love how poetry feeds my soul. enjoy this sunday bonus.
Understanding Trauma | What a world if everybody only knew!.
Longtime readers know I’m a huge fan and grateful recipient of the trauma recovery work of Peter A. Levine. I’ve been exploring Beyond Trauma, the Somatic Experiencing blog. I just read the post linked to above and thought I’d share.
The post contains a link to a 30-minute podcast that inspires some great questions:
Several readers have shared their experiences of doing the trauma releasing exercises of David Berceli here on this blog. Here’s a new report. David writes:
I ordered the video and it arrived yesterday. I tried the exercises for a second time today. I did the preparatory stretches and then did the wall position. Leaning against the wall I just tried to get deeper into my breathing, but for the longest time very little happened. I was having little tremors, but they still felt half-way forced.
Then gradually, after about seven minutes, some real trembling and shaking started. The more relaxed I became the more pronounced they were. I had no control over them at all. I almost felt like shouting down to my wife to come upstairs and see what was happening, because it was so strange. Just overall, rapid involuntary tremors in my legs, through my pelvis and along my torso. They went on and on for at least ten minutes.
Then I tried the lying position and it was less successful. Still, I’m grateful I tried and I’ll keep doing them.
Thank you, David, for writing.
Doing the exercises can generate the release of muscle tension in the form of shaking and trembling, but it doesn’t happen automatically.
It’s great that David kept at it. Tried the exercises a second time and continued to be willing for the trembling and shaking to start after having little “half-way forced” tremors.
There is a step in inducing tremors for the first time that no one can instruct you how to do. Between doing the exercises and involuntarily shaking and trembling, there’s a step that I think of as surrendering. It is a skill, but it’s a skill of “not doing” rather than doing. You have to be able to let go of your need to control your body.
That can be scary, but it can be done.
For some people, surrendering is easy and natural. For others, especially people who have been traumatized and who are carrying tension in their bodies, it isn’t easy or natural at all.
If you are one of these people, I urge you not to give up. Just keep at it and eventually you will surrender and shake.
Get in touch with your hunger.
That’s all. Just get in touch with your hunger.
How long has it been since you actually felt hunger? We live with abundant food all around us, but our bodies haven’t evolved much from 10,000 years ago when the human species was hunting and gathering its food, feasting in times of plenty and going hungry in lean times.
Many modern people go for years without ever feeling hungry, so that when it does happen, they don’t know the sensation—and if they do know it, they gobble food down to avoid feeling it as quickly as possible. Feeling anything has become something to be avoided.
Many people eat according to the clock, not according to their stomachs. And we wonder why we have such an obesity problem. It’s not just the HFCS. It’s not being in touch with our bodies, with our hunger, with what “enough” actually is.
If you feel stuck with unnecessary weight or a poor diet, if you’ve used food to numb your feelings while comforting yourself, try this:
Postpone your next meal until you feel hungry and really notice the sensations in your body of feeling hungry.
There are wonderful wise lessons to learn from feeling hunger that can help you live a healthy life that you actually experience and enjoy first-hand.
You can totally play with eating in this way! A couple of weeks of eating like this is quite refreshing after mindless eating and pretty much guarantees that just by being in touch with your hunger and eating accordingly, you will drop a few pounds.
More importantly, you may feel more energy and gratitude for your life.
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Caveat: When is it not a good idea to play with hunger? When you have issues with your blood sugar. If you are diabetic or pre-diabetic or have hypo- or hyperglycemia, or get really shaky when hungry, you need to take extra good care of yourself and consult a knowledgeable professional first.
That’s what my 12-year-old granddaughter said about Ecstatic Dance Austin this morning. We arrived during warmup. She sat in a corner and watched. I danced. The space was full.
She sounded surprised and delighted when she made this observation. I had to agree. We do dance like little kids at ecstatic dance. Only we have better rhythm and more grace, and maybe some of us feel a bit more stiffness until we get warmed up. From what I remember, little kids don’t need to warm up.
We definitely have the playfulness, the wholeheartedness, the joy, the abandon, and the presence of little kids when we’re on that dance floor.
We’ve gotten pretty good at connecting with each other and respecting boundaries, completely nonverbally.
We’ve gotten pretty good at keeping the space safe, of moving into the empty spaces instead of colliding. We keep our eyes open.
We’re pretty good at spontaneity and going with the flow.
You could say we dance like nobody’s watching, and that’s because no one is. They’re paying attention to their own dance, dancing with one or more partners, maybe even dancing with the whole room. We’re there to dance, not judge.
I had a blast today, making some sweet connections, and my pulled soleus muscle is working well. I did some jumping and leaping, and it felt strong and capable. It’s just a little stiff. I believe that in another week, the healing will be complete.
Hurray for healing my own injuries!
We also got the good news that the development project that was going to tear down our dance space at the Austin Yoga School on South Lamar has fallen through, and the tenants can stay in their spaces.
That news was very welcome.
And so she danced a dance with me. For one song, we boogied and swung and jumped and played and grinned and laughed and got silly together.
Life is good.
I came across this excerpt from Shambhala Sun magazine from Thich Nhat Hanh on mindful walking. It is a way of being grounded, and since that is an essential energy of well-being, I want to link to it so you can read it all (one screenful on my laptop) and include an excerpt describing a basic element of the practice, in case you’re interested but pressed for time.
One way to practice walking meditation is to breathe in and take one step, and focus all your attention on the sole of your foot. If you have not arrived fully, 100 percent in the here and the now, don’t take the next step.
Here is his Walking Meditation Poem:
I take refuge in Mother Earth.
Every breath, every step
manifests our love.
Every breath brings happiness.
Every step brings happiness.
I see the whole cosmos in the earth.
May your day include grounded energy!
Since I’ve posted before on how prolonged sitting is unhealthy and how to counteract it, and I’ve promoted standing desks, I want to bring this to your attention (and thanks, Shelley Seale, for bringing it to mine).
This is on the heel of news that sitting less could add two years to your life expectancy.
It is a stationary bicycle with a desktop attached to the front of it. You can pedal and keep your leg muscles active, improve circulation, burn calories, circulate lymph, move cerebrospinal fluid, and more, while working or playing video games!
The FitDesk X Compact Pedal Desk is for sale on Amazon for $249.99. Amazon will cross-sell you a comfy bicycle seat and a laptop/iPad holder to go with it.
The seller offers a full refund (plus shipping) within 30 days if you are not satisfied with it. (Hint: Save the carton.)
One thing I really love about Amazon is reading the customer reviews. This product gets an average of 4.5 stars from 111 reviewers (all gave it 3 to 5 stars). Here are what some said:
It sounds like it won’t compare to serious exercise bikes, but the whole point of it is not getting a strenuous workout but rather getting a light workout over time while getting computer work accomplished or playing video games.
Okay, okay! I want one! I’m drooling at the thought of cycling while writing blog posts! Would be awesome to have one at my next corporate stint.
The FitDesk weighs 33 lbs., holds users up to 250 pounds, and has a “seat extender” available for tall people. It is easy to fold up and move.
Also, there may (or may not, since the product is being continually improved) be issues with the electronic monitor, and I couldn’t get the straight dope on that.
The company has a video showing the product in use:
You can “like” FitDesk on Facebook (where they offer discount codes and giveaways) and follow @fitdesk on Twitter.
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Follow-up on 7.13.2012: The maker of the FitDesk has offered to send me one to try out! I love it! Will post on the experience, with photos!
I’m in bed, mid-afternoon on a Wednesday, listening to the sound of rain on my metal trailer and the rumble of thunder in the background.
When you live in central Texas, and you get several days of thunderstorms and drenching rains in the middle of July, you count your blessings. Last summer was the worst drought on record. There were cracks in the ground an inch across and as deep as two feet where I live. Those cracks began to reappear after a luscious wet spring turned until a dry summer.
Until this week. The rain sounds and feels like a blessing. Even the hot humidity, in between rains, is welcome. It’s been so long since we’ve had it.
I went out earlier today to meet with a recruiter about a job. Yes, I’m looking for a technical writing/editing contract job. I’ve been heavily recruited for multiple jobs in the past week. I have some financial goals that I’d like to achieve before I’ll be ready to settle into a full-time bodywork and changework practice. Need a newer car, insulation and a deck for my trailer, a much desired trip to Peru in February, and some advanced NLP training next summer. I cannot do all that on massage wages.
I feel a bit incongruent about it. I’d love to just do bodywork and change work full time now (plus more writing), but I’m too broke. So, sigh, hi ho. Even though corporate work takes a toll on my health, I was able to earn and save a nice chunk of change that I’ve been living on since that last job ended nearly two months ago.
I’m still recovering from adrenal depletion (according to my acupuncturist, who told me to take OTC rhodiola and eleuthero) from shocks and stress earlier this year, and I am really feeling it today. Naps are good! Avoiding stress is good. So is really cherishing myself and only hanging out with people who are nurturing and fun to be around and trustworthy.
Laughter is good.
In order to work in the corporate world and stay as healthy as I can, I need to:
I’m feeling grateful for this downtime in between jobs to start my private massage practice, to experience doors opening (chair massage, anyone? stretching, trigger points? marketing?).
Meanwhile, I’m learning about the mechanics of trauma/chronic stress recovery first hand, and that will be quite useful in my own life and in my healing practice.
Wish me well!
What would you do in the following situations?
These are just a few of the 61 real-life stories in the new book Sweet Fruit from the Bitter Tree by Mark Andreas. I highly recommend reading this book if you like being resourceful in situations of conflict and desire more peace in your life and in the world.
By the way, the psychiatrist asked the homicidal maniac exactly where he planned to kill him—in this spot or in that spot. While the would-be killer thought it over, the psychiatrist pulled out his key and unlocked the elevator. Calmly stepping out into the hallway, he points to a chair that the killer could sit in afterward. Then he points out another chair, and another at the end of the hallway.
Eventually they arrive at the station where the attendants are gathered.
The psychiatrist was Milton Erickson.
If you want to find out what happened in the other situations, order the book!
This morning I woke early and sensed a shift in my energy.
Without thinking about it, I started happily organizing some accumulated clutter in my bedroom that I’d been procrastinating on. I even fixed a couple of broken things. I cleared some space, found good places for stuff, and created more visual order.
I found a business card I’d been looking for, someone who asked me to contact her once I got my massage license, which I did about a month ago. I’ll call her today. Yay.
I do care about having an orderly home, and yet managing stuff (even living in a trailer!) often gets the better of me. I make it a low priority. It’s not that I’m a terrible slob, although I’m sure I am in someone’s eyes. I pile things up to deal with later. I start doing things and get distracted and don’t finish. I leave stuff out to remind me that it’s not “done”. Then I notice I have a lot of piles, and clearing them seems like drudgery of the worst kind.
Today I created order and completion without thinking about it, because something opened up. I felt more upbeat. I was observing myself, thinking, “Wow, I am behaving differently. I like this. I feel energized and productive. Something has shifted. What happened?”
This is what I attribute the shift to. (Or perhaps the stars had something to do with it.)
On Tuesday evening, I went to bed aware of how much I mentally obsess about problems. By obsess, I mean they occupy my attention during times when I am not actually communicating with the person I have issues with, or I am imagining how I will handle something in the future. I do this often, usually not making much progress.
This ruminating helps me get clearer about my feelings and what I want, but it also distracts me from being fully present. I’m “in my head”. I’m feeling tense and anxious. I’ve become a slave to my thoughts, especially my fears. I get stuck and then don’t know how to stop. And then I become aware of my state.
It’s a way that I create my own suffering. I’d like to get out of my own way.
I vowed to myself that night that since this habit doesn’t really serve me all that well (except when it does give me insight and direction), that I was going to do something different yesterday.
I decided to dissolve my preoccupation. That is, when I realized that I was not feeling happy and present and content because my mind was rehashing some issue and I was feeling lack of joy in my body, I would take an impression, a snapshot, of my full experience—the images and words in my mind and the feelings in my body representing the person or the problem—and imagine that whatever power gave it substance (Higgs boson?) simply withdrew from it.
I saw, heard, and felt it fall apart. Images of faces and places, my own internal dialogue about it, and the worries, fears, and stuckness I felt in my body all lost coherence, dimensionality, reality. They fell apart into a pile of atoms that were swept away by the solar winds.
If it’s all illusion anyway, you might as well make it work for you. You can dissolve the illusions that don’t bring inner peace, joy, and freedom. It’s like dissolving whatever is within that keeps me from fully occupying and experiencing myself in this moment.
Mind you, I’ve just been doing this for one day, and I only did it a handful of times, but that was enough to create the energy shift I felt this morning.
If you’d like to try this, here you go:
The Well: bodymindheartspirit 