Tuesday, 10 February 2015
Calluses
myself back in? Did I lie
and say these ragged, bitten
stub-fingers make me strong?
Did I pretend muscle
is marble, claim
blood-raw sin is as
glossy as a photograph?”
— From “Calluses," a poem in Instructions For Preparing Your Skin by Ariana Nadia Nash, reviewed here by Diego Báez.
Monday, 9 February 2015
Skin
"Playing with surfaces is probably where my brain is as well as my own
body. Looking at the difference between a set of monkey bars, which
would never occur in nature, and then looking at trees. Not just their
angles, but also the textures of the bark. All the things you would
touch would not have been smooth, they would bite into your skin and
require that your skin strengthen.
Our skin is a big limitation to our health. The muscles of the entire body has to pass through either the hand or the feet if you’re doing something with body weight, and yet the skin has never been exposed to anything natural. Even if you are barefoot the nutrient you consume the most is a flat man-made surface.
I’m observing how everything is flat and smooth in my whole life. Nothing has asked the skin to the party. Nothing has asked the skin to participate in your body’s way of moving. Walking on different surfaces just for the sake of the skin. Playing with grip, diameter, and how that changes muscle recruitment."
--Katy Bowman via Liberated Bodies
Our skin is a big limitation to our health. The muscles of the entire body has to pass through either the hand or the feet if you’re doing something with body weight, and yet the skin has never been exposed to anything natural. Even if you are barefoot the nutrient you consume the most is a flat man-made surface.
I’m observing how everything is flat and smooth in my whole life. Nothing has asked the skin to the party. Nothing has asked the skin to participate in your body’s way of moving. Walking on different surfaces just for the sake of the skin. Playing with grip, diameter, and how that changes muscle recruitment."
--Katy Bowman via Liberated Bodies
skin
“To be naked is to be oneself.
To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself. A naked body has to be seen as an object in order to become a nude. ( The sight of it as an object stimulates the use of it as an object.) Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display.
To be naked is to be without disguise.
To be on display is to have the surface of one's own skin, the hairs of one's own body, turned into a disguise which, in that situation, can never be discarded. The nude is condemned to never being naked. Nudity is a form of dress.”
― John Berger, Ways of Seeing
To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself. A naked body has to be seen as an object in order to become a nude. ( The sight of it as an object stimulates the use of it as an object.) Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display.
To be naked is to be without disguise.
To be on display is to have the surface of one's own skin, the hairs of one's own body, turned into a disguise which, in that situation, can never be discarded. The nude is condemned to never being naked. Nudity is a form of dress.”
― John Berger, Ways of Seeing
Sunday, 8 February 2015
Saturday, 7 February 2015
Saturday Poem
Like You
Like you I love love, life, the sweet smell of things, the sky- blue landscape of January days.And my blood boils up and I laugh through eyes that have known the buds of tears. I believe the world is beautiful and that poetry, like bread, is for everyone.
And that my veins don’t end in me but in the unanimous blood of those who struggle for life, love, little things, landscape and bread, the poetry of everyone.
-- Roque Dalton (Translated by Jack Hirschman)
Friday, 6 February 2015
“My tautologies weren’t taut at all, so I
did what anyone else would do. I departed
then re-embarked. Doubled my nothing.
Climbed the frost-tip tree that was no tree
but just a daub of glue to seal a root.”
did what anyone else would do. I departed
then re-embarked. Doubled my nothing.
Climbed the frost-tip tree that was no tree
but just a daub of glue to seal a root.”
— From Mary Biddinger’s “A Coin-Operated Railroad,” from her book A Sunny Place with Adequate Water, which Danielle Susi reviews at The Rumpus.
belly massage
I am a BIG fan of this technique.
It helps when I have period pain, low back tension or indigestion and I always feel so relaxed afterwards. Highly recommend finding a pliable squishy ball and having a go.
Jill Miller explains more of the benefits here.
It helps when I have period pain, low back tension or indigestion and I always feel so relaxed afterwards. Highly recommend finding a pliable squishy ball and having a go.
Jill Miller explains more of the benefits here.
Thursday, 5 February 2015
Wednesday, 4 February 2015
home play
and some homework...
Choose a normal daily activity like taking a walk or cooking dinner and first try to do it while consistently contracting your core. Then let it go and let your core do its normal pre-conscious thing where it responds to and participates in whole body movement. What do you notice?
The myth of core stability
Doing some research....
- Podcast with Eyal Lederman from liberated bodies. http://www.liberatedbody.com/eyal-lederman-myth-core-stability-lbp-033/
- and Eyal's original paper... http://www.cpdo.net/Lederman_The_myth_of_core_stability.pdf
- an article from Peta Bee http://www.qn-alexandertechnique.com/page13.html
- some of Stuart Mcgill's ideas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=033ogPH6NNE
“In the first movement, our infancy as a species, we felt no separation from the natural world around us. Trees, rocks, and plants surrounded us with a living presence as intimate and pulsing as our own bodies. In that primal intimacy, which anthropologists call "participation mystique," we were as one with our world as a child in the mother's womb.
Then self-consciousness arose and gave us distance on our world. We needed that distance in order to make decisions and strategies, in order to measure, judge and to monitor our judgments. With the emergence of free-will, the fall out of the Garden of Eden, the second movement began -- the lonely and heroic journey of the ego. Nowadays, yearning to reclaim a sense of wholeness, some of us tend to disparage that movement of separation from nature, but it brought us great gains for which we can be grateful. The distanced and observing eye brought us tools of science, and a priceless view of the vast, orderly intricacy of our world. The recognition of our individuality brought us trial by jury and the Bill of Rights.
Now, harvesting these gains, we are ready to return. The third movement begins. Having gained distance and sophistication of perception, we can turn and recognize who we have been all along. Now it can dawn on us: we are our world knowing itself. We can relinquish our separateness. We can come home again -- and participate in our world in a richer, more responsible and poignantly beautiful way than before, in our infancy.”
― Joanna Macy, World as Lover, World as Self
Then self-consciousness arose and gave us distance on our world. We needed that distance in order to make decisions and strategies, in order to measure, judge and to monitor our judgments. With the emergence of free-will, the fall out of the Garden of Eden, the second movement began -- the lonely and heroic journey of the ego. Nowadays, yearning to reclaim a sense of wholeness, some of us tend to disparage that movement of separation from nature, but it brought us great gains for which we can be grateful. The distanced and observing eye brought us tools of science, and a priceless view of the vast, orderly intricacy of our world. The recognition of our individuality brought us trial by jury and the Bill of Rights.
Now, harvesting these gains, we are ready to return. The third movement begins. Having gained distance and sophistication of perception, we can turn and recognize who we have been all along. Now it can dawn on us: we are our world knowing itself. We can relinquish our separateness. We can come home again -- and participate in our world in a richer, more responsible and poignantly beautiful way than before, in our infancy.”
― Joanna Macy, World as Lover, World as Self
1. James Abott McNeill Whistler, Nocturne: Grey and Silver 1873
2. Edward Steichen, Woods, Twilight 1899 (platinum print)
(both via 1910-again)
On being: Joanna Macy
Listen to this podcast with Joanna Macy. It's beautiful.
A philosopher of ecology, Joanna Macy’s path wound from the CIA to Tibetan Buddhism, to translating the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. We take that exquisite poetry as a lens on her wisdom on the great dramas of our time: ecological, political, personal. Now in her 80s, Joanna Macy says we are at a pivotal moment in history — with possibilities of unraveling, or of creating, a life-sustaining human society."
Tuesday, 3 February 2015
Best Practice
“Best Practice” is a letter to oneself. A pseudo-dream where reassurances and self taught coping mechanisms intersect a shuffle of memories. It is an adventure of self care, by cartoonist and painter Joshua Jarrett.
(via The Rumpus)
bodily practices
To make bread or love, to dig in the earth, to feed an animal or cook for a stranger—these activities require no extensive commentary, no lucid theology. All they require is someone willing to bend, reach, chop, stir. Most of these tasks are so full of pleasure that there is no need to complicate things by calling them holy. And yet these are the same activities that change lives, sometimes all at once and sometimes more slowly, the way dripping water changes stone. In a world where faith is often construed as a way of thinking, bodily practices remind the willing that faith is a way of life.
- Barbara Brown Taylor
Sunday, 1 February 2015
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