Author Archives: MaryAnn Reynolds

About MaryAnn Reynolds

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

My cousin the dancing tree

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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?

Tibetan monks in Austin

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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

Samadhi and the right brain

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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.

New book, Shaking Medicine: The Healing Power of Ecstatic Movement

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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…

 

10 lessons from the Chronic Stress and Trauma Release Challenge

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The month of March ended without me quite reaching my goal of doing the trauma releasing exercises twice a week. I probably did them once a week. It’s important to actually listen to your body.

The last time I did them, I started my yoga session in the morning, and after one half of a sun salutation, I realized my body really wanted to shake.

So I did the “air chair” pose (Exercise 6a in the book) with knees bent, back against the wall, and held it for two minutes, long enough to get a strong burn in my quadricieps.

I went straight to my yoga mat, laid on my back, and immediately my legs began to tremble.

I experienced the usual waves of intense leg shaking. I had trembling and then some wild movement in my left shoulder, nothing in my right shoulder, and some rocking and head turning from side to side.

The leg shaking gradually wound down. I felt done after 10 minutes.

So here’s what I’ve learned about this practice:

  1. The trauma releasing exercises are good for nearly everyone, because nearly everyone carries extra tension in their body that’s below conscious awareness.
  2. Follow the exercises in the book or on the video completely for the first dozen or so times.
  3. It is ingrained in us to be in control of our bodies from an early age. It can be hard to learn how to let go. A facilitator who is supportive can be very helpful.
  4. If not much happens at first, don’t be discouraged. Do the exercises when you feel motivated, and be kind to yourself. Every body is different.
  5. If still not much happens, do them after a vigorous physical workout. Also, do them when you’re emotionally upset.
  6. Notice your release patterns and allow new patterns to arise. Some tension may be deeply embedded, and you need to release the superficial layers first.
  7. Feel gratitude for all the tension you are letting go of! You’re getting old stale patterns and energies out of your body! Yay!
  8. After you’ve done a good amount of shaking, trembling, quivering, and wild movement, try shortcuts like the one I described above.
  9. Listen to your body and do them when you feel the need. Once a week is probably good after you are getting some good shaking.
  10. Over time, notice whether you feel better physically or if your moods are more pleasant or your senses clearer. I imagine so.

 

Working with a healer, Fran Bell

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Yesterday I went to see a new kind of healer. Her name is Fran Bell. Remember that name.

I work with practitioners who specialize in one healing modality, and others who combine modalities, and some who’ve learned and integrated multiple modalities and added something else to it. They’ve invented something that nobody else does.

That’s the kind of healer Fran is. Her business card says she is an integrated health coach. Because of course, the body, mind, heart, and spirit/soul are integrated. The name of my blog and her business card nearly match!

So the background for me going to Fran is this (skip ahead if you’ve heard my story before – la di dah): I’ve had a lot of body and alignment issues in my life, including a sacral nerve injured at birth, a major childhood trauma that left me with PTSD, scoliosis from adolescence until a couple of years ago, and a car accident that left me with significant soft tissue damage in my lower back, which centered around my left sacroiliac joint.

And you wondered why I like yoga so much! It’s all about healing and expanding my well-being.

So all this physical and emotional trauma, even with yoga and everything else I do, has left me with movement patterns that stem from trying to hold myself together in ways that are less than optimal.

These ways were the best my jangled nervous system could do right after the injury. They did hold me together when I had to soldier on — go to work to have health insurance, be a single mom. (That’s part of the problem, too, the belief that I had to soldier on and couldn’t really take the time for myself that I needed to heal.)

I’ve had balance issues. Tree pose is hard. I often wake and go through my day with minor aches and pains. I don’t have stamina for being on my feet for more than a couple of hours, and forget running!

So now it’s time to learn functional ways of holding myself together, ways of just using what is needed and letting everything else relax. These old injuries are long healed, and the patterns no longer serve — they constrict.

If I knew how to repattern my body on my own, believe me, I would have done it.

I went to Fran because I had been told by my chiropractor that she was trained in Functional Movement Systems, which Tim Ferriss wrote about in The 4-Hour Body. (Read the chapter called Pre-Hab: Injury-Proofing the Body.) FMS looks at bodies in terms of mobility, stability, and strength. I was sure I needed more stability and was looking forward to Fran giving me some exercises.

Fran starts where she starts. She’s a delightful person who knows that people get into these holding patterns because they’ve experienced injury and they’re trying to protect themselves. She knows how to make a client feel safe.

She’s empathic, intuitive, and has developed her perception of how to correct dysfunctional patterns to a remarkable degree. That is something that has marked the healers I’ve worked with in the last few years: they have developed their perceptions (of injury, imbalance, energy pathways, blockages, holdings, and releases, movement patterns, the nervous system) to such a degree that I can barely understand how they do what they do, except to know that it’s beyond me. It’s deepened my awareness.

Fran watched me walk and said I had a big holding pattern. She took me to a massage table. She had me move this way and that, coordinating movements with my breathing.

I came out of our first session feeling different and better when I walked. Before, I was holding myself together from the sacrum, with stiffness in my lower back and not much range of movement.

After, I was walking from the hip joint, which is the natural place to walk from. My lumbar curve increased and I got to experience a springlike movement there as I walked, a fluid dynamic relationship between the masses of my pelvic bowl and my rib cage.

My breathing was more relaxed.

I also could see more clearly. Fran took me to the window and raised the blind. Everything had more depth and richness.

Wow. Isn’t this what we all want, to be more alive?

A day later, I’ve lost a little of that freedom I felt at the end of yesterday’s session, but I know I won’t revert to how I was before. I can feel my body shifting, adjusting, taking in as much as it can of a new way of being.

After my session with Fran, I actually did remember that after the car wreck, I was aware that my body felt very different, almost alien-feeling. One day when I was walking, I realized I was dragging my left heel. I made an effort to pull myself together, and at least I didn’t drag my heel any more. That’s probably where this pattern stems from.

Fran is certified in Spiritual and Medical Healing by the Jaffe Institute, now called the University of Spiritual Healing and Sufism. She’s a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist, a Certified Personal Trainer, as well as being trained in Functional Movement Systems. And she’s been a healer since the age of 11.

I’m going to see her weekly for a while. I’m feeling very grateful to have this opportunity right here in Austin, Texas, USA. And I’ll keep posting. You can search my blog for “fran bell” to find posts about my work with her.

If you have body aches and pains that are persistent, I recommend seeing Fran. And here’s a link to some more testimonials.

She’s at Austin Holistic Health. Call her at 538-5993 or email fran.bell @ yahoo.com to schedule or discuss. Her rates are $120 for the first session and $95 after that.

10 rules for brilliant women

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In my online wanderings, I came across this woman’s blog. I like it! It’s called Wise Living Blog. The blogger, Tara Sophia Mohr, is a coach.

Notice how nice it feels to be addressed as brilliant!

In this post, dated September 17, 2010, she writes about 10 rules for brilliant women.

Here’s the first rule:

1. Make a pact. No one else is going to build the life you want for you. No one else will even be able to completely understand it. The most amazing souls will show up to cheer you on along the way, but this is your game. Make a pact to be in it with yourself for the long haul, as your own supportive friend at every step along the way.

Here’s number 3:

3. Gasp. Start doing things that make you gasp and get the adrenalin flowing. Ask yourself, “What’s the gasp-level action here?” Your fears and a tough inner critic will chatter in your head. That’s normal, and just fine. When you hear that repetitive, irrational, mean inner critic, name it for what it is, and remember, it’s just a fearful liar, trying to protect you from any real or seeming risks. Go for the gasps and learn how false your inner critic’s narrative really is, and how conquerable your fears.

I love this one!

6. Question the voice that says “I’m not ready yet.” I know, I know. Because you are so brilliant and have such high standards, you see every way that you could be more qualified. You notice every part of your idea that is not perfected yet. While you are waiting to be ready, gathering more experience, sitting on your ideas, our friends referenced in rule five [the arrogant idiots] are being anointed industry visionaries, getting raises, and seeing heir ideas come to life in the world. They are no more ready than you, and perhaps less. Jump in the sandbox now, and start playing full out. Find out just how ready you are.

The rest of the rules are pretty inspiring. Click this link to read them.

New study of yoga’s benefits for metabolic syndrome

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I’m always heartened when I read about a new study of yoga’s benefits. It’s the best of the East and the best of the West: the scientific method and this ancient philosophy/practice.

Of course, yogis know from experience that yoga builds health. Non-yogis may need scientific proof that yoga is good for them before beginning a practice.

Here’s news of a new study: a year-long study of the health benefits of yoga to those with metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome can occur with overweight adults who have high blood pressure, high insulin and/or cholesterol levels, and excess fat around the waist. These conditions increase the risk of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes.

The article says that about one-fourth of adults in the United States has some combination of these risky conditions.

One-fourth!

“We know that diet and exercise work when it comes to reducing an individual’s risk of diabetes and heart disease, but those behaviors are very hard for some people to sustain,” said PRYSMS lead investigator Alka Kanaya, MD, an associate professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine and a faculty member at the UCSF Diabetes Center. “If we can offer something novel that is enjoyable and easy to sustain, we can help combat these health epidemics.”

Yoga has been found to improve specific metabolic risk factors, such as blood pressure, body mass index and insulin sensitivity, but the 10-week UCSF pilot trial in 2008 was the first to examine its effects in individuals with metabolic syndrome, said Kanaya, who also led that study.

The pilot study found that after 15 90-minute yoga sessions over a 10-week period, “there was a trend to reduced blood pressure, a significant increase in energy level, and trends to improvement in well-being and stress” among study participants, according to a published report in the journal Metabolic Syndrome and Related Disorders.

The pilot study centered on restorative yoga, resting in various poses with the body supported for several minutes at a time.

Yay for a pilot study centering on restorative yoga! Which anyone, even nonyogis, can do.

The full study will compare restorative yoga and active stretching, and researchers expect both to show benefits to this group.

“If restorative yoga or active stretching are effective in reducing metabolic risk factors, the mechanism is likely through relaxation and stress reduction,” she said. “The initial results are encouraging enough to warrant a longer, larger trial of both behavioral interventions.”

Oh, yeah, and the article has photo of Cora Wen doing a seated side bend. That’s how it came to me. I’ve never met her but just love her on Facebook and hope to study with her some day.

If you know anyone in San Francisco or San Diego with these conditions, the article ends with contact info for prospective participants.

~~~

Also, I’m congratuling some folks I know and love with a well-planned and so far successful change in eating habits resulting in healthy, respectable weight loss. You know who you are, darlings!!!!

32 benefits of yoga

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Loved this blog post in Elephant Journal about some unusual benefits of yoga. The writer includes not just the usual — better posture, mood, flexibility.

She cites yoga for helping her lose 30 pounds, not through exercise or dietary changes, but through loving her body as it is.

Relationship clarity, better tools for difficult situations, less need for drama, pausing before situations…

Read Claudia Azula Altuchar’s list here.

Thoughts on spring cleansing, the liver, allergies

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I started the colon/parasite cleanse today. It’s spring! Time to clean out the system! I do this twice a year.

I wrote about this last fall. You can click this link to my earlier post, which contains instructions for the colon/parasite cleanse, which is fairly simple, and information about the liver/gallbladder flush, which is more complex but worth doing.

I didn’t provide instructions for the flush because it’s complicated, and in my opinion, if you’ve never done it before, it’s best done under the supervision of an expert, experienced health care practitioner who’s quickly available should you have any questions or problems.

One new bit of information to note: The company that makes Paracidin, which rids the body of parasites in the liver, gallbladder, spleen, and pancreas, has changed the name of that product to Paratosin. The labels, including dosage and ingredients, are identical except for the name.

Another new bit of information that I’ve heard or read from several sources: allergies are related to liver toxicity. I’m not sure about this, but thought I’d put it out there. If you have experience or information on this, please share.

My respiratory allergies have decreased dramatically over time. I had NAET acupuncture treatment in 2000 (when I moved back to Austin, allergy capital of the world), and it made a substantial difference.

Before NAET, Seldane or Claritin every day, year round, plus at least one sinus infection per year requiring antibiotics.

After NAET, I’d take an occasional Claritin, and I’ve had only one sinus infection in the 10 years since, when I walked to and from work on a windy day last spring after a long dry spell — exposing myself to lots of pollen. Acupuncture helped me recover from that.

NAET worked pretty well for me.

I’ve done the liver/gallbladder flush twice a year (two nights in a row each time) for about 3 years. I rarely take medication for allergies any more. I feel unpleasant side effects if I take Claritin, so if I’m having nasal congestion and sneezing, I take a homeopathic remedy, Histaminum hydrochloricum, and that does the trick. I use it maybe once a week at peak pollen times. My body doesn’t respond to allergens like it used to. (Another day I’ll post on the NLP allergy cure, which has probably also made a difference.)

So it’s possible that the flush has improved my liver’s health and reduced my allergies. They haven’t gotten worse. (This does not apply to my gluten sensitivity, just to airborne allergens.)

Here’s a link to an article I found with much more information on the liver/gallbladder cleanse, including what actually happens in those organs.

The instructions are pretty close to what my acupuncturist says. She has me test my pH before doing the flush to make sure my body is clearly alkaline, and she has me do it two nights in a row. She also suggests taking magnesium malate when it’s difficult to make fresh, organic apple juice in quantity.