letters from a healing jouney

letters from a healing jouney

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

outside

It's amazing to me how different it feels to be out in "nature" as opposed to the city.  I forget when I don't get out of the concrete that there exist places where a person can dig a hole or build a beautiful pyre out of found wood to light a fire.  Next thing you know, my friend and I were making up songs in two part harmony.  We get to express our creative selves in other ways in the City, but sometimes it just feels right to use my arms and legs to walk and carry and let my creativity come out in ways other than pen and paper or a cute outfit.

Right?  The Outside reminds us who we are on the Inside.  Or something.  Let's go play!

Monday, December 29, 2008

training

I have agreed to ride 100 miles on the back on a tandem bike on March 19.  

I know from experience that when I start training for a specific event, suddenly my body means something very different to me.  This machine that carries my soul around and allows me to make contact with the world and other people transforms into a machine that must endure a certain physical challenge.  This is special!  This is different!  Especially in this case because every pound of my body is an extra pound which my brother will be carrying.  Let me explain.

My brother has offered to basically pull me along on the back of his tandem.  That fact makes this event distinct from the couple of races I've competed in (some runs and a sprint triathlon) because in this one, I don't have to do anything but sit there if I want to do.  Here's why: both my father and my brother are going and my brother is too fast a rider to have fun riding this race with our dad and his friends.  These guys, let me explain, are strong.  They're far stronger riders than I am and may ever be, it's just that my brother is even faster.  So my job is to make my brother's job a little harder by sitting there on the back of the bike.  Easy right?

Well, I still need to sit there for six straight hours, and I still need to keep my feet moving all that time.  So, if nothing else, I need to train for endurance.  Plus, I want to help.  I might as well do something if I'm going to sit there all day.

So two things are going on: I have an event to train for, and I am going to become a lighter creature.  Crazy, right?  I have the option of changing the size of my body.  With all of the thinking and meditating and writing on the mind and body and spirit and community all being connected, this brings ups some interesting implications.  I'm still wrapping my head around all of it, and I will keep you posted as I go.  

For now, what's coming up for me is being seventeen years old.  That's the last time that I thought of my body in terms of how many pounds it weighed.  The lightest I ever remember weighing was fifteen pounds less than I think I weigh now, though it has been about a year since I've measured my weight.  And in a little over two and a half months I plan on weighing seven pounds less.  Crazy!  I need to go find a scale.  

What does this have to do with bodywork, then?  If nothing else, it gets my consciousness into my own body in new ways, which allows me to connect more deeply with what is going on in the bodies of my clients and the people around me.  I can see that my body today is not ready to ride a hundred miles on a bicycle and at the same time I understand that I can and will make it ready by diligent work over time.  So I understand that the body is not stuck in its current situation.  When I am working with a client on moving through a specific painful tendency in their body I hold the understanding that we humans are capable of change and not doomed to remain exactly as we are (frightening though that may be).  That pain in your shoulder or back or neck or jaw or wherever that you think of as part of yourself or "just the way you are"?  Guess what, it's not.  We can keep it there if we want to, but we have the option of realizing that it's our choice to do so.  We can move from weakness to strength through training and we can move from pain to free movement through similarly applied work.

As always I start by talking about the body with the understanding that this same idea shows up everywhere.  In each aspect of our lives, we are in training for something.  Whether we consciously prepare ourselves or not, each choice we make sets us up for the next challenge: every experience gives us more tools we can use to meet the next situation life hands us.  There are times to actively train and times to actively perform and times that are a little of each.  Right now, for me, I train.

Sunday, December 28, 2008

life

We are all alive!  and we were teeny tiny babies once.

I remembered this on Christmas Eve while holding a three day old baby, born just shy of six pounds: his trunk hardly bigger than my two hands cradled together.  I could still see the ridges between his individual skull bones.  I felt countless different pulses move as his blood, craniosacral fluid, lymph, and everything else buzzed around, helping him make sense of being Outside.

And Inside there, inside his own little body, every little organ and system for creating, healing, and sustaining life is already fully formed and functional.

It's so easy to be amazed when it's all brand new, but that's all of us.  We're doing it: being in the world!  What a miracle!

Monday, December 22, 2008

drawing in

The winter solstice was yesterday.  The nights are as long and the days are as short as they're going to be all year.  Starting today, every day will be a little bit longer than the last.

And I'm cold.

Around this time of year, every year, I start to pull in my sphere of influence.  I am in the house more often, or in my neighborhood, and spending more time with my most intimate friends and less time making new ones.  I work less, talk on the phone less (and post in my blog less too, right?).

I used to wonder, "Man, what is WRONG?" and now I realize, nothing.  If anything, I've begun to wonder why the heck we try as a society to continue to act as if nothing was happening.  For example, why would you go to work for eight hours a day when there are only nine hours of sunlight to soak up?  We humans are part of the world, part of this planet, and this planet just happens to be one that has seasons.  Times of growth and times of rest, time for bikerides and time for contemplation.  Within each one of the seasons there are times for each, but in my life I notice that certain seasons make for better times to focus on different activities and aspects of my life.  

Winter is down time for me this year.  Working less time.  Also, danceparty time (somewhat surprisingly), and live music time: getting close with the folks I'm close with.  Reminding myself to let people know I might not follow through on that plan we just made.  Eating lots of root vegetables.  That's my pattern this year, and honestly, winter caught me a little off guard this time around.  It took me several weeks (months??) to adjust from my late summer self.  Maybe by writing it down and sharing it with you I can make that mental note and remember to stock up for the winter and look forward to the long, cold days of rest and waiting for the sun to return.  

Because it's wonderful, winter, and if I'm here living it, I must be living it for a reason.