this morning, sitting with you

Meditating this morning, sitting, feeling, sensing is nothing more than everything. I am looking for continued life lessons in how to not try so hard, and how to run through walls and not into them. It doesn't get much easier than simply sitting and observing.

I'm a very active person and tend to like my lessons learned hard, through injury and recovery, through speeding tickets, through eyes burned red from jalapeno pepper oil. I'm also realizing more and more that this might not be the easiest path to self actualization and realized dreams.

But in meditation, I find these lessons through healing. This morning, I am reminded of the universal truth that everything is not good or bad, it's simply wonderful in its vacillating state. There's no need to try to create an outcome and clinging to that outcome only serves to perpetuate suffering in myself and others. But by sitting and simply observing, relaxing all necessity and just enjoying the experience inside this body, the unfolding of events can be witnessed, enjoyed even, without judgement, condemnation.

I had this experience before, when learning this meditation technique, Vipassana. There was a feeling of being wrapped in the nurturing warmth of a compassionate parent. There was memory of strong hurts, ages old, perhaps centuries old being eased. There were no tears but just the sweetness of relief that comes after hours of crying.

I'm reminded that the conscious brain, our sensory motor cortices are inhibitory centers. With Hanna Somatics, we use a voluntary motor action to bring up a conscious sensation. With that conscious sensation, involuntary muscular contraction can be eased. Years of built up tension starts to soften.

In my intentional sitting, I feel that inhibitory action. I feel my involuntary compulsions/clinging start to relax. I feel everything and whatever I feel eases. I feel deeper than muscular levels, into the culture, the history and the future. As consciousness expands, the clouds of discomfort, the sludge of personal slights/global injustice and aggression to ourselves and our planet wash away as if from a late afternoon thundershower and reveal underneath the compulsive regenerating force that is always present and patiently awaits inevitable changes of life.

And I'm temporarily calm, and beautiful and loving of the mission and it's hipsters, its homeless, its trendy bars, dingy taquerias, and frenetic youth.

Perhaps the mission, the universe, you are temporarily loving of me too. Or perhaps that love is there continuously and I just have to keep sitting.

Darkness is not the opposite of Light

so the line on the wall said. It is merely the absence of it.

Wise words for a graffiti artist in the mission. But then again, a graffiti artist can appreciate this, the way sunlight or the absence of obscures, changes, illuminates their work of art. Or the way a dark cloud or passing truck temporarily blocks the light; bringing darkness.

There’s an idea I read recently, in physics, about the known unknown. That is, we can understand fully what happens only in the places that light can reach. We can understand what happens on the borders, where light stops. Furthermore, we know that there is something,theoretically, beyond the range where there is light but we cannot know what that something is. Light, vibrating waves or beaming photons(depending on how you look at it), is the thread of space and time. Without light, there is nothing.

I had a personal experience with this recently. I took a course in Vipassana Meditation, a form of buddhist meditation where the goal is insight, deep wisdom about yourself and the world. In this technique,the first focus of your wisdom is yourself. To observe, objectively what is happening within your body. You observe your body as if it were something external from you, arms legs, torso. “no me, no my”. You observe and you observe and you observe curious things. You observe areas or your body that feel somewhat nice, the subtle sensation of vibrations, tinglings, warmth, energy flowing like water passing over rocks in a river. You observe areas where there is intense sensations like pain, burning, stabbing, a leg falling asleep, sharp tinglings where you want to itch and itch and itch. You’re taught that these are distractions, the seeds of misery and suffering. To react would only multiply and further the suffering and misery. So you sit and just observe. and then you notice other areas where you feel…. nothing. A whole section of your face, missing. Some fingers, missing. A whole foot, missing. What a curious thing. You saw yourself in the mirror earlier that day and were sure that you looked whole, complete. There were no holes in your face, you ate breakfast with all your fingers, you walked on two feet. But internally, there is nothing.

And this nothing is not the opposite of something, for that too would be something. It’s not numbness I’m talking about, numbness is certainly something and for sure, there is numbness in places. What you experience is the absence of something and what that absence leaves; nothing.

I wasn’t surprised by this. As a Hanna Somatic Educator, I’m very familiar with Sensory Motor Amnesia;a forgetfullness of how to voluntarily move and consciously feel an area of your body. My intellectual side was fascinated by this phenomenon of my nervous system. What sensory motor amnesia means is that movement and sensation are linked together. Meaning; as movement decreases, as an area of the body becomes rigid, sensation decreases as well. When the flow of energy and movement no longer reaches certain muscle fiber, it’s as if they cease to exist. You can feel the areas around them. If they are rather superficial, lieing close to the surface, you can touch them with your hand. But until sensation is recovered, voluntary movement cannot happen. Until movement is returned, it’s as if they are gone.

and I see this quite often in my work with trauma recovery. A person has been injured, suffered abuse, broken bones, surgery and in a protective reflex has blocked themselves from feeling certain parts of their body. They do this instinctively by freezing the affected area. If you touch a hot stove, immediately, your hand is drawn back into your center and will remain tucked into your side, frozen, until the pain is gone. A soldier, shot in the stomach will reflexively curl up, clutching the wound as they hobble off to safety. A victim of sexual abuse may disconnect from their pelvis, tightening the muscles around their groin and lower abdomen.

In a normal, healthy world, these postures, these reflexes would only last as long as it took the person to get to safety and consciously feel that they are free from harm. But in a world where we are constantly inundated with trauma, stress, sensory overload sometimes we forget to let go. We keep holding on to our wounds, protecting them from further injury.

And in this way, our own bodies become the dark clouds that obscure light. In this way, over time, the borders of where we exist start to draw back and darkness, the absence of light starts to creep towards us.

But also in this way, with understanding or natural process, we can proceed. Venturing forward with the knowledge of what is and what isn’t, we can start to move with the light, knowing that all we have to do is bring light and the darkness will peel away. With the guidance of a Hanna Somatic Educator, trauma victims can recover pain-free movements in areas of their body and in this way recover their sense of wholeness, of light shining throughout all parts of their inner universe.

And so back in my meditation I sat further and observed these borders of my inner darkness. And bit by bit, little waves of sensation start to creep over the borders. And bit by bit what did not exist springs into being with the vibrancy of a young flower breaking through ground cover. Bit by bit, light returned to what was once dark and there was knowledge and there was life and there was intense sensation and deep ache of old trauma, but at least there was not nothing.

And back on that Mural, the sun rises and a grafitti artist’s words spring into being, into action, into the mind of a writer, the research of a physicist and the reality of our universe.

Exercise like your life depends on it.

Saw this article in the NYTimes and I thought, well duh. Don't we know this? Don't you feel that in your soul? Our bodies were meant to be moved, we are engineered to walk, to swing from trees, to swim in the oceans. Within all of us is our ancestors, the Savannah people of Africa. Within all of us is our ancestor, the Great Apes. Within all of us is our Ancestor, the reptiles who crawled out of the ocean. Within all of us is our Ancestors the fish. Within all of us is an organism that is one or two celled, dividing and uniting to form more and larger organisms.

You can see this in our brain. As Carl Sagan writes about in Dragons of Eden, we have the reptilian brain, the mammalian brain and most recently the neocortex: Consciousnes is thought to be a result of the neocortex. But the neocortex is on top of the other two levels of brain which developed first and which in all of us develops first. In fetal development we all go through stages where we are first a single cell, later a fish, later a mammal and finally human. All of these stages are necessary to go through to develop into a whole functioning human. Similarly all of the stages in evolution were necessary for the Human species to come around. The Universe had been around already for billions of years before humans came around. You can not rush something as magnificient as us, you can not skip steps and you cannot cheat biology.

All of our ancestors are creatures of motion, just as we are creatures of motion. It's wonderful that we have developed elaborate cultures, arts, architecture. We have used our immense capacity for imagination, creativity and problem solving to build and change and inspire future generations. But never foroget what we are and how we got here. Never stop moving. The moment you stop moving is the moment you begin to die.

Stay mobile, completely mobile, stay fluid like water, stay flexible like a blade of grass, swing like a monkey, swim like a fish. Exercise like your life depends on it, because it does.

How Sensory Motor Awareness Can Change the World.

In my last post, I talked about Sensory Motor Amnesia, a forgetfulness of how to move and feel an area of your soma. When Amnesia sets in, that area of your soma become unconscious and inaccessible to you. The word Soma refers to the Human Body experienced from within. In another sense, it refers to the universe experienced from your specific location. And so if there is a disconnection and loss of awareness within yourself then there is also a diminished ability to sense and move through the world around you. For this reason, SMA often leads to stiffness, inflexibility, discoordination and clumsiness navigating through the universe and through life. And not just in terms of the physical. From a somatic viewpoint we see that the whole person, including spiritual, ideological and personality development will become stiff, rigid, clumsy and inefficient. The person will become afraid of change because their ability to adapt is diminished. This is reflected in how as people age in modern society, their worldview often becomes more focused/limited and they lose the capacity to see other points of view, ways of doing things. The old adage you can't teach a dog new tricks is indicative of an "old dog" who has acumulated a great deal of Sensory Motor Amnesia. So much of what that "old dog" does is unconscious, involuntary and lost to them.

But you CAN teach an "old dog" new tricks. More importantly, you can teach a human Soma to overcome Sensory Motor Amnesia and turn it into Sensory Motor Awareness. And Because this Amnesia, this forgetfulness of how to sense and move is a Sensory Motor event, it can be addressed quite quickly through sensory motor activity, namely, slow conscious movement. Every event not just in human activity but in the universe is a sensory motor event; feedback loop between information and response. The push and pull between masses of energy, the swaying of a tree branch, the coordinated attack of an alligator, the leaping of a kangaroo, and the walking and talking of human somas. What's unique about human somas is our ability to be conscious of this sensory motor feedback and influence it.

It's this ability that got us into this mess. We have taught ourselves inadvertently, and sometimes quite actively, patterns that have led to disease, pain, and have set a path of destruction to nature and other species. These patterns have been in place for centuries, are in the very foundation of our society and, just like the back tension that we don't feel until it "goes out" with a painful spasm, we don't sense the destructiveness of these patterns until species start disappearing, economies collapse and people start getting sick on mass levels(notice the elevated rates of drug dependency, chronic illness, cancer, obesity). In a sense, society itself is a product of and an instigator of Sensory Motor Amnesia. We must now use this conscious ability to deconstruct those old patterns, reverse the damage we've done and start building more sustainable patterns within our own life and within the larger universe that we share.

As I said before, this must be a conscious process, creating Sensory Motor Awareness individually and globally. Individually, by moving slowly and gently, you force the conscious part of your brain to spring into action, finding the connections between body parts and coordinating movement through space. As your movement becomes more coordinated, all of a sudden your sensation throughout your Soma starts to improve. In this process of Sensory Motor Awareness; pain, imbalance and disease begin to disappear. As you become much more sensitive to what is happening throughout your system, your internal mechanisms of homeostasis take over, returning you to health and balance. Similarly as more of your soma becomes incorporated with movement; circulation, lymphatic drainage, blood pressure, and your immune system starts working better because all parts of you are now receiving adequate blood flow and nutrients. Your posture and temperament become more flexible, more dynamic. Your emotional range, capacity for joy, sadness and everything in between, increases dramatically.

Not only that, but as you become more sensitive internally and coordinated, you also will become more aware of your position in the world and your relations with other people. Your movement through space will become graceful, efficient, and responsive. You will have less injury and be less afraid of change because you will have faith in your innate powers of adaptability and healing. On a larger level, you will start to feel more your relationship with nature and other species. In my estimation, a populace that is engaged, aware and connected will automatically stop poisoning and destroying our planet. people that are pain/disease free will be more compassionate and joyful towards other Somas. The mass Sensory Motor Amnesia of Somas in a society is an inability to change the path of destruction we're on. And as the pains of what we're doing to the world are reflected in our own disease and suffering, so too are the joys and changes we make. What society would you live in if you felt you could do anything, and were unafraid of change? It's not that awareness in itself will be that change but mass awareness opens the door to proactivity, sustainability and successful cohabitation between all Somas; human, animal, plant, and other.

The point is to be aware, to be sensitive, to enjoy your Soma for all that it can offer you and all that you can offer the world. This is our place of control and reflection, this is our place of change. I welcome you to come and explore this with me in my regular Tuesday evening class, 6:00 at 3380 20th street or come in for a one-on-one session. That's all for now, feel free to comment and respond or share this in anyway you see fit.

Somatic Storytelling: the bunion

A case Study:


I saw a woman this week with a bunion, a bony growth on the inside of her big toe. She had suffered pain in this foot for twenty years and was contemplating surgery. Now, what can one do about someone else's body growing extra bone on their foot? Thinking about it from my perspective: as a somatic educator, my question is Why would someone grow extra bone in their foot in the first place. Structure over function. Structure means your bones and nervous system. Function means what you do with the structure, how you carry it through the world. It seems quite unlikely that someone would just happen to grow extra bone in their foot. There must have been a functional imperitive, the way she was using her body demanding that the structure of the foot shift.

In fact, bunions are very common among women(another plague of patriarchal society perhaps). There's speculation that it is caused by squeezing the foot into tight, constricting shoes. I think quite simply what is clear is that it means the person's center of gravity, which should be spread out evenly throughout their whole foot has been shifted, perhaps narrowed or set off center. If this happens long enough the structure will compensate.

When you look at her whole soma, indeed there is a great deal of compensation. For one thing, her weight is shifted onto the other leg. This could be so that she doesn't bear weight on the painful foot or it might be that the imbalance in the foot leading to the bunion started from this weight shift higher up in the center. Potentially from an earlier trauma. Two, there is a great deal of tension in the hips that seems to lock the pelvis and corresponding legs in their position, diminishing her capacity for comfort and healing.

So, my focus is on comfort. At this stage, there is nothing I can do to get rid of the bunion, all that I can do is help her refind her center of balance and release the tension around her pelvis letting the legs move freely and restoring ease to her gait. As with most problems, this involves keeping focused on the center of the body. This is where real change has to come from.

And I'm happy to let you know that it seems to be working. After just one session of lengthening and balancing the muscles in her waist, she felt a great deal of comfort in her body and actually noticed that the foot pain went away. As long as she continues to remind herself how to stand in an easy, balanced way, the bunion pain should go away. And I'm very curious to see if, once natural, balanced function is restored, the bunion might actually start to diminish. If the extra bone is no longer needed for support, will her Soma start to absorb it back? We shall see. This is just another example though of our amazing capacities for self change and healing, at any point in our lives.

modelling:how we learn unconsciously from our surroundings...

I spent a beautiful couple of days up on a hillside overlooking the pacific ocean this past weekend. I set up my tent on this ridge just above the fog line, and at times it felt like I was floating on clouds. I did a bit of hiking but mostly just sat; observing, thinking, feeling, feeling, enjoying and I came back revived and inspired.

Something I often come back to when considering how we Somas develop and interact is the Mirroring reflex. Like all reflexes, the mirroring reflex is hardwired into our very structure. What it does is causes us to mimic, to reflect what we see around us. This is helpful when learning how to walk, talk, dance, run because we don't have to ask somebody how they do something, we can just observe and repeat. In fact, we don't even have to be conscious of it, we just naturally do it.

But does that stop at human mirroring? What needs to be considered is not just how we mirror other human somas, but how we mirror other animal somas and in fact, how we mirror our environment as a whole. It's nice to think that all the world is a stage and we are merely players, but that neglects the obvious fact the world, the universe, our environment is the biggest player of them all.

With modern civilization we have done a great deal to shift of surroundings, manipulating and suppressing nature. We have built stronger and stronger fortresses to live in with rigid straight walls and hard cement roads. What can one learn from cement and tall rigid houses but to become stiff, rigid and hard?

Watching the grass this weekend, I was reminded of the strength in flexibility. In order to survive through the seasons, grass, even in its dried state has to maintain an enormous amount of flexibility. As the winds gusted the tall tan grasses bent and swayed far away from their upright position and as I walked through them, they seemingly cleared a path, sharing the space with me. In this same way, in order for us Human Somas to survive in a world that is often unpredictable, definitely more crowded and sometimes quite gusty, we would do well to model these grasses and be more flexible, less rigid, more able to share our space, bend with the changes and stand up tall with the sun.

So I'm positing two things.

1 I think we all need to spend a lot more time out in nature away from the hardness, rigidness of our modern roads and buildings and

2 If we insist on continuing to create and distance ourselves from nature, can we do it in a way that will reflect growth, efficiency, flexibility, and sustainability?; inspiring ourselves with our imagination and letting the power of reflexes and nature guide us to a better place.

experimenting with the malleability of attention

Sometimes an understanding of neurophysiology really comes in handy when you come upon an unexpected situation. I wanted to share with you an experience I had with an interesting road block that required some thinking outside the box.

I've been working with this particular client pretty steadily for a few months now, helping her resolve a chronic vertigo and migraine problem. The focus for the first month or so was on simply unwinding steady tension around the torso. If you are rigid and tense all over then the shocks and jolts of the modern world will violently shake you with every step you take and bump you drive over. A relaxed, responsive Soma can easily absorb and diffuse tension throughout their system keeping them from getting jostled too much. So this was our focus in the beginning and she had been making slow and steady improvement with the home exercises and hands-on sessions.

A few weeks ago I tried to bring in more twisting to our sessions. Twisting of any sort had been quite uncomfortable for her and would trigger flair-ups in the migraines and naseau. Twisting; such an integral part to comfortable, relaxed walking, is something that needs to be comfortable.

So we began to do some very gentle twisting movements, differentiating the movement of the neck and eyes from the movement of the torso and shoulders. We moved slowly, finding comfort in every step of the way so that she could feel that twisting could be a positive experience. *Contact me for the specific technique of this movement*
And as she began to find ease and comfort through this twist she became acutely aware of a very deep tension around her esophagus, almost as if something was choking her. This is something that happens quite frequently, when you start unraveling layers of tension. In particular, this is something I've come across with trained ballet dancers. Although they are quite flexible and don't seem to have a great deal of superficial tension, there is often a a lot of deep stabilizing tension. And so at this point I asked the client if she had been trained as a dancer and indeed, as a child she had.

So what do you do with these deep muscles that don't seem to bend the joint in one particular direction but instead seem to lock around the joint, stabilizing it in all directions? You have to get a bit inventive. And so I thought back to a story I heard once of famed Neurologist V S Ramachandra helping patients with phantom pain in amputated limbs. The limb was clearly inaccessible, but through a creative use of a mirror box and the still attached limb, patients are able to release the phantom spasm and subsequent pain. Go here for a great video of him talking about this and other neurological stories http://www.ted.com/talks/vilayanur_ramachandran_on_your_mind.html

The reason for this is that all sensations of the soma occur in the sensory motor cortex, an area of amazing malleability. So to activate this part of her Soma, I had her concentrate on the tension surrounding her esophagus, and imagine it as a fist that was gripping around her throat. I've found imagery to be incredibly useful for turning something intangible into reality. So then, to attach the imagery to something useful, I had her clench her own fist on the right side; her dominant and more contracted side. So there was now a simultaneous contraction around the throat and in her hand. Through imagery these two contractions were linked together. As her fist tightened, the grip on her throat tightened and then, as the tension in her fist lessened, the tensions around the throat lessened. With the tension around her throat lessened, we could proceed to more freedom of movement and ease in twisting.

The gripper muscles of the hand just happened to be a very appropriate connection to make 1 because their action is quite similar to what was happening to her throat and 2 Because it was a very easy image to visualize, that of a hand gripping the throat. For sure, not a pleasant image, but then again there is nothing pleasant about tension around the esophagus.


I'll update you as our work together continues if anything else of note comes up. And please, if you have any commments, thoughts or suggestions, I would love to hear it.