getting to know me

One of the clearest lessons from contemporary neuroscience is that our sense of ourselves is anchored in a vital connection with our bodies. We do not truly know ourselves unless we can feel and interpret our physical sensations; we need to register and act on these sensations to navigate safely through life. While numbing (or compensatory sensation seeking) may make life tolerable, the price you pay is that you lose awareness of what is going on inside your body and, with that, the sense of being fully sensually alive.

--Bessel Van Der Kolk from The Body Keeps The Score

"Feeling is understanding"

-- Wim Hof

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.

feel everything

(Found here)

Pina Bausch, Masurca Fogo

Touch

details

The inspiration for all that deep groin release in class this week was this post from Anna Karkovska McGlew at fleshcontext.

"...this is an active groin release, not a passive one. It involves a strap, so go get one (the longer the better; if not, you might need to connect two straps to make a long one). The video will show you how to loop the strap around your feet, shins and thighs. Notice that the heels are not together in this variation, only the toes and the balls of the feet are touching, the heels never touch. Once you get there, anchor your upper arm bones against the floor. As you pull on the tails of the strap, actively press the balls of the feet into each other and resist the heels away from each other (same idea as above). At the same time, lift your heels away from the floor, as if someone is prodding the outer heels and the outer edges of the feet up from underneath. By this time, you will probably feel a stretch from the pubic bone through the upper inner thigh. Don't forget to breathe and keep space between the upper and lower jaw. Also, your buttocks will be working, but don't confuse working with overworking and gripping. If you feel like you are gripping, think of broadening the buttocks away from the sacrum and lengthening the center of the buttocks away from the top of the pelvis in the back. Finally, check once or twice to see that the heels are evenly lifting away from the floor. Often one will be higher than the other, as in the upright version--you  might also be able to discern this from the tone of your buttocks against the floor/mat..."

It's been helping me with my hip movements in overhang climbs too.

Trisha Brown

Trisha Brown's movement investigations (both in her dance and visual art practices) found the extraordinary in the everyday and challenged existing perceptions of what constitutes performance. Her work always leaves me with the desire to move and explore. Priceless. I highly recommend exploring her lifes work.

"ALL I EVER REALLY WANT TO KNOW IS HOW OTHER PEOPLE ARE MAKING IT THROUGH LIFE. WHERE DO THEY PUT THEIR BODY, HOUR BY HOUR, AND HOW DO THEY COPE INSIDE OF IT. "

-- Miranda July

Feeling

From lastnightsreading

Splittings

1.
My body opens over San Francisco like the day –
light raining down      each pore crying the change of light
I am not with her     I have been waking off and on
all night to that pain     not simply absence but
the presence of the past      destructive
to living here and now      Yet if I could instruct
myself, if we could learn to learn from pain
even as it grasps us      if the mind, the mind that lives
in this body could refuse      to let itself be crushed
in that grasp     it would loosen      Pain would have to stand
off from me and listen     its dark breath still on me
but the mind could begin to speak to pain
and pain would have to answer:
We are older now
we have met before     these are my hands before your eyes
my figure blotting out      all that is not mine
I am the pain of division      creator of divisions
it is I who blot your lover from you
and not the time-zones or the miles
It is not separation calls me forth      but I
who am separation      And remember
I have no existence      apart from you

2.
I believe I am choosing something now
not to suffer uselessly     yet still to feel
Does the infant memorize the body of the mother
and create her in absence?   
or simply cry primordial loneliness?    
does the bed of the stream
once diverted      mourning       remember the wetness?
But we, we live so much in these
configurations of the past      I choose
to separate her     from my past we have not shared
I choose not to suffer uselessly
to detect primordial pain as it stalks toward me
flashing its bleak torch in my eyes     blotting out
her particular being     the details of her love
I will not be divided      from her or from myself
by myths of separation
while her mind and body in Manhattan are more with me
than the smell of eucalyptus coolly burning      on these hills

3.
The world tells me I am its creature
I am raked by eyes     brushed by hands
I want to crawl into her for refuge     lay my head
in the space     between her breast and shoulder
abnegating power for love
as women have done      or hiding
from power in her love     like a man
I refuse these givens      the splitting
between love and action      I am choosing
not to suffer uselessly      and not to use her
I choose to love      this time      for once
with all my intelligence.

-- Adrienne Rich

Stop minimizing and discounting your feelings. You have every right to feel the way you do. Your feelings may not always be logical, but they are always valid. Because if you feel something, then you feel it and it’s real to you. It’s not something you can ignore or wish away. It’s there, gnawing at you, tugging at your core, and in order to find peace, you have to give yourself permission to feel whatever it is you feel. You have to let go of what you’ve been told you “should” or “shouldn’t” feel. You have to drown out the voices of people who try to shame you into silence. You have to listen to the sound of your own breathing and honor the truth inside you. Because despite what you may believe, you don’t need anyone’s validation or approval to feel what you feel. Your feelings are inherently right and true. They’re important and they matter — you matter — and it is more than okay to feel what you feel. Don’t let anyone, including yourself, convince you otherwise.

-- Daniell Koepke

(image source: thedeathofcool, via awelltraveledwoman)

Practice.

When moving what do you chose to  focus on?
The small details or the bigger picture?
Watch how your attention shifts between the two.
What happens to the movement when your focus is broken? Can you keep bringing it back to the task in hand?

It is the moment by moment focus on how you feel as you are feeling it that will keep you safe. 

(Illustrations by Lauren Nassef)

The Square Circle

The Square Circle on Nowness.com

"Boxing is a beautiful thing. It's a triumph of a persons soul over there fears, over their anxieties."

Backward t-shirt

"The slightly uncomfortable, ‘something-is-wrong-here’ feeling you get when accidentally you put a sweater or t-shirt on backward. It takes you a moment to realize the mistake although your body already feels it. That’s how she felt whenever he was around and she never got over it. In her head she nicknamed him BT for ‘backward t-shirt." 

--Jonathan Carroll