Category Archives: books

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…

 

4-Hour Body exercise induces shaking

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Today I induced trembling unintentionally.

I’m reading The 4-Hour Body. I was feeling achy in my lower back this morning and decided to try some exercises I read about last week. The Egoscue Method is a postural therapy program with 24 clinics worldwide. Tim Ferriss, the author, was skeptical but tried a session, walking out after 90 minutes with no pain in his mid-back for the first time in six months.

He recommends six exercises for desk-dwellers’ postural imbalances.

If you have the book, I’m talking about pages 302-306.

The last exercise of the six is called the “air bench”. It’s like Exercise 6a of the trauma releasing exercises.

  1. Stand with back against a wall, feet and knees hip width apart, feet straight ahead.
  2. Walk your feet out as you slide your back down the wall. Stop when your knees are bent 90 degrees. Ankles should be slightly ahead of knees. Lower back is flat against the wall. Keep the weight in your heels.
  3. Hold for two minutes.

Aargh, it’s hard work! I bring my attention to my breath and breathe slowly, deeply, and smoothly. Otherwise, I’d be moaning.

When I finished, I lay on my yoga mat and did Exercise 6b, on my back, soles pressed together, knees as wide as possible, sacrum elevated two inches.

Then I immediately relaxed and put my soles flat on the floor and trembled, shook, and quivered for 20 minutes! It was a very good session, with lots of releasing. Both shoulders released, separately.

Nothing new to report except that I seem to be experiencing less intense shaking in my legs. I don’t shake as hard.

I wonder if there’s a point when you’ve done these exercises enough that you only shake mildly and for a short time.

That will be the blessed day…

Anyway, I’m going to try doing just Exercises 6a and 6b to find out if they alone can induce shaking. Next time!

The 4-Hour Body, continued: pre-hab and weight loss

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I blogged in January that I was starting to read Tim Ferriss’ new book, The 4-Hour Body. Well, I’m still reading it! It’s a big book chock full of interesting information, and I’m reading it from front to back, which Tim does not recommend.

Well, I’m up to page 332 out of 474 (excluding the 100 pages of appendices, bonus material, and index), reading about something Tim calls “pre-hab”. This chapter is about stabilizing the body to prevent injuries. The man who has worked with world-class athletes to improve their consistent high performance is Gray Cook, and Tim pumped him for information for do-it-yourselfers like me to do at home.

It’s all about gaining strength and stability using basic movement patterns.

Boy, I need this. A strong wind can almost blow me over. I’m 58 and understand how devastating a fall can be in a way I didn’t when I was a lot younger (“Why don’t you just get up?”). Even though I’m probably fitter than average for someone my age, I can always improve.

So apparently you can self-assess by doing some exercises and noticing left-right imbalances and wobbling/shifting. Then there are four corrective exercises to fix the most common imbalances/weaknesses.

These have names like chop and lift, Turkish get-up, two-arm single-leg deadlift, and cross-body one-arm single-leg deadlift.

You might as well be speaking a foreign language, Tim!

I’m going to pursue this, and I wish for someone who speaks this language to magically show up and guide me. Know anyone?

~~~

I do have something else to report from The 4-Hour Body. I followed the Slow Carb diet in February. Subtitle: How to Lose 20 Pounds in 30 Days Without Exercise.

Results: I lost only 4 pounds but lost several inches converting fat to muscle. I don’t have an accurate way of measuring BMI, just a scale, and it showed a loss.

Note: I have been on a gluten-free diet for several years, and I also (usually) avoid potatoes. That’s probably where most people who eat those things lose the 20 pounds.

This diet calls for no rice, no dairy, no fruit/sugar/sweeteners, just eating the same meals of animal protein/legumes/veggies every day. Yep, beans, eggs or fish, and veggies at every meal. Good thing I love refried beans.

The bonus is one day a week you can eat whatever you want. Yes, built-in cheating! I went all out twice and then binged moderately, with a kefir and pomegranate and stevia smoothie and occasionally ice cream.

I learned gratitude for the variety of legumes in this world. Refried beans, fava beans, limas, snap peas, black beans. The beans really help each meal “stick to your ribs” so you don’t get hungry and snack in between meals.

I lost inches around my upper arms, thighs, and waist, and I gained an inch around my hips. That inch is all in my booty, from doing kettlebell swings twice a week. I’m sure it’s building bone density too.

Have you read the book and tried any of his suggestions?

 

Livin’ in the suburbs, drivin’ a rental

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My posting has been infrequent lately because (1) I’m working full-time on a three-month technical writing contract and (2) I just moved after selling my home of 10 years.

I thought I got rid of a lot of stuff when I got the house ready to list back in November, but when it came time to pack and move all but some basic necessities into a storage unit, I discovered that I still have way too much stuff. Gonna need another weeding when I move into my trailer.

Moving has been disorienting. I lost my little red Canon camera some time between Saturday afternoon, when I had someone take a photo of Judith Lasater and me (she created restorative yoga, would have loved to put that on my yoga page) and Wednesday morning, when I wanted to photograph some spectacular clouds and discovered my camera was not in my purse.

I’ve contacted Yoga Yoga and looked under the car seats and in the most obvious places. It will probably show up at some point. (Apparently the police found my laptop that was stolen in December! Will get that back next week!)

I also can’t find a box with my supplements in it. I take most of the supplements recommended in the book Buddha’s Brain. I’m glad I posted about them, because I may need to go buy replacements, and that book is deep in a box in storage.

Yesterday I completely forgot the PIN for my debit card. Proof that nourishing those neurotransmitters makes a tangible difference!

Adding to my feelings of disorientation and insecurity, I’ve been having car problems since Dec. 23. I took it back to the shop twice for problems; then when it overheated, I took it to a different shop, and that shop discovered it had a blown head gasket, which none of the previous shops had discovered.

I’m ready for my car to be fixed completely! And I hear myself whining and know that I created this. Well, maybe not all of it, but I wanted a change. And here I am. Livin’ in the suburbs, drivin’ a rental, camera-less and supplement-less. Oh well!

A couple of positive notes: Mango handled the move really well. This was our first move together. I bought him a top-loading cat carrier — much easier to get him into it. I moved him with the last load, and he meowed most of the way. He’s been super affectionate and hasn’t even tried to go outside yet.

And…he’s been behaving in a frisky manner! Running and jumping up on furniture with a goofy look on his face! I think he likes this place — a big house with three people to give him attention.

The other note: Saturday, in the midst of moving, I took a restorative yoga workshop with Judith Lasater, who created restorative yoga. I’m so glad I  did. I’ll post about that separately.

Anyway, here I am living in Wells Branch with Katie and Keith and Mango, while I work on this contract job and purchase, get transported, and set up my next home, a vintage trailer. Stay tuned for more adventures!

Welcome to the Chronic Stress and Trauma Recovery Challenge!

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Good morning! It’s a lovely 18 degrees F. here in Austin, TX, with rolling blackouts occurring around the state as I write this due to the extreme demand for electricity. My old house is chill, and I’m lucky to be bi-powered, with gas and electricity.

If you don’t have the book, The Revolutionary Trauma Release Process: Transcend Your Toughest Times, or the video, or if you’re completely lost about this work,check out these videos on YouTube:

  • Trauma & Tension Releasing Exercises, 1:37. This silent video first shows a captured polar bear trembling to release shock and stress from its body, and then it shows several people doing the same in a deliberately induced process (because we humans have mostly forgotten how to do this). You can get a sense from seeing the variety of ways that people tremble, shake, and rock that there’s not a “right way” to do it. Your body finds its own way to release stress and trauma, and that can look a bit different from person to person. If your body does something else, just surrender (but please keep yourself safe.)
  • Trauma Releasing Exercises, 3:58. This video shows a group of women at a workshop testifying about their experience, as well as some bits showing them doing the exercises. If you haven’t done them before, check out what the trembling can look like. Really clears out energy blocks in the lower chakras!
  • There are also a series of six videos, interviews with David Berceli, author of the book above, who developed these exercises. I haven’t seen them all yet.

I’m getting out my book and turning to page 144. Here goes!

Ahh. I stopped after 30 minutes so I could finish this post before my chiropractor appointment. Had a sense I could have gone for 5 more minutes.

Noticings:

  • I have been holding off on doing these, noticing stress in my body and wanting to really be ready to do these exercises for this challenge!
  • The floor was cold, even on a yoga mat, so I spread yoga blankets on it.
  • I do Version B of Exercises 2 and 3. What do you do?
  • I have to do Exercise 2 longer to feel stress in my calf. But then I can squat with flat feet, so my calves are pretty stretched out. Do you find that you need to do more of any exercise to feel the stress in your muscles?
  • I believe that Exercise 6 is really the tough core of the process. Today the trembling started just before I went into the third minute. I hung in there for five minutes! (I wonder if you were in a hurry and just did this one exercise, would your legs begin trembling? I will probably check that out at some point!)
  • Exercise 7 is the release! Whee! Today, mostly my legs trembled, but my hands shook at times as well, and when the trembling stopped, my body began to rock. I alternated, trembling and rocking, for 15 minutes.
  • My cat Mango curled up next to my side while I was on the floor trembling. Cats are very sensitive to good energy! Thank you, Mango!

All in all, today was a good start.

If anyone reading this in Austin, TX, is interested in doing these with me, please get in touch. I’d love to teach you or do these with you. If enough people are interested, I will look for a place to teach these for free or very low cost.

Meanwhile, until Feb. 26, there’s my house!

Since I’m doing these on even-numbered days in February, until Friday! (It may be an everything-closed-because-of-snow-and-ice day here in Austin, Texas!)

Byron Katie’s website and books

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If you’re interested in learning more about Byron Katie and The Work, please check out her website.

She mentioned several times yesterday that she makes her worksheets and other resources available for free on her website. They’re on the Do The Work page.

She also helps people find certified facilitators in The Work, some of whom work for free or on a sliding scale, or use Skype so that location isn’t a problem.

I see that there is also a helpline.

Her first book, Loving What Is: Four Questions that Can Change Your Life, came out in 2002. This book covers applying The Work in all kinds of situations: couples and family life, work and money, self-judgment, underlying beliefs, children, the body and addiction.

There’s even a chapter on trauma, Making Friends with the Worst That Can Happen.

She’s also written:

Most recently, she and Eckhardt Tolle have contributed to a gift book, Peace in the Present Moment, which consists of selected quotations from them with photographs of flowers.

There are also Byron Katie audiobooks available on Amazon.com.

Day 10: Tim Ferriss and The 4-Hour Body. I love teaching yoga. YES!

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The three things I’m grateful for today (day 10 of 21) are: Tim Ferriss, teaching yoga, and the word YES.

If you don’t know Tim Ferriss, you should. He wrote a groundbreaking book called The 4-Hour Work Week, which was a huge bestseller. He shared how people can get out of the rat race of working long hours for someone else and find a new lifestyle where the work is mostly remote and delegated.

Tim chose to travel, learn tango, compete in martial arts contests, and write a bestseller after setting up a health supplement company that practically ran on autopilot, which allowed him the time and income to do those things.

I haven’t followed his formula, but it inspired me to come up with a business idea that I could do anywhere I have access to a phone for a few hours a day, with fairly low start-up costs. I may do it yet, so it’s a secret!

What I love about Tim is his plain ol’ brashness. He’s incredibly curious and likes to find out for himself. He’s a pioneer, an explorer, an adventurer, a seeker, a finder, and a sharer. He’s got the energy of a barrel of laughing monkeys. What’s not to like?

He blogs about his experiments in lifestyle design, too.

Tim is back with a new book, The 4-Hour Body. I’ve just started reading it, and I can tell you now, I will learn a lot from it. With access to doctors, scientists, elite athletes, and state-of-the-art measuring equipment for his own personal experimentation, Tim has hacked the secrets to losing weight, gaining muscle, sleeping well, increasing testosterone and sperm count, running faster, reversing “permanent” injuries, and having 15-minute orgasms. So the cover says, anyway!

He shows you how to make tiny changes, starting from where you are now, that are the most effective changes. His key question is:

For all things physical, what are the tiniest changes that produce the biggest results?

(No wonder this appeals to me: It’s a Maximizer strategy. See my earlier post about finding your strengths.)

I love key questions and will blog about them in the future.

I peeked ahead to see how to lose 20 lbs in 30 days. His formula is:

  • Avoid “white” carbohydrates (or anything that can be white).
  • Eat the same few meals over and over again.
  • Don’t drink calories.
  • Don’t eat fruit.
  • Take one day off per week and go nuts.

And then he gives the fine points.

(Can’t wait until he hacks enlightenment in his next book, The 4-Hour Brain. You listening, Tim?)

Another thing I’m grateful for is that I finally took yoga teacher training and am teaching yoga. It is so gratifying to help motivated people find their way into yoga. Whether they are beginners who want one-on-one personal attention and instruction as they learn, or just want to unwind from stress and experience some deep relaxation, I’m enjoying teaching.

At present, I have one class on Sunday evenings, a restorative class in Oak Hill, and I have a private student who comes to my home after work one evening each week. (Bonus: My cat Mango curled up on top of her during savasana this week! He knows where the good juicy energy is.)

I’d like to teach more. My rates are very reasonable. Private classes are $25 an hour now, and group classes are $10 for 60 minutes, $15 for 90 minutes. If you want a trial session, call me.

You can read more on my Yoga offerings page on this blog.

I am grateful for the word YES. I’ve been getting some very nice YESes in my life lately. Two offers on my house this week, one of which I am getting ready to say YES to — and some folks who were looking at it last night loved it too. Affirmation!

Oh, and according to Patrice,

No is just another way of saying Yes.

So basically, it’s all Yes!

Water falling from the sky, Mexican food, and saying no

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I am grateful for rainy days, specifically for today’s drizzle and forecast of rain for the rest of today and into tomorrow. After I post this, I’m going back to bed with a cup of tea and the wonderful novel I’m reading.

Isn’t it somewhat miraculous that we live on a planet where water falls out of the sky from shape-shifting beings called clouds? And that water soaks into the earth to nourish plant life, which feeds all the animals, including us, and also — by seeking the lowest place — that it runs off into streams and rivers and seas? And that water evaporates back into clouds to start the cycle over again?

(If it’s flooding now where you live, I hope you feel grateful for the evaporation and the gaps between rains.)

I feel gratitude for Mexican food. I just made myself some migas for breakfast. If you’re not familiar with migas, they’re scrambled eggs with salsa, grated cheese, and crumbled corn chips mixed in. Very popular in Texas!

I love the mouth-feel (the soft warm cage-free farm eggs and cheddar cheese contrasted with the crunch of the corn chips), the flavors (bland eggs, piquant salsa, sharp cheddar, salty chips), and the colors (especially if you use the baked blue corn chips). Migas made with high-quality, healthy, fresh ingredients are quite appetizing, and it’s a fun, creative way to gussy up scrambled eggs. (Try some smoked goat gouda sometimes in place of the cheddar. Yum!)

I feel gratitude for being able to say “no”. My friend Katie just called about meeting up with her and other dear friends today for an attractive adventure.

I declined, telling her of my plan to read in bed today.

She liked that I was doing that for myself, and I liked that she and Glenda and Vee were doing something they wanted to do. We left off agreeing that either I’ll call her when I’m ready for something else, or she’ll call me when they’re ready to do something else. Everyone is happy and fulfilled and flexible.

Easy peasy, huh? Not always, for me. I’ve learned how to say no without feeling like I need to apologize, and for that I feel very, very grateful.

On the third day of gratitude…health, a car wreck, and the best novel ever

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I am grateful for my health. I know that is a “typical” thing to be grateful for, and that people often compare themselves to those who are having serious health struggles, so they feel grateful and somewhat guilty.

I like comparing present to past in my own life, since health struggles are inevitable, seeing that we are all mortal. It’s more useful.

In my past I’ve neglected my health terribly and suffered from it. Smoking, drinking, eating crappy processed stale food, shorting myself on sleep, being stressed for prolonged periods of time, not exercising, being depressed or resentful or numb.

Mostly that was due to my own ignorance about how to improve and maintain my health.

I lacked awareness that what holds us in life are chemicals and electricity operating within a narrow bandwidth, and when our bodymindheartspirit systems go outside that bandwidth, life fails and we die.

To be truly healthy means attending to and nourishing our bodies with the food we eat and the water we drink, using our bodies with physical activity, and letting our emotions become trusted messengers doing their jobs, helping us make decisions and connect with others and fulfill our destinies, no more and no less.

I woke up this morning feeling really great. My bodymindheartspirit feels flexible, fierce, capable, loving, playful, and resilient. I loved on Mango, my cat, who has been feeling a little under the weather the last few days, keeping quietly to himself. He loved receiving a long, gentle massage. My health overflows, and I am grateful.

I am grateful for a car wreck that I had in 1996 that changed my life. I know it seems like an odd thing to say, and I wasn’t grateful for a long time afterwards. I felt like a victim (and technically, I was driving completely appropriately, hit by someone who was driving inappropriately, speeding, drinking, and passing on the right as I made a right turn, who left the scene, never to be held accountable by law or insurance — luckily I had uninsured motorist coverage). I had to give that up to God and focus on my recovery. God has taken care of it.

In hindsight, what that car wreck did for me was set me on the path to health. I had to set some new boundaries based on my limitations. I started seeking relief from the damage to my body, which outside of a few stitches on my head, was soft tissue damage — my musculo-skeletal system was seriously out of whack, stretched this way and that by the impacts.

Healing has taken years and money, and in the process I’ve learned of other long-standing health issues and worked through them.

I got serious about doing yoga. I experienced chiropractic of several kinds, myofascial release work, and so much more. I got a fabulous first-hand education, and now I am moving in the direction of becoming a healer myself.

Today I also feel grateful for Michael Malone, whom I have never met, but whose novel Handling Sin is the most entertaining novel-reading experience I’ve ever had. Thanks to Cate Radebaugh for recommending it. I trust your discernment about fiction, Cate!

I tell you, this guy is a born storyteller who has crafted a fabulous tale about the responsible misfit in a large Southern family from the small town of Thermopylae, NC, accompanying him on an incredibly improbable and hilarious roadtrip, meeting colorful characters that will make you laugh and weep (in fact, one character, a tiny aged Jewish career criminal, is named Weeper Berg) as you and the hero recognize truths about human nature.

Michael Malone has me in the palm of his hand, and I’m grateful for everything it took for this book to be written and published and get into my hands.

Gratitude for my daughter, women friends, and skilled intuitive healers

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About gratitude journals

From googling “gratitude journal,” the practice apparently began in 1996 when Sarah Ban Breathnach created The Simple Abundance Journal of Gratitude as a companion to her popular book Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy.

Here’s a blurb about the book:

“Gratitude is the most passionate transformative force in the cosmos,” promises author Sarah Ban Breathnach (Simple Abundance) in her introduction.

I believe it, Sister Sarah!

Sarah asked journalers (journalists?) to write five things every day that they felt grateful for and said they would feel their lives shift within a couple of months.

In 1998, Oprah Winfrey had Sarah as a guest on her show, and as we all know, Oprah just knows goodness. The gratitude journal took off.

I missed out on this back then. It was in the early days of the world wide web (remember that?). I was working at a computer all day, and in my free time, the last thing I wanted to do was be on a computer. (My, how Facebook and blogging have changed that!)

I was raising an adolescent girl going through her most difficult period, in an often-strained relationship.

Actually, looking back, keeping gratitude journals would probably have been a fantastically wonderful practice for us to share back then, if she had deigned to share anything with me.

Hmmm. She’s changed, and so have I.

What I feel grateful for today

Today I feel grateful for my whole experience of motherhood. From pregnancy (easy), through childbirth (difficult), to the moment I held my new baby in my arms for the first time and she wrapped her tiny fingers around my little finger (instant love), I have been blessed to have had a child, a daughter, and specifically my daughter, Lela Rose, who is 29 years old now.

Lela at her Dec 2010 graduation from nursing school, with her women friends.

I watched and helped her grow up, even as I grew up more myself, and she has turned out to be a mensch, a true human being. I see her in her young adult years now, a mother herself, starting her nursing career just this week, moving through struggle to accomplishment. I see her self-esteem, her worthiness, her competency, her intelligence, her endearing goofiness, her wisdom, her discipline, her caring, her limits too.

What I am most grateful for about being a mother is the personal growth that raising her brought to my life — the growing up that I had to do, the inner work of exploring my values, learning when to be flexible and when to stand firm, the changes that being her mother brought to my life.

Today I feel grateful for my women friends, in particular Clarita and Linaka, whom I spent time with last night. We go way back to 1995 when we began ecstatically dancing together. That is 16 years of knowing each other, talking, coming together and moving away, seeing each other through difficulties and joys and sharing them, traveling together, cooking and eating together, always laughing together, and lately doing NLP with each other.

I feel blessed to have so many women friends, new and old, near and far. There is something about the friendship of women that is so nurturing. I think we let our hair down when it’s just us, in a way that we don’t or can’t with men, because we share the lifelong experience of being women in this culture. And when we have common interests and affection for each other, the connecting is abundant.

Today I feel grateful for those people I’ve encountered so far in my life who are skilled intuitive healers. I’ve mentioned Patrice, my acupuncturist, and Chandler Collins, my chiropractor, on this blog before.

Yesterday I had a heart-centering bodymind session with Bo Boatwright, who is a chiropractor but who has learned and developed a method that one could do with just a massage license.

Having experienced one session with Bo, I’d say his work with me on the table was a combination of massage, chiropractic, myofascial release, rebirthing, and visualization. He rolled me and moved me to find the stuck places, and he dug into the stuck places, having me breathe all the while, until my body spontaneously began to release stress/tension/stuckness in the manner of rebirthing and trauma releasing exercises.

After my body quieted down, I felt sadness arise in my heart chakra. I cried, and Bo asked me about my relationship with my parents, who died in 1984 and 1997 (but of course one’s relationship with parents doesn’t end with death). I opened my heart to them, forgave them, embraced them, kissed them…

A couple of hours later, in a moment of quiet stillness, I noticed a new space in my heart center, an openness that wasn’t there before.

Thanks, Bo. I’m grateful for you. And heads up, you are teaching me.