This past Saturday, I provided the “ofrenda” at the monthly gathering of women dancing the 5 Rhythms (Step Into Yes) in Austin, facilitated by Lisa DeLand (dancingfirelizards.com).
Lisa and I are old friends. We met at Sweat Your Prayers, an ecstatic dance, in 1995. We have similar paths of recovery from adverse childhood experiences, and now, having worked a lot with our selves, by ourselves and with the help of others, we are in the primes of our lives in terms of creating and offering paths to wholeness and wellness for those in search.
Our paths have some overlap. We both are acquainted with the vast amount of suffering in the world, including our own, and feel moved to offer paths that liberate us and those we work with from conditioning that limits us.
My ofrenda was called Bringing Us Home To Our Existence, and I had 20 minutes between waves of dancing to teach the 28 or so women present about their inner rhythms: breath, heartbeat, and tide.
Background: In late 2022, I began posting on Instagram daily — for 100 days — my experience of what I was then calling Biodynamic Meditation. I’d actually begun practicing it many years previously, in 2013, after I took my first class in Craniosacral Biodynamics and wanted to explore how the concepts of the breath of life, primary respiration, potency, and the tides actually manifested in my own embodied existence.
I sat and sat and noticed more and more. It helped to have some direction from my training, and I could go to my teacher, describe my experience, and have him verify whether I was on track.
That’s one way of learning.
I had planned to start teaching Biodynamic Meditation in 2023, and then I learned I was going to have to move from my home of 12 years, which disrupted my plans.
The move is complete. My foundation training in Craniosacral Biodynamics (and certification) is complete. I’m spending this year learning how best to teach Biodynamic Meditation, and I dipped into in-person teaching of a large group for the first time on Saturday. It was too brief, but they got a taste of it. My take is that some people (who all gathered primarily to dance) were not deeply interested, and others came up afterward and thanked me.
I’m now considering calling it meditation for self-healing, meditation for healing, meditation for health, or simply, how to make friends with your body.
If this is a topic you are interested in, I’d love to hear from you! I’m open to working with individuals, small groups, in person, and online.
This is the name of a Substack I subscribe to. The writer, Natureza Gabriel, is releasing a book by this title chapter by chapter on Substack now, and the book itself will be published in April. You can preorder it.
This topic is fascinating to me. As a bodyworker, biodynamicist, and teacher of meditation for self-healing, I work with the autonomic nervous systems of my clients/friends in every session (how can I not?), mostly assisting them to move more deeply into a parasympathetic state where healing has more resources to happen — healing like tissue repair, better regulation of metabolic processes, better coordination of the body’s systems, reduction of pain and tension, more wholeness, and more.
People experience themselves differently after a session, and some of each session is cumulative. It lasts. Getting regular sessions changes the autonomic nervous system, reducing stress levels. People sense themselves as more whole, integrated, coherent, healthy. I experienced this myself and changed my livelihood to offer it to others.
When the body is in a more sympathetic state, it’s gearing up for action and doesn’t have resources for healing. And…many if not most people in our culture live in bodies that are more stressed than is healthy. Sometimes way more stressed. And that affects everything: health, relationships, performance, behavior, cognition, presence, intuition…
There are many more autonomic states than parasympathetic and sympathetic. It’s more of a spectrum or spiral than an either-or equation, as seen in the image of the book’s cover above of a poster of the autonomic spectrum. You can get these posters from Gabriel’s organization for your office: https://restorativepractices.com/product-category/posters/
I’m someone who years ago, after being diagnosed with PTSD and processing a major childhood trauma (that occurred before PTSD existed as a diagnosis), asked herself, “How relaxed can I get while awake and not using substances?”
As the antidote to having a “stress disorder” that’s conventionally considered incurable, I set off on a journey of meditation, movement practices, bodywork, NLP, shaking, Zen, vipassana, breathwork, stillness, perception, and craniosacral therapy. Then I trained in craniosacral therapy.
The writer Gabriel has trained in neurobiology and also with indigenous people who have maintained connections within themselves, each other, with the world around them that are not prevalent among people in today’s predominant capitalistic, technological cultures.
I’m familiar with some of these connection states as a long-time meditator and through exposure to shamanic/indigenous and Buddhist/yogic beliefs and practices.
Another book by this author is Restorative Practices of Wellbeing, which I just received and will soon be delving into. Find his books here: https://restorativepractices.com/product-category/books/ You can preorder The Neurobiology of Connection as well.
We make the world a better place starting with ourselves.
Reincarnation. Not part of Western culture but a long-time belief in spiritual traditions coming out of India.
I don’t have any explicit, conscious memories of previous lives. So there’s room for doubt.
But what if I had implicit memories? Those are the kinds of memories that become so imbedded — wired in, you might say — that you don’t have to consciously recall them to do certain activities, like driving, reading, conversing in your native language. Or, really, anything you do often enough that you don’t have to think about it.
By the way, you can always improve the activities you do on autopilot by becoming present as you do them. Maybe you always miss a spot when brushing your teeth, and you have dental issues. Or you need to look up words in whatever you’re reading for better comprehension. Or your fancy car beeps when you cross the center line, and you learn to pay better attention.
There’s always room for learning.
Anyway, what if a relationship in this lifetime was with someone you knew in a past life, or perhaps several lives?
How would you know?
I’ve been puzzling about a certain relationship for awhile now. Sometimes I feel like I know this person well, and yet, in this lifetime, I know that I don’t. It’s a mystery.
You know how your mind can make up a story to fit your experience? We like for things to make sense. Narratives are important.
My mind did just that! An idea formed in my consciousness that we had been very close in a previous life or lives, and that I loved them very, very much. I don’t know what the relationship(s) were: life partners, parent/child, siblings, best friends, close collaborators, colleagues…maybe all of the above.
That thought felt really good. It changed my perspective, from feeling unsettled about it to appreciating so much that I get to witness some of their current life and can see some of their evolution.
They have created a beautiful life.
Wow, that might be a good perspective to take with everyone! We’re all evolving.
Also, our species has been settling on farms and in communities for 10,000 years and were nomadic hunter-gathers for many millennia before that.
If reincarnation is for real, then we’ve probably had at least 1,000 lives. Maybe twice that many. Who knows? We could have experienced almost everything.
It’s known now that we can inherit memories. Maybe the idea of reincarnation helped explain that in the eons before we knew about epigenetics.
We all have had at least 2,000 ancestors, and through them have probably experienced almost everything.
Either theory could explain the felt sense of having known and loved someone that you know you have never met before in this lifetime.
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 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.
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!
I started a training course in the fall of 2021 that involves making 10 trips to Washington, DC, from Austin, TX. The training was actually in Silver Spring, a suburb.
I was very enthused about working with this teacher! And…I didn’t think much about all the travel, not ever having had to do much business travel back in those olden days.
The first trip was adventurous! I took the Metro and visited museums on the Mall on an extra day. I stayed in a crappy AirBnB that was close to the training so I could walk.
The second trip I stayed in a nice rowhouse in Columbia Heights and took the Metro to class each day. I visited the Phillips Collection, a good art museum, on my extra day.
On the third trip, I stayed in an AirBnB in Silver Spring where the owner (who did not live there) had gone crazy with a label maker.
Oh, yes, you could find “BOWELS” on a shelf in a kitchen cabinet.
I took the Metro to the Mall and walked to the Lincoln Memorial when the cherry trees were first starting to bloom. It was cold and windy, and I wore myself out, but I’m glad I did it.
On my fourth trip, I burned out. I’d been in a high speed car accident a couple of months before, and I’m convinced that even though I wasn’t seriously injured, going from 65 mph to 0 quickly and getting “spine-lash” is not something the human body is designed to bounce back from. It’s taken PT for my body and many months off body/energy work and breathwork and meditation for my nervous system to recover. I’m still taking Cortisol Manager. It’s been almost a year.
And there’s more… I’d planned to arrive a day early, but my one-stop flight ended in Oklahoma City because of bad weather in DC, and I unexpectedly had to book a hotel room and then be at the airport at 4 am to get a three-stop flight to DC. I was in six airports in two days on next to no sleep. I was tired when I got to DC, and things didn’t improve much.
I had signed up for a 3-day training right before my regular 4-day class. I learned that 7 days in a row in a classroom doesn’t work well for me. I love learning, but I need time to rest, to move, to sleep well, and to integrate.
And more… The Supreme Court overturning of Roe v. Wade happened the first day of class. I read articles that night about the white supremacist, anti-LGBTQ intent of the new conservative majority, which felt threatening to my beautiful rainbow family’s integrity, and it was happening right there in DC.
And still more… The AirBnB I stayed in seemed haunted, in hindsight. The location was good, but day by day, I felt lonelier and more depleted, and I simply did not want to be there. I couldn’t tell if “there” was in that AirBnB, in the training, in DC, or on the planet. I felt empathy with Anthony Bourdain’s suicide. He probably just wanted out.
Being not suicidal, I later wondered whether in my depleted state, I was picking up energies from a previous occupant of that basement apartment who’d been depressed and suicidal.
I went home earlier than I’d planned, drained.
Business travel is not like going to Maui. I thought about dropping out. I stayed home and did the fifth class on video.
Given time, I recovered and went back to DC for the sixth training, staying in a hostel in Adams-Morgan, which I liked better than most of the AirBnBs, again taking the Metro to and from class. I got a couple of nice walks in every day getting to and from the DuPont Circle station.
I enjoyed the hostel. It has dorm rooms with privacy curtains around each bunk and a shared bathroom. Sometimes there’s a happy hour with games. The staff and guests are young, vibrant people who come from many places. The staff knows the neighborhood well and are very friendly and helpful.
There’s a free washer and dryer with detergent and dryer sheets, as well as a big, fully equipped kitchen to cook in.
I also treated myself to a floatation tank session one evening during this sixth trip. It was a great reset.
I was curious about other introverts traveling for business, and fortuitously, the wife of a member of my spiritual book group, Laura, sat next to me at our annual December potluck dinner. I knew Laura was an introvert who had to do a lot of business travel for her consulting job, and I asked her for tips for introverts doing business travel.
Here’s what she kindly shared with me:
The key is to reduce stress by making everything as close to your home routines as possible.
Think about when you are ready to face the world each day, and schedule your departure to the airport for after that time.
Book flights far enough in advance to get desirable nonstop mid-day flights (or at least less time in transit) and make the whole day a travel day. It’s way less stressful.
She advised packing everything into one carry-on and one personal item to avoid waiting at baggage claim. She re-wears or washes clothes.
I haven’t done this yet, but it’s appealing. My big bag that I’ve been checking is heavy for someone not quite five feet tall, and baggage claim can be very slow and crowded, not to mention managing the big bag on the Metro.
She recommended staying at the same place. For her, it’s always the same hotel chain, because the layout and rooms are similar no matter where they’re located.
I’m traveling and training on my own dime and can’t afford hotels. Don’t really like them anyway…so impersonal and corporate and don’t feel very fresh.
If I can’t find an affordable nice AirBnB near the training on my remaining trips, the hostel is my next best choice.
Laura advised ordering food delivered from Whole Foods and eating what I’d eat at home.
That works for me. Having a kitchen to cook in is a big plus. I cook for myself most of the time at home, knowing the ingredients are healthy and my food is made with love.
Not to mention, dining out has gotten expensive.
Laura advised setting toiletries out in the bathroom the same way you do at home, and putting clothes in drawers and the closet the same way you would at home.
If your meeting starts on Monday, and you fly in on Saturday, spend Sunday relaxing and reading a good book.
Laura also advised not joining extroverted colleagues in evening activities after workday meetings. Since we introverts recharge our batteries in solitude, make sure you get enough alone time to fully recharge after a day of being in meetings or training with others. It’s also good to reconnect with loved ones back home every evening on the phone.
I got lucky for my seventh class and found an AirBnB on the same block as my training. I could walk to Whole Foods to get groceries, cook for myself, and walk to class with ease. I brought matcha, frother, and add-ins from home.
It was a spare bedroom in a high-rise apartment complex. I saw some gorgeous sunsets from there and a cherry tree in full bloom on my block. My host was someone nice to chat with a few times, and I had privacy. I felt safe and comfortable, staying with her.
I only used Uber to get to and from the airport and never used the Metro this trip. That helped reduce wear and tear quite a bit.
I’m probably not as introverted as she is, because I joined a few of my classmates on Friday night at an ecstatic dance in DC. Since it’s nonverbal movement, it didn’t drain me. It gave me some satisfaction to move exuberantly after so much sitting all week. I blew off a lot of steam.
I slept well that night and returned to Austin the next day. This was the easiest trip so far.
Only three more to go.
What would you add, if you’re an introvert who travels for work or training?
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.
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.
Yesterday I wrote about finding a place in my abdomen that felt cool in my Biodynamic Meditation. It condensed into a round shape maybe 2 inches in diameter.
It felt like old, stagnant, stuck fear, an iciness from who-knows-which young experience, maybe several.
I wondered if this was a place in my system that the healing energy would return to, helping it heal.
In today’s meditation, I felt radiance at my face, Tide, and healing energy slowly moving in my abdomen.
I felt the condensed energy again. It wasn’t as cold as it was yesterday. The healing energy stayed there for a while, like it was settling in with its attention.
Healing always happens in the present, no matter when the energy became stuck.
Healing cannot be forced. It happens when it’s ready to happen.
We can help it be ready, with our awareness and by simply allowing it to be as it is, with kindness and patience.
Some of our stuck energies have been with us for a long, long time, protecting the rest of our systems from chaos. They serve us until they are no longer needed.
Photo: Copied from somewhere online, honoring our tree brothers and sisters so many of whom were reshaped by the recent ice storm in Austin. The branches that remain intact will fill in the empty spaces and grow.
Sometimes life can be overwhelming. Trauma is an obvious example. So is simply having too much to manage coming at you all at once.
Right now, in early November 2022, politics and prospects for the future of the U.S. are in our faces, as well as our individual prospects for the future. Personal finances for those depending on Social Security and Medicare, civil liberties for (it seems) everyone but the “Christian” far-right, changes in how we work, the polarization of information sources, the influence of commerce and materialism, disasters from global warming, and so many loud, angry voices, often with guns.
We are living in what currently looks like a post-pandemic world, and we are trying to reorganize amidst a lot of uncertainty. There’s too much unease if you’re sensitive…and if you’re not sensitive, bless your heart and wake up.
I’ve been practicing something new to me. I ask for help. Every day. Sometimes multiple times a day.
I added a line I learned from constellation work to precede my plea. It refers to the innocent, vulnerable child inside all of us — no matter how big or old we are — who is given too much to deal with.
”I’m just the little one.
Please help me.”
You could call it a form of prayer, although I’m not particularly religious. It’s a message and a plea and an acknowledgment that this world of some sorrow is troubling.
I send this message out to whatever unseen power it is that is bigger than me. A higher power. God-Universe-Spirit (GUS), as some friends say. The planets.
I don’t know if there will be an answer that I can understand.
I open my heart and my mind when I make this request. It does seem to help me to at least feel less alone with my struggles.
I don’t know how help will show up. I just trust that it will.
Try it.
Help may come in the form of an inspiration to vote, if you’re registered but not in the habit, because this election could be the last election, in which case you will lose that right.
Democracy requires participation. No choice means someone else makes decisions that affect you, your family and friends and community, your finances, your future, your freedom.
You may be inspired to become a poll watcher (or watch the poll watchers to be sure they don’t interfere with those voting).
You may be inspired to give people rides to the polls if you can.
You may be inspired to avoid the news until at least a week after the election, since that’s how long it takes just to count all the votes. Or even longer, since the courts will probably decide in some cases.
I hope you vote for peaceful and reasonable solutions to our problems to help minimize the chaos.
It’s not a full-length evaluation like you would get if you came to see me in my office. But it seems that a lot of people with jaw pain don’t know how common it is — and how much jaw symptoms can vary from person to person.
Understanding the factors that contribute to jaw pain is not well-researched, but stress, posture, and habits are commonly involved.
We address these factors in my Self-Help for Jaw Pain online course, which is one option after taking the quiz.
The Well: bodymindheartspirit 