saturday poem

In the morning when the moon is at its rest,
you will find me, at the time I love the best
watching rainbows play on sunlight;
pools of water ice cream cold light, in the morning.
yeah yeah yeah
its the morning of my life.

In the daytime I will meet you as before.
You will find me waiting by the ocean floor,
building castles in the shifting sands
in a world that nobody understands,
In a morning.
it's the morning of my life
'Tis the morning of my life

In the morning of my life
the minutes take so long to drift away
Please be patient with your life
It's only morning and you're still to live your day

In the ev'ning I will fly you to the moon
To the top right hand corner of
the ceiling in my room
Where we'll* stay till the sun shines
Another day lay on clothes lines
I'll be yawning
It is the morning of my life
This is the morning of my life

In The Morning - Nina Simone

friday cartoon

week 6

ON BEING COLD

I, like most people reading this, like to be a nice temperature. Not to hot and not to cold. I especially dislike the cold. This week’s natural movement challenge is something I’m still working on, but since it’s still winter in this hemisphere we might as well make the most of it.

I want you to make sure part of your day is spent outside in the cold or somehow getting a little cold…doing it whilst out for a walk would be my top suggestion cus then two movement nutritionals in one. BAM.

And now for the WHY THE HELLS…?

So we tend to think of muscles like “ I’m going to train to do a pull-up and a marathon” or “My hamstrings feel like guitar strings, I’m going to train to increase their tolerance, get me to yoga!” but its rare that I hear people talk about activating their musculature in that sense of “I need to train for a variance in temperature.” Unless you happen to be Katy Bowman.

Most of us house/office dwellers are always exposed to exactly the same temperature throughout the day. So when it comes to getting out in the cold our bodies aren’t used to generating their own heat. Now the body can actually generate its own heat, but you have to train your heat-generating muscles, and so regular exposure to cold is part of that process.

Nice ways to start this training include….

1. Not bundling up too much to go out and actually letting yourself feel the cold. I would recommend doing it in layers and every now and then taking a layer away. Just like working with yoga props!

or, for the brave….

2. Not taking a really really hot shower, but a slightly cooler one, and then cooler, and then a colder shower. 

Simple!

Big shout out to fellow Amsterdamer Wim Hof (also known as The Iceman) for the inspiration this week. 

(Image of me in the cold with my gloves off...you gotta start somewhere...)

the benefits of being cold

Even on the hottest nights, I feel like I need the weight of a blanket, or at least a sheet, to sleep. But like eating sweets or turning up the heat, he sees sheeting and blanketing as acquired habits that can be changed. He was able to wean himself from blankets gradually, by learning to sleep with them first folded down partway, and then folded further, and then, eventually, all the way down to his feet. Cold really isn’t that miserable, he insists, once you’ve gone through withdrawal and adapted
to it.

Cronise said that when people tell him they need a blanket to sleep, he asks them, “Do you walk around in a blanket all day?” (Given the choice, some of us would.) But Cronise is more affable and reasonable-sounding than his anti-blanket rhetoric might suggest. The mild cold exposure he advocates might be as simple as forgoing a jacket when you’re waffling over whether you need one, not layering cardigans over flannels despite the insistence of the fall catalogs, or turning off the space heater under your desk

James Hamblin for The Atlantic. Read the article in full here.

do not feel absolutely certain of anything.

"I don’t either… You believe it’s cold, but if you build yourself a snowhouse it’s warm. You think it’s white, but at times it looks pink, and another time it’s blue. It can be softer than anything, and then again harder than stone. Nothing is certain."

-- Tove Jansson
(Too-Tricky's comforting solidarity in Moomintroll’s lament that he doesn’t understand the snow)

grit

Geoffrey Jones, Snow. 1963. Found via evencleveland.

This is mesmerising! Manual labor and tweed jackets.  Talk about grit.

Alabama Chanin: vintage quilts, over-dyed in indigo with hand-sewn appliqués and embroidery details, They were part of the Alabama on Alabama installation at The Boiler Room at Heath Ceramics. 

They remind me of winter.

the skin show

Is it cold where you are? yes? good! get outside to challenge those arrector pili muscles (or goose bumps to you and me) and don't just take my word for it, click the link below to listen to this expert...

Episode 29- The Skin Show

 "You squat, you hang, you climb, and you threw your couch to the curb—all for the sake of more natural movement. But are your arrector pili getting their movement nutrients? Wait, what ARE your arrector pili? Katy scratches the surface of that oft-neglected but serious player in your whole body health—your skin! Of course, this vast subject needs more than one episode, but this is a good start on a fascinating topic."

"Feeling is understanding"

-- Wim Hof

"i love the cold"

" I think of the cold as a noble force. It's just helping me. It's training me. It's bringing me back to the inner nature, the way it was meant to be."

-- Wim Hof

This guy is amazing!

continual flux

Our minds, like our bodies, are in continual flux; something is hourly lost, and something acquired. To lose much at once is inconvenient to either, but while the vital power remains uninjured, nature will find the means of reparation. Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye; and while we glide along the stream of time, whatever we leave behind us is always lessening, and that which we approach increasing in magnitude. Do not suffer life to stagnate: it will grow muddy for want of motion; commit yourself again to the current of the world ...

Samuel Johnson, Rasselas.

Photos: Fox in motion photographed in Russia's Kronotsky National Biosphere Reserve. Found at English Russia.

New Mexico. image by me.

cold

We feel cold, but we don’t mind it, because we will not come to harm. And if we wrapped up against the cold, we wouldn’t feel other things, like the bright tingle of the stars, or the music of the Aurora, or best of all the silky feeling of moonlight on our skin. It’s worth being cold for that.

Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass / Northern Lights.

Once

On a summer trip to Norway, I jumped in to the Arctic sea.
I did it because everyone else was doing it (yup) with what looked like ease...
And, as I have mentioned before, I've been swimming since I was a tiny...one of the only things my parents were adamant me and my brothers stuck with...so I figured I'd be strong enough.
The cold was such a shock to the system I had to be pulled back out, gasping and numb.
When I swim in the ocean now, I step into the water slowly and with great care and although I rarely think about that time in Norway, it always feels as though I'm absentmindedly touching a scar.

the solace of soaking

I love baths. Unfortunately I don't have one, so I like to make time to search out heat, steam and icy cold plunge pools every once in a while. Luckily, there is plenty to chose from in London. 

They say time heals all wounds, but time is a luxury and sometimes afflictions need a faster balm. The subtle indulgence of soaking, plunging, steaming and melting purges tired bones and minds of ailing aches, enlivens the senses, opens the pores and soothes beyond the surface of the skin. 

I highly recommend searching out the weightlessness of water and giving yourself time, every now and then, to just be. 

(Image by Nadav Kander)

Ahhhhhhhhh Le Weekend!!

I'm trying to get rid of a cold so I plan to wrap up warm, drink hot toddies and make a start on the ever growing pile of books beside my bed...
Have a lovely one!

'les-positions-pour-lire' found at the beautiful goldlionaz