Monday, October 2, 2017

Where are you?



Are you at the beginning of your year- looking forward to the new days and new possibility?

Or are you heading toward the end of your year - looking forward to celebrations with friends and family?

Whichever group you fall into, we all can use this time as one for reflection, the beginning of a new year, and ending to the old year.

Moshe Feldenkrais said, “If you don't know what you do, you can't do what you want.”  This thought runs throughout in the Feldenkrais Method®.  We race through our busy lives, but do we really know where we are? Do we know how our current actions can cause pain, decreased balance, decreased endurance, or stiffness? 

Every lesson we do addresses this. Every Awareness Through Movement® lesson starts with what’s called a “scan” or a “check in.”  We do it at the beginning and end of each lesson so that we can know where we started and how we changed.  A scan gives us a baseline, it is  a mirror or an x-ray. The scan helps us feel our restrictions and how we limit ourselves by our patterns of holding. There cannot be a path to improvement if you don’t know what you are already doing, what your pattern of movement is.
                                                                  
If you were able to scan and assess yourself easily, you’d see yourself not only in relation to yourself, but in you would get to know yourself relative to your environment.  That’s one of the secrets of improvement: check in throughout your session from beginning to end.  This is how we know what we do…so we can do what we want.

This scan, can be done anytime.  Try it right now and feel the change in your sense of yourself………

Take a moment to sense yourself in sitting right now. 
Move your chair back from your computer.   
How do your feet touch the floor?  
Are your feet more toward your heels, your toes, the outside of your foot, the inside of your foot? How much of your foot is on the ground? 
How comfortable, or uncomfortable are you?  Where is the pressure on each buttock?  
Do you sit toward your pubic bone or backward toward your tail bone?  
Are you breathing? Where is your breath?  
Do you breathe in and out in your belly or in your chest? 
Does the surface on which you sit change with your breath? 
Let go of any judgement you have about how you are sitting right now. There is no right or wrong. 
It is simply a question of what you are doing.
How do you hold your head?  Is your right ear closer to your right shoulder than your left ear is to your left shoulder? 
Feel your breath come into your nose. Follow it throughout your chest. Where does it go?  
Are your teeth touching.
Are your lips touching? 
Allow your eyes to be soft. 
Sense how your head sits on your chest and follow your spine down from the base of your skull to your pelvis and feel your sitting bones on your seat now.  
How do you feel now?
  
You will sense a change by just this small bit of noticing.  There is no need to adjust anything.  Just your awareness will affect how you move, feel, and think. Your stress and anxiety will decrease if you can nourish yourself with this kind of sensing throughout the day  your ability to do what you want and to live the life you want will increase! How would that feel for you?  

Don't forget to ask yourself the question. "Where are you."
Go, take on your day!







Thursday, August 10, 2017

Party Trick or Life Skill


Is this a party trick, or a life skill?

Do it at your next party and everyone will marvel at your flexibility...then watch them all get down on the ground and try it!  

Chances are, most will fail  because according to dictionary.com, only a mere 1 in 2,000 humans can do this:


This action is called interdigitate. 

It's a verb which means to interlock the fingers of both hands.  A feat (pun intended), according to dictionary.com, that humans cannot do with their toes.

So why, besides becoming the life of the party, would you want to do this?

My answer is: what could soft, responsive toes do for you?

Think about that for a moment.  Plantar fasciitis and painful feet are epidemic in baby boomers.  We have neglected our feet for most of our lives, taking them for granted.  We spent years wearing uncomfortable shoes with pointed toes and high heels. Now we exercise and have learned to hold ourselves our "center," over-using our hips, knees, and feet. Many of us clench our toes!  

Without realizing it, we hold our stress in our feet.  

In order to interlace your toes, you must know what you are doing with your hips, your spine, and your belly.

Having hips that are stable (yet movable) is key at any age.  Stable hips mean you can maintain a posture that works no matter what activity you choose to do.  Do you like to dance? Play tennis? Having a flexible, competent spine along with those stable hips will allow you to bend, squat, and lift.  And we must know when to contract our abdominal muscles and when to relax them because, contrary to current theory, our core muscles are not meant to be held tightly at all times. Odd as it sounds, when we are constantly clenching our abdominals, we have a tendency to overuse our feet; especially when walking.

Learning to interlace (or interdigitate) our toes is a complete exercise.  You will be surprised at the knowledge of yourself you gain as you learn to do this.  You will learn how to pay attention to parts of yourself that you may not have known were related.

I know the burning question that you are having right now:  Can I actually do this? Yes you can. You can learn to have the soft, flexible feet that you once had! 

You can learn to do this and more.  You will be amazed to discover that all it takes is learning (or re-learning) through paying attention to how your body works. (NOTE:  it's not about strength, or even flexibility.  You'll struggle if  you try too hard!)

For now it might be enough to know that you could be able to do this if you wanted to.  

Keep and open mind and keep moving.

Class starts Tuesday, September 5th. 10:30 to 11:30 for 6 weeks. Come learn something new. See how your life improves.  Feel your blind spots disappear.

Monday, March 6, 2017

Time to Declutter ?


Hello
Spring will be here in a minute.  Are you like me? Are you thinking about “spring cleaning?”
Don’t get confused. I said “thinking” about it. Actually, I can live in clutter. I like my "stuff." What I don't like is having a cluttered brain or body. Many people have spotless homes and offices, but their brain and bodies are still in disarray. In fact, they are even beyond cluttered. They are overloaded.
I have a question for you. Does clutter cause stress? Or does stress cause clutter?
Does a cluttered home cause your brain to be stressed, or does a stressful situation cause you mind, body, and home to be cluttered?
What is stress any way? It is a reaction to anything that disturbs our equilibrium, our balance, either physically or emotionally.  In other words, it's forever a  part of life. A stressful event can trigger the “fight-or-flight” response, causing hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol to surge through the body. However, stress is not always a bad thing. Life’s pressures cause us to get out of bed in the morning. They allow us to go to work or to get our children to school.
stress
Sometimes, we just can’t balance our life. We rush around trying to accomplish everything and nothing. We are in such a hurry that we stop paying attention to the state of our body or our mind.

What does “stress” or “clutter” feel like?  This list could be very long. Often we feel some degree of instability. Or we feel angry and we don’t know why. We feel uncertain or we are in pain. We often have problems sleeping, or, breathing.

Many people and modalites advocate ways to relieve stress and they are almost all good. The question becomes, how easy are they to do, to do at any given moment. How quickly do they act and relieve our state of imbalance and volatility? Are they lasting? Can we do them while we are driving, working, grocery shopping?

I know the secret.  We can't necessarily change the stressors, but, we can change the way we react to them . There are answers.  We can diminish your reaction to stress quickly. The difference in my work is that you will be able to do it for yourself, anytime, whenever you need to. You won't need special clothes. You won't need to change your position. You can do it while your are walking, driving, playing, or working.

If you go to my website, you will find out how to "become the expert on you."  
You will see the information and how to sign up for my next workshop which just happens to be on Stress and Pain: Back, Neck, Feet.

I teach workshops, weekly classes, and individual sessions. Just contact me at 

Best regards to you until next time,
Beth R