Monthly Archives: October 2015

Oct23

this is worth sharing

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I am a big fan of Maria Popova and her blog Brain Pickings.  In the world of self-absorbed, politicizing, opinionizing writing, her blog is the one that provides real portals for investigation, learning, reflection.

Her latest post on her 9 Learnings is worth a close read – more than one, in fact.  So is her interview with Krista Tippett, on On Being, who calls her a “cartographer of meaning in a digital age.”

If you haven’t visited Brain Pickings, you are in for a treat.  If you have, you know what I mean.

 

 

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Oct23

the dance of fascia

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During the recent ISMETA (International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association) annual meeting, the dinner conversation turned (passionately) to fascia. What is it?  How does it work?  It is the connective body-suit – the structure that, if we removed everything else, would still show our shape as a body.  It is the tissue that supports everything else, through which the other structures thread.  When the fascia becomes dry or inelastic, so do we.  Habitual restrictions are born in the fascia.

Our mobility, integrity, and resilience are determined in large part by how well hydrated our fascia is. In fact, what we call “stretching a muscle” is actually the fibers of the connective tissue (collagen) gliding along one another on the mucous-y proteins called glycosaminoglycans (GAGs for short). GAGs, depending on their chemistry, can glue layers together when water is absent, or allow them to skate and slide on one another when hydrated.1,2 This is one of the reasons most injuries are fascial. If we get “dried out” we are more brittle and are at much greater risk for erosion, a tear, or a rupture. (read more)

Now watch this beautiful video.  How have you nourished your fascia today?  The principles of somatics, including variation, slowing, awareness, connectivity, breath support and focusing on the whole as well as the parts are all essential food for our fascia.

Oct16

in transit

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moving-day

We are moving.  In the thick of sifting, culling, releasing, saving, organizing, packing, unpacking.  We are between two houses – straddling.  It is awkward and at the same time exhilarating.  We have known this was coming for a long time.

Actually, when we moved from Martha’s Vineyard, it took more than one tractor trailer to move us.  Stuff had to be ferried down our narrow sand road (between two wetlands) out onto the main road to the BIG TRUCK.  Then ferried across the Vineyard Sound and Massachusetts to the farthest edge of Connecticut.  I started culling then, but things have a way of coming in the door and piling up nonetheless.

This move should feel simple by comparison. In some ways it does.  We know the area.  We have the luxury of moving over the period of a month.  However, we are leaving a house that is full of memory and feeling: our daughters, our granddaughter, and the many animals who have left us  -Pachi, Abijah, Gordita, Jules, Liam, Nikita.  A wedding, our civil ceremony that had to happen when we moved.  Dances that have been made here, art that has been created.  New directions in work and love.

At the new house, yesterday they spray foamed what will be my new movement studio.  Our contractor managed to save the beautiful mahogany floor that was there so we can reuse it.  Pam’s studio is plumbed.  The dog fence is going up.  My Aunt Pearl’s peonies from Sioux Falls have been transplanted.  Very soon we will all transit:  Cho, Guinnie, Hentri, Sadie Mae, Eli, Mamacita, Maggie, Talullah, Precious, Bella, Ivy, Pam and Paula.  Waving goodbye, waving hello.