanity. But the paradox is that when I train my body, my mind subsides into a comfortable relationship with the silence that allows me to hear my own thoughts with the clarity of that stunning moment of understanding.

Even D.H. Lawrence got it. In his novel, entitled The Rainbow, about the healing of a rocky marriage, he describes this phenomenon and how it might work for ‘average’ people. Once the couple went through the process of forgiving their differences, their daughter, Anna, was able to experience her parents as pillars supporting her life, rather than as pillars tearing her apart: “Her soul was put at peace between them. She looked from one to the other and she saw them established to her safety, and she was free.”

 

 

-Gabrielle

Browns Valley, CA

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Illusion is Subjective: Who’s To Say Who’s Reality is ‘Real’?

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“We tried everything, doctors in Milan and in Switzerland, but nothing worked. I had to accept the fact that I was  barren. That changed the direction of my life. What I wanted most was denied to me. You come up against something, a roadblock, you’re so sure of the direction you’re going in, the road you want to take, that it’s inconceivable. But a bridge has been washed out. You have to find some other way.”  -Robert Hellenga, The Sixteen Pleasures

This is not my story, but also an encounter with a new level of awareness of life’s own momentum that takes us places we never intended to go. Funny how women who can’t conceive want children more than anything, whereas some women conceive at the drop of a hat, and wish it weren’t so. Women with straight hair want curls, rivulets of springy tendrils, whereas women with curly hair crave hair as straight as a rod. Is this human nature, or is it an affliction that is especially prevalent in the female?

The direction I was going in was towards a reconciliation with my 25 year old daughter when suddenly, the entire organizing principle of my life was waylaid, as if by robbers, stolen from me, by the Grim Reaper himself, the Ultimate, Irrevocable King of Thieves. Never mind that this drama had been going on since she was six. Never mind that I had channeled my life, my work, my intention, my hopes, my dreams towards this end, and felt, in fact that it would soon come. Our time was near. Perhaps it was. But the closeness you can feel with the dead on the other side is not exactly the relationship I had been hoping for.

The stream of my life has been diverted by the huge, obtrusive rock of this ‘reality.’ I put this word – ever my nemesis – in quotations because I have almost always believed that the world we inhabit is somehow illusory, even since I was a child. It has almost always seemed so surreal. Then, at sixteen, I encountered a book called, the Autobiography of a Yogi. Born in 1893, this guy made an impression on my impressionable mind because, in addition to a very interesting life, he elaborated at length about how science itself proves that matter is illusory. He goes on for pages and pages showing how matter does not exist with examples from physics, and mathematics, and the science behind light and electricity and atomic power. Then he drops the bomb:

“From science, then, if it must be so, let man learn the philosophic truth that there is no material universe; its warp and woof is maya, illusion. Its mirages of reality all break down under analysis. As one by one the reassuring props of a physical cosmos crash beneath him…”

This made sense to me since my world seemed to have been on a course of wild crash and burn from the outset. I never knew where I would be, who I would be living with, or what might happen. I had been told my mother would die immanently for about seven years already. That’s a long time to live under the shadow of Death’s Door. I didn’t buy into the religiosity much, but I was impressed by the way he used his explanations of science to describe what happens when yogic masters would access powers unavailable to the rest of us, like the simple explanation of how to materialize your body; you simply have to learn to move with the velocity of light. So, that’s how they do it. I’ve always figured there’s no smoke without fire, and I found it all fascinating. Especially the bit about some other reality:

“One’s values are profoundly changed when he is finally convinced that creation is only a vast motion picture, and that not in it, but beyond it, lies his own reality.”

Fast forward to my most recent encounter with the writings and lectures of a man named Alan Watts. He too talks about the illusory nature of reality, but I especially resonate with his irreverent streak, he actually makes fun of us poor slobs stumbling around in the dark, trying to pursue things illusory, like a cat chasing it’s tail. He says, “Make a spurious division of one process into two, forget that you have done it, and then puzzle for centuries as to how the two get together.” This is from his book entitled, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are.

I have been wondering how I got here since birth. I have always had a sense that I was an actor, we are all actors on a stage that we can view from afar at the same time that we are in process. Hence, as I see myself falling to pieces when faced with the idea of taking up my previous existence, or, going back to my “real” life, I get angry. It feels like pressure, but I’m not sure from where. Is it from the people who want me to carry on as if I’m done with grieving? Or, is it from the part of myself that is adamant that something must change.

I must do things differently, lest I repeat the mistakes of the past. I must learn something. Much of my drive is gone, vanished into thin air. But this is still a tangible energetic thrust of my own motivation. Who would strip me of this vital connection with the living? There are valuable lessons here. Lessons that I cherish and want more than anything to honor from this experience. I am taking a stand to prevent the rest of my existence from being as stupidly futile as running in the rat race I have feared being a part of since I was ten years old. I tried it. It’s not for me, and it certainly did nothing for my daughter. It’s not about fault. It’s just that there are no coincidences. At least that’s what I believe. And I do believe that children are wiser than adults, and then, after socialization, become just as stupid and oblivious as other adults.

At this point, I’m no longer in the phase of revisiting the past. I’m in the phase of scrying the future to eliminate any bits that smack of BEING in ways that I have come to associate with my part in this situation which everyone wants to tell me just happened. Excuse me, I have spent the last 25 years of my life learning to look at my behavior and take ownership of whatever my end of the dysfunction is. If my friends and family want to go on oblivious to the potential for expansion here, that’s their call. For myself, I know that when things are this painful, this ‘real,’ I’m either going to move in the direction of maturity and wisdom, or be overcome by self-pity and hatred.

So, I’m policing my future, not with an eye for material success, or picking up where I left off. I can never do that. I wish that those closest to me could hear what I’m saying, it would not honor the depth of this crisis to wallpaper over it like something out of an Edgar Allen Poe novella. I am not willing to live a life of a) being over-extended b) frittering away time by hurry and worry c) or being overly concerned with the worldly crap that is like mud on the windshield of life; the kind of things that people whine and moan about on a daily basis, together and all over the airwaves. Old habits die hard. I am reverting in many ways to the person I wanted to be before I got overly caught up in survival, and which was a result of trying to rejoin the human race after moving out of my own addiction. Who the hell wants to be in the race, anyway? I never did. I tried it, and it led me to where i stand now, with no firm ground to stand on. Shifting on quicksand.

I am overwhelmed by anxiety at the prospect of reverting to my life before this moment. How do I know it’s out of control? My horse doesn’t even want to hang out with me when I’m in this state, because I am trying to squelch it, thinking I ‘must’ go back. Who says? And isn’t my experience and training completely in agreement with the idea that it’s a total misnomer that a person could ‘get over’ anything. The only way it works is to move through it.

“One is a great deal less anxious if one feels perfectly free to be anxious, and the same may be said of guilt.” – Alan Watts, Psychotherapy East and West.

It cannot dissipate if I try to damn up the flow. It must have a beginning, a middle and an end, like anything that is in existence. All is tenuous. Even free-floating anger. Do I drive it on, whip it up like stiff peaks of whipped cream, beaten by my own mind as it escalates it’s chatter?

My partner has been telling me since I met him that ‘not everything that happens means something.’ True enough. Especially, if it’s all an illusion. But what I’m talking about is not the same as ascribing guilt, or creating a story about what happened. I’m just looking for a new way to live that expresses the value of what I have experienced. This lens has made me appreciate being in appreciation as it happens, instead of by rote afterwards. This lens has made me want to protect my moments with a maternal care, shielding them from the futility of so much of what our society finds such value in.

This lens has made me very selective about what I’m willing to spend the currency of my time on. And, it’s not driving around, nor is it frittering away my energy in a thousand directions, or people pleasing, or scrambling after the almighty dollar. I refuse to live any more of my days with the mantra, ‘I can’t afford it.’ I am seeing what I most want to afford, and let all else fall away. It’s just in the way anyway. Space is a catalyst for growth. The things I love to do are complex enough. I have ever been a worshiper at the altar of skill. I love the complexity of them. All else is now extraneous. This is my stance.

For more on dissipating negative emotions, try one of the meditations on the resources page. For more on learning to move beyond the limitations of adult cognition, to return back to the ability to soak up new potentialities with the zest of the child you once were, try the awareness through movement lesson, also on the resources page.

“Logotherapy…considers man as a being whose main concern consists in fulfilling a meaning and in actualizing values, rather than in the mere gratification and satisfaction of drives and instincts.” – Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, p.164

-Gabrielle

Ashland, OR

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Self Abandon Or Abandoning Yourself? Resolutions Are Not About Discipline

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Addiction is a disease of the heart that eats away at our reason and our values until the entire hill of life collapses from underneath like an empty anthill.

Abolitionists used to claim that alcoholism was a moral issue, or that it’s a lack of will power; either way it was a deficiency of character. Religion pushes morality. 12 step programs, which are also based on a Christian model of spirituality, provide a means for working with character deficiencies. But I have a problem with using guilt to motivate people. I suppose it worked in the beginning, to get through the thick hide of denial about my own actions. But once I got to the point where I was able to live on my own and pick and choose how to live, I couldn’t motivate myself to use discipline.

What if you could find your own sense of acting in a right way from the top down? Instead of ‘whipping yourself into shape,’ what if you could strip away the layers of illusions you have about yourself and life in general until what’s left is your own innate sense of right and wrong that gets you to do things because you feel so strongly about it you have no choice. Funny, it sounds like we’re talking about compulsion, but in this case, what’s usually at issue is doing something that is not about immediate gratification, that’s the difference. Most things that require discipline – ostensibly – are about delayed gratification. So, what’s the difference, there is a place for discipline; where is it?

Discipline is no longer that much of an issue if you are really connected to what you want, in an environment that supports you by  being an ideal place to study it, by surrounding you with people of like interests, and by giving you easy access to whatever you need to do your chosen thing, and a minimal amount of diversion away from it.

In the beginning of every iRest meditation, the question is, what is your heart’s deepest desire? Now this may sound very unbuddhist, given that that path is one that would ostensibly lead us away from attachment and desire. But even the Buddhists realize that if you strive to detach from attachment, you are still attached to being detached. So, what’s the resolution of this conundrum? Allowing ourselves to really well up with the full impact of that desire, to sense it, to experience it as a sensation without resistance so that it can dissipate organically on it’s own. It’s in trying to prevent ourselves from feeling things that we get stuck. It’s an energetic stuckness, if you will, because every manifestation has a moment of beginning, a middle of manifesting, and an end in  which it dissolves into oblivion. It’s the nature of all things that originate, be they buildings, rocks, stars, emotions, animals or people. Once we take the time to get with the program and allow it to be just as it is, it’s so much easier, and there’s so much less suffering.

The wisdom of the ages is truly encapsulated in certain cliches that we are all familiar with. This is the meaning of ‘Que sera, sera.’ (How many of you remember Doris Day?), or ‘Let it be, Let it be, Let it be, Let it be…’ (you guessed it, Paul McCartney and the Beatles…).

But don’t just think it. Do it. It’s not a thought process, it’s an experience. (Take the time to do one of the meditations on the Resources page.) Setting an intention without creating the perfect conditions for it to manifest is a half-hearted attempt at resolve. It’s not about what you say, it’s about what you do. And doing means, take the time, if it’s important to you. Firstly, take the time to really connect with what you love. Secondly, take the time to create the conditions that will make it a reality. Life is too short to live in mock deference to your own values. If you are really true to yourself, both resolve and discipline are merely assets that facilitate your intention, already grounded in a relevant environment, in other interested people, in easy access, and in being about that which you determine your life to be about…

-Gabrielle

Ashland, OR

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Stepping Out of the Grave Into the Light of Day

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“This horse, who had been beaten into submission by his first trainers, had not so long ago found his way back from the dissociative trance that robs trauma victims of their souls.”  – Linda Kohanov, Riding Between the Worlds

Tuesday, I felt as if someone had given me a leg up out of the grave, and I was standing in the light of day for the first time in months. It was as if up until that point, all I wanted was to be with my daughter so much that I was willing to stay down there with her, wherever she was bound.

Whence came the shift?

Was it going to the Buddhist temple on Sunday? Was it allowing myself to fully feel and admit to myself that I was immersed in force field of anger that was actually a form of hatred? Was it the emanations of ‘loving kindness’ that these Buddhists send out as a part of their practice? Was it the power of the amplification that happens whenever two or more are gathered in contemplative meditation? I’m sure it was the powerful combination of all of the above. Nevertheless, I experienced that strange feeling of release from the grave all day, along with a vague sense of relief and gratitude.

Up until that point, I had left home, I was trying to avoid people I know, for they all seemed implicated, and I was struggling to contain the rage which would pop up, like some phantom in the night, when I was awakened suddenly by nothing apparent, or when I was tired, or hungry, or lonely…(basic AA: people, places and things may trigger you into weakness if you are not aware that they are potential triggers; avoid being hungry, angry, lonely or tired, or at least know that that’s when the demon of pain will try to overcome you, if you are not ready with a plan or with the awareness to just deal with it in the obvious ways: eat, sleep, get on the phone, or take care of yourself in some palpable way).

Was it the gift I gave myself of simply being open, of allowing it to be, and to blossom into full-fledged openly felt hatred without doing anything to otherwise act out or act on the emotion, to simply have the willingness to feel it, to allow it to be? It was too powerful to do on my own, but in that temple, the invitation was renewed and it felt like a safe, supportive place to do it. I had the sense of generations of wise ones before me, guiding me to allow it, with the reassurance that it was not only safe, but a sure way for it to ascend, to find expression without harm to myself or anyone else, and to dissipate, like a fierce storm that must, ultimately, fade into thin air.

This is one of the main premises of the iRest meditation practice: to allow whatever comes up from deep in the internal well to filter up to the light of day, without hemming it in, without trying to control it, without trying to contain it or repress it or cover it up with other activities or divert oneself from it. But surely for some emotions, for certain situations, where the loss is beyond imagining, it behooves us to find the amplified support of being in the presence of others also bound by the same universal laws of mortality and suffering.

Yet, also ultimately, we are all on our own. We are born alone and we die alone, and the best use of the gift of consciousness, as I see it, is to also learn to do this as a practice on one’s own. It’s the operating principle that I’m working with in this experiential blog:  to be with what is as it comes up. I have spent a lifetime in my profession as healer teaching others to bring their attention to their aches and pains, to breathe into them. And I have seen it time and time again, in hundreds of people each year, that to do so expedites the release. It’s like allowing the light of their own consciousness to alight like a bird on a branch, curious, alert, at the ready if need be, for flight, but willing to consider what is, to look at it, to feel it. And, with the Buddhist emphasis that I have not encountered before, to persevere in being patient with whatever blossoms, as if it were a discipline that counteracts the point-blank stupidity of the way we egg ourselves on in our own minds, going back over some irksome thought again and again and again.

I am really intrigued by this distinction that I’ve never encountered before: the Buddhist way of relating to the word ‘emotion’ is that it always refers to a mind that is agitated, confused and distorting perception. When considering negative emotions, who could argue with that? Anyone who has ever been angry would have to concede that it’s an emotion that perpetuates itself in that it causes a person to act thoughtlessly, and often unwisely. Okay, so I may not be entirely clear what wisdom is, or how it relates to the day to day grind, but acting in haste, without consideration, even sending an email without consideration, is clearly unwise. I love this idea that emotions, as such, are regarded as states of mind that obscure awareness and interfere with our ability to have the perspective to act appropriately.

I have already documented over  many years on my FELDENKRAIS blog how I conceive of AWARENESS THROUGH MOVEMENT (ATM), when done as a daily practice, (or as an intensive workshop), as a way of entering an altered state without drugs or mind altering chemicals, that allows us to see the world with the freshness of a child seeing it, sensing it, feeling it for the first time with a vividness that embraces beginner’s mind spontaneously.

I have a small issue with the idea that disturbing emotions are a mental state. Perhaps I can find my way to allowing that if I frame it this way: that the disturbance keeps us stuck in the mind, in the reactivity, unable to access the direct sensual experience of enjoyment, or the freedom of spontaneous experiencing. Yet, I’m totally on board with the Buddhist idea that responses that incur an enhanced sense of openness, such as trust, love, compassion and clarity, are not really ‘emotions’ at all, but are ‘positive mental factors that are aspects of wisdom or qualities of awakened mind.1 (With the exception of strong attachment, such as possessiveness, jealousy, or other forms of latent control that pose as ‘love’ when they are actually facets of codependent neediness and desperation.) I don’t know about enlightenment, or awakened mind. I’m not aspiring to that, only to finding sanity in a world that I have little use for at the moment. But this speaks to me, this idea that all this crap interferes with our ability to have a direct experience of life.

Because when I get into the zone with ATM, I am back to that place of direct experiencing. Light is more varied, color more rich. The scent of my surrounding seem especially potent, the sounds pertinent and the feel of it immediate. And, when I get into the zone with iRest, I am BEING openness, allowing, welcoming what is and observing the blossoming of whatever arises in the moment of this, immediate moment, now, without inhibition or bracing or trying to stuff it all under the carpet. Let’s deal with it as it comes up, that’s my motto. There’s too much to deal with to not address it as it comes up, lest it snowball into an avalanche.

“It was a lesson I hoped to learn in the months ahead, how to stop rushing from place to place, always looking ahead to the next thing while the moment in front of me slipped away unnoticed.” – Alice Steinbach, Without Reservations, The Travels of an Independent Woman

Life is too short for multitasking.

“The best books, like the best vacations, contain unexpected delights, surprises that enrich the soul as well as the senses.” – The Des Moines Register (in a review of the above book)

Cultivating awareness leads to a sensual, embodied experience of life that may have eluded you for years, since you were a child, before you were socialized to expect less from being alive.

“There’s something of a rebellious streak in all of us. Usually it’s dormant, but sometimes it’s provoked into expression. If nurtured and guided with wisdom and compassion, it can be a positive fore that frees us from fear and ignorance.” – Dzogchen Ponlop, Rebel Buddha, On the Road to Freedom

Go within, find your inner guide. Check out the resources on the resource page. Tag, you’re it. This is one of many paths,  but the purpose, the experience, the real guidance is provided courtesy of your own wisdom. Let me know when you figure out what that’s about…

____________________________

1Dzogchen Ponlop, Rebel Buddha, On the Road to Freedom (2010). Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boston.

- Gabrielle

Ashland, OR

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Exercising Your Demons; Moving Through Anger

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“The ability to fantasize is the ability to survive.” – Ray Bradbury

Where have I been? Morphing. Treading water. Moving, Working out. Turning atrophy into fitness. Riding, riding, riding. Walking up hills, riding my horse, who has been in training while I traipsed around Europe. Now, under the sharp eye of his trainers, I am being morphed back into an athlete. It’s been a long time since I’ve been fit enough to call myself that. Riding had been the main focus of my life for many years, and when I realized my daughter was in trouble, about ten years ago, painfully, I let it go, for better or worse. I never stopped riding, I just stopped riding competitively. I focused on work, thinking it would ultimately bring me more time with my daughter, if I had a better income. Obviously, it didn’t work…

I know now why body builders have a reputation for being stupid, or at least dense, in the stereotypical comedy: because when you work out that hard, you’re too tired to think. This actually works for a while, but then, as with drugs, you build up a tolerance. Working out actually used to remind me of doing drugs, you do it, you get the endorphin rush, you feel great, you wake up so sore you don’t want to move. Kinda like what I was used to from those long ago days before my daughter was born, when I was an active user. The difference is, I haven’t had this much blood circulating through my system in a long time. It feels good to have that flush of energy coursing through you, and to slowly be regaining the strength it takes to ride like you mean it.

Dressage is a sport that requires the focus of ballet and the core strength of pilates from both horse and rider.

People think riding is no work for the rider. It depends on what kind of riding you do. To think that Dressage is not work is like saying Pilates is not a workout. My fondest dream, since the age of about 27, when I saw my first upper level Dressage horse dancing in pirouettes, and skipping along in alternate flying lead changes, was to have a big warmblood who was bred for it, and to learn to ride like that. That dream has been with me ever since, a fantasy that has designated my choice of work, the places I would consider living in, and the level of fitness and health I strove to maintain, so I would be ever at the ready to fulfill this desire, this new motivation to be a part of the human – race – unfortunate, but telling expression.

Problem was, it was way out of my league, at the time. (Only now has it become a remote possibility. You’ve got to have the right horse, a place to train, the best trainers, and be able to pay for it all.) I had a two year old and a relationship that teetered on the edge of violence that I could neither admit to, nor could I figure out where it was coming from. I had gone from the frying pan into the fire. From getting off drugs, right into a relationship that was not emotionally or physically safe. I was baffled, and tired. I was still young enough, and presumptuous enough to think that since I was still on the planet (unexpectedly), I might as well be happy. All I knew for sure was that I needed to learn how to work for a living, for my own self-respect and for my daughter’s sake, so I started working for the woman who was riding that horse. I became her indentured servant, I wanted to soak up everything I could possibly learn. My life was a strange combination of exquisite beauty, with infrequent but sudden bouts of horror, framed by exhaustion on a daily basis.

Hmmn. That seems to be the case now, too. The difference is that there is no violence in my life now. Something to be grateful for. And I’m not claiming innocence in the matter. It takes two to tango. But there is the sudden horror every time my mind latches onto the awareness that Ilonna is dead. It’s horrific. Then it inevitably goes down the well-worn neural pathway of what might have been, if only and why didn’t I? Here’s where an active imagination is a hindrance. But I’m stuck with one, so I’d better channel it. It’s as if my mind has a mind of it’s own, or a will of it’s own, but actually, it’s just habitual. Ironic that we call it mindless when the mind takes over. From long years of meditation practice and instruction, I know that the mind is a tool, like a hammer or a skillet, and it’s meant to be taken off the hot plate now and then for optimal function. A mind without an on/off switch is like a stove without controls. Can’t cook when the pan’s too hot, it just burns everything. I knew my mind would be on a rampant the-opposite-of-joy ride, and so I developed this two-tiered plan with the help of my brother and step mother. Like retro journey back to the places where I first began to appreciate life without drugs, first, an immersion into the beauty that is the Swiss experience, and then an immersion into Dressage, the ultimate sport of dancing with your horse.

The Craft of making Confiserie by hand, daily, is alive & well in Zurich

So, to survive the first month of awakening to the daily battering awareness that the last twenty-five years of my life have been lived under the false assumption that I was making a life for myself and my daughter, I went back to the place I grew up from the ages of 10-19: Switzerland. There I learned again the power of an exquisite landscape to bring the heart into the present, and the value of taking the time to be very detail oriented, how it lends the quality of appreciation to life, and how it adds to the quality of our relationships, because it supports an enjoyment of each other, of taking time, of being in appreciation for the little things that make life easier, more pleasant, and more enjoyable. Well designed, beautifully executed, creatively put together. There is a level of skill there that I have always admired, in areas that are simply obsolete here, from the most minute perfection of the respect accorded to each separate realm of food preparation, each a professional domain in and of it’s own, to the conscious design of living spaces and electronics that adds a sense of luxury to everyday life.

Which brings us back to present time, where I am learning to dance with my horse. I had spent half a year rehabilitating him from the injury that made him a prospect within my reach in the first place. Then a year and a half getting his too-hot-to-handle self into the mindset of being safe, willing and able to focus mentally. At almost seventeen hands and about 1800 pounds, he could have turned into a pushy, difficult horse. He’s big and he knows it. But the work we did, mostly groundwork, allowed him  to really blossom into  the sweet, willing, intelligent athlete he was born and bred to be. For more on the Dressage Intensive, I’m writing about that separately. Not everyone is a rider. The details are a bit technical. But suffice it to say that there is something to be said for getting really fit, for working out until you feel completely challenged by it and until you are too tired to think. Then, after the months of exhaustion and weakness from loss and grief, you move eventually into sense of accomplishment born of really going past your previous level of fitness, and slowly getting stronger than you have been in years…

But there is a consequence. It has pushed me into the next phase of grief, into anger. It has been growing and glimmering since my return home, popping up as a desire to avoid people I know. Festering as a pushing away, an isolation. Now, away from home again, I’m here in Oregon and I feel it arising related to everything I’ve spent my time doing in the last ten years. I’m angry at everyone from my past and at myself for all the caddywompus choices and bad decisions I’ve ever made, which seem to dominate the landscape of my history in my mind. I can see where this is going. It’s leading to isolation, to pushing away the very people who support me, to hurting those who want to help until they leave me alone like and old dog who wants to die alone, licking it’s own wounds, growling at anyone who comes near. I find I can live free of this as long as I’m with people I don’t know, which would keep me on the road for a lifetime. Finally, I got that I have to find a way to deal with this, before I turn away everyone who cares.

Kagyu Sukha Chöling Buddhist Temple ~ 109 Clear Creek Drive • Ashland, OR

Not knowing what to do, I found myself landing in a Buddhist temple on a Sunday morning. Never been to one before, although I was very comfortable with the meditation part of it all. It was the only time during the whole thing that the tears stopped running down my face, dripping on my knees, neatly folded underneath me where I sat on the meditation cushion surrounded by the reds and oranges and gold-gilt statuary that imbue the temple with echoes of it’s Tibetan lineage. But I knew I could let the tears fall as they may. I knew there would be an understanding of the need for grief without pity, but with compassion in that place. It was palpable.

Over the years, I have acquired enough of an acquaintance with Buddhist philosophy from my own study and from the study of iRest, which is partially based on the same tenets, as well as the Non-Dualism of Advaita, to understand that the blossoming of extreme emotion is something to observe, to allow, and to watch with respect until it morphs into some other experience, a new emotion, a new moment, hopefully, a new understanding. By withholding the knee-jerk reaction to not deal with it, to try not to feel at all (which, we all know doesn’t work anyway!), by creating space for the inevitable, I was allowing space for something else to manifest.

Now, in the state of mind I found myself, I had no interest in enlightenment, nor in opening myself up to be more compassionate towards humankind, nor in finding wisdom. When you are consumed with anger and rage at your life, at the universe and at most of the people you know, who cares about enlightenment, compassion or wisdom? Let’s get real here. So, at the end, being myself still, even amidst all this transition, I participated in the question and answer period. I asked the question that was then foremost in my mind, “What do I do with this anger? I know that this is about practicing ‘loving kindness,’ but I did that, and it didn’t amount to anything. And given that the nature of things is to fall apart, who am I to intervene? Isn’t that trying to control the outcome of the nature of things, which is to fall apart?” The answer I got was about patience. The answer I got was a question, ‘In retrospect, wouldn’t you still do the same thing? Would you prefer you had not acted with the intention of helping, of being loving, of giving?’ The answer I got was about being patient enough to notice that my thoughts fan the flame of the first little irritation and that unattended, the flame turns into a fire and the next thing I know, I hurt more, I hurt others, and I am making it worse.

So, here’s the thing, with my thoughts, unattended, I make it worse in my mind. When I don’t stop to attend to the first inkling of irritation, before it turns into rampant anger galloping across an otherwise green field towards the inevitable battlefield of hatred, I make it worse. I do that. Or, my mind does, anyway (I’m not too clear on what part of me constitutes I anymore. Suffice it to say, I have choices about what to think, if I’m living slowly enough to hear the background noise in my head.)

The bottom line brings me right back to the philosophy I have ingrained in myself through years of FELDENKRAIS practice, does it feel good? It’s it conducive to my intention? Okay, so I’m not in the do-good state of mind that would allow for practicing loving kindness in a world that to me seems desolate in light of my personal disaster, but I do have an intention to get through this. What else am I going to do? Kill myself? Okay, so I don’t have the same appreciation for my own life that I have for the life of a newborn puppy, but I do get that it’s not mine to take and that it would be a violation of the ones I love to take my own life.

The closest I can get to practicing compassion, at the moment, is to know that my intention is to live through this, and to be as comfortable as I can doing it, and to do it as expeditiously as possible. I know there are some things that cannot be hurried, like massage, you can’t ‘make’ someone relax. You can spend hours trying to get relaxed and it can be obliterated in a single flash of anger. Have you ever had an argument just before going to bed? Try sleeping now. Ha! Not happening. In the same way, my own anger, in a single flash, can cancel out all the good I’ve been trying to do – for myself – in this process, and make it unbearable for anyone around me to tolerate being around me. Destructiveness at it’s finest.

And there’s an addictive quality to this anger. It’s got a habitual, seductive quality that is fed by mindlessness. It’s self-perpetuating. It gets bigger and bigger. It tempts me to say stupid things, and isn’t it stupid to allow a progression that feels so crappy?  What could be more counterproductive to what I want, which is simply to feel some relief from all this pain? Pema Chödrön1 says that the Dalai Lama prefers to speak about of this phenomenon as hatred, rather than anger, because anger can have it’s place in standing for what is right, but this kind of anger is righteous, it’s about feeling justified. So, any kind of anger that’s permeated with the resentment of righteousness is really more appropriately called hatred, because it turns others into the foe, into being Wrong with a capital W. When I followed this line of thinking I got that I am consumed with hatred. And it hurts no one, but me. I can’t sleep, I have no peace of mind, and it makes others not like me.

Again, going back to the kinds of themes that run through every FELDENKRAIS lesson, I would ask, is this true? Is it true for you? Don’t take my word for it. Pay attention. Check it out for yourself. Does it make you happy? The next time you fall into the mindless void of fanning even the smallest resentment, can you stop, observe, and listen? Are you escalating? Does it feel good to fan the flame of making someone else wrong? Does it add to your quality of life? Is this what you really want?

1 Don’t Bite the Hook, Finding Freedom From Anger, Resentment and Other Destructive Emotions, Pema Chödrön, Shambala Audio (2007).

 

-Gabrielle, Ashland, Oregon

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How the Advancement of Intellectual Improvement Can Add Up To Crisis

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Or, A Refutation of the Importance of External Accomplishment

“To know and to act are one and the same.” – Samurai Maxim

“Scientific theory is a contrived foothold in the chaos of living phenomena.” -Wilhelm Reich

I’m a bit disgusted with Western Philosophy at the moment. It’s a history of ‘discoveries’ that gradually seem to renounce the value of human experience. The conclusion that only what can be proven has validity, reduces both human function and the entire universe itself to a series of arbitrary, mechanistic, mindless events. So, what’s the problem? This concept completely invalidates subjective experience and disempowers people, because they are socialized to discount their own perceptions. That’s very dangerous for a living being that depends on sense perceptions to avoid injury. It’s also a clear devaluation of the value of internal fulfillment. It promotes a society entirely focused on materialistic success: we are all deftly, implicitly programmed to look for life satisfaction by accumulating external accolades, which is basically stuff, and, yes, you guessed it, more stuff (i.e.money; another completely external way our society evaluates success.) We may consciously scoff at the very idea, but really, truly, what runs you?

In a perfect display of the arbitrary nature of the human personality, I’ll start by nailing the first perps: Who Started It?

Let’s see, as far back as we can trace it, it started with the Greek philosophers arguing over whether anything can actually be known or not. This worthy tradition of respectful debate is still in evidence in our modern institutions today. It’s how people vie for tenured positions in universities; by proving that their view/theory is more valid than someone else’s. No wonder academia has little to offer in the way of promoting world peace. In theory this system is not about being judgmental, it’s about an empirical concept that is either right or wrong. The first problem with this is that every major theory is eventually disproved in the laboratory of time as people evolve their understanding of the universe. The second problem is that, in my experience growing up around academia, watching professors spat about their theories, it almost always deteriorates into a similar kind of debasement of character that is currently also a socially acceptable form of public persuasion in politics.

These first philosophers debated things like whether induction or deduction was the most valid way to know a thing. Now, in the East, long before this juncture, it had already been established that some things are unknowable. But they didn’t come to this understanding through the intellect. They were busy messing about with consciousness, which may require a certain comfort level with complete abandon. But we’re much more obsessed with control in the West, always have been, apparently. And, since it could take longer than all day to go over the entire history of Philosophy, let’s content ourselves with a few highlights that led to our current subconscious assumption that the world needs our brilliance to survive more than we need it to survive. (If it sounds like a sense of entitlement, bingo, you’re onto something.)

Aristotle (ca. 300 BCE) started the current obsession with measurements that invalidates anything which cannot be measured. Then, an Islamic Scientist and Philosopher, Ibn-Sina, over 500 years later (ca. 1000) pointed out that scientists should not regard themselves as infallible, but we never listened to that wise advice. Eventually, one of the biggest dents in the perceived value of subjective experience came about when Isaac Newton “discovered’ gravity (ca. 1600, even though leaves have been falling for a lot longer than that). Since it was something that could be easily replicated by anyone with an apple and a tower, or even a tree, the basis for the clear superiority of scientific method was born – to the detriment of our understanding of the value of things outside what can be measured. For example, that apple may or may not be verifiably rotten, but to someone who is starving in the streets of Paris as they were in the 1700’s, that apple may well appear as a thing of beauty and very significant value, rotten or not.

Descartes, around the same time, made it explicit by stating that, evidently, we live in a purely physical and mechanical universe, that animals and the body are mere automatons, and the soul is the only thing that elevates humanity. Now Descartes was a Catholic, living in France, where there are almost as many saints as days of the week, and where the idea of the mortification of the flesh goes back as an important Christian virtue to at least to 1300 as an antidote to the innate evil inherent in us humans, sinners that we are from birth. His thinking was a product of the times.

The dominant religious views back then considered humans to be like objects that needed to be saved from themselves, from their own drives, lusts and needs. As a matter of fact, anything that connected people to their sensate experience was frowned upon by the church. Meanwhile, the church itself was very intent on accumulating worldly goods by allowing people to pay for forgiveness. And, anything that might empower people to believe in their own perceptions could possibly topple their empire. It would mean they didn’t need the church, and might lead people astray, away from God. The religious emphasis on martyrdom, and celibacy, are both extremely effective ways to control people by ensuring they have the subjective experience that they had a need for somebody to lean on, (i.e. the potentates who could plead their case to God, kind of like lawyers), because living in penance and shame would make anyone’s life seem too damn painful and lonely to bear without help.

Eventually science dropped the soul part. It was a bit over the top. And religion itself fragmented, as evidenced by the multiple denominations seeking refuge in the New World, into subgroups lacking any united conviction; it’s the old divide and conquer story.

What’s at issue here, is that subjective experience is what creates quality of life; it’s much more subtle than the idea that the proof is in the pudding. To eliminate subjective experience gives rise to a whole host of ills, such as an industrial revolution that began to treat humans like worker bees; divorcing the human from their own humanity in the workforce. This trend continues to this day. Most corporations have people repeating the same mindless tasks over and over, even though studies show that people glaze over after about 50 minutes at one constant task, and they would work more effectively given more variety of tasks in the workplace. Economics has taken priority over the people it’s meant to serve. It has generated a consumer driven market with such an abundance of technology intended to save time that we have become obsessed with saving time rather than enjoying what time we have. This I have noticed especially of late since I have pretty much walked off that planet and no longer feel driven to do any of the things that used to run me rampant. And, that technology, meant to save time, has begun to rule us instead of us ruling it. It alienates us from the quality of the time we have. Try asking ten people out to lunch and see if you can get any one of them to say, ‘yes,’ for every nine people who say they are too busy – that is unless there is a business motive or a ‘goal’ for the time spent together. To our American work ethic, it’s not valuable to separate the task from a goal. We simply write it off as a waste of time, again, a devaluation of time itself.

Charles Eisenstein frames the situation explicitly in his book, which is an extensive summary of the situation entitled, The Ascent of Humanity, “Not only is technology based on a conceptual separation from nature, but it also reinforces that separation. Technology distances us from nature and insulates us from her rhythms. For example, most Americans’ lives are little affected by the seasons of the year. We eat the same food year-round, shipped in from California; air conditioning keeps us cool in the summer; heating warm in the winter.”

The fact that we are so obsessed with time, technology and achievement has also divorced us from the awareness of the process, the sensitivity to notice how we do what we do. As a society we have become oblivious to the ability to comprehend when enough is enough, when it’s time to take a time out and enjoy what is. In America especially, we can’t even draw the line between what a person should be responsible for sensing for their own survival, and what constitutes the responsibility of the corporate entity. We have relegated responsibility for sensing if our morning coffee is so hot it will burn the tongue to the company who served up the coffee.

Moshe Feldenkrais stated it this way, ‘In traditional learning, it is what we learn that is important. But the higher function of learning is to [be] free of such restrictions. Learning to learn involves an improvement of the brain function itself, which carries it beyond it’s latent potential…To facilitate such learning, it is necessary to divorce the aim to be achieved from the learning process itself.”1 This is how children learn. You could say it’s the line between developmental learning and learning for achievement. The former is necessary for maturation from child to adult. Yet, we all know adults who seem, in some ways, like children. The latter is a refinement of the basic skill set necessary to become an independent adult. And, we also all know the child prodigy who has excelled at something beyond their years…Amadeus Mozart (composer), Bobby Fischer (chess player), Tiger Woods (golfer, among other things), and…my father, John Milnor (mathematics). (No wonder I’m hypersensitive to this issue of the difference between how we do things and what we do.That’s a hard act to follow.) Now reread the last few sentences and you’ll realize that often there’s an overlap; child prodigies can do amazing things in a specific field that is beyond what the rest of us can comprehend, but, they often remain childlike in other areas of normal human development.

Let’s face it, our society rewards people for achievement. Only life rewards us for the ability to survive, but that may be the limit of it, survival and naught else. This creates a closed system that fosters living for the destination while being oblivious to the journey. I fell for it, that’s why I’m carping about it. And if you are struggling to move through trauma and grief, you’ll find that very few people who are not standing in your shoes understand, that for you, daily survival is an achievement.

Yet, that’s no way to live, is it? Learning how to cope is like puppy training. At the moment, you’re living out of your comfort zone all the time, so the obvious thing to do is back up and do something so easy you know you can, to establish a sense of confidence in a world tipped on it’s edge.

In all due fairness to your average genius whose well along in their abnormality, there’s probably little concern for the external accolades that mark great achievement, they’ve already ‘proven’ their mettle (there’s that word again). At this stage the motivation is simply to do what they love to the exclusion of all else. Doing what you love is a profound motivator for learning, because it detaches goal-mindedness from learning. When push comes to shove, and your world is up-ended by loss, taking time to be with yourself and live out what you still find value in may be a sudden turn in the road, albeit essential, because it’s an end in it’s own right, a stepping stone back to finding a way to enjoy the process.

Eventual mastery will come when it does. The caveat is to avoid the part that is obsessed with ‘to the exclusion of all else.’ That’s what creates the exclusive price tag. Another way to frame it would be to say that it inhibits growth in other kinds of intelligence. Like how to have healthy relationships and to bring up children. In Switzerland you have to go to training classes to own a dog, but not to have a baby.

What other kinds of intelligence? Daniel Goleman, author of many books on the subject, wrote Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ, way back in 1995. He shows how IQ tests do not test relevant knowledge in any other context than the context of being good at taking SAT style tests. The way we measure human intelligence is completely dysfunctional, and ignores a crucial range of abilities that matter immensely in both human relationships and in life in general. Since then, he has written several more books on the topic and many others have built upon this concept.One of my favorite quotes of his is, “The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change, until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.”

But none of this is news to the mystics who have been noticing this phenomenon since time immemorial. Six centuries before the birth of Christ, Gautama Buddha as well as the Yogis of ancient India realized that we are stuck in a repetitive cycle of seeking but never finding, because the intellect is useless for shifting consciousness off the treadmill of being impressed with itself. By contrast, all learning that is developmental, that improves how we do what we do, not just adding to our list of accomplishments, is experiential. It could, in effect, be framed in the same way that Zen is often discussed: as something with no goal that is brought into being by experience, not understanding. “Words can describe a glass of water, but they cannot quench your thirst.” Or, “The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon itself.”2

Moshe points out that a society preoccupied with achievement will falter, for it is based on an abstract notion of what is good or important, whereas a society that is composed of men and women who value their own perceptions and awarenesses, will be more conscious and will therefor be one that ‘will work for human dignity’4 for all, rather than as an island unto him or herself.

Hence, AWARENESS THROUGH MOVEMENT, has relevance for all human interactions, as well as for the self, and for improving our ability to learn how to learn in a self-directed way that empowers us to find the individual quality of life we may sense only as a vague impression of something lacking. Like the glass of water that satisfies even more when we are thirsty, you can’t know it until it’s something you have experienced.

1Embodied Wisdom, the Collected Papers of Moshe Feldenkrais (2010) Somatic Resources and the Feldenkrais Estate, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley CA
2You’re It: On Hiding, Seeking, and Being Found, Alan Watts, Collected Recordings, Sounds True Audio Books

-Gabrielle, Ashland, Oregon

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Trauma Demands A New Relationship To Environment

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When the plates of the earth move underneath you in a massive earthquake, obviously there must be a re-organization of how you stand, if one plate is now higher than the other, or if a gaping crevasse opens in front of you. Even so, when all that you hold dear is brought into question by the enormity of your loss, you must find a new equilibrium. Awareness Through Movement® deals concretely with developing skill in adapting to the environment.

For we are not as independent of environment as we imagine. Neurologist Antonio Damasio puts it this way, ‘The entire construction of knowledge, from simple to complex, from nonverbal imagetic to verbal literary, depends on the ability to map what happens over time, inside our organism, around our organism, to and with our organism, one thing followed by another thing, causing another thing, endlessly.’1 In other words, how we respond to our environment affects how we feel, for better or worse, affecting our primary environment: internal experience. Trauma makes a big dent in how we experience our environment, so it’s an obvious place to start effecting a change for the better, if we are to recover that elusive sense of equilibrium.

In the many aftershocks of a loss that relates to death, I find myself recurrently wondering, wandering from whatever’s in front of me, dazed by the difference between the living and the dead. Where did she go? What is separating me from her, now that she is dead? I eat, I sleep, those are the needs I balked at in the beginning, hoping that by starving myself I could disband the apparent illusion of separation. But further along, I noticed that I have interests and habits that anchor me to this world in ways that have deep roots, preventing me from completely loosing touch with that thing that people call reality. I have often thought it would be so much easier if I could loose a marble or two, but, to no avail. And, if I’m to be here, I might as well make the most of it, otherwise it’s pure agony.

Few things have the power to pull me out of it, but curiosity is one, and finding the thread of your own curiosity is a major player in the work of Moshe Feldenkrais. Can a somatic approach move me more effectively, more quickly out of a fairly recent state of loss? My experience is yes, my research and training also provide clear justification for this idea, and the more I go back and look at the literature on trauma recovery and somatics, the more obvious the correlations become.

Moshe Feldenkrais was known for pointing out the most obvious difference between the living and the dead: we move2. If someone does not move for a prolonged period of time, they are pronounced dead. At the end, even on deaths door, there is often movement: a soft rising and falling of the chest or belly. At the beginning, every new mother knows the tightening of anxiety in the belly that accompanies the search for evidence of that ever-so-slight movement that signifies so much, when she goes to check on her sleeping baby.

But this act of moving, is far more complex than movement or no movement. Some of the functions of the body occur without conscious direction. The muscles of the heart, for example, act to regulate the flow of blood to the extremities. The muscles of the skeleton in motion are vital in generating some of the pumping action that allows blood to flow up and down along the length of arms and legs against the pull of gravity. All this spontaneous maintenance is performed by the nervous system, without which the body would not be able to stand even with a fully formed skeleton possessed of normal musculature. Before it became fashionable to talk about the mind/body connection, Moshe pointed out that the idea that there is a separation between mind and body is preposterous, because that body would fall without a brain to coordinate it’s standing, and without a mind to allow it to learn to walk, we would all be bedridden. The brain and mind are an inseparable part of the body, a system that works within to regulate inner workings and without to create the context of our relationship with the environment.

So where is there room for separation? In anatomy, they say, ‘Form follows function.’ It’s true. If you could make a robot that had muscles, a skeleton, and a brain, you would still be at ground zero. Would that robot know how to speak? What language would it speak, English, Russian, Japanese? Would it be able to do calculations in trigonometry? Could it play chess or the ancient board game of Go? Or, could it play musical scales in the manner of China, India, or the West? No. All that is wired in from birth is an ever increasing range of development in internal functions. It’s a very precise sequence that, when varied, is often evidence of abnormal growth. A baby is born without the ability to make sense of vision until the brain wires in the ability to control the muscles of the eye to respond appropriately to the stimulus of light and dark. The spinal coordination of lifting the head in space must precede sitting, for example.

But what’s most telling in terms of the importance of environment upon the identity of the individual is that a baby born into the world with a fully functional brain is fit only to do what any animal can do: organize internal necessities like digestion, excretion and blood pressure. It’s animals, that, in many cases surpass humans in functionality when they are born. The foal attempts to stand within minutes of birth and staggers off, her mother in tow, within the next few moments. But even in that instance, the continual stimulus of the mother’s tongue, licking mucous off the foal’s body, serves to help the brain of that foal identify and feel it’s own potential, the shape, the location and the sensation of it’s own musculature.

Where I’m born will dictate what language I begin to speak, what notions I hold about the hidden connotations of words, body language, as well as what’s good and what’s bad in terms of behavior, since the bulk of early behavior, by default, is encouraged by approval, and therefor externally motivated. So much of our external learning is wired in by circumstance that the bulk of it occurs by chance, not by choice. And, therein lies excessive room for error. Do you do it because it works, or because that’s the way it’s always been done, in your mind? What have you absorbed by osmosis that doesn’t work for you in the way you think, and in the way you carry yourself in space?

And by the same token, trauma occurs as an accident of fate, not by choice. It’s an accident of fate that confounds all previous learning, all dearly held assumptions about self and other and the universe. The FELDENKRAIS  Method of AWARENESS THROUGH MOVEMENT (ATM), is uniquely placed to provide assistance with reconnecting to the environment in new ways that help make a felt sense of what a person can build on, now that everything is not as it was. It’s a huge body of work that provides a clear means to improve how we learn so that it can be a self-directed process that is much more consciously related to choice, and talent. It’s especially valuable in re-wiring the sensate impressions, the psychosomatic tensions, and the desecrated sense of one’s own safety and competence that is the natural legacy of severe loss.

Most approaches operate from a healing model. But the implication there is that you are broken. What’s broken, is the old way of relating to reality. When you work to improve your ability to make sense of the basic stimulus of everyday life, you ground yourself in something very familiar. You meet again, on the ground, with what is constant in spite of all the chaos, like gravity. You may not know, consciously, how to do this, but your brain does, because the process of learning  how to navigate your environment, has been self-directed from the beginning. Children don’t take walking lessons. On the other hand, adults are so set in their ways of thinking, noticing and perceiving that they are much less aware than children of what works and what doesn’t. ATM provides a clear path for improving how you do what you do, and empowering you to test your experience with many small variations, first in one direction, than in another, to compare, from your own point of view, what works with what doesn’t.

It offers a new set of values that are completely necessary to improvement after trauma: can you move with compassion for yourself, sense when you have had enough, and can you honor those impressions? Can you start to learn to sense things in your body so clearly that you can tell when someone else’s idea about what’s good for you is inaccurate? Because, as Moshe was always ready to explain, the truth of human development is that there is no empirical right way, there’s only what’s right for you. He would often say that if you don’t know what you are doing, you cannot possibly do what you want. And if loss is eating away at you, chances are you have a profound sense that you don’t know what you’re doing anymore, or why.

So, I invite you to experience a new possibility: what if you could find a way to systematically move into a new way of relating to self and environment, guided by a new set of values? Would it help to rewire your brain to continuously look for what is most comfortable? To find ways do more, with less effort? To use my environment, the field of gravity to my advantage? Would it actually help to regularly practice being more compassionate with myself in this situation, less judgmental?

You are already encompassed by pain – finding your own internal compass involves learning to sense yourself more clearly so you can respond spontaneously, instead of react unconsciously because there are layers upon layers of stuff to deal with. Any stressful event causes a significant regression to older, safer habit patterns, in the case of emotional stress, it may be an older way of thinking about life, a recurrence of old anxieties, for example. This must be addressed for any improvement in quality of life to recur.

But, thought doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Thoughts that evoke chronic emotional pain have physical consequences. Like a simple one-celled organism retracting from an electrical stimulus, our bodies may adapt to chronic pain by retracting from space in some way that is usually invisible to the untrained eye. The sensory-motor system is designed to guard us from danger, and it doesn’t distinguish between real or perceived threat, nor between present and past. It’s protective function, called the trauma reflex3, happens below the level of conscious awareness. It may entail habitual holding of breath or an ingrained somatic pattern of cringing ever so slightly with the whole self, as if warding off a cigarette that threatens to burn some part of you, or in the common phrase that refers to someone whose posture seems like they are ‘carrying the weight of the world.’ Different people respond in different ways.

The bottom line is that when loss intervenes to create a situation wherein your relationship to your own body has become negative, you see it, sense it, feel it as a difficult place to be at best, that needs to be addressed. For ultimately, your internal environment is the most important one you will ever inhabit, no matter where you live. This ATM is an introduction to some of the fundamental rewirings that go on in any lesson, so, to begin at the beginning, please download the recording, load it on an audio cd and get started.

What You’ll Need:
-At least 55 minutes undisturbed.
-A room without distractions that is a comfortable temperature, preferably a bit warmer, because your blood pressure tends to drop making you sense cold more acutely, as you  slow down all your body’s systems by practicing slow movement with guided awareness.
-Easy access to volume controls and pause functions of the CD player. Your hearing also gets more acute as you slow down, and you are invited to take frequent rests, whether instructed to or not, as you see fit.
-A floor space about the width of your arms outstretched, padded with an exercise mat, folded blanket or quilt (many people use the blankets you can get from moving and storage companies, because they are easier to move on. Whatever you lie on, make sure it’s flat, and hard enough to provide clear feedback about points of contact, but soft enough that you could rest on it for ten minutes or so without getting sore. Most of the time you will be moving, but not without many short rests.
-Depending on your history of previous injuries, you may need something to lift your head off the ground so that your neck is in a position more similar to the position it’s in when you are standing, if you stand with your head chronically contracted forward. A folded hand towel or a small piece of foam used for padding the knees available in any gardening or hardware store is ideal. Estimate the appropriate thickness by what is comfortable while you are lying flat on your back. Eventually, as your resting muscle tone decreases from hyperextension to a more generous length, you may find both more space in your body, more length in your spine, and less need for temporary props to tide you over until you have more of these awareness lessons under your belt.
-Also extremely helpful is an attitude of open willingness to explore the unknown, to manage temporary discomfort, and to be in a state of not knowing exactly what to do, but being willing to trust that it will become clear, in time, if you give yourself permission to not know, and be okay with it.
-It’s the questions we ask ourselves that generate the quality of our lives: Think about how you could find new ways of responding, new options, new places in your own body where things are working as they should and where you can learn to appreciate the absence of pain. Most of us are drawn to what doesn’t work. Set aside some time to notice what does.

1 Damasio, Antonio. (1999). The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, Harcourt, Brace & Company

2 Feldenkrais, Moshe (2010). The Collected Papers of Moshe Feldenkrais. Elizabeth Beringer (Ed.) Movement and the Mind, An Interview with Will Schutz (pp. 179-189). North Atlantic Books, Somatic Resources and the Feldenkrais Estate.

3 Hanna, Thomas (1980). Somatics, p. 79 Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc.

This post is also available as an Audio Pre-Talk to provide a context for the Introduction to Awareness Through Movement Audio, as it relates to recovering your stability after loss, bereavement, or trauma, or recovery from addiction and alcoholism, which naturally entails all of these as stages in the process. Both audios can be found on the Resources page on the navigation bar above.

 

-Gabrielle

Browns Valley, CA

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