“…If you never wholly give yourself up to the chair you sit in, but always keep your leg- and body-muscles half contracted for a rise; if you breathe eighteen or nineteen instead of sixteen times a minute, and never quite breathe out at that,—what mental mood can you be in but one of inner panting and expectancy, and how can the future and its worries possibly forsake your mind?…”
Read MoreCertain songs and books alter the trajectories of our lives. Here are 21 books that changed mine…
Read MoreI am a bit fascinated with obituaries - as they say, "That's all she wrote." I think the summary of a whole life should be compelling! Here is my favorite obit written about a man I did not know but got real feeling for as I read it - Lyman M. Jones III.
Read MoreHeaven, according to science, is not demonstrable. But we know, both as givers and receivers of high quality bodywork, that heaven often seems to make an appearance within the context of a session….
Read More“Advice is like snow, the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind.”
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Read MoreThe scope of bodywork includes not only individuals but, in the largest sense, our whole community - i.e. the “body politic.” The news media and the internet lead us to believe that kindness and rationality are in decline. This is not true - the majority of U.S. population holds positions that are thoughtful and kind….What to do?
Read MoreThe lore of the Chinese lute gives us an unparalleled window into touch technique.The descriptions and imagery of the kinds of touch used for lute-playing show us that we in the West have a highly under-developed vocabulary and imagery for the vast range of gestures, shapes and spirit conveyed through the infinite and different ways we touch.
Read More“Poetry is prayer.” There are a thousand prayers from around the world in these treasured anthologies.
Read More“The Memory Palace of Bones” (with the subtitle “exploring embodiment through the skeletal system.”) Why “The Memory Palace of Bones?” How could understanding the title of this book be in itself illuminating? Here is the story of how and why we came up with, and were inspired by, this title and the book that flowed from it…
Read MoreI’ve been planning my first out-of-the-U.S. workshop in 2022, in Costa Rica, and for this one, I prepared for travel and the class with more anxiety than usual…
Read More“THE THING THAT BRINGS HUMAN VALUE BACK TO EXPERIENCE IS THE TOUCHING OF IT WITH HUMAN PRESENCE.” ~ Steve Gilligan
Read MoreFor better and for worse, we can see and feel that our body, on the level of the nervous system and therefore on all that our nervous system touches, is being shaped and transformed by the “media” surrounding us…
Read MorePolyvagal theory and related practices give us valuable neuro-physiological and psychological information for our lives and can help specifically with bodymind therapy applications.
Read MoreThe thymus gland, “budding” underneath the sternum, also comes from the ancient word for “smoke!”
Read MoreCan we really lead healthy lives without religion? Not religion as an institutionalized system,, but considered as a natural human behavior, a natural belief and emotion. Is it as natural to feel religious, as to feel awe, anger, grief, fear, or love?
Read MoreExcerpt from a review by Srikanth Reddy of “How Do You Know Where You Are”: Poems by Dana Levin, in the New York Times Book Review, April 17.…..(Levin variously) attempts to find a way out of her literary PTSD. So it’s quite exhilarating when, toward the book’s end, the poet finds her truest muse in the unlikeliest of places, on a chiropractor’s table:
Read MoreHow do you carry a dream in a broken world?
Read MoreUnderlying so much of the last two plus years are unconscious and conscious reactions to death – the deaths of people around us and our own death. The expression “I feel it down to my bones,” captures much of implication that our reactions to death go immediately deeper than our muscles.
Read MoreThe etymology of lungs is “light.” We don't necessarily think “light” when we think about the lungs. So this naturally is an exciting suggestion…
Read More'Roughly forty-three thousand years ago a young cave bear died in the rolling hills on the northwest border of modern-day Slovenia. A thousand miles away and a thousand years later, a mammoth died in the forests above the river Blau near the southern edge of modern-day Germany. Within a few years of the mammoth's demise, a griffon vulture also perished in the same vicinity. Five thousand years after that a swan and another mammoth died nearby.
…These different creatures, lost across time and space, did share one remarkable posthumous fate. After their flesh had been consumed by carnivores or bacteria, a bone from each of their skeletons was meticulously crafted by human hands into a flute.