Drink Beer, Eat Chocolate, Live to 100. ~ Jolee McBreen | elephant journal.
Click to read what researchers now believe the link between longevity and stress is.
Hint: It’s not avoiding stress or minimizing stress.
Thanks, Elephant Journal.
I ordered the Trauma Releasing Exercises DVD a few weeks ago and finally found time to watch it.
I recommend it if you are a visual learner and if you want to get up to speed and do the TRE exercises quickly without reading a book or having to find and pay a teacher. You can watch it, learn a bit of the background without too much detail, watch people shaking, and do the exercises in real time along with the demonstration.
One of the beautiful gifts of learning from the DVD is that you can watch and do the exercises with another person and pause when you need to, rewind, fast forward, etc.
One important note: If you have only read the book, the exercises presented here are slightly different. There are some exercises for the feet at the beginning, and more details are provided.
I was just watching the models do Exercise 5 in the book, and David Berceli’s voice-over adds that you can allow your jaw to open as you twist your upper body. I didn’t see that in the book.
The exercises also have different timing, so that where the book says to hold for one minute, the video says to hold for 30 seconds to one minute.
The video also includes testimonials from various professionals — two chiropractors, a marriage and family therapist, a writer/teacher about the psoas and the core, a clinical social worker specializing in trauma, a massage therapist/teacher, and a physical therapist/cranio-sacral therapist.
Readers, I am processing something that happened this week, and I beg your indulgence as I move through my stuff. Maybe you find other people’s processing interesting. If not, skip reading this post.
Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die. – Malachy McCourt
Social work professor and authenticity researcher Brene Brown posted this quote on Facebook yesterday. (No, I don’t know her in person, but her work is pretty awesome, as are her TED Talks.) The timing for me to encounter this quote was perfect. On Monday night I had a meeting with someone who told me he has resented me for a year, since we both came onto the leadership team of a social and educational organization.
Suddenly I got insight into the tension I’d felt coming from him and how he related to me as if I were a bad employee to be corrected or micromanaged, his dissatisfaction and hypercritical attitude toward any mistakes I made, and a lack of support, gratitude, and appreciation for anything I did, even to the point of undermining me (which was why I wanted to meet with him, to tell him I didn’t like that a bit, you jerk).
It had the ring of truth to it. I also felt horrified. Frankly, it’s creepy to have someone tell you that they’ve resented you for a year. A year!
I left after about 20 minutes. Clear that I don’t want to work with him any more, I ended our “conversation” by resigning. I felt disappointed, but also that there was no real choice. Interest has tapered off. I don’t have hope that the organization will survive.
Later that evening, I found out another person on the leadership team had resigned that morning. And yet another person — also a supporter who has shared his gifts with this organization — soon decided after fruitless and frustrating conversations with this person to take his talents elsewhere. After learning this, I quit as a member.
I just wanna say this:
Hey, dude. Maybe it’s not me. Maybe it’s you.
Maybe members sensed your hidden resentment and decided not to come back. You probably think that’s too woo-woo. But maybe there’s a whole field of awareness that you’ve been blind to.
You were a real pill to work with, and as much as I loved doing my role, even imperfectly, I’m okay with severing our association. Relieved. Let me get away from your poison. I came away with many new relationships with people I do like. I even liked you sometimes, but not as a leader.
Here’s a beef: You don’t use the skills this organization promotes to resolve problems! When I asked you what the outcome was that you wanted, you avoided answering my question. Others have noticed that you have difficulty answering a clear, direct request with a clear, direct answer. The meaning of communication is the response you get.
You went off on a tangent but actually got the outcome I think you wanted — my resignation — without ever directly asking for it.
So, um, you could have just asked for my resignation at any time without all the drama, you know. So why didn’t you?
Dude, where’s your well-formedness?
I don’t even think this has much to do with me. It’s more about his ego.
I understand that he’s working out something karmic in his life. This is not about what he thinks it’s about. It’s about self-revelation. He doesn’t seem to know himself very well or be effective in a leadership role. If people don’t trust him or have confidence in him as a leader, then he’s not a leader, no matter what title he has.
I’ve been thinking a lot this week about what good leadership is. It seems clear to me that it’s situational. People talk about leadership style, but the style has to match the situation.
What works in an employer-employee relationship where you pay someone to fulfill your agenda will not work in an organization composed of volunteers. That is much more about relationship skills and consensus building, rapport and responsiveness, not command and control.
New awesomeness arises out of the ashes. I am free to pursue my best interests, and that’s already taking shape in a very satisfying way.
~~
Update a week later: Everything is perfect just the way it is. When this guy is my age and looks back on who he was at this current time in his life, he will have great perspective on how much richer his map of the world got. His identity, his role in creating this, his ability to be congruent, his skills in relating to people and in leading people will all be vastly more developed and nuanced.
Had another session with Fran Bell today. She did the functional movement screening, or at least part of it, where she directed me to do some unusual movements, and she notices and measures stuff about my body.
Yep, it was as I thought. I need help. I need to get more stable and flexible to prevent injuries.
For this week, I have some exercises to do with a foam roller, working the knots out of my leg muscles.
She’s very sensitive to emotions and shifts in energy.
Also, she’s going to show me later, when I’m ready, how to do the kettlebell swing without injuring myself.
I teach restorative yoga, and a friend and fellow yogi who attended my Free Day of Yoga restorative class last Labor Day, Shelley Seale, invited me to teach a class at her new live/work space — the morning before she moved in.
There were seven of us yogis in this awesome space, getting all chill before the strenuous, stressful work of moving.
I can only imagine what it must be like to move after having a 90-minute restorative yoga session. I want to try it for my next move.
I want to recognize Shelley for having such a creative, collaborative idea, and letting some OMs fill her fabulous new space!
If you want to do something like that, please get in touch!
~~
Another note: My Sunday evening restorative yoga class is settling on just the right time during these lengthening days. We’ll now meet at 7 and end at 8:30.
At the end of January, this blog had gotten 5,000 views.
Today the count is up to 7,355 views. I also have several new subscribers. Welcome! I hope you find some value here.
Just want to say thanks to all of you. I appreciate you reading my posts and especially enjoy getting your comments.
This blog is an outlet for me to follow and pursue what interests me and share what I discover, both in myself and “out there” in the world. I imagine that not every post is everyone’s cup of tea, but to those who read my posts occasionally, or regularly, I really want you to know how grateful I am to have something to offer. And I’m glad you can pass up the ones that don’t resonate, too!
I feel like I’m on a journey, and I don’t know the destination yet, but getting there is a lot of fun. Thanks for being company on the road.
Was driving to my temp job the other day when I noticed a tree violently shaking near the road.
This particular tree was dancing with such abandon, it seemed possessed by a spirit.
Then I realized it was very windy by noticing that all the trees were dancing. (You know, I woke, got ready for work, and walked a short distance to my car. It’s easy to miss how windy it is unless it knocks you over. The sight of this tree knocked me over.)
And still, this tree was dancing with more wildness than the others.
Who’s to say it was not possessed by a spirit? I couldn’t see a spirit, except in the extraordinary fervor of the tree, limbs whipping this way and that.
I connected energetically with that tree. I empathized because of my practice of shaking medicine. A fresh breath, a newness, an expansion, a connection…
Plants shake, animals shake, people shake (but sometimes have to be taught).
A day later, I bought a new metal water bottle. It was green, with a tree image on it.
I just now made that connection in my conscious mind.
Shaking, connection, expansion — it’s contagious! Are you catching it yet?
Some Tibetan monks from the Gaden Shartse monastery are visiting Austin. They made a sand mandala at City Hall over the past week, and yesterday they held a ceremony in which they destroyed it. My friend Tom and I went to see it.
Quite a crowd had gathered at City Hall, with people on the stairs and balconies, gazing down. Bumped into old friends Rebecca and Jutta.
One of the monks was American and explained things well. He said one monk was a geshe and described what it takes to become a geshe (20 years of monastic academic studies and a lot of winning debates with other monks). Another was a lama, a title indicating an honored dharma teacher.
You can see their wonderful hats.
They chanted for a long time. I couldn’t understand a word, but I liked it. I recorded it on my iPhone but can’t figure out how to upload a voice memo to my blog, so you can just imagine the chanting.
After destroying the sand mandala with paint brushes, they gave each person attending a small bag of the sand and suggested it was good for two things — to sprinkle on the four corners of your property as a blessing for your home, and to rub a bit of it into the crown chakra of a dying person to ensure a good rebirth.
I couldn’t resist making the final photo my new masthead photo!
So what is this ceremony about? Nonattachment. A visual lesson about creating something of beauty, intricacy, and special meaning, with highly focused, meticulous, and lengthy labor, and then destroying that creation — because life is change and nothing is permanent — and releasing it back to the Source. The practice of presence. Equanimity.
I loved their energy. One of the monks in particular just radiated so much intelligent alive awareness in his mostly silent presence (and no, he wasn’t the geshe or the lama). I felt connected energetically to them all. They radiated such deep well-being.
Here’s a link to their activities for their remaining time in Austin.
Circling the sand painting
Destroying the sand painting
Chanting at the lake...
...as a monk pours the sand into the lake
Ceremony over, posing for photos
I’m linking to an article published in Elephant Journal that has an interesting discussion about the right brain and mystical states. Jill Bolte Taylor wrote about having her left brain shut down during a cerebral hemorrhage in My Stroke of Insight.
This writer, a yogi and ayurvedist, wonders aloud if samadhi is actually experienced through shutting down big parts of the left brain.
Read on for a worthwhile discussion, and juicy tidbits about a few spiritual eminences.
I found a book, Shaking Medicine: The Healing Power of Ecstatic Movement by Bradford Keeney, at Half Price Books on Sunday when I was looking for another book. Of course it jumped off the shelf and right into my hands!
The author is a professor at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, or at least he was in 2007 when this book was published, and has made a remarkable connection with the bushmen of the Kalahari Desert, who practice shaking medicine ritually. Dr. Keeney has been shaking his whole adult life and has the gift of being able to induce shaking in others.
Plus, he seems to have training in anthropology, systems theory, and hypnosis, so I have a connection there with my NLP training.
Here’s a link to his website. Oh, and he and a colleague (operating as The Mojo Doctors) now offer 5-day experiences they call Rehab for the Soul in New Orleans.
I do like the term shaking medicine better than trauma releasing exercises. And please note that it is about shaking, not dance, although apparently ecstatic dance can unleash ecstatic shaking.
It also seems that the trauma releasing exercises are the latest incarnation of a practice that goes way back in time. It has surfaced in various cultures, religions, and places over millenia. It may be the opposite of meditation: instead of deep stillness, it’s deep uncontrolled movement.
Whatever. It’s good medicine.
I’ll write more as I’ve read more. Just wanted to let y’all know where this path is now taking me…
The Well: bodymindheartspirit 