life makes shapes

"Life makes shapes. Life is a natural, evolutionary process in which series of shapes are continually forming. These shapes are part of an organizing process that embodies emotions, thoughts, and experiences into structure. This structure, in turn, orders the events of existence. Each person?s shape is his embodiment in the world. We are the body we inherit, the one that lives us, and a personal body, the one we live and shape through voluntary effort. We are citizens of two worlds, rooted in the animate, immortal and timeless. Molecules and cells organize into clusters, which further organize as layers, tubes, tunnels and pouches. These give structure to liquid life and set the stage for embodied human consciousness. Through the act of living, a personal human shape grows, one that is changed by the challenges and stresses of life."

-- Stanley Keleman

talking circles

live with your hands unfolded

Son: What are your dreams for me?
Dad: My dream is for you to beable to live out your dreams. I like this old proverb that talks about when children are born they come out with their fists closed because that's where they keep all their gifts. As you grow your hands learn to unfold because you are learning to release your gifts to the world. So, for the rest of your life I want to see you live with your hands unfolded.

Saturday Cartoon

doing things in reverse

As you get older you start doing things in reverse. You start cutting people out from your life. Your Christmas list becomes practically nonexistent. You don’t need to be the first in line for everything. You take less pictures because some memories are best kept in your heart and not your hard drive. And instead of looking for love, you dig for it from within.

- bookmarks in my life

Cheryl Strayed

Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

I keep coming back to this book by Cheryl Strayed.

It is a group of letters from Strayed's advice column on The Rumpus. She writes with compassion, honesty, wisdom, humor and guts and I highly recommend it. I actually give copies to friends and if they don't like it i question our friendship...jokes...kind of ; )

Some of the bits I like to re-read every now and again...

Don't

“You give a lot of great advice about what to do. Do you have any advice of what not to do?

Don’t do what you know on a gut level to be the wrong thing to do. Don’t stay when you know you should go or go when you know you should stay. Don’t fight when you should hold steady or hold steady when you should fight. Don’t focus on the short-term fun instead of the long-term fall out. Don’t surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn’t true anymore. Don’t seek joy at all costs. I know it’s hard to know what to do when you have a conflicting set of emotions and desires, but it’s not as hard as we pretend it is. Saying it’s hard is ultimately a justification to do whatever seems like the easiest thing to do—have the affair, stay at that horrible job, end a friendship over a slight, keep loving someone who treats you terribly. I don’t think there’s a single dumbass thing I’ve done in my adult life that I didn’t know was a dumbass thing to do while I was doing it. Even when I justified it to myself—as I did every damn time—the truest part of me knew I was doing the wrong thing. Always. As the years pass, I’m learning how to better trust my gut and not do the wrong thing, but every so often I get a harsh reminder that I’ve still got work to do.”

Sister Ship

"...You'll never know the life you don't choose. We'll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn't carry us. There's nothing to do but salute it from the shore."

Love details

"love is not so incomprehensible as you pretend, sweet pea. love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard. it can be light as the hug we give a friend or heavy as the sacrifices we make for our children. it can be romantic, platonic, familial, fleeting, everlasting, conditional, unconditional, imbued with sorrow, stoked by sex, sullied by abuse, amplified by kindness, twisted by betrayal, deepened by time, darkened by difficulty, leavened by generosity, nourished by humor and loaded with promises that we may or may not want to keep. the best thing you can possibly do with your life is to tackle the motherfucking shit out of love. and, honey bun, on this front, i think you have some work to do."

 

Space

"One of the basic principles of every single art form has to do not with what's there- the music, the words, the movement, the dialogue, the paint - but with what isn't.  In the visual arts it's called the 'negative space' - the blank parts around and between objects, which is, ofcourse, every bit as crucial as the objects themselves. The negative space allows us to see the non-negative space in all its glory and gloom, its colour and mystery and light. What isn't there gives what's there meaning. IMAGINE THAT. "

 

 

"Movement is life. Life is a process. Improve the quality of the process and you improve the quality of life itself."

- Moshe Feldenkrais

What the Queef?

I've spent a ridiculous amount of time upside down of late in class...mostly...and two 'issues' keep popping up for my students. Queefing (yep) and rib thrusting.
So I've searched the inter-webs for simple explanations of the two and (to my delight) found THIS from Katy Bowman of Katy Says.
Ladies check it out! Saves me having to provide the detail ; )

The rib thrusting thing is for the gents too...

The beauty is in the detail.

Images by Nina Leen for LIFE, 1949.

20 instructions for Life by The Dalai Lama

Love these...

1.Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.

2. When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.

3. Follow the three R’s:

-  Respect for self,

-  Respect for others and

-  Responsibility for all your actions.

4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.

5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.

6. Don’t let a little dispute injure a great relationship.

7. When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.

8. Spend some time alone every day.

9. Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values.

10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

11. Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and

think back, you’ll be able to enjoy it a second time.

12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.

13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don’t bring up the past.

14. Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality.

15. Be gentle with the earth.

16. Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.

17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.

18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.

19. If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.

20. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

-- Dalai Lama

(Source: mindbodygreen and iswasandwillbe )

“Organize yourself & bring rhythm to your life: Because you have things to do, habits to break, dreams to achieve, peace to discover and one life to live”

― V.V. Rao

We wax, we wane. It's the dance of life.

  "Every living thing is a pulse. We quicken, then we fade. There is a deep beauty in this, but deeper down, inside every plant, every leaf, inside every living thing (us included) sits a secret....

...Nature Has A Formula That Tells Us When It's Time To Die"

www.npr.org 

“This is the real secret of life -- to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.” 

 ― Alan Wilson Watts

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

Live anyway

--Unknown
Found via witanddelight

"...Everything except the fact that i didn't need to know. That it was enough to trust that what i had done was true...to believe that i didn't need to reach with my bare hands anymore. To know that seeing the fish beneath the surface of the water was enough. That it was everything. It was my life - like ALL lives, mysterious and irrevocable and sacred. So very close, so very present, so very belonging to me. 

How wild it was to let it be."

 -- Cheryl Strayed, Wild

both from otherwordly

Life and Death

Today I went to see both Mariko Mori: Rebirth at The Royal Academy (open until 17th February) and Death: A self portrait at The Welcome Collection (open until 24th February) and I wholly recommend them both, especially The Welcome Collection for the chandelier made of 3000 plaster-cast bones by British artist Jodie Carey. Stunning.