rressponssible ppeoplle

The Medium lost the delighted smile she had worn till then. "Oh, why must you make me look at unpleasant things when there are so many delightful ones to see?" 

Again Mrs. Which's voice reverberated through the cave. "Therre will nno llonggerr bee sso many pplleasanntt thinggss too llookk att iff rressponssible ppeoplle ddo nnott ddoo ssomethingg abboutt thee unnppleasanntt oness."

Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time.

(found via evencleveland)

(Source: chacoco)

blood and earth

"They do the washing and preparing of the minerals. A lot of them, as I say, are living and sleeping in tunnels, which they've been digging through the mountains and so forth, and then there are a few structures, but those structures are controlled by the armed gangs that control the mines and enslave all the people in the mines ....

The jobs that they're doing are divided up in two or three categories. One is simply the digging — digging into the side of mountain or digging down from the top — and you're just hammering away with hammers and chisels and shovels to pull these minerals out. Another job will be hauling those minerals on your back out of the tunnels and out of the holes to take them down to the river, where they'll be handed over to more women workers who will then wash the minerals to get a lot of the clay and other dirt off them. They just put them in giant tin cans with lots of holes poked in the can to shake around in the water and clean them up a little bit. Then there'll be people who put those [minerals] into bags and then those people who carry those bags and stack them up and store them. And then, ultimately, there will be people who are enslaved whose job it will be to put those bags on their back and walk for 20, 30, 40, 50 miles to get them out of there and into the supply chain that brings them to our cellphones."

This is a really interesting listen.
All the conveniences we use, somewhere it is costing someone something. I'm working on becoming more aware of the labor involved in procuring a 'convenient' item. The convenient option will always seem like the best option until you start to imagine the risks and movement involved in making them as well as any movements that these items reduce on my behalf.
Becoming a more conscious consumer is part of becoming a better mover. It is all connected!

dorothea tanning

my joy takes nothing from you

Monday tunes because the weekend flew by...also that tummy! LOVE

"Movement frames much of our experience on Earth. We are constantly resisting the pull of gravity and making our way around the world to accomplish our tasks, whether that be taking a shower in the morning, training for a marathon or picking up a tired child to tuck them into bed. Our yoga practice challenges us to untangle the complicated strands of unconscious movement and then re-create a new normal, one that is informed by a fresh understanding of how we perceive our own bodies in space."

- Kate Krumsiek for Yoga Dork

swimming pool

"Swimming Pool" photographs by Mária Švarbová.

how to talk to your daughter

How to talk to your daughter about her body, step one: don’t talk to your daughter about her body, except to teach her how it works.

Don’t say anything if she’s lost weight. Don’t say anything if she’s gained weight.
If you think your daughter’s body looks amazing, don’t say that. Here are some things you can say instead:

“You look so healthy!” is a great one.

Or how about, “You’re looking so strong.”

“I can see how happy you are – you’re glowing.”

Better yet, compliment her on something that has nothing to do with her body.

Don’t comment on other women’s bodies either. Nope. Not a single comment, not a nice one or a mean one.

Teach her about kindness towards others, but also kindness towards yourself.

Don’t you dare talk about how much you hate your body in front of your daughter, or talk about your new diet. In fact, don’t go on a diet in front of your daughter. Buy healthy food. Cook healthy meals. But don’t say “I’m not eating carbs right now.” Your daughter should never think that carbs are evil, because shame over what you eat only leads to shame about yourself.

Encourage your daughter to run because it makes her feel less stressed. Encourage your daughter to climb mountains because there is nowhere better to explore your spirituality than the peak of the universe. Encourage your daughter to surf, or rock climb, or mountain bike because it scares her and that’s a good thing sometimes.

Help your daughter love soccer or rowing or hockey because sports make her a better leader and a more confident woman. Explain that no matter how old you get, you’ll never stop needing good teamwork. Never make her play a sport she isn’t absolutely in love with.
Prove to your daughter that women don’t need men to move their furniture.
Teach your daughter how to cook kale.

Teach your daughter how to bake chocolate cake made with six sticks of butter.
Pass on your own mom’s recipe for Christmas morning coffee cake. Pass on your love of being outside.

Maybe you and your daughter both have thick thighs or wide ribcages. It’s easy to hate these non-size zero body parts. Don’t. Tell your daughter that with her legs she can run a marathon if she wants to, and her ribcage is nothing but a carrying case for strong lungs. She can scream and she can sing and she can lift up the world, if she wants.

Remind your daughter that the best thing she can do with her body is to use it to mobilize her beautiful soul.

-  wordpress

Africa | Carrie Mae Weems, 1993. Mud architecture, Djenne, Mali
 (and a good looking door to jam in...)
Found here

Week 10

REACH (farther then for the remote control)

The natural motion of your shoulder and elbow axis is, as you might guess, important for your well being. Unfortunately it's a motion far to many of us a have altered by decades of hours at a desk (or other repetitive forward motion actions...insert option here...................).

Fortunately there is a habit you can inject into your everyday life to help combat this lack of range. REACHING. My favorite everyday variation of this is the 'Door Jamb Reach', as named by Katy Bowman. It's so simple, basically every time you walk through a door reach up with both arms to touch the top of the door frame, you can add to that with a fake hang, or a real one if the structure allows (bonus) or keep your arms straight and push your chest forward through your arms....and if you are feeling really fancy play around with the position of your elbows as you do this.

Enjoy!

(p.s. not like this pictures, obviously, although it does look fun...)

sunday tune

saturday poem

My single star is gone, the one
I like to call mine. Instead, a thick haze
     of moonlight. Just as my mother did
when she was growing old, I sit in the darkness,
     getting used to how little I can see.

Jim Moore, from 'Disappearing in America' in Invisible Strings.

friday cartoon

Shiva Ray Moon Salutation via Yoga Journal

moon light

Vanessa Bruno - Moonlight from Vanessa Bruno on Vimeo.

morning… birds

noon… nourish

night… moon

gravity

‘Gravity is a part of nature. It holds the world together. We are all linked by it. We are linked to the earth. The earth is linked to the sun. When we are upright, the pull of gravity is from the waist down. You feel a pull. The earth pulls you down. If you are relaxed and if you are attentive with the body, you feel it. You let the body be sucked by the earth and this is gravity. At the same time the upper part becomes light, open, aware, relaxed.’ 

--Vanda Scaravelli

moon walk

Cire Trudon's Odeur de Lune: a candle created by the artist Philippe Parreno imagining the metallic scent of the moon, based on NASA's reports from moon landings.

This blows my mind.

circular

1. Maurizio Mochetti, Cilindro - Due dischi di luce(1968).
2.  Matt Bryans, untitled (2008).

we aren't here to make things perfect

Loretta, I love you. Not like they told you love is, and I didn't know this either - but love don't make things nice. It ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We aren't here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. Not us! We are here to ruin ourselves, and to break our hearts, and love the wrong people, and die. The storybooks are bullshit! Now I want you to come upstairs with me and get in my bed!

Ronny Cammareri, talking to Loretta Castorini in Moonstruck (1987)
(found via evencleveland)

The Distance of th moon

My return was sweet, my home refound, but my thoughts were filled only with grief at having lost her, and my eyes gazed at the moon, forever beyond my reach, as I sought her. And I saw her. She was there where I had left her, lying on a beach directly over our heads, and she said nothing. She was the color of the Moon; she held the harp at her side and moved one hand now and then in slow arpeggios. I could distinguish the shape of her bosom, her arms, her thighs, just as I remembered them now, just as now, when the moon has become that flat, remote circle, I still look for her as soon as the first sliver appears in the sky, and the more it waxes, the more clearly I imagine I can see her, her or something of her, but only her, in a hundred, a thousand different vistas, she who makes the Moon the Moon and, whenever she is full, sets the dogs to howling all night long, and me with them.

Italo Calvino, 'The Distance of the Moon,' translated by William Weaver.

Toshiko Takaezu

Toshiko Takaezu's Moon Pots

Spend your days outside. Spend your nights watching the moon.

week 9

PLAY

This week's challenge might sound down right ridiculous, but that just makes it all the more appealing : ) Also, it's really simple. Bonus!

Head to the playground. That's it. Watch kids playing in their un-self-conscious ways - no reps, no ‘exercise as a chore’- and see if you can get on the equipment and move like they are, within the range of what is an option for you physically right now.

Why is it not OK for adults to play on those things anyhow? We are missing out. I can no longer pass one by without having a swing on something...

sunday tune

friday cartoon

spread the love

found here

i dwell in possibility

I dwell in Possibility –

A fairer House than Prose –

More numerous of Windows –

Superior – for Doors –

Of Chambers as the Cedars –

Impregnable of eye –

And for an everlasting Roof

The Gambrels of the Sky –

Of Visitors – the fairest –

For Occupation – This –

The spreading wide my narrow Hands

To gather Paradise –

 

-- Emily Dickinson

contagious

valerie hammond

Arms spreading.
Lithographs and wax sculpture by Valerie Hammond

how things spread

nancy spero

Happy International Women's Day!

spread

“A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on.”

― Terry Pratchett, The Truth

week 8

Free your head.

This weeks challenge is a movement meditation and one of my favorites from Mary Bond over at Heal Your Posture. It's also is a nice follow on from the whole 'getting rid or your pillow rant' from last week as it's something to help restore mobility at the joint between the top of your neck and your cranium, the area that so often expresses stress as rigidity.  It will be particularly useful if you have to spend long hours in front of a computer screen. 

Like most of the challenges I'm posting, this is not a one-time exploration, but rather a practice to incorporate into your self-care routine and it can be done anywhere. The meditation asks you to “draw” circles and figure 8’s using your uvula (that strange bit of flesh hanging in the back of your throat) as a stylus, and rather then make you read a long badly written post by me you can check out Mary's video below, she describes it wonderfully!

Enjoy!

sunday tune

saturday poem

FAMILY

The Family, the cosmic, transcends our realms of humanity.
Your mother
         father
         sister
         brother
         stranger
         lover
         friend
         and enemy
The birds
The bees
The flowers
The trees
All interstellar entities
Everything that lives and breathes
We are all family.

--Zoe Bedeaux from i-D Soul

friday cartoon

Ed Ruscha.

note to self

Our ignorance is their power so take every opportunity to make the connection with those around you, listen and learn.
Connections create community. Community helps understanding.
Understanding fuels empathy.
Empathy facilitates change.