Category Archives: spirit

First restore, THEN move in!

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I teach restorative yoga, and a friend and fellow yogi who attended my Free Day of Yoga restorative class last Labor Day, Shelley Seale, invited me to teach a class at her new live/work space — the morning before she moved in.

There were seven of us yogis in this awesome space, getting all chill before the strenuous, stressful work of moving.

I can only imagine what it must be like to move after having a 90-minute restorative yoga session. I want to try it for my next move.

I want to recognize Shelley for having such a creative, collaborative idea, and letting some OMs fill her fabulous new space!

If you want to do something like that, please get in touch!

~~

Another note: My Sunday evening restorative yoga class is settling on just the right time during these lengthening days. We’ll now meet at 7 and end at 8:30.

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

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.

Fall down seven times, get up eight

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I discovered this lovely blog post about the resilience of the Japanese people. Thought it was worth sharing.

They say that in times of crisis people show their true character. Anyone can be cooperative, patient, and understanding when things are going well and life is good. But it is the noble man or woman who can behave with grace and compassion and even kindness when times are very, very bad. For many people in Northern Japan right now, the times could not be worse. And yet, at least to the outside observer, the manner in which the Japanese people conducted themselves in the aftermath of this calamity has been remarkable.

Here’s more:

The best kind of motivation is intrinsic motivation. For the benefit of oneself — and for the benefit of others as well — one must bear down and do their best. Even in good times, behaving uncooperatively or in a rude manner is deeply frowned upon. In a crisis, the idea of complaining or acting selfishly to the detriment of those around you is the absolute worst thing a person can do. There is no sense in complaining about how things are or crying over what might have been. These feelings may be natural to some degree, but they are not productive for yourself or for others.

Click the link to read on.

Quote about teaching yoga

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Teaching yoga is the best job in the world because you get to do it barefoot and wearing your pajamas. 🙂 Celebrate!

From Judith Hanson Lasater on Facebook.

She’s got a point! I said that when I retired from my serious job where I was an employee and worked for a salary, I’d wear yoga clothes all the time.

Well, I’m not retired yet from that type of job (but soon, I hope), and I manage to wear yoga clothes to work (with jewelry, shawls, and jackets) nearly every day.

My favorite yoga pants that I’ve found so far come from Lucy.com (they come in lengths). They are so comfortable and durable.

Claiming some me time

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Like the Energizer bunny, I’ve just kept going and going, with work and training and teaching and transitioning toward a new home, and then things started to go not so well. Low back-ache, fatigue, muscle tension, losing things, not handling a situation well, emotional sensitivity, feeling close to overwhelm.

As in, “If one more difficult thing happens, I’m going to lose it, and it’s not going to be pretty.”

As much as I like to meet life from a place of strength and resilience, sometimes that isn’t what’s real.

So I declared this afternoon as me time. You know. Solitary unpressured time — several hours of it — to rest, ruminate, and recover.

I even cancelled my restorative yoga class, which I try not to do, because I know when you need it, you need it, and it’s disappointing if it’s not available.

Yogis and yoginis, namaste. It’s savasana time for me, and for you if you need it! And, I am changing our class time to 7:30-9 pm so we can all have more “day” to enjoy on Sundays, then eat lightly, do the class, drive home, and go to bed all relaxed.

How does that sit with you?

We all need time to be active, time for sleep, and time for rest. In this case, I have not been getting enough rest.

Rest is when I check in with myself and get back on track, reconnect with myself and recenter.

It’s actually one of the best parts about being human. That we can do this!!!

And now, I’m going within, to get in touch with my feelings, breathe, maybe cry a little, curl up with Mango, and get some rest. And plan how to intervene with myself a little bit sooner so this doesn’t happen again. I hate disappointing people! I believe it may be time to restart my regular sitting practice, which has become irregular.

Yep. This is what happens when I don’t meditate. Yep, I’m really remembering that now.