Category Archives: body

Keeping the aging body hydrated

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I’ve been a yogi for a long time, and also at various times, I’ve danced, biked, swum, kayaked, walked, hiked, worked with a trainer in a fitness studio, done tai chi and/or qi gong, Pilates… I’m sure there are some activities I’ve forgotten at the moment.

I love it when my body moves well, when I have full range of motion in all my joints and can move with fluidity and enough energy and strength to do these activities and get through my days with a minimum of discomfort.

I practiced the MELT Method at home, subscribing to MELT On Demand, for a while a few years ago. It gave me online access to hundreds of videos focusing on rehydrating my body parts using soft foam rollers and balls and stretchy bands.

Hydration. Rehydration. We are squishy beings. Infants are about 70 percent water, but it declines with age, to maybe 55 percent in the senior years, which is where I am now.

In other words, we kinda dry up with age, and this shows up as stiffness.

You know what? It is not inevitable! And it takes more than just consuming enough fluid.

You want those fluids to get into your soft tissues, into your muscles and fascia, bones and joints, tendons and ligaments.

You know how good you feel after you’ve received a full body massage? Well, the secret to that good feeling is the massage therapist gliding their hands with light or firm pressure on your skin. It redistributes your fluids, which relieves stiffness, aches, and pains.

The MELT Method is hands-OFF bodywork you can do by yourself, at home, with MELT equipment and videos. Sue Hitzmann, bodyworker and self-described gym rat, developed the MELT Method and continues to add to it.

Don’t underestimate Sue because she is in great shape, attractive, perky, and wears fashionable workout wear. She’s also disciplined and brainy. She has a master’s degree in exercise science from NYU. She’s participated in dissections of cadavers to learn more about fascia and belongs to the international Fascia Research Society. She’s worked with some big names in the field of fascia research: Tom Myers, Gil Hedley, Robert Scheip, Jean-Claude Guimberteau.

She is a somatic educator, bringing information and practices you can use to enhance your experience of well-being.

I stopped doing MELT for a while but just re-upped my subscription to MELT On Demand because I was feeling too stiff.

If this interests you, @MELTmethod is a YouTube channel with free material on MELT, no subscription needed.

Here Sue describes how she developed the MELT Method.

Here Sue describes the MELT Method in 3 minutes.

Here is a link to a 10-minute foot treatment. You can do this treatment on one foot and then notice the difference between each side of your body — the side you treated and the one you didn’t.

You’ll get a clear understanding of what rehydration does for you in a way that words simply can’t convey.

In some ways, it’s like reflexology. The sole of the foot maps to the entire body.

If you want to buy the MELT hand and foot therapy balls and just do that, it’s a great start. 10 minutes every day…no more morning stiffness.

As someone who sits still for long periods in my work as a biodynamic craniosacral therapist, I can’t recommend this enough. My work is oriented to fluids and energy in the body. I help my clients experience more ease in their bodies. If I could receive a session every day, I would!

MELT is the next best thing.

100 posts — and what’s next

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This is my 100th post on Biodynamic Meditation!

Just back from 4 days in Big Bend National Park, with the big sky, desert, mountains, river, hot springs, ravens, Mexican jays, javelinas, and numerous trails.

And most of all, quality time spent with my beloved 22-year-old granddaughter, Hannah.

And…it’s great to be back home, in my own bed, with comfort, solitude, and time to sit.

After over 3 months of daily meditations, when I start sitting, things start happening…perceptions of radiance at my face, the motions of the Tide, the vitality of my life force swirling within.

I remember when I started doing yoga (asanas) 40 years ago. At some point after my practice became habit, I realized I didn’t just DO yoga, I WAS (and still AM) yoga. It was in me.

Same now. I AM the radiance, the Tide, the swirliness, the health. It’s in me, and it’s in you too, and I can help you find it, if that is your desire.

So…I will continue my practice but won’t be posting so much about it. I will be reviewing my posts (I started on 11/11/22), exploring ways of teaching it, as one-to-one private sessions now, and later as a guided meditation/yoga nidra, for small groups, and whatever else emerges.

Thank you for checking out my posts on this inquiry. Please stay in touch! Links are in my Instagram bio.

#biodynamicmeditation #craniosacralbiodynamics #craniosacraltherapy #craniosacral #biodynamiccraniosacraltherapy #bcst #radianceatmyface #tide #swirliness #perception #love #vitality #lifeforce #teaching #practice

Whole body awareness with HeartMath sensor: 88 percent high coherence!

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I did something different in my Biodynamic Meditation this morning.

I stayed with whole body awareness during my 45-minute session.

I didn’t put much effort into labeling what was happening.

I just felt my life force moving within my body and field, and it felt great.

And wow! So much life force moving within me!

I noticed how pleasurable it was to simply be aware of my life force energy for that entire period of time.

I clipped my HeartMath sensor to my earlobe and set up the Inner Balance app for a session again.

I was in high coherence 88 percent of the time today.

I could see on the report that HeartMath displays after completing a session how my coherence fluctuated. It’s never a straight line. It is always changing.

I just signed up for a HeartMath training called The Resilient Heart: Trauma-Sensitive HeartMath Certification. I so love learning how we can influence the autonomic nervous system since there’s just so much unhealthy stress in most of our lives.

Let’s change that. Change that, change the world.

How self-healing works

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My Biodynamic Meditation today came after spending time in a friend’s hot tub and going for a walk, including a heart-pounding hill climb.

Now, rest, meditate, write.

My session this morning included radiance at my face, the Tide, and swirliness in my head, heart, and pelvic centers.

Swirliness shows up in several ways: seeking, settling into an area or spot in the system, and reorganizing.

This is how self-healing works. Attention is love, so you bring it inside and really pay attention to your sensations, rhythms, patterns. You feel the Tide regulating your system, then you may have a stillpoint, a pause that acts as a reset button. When swirliness happens, your system frees stuck energy, increasing your vitality.

You always start with where you are today, in this moment.

L’chaim!

I heard some great music Friday night at Sahara Lounge. This is Atash. They’ve played Carnegie Hall. Amazing musicianship, danceable music!

I dreamed I was pregnant

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I dreamed that I was pregnant, and that I was preparing to go into labor with lots of support, even from people far away whom I didn’t know.

I am preparing to teach Biodynamic Meditation, and this is a good omen!

My Biodynamic Meditation this morning started with my posture, then breathing physiological sighs (sniff sniff ahhhh) until I yawned.

Radiance at my face. Then sensing the Tide ascending and descending my central energy channel.

Spacing out (heard the first mockingbird of the year singing outside — joy!).

Noticing the Tide had gotten swirly and was investigating various areas: abdomen, sacrum, throat without settling long anywhere.

I decided to pose a question to the healing energy: If you could find the most optimal place for healing in my system today, the place that’s most ready to heal, where would you go?

It settled in my spine in the mid-thoracic region and stayed there.

It was still there when my timer went off after 45 minutes, but it didn’t feel “done” so I waited 5 more minutes until it felt done.

Sometimes “done” is clearly done, and sometimes it’s “done for today”. I will find out which as the day progresses.

I have a slight reverse S curve in my spine, and this is a place where the vertebrae shift directions. I’ve been doing PT exercises for months to straighten my spine…

Yes, you can communicate with the healing energy. In my experience, it takes time to build energetic rapport with it, to develop trust and familiarity.

Even now, when I ask it a question, sometimes it doesn’t answer, and sometimes it consents…by simply doing.

It doesn’t speak English, but it understands intent.

It’s mysterious! So much more to learn! This communication comes after a lot of listening.

It might be Biodynamic Meditation 201 or 301. I’m focusing more on preparing to teach 101 now.

Change your bias toward what’s going wrong, toward what’s going right.

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What’s going right in your body-mind system?

Many of us, myself included, have a bias toward noticing what’s wrong, what hurts, is tense, stiff, sluggish, numb, dysfunctional.

We may even make up stories about what’s wrong, feeling ourselves deficient, flawed, less than, unworthy.

I’m motivated to get over that!

You know, if you’re not on life support in a hospital, there’s a lot that’s going right.

A LOT.

You’re breathing.

Your heart is beating.

You’re viewing this post and reading these words.

You very likely are hearing sounds, if you direct your attention there.

The many sensations of body awareness…

Your weight pressing down into whatever you’re sitting or standing or leaning on.

The sense of where you are in space, how your body is arranged, your posture.

Warmth or coolness.

Balance.

Emotions.

Your many systems that keep you organized and alive: cardiovascular, pulmonary, nervous, lymphatic, digestive, immune, etc.

Also, your mind. Your memories and imaginations, beliefs, motivations, identity, skills, preferences and avoidances, etc.

Underlying all is your life force. Yogis call it prana. Daoists call it qi (chi, ki).

I feel it when I do Biodynamic Meditation, doing yoga or qi gong, walking in nature, having a great conversation with someone, hugging a friend, practicing Craniosacral Biodynamics, and just at random times.

I feel grateful for being alive.

That’s what this is all about. This comes even before sensing the Tide in the central energy channel.

This is Day 90 of these posts.

Swirliness is healing intelligence at its finest!

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Wow! Today’s Biodynamic Meditation was mostly swirliness!

I had again awakened early and listened to a Yoga Nidra recording on YouTube. I’ve been sampling them. Still like Liam Gillen and also now Kristyn Rose Yoga who has one with some focus on the heart chakra.

I also gave 5 mini-sessions at last night’s Community Healing Circle after being unable to work this past week. Power outage at my office due to ice storm. (It’s back on now.)

I was primed for a really good meditation.

I breathed a few physiological sighs until I yawned (parasympathetic sign).

Felt radiance at my face and then my entire head.

Tide.

No stillpoint unless it was brief.

I wonder if the healing energy, after 3 months of daily meditations, doesn’t need stillpoints any more because it knows my system well by now.

When I work on others, a stillpoint seems like a pause when the healing energy is assessing their system and gathering resources before it starts swirling.

Swirliness happens when the healing energy of the Tide changes its action from regulation (ascending and descending the central energy channel) or stillpoints (gathering resources) to healing whatever is ready to be healed (swirling where it’s needed), as best I understand it experientially.

Swirliness is so mysterious and magical! It has its own agenda for healing that is extremely intelligent!

I believe it’s way more intelligent than any of us could possibly be. After all, it has known us deeply and intimately, from the inside out, since shortly after our conception.

Sometimes it moves really fast, zipping around. Sometimes it slows down and lingers in an area.

Today it touched on all my chakras and did some more realigning of my cranial bones.

Usually it feels really good! Sometimes, like today with my frontal bone, there was a brief, slight sense of discomfort until the bone was aligned with its neighbors.

Photo: wave receding from lava tube, with whispering stones, at Wai’anapanapa State Park, Hana, Maui.

Locating and healing stuck fear in my body

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I woke early, not sure when, still dark, though.

It happens.

I’ve listened to multiple Yoga Nidra/NSDR meditations on YouTube to help me get back to sleep, enough to improvise one for myself.

So I did! I included my chakras and central energy channel as well as breath and body parts, and indeed, went back to sleep until daylight.

Hmm. New idea for teaching Biodynamic Meditation in person!

So when I did my own Biodynamic Meditation, I was already primed.

By the second physiological sigh, I sensed radiance at my face. By the third, my central energy channel with Tide.

A cranial stillpoint came on. Then swirliness.

Then I felt a steady sensation of coolness in my abdomen. At first it was larger, and as I stayed with it, it became smaller.

I don’t know what’s going on, except that there is a holding pattern there that feels old that I haven’t noticed before.

Our bodies hold so much history.

It seems related to fear. Stuck fear.

It didn’t unwind or dissolve today, but the healing energy showed it to me and gave it more healing resources.

I’m wondering if this will be a new focus in future sessions, the way my cranial bones and pelvis — sites of multiple injuries — have.

This is day 87, practicing Biodynamic Meditation. The sun is shining on a lot of tree damage in the Austin area, and power is coming back on for many. My office park is without power or water… I look forward to working when it’s restored.

Photo of Florida sunrise by Eric Towler, photographer and Zen friend.

We are all miracles. Appreciate yourself!

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Today I heard a cardinal chirping when I first awoke, a sign that spring is coming. They nest here every year. I love hearing and seeing them.

I went to work on my business website, editing and updating my offerings, before I even remembered to meditate.

Staying at home during this Texas ice storm has thrown my rhythms off.

Radiance came first, then third eye, solar plexus, heart, and root chakras, followed by a little bit of tide and a lot of swirliness.

Swirliness moved through my upper back, shoulders, and neck, reminding me to use better posture, because when I get into a writing trance, I can easily forget I have a body until it reminds me.

Swirliness also addressed issues in my upper abdomen, in the middle where stomach and liver abut.

It could have been my omentum, too, the layer of adipose tissue that moves to cuddle needy abdominal organs, bringing them extra resources.

We are simply fascinating! Every single one of us is a walking miracle.

Radiance at my face

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My Biodynamic Meditation this morning:

Set Insight Timer for 40 minutes.

Physiological sighs.

Radiance at my face.

It felt strong today and kept my attention the whole rest of the time, except for a few check-ins of my central energy channel, where I felt the Tide ascending and descending.

This radiance is different from a stillpoint at the cranial end of the central channel.

It’s different from sensing cranial chakras, although they may also be open while my face feels radiant. Today they were open but not strong.

The radiance involves my whole face.

When I first began to sense it, it was only across the middle of my face.

Over time the radiance has spread.

Discerning sensations is part of knowing thyself.

Then, the age-old human question is, “But what does it mean?”

I don’t really know, except that it feels life-affirming.

It is also a sign of healing for me. Because of an early trauma, I wanted to hide, to be invisible.

This radiance has found my face and put a shine on it.

Cold spell in much of the U.S. No snow so far in Austin, Texas. I love the stillness in this random online photo.

May you be warm and safe.