Monday, 30 September 2013
never enough:
the strength to lift
rivers from their beds
one drops after another up,
millions spirited heavenward
lifted in the giddiness of sunstroked days
above the drought and dead cattle
the mud and fester made
not from their leaving
but their failure
to return.
And in your long absense too
you can paralyze the flow,
ice the brooks,
freeze stone
banks.
You can also return late,
stay too long,
appear surprised,
come to tempt
or disappoint.
This we know,
we who eat what will grow,
rise and sleep, and leave
just once.
—Alan Nadel, “To Summer”
Art Credit Rhiannon Adams.
Dancing Dreams
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In 2008, world famous dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch selected 40 teenagers who had never heard of her to be part of the dance performance 'A Place to Make Contact' (Kontakthof). They spent the next ten months falling in love with dance and discovering the work of Pina Bausch.
Pina died in 2009. This film is a testimony to her revolutionary work and the impact she had on the contemporary dance movement.
I watched this last night and I highly recommend it! By far one of the most life-affirming things i've seen in a while. It made me cry. It's stunning.
Sunday, 29 September 2013
Friday, 27 September 2013
Have a GLORIOUS weekend!
-- Madame-Clairevoyant
“‘I need a volunteer,’ declared the professor. Meredith raised her hand, and the man at the podium said, ‘Yes, back there. Tell us your name and the name of the animal you’ve chosen to become today.’”
—Donald Antrim, from “Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World”
Photography Credit David Zilber.
Sit. Stay. Heal.
Taken from Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears by Pema Chödrön“The sad part is that all we’re trying to do is not feel that underlying uneasiness. The sadder part is that we proceed in such a way that the uneasiness only gets worse. The message here is that the only way to ease our pain is to experience it fully. Learn to stay. Learn to stay with uneasiness, learn to stay with the tightening, learn to stay with the itch and urge of shenpa, so that the habitual chain reaction doesn’t continue to rule our lives, and the patterns that we consider unhelpful don’t keep getting stronger as the days and months and years go by.Someone once sent me a bone-shaped dog tag that you could wear on a cord around your neck. Instead of a dog’s name, it said, ‘Sit. Stay. Heal.’ We can heal ourselves and the world by training in this way.Once you see what you do, how you get hooked, and how you get swept away, it’s hard to be arrogant. This honest recognition softens you up, humbles you in the best sense. It also begins to give you confidence in your basic goodness. When we are not blinded by the intensity of our emotions, when we allow a bit of space, a chance for a gap, when we pause, we naturally know what to do. We begin, due to our own wisdom, to move toward letting go and fearlessness. Due to our own wisdom, we gradually stop strengthening habits that only bring more pain to the world.”
Found via the beautiful Gold Lion Yoga .
Thursday, 26 September 2013
People shouldn’t be so snobby. It’s just not that simple, it’s like saying filet mignon is brilliant food, but bananas are stupid to eat. You need all the different things, you should chew it all, all of them. If they listen to stupid music, it’s because they want stupid music and then, if that’s making you happy, that’s brilliant. You know…and people shouldn’t be so snobby.
-- Björk on snobbery
Wednesday, 25 September 2013
Tuesday, 24 September 2013
Movement Basics
Bones - Bones have many functions including providing
leverage when muscles act upon them, transmitting forces (when we walk
or run the force of the weight of our body is received largely through
the skeleton) and baring some of our weight.
Skeletal muscle - or "voluntary muscle" is anchored by tendons (or by aponeuroses at a few places) to bone and is used to effect skeletal movement such as locomotion
and in maintaining posture. It is an energy intensive system!
Smooth muscle- or "involuntary muscle" is found within the walls of organs and structures such as the esophagus, stomach, intestines, bronchi, uterus, urethra, bladder, blood vessels, and the arrector pili in the skin (in which it controls erection of body hair). Unlike skeletal muscle, smooth muscle is not under conscious control.
Ligaments - fibrous tissue that connects bones to other bones and there to limit the movement in our joints
Tendons - (or sinew) a tough band of fibrous
connective tissue that usually connects muscle to bone and is capable
of withstanding tension.
Fascia - A fascia is a structure of connective tissue
that surrounds muscles, groups of muscles, blood vessels, and nerves,
binding some structures together, while permitting others to slide
smoothly over each other
This connective tissue supports the skeleton in a similar way to that in which guy ropes support the frame of a tent. Slight sway will be restrained by a pull on this elastic tissue, and in many areas of the body it is this restraint that preserves muscular effort. It also helps absorb shock in movement.
Fluids - when contained by the body's muscles and connective tissue fluids create pressure. This pressure provides a very effective response to gravity.
We are using all these supporting mechanisms all of the time. Emphasis shifts from one system to another as we move and in a well organised body we can reduce muscular effort (the only system we can knowingly engage) to make more effective use of these other systems.
Your yoga, practiced intelligently, can help mitigate the over use of skeletal muscle which is so often the cause of discomfort and complaint.
Patterns
"If I consider my life honestly, I see that it is governed by a certain very small number of patterns of events which I take part in over and over again.
Being in bed, having a shower, having breakfast in the kitchen, sitting in my study writing, walking in the garden, cooking and eating our common lunch at my office with my friends, going to the movies, taking my family to eat at a restaurant, going to bed again. There are a few more.
There are surprisingly few of these patterns of events in any one person’s way of life, perhaps no more than a dozen. Look at your own life and you will find the same. It is shocking at first, to see that there are so few patterns of events open to me.
Not that I want more of them. But when I see how very few of them there are, I begin to understand what huge effect these few patterns have on my life, on my capacity to live. If these few patterns are good for me, I can live well. If they are bad for me, I can’t."
-- Christopher Alexander
Being in bed, having a shower, having breakfast in the kitchen, sitting in my study writing, walking in the garden, cooking and eating our common lunch at my office with my friends, going to the movies, taking my family to eat at a restaurant, going to bed again. There are a few more.
There are surprisingly few of these patterns of events in any one person’s way of life, perhaps no more than a dozen. Look at your own life and you will find the same. It is shocking at first, to see that there are so few patterns of events open to me.
Not that I want more of them. But when I see how very few of them there are, I begin to understand what huge effect these few patterns have on my life, on my capacity to live. If these few patterns are good for me, I can live well. If they are bad for me, I can’t."
-- Christopher Alexander
Monday, 23 September 2013
Everything*
You came one day andas usual in such matters
significance filled everything—
your eyes, the things you
knew, the way you turned,
leaned, stood, or sat,
this way or that: when
you left, the area around here rose
a tilted tide, and everything that
offers desolation drained away.
—A. R. Ammons
*This poem was found after the poet’s death on the back of an envelope from Helen Vendler, November 28, 1981.
significance filled everything—
your eyes, the things you
knew, the way you turned,
leaned, stood, or sat,
this way or that: when
you left, the area around here rose
a tilted tide, and everything that
offers desolation drained away.
—A. R. Ammons
*This poem was found after the poet’s death on the back of an envelope from Helen Vendler, November 28, 1981.
Jockum Nordström: All I Have Learned and Forgotton Again
Jockum Nordström: All I Have Learned and Forgotton Again
at the Camden Arts Centre right now is great. It's only on until the 29th September, so if you are in London go and see it. I came away all excited and inspired...
