Sunday Tune

Sunday Tune

Saturday Poem

Self-Portrait in Iceland

The face is featureless,
As though bound in tight gauze,
And therefore presents a mien
Of deadly restraint, and for a moment
It terrifies, this visage
Shorn of expression, the first impulse
Is to recoil from what appears
To be willful, if bloodless and unscarred,
Mutilation, but somehow
The set of the head, its angled tilt,
Imparts a liveliness to the sitter
That defies a nullity because it captures
Light from an unseen window
And reflects from an unseen radiance
A sanguine assertion of self
Drawn from tones of glacial tides
And roseate pumice stone.
The hands, extremities at rest
In the sitter’s lap just over the knees
And crossed at the wrists, are nearly convivial,
Inward-cupped, not articulated but nonetheless
Eloquent in their assured capacity
For labor, the lack of delicate modeling
Suggests a readiness
To take hold, to lend themselves
To tasks at hand, but the rudimentary
Aspect reveals no crudeness of character
In the sitter, no vulgarity, on the contrary
The hands are free from guile and coarse use,
They echo the face in elemental probity,
Holding in quick, almost offhand fashion
Gulps of sun,
Chunks of flame
In the shade of bleached volcanoes. 

 

-- Deborah Pease

Saturday Cartoon

Listen

Interesting stuff about Dr Andreo Spina's Functional Range Conditioning and his clinical thought process. If you work with bodies click play!
MS Podcast with Dr. Andreo Spina

found here

Proprioception

Proprioception is the sense of the relative position of neighbouring parts of the body and strength of effort being employed in movement. This sense is very important as it lets us know exactly where our body parts are, how we are positioned in space and to plan our movements. Examples of our proprioception in practice include being able to clap our hands together with our eyes closed, write with a pencil and apply with correct pressure, and navigate through a narrow space.

Balance Beam

solid moves and good music to boot...Enjoy!

Vestibular

The vestibular system explains the perception of our body in relation to gravity, movement and balance. The vestibular system measures acceleration, g-force, body movements and head position. Examples of the vestibular system in practice include knowing that you are moving when you are in an elevator, knowing whether you are lying down or sat up, and being able to walk along a balance beam.

 

Francesca Woodman

yadir quintana

Yadir Quintana

sit down, stand up

Can you get up and down off the floor without “touching” anything?

" My oldest client ever was a woman named Myrle. She was 89 when she started seeing me and we worked together for 5 years. When we first met, I asked her to get down on the floor and back up. I wanted to get a sense of her functional strength. It took her about 2 minutes to get down (with the use of a chair) and it took her 72 minutes, 4 pieces of furniture, and every one of MY muscles to get her back up again.
She was mortified and told me how the exercise brought up memories of her mother. She had cared for her mother in the end stages of her life, and when she watched her mother struggle to get off the floor, she swore “I will NEVER be like that.” Of course, most physical goals require some sort of physical practice beyond grand declarations. Myrle, like most people, didn’t get down on the floor regularly the last 20 (or 40) years and so the muscle strength necessary to do so silently slipped away..."

Read the rest of this brilliant blog post from Katy Bowman here.

Touch Tours

Matt Ducklo's pictures of museum "touch tours" where blind or partially sighted people are able to take private tours of museums so that they can touch and experience the art work.

“Touch has a memory.”

― John Keats

Touch

Happy

Hearing

'Hear' by Lou Dorfsman

How we taste different colours

"When I think of flavour perception, noses and taste buds primarily spring to mind. Sure, other factors such as texture, temperature and touch sensations play a part, but taste and smell are the dominant senses here, right? Well perhaps not. You only have to consider the insatiable public appetite for food porn masquerading as cookbooks to see there is meat to the old adage: we eat with our eyes...."

Read on here

Taste

The Nose

memories and security

“Smell is important. It reminds a person of all the things he's been through; it is a sheath of memories and security.”

― Tove Jansson, The Summer Book

Smell

(images from all over here)

“I need to write down my observations. Even the tiniest ones; they're the most important.”

― Tove Jansson, Art in Nature

Brooks Shane Salzwedel

Brooks Shane Salzwedel

Overview

OVERVIEW from Planetary Collective on Vimeo.

On the 40th anniversary of the famous ‘Blue Marble’ photograph taken of Earth from space, Planetary Collective presents a short film documenting astronauts’ life-changing stories of seeing the Earth from the outside – a perspective-altering experience often described as the Overview Effect.

The Overview Effect, first described by author Frank White in 1987, is an experience that transforms astronauts’ perspective of the planet and mankind’s place upon it. Common features of the experience are a feeling of awe for the planet, a profound understanding of the interconnection of all life, and a renewed sense of responsibility for taking care of the environment.

‘Overview’ is a short film that explores this phenomenon through interviews with five astronauts who have experienced the Overview Effect. The film also features insights from commentators and thinkers on the wider implications and importance of this understanding for society, and our relationship to the environment.

STUNNING.

Pumkin Eyes (and pelvic floors)

READ THIS
by Katy Bowman.

Tibetan Eye Chart

Eye exercise using Tibetan chart

Spent to much time in front of the computer? (guilty!) My first yoga teacher once sent me home with one of these...

These exercises are to be done without glasses or contacts. Do each movement for 30 seconds while in a sitting position, spine elongated and do not move the head side to side. Move only the eyes.

1.) With the palm of each hand cup both closed eyes to relax them.

2.) Move the eyes clockwise around the outer circle of dots

3.) Repeat this movement in a counterclockwise rotation

4.) Move the eyes back and forth between the dots at 2 and 8 o’clock

5.) Repeat this movement back and forth between dots at 4 and 10 o’clock

6.) Blink the eyes briefly and finish therapy with the palming same as exercise #1

Repeat exercises as desired being careful to avoid strain.

more info here. image and text from here.

Sight

images from here

Senses

Still Life by Pieter Claesz, 1623. The painting illustrates the senses through musical instruments, a compass, a book, food and drink, a mirror, incense and an open perfume bottle. The tortoise could be a possible illustration of touch or an allusion to the opposite, screening of or shielding the senses (the tortoise isolating in its shell).

Sunday Tune

Sunday Tune

Saturday Cartoon

Gravity: A Falling Montage from Plot Point Productions on Vimeo.

Saturday Poem

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

Robert Frost

(found *****here*****)

Seagull diptych by futurowoman fotographie.

Wind, Sand and Stars

When the wild ducks or the wild geese migrate in their season, a strange tide rises in the territories over which they sweep. As if magnetized by the great triangular flight, the barnyard fowl leap a foot or two in the air and try to fly. The call of the wild strikes them with the force of a harpoon and a vestige of savagery quickens their blood. All the ducks on the farm are transformed for an instant into migrant birds, and into those hard little heads, till now filled with humble images of pools and worms and barnyards, there swims a sense of continental expanse, of the breadth of the seas and the salt taste of ocean wind. The duck totters to right and left in its wire enclosure, gripped by a sudden passion to perform the impossible and a sudden love whose object is mystery.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars

Photo found here.

marisa-ramirez:
amparo de la sota

a song for falling leaves

"The bad news is you’re falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is there’s no ground."

 

--Trungpa Rinpoche
(via goldlionaz)

Hope is the thing with feathers

Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm.

 I’ve heard it in the chillest land, And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me.

-- Emily Dickinson

Jesse Mockrin

Jesse Mockrin

Balance Beam Basics

Ryan McGinley

Falling (and a fall) by Ryan McGinley

"It’s all about falling in love with yourself and sharing that love with someone who appreciates you, rather than looking for love to compensate for a self love deficit." 

-- Eartha Kitt

Falling

This tree keeps falling over. I prop it up,
it falls again. And the rain falls
day after day like a broken wet record.
Here are the birds—tiny, smaller

than birds. And like fresh butcher’s
paper, the light so bright it hurts.
So the birds are paper and so is the sky.
It will be easiest if I draw you a picture,

each of us a different shade of gray.
What goes right is an accident. It can’t
be blamed on us. What goes wrong

is almost impossible to see. How quickly
it disappears, like someone’s hand
into someone else’s pocket.

—Matthew Thorburn.

(Image found here.)

Sunday Tune

Sunday Tune

Saturday Poem

On The Pulse Of Morning

A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Mark the mastodon.
The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,

But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no hiding place down here.

You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.
Your mouths spelling words

Armed for slaughter.
The rock cries out today, you may stand on me,
But do not hide your face.

Across the wall of the world,
A river sings a beautiful song,
Come rest here by my side.

Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more.

Come, clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I
And the tree and stone were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your brow
And when you yet knew you still knew nothing.
The river sings and sings on.

There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing river and the wise rock.
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew,
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek,

The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the tree.

Today, the first and last of every tree
Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the river.
Plant yourself beside me, here beside the river.

Each of you, descendant of some passed on
Traveller, has been paid for.

You, who gave me my first name,
You Pawnee, Apache and Seneca,
You Cherokee Nation, who rested with me,
Then forced on bloody feet,
Left me to the employment of other seekers—
Desperate for gain, starving for gold.

You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot…
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru,
Bought, sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare
Praying for a dream.

Here, root yourselves beside me.
I am the tree planted by the river,
Which will not be moved.
I, the rock, I the river, I the tree
I am yours—your passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced with courage,
Need not be lived again.

Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.

Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands.
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts.
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.

The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me,
The rock, the river, the tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.

Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes,
Into your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.

-- Maya Angelou

Saturday Cartoon

LOVE this!

“When Alice Walker explained that meditation took her back to the way she had been as a child, crawling around eating sweet-smelling earth, knowing love and loving, she concluded, “So that’s the paradise that’s lost, that feeling of being one with everyone and everything.” Loss of childhood is loss of the spiritual kingdom within.”

—   Akasha Gloria Hull, Soul Talk (via bellahugo)(via yearningforunity)

Friday!

Have a lovely one. Try not to get caught up in the things you are worrying about. Worry is a misuse of your imagination.

(gif found here)

Fabrizio Corneli

Light sculptures by Fabrizio Corneli