The perfect is the enemy of the good. Fussing with our posture can get obsessive. It becomes another excuse for beating up ourselves. There is a time for attention toward detail, and a time to let it go and move on. Too much attention to detail...
“Anxiety: Women Nearly Twice as Likely as Men to Have Anxiety, Study Shows” Researchers from Cambridge University reviewed 48 studies on anxiety disorders and determined that for every 1.9 females, one male is affected by anxiety, the...
I take some of my somatic principles from psychology. The struggles in the bodymind are mirrored by the social challenges we all face. Body parts and systems interact in ways similar to members of social groups. Marion Woodman is a Canadian...
Why do people read to confirm their existing reality, rather than to get new perspectives? Why do we all hear more of what we agree with, and drop challenging details that might force us to rethink our world view? These are perennial...
“Stability increases the feeling of safety. Instability means risk but easy mobility. Both are biologically important. Becoming addicted to one of them makes one unsafe for lack of choice.” Moshe Feldenkrais How do find a good...
“Every weakness contains within itself a strength.” Japanese author Shusaku Endo spent a lot of time around doctors and nurses. Before publishing his award-winning work of historical fiction, Silence, he spent the greater part of...
In Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Nobel prize winning novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, he tells of a priest who levitates every time he drinks hot chocolate. The author said once that originally he had the priest levitating when he drank...
Love is scary. Love challenges our identity. These statements are true in a sense, but not all the time in all ways. Our culture has a lot of sad, angry, and bitter stories about loving. Try on this idea: Loving is easy. Specifically, loving you...
When my great aunt Hildegard died, I headed off to the general store for some fixings for Jello molds and funeral potatoes. I got out the wagon, and hitched up my favorite team of oxen. When I had procured my comestibles, I set off again. I was...
I’ve taught yoga, Feldenkrais, Contact Improvisation and seminars for massage therapists- teaching in both private classes and university settings. The rules and expectations vary in each sub-culture. Teaching is a great privilege, a...
I got hit once. I could see the driver’s eyes, and I knew he did not see me. He was looking for cars, not for a bike. By accelerating quickly, I avoided getting hit on my body, but the car still hit my back wheel, launching me into the road...
We are living under time pressure. Many of us are chronically late. We hurry from task to deadline to appointment to date. Where’s the joy, the contentment, the romance? The concept of being on time assumes we are able to agree on what we should...