I am a traveler of this world.
My Journey: To remember.
Not where Ive been,
rather where I am.
Not the names of the encountered,
rather their ineffable spirit.
I am not interested in becoming full of knowledge,
rather emptying into understanding.
I do not wish to find myself,
rather find you within me.
I do not want to hold on for assurance,
rather let go into vulnerability.
Someone once told me,
treading the path of vulnerability leads to the road of joy and sadness,
there, I can find a place where I no longer become a traveler,
rather I become a Warrior. - Jigme Sang-gye
My Journey: To remember.
Not where Ive been,
rather where I am.
Not the names of the encountered,
rather their ineffable spirit.
I am not interested in becoming full of knowledge,
rather emptying into understanding.
I do not wish to find myself,
rather find you within me.
I do not want to hold on for assurance,
rather let go into vulnerability.
Someone once told me,
treading the path of vulnerability leads to the road of joy and sadness,
there, I can find a place where I no longer become a traveler,
rather I become a Warrior. - Jigme Sang-gye
Aldous Huxley Quote
There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.” Aldous Huxley
Japanese Psychotherapy
http://www.todoinstitute.org/morita.html
"The Naturalness of Feelings (Arugamama)
If we find out that we have just won the lottery, we may be excited and happy. But if we find out about the death of a loved one, we may feel sadness and grief. Such feelings are natural responses to our life circumstances and we need not try to “fix” or “change” them. Arugamama (acceptance of reality as it is) involves accepting our feelings and thoughts without trying to change them or “work through” them.
This means that if we feel depressed, we accept our feelings of depression. If we feel anxious, we accept our feelings of anxiety. Rather than direct our attention and energy to our feeling state, we instead direct our efforts toward living our life well. We set goals and take steps to accomplish what is important even as we co-exist with unpleasant feelings from time to time.
Feelings are Uncontrollable
There is an assumption behind many Western therapeutic methods that it is necessary to change or modify our feeling state before we can take action. We assume that we must “overcome” fear to dive into a pool, or develop confidence so we can make a public presentation. But in actuality, it is not necessary to change our feelings in order to take action. In fact, it is our efforts to change our feelings that often makes us feel even worse."
From the Web site
"The Naturalness of Feelings (Arugamama)
If we find out that we have just won the lottery, we may be excited and happy. But if we find out about the death of a loved one, we may feel sadness and grief. Such feelings are natural responses to our life circumstances and we need not try to “fix” or “change” them. Arugamama (acceptance of reality as it is) involves accepting our feelings and thoughts without trying to change them or “work through” them.
This means that if we feel depressed, we accept our feelings of depression. If we feel anxious, we accept our feelings of anxiety. Rather than direct our attention and energy to our feeling state, we instead direct our efforts toward living our life well. We set goals and take steps to accomplish what is important even as we co-exist with unpleasant feelings from time to time.
Feelings are Uncontrollable
There is an assumption behind many Western therapeutic methods that it is necessary to change or modify our feeling state before we can take action. We assume that we must “overcome” fear to dive into a pool, or develop confidence so we can make a public presentation. But in actuality, it is not necessary to change our feelings in order to take action. In fact, it is our efforts to change our feelings that often makes us feel even worse."
From the Web site
THE AGE OF THE INFORMAVORE
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/schirrmacher09/schirrmacher09_index.html#video
"We are apparently now in a situation where modern technology is changing the way people behave, people talk, people react, people think, and people remember. And you encounter this not only in a theoretical way, but when you meet people, when suddenly people start forgetting things, when suddenly people depend on their gadgets, and other stuff, to remember certain things. This is the beginning, its just an experience. But if you think about it and you think about your own behavior, you suddenly realize that something fundamental is going on."
"We are apparently now in a situation where modern technology is changing the way people behave, people talk, people react, people think, and people remember. And you encounter this not only in a theoretical way, but when you meet people, when suddenly people start forgetting things, when suddenly people depend on their gadgets, and other stuff, to remember certain things. This is the beginning, its just an experience. But if you think about it and you think about your own behavior, you suddenly realize that something fundamental is going on."
Perception .... something to think about...
Perception .... something to think about...
Washington, DC Metro Station on a cold January morning in 2007. The man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time approximately two thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. After 3 minutes a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried to meet his schedule.
4 minutes later:
The violinist received his first dollar: a woman threw the money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.
6 minutes:
A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.
10 minutes:
A 3-year old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children.. Every parent, without exception, forced their children to move on quickly.
45 minutes:
The musician played continuously. Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while. About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32.
1 hour:
He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.
No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before, Joshua Bell sold out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100..
This is a true story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people's priorities. The questions raised: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?
One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be this: If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made..... How many other things are we missing?
The Culture tunes our neurons; a personal narrative
From an interview with Oliver Sacks in Psychology Today:
"OS: Our culture beats on us constantly, and we see this most clearly in the occasional wild child, the wolf boy, who has been lost in the woods. Our nervous systems need culture as much as they need chemicals. Without language and culture, we are like headless monsters.
PT: The culture tunes our neurons....
OS: Right, and so the biological and the cultural are woven in us together from the very start, from the first days of life. This is why a pure view of physiology is not sufficient. It has to take in the whole world."
I am kind of constantly investigating and researching the effects of culture. I look into every door of science and scholastic history I can to gain some insight into my own experience. I know that my culture has shaped my perception, better yet has shaped my sensory experience. I know through my entire investment I make into Somatic Psychology, which like many begins by inquiring into our own nature. One small slice of this inquiry leads me to my life and development from 8-13. More specifically my alienation and abandonment from my body and into my mind. I will tell this story over a few days, so this post and this story will just continue to evolve.
Early in my life I was diagnosed with A.D.H.D and put on the first generation of treatments. The first was the Fine Gold diet then a precursor to Ritalin and finally I was on Ritalin. I recall having a wide range of ticks as a byproduct of being on Ritalin. I would cough incessantly or pick my nails in 5th grade, getting all the cuticles out with small staples I would find on the floor. I would have to soak my fingers in some warm water soapy solution at night to help ease my picked at fingers. My body felt like a vibrating ever-present drum beat with no rhythm, pattern, or beat. This was not a horrific traumatic event, but rather a low grade annoyance that had multiple effects. In relating to myself, to my family, to my local little world, and to the media stream into our home that informed me about the world outside of my local little world. With all of these variables converging within my little 8-13 year old being, I was so absolutely uncomfortable in my body that I found a refuge in my mind. In fantasy, in thought, in the visual, in the auditory, basically all my senses from the neck up. Through this time period I grew accustomed to ignoring the information of my lower body, the neck down. It was the neck down that was tight, constricted, bouncy, short of breath with abundant crazy energy, energy that felt hot and bitter, that was angry, but not knowing where this belonged. So with just a bit of Ritalin, a lot of TV, and a divorcing family, and a culture with no language, attention, or attunement on the neck down life, I forgot about it. This did not happen overnight, but incrementally, day by day and soon my neural networks wired upwards and did so minimally downwards. There was enough wiring form me to skateboard and run and play, but not enough to feel my posture, breath, or where my arms were in space aka proprioception. As when i did most of these activities I did them first from my imagination, from "control central", from the voices in my head, from my alienated neck up in the clouds. I remember feeling psychotic when I was 13, not really because, at 13 I really did not know what this meant, but I had so many scary thoughts. Thoughts that in reflection were like movie scenarios.
My parents got cable when I was 11ish. It was a brown box with lots of black numbered buttons, I would click them constantly seeking a resonant channel. Looking for that one show that would fully engage all that I wanted, all that in this vital moment could completely fulfill me, that could continue to keep my attention going out my eyes and ears, that ONE channel to hold me captive, while I was able to ignore the volcanic agitation and heat within the region below my neck. Some times I would find stuff to connect with, but mostly it was mediocre and my seeking to be fulfilled would just be resigned to what whatever was on. I lived like this for a while, just going to school in an imaginative haze. I interacted and appeared to be just like everyone else, but I had a private life within my own mind. By the time I was 13 my inner thought world from the neck up was so habituated that I barely noticed that my ticks had become regular and that at 13 I preferred to be alone. One of the many conflicted themes within this was that I hated not being liked, so all the while that I preferred to be alone, I couldn't say no and I really really needed to fit in. I never understood this impulse to fit in, but when I didn't, when say I was shunned for my ticks, my agitation below my neck would rumble of tightness and constrict my throat for days. I never mentioned any of this because it was all just too subtle. I was though taken to a whole host of throat and nose doctors to solve the mystery of my ticks. Was I allergic, did I have a throat obstruction, what was "WRONG" with me? I just thought i was defective from the neck down so I continued to stay up, to stay above the neck. To be continued..............
"OS: Our culture beats on us constantly, and we see this most clearly in the occasional wild child, the wolf boy, who has been lost in the woods. Our nervous systems need culture as much as they need chemicals. Without language and culture, we are like headless monsters.
PT: The culture tunes our neurons....
OS: Right, and so the biological and the cultural are woven in us together from the very start, from the first days of life. This is why a pure view of physiology is not sufficient. It has to take in the whole world."
I am kind of constantly investigating and researching the effects of culture. I look into every door of science and scholastic history I can to gain some insight into my own experience. I know that my culture has shaped my perception, better yet has shaped my sensory experience. I know through my entire investment I make into Somatic Psychology, which like many begins by inquiring into our own nature. One small slice of this inquiry leads me to my life and development from 8-13. More specifically my alienation and abandonment from my body and into my mind. I will tell this story over a few days, so this post and this story will just continue to evolve.
Early in my life I was diagnosed with A.D.H.D and put on the first generation of treatments. The first was the Fine Gold diet then a precursor to Ritalin and finally I was on Ritalin. I recall having a wide range of ticks as a byproduct of being on Ritalin. I would cough incessantly or pick my nails in 5th grade, getting all the cuticles out with small staples I would find on the floor. I would have to soak my fingers in some warm water soapy solution at night to help ease my picked at fingers. My body felt like a vibrating ever-present drum beat with no rhythm, pattern, or beat. This was not a horrific traumatic event, but rather a low grade annoyance that had multiple effects. In relating to myself, to my family, to my local little world, and to the media stream into our home that informed me about the world outside of my local little world. With all of these variables converging within my little 8-13 year old being, I was so absolutely uncomfortable in my body that I found a refuge in my mind. In fantasy, in thought, in the visual, in the auditory, basically all my senses from the neck up. Through this time period I grew accustomed to ignoring the information of my lower body, the neck down. It was the neck down that was tight, constricted, bouncy, short of breath with abundant crazy energy, energy that felt hot and bitter, that was angry, but not knowing where this belonged. So with just a bit of Ritalin, a lot of TV, and a divorcing family, and a culture with no language, attention, or attunement on the neck down life, I forgot about it. This did not happen overnight, but incrementally, day by day and soon my neural networks wired upwards and did so minimally downwards. There was enough wiring form me to skateboard and run and play, but not enough to feel my posture, breath, or where my arms were in space aka proprioception. As when i did most of these activities I did them first from my imagination, from "control central", from the voices in my head, from my alienated neck up in the clouds. I remember feeling psychotic when I was 13, not really because, at 13 I really did not know what this meant, but I had so many scary thoughts. Thoughts that in reflection were like movie scenarios.
My parents got cable when I was 11ish. It was a brown box with lots of black numbered buttons, I would click them constantly seeking a resonant channel. Looking for that one show that would fully engage all that I wanted, all that in this vital moment could completely fulfill me, that could continue to keep my attention going out my eyes and ears, that ONE channel to hold me captive, while I was able to ignore the volcanic agitation and heat within the region below my neck. Some times I would find stuff to connect with, but mostly it was mediocre and my seeking to be fulfilled would just be resigned to what whatever was on. I lived like this for a while, just going to school in an imaginative haze. I interacted and appeared to be just like everyone else, but I had a private life within my own mind. By the time I was 13 my inner thought world from the neck up was so habituated that I barely noticed that my ticks had become regular and that at 13 I preferred to be alone. One of the many conflicted themes within this was that I hated not being liked, so all the while that I preferred to be alone, I couldn't say no and I really really needed to fit in. I never understood this impulse to fit in, but when I didn't, when say I was shunned for my ticks, my agitation below my neck would rumble of tightness and constrict my throat for days. I never mentioned any of this because it was all just too subtle. I was though taken to a whole host of throat and nose doctors to solve the mystery of my ticks. Was I allergic, did I have a throat obstruction, what was "WRONG" with me? I just thought i was defective from the neck down so I continued to stay up, to stay above the neck. To be continued..............
Parker palmer
Parker Palmer: Know Yourself, Change Your World by Sarah van Gelder — YES! Magazine
"Why do bankers make unethical investments, and what makes teachers burn out after a year on the job? Acclaimed educator and author Parker J. Palmer says most of us lack an understanding of our inner lives. If we learned in school how to navigate the inner landscapes of our lives, we might gain the tools to make it through difficult times, and clarify and act on our deepest values. Palmer is the author of A Hidden Wholeness, Let Your Life Speak, and The Courage to Teach, and a founder of the Center for Courage and Renewal."
Isabelle Peretz Research Labratory Publications Availible for download
http://www.brams.umontreal.ca/plab/publications/article/82#downloads
"Phillips-Silver and Trainor (Phillips-Silver, J., Trainor, L.J., (2005). Feeling the beat: movement influences infants' rhythm perception. Science, 308, 1430) demonstrated an early cross-modal interaction between body movement and auditory encoding of musical rhythm in infants. Here we show that the way adults move their bodies to music influences their auditory perception of the rhythm structure. We trained adults, while listening to an ambiguous rhythm with no accented beats, to bounce by bending their knees to interpret the rhythm either as a march or as a waltz. At test, adults identified as similar an auditory version of the rhythm pattern with accented strong beats that matched their previous bouncing experience in comparison with a version whose accents did not match. In subsequent experiments we showed that this effect does not depend on visual information, but that movement of the body is critical. Parallel results from adults and infants suggest that the movement-sound interaction develops early and is fundamental to music processing throughout life."
"Phillips-Silver and Trainor (Phillips-Silver, J., Trainor, L.J., (2005). Feeling the beat: movement influences infants' rhythm perception. Science, 308, 1430) demonstrated an early cross-modal interaction between body movement and auditory encoding of musical rhythm in infants. Here we show that the way adults move their bodies to music influences their auditory perception of the rhythm structure. We trained adults, while listening to an ambiguous rhythm with no accented beats, to bounce by bending their knees to interpret the rhythm either as a march or as a waltz. At test, adults identified as similar an auditory version of the rhythm pattern with accented strong beats that matched their previous bouncing experience in comparison with a version whose accents did not match. In subsequent experiments we showed that this effect does not depend on visual information, but that movement of the body is critical. Parallel results from adults and infants suggest that the movement-sound interaction develops early and is fundamental to music processing throughout life."
Book: the social and the somatic
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0816665109/?tag=gpfm-20
"In Political Affect, Protevi investigates the relationship between the social and the somatic: how our bodies, minds, and social settings are intricately and intimately linked. Bringing together concepts from science, philosophy, and politics, he develops a perspective he calls political physiology to indicate that subjectivity is socially conditioned and sometimes bypassed in favor of a direct connection of the social and the somatic, as with the politically triggered basic emotions of rage and panic. Protevi's treatment of affective cognition in social context breaks new theoretical ground, insisting that subjectivity be studied both in its embodied expression and in terms of the distribution of affective cognitive responses in a population."
Another Blog on Somatic movement
http://stevehamlin.blogspot.com/2008/06/somatic-relaxation.html
"When this is understood - that our brains and bodies are built to exist in a dynamic balance between comfort and challenge, between rest and activity, then we begin to understand what somatic education is all about."
"When this is understood - that our brains and bodies are built to exist in a dynamic balance between comfort and challenge, between rest and activity, then we begin to understand what somatic education is all about."
Movements Afoot’s Blog
http://ow.ly/t09s
"Movement is essential to our well-being on all levels – including the neurological, the muscular, and the emotional. In our culture now, we are forgetting essential habits of movement in large part because of being less physical due to cars, computers, and TV. We believe all people should move more. When we move with awareness and a sense of pleasure, all will benefit from it."
"Movement is essential to our well-being on all levels – including the neurological, the muscular, and the emotional. In our culture now, we are forgetting essential habits of movement in large part because of being less physical due to cars, computers, and TV. We believe all people should move more. When we move with awareness and a sense of pleasure, all will benefit from it."
Good Article on Somatics
http://ezinearticles.com/?id=3013422
"Somatics is exactly an awakening of attention of a special kind. It is an awakening of attention on many levels of the human being, bringing self-mastery. The process teaches the relationship between mind "and" body (the "two" being internal and external manifestations of the same thing, and therefore not-two). It awakens us to new sensations. It cultivates the ability to focus attention, to act deliberately, to recognize the relationship between effort and its outcome, to be self-correcting, to follow through to completion. It teaches how to direct attention and intention toward the same thing. It gives us access to more of our abilities."
"Somatics is exactly an awakening of attention of a special kind. It is an awakening of attention on many levels of the human being, bringing self-mastery. The process teaches the relationship between mind "and" body (the "two" being internal and external manifestations of the same thing, and therefore not-two). It awakens us to new sensations. It cultivates the ability to focus attention, to act deliberately, to recognize the relationship between effort and its outcome, to be self-correcting, to follow through to completion. It teaches how to direct attention and intention toward the same thing. It gives us access to more of our abilities."
Baby Development Videos
http://www.babycenter.com/2_inside-pregnancy-weeks-1-to-9_10302602.bc?intcmp=Nav_Global_photosandvideo_inside&pn=Video%20clips%20on%20pregnancy%2C%20labor%2C%20birth%2C%20delivery%2C%20baby%2C%20dads%2C%20breastfeeding%2C%20and%20becoming%20a%20mom
Wow I find these videos very informative. If you can deal with the very brief commercials its a real eye opener. Also I would encourage you to explore the other videos and the whole site, then send it to everyone you know. Birth is pretty amazing.
Scot
Thought as energy!
From:
http://wilderdom.com/games/PhysicalActivities.html
Recent work on the Involuntary Nervous System proves an explanation for this ideational part of this exercise and for the body/mind view generally. Miller (1969) says:
Cellular electric current can be made to occur in protoplasm by the very act of thinking. Thought alone can therefore, in and of itself, be the stimulus to induce an electric current to flow down any nerve to the affected tissue - demonstrating that thought is a source of energy...The Involuntary Nervous System is not necessarily involuntary...it is more under conscious control than previously believed.
http://wilderdom.com/games/PhysicalActivities.html
Recent work on the Involuntary Nervous System proves an explanation for this ideational part of this exercise and for the body/mind view generally. Miller (1969) says:
Cellular electric current can be made to occur in protoplasm by the very act of thinking. Thought alone can therefore, in and of itself, be the stimulus to induce an electric current to flow down any nerve to the affected tissue - demonstrating that thought is a source of energy...The Involuntary Nervous System is not necessarily involuntary...it is more under conscious control than previously believed.
somaesthetics
Some recent research lead me to these links (thanks Tivo). They are a definite core trajectory of somatics off of phenomenology and hanna. As I track the evolution and progression of somatics, I find that multiple areas of focused attention via academia, dance, psychology, cultural practices (chi gong and yoga) and independent thinking humans have come to similar conclusions, but through different language and cultural lenses. This realization keeps coming up for me as I read a range of thinkers from Emilie Conrad, Bert Bennett, to Thomas Hanna. We each have a profound capacity to awaken to experiential realities based in our bodymind that lead to states of being and awareness that are birth rights and at the most fundamental direction of natural uninhibited biological development. Thus all of the variety of soma based creativity that turns into "modalities" seem to just mirror our inhibitions and thus create the need to cling to a self created form of embodied awareness. This form that has emerged out of natural biological trajectories then becomes an economic anchor. Why do somatic creators make modalities? This is a bigger question that has some obvious answers, like each system needs skin and boundaries and a shape to live, much like ourselves, yet some how each modality becomes rigid in time. This is one reason I am so drawn to this link:
http://wise.fau.edu/bodymindculture/
"The Center for Body, Mind, and Culture is an interdisciplinary initiative dedicated to promoting research, programming, and teaching of topics concerning the body-mind-culture nexus. The Center’s motivating logic affirms that the three terms constituting its name are essentially interdependent rather than separate entities and that they therefore need to be studied in terms of their interrelations and through interdisciplinary research."
We somatically driven folks need to collaborate our efforts and focus our thoughts, maps, and modalities to support the natural and biological trajectory of embodied awakening for each human and for each human group. The collective illness and insanity of our time is greater than one modality, as it will take a collaborative effort to reawaken enough bio-energetic presence to care in the face of a dynamically changing world.
I had dinner last night with someone who manages portions of a state funded agency that provides psychological care for people in the lowest economic stratosphere of America. I have also worked with addicted teen women from this population. In our conversation last night, I was mentioning that I had the intuition that this population was exponentially growing due to greater and greater amounts of cultural illness swept under the large American rug. I track it as nervous system issues passed from ancestry to ancestry to ancestry, thus the ghosts of embodied agitation keep looping through the familial systems, supported by culture and then amplifies its agitation each generation in younger and younger off spring from the generation. His response was that he too was witnessing this and that the many agencies he works with have also seen waves of large spikes in highly traumatized beings that are fall out from the past generation's inability, biological inability, to parent or love their children. This leads me to think that love is not automatic even in the face of a lymbic system. As Joeseph Chilton Pearce points out a defended mother will produce a baby with a larger hine brain and thus will be more defended.
By bringing the vast somatic map into convergence we can track multiple streams of research, science, philosophy, and good old fashion intuition to understand how to help not just our own, and very needed healthy narcissism, but to actually create ways to aid our culture, our earth, and our future to............?????????????????????
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Shusterman
http://wise.fau.edu/bodymindculture/
"The Center for Body, Mind, and Culture is an interdisciplinary initiative dedicated to promoting research, programming, and teaching of topics concerning the body-mind-culture nexus. The Center’s motivating logic affirms that the three terms constituting its name are essentially interdependent rather than separate entities and that they therefore need to be studied in terms of their interrelations and through interdisciplinary research."
We somatically driven folks need to collaborate our efforts and focus our thoughts, maps, and modalities to support the natural and biological trajectory of embodied awakening for each human and for each human group. The collective illness and insanity of our time is greater than one modality, as it will take a collaborative effort to reawaken enough bio-energetic presence to care in the face of a dynamically changing world.
I had dinner last night with someone who manages portions of a state funded agency that provides psychological care for people in the lowest economic stratosphere of America. I have also worked with addicted teen women from this population. In our conversation last night, I was mentioning that I had the intuition that this population was exponentially growing due to greater and greater amounts of cultural illness swept under the large American rug. I track it as nervous system issues passed from ancestry to ancestry to ancestry, thus the ghosts of embodied agitation keep looping through the familial systems, supported by culture and then amplifies its agitation each generation in younger and younger off spring from the generation. His response was that he too was witnessing this and that the many agencies he works with have also seen waves of large spikes in highly traumatized beings that are fall out from the past generation's inability, biological inability, to parent or love their children. This leads me to think that love is not automatic even in the face of a lymbic system. As Joeseph Chilton Pearce points out a defended mother will produce a baby with a larger hine brain and thus will be more defended.
By bringing the vast somatic map into convergence we can track multiple streams of research, science, philosophy, and good old fashion intuition to understand how to help not just our own, and very needed healthy narcissism, but to actually create ways to aid our culture, our earth, and our future to............?????????????????????
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Shusterman
A New Way to Fight Stress | Parade.com
A New Way to Fight Stress | Parade.com
The Parade is covering a Somatic modality! Wow perhaps we are seeing small ripples in the world that the body or rather the mind-body is the foundation of health and well being. Perhaps our collective suffering via the hyper addiction to mentalizing reality and the numbing effects of modern social life are reaching a point that we can no longer tolerate the stress loads we have taken on and we are making a sweet return to our most simple experience of our self. My one complaint about this article is the modality-centered approach. Its a mechanical approach to mind body integration. Meaning if I apply IBMT to me-or my body-as object then I will have stress relief, but really there are many diverse ways and modalities to meet the needs of a range of body's to integrate with mind's, there is not just one way, god forbid, but rather a plethora of creative approaches to this issue. Thoughts?
s
The Parade is covering a Somatic modality! Wow perhaps we are seeing small ripples in the world that the body or rather the mind-body is the foundation of health and well being. Perhaps our collective suffering via the hyper addiction to mentalizing reality and the numbing effects of modern social life are reaching a point that we can no longer tolerate the stress loads we have taken on and we are making a sweet return to our most simple experience of our self. My one complaint about this article is the modality-centered approach. Its a mechanical approach to mind body integration. Meaning if I apply IBMT to me-or my body-as object then I will have stress relief, but really there are many diverse ways and modalities to meet the needs of a range of body's to integrate with mind's, there is not just one way, god forbid, but rather a plethora of creative approaches to this issue. Thoughts?
s
Layers of Intimate Proximity
Layers of Intimate Proximity
We are biologically self organized in nested layers of intimacy. Just note the 'felt sense' when you communicate with your children or your partner compared to talking to your neighbor, compared to going to a party, to a farmer's market and on. Consider these the necessary filters to protect infancy, childhood, and even our own personal interiority, the private experience of our self. Then consider this in terms of an ever increasing global society. Consider this in relation to news and information. Consider how we interact with these layers based upon our beliefs about the layers. For instance:
1. If I have had the continual experience through the layers of Intimate Proximity (IP) that people are untrustworthy, then I will interact with all realms in defensive postures, thoughts, and actions. Protecting my core through each layer.
2. If I have never had much contact in the variety of IP layers with diverse people then when I do meet them in the outer layers, I will respond defensively.
3. Say that I have been raised with a range of fluid experience across the IP layers, then I will be comfortable with a range of transitions within IP layers.
We transition in and out of these layers daily. The transition is filled with somatic information. This information is in the form of:
Sensations
Shift in-breath
Unconscious disassociation
Loss of ground-shift in weight
Subtle or not so subtle contractions of expansions in musculature
Social Anxiety: Fear of contact or fear of being alone
Longings
Repulsions
Judgments
Intuitions
and more
Because we generally move through these transitions quickly the information is lost in our pace to get to the next place. Our pace maintains the habituated interactions and relationships that we are patterned to. Unconscious relational patterns through the IP layers are collectively maintained by policy, schools, infrastructure, but more importantly by our own somatic life. When we slow our pace we slow our perception and can attune to nuanced experiences that are coursing through our entire nervous system. When we attune we begin to have more options, fluidity, and reflective power to interact in creative ways with the diverse layers of the IP.
When I teach I utilize IP layers to carry, contain, and exchange more ways of understanding the information that I am teaching. Much like an eco-system, students will each offer and exchange how they experience a particular concept, which focuses their own experience and yet expands their possibility and range of experience. I created a mid term based on this idea. The success of the mid term was astonishing to me. In fact the students through the exchange of knowledge, perspective, and experience created ways of understanding the subject that where new, novel, inventive, and revealed an emergent understanding beyond what I had presented.
I have also applied the IP layers to drug addicted teen women. The process that I facilitated, which is experiential, managed the group at a new level. Most of these women have been abused since birth and suffer from a life time of PTSD, thus managing reactive behavior was very challenging. Within a few weeks of my process, i was able to create a more supportive environment within the facility and create more group self regulation. Rather then having these highly abused women autonomously self regulating, which they cant, they were self regulated by the IP layers of the group. Thus free exchange of information and feeling is passed through the layers.
What I love about this work is that our 'felt sense' is naturally attuned to these IP layers, so with a little training these biological cues are exposed. Rather than the information being too ethereal or esoteric it is easily felt, tracked, and worked with.
Enjoy
Scot
Behavior and Thoughts as Biological Processes
We are each in a unique constellation, organization, and/or configuration in response to our environment. Our environment being the human and natural environment of our experience, so parents, siblings, family, friends, neighbors, city, culture, news, global moods, forests, buildings, and on and on. Our environment is richly complex, interdependent, and woven in feedback loops from the small intimate experience to the large global and social experience. Our experience is self-organized by layers of intimacy and layers of contact within different proximity's of intimacy. We cluster in small groups of intimate contact, be it partnership and love or friends and co-workers and thus navigate the world through small portals of those that know us and those that we pass by, environments that are familiar and environments that are not. We constantly transition these realms and layers, yet rarely notice the shifts in our Somatic life that cue us to these changes, aside from the shifts in our comfort and ability to tolerate change and to be flexible internally in the face of dynamic change. Anxiety would be an example of intolerance of change, expressed as not enough breath and an inability to move the upwelling of overwhelming sensations building up throughout one's body in the face of transitioning through the layers of intimate proximitys.
We are born into this layering structure and each respond to this richly complex environment in a multitude of ways, reactions, and responses. Some of us may be more comfortable in the outer layers of intimate proximity, preferring to be more social than intimate, helpers, hero's, and staying away from depth and contact. While others may prefer to stay in the inner intimate proximity and relating only with a few close and trusting others. Depression can be one form that prefers only the most interior intimate proximity of our self, thus creating alienation and isolation.
Our body/Somatic life contains the collection of familial responses, unconscious, and adaptive behaviors that have been successful to keep the family alive, the individuals alive, and each system has a point of tolerating stretching this adaptive behavior. This can be seen in our Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). This is an ancient nervous system found throughout biology as the primary interface between our inner and outer world. This can be as simple as contracting, hardening, and mobilizing vital energy in the face of an attack (fight or flight) to the simple sounds our our intestines digesting food into usable energy(rest and restore). Each family system has a collection of family strategies that swirl through the family nervous systems over generations making small increment changes and subtle evolutions. Every member of the family may adapt a particular constellation of these strategies, thus each one is unique, yet we will all utilize the same pool of strategies and each tolerate a particular stretching of the system.
Our breath contains the subtle clues and cues of the thumbprint of our strategy. Our sensations are the language of our biological-familial-system and our personal narrative stories, our thought life are the ripples at the surface of embodied life. This Somatic life is, in my opinion, is the place that we can most grow, stretch, change, and transform our own personal experience within the thumb print of our familial nervous system.
On the Stress response
"It is not so much that the stress response runs out, but rather, with sufficient activation, that the stress response can become more damaging than the stressor itself, especially when the stress is purely psychological. This is a critical concept, because it underlies the emergence of much stress related disease. That the stress response itself can become harmful makes certain sense when you examine the things that occur in reaction to stress. They are generally shortsighted, inefficient, and penny-wise and dollar foolish, but they are the sorts of costly things your body has to do to respond effectively in an emergency. And if you experience everyday as an emergency, you will pay the price.
If you constantly mobilize energy at the cost of energy storage, you will never store any surplus energy. You will fatigue more rapidly, and your risk of developing a form of diabetes will even increase."
from Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers?, Spolskey p, 13
Process your stress with www.somatic-in.com
Train your stress with www.livingCRT.com
For more information about my private somatic psychotherapy practice see www.scotnicholscounseling.com
Research on Breath
Mounting scientific research continues to
suggest that health, quality of life, and
even the very length of life, are all profoundly
affected by our mental and emotional states.
The emerging field of mind/body medicine
explains how our thoughts and emotions can
powerfully affect brain, endocrine (hormone),
and immune system function. This influence
is facilitated by chemical messengers called
neuropeptides, which are released with one’s
every emotion. They are rapidly picked up by
cells in the immune, endocrine, and autonomic
nervous systems, and directly affect their
functioning.
from
http://www.aolresearch.org/research_symmary.html
suggest that health, quality of life, and
even the very length of life, are all profoundly
affected by our mental and emotional states.
The emerging field of mind/body medicine
explains how our thoughts and emotions can
powerfully affect brain, endocrine (hormone),
and immune system function. This influence
is facilitated by chemical messengers called
neuropeptides, which are released with one’s
every emotion. They are rapidly picked up by
cells in the immune, endocrine, and autonomic
nervous systems, and directly affect their
functioning.
from
http://www.aolresearch.org/research_symmary.html
Allostatic Balance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allostatic_load
"It is used to explain how frequent activation of the body's stress response, an essential tool for managing acute threats, can in fact damage the body in the long run. Allostatic load is generally measured through a composite index of indicators of cumulative strain on several organs and tissues, but especially on the cardiovascular system."
“Allostasis refers to the process of maintaining stability in the course of responding to challenge and reflects an understanding of health as a capacity for adaptation. Allostatic load consists of the cumulative somatic and psychic burden of repeatedly responding to challenge. This includes not only the total effects of chronic stress but also the genetic, developmental, and environmental factors that condition the effectiveness of adaptive responses to challenge. A rapidly growing body of medical research now confirms the extent to which the capacity for adaptation is conditioned by the interdependence of experience mediated by the CNS, the endocrine system, and the immune system.” pg 42 from Peter Hershock
This is the precursor to PTSD. Preventing PTSD or resolving it, is dependent upon ones ability to perceive and work with Allostatic Balance and Allostatic Load.
"It is used to explain how frequent activation of the body's stress response, an essential tool for managing acute threats, can in fact damage the body in the long run. Allostatic load is generally measured through a composite index of indicators of cumulative strain on several organs and tissues, but especially on the cardiovascular system."
“Allostasis refers to the process of maintaining stability in the course of responding to challenge and reflects an understanding of health as a capacity for adaptation. Allostatic load consists of the cumulative somatic and psychic burden of repeatedly responding to challenge. This includes not only the total effects of chronic stress but also the genetic, developmental, and environmental factors that condition the effectiveness of adaptive responses to challenge. A rapidly growing body of medical research now confirms the extent to which the capacity for adaptation is conditioned by the interdependence of experience mediated by the CNS, the endocrine system, and the immune system.” pg 42 from Peter Hershock
This is the precursor to PTSD. Preventing PTSD or resolving it, is dependent upon ones ability to perceive and work with Allostatic Balance and Allostatic Load.
Viktor Shauberger Quote
"The majority believes that everything hard to comprehend must be very profound. This is incorrect. What is hard to understand is what is immature, unclear and often false. The highest wisdom is simple and passes through the brain directly to the heart."
Viktor Shauberger
Living Energies pg 31 Callum Coats, 1996
Having a body is what being human is all about
"The last two decades of the twentieth century have been characterized by a frantic search for self-improvement and purification: We join programs to give up smoking, drinking, and drugs. We train our bodies in gyms. We eat carefully controlled diets to starve our bodies into submission. We buy books on how to improve our sex lives. We live hard and fast, seeking excitement, and then recover by meditating on inner peace, chasing out-of-body experiences and longing for a less corpreal world. We spend billions of dollars on diet, fitness, entertainment, and religion, and we are still not satisfied. The simple truth is this: In seeking to perfect our bodies, tire them out, or escape them alltogether, we have forgotten a fundamental point. We cant go anywhere without them, even though we try. The body matters. It's a resource, not an object to whip into shape. It is you! Having a body is what being human is all about."
from senses wide open, Johanna Putnoi, p.6 2000
Systems theory and Somatic Psychology
This link is from a series of interviews on somatics. This one is of particular intrest for me. http://www.somaticperspectives.com/index.htm
Yvonne M. Agazarian, EdD, DFAGPA. FAPA, CGP, is Clinical Professor in the Postdoctoral Program in Group Psychotherapy, Adelphi U. She treats, teaches, trains and consults in systems-centered practice. She developed the Theory of Living Human Systems; founded the Systems-centered Training and Research Institute. She has authored and co-authored seven books and many articles. In 1997 she received the Group Psychologist of the Year award from Division 49 of the American Psychological Association "For her involvement in research, publication, teaching and training. She exemplifies the finest in scholarship in the discipline of psychology. As a group psychologist, she has contributed to expanding our knowledge of the boundaries between clinical and social psychology with the investigation of living human systems and systems-centered group and individual therapy. Her considerable body of work illustrates the highest blend of creativity and learning."
http://www.somaticperspectives.com/zmore/audio/S-2009-08-Agazarian.mp3
Yvonne M. Agazarian, EdD, DFAGPA. FAPA, CGP, is Clinical Professor in the Postdoctoral Program in Group Psychotherapy, Adelphi U. She treats, teaches, trains and consults in systems-centered practice. She developed the Theory of Living Human Systems; founded the Systems-centered Training and Research Institute. She has authored and co-authored seven books and many articles. In 1997 she received the Group Psychologist of the Year award from Division 49 of the American Psychological Association "For her involvement in research, publication, teaching and training. She exemplifies the finest in scholarship in the discipline of psychology. As a group psychologist, she has contributed to expanding our knowledge of the boundaries between clinical and social psychology with the investigation of living human systems and systems-centered group and individual therapy. Her considerable body of work illustrates the highest blend of creativity and learning."
http://www.somaticperspectives.com/zmore/audio/S-2009-08-Agazarian.mp3
embodied belonging
"And as Shakespeare says in Hamlet: To thine own self be true, then as surely as night follows day, thou canst to no man be false. The journey shows you that from this inner dedication you can reconstruct your own values and action. You develop from your own self-compassion a great compassion for others. You are no longer caught in the false game of judgment, comparison and assumption. More naked now than ever, you begin to feel truly alive. You begin to trust the music of your own soul; you have inherited treasure that no one will ever be able to take from you. At the deepest level, this adventure of growth is in fact a transfigurative conversation with your own death. And when the time comes for you to leave, the view from your death bed will show a life of growth that gladdens the heart and takes away all fear.”
-John O’Donohue-
How do we begin the life of belonging? Belonging to ourselves, our bodies, our earth, our communities, etc.? It is here that we must search, but this journey begins by using a level of experience that we have marginalized, that of the right brain. Its like our collective culture has been ignoring this side of our life for so long that it is not there any more.
"The main theme to emerge... is that there appear to be two modes of thinking, verbal and nonverbal, represented rather separately in left and right hemispheres respectively and that our education system, as well as science in general, tends to neglect the nonverbal form of intellect. What it comes down to is that modern society discriminates against the right hemisphere."
-Roger Sperry (1973) from: http://www.viewzone.com/bicam.html
How do we begin a journey when we have been mistaking the map for the territory? Thoughts? Questions?
Thanks
Scot
more links:
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22556281-661,00.html
http://www.danpink.com/wnm.html
http://www.jodonohue.com/
perspectives on how consciousness creates its experiential reality
Filters and Reflections: Perspectives on Reality. Edited by Zachary Jones, Brenda Dunne, Elissa Hoeger, and Robert Jahn.
This new book is a series of essays related and responding to the PEAR laboratory publication, “ Sensors, Filters, and the Source of Reality." This anthology presents an assortment of perspectives on how consciousness creates its experiential reality through an array of subjective “filters” by which “we endeavor to infer, either intuitively or analytically, composite functional models of our world and of ourselves.” Taken together, the individual contributions serve as an array of lenses that amplify the seminal essay.
This new book is a series of essays related and responding to the PEAR laboratory publication, “ Sensors, Filters, and the Source of Reality." This anthology presents an assortment of perspectives on how consciousness creates its experiential reality through an array of subjective “filters” by which “we endeavor to infer, either intuitively or analytically, composite functional models of our world and of ourselves.” Taken together, the individual contributions serve as an array of lenses that amplify the seminal essay.
Affect attunement and right brain processing
As I study the latest edges of psychobiological development via Neurobiology, I am taken to see that we are imprinted with the dyadic impressions of our earliest interactions with our primary care givers. As infants we grow through the experience dominant right brain, as the left comes fully online from two years old onward. Taking this idea through the life time of development, I am wondering if we are imprinted continually throughout all ages. So during the teen years we are imprinted by the complex weaving of our deep intersubjective core self and the socialization process of attaching to adolescent peers, subculture identities, music, etc. Further into our twenties we are again imprinted by leaving the family to create our autonomy. These imprints are deep unconscious, right brain, implicit forces that effect our deeper emotional life. Leading us to live out in a variety of ways, with a variety of choices all governed by the implicit impressions of our emergence from infancy to adulthood and onward. Without Somatic awakening these deeper implicit forces will make choices through us as core reactions and hungers. What I am thinking is that without self knowledge in the form of an ever increasing felt sense through the introception of the nerves of our internal physical life, we are at the whims of impressions and culture. Thus the way to autonomous interdependency, full human-hood, loving and deeply gratified beings, is to fully process these impressions. I think these deep impressions are most likely a cause of deep dissociation and muscular numbness, which leads us to collectively believe we are our thoughts and superficial identities. Yet lying underneath this superficial self is the deep fulfillment of living in our core perceptual truth of deep embodiment. What seems to prevent the full expression of this core self is both social forces ruling the impressions through absurd and unspoken taboos and a deep fear of loosing the identity that we do have. The fear of loosing this identity is wrapped up with the deep fear of feeling our most deepest emotions: grief, terror, shame, and oddly enough pleasure. This collective quagmire is promoted and supported by most of us. I would like to support an inner-revolution, not based on a switch of power structures, or financial, or philosophical ideas, but rather an emotional freedom to feel as a sentient aware conscious being
Thoughts
Scot
Integral Life
Bring awareness to perspectives: The world is a vast terrain of perspectives and potential perspectives. However, perspectives alone exist in a state of confusion, crashing into one another in cycles of mindless conflict. Awareness is the act of holding multiple perspectives in a space that nurtures their value and constrains their short-sightedness. Such a space allows depth to emerge in our understanding and actions.
http://integrallife.com/node/47214
From Body Thoughts by Andrew Strathern
This is in reference to an article called "Bodily images in Melanesia: cultural substances and natural metaphors." by Bruce Knauft. Whats interesting is that it accurate if we compare this work with Peter Hershock's Buddhism in the public sphere. (See below)
"The ideal body thus created is also one that is "defined fundamentally through social and spiritual relationships," he writes. He therefore begins by negating individualistic concepts of the body and the self that are part of western culture. in this he is right: myriad examples show that the thoughts and attitudes and actions of kinsfolk, living and dead, are held to influence the health of the person, and therefore the body as the site of health or sickness also the site of socially defined and constrained morality. It is important to stress that this is exactly what is negated in principle by bio medicine, which treats sickness as a physical and therefore morally neutral. Such a proposition can work only in a tradition that has inherited a Cartesian separation between body and mind. In Melanesian cultural thinking conditions are certainly physical, but the physical is intimately tied the mental and social. Physical conditions are considered to be the results of mental and social factors, and the curing of sickness therefore depends on tracking down such factors and dealing with them. These factors, however, are an outcome of people's choices to think and do certain things. Therefore, agency, if not individuality, must be taken into account if we wish to understand how the cycle of events is conceived of by people." pg 64 from "Body Thoughts"
HERSHOCK:
“At the very least, it urges affirmation that health arises through open and properly aligned and balanced reciprocal interactions among physical, biological, cognitive, social, and cultural dimensions of human being. Health is not a state to be achieved and maintained-the model of homeostasis; it is a distinctly creative quality of interrelatedness.” P. 42
"The ideal body thus created is also one that is "defined fundamentally through social and spiritual relationships," he writes. He therefore begins by negating individualistic concepts of the body and the self that are part of western culture. in this he is right: myriad examples show that the thoughts and attitudes and actions of kinsfolk, living and dead, are held to influence the health of the person, and therefore the body as the site of health or sickness also the site of socially defined and constrained morality. It is important to stress that this is exactly what is negated in principle by bio medicine, which treats sickness as a physical and therefore morally neutral. Such a proposition can work only in a tradition that has inherited a Cartesian separation between body and mind. In Melanesian cultural thinking conditions are certainly physical, but the physical is intimately tied the mental and social. Physical conditions are considered to be the results of mental and social factors, and the curing of sickness therefore depends on tracking down such factors and dealing with them. These factors, however, are an outcome of people's choices to think and do certain things. Therefore, agency, if not individuality, must be taken into account if we wish to understand how the cycle of events is conceived of by people." pg 64 from "Body Thoughts"
HERSHOCK:
“At the very least, it urges affirmation that health arises through open and properly aligned and balanced reciprocal interactions among physical, biological, cognitive, social, and cultural dimensions of human being. Health is not a state to be achieved and maintained-the model of homeostasis; it is a distinctly creative quality of interrelatedness.” P. 42
Everything is Waiting for you
Everything is Waiting for You
Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.
Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.
-- David Whyte
from Everything is Waiting for You
©2003 Many Rivers Press
http://www.davidwhyte.com/english.html
Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.
Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.
-- David Whyte
from Everything is Waiting for You
©2003 Many Rivers Press
http://www.davidwhyte.com/english.html
bodymindy meets natural world
"The Pullitizer Prize, Harvard biologist, Edward O. Wilson, observes that "Only in the last moment of human history has the delusion arisen that people can flourish apart from the rest of the living world. Preliterate peoples were in intimate contact with a bewildering array of life forms." By contrast, as citizens of Western civilization we spend, according to Cohen, "an average of over 95 percent of our lives indoors, cloistered from nature. We live over 99 percent of our adult lives knowing nature through detached words, stories and pictures." This detachment of our psyche from its biological and psychological origins stressfully and hurtfully estranges us from creation, from nature's supportive, non-verbal wisdom, spirit and love within and about us." This loss creates the insatiable wants and greed that underlie our disorders. We become psychologically addicted to rewarding technologies and relationships that often have destructive side effects. The consequences of our alienation from nature manifest as the myriad of lasting personal, social and environmental problems which beset the modern world." Common Futures Magazine
Depressed? Go Play in the Dirt-
http://www.livescience.com/health/070411_happy_bacteria.html
"Sun exposure is perhaps the most important source of vitamin D because exposure to sunlight provides most humans with their vitamin D requirement. Ultraviolet (UV) rays from the sun trigger vitamin D synthesis in skin. The seasons, geographic latitude, time of day, cloud cover, smog, and sunscreen affect UV ray exposure and vitamin D synthesis... Industrial pollution, which increases shade, also decreases sun exposure and may contribute to the development of rickets in children with insufficient dietary intake of vitamin D. It is important for individuals with limited sun exposure to include good sources of vitamin D in their diet."
More on urban gardening
http://www.wiretapmag.org/rights/43579/
Go Barefoot! Barefoot parks-
http://www.terraplana.com/news/go-barefoot-trentham-gardens-and-adventure-play-barfuss-park-barefoot-walk/
Learn how to make a bee garden- help the threatened honey bee and yourself! Did you know insect pollinators are responsible for 1/3 of our food crops' success?
http://nature.berkeley.edu/urbanbeegardens/
Depressed? Go Play in the Dirt-
http://www.livescience.com/health/070411_happy_bacteria.html
"Sun exposure is perhaps the most important source of vitamin D because exposure to sunlight provides most humans with their vitamin D requirement. Ultraviolet (UV) rays from the sun trigger vitamin D synthesis in skin. The seasons, geographic latitude, time of day, cloud cover, smog, and sunscreen affect UV ray exposure and vitamin D synthesis... Industrial pollution, which increases shade, also decreases sun exposure and may contribute to the development of rickets in children with insufficient dietary intake of vitamin D. It is important for individuals with limited sun exposure to include good sources of vitamin D in their diet."
More on urban gardening
http://www.wiretapmag.org/rights/43579/
Go Barefoot! Barefoot parks-
http://www.terraplana.com/news/go-barefoot-trentham-gardens-and-adventure-play-barfuss-park-barefoot-walk/
Learn how to make a bee garden- help the threatened honey bee and yourself! Did you know insect pollinators are responsible for 1/3 of our food crops' success?
http://nature.berkeley.edu/urbanbeegardens/
Body Practices and Human Inquiry
http://www.donhanlonjohnson.com/newsite/pages/articles_practices.html
http://www.donhanlonjohnson.com/
http://www.donhanlonjohnson.com/
Somatics as a response to our times
I just posted a video on exponential change. In the face of these facts, Somatics is a profound response to our world and its change. Right now our human soul/being/body is being asked some very deep questions about our future as mammals and as embodied beings. These questions have never had to be asked prior to this time, as we have never seen such an exponential technological advance. With technology merging quickly with our lives we are facing a continual mechanization of all that is human and so our stirrings are now being felt collectively in that our webs of interconnection are now feeding us more than ever before. Somatics is a response to these questions; return to the body. We support the process of revealing what has previously been unconscious conscious and in this act we once again reclaim our deepest most ancient birth right, that of the experience of our interiority and our felt sense. This return is simple, obvious, ever present, and healing. In the face of dynamic change a return to the soma is a powerful response.
Thoughts?
Scot
--
Check out my work:
www.somatic-in.com
http://www.thecalco.org/
http://www.wwu.edu/fairhaven/about/faculty/visiting/nichols.shtml
http://twitter.com/ScotN
http://wan-tee.blogspot.com/
collaborative work:
http://inexecology.blogspot.com/
http://emergenteconomy.blogspot.com/
Evo Devo Universe
I just recently read the 40 page document downloadable from the PDF link below. It proposes a new emergent model of the universe that has multiple implications for us all. Being a Somatic therapist and educator I am particularly interested in this model because it has many discussions surrounding biology and embodiment. I am finding that acceleration waves are occurring in the media/web realm that are consistent with exponential growth statistics found all over the internet with regard to increasing change and novelty found in our collective experience on the planet at this particular time period. What this looks like to me is that we are rapidly approaching a very dynamic shift in our social consciousness whose future is to be determined by our capacities to respond in more integrated and nor ordinary ways. I find that Somatics is a deep response to the need to bring to consciousness our most human attributes; care, connection, compassion, integrity, courage, innovation, love, stress, relationship, physiological interconnection, breathing, presence, child rearing, etc. So much of our human experience has remained unconscious, yet at this time we are at a point where our species can be self aware and to move along a continuum of awareness. To become aware of our mammalian nature may be the most vital source of change as the variety of powers attempt to appropriate and colonize our consciousness.
http://evodevouniverse.com/wiki/Main_Page
http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/2360008/
accelerating.org/downloads/SmartEvoDevoUniv2008.pdf
http://evodevouniverse.com/wiki/Main_Page
http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/2360008/
accelerating.org/downloads/SmartEvoDevoUniv2008.pdf
Electromagnetic Fields and Somatics
Magnetic Movie from Semiconductor on Vimeo.
Perhaps this is what we are experiencing, as the Heart picks up, perceives and produces electromagnetic fields. We are fine tuned antennas of awareness. Our moods, thoughts, and emotions flow out of us first as electromagnetic information. All of our bodies are in a sea of instantaneous communication with each others fields. Yet through multiple generations of terror, war, famine, propaganda, etc, we have developed a powerful armor to the perception of electromagnetic information. This armor is in the form of disassociation, narcissism, and physically holding and producing cortisol.
Embodied Relational Therapy
http://www.erthworks.co.uk/
This is an author I love and respect. His work is accurate and has influenced my own thinking.
This is an author I love and respect. His work is accurate and has influenced my own thinking.
Interview with Alan Schore
http://www.thinkbody.co.uk/papers/interview-with-allan-s.htm
"There is a movement now in all psychotherapies into the importance to really have any form of change of having an emotional experience in time with the therapist perhaps even directed towards the therapist. A key to that is that the patient must have a felt experience of his own body, as well as more of an intense reflective capacity about how he is emotionally relating to other people."
"There is a movement now in all psychotherapies into the importance to really have any form of change of having an emotional experience in time with the therapist perhaps even directed towards the therapist. A key to that is that the patient must have a felt experience of his own body, as well as more of an intense reflective capacity about how he is emotionally relating to other people."
Somatic Leadership
Somatic Leadership
Lets us assume that the Western Psyche is maturing into a perspective of interdependence. This interdependence is seen in multiple dynamic contexts from the personal to the communal. Change within this maturing perspective needs a new form of leadership with a very different orientation marked by ones ability to feel, see, and relate to how the personal and the communal are woven and thus participate with this present time dynamic in such a way as to foster this very orientation and awareness in others. This begins through Leadership practices that illuminate our own personal values-intentions-actions and how these are embodied actions that are either in line with the communal or in discord with the communal. Through Somatic Leadership processes we discover and practice present time dynamics that create and generate our mutual interdependent experience of reality.
Thoughts?
Scot
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