Author Archives: MaryAnn Reynolds

About MaryAnn Reynolds

I practice advanced bodywork in Austin, TX, specializing in Craniosacral Biodynamics and TMJ Relief.

50 Reasons Why YOU Are Absolutely Beautiful. ~ Linnea Jensen-Stewart | elephant journal

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50 Reasons Why YOU Are Absolutely Beautiful. ~ Linnea Jensen-Stewart | elephant journal.

I came across this list and couldn’t not share it with you! Maybe you will read this list and think of someone special to you, or several someones, and of course you will think of yourself.

Reading this list made me smile, think, laugh, remember, imagine, agree, wonder, qualify.

This one made me think:

3. Beauty is a daring action. One that is built on your authentic intention instead of being attached to the outcome.

There may very well be a future blog post born from that one.

Here’s another:

32. Having faith in someone else’s word, because we know we’ve been true to our own. That is beautiful.

Can I really trust that? It is so beautiful to trust.

What’s most beautiful to you? What is beautiful that’s not on this list? I’d love to hear from you, in the comments.

You are beautiful to me!

Manual for climbing mountains — Paulo Coelho’s Blog

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1 min reading: Manual for climbing mountains — Paulo Coelho’s Blog.

What a great metaphor for living an adventurous, rewarding life! Start with the first step:

A] Choose the mountain you want to climb: don’t pay attention to what other people say, such as “that one’s more beautiful” or “this one’s easier”. You’ll be spending lots of energy and enthusiasm to reach your objective, so you’re the only one responsible and you should be sure of what you’re doing.

Continue until you get to the last step:

L] Tell your story: yes, tell your story! Give your example. Tell everyone that it’s possible, and other people will then have the courage to face their own mountains.

I’m so looking forward to finally reading Paulo Coelho’s book The Alchemist over my holiday break.

Body care tools make great gifts!

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When you are considering gifts to give during the holiday season (or for birthdays or special occasions year-round), here are some recommendations from a professional bodyworker. All of these relax, relieve stress, release tension, and enhance well-being. Who doesn’t want that?

First of all, please consider giving your loved ones gift certificates for massage. There are many modalities available ranging from Swedish to Ashiatsu to craniosacral to hot stones and more. This is a great way to show love — by surprising your loved one with a health-giving, rejuvenating, relaxing massage.

Your loved one will love you for it, and you’ll enjoy their relaxed, post-massage company even more!

Plus, supporting a private practitioner keeps the money in the local economy, so you’re being generous twice.

Here are my recommendations for tools that bring relief between massages:

  • Therapeutica Sleeping PillowThe Therapeutica Sleeping Pillow helps side sleepers keep their heads aligned with their spines while they sleep and encourages healthy back sleeping by providing nice curves for neck and head alignment. It is designed to reduce snoring and to relieve TMJ pain. Comes in five sizes based on shoulder width.
  • Check out the smaller Therapeutica Travel Pillow if your loved one travels a lot.
  • The Sacrowedgy is designed to be placed under the sacrum while you are lying on your back. It can relieve sciatica, back pain, piriformis syndrome, and more. Massage therapists and bodyworkers know that the keys to activating the parasympathetic nervous system (opposite of fight or flight) lie in pressing nerves at the occiput and/or the sacrum. This device cradles the sacrum similar to placing a hand under it, the way we often hold infants. Very calming and relaxing! Sized to fit male and female sacrums. Makes a nice stocking stuffer.
  • Place a Still Point Inducer under the occiput when you are lying on your back. Just as the Sacrowedgy induces relaxation via cradling the sacrum, the Still Point Inducer calms by cradling the occiput. A “still point” is a pause in the rhythm of the cerebrospinal fluid that results in better functioning of the central nervous system. Inducing a still point can relieve headaches and eye strain, lower blood pressure, and enhance the immune system. Craniosacral therapists induce the still point manually. You can do it yourself at home with one of these.
  • neckpillowA flaxseed pillow shaped to fit your neck and shoulders can be heated or chilled as needed for stiffness and pain. Better yet, get two of these! Freeze one and microwave the other, and then alternate heat and cold on your neck and shoulders for some wonderful circulatory and metabolic stimulation. Comes unscented — add your own fragrance if desired. Lavender is always relaxing.
  • TPWBThis item might inspire a New Year’s resolution! The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook by Clair Davies shows where to find trigger points  and describes how to release them in layman’s language. (Third edition is recommended.) If regular deep tissue massage is too expensive and you and your partner or friend suffer from trigger point pain and limited range of movement, this book is a fantastic resource. You’ll also need an inexpensive tool, such as a knobble or maybe a back buddy. If you and your partner or friend are able to spend time weekly helping to find and release each other’s trigger points, you’ll both feel so much better by the same time next year!
  • spine alignerThe wooden Spine Aligner does just that. You lie on it, on a bed or cushioned surface at first, then on the floor when your body has adjusted. Rest the two central knobs between two vertebrae starting between your shoulder blades. Lie back on it for 10 breaths, then roll it down between the next pair of vertebrae, take 10 breaths, and so on, all the way down to L5-sacrum. The Spine Aligner relieves kinks and misalignments in the back, like you get when you sleep in a strange position or on a strange bed and wake up with a spasm-y, crick-y back. You can even put a knobby end under a glute for a nice tension-relieving stretch that definitely works some pressure points. You can roll the corrugated parts with the soles of your feet for a nice foot massage.

Some body care gifts you can make at home without spending a lot of money:

  • Two tennis balls tied in a tube sock. If your loved one’s car does not have built-in lumbar support, and he/she spends much time driving, you can easily make this simple gift. Put two tennis balls into a man’s tube sock. Tie a knot at the open end to keep the balls from coming out. They’ll place the sock behind their low back while driving, with a ball on either side of the spine. They can press into them, giving the low back a nice little massage.  Good for between the shoulder blades, too. This is  great on long car trips and to relieve the stress of driving in rush-hour traffic!
  • Scented bath salts. Buy Epsom salt in bulk at the grocery store, pharmacy, Costco, or online. Measure two cups of Epsom salt into a 16-oz. glass container. Add an essential oil such as lavender, chamomile, orange, sandalwood, rose, or peppermint for different effects. Stick an attractive label on the jar identifying the scent and include instructions to dissolve in a hot bath and soak for at least 12 minutes.
  • Make your own gift certificates for foot, hand, or scalp massage, or a back or shoulder rub. No training is needed, and 15-30 minutes keeps it at a good length to be effective but not tiring for you. Ask the recipient to tell you what they especially enjoy, and deliver that.

Taking care of your body, and helping your loved ones take care of theirs, is the essence of healthy living. Body care gifts create good will and make the world a better place, because people who feel great do great things!

More on the Buddhist precepts

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Here’s another jewel of a quote from Tricycle Daily Dharma. It’s been sitting in my inbox for a few days, and I have not been able to bring myself to delete it. Must mean I need to share it!

It’s a pretty good description of Buddhism’s precepts:

To be sure, as humans with a short life span, we cannot know the long-term results of our actions. But recognizing that what we say and do can have repercussions for months, years, or eons, and that we cannot know the “final” outcome of something we think, do or say, Buddhism, like all other major religions, has developed a set of precepts. The precepts have been compared to dikes in a rice field. They hold back and channel the rushing water of our passions so that our life is not flooded, so that smaller and more helpless creatures are not harmed and the harvest of our life’s efforts is not ruined. These precepts prohibit those actions that have a bad outcome and cause harm to ourselves or others almost all of the time.

– Jan Chozen Bays, “What the Buddha Said About Sexual Harassment”

I started taking a class on the precepts at Appamada Zen Center last year and was unable to complete the training due to family needs, but the precepts have stayed with me.

You can read what the late Robert Aitken Roshi said about them here.

I find that just being acquainted with the precepts begets self-inquiry and informs my decisions. A small example: last year I bought a fake leather jacket. I could have afforded a real leather jacket, but I thought about my relationship to the animals whose skins are used for leather and decided that if my purchase of a leather jacket encouraged people to slaughter animals for the economic value of their pelts, I could not feel any joy about buying leather products, and I probably won’t in the future.

Now I don’t really know that this jacket isn’t made of some petroleum-based product that involved some other method of harm to manufacture. It probably is. And I am not consistent about this — I own and wear leather shoes and boots and will continue to do so. I appreciate fine things, and sometimes they are made with leather.

But now I bring this precept into consideration when I make my own decisions, whereas I used to never think about it.

I cannot judge others’ decisions either. We all have our own paths in life. Serenity prayer: I change what I can, and usually that means me.

Having some familiarity with the precepts and examining my ethical beliefs and behaviors adds mindfulness to my life, deepens and enriches it, even as they call on me not to take the easy way out.

The ENEMIES Project by Nelson Guda — Kickstarter

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The ENEMIES Project by Nelson Guda — Kickstarter.

My friend Nelson Guda is a peace geek. He went to Africa, where he met with and photographed people who were formerly enemies, like Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda, now living together in peace.

How do people find peace after violence, even genocide? This is a great question to ask and collect answers in the form of photos and stories from people who’ve been through it.

Nelson would like to exhibit his photos at the United Nations headquarters as well as in various capitals around the world, and also publish a book of photos with the stories they go with.

This is not crazy, because Nelson is one smart guy. Not only does he have a Ph.D., but he’s already exhibited his photography in the U.S. Senate Building. He manifests.

Here’s what Nelson says:

Why on earth would anyone do this, and how do you know I will finish it?

I can’t explain why I need to take on big projects like this.  Maybe the simplest explanation is that I am an artist and have a tendency to work to obsession.  In my last major project about roadless forest lands in the U.S., I photographed National Forests across the country.  As a part of this project I designed and built a website that dynamically maps all the roadless lands in the country.  At the time there weren’t any good ways to quickly map and query that much data on a website, so I taught myself how to program and designed a system to do it.  The site is still up – it is called Roadlessland.org.  In former lives I have gotten a PhD and helped start an institute at a major university.  Will I finish this project?  Not counting time, I have already invested a lot of my own money into ENEMIES.  But even more importantly I think this is an important thing to do.  In my mind I can’t not finish it.

You can help Nelson fund his goal of $20,000 in 44 days by pledging as little as $1.

Here’s to the crazy ones: video of original ad and poster

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View the original video with Steve Jobs’ narration below.

You can get this great quote as a poster here. They’re accepting orders through December 17. Your purchase benefits the Acumen Fund, a charity fighting poverty. Read more here.

Massage school classwork over; internship starting

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This morning I finished my classwork (except for a couple of makeup classes) at The Lauterstein-Conway School of Massage.

I’ve been in the fastest-paced program available, called “the intensive”. My class started on June 27, 2011, and has now completed 450 hours of training. My 50-hour internship in the school’s student clinic starts on Thursday.

If you are in Austin and would like a $35 student massage from me, click this link to view my December internship schedule. You can also just call the clinic at 512-453-2830 and ask when I’m working and not booked. (Please note that these massages are in demand, and the clinic tends to book several weeks in advance. I’m doing 20 massages in December, 28 in January, and 2 in February, if all goes according to plan, so call soon.)

I want to thank those family members and friends who have let me practice on you during my training. I appreciate your patience and willingness (okay, I didn’t have to twist any arms), and I hope my practice benefitted you and enhanced your well-being. Actually, I hope you loved my touch. I’ve worked on about 25 of you outside of school, generally for longer than an hour, and several of you more than once. Thank you.

I’d also love to thank my classmates. Our class held together pretty well, with not too many drop-outs. We started with 28 and ended with approximately 22. It’s been a pleasure knowing you and working on and with you and receiving your work. I’ve worked on most of you multiple times. Thank you! I’d like to stay in touch.

I’ve greatly enjoyed my teachers at TLC, the apropos nickname for The Lauterstein-Conway school. Your personalities are so vivid, I’ve thought that someone should write a sit-com pilot set at a massage school and pitch it to Hollywood — and much hilarity ensues! Thank you for choosing to practice and teach massage, and for teaching me so much.

I’ve learned a lot about anatomy, physiology, and kinesiology — and I’ve really just begun a lifelong love. I’ve learned the basics of Swedish and sports and deep massage and Shiatsu, BMTs, ROMs, stretches, pressure points, and more. All have made their way into my work. In addition, I learned about business, ethics, energy work, clinical protocols, and so much more it’s hard to even remember at this moment.

I also want to acknowledge Awareness, in which you, I, and all of Creation exists, and recognize its internal guidance to this right-for-me livelihood and so many other things that are right in my life.

I want to especially acknowledge two people who work on me, Bo Boatright and Peach, as being instrumental in encouraging me to do healing work.

Bo asked me to work on him when he was injured. I only had reiki training at the time and had hardly used it, and that was all I could do, but I stayed with him and let the energy pour through. He recognized the quality of my touch and my heart connection, and I am finding that others recognize that too. Thank you for dancing with me, Bo.

Peace has been the best role model ever for a learned, very skilled healer and teacher and a happy free spirit who does life her own unique way, and it seems to be working out extremely well for her. We’ve come such a long way together over the past few years in terms of health, relating, and getting my qi flowing well. Thank you for dancing with me, Peach!

Sometimes I don’t know if I’m dreaming or awake. Is living the dream the same as being truly awake? Today I’m going for dreaming and awake.

Many different flavors of joy

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Today’s post centers on a quotation I received this morning via email from Tricycle magazine’s Daily Dharma subscription service. I subscribe to several of these — The Universe, Tricycle Daily Dharma, and Ocean of Dharma are the main ones, and I’m currently testing one for my Enneagram type that I’ll write about later.

I enjoy opening my inbox in the morning and finding words of wisdom.

This is what I found this morning:

Joy has many different flavors. It might overflow from us in song or dance, or it might gently arise as a smile or a sense of inner fullness. Joy is not something we have to manufacture. It is already in us when we come into the world, as we can see in the natural delight and exuberance of a healthy baby. We need only release the layers of contraction and fear that keep us from it.

The author is James Baraz in Lighten Up! 

Joy. I seem to be in a groove in my life in which I often experience joy. It’s delightful and welcome.

Here are some ways joy has shown up for me recently:

  • Singing along with remastered Beatles songs in my car brings me joy.
  • Responding to an invitation to improvise my movements to music (aka dancing ecstatically); to seek a groove, release it, and find  another groove; continually discover the balances between ease and stamina, attention inward and attention outward, and staying in one place and circulating through the space; of connecting with others and choosing how much to engage; lying in a circle on the floor afterward in silent community.
  • Laughing with a certain friend whose laughter is loud, full, wild, and raucous. Her laugh makes me laugh.
  • Taking two road trips with dear friends recently. Road trips engender good conversation while barreling down the highway and exploring the destination.
  • Making chicken soup for my visiting grandchild who had a fever and sore throat and being comfortably together sharing our lives while it cooked.
  • Attending a house blessing for my friend who is bringing her aged parents to live with her until they pass or need more assistance, and literally filling the house with didgeridoo and rainstick and human sounds, filling every room, closet, and space with our presence and love and joy, decorating altars, and inviting our parents and grandparents, living or dead, and others with similar caretaking responsibilities to benefit from our work together.
  • Massaging people, experiencing the difference between before and after, and knowing I made a difference.
  • Waking to the sound of rain on the roof of my trailer.
  • Having Mango curl up on my chest and purr and put his “hand” on my face when I visit, knowing that my friends who gave him a home love us both. Yeah, kitty reiki!
  • Experiencing a long close embrace with someone special, breathing joy.

Being present and allowing life to unfold as it will inevitably brings moments of joy in some way, shape, or form. Letting joy go when it’s over instead of trying to hold onto it invites it back.

May your day hold many moments of joy, and may you savor each one fully, and let it go.

Amy Purdy: Living beyond limits | Video on TED.com

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Amy Purdy: Living beyond limits | Video on TED.com.

If you are up against an obstacle in your life, watch this video for inspiration. Amy Purdy, 30, will inspire you, telling her story about losing her legs to an infection at age 19 and going on to become a world-class pro snowboarder.

I feel an affinity with her.

She asks the important question:

If my life were a book and I were the author, how would I want the story to go?

I really like what she says about facing fears head-on and living our lives beyond limits.

Our borders and our obstacles can only do two things. One, stop us in our tracks, or two, force us to get creative.

In my life, innovation has only been possible because of my borders. I’ve learned that borders are where the actual ends but also where imagination and the story begins.

Instead of looking at our challenges and limitations as something negative or bad, we can begin to look at them as blessings, magnificent gifts that can be used to ignite our imaginations and help us go further than we ever knew we could go.

It’s not about breaking down borders. It’s about pushing off of them and seeing what amazing places they might bring us.

I went to high school naked and people danced because I watched

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Tonight at my book group, we read about the relationship between the Absolute and Creation, and it triggered the memory of a dream I had a few years back, maybe eight years ago, that I haven’t thought of for a long time.

I still think this was one of the most remarkable dreams I’ve had, and I want to share it. If you’ve ever had a dream like this, I would love to hear about it in the comments or via email. The dream just reeks of clarity.

In part 1 of the dream, I am back in high school. I am older and a high school student at the same time. I live off-campus in my own apartment. I go to class when I want to, and I actually do go to school because I want to learn.

In the dream, I don’t give a damn about the rules. Remember how many rules there were in high school? If I’m tardy, I miss out. If you want to penalize me further, that’s your stuff, not mine. I’m there to learn.

There is some problem with my schedule that I try to resolve with administrators, to no avail. I get very clear in my thinking that if people make something too difficult, that is, they let their power run away with them, I don’t have to get upset. I can just opt out or set my own course. And if people enjoy making things complicated for others, as administrators sometimes do, fuck them. (Pardon my language, but it was that kind of dream.)

I decide to blow off a class I’m supposed to be taking because somehow, taking it has gotten incredibly complicated, and I’m just not going to suffer about it. I feel confident that I’ll pick up what I need to know when I need to know it.

Also, I’m naked. I arrive at school naked, walk down the halls naked, sit in class naked, and I don’t care what anyone thinks. I don’t seem to have any clothes, and it’s not a problem. To me, anyway.

I do have long hair that keeps growing in the dream, brushing down my back as I walk. It feels pleasant, sensual.

I notice that most of the students have clothes on, and they are pretending not to notice naked me. They don’t talk to me. I probably scare them. A few other students are naked too. We see each other, recognize each other, feel a kinship, but don’t talk. I’m there for class.

Then a shift in scene occurs. I am standing outside the school looking toward a covered walkway on which a group of students are standing. They begin to move in unison, beautifully, silently. I am transfixed, watching them.

I realize that they are dancing because I’m watching, and that I’m watching because they’re dancing. The dancers and I feed each other in this way, joined into a holy union through mutual acts of attention and respect.

And that’s when the dream fades.

The first part of this dream showed me how I had changed over the course of my adult life. It showed me that I could live with a healthy attitude about learning and being myself and making decisions. Although I do wear clothes!

The second part of the dream I now understand as an invitation to explore how I use my attention and how I relate, and I have actually done that since I had this dream!

This part of the dream is like a koan. It’s about presence and awareness, and it’s not linear. This is the part of the dream that I first remembered from our reading about the Absolute and Creation and their relationship to each other.

Interestingly, dancing in unison is part of Gurdjieff’s legacy, and my book group is studying The Work too. I occasionally do ecstatic dance myself, and it is a great pleasure.

My naked self in the dream may very well represent my essential self. Or perhaps be my essential self.

Anyway, it’s totally worth sharing this dream, which still delights me years later. And now, I’m going to put my clothes back on.