Category Archives: moving, breathing, feeling

Nov21

to gladden the heart

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What Actions are most excellent?

To gladden the heart of a human being.
To feed the hungry.
To help the afflicted.
To lighten the sorrow of the sorrowful.
To remove the wrongs of the injured.
That person is the most beloved of God
who does the most good to God’s creatures.

~  Muhammad ~

For the past three years I have been studying Somatic Experiencing, the trauma healing work developed by Dr. Peter Levine.  We are currently in the final Advanced module of that training, focusing on touch.  After all of the lectures, the practice sessions, the questions, the confusion, the flashes of insight, this poem is what the training cooks down to.  Helping others feel better.  Simple as that.  We have a lot of tools and perhaps the most important of those is our focused intention, our desire to create a space where balance and coherence can emerge.

I will be working with clients using Somatic Experiencing in combination with the other tools of Somatic Movement Therapy, including the possibility of working with horses in a therapeutic context.

Contact me for more information or to make an appointment.

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Nov1

the detour strategy

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Loiter.  Linger.  Pause

The path is not straight

but curved, scalloped,

circuitous,

embellished with apertures of

time and space

that open when we

look around

for the deeper mysteries

that nestle in the small

unplanned,

unintended moments –

those not tethered to the

carrot and stick of

immediate demand

but rather

waiting to be discovered

in the savoring of

now now now.

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.

 

 

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.