Feldenkrais and Qi Gong in Seattle Washington

I will not be posting to my blog until Jan 2011. Blessings for Peace, Joy, and Internal Wisdom this Season.

Carrie

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The world of online. It continues to grow, morph and invite participation. I am choosing my participation with conscious consideration. I have moved another step forwards and created a Pro Biznik profile. Biznik started as a local Seattle company and has grown to a much larger network. It specifically sets up possibilities for self-employed entrepreneurs to network together. If you are interested in seeing my profile–check for it here: http://biznik.com/members/carrie-lafferty-pt.

The following blog post was written for the Biznik group of entrepreneurs. It was recently posted Biznik-wide. Here it is.

Four-legged animals do it constantly. Martial artists are particularly good at it in their own masterful way. A dancer or a musician completely engrossed in a performance does it with elegance and grace. A young child who enters a new grassy park does it with complete embodiment of joy.

What is it?? What could it possibly be? Living the moment…fully. As it is. No unnecessary additions. No tense resistances. Not being any place other than fully in the present experience…whatever the moment holds.

Every one of us has had these fully embodied moments just unfold. Often they show up when the moment contains an activity that speaks to and arises from the very depths of being. Could be during a yoga or Qi Gong practice. Did I mention Qi Gong? Listening to your favorite music. While watching a sunset or walking in nature. These are the easy ones. They just show up.

These moments universally contain the qualities of interconnection—grace, ease, insights, and wise passionate compassion. They also take way less energy. They feel easier!! Imagine cultivating the subtleties of your own felt-sense wisdom and these types of wise graceful interconnected moments begin to appear countless times each day. You can operate your business this way.

Interacting with a client when ideas are flying near the completion of a project. Just before walking into a meeting about securing a new client or contract. Sitting in traffic late for an important meeting. Consider allowing yourself to notice your inner world as you walk through your workday also.

Cultivating the Subtleties for Wise Graceful Actions

1. Start Today. Begin Now.

2. Pause. This moment. Observe and sense the actual experience of how you are sitting or standing. Feel yourself connected to the earth.

3. Notice qualities. Of your experience. Heavy. Light. Tilted. Twisted. Leaning. Pulling Back. Light. Floating. Jumpy. Smooth. Fluid. Continuous.

4. Notice Breathing. Just feel one full breath…….completely. Without changing it. Just notice inside. Like eating a strawberry. Just tasting. Not describing the experience in your mind.

5. Gently widen your noticing. Continue to feel your contact and read this text. Gently open and expand to allow the moment to just be. Not be ahead of this present moment.

6. Check in frequently. Choose a noticing moment seven times today. However long. Ten seconds. Longer. Doesn’t matter. Start with easy moment. Progress slowly to moments that have more emotional or attitudinal tension in them.

7. Allow space between intention and action. Every moment has an intent—known or not recognized. Know your intents. Big, medium, or small. Every intent is followed by an action. Known or unrecognized in your inner world. The bridge between intent and action is awareness. Drive your own unique vehicle of your specific inner sensations over the bridge. The more often you travel over this bridge, the easier the drive becomes. Your own inner noticing of how you think, feel, or act creates a new inner experience of your thoughts, emotions, and actions and the route continues on. Back and forth, ever deepening. A spiral connection in all directions to your own interconnection to the wisdom you are.

8. Notice while doing. Reach for your next phone call. Reach slowly. Notice qualities. Jerky, smooth? Widen your awareness. Does your weight shift across your feet and pelvis as you reach? How much of you is felt to be participating in this action? Notice your breath. How full or tense do you sense it? Continue to widen the space between intention and action. Allow that space to be filled with wise adjustments made from within that move you towards smooth, fluid, connected, continuous inner sensations.

9. Remain curious. Notice inside and wonder. Notice again. Ask the universal awareness question…. Huh? It’s a very simple question. Ask this question from a state of gentle yet persistent wondering.

Wise entrepreneurs do it. Self-employed professionals do it. Net working individuals do it. What is it? Stay connected within. Join the flow. Create your intentions and actions from that place.

To further the cultivation or refer someone you feel may benefit, you can contact Carrie Lafferty, Physical Therapist, Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner, Master Healing Qi Gong Teacher. Carrie is a guide for cultivating the infinite subtleties of your inner knowing bringing about self-healing, transformation and becoming your full embodied vital being!

She can be found at Feldenkrias and Qi Gong in Seattle at http//www.movementfromwithin.net. (206) 459-1773 or at feldychi@comcast.net.

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The alarm sounds (or lights up if you have a zen light clock like I do) and you roll over in bed to reach out and shut it off. It’s another day…….same old…….you throw off the covers and walk to the bathroom. The daily routine begins. You visit the toilet, splash water on your face, rinse your mouth—whatever is your- first- thing to do. Then onto the next, and the next…… When do you pay attention to how you move from one routine to the next? When do you choose to be curious about your inner state? Do you navigate for most of the morning from one routine to the next without ever truly feeling your own aliveness and vibrancy of just being—being with the routine task. Are you thinking ‘about’ something else completely—the next thing to do–grasping ahead of yourself or aversive to a moment that didn’t work out? Who are you when you are not grasping or rejecting the moment?

When we are not helping or resisting a moment AND we are engaged in that moment in a lightly fresh and curious way, we are just being—just allowing and resting in the unfolding moment. Just feeling our internal state. This may consist of sensations of pressure, weight shift, temperature, comfort or not, the sense of movement as forces travel through us, and countless other nuanced sensory experiences. We may also notice our internal feeling state of interest, curiosity, or any number of simple or complex emotions and/or feeling sates that arise and then fall away—changing from one moment to the next.

WHAT HAPPENS WITH THE MUNDANE MOMENT?

What happens when the moment at hand is perceived as mundane, uninteresting, boring, or just plain routine? So much of our day and therefore our lives are made up of these kinds of routine moments. The routine allows us a certain ‘freedom’ to ‘go on automatic’ for these mundane tasks however that very thing is what pulls us out of staying connected to our innate state of curiosity—our sense of vibrancy of just feeling alive and ‘felt’ in the moment. Instead we go into our thinking, planning, or judging self and then begin to create effort within our ‘how’ of how we are completing the mundane task or effort in our being with our thoughts and/or emotions in the mundane moment.

Our wise internal knowing that is always connected to that innate state of vibrancy and aliveness that IS US can always be connected to just by pausing, and feeling inside. Every moment is equally alive and vibrant and equally holds the full potential for ease of sensing, thinking, feeling, acting, and being in any direction. Our ego-mind just begins a story ‘about’ the moment and if we are not checking in with our internal state, we will begin to effort– through being ahead of the moment by grasping at the next or resisting the moment by pushing it away or turning away. But what about when we perceive the moment to be dull and uninteresting, so joyless? Here our ego-mind often tends to disengage from the moment through excessive thought to make the moment more interesting . We feed our story about the dullness of the moment. Or we likely will move toward resisting or turning away from it. We will not engage at all or engage in a way that we create effort.

PRACTICE NOTICING

Our internal noticing selves require practice (just like anything else) to get better at their skill. The skill is our refined noticing of ‘how’ we do and be in each of the moments of our lives. In order to stay engaged IN the moment of mundane routine or uninteresting doing, it is required for us to take a fresh and curious notice of the internal state of ourselves within that moment. This fresh questioning within has to be then paused for afterwards and allowed– for an answer to arise from within.

Take the mundane task of brushing your teeth. You’ve done it thousands of times. You don’t need to pay attention in order to complete the task in any way. However, do you have any sense of whether you are adding any unnecessary effort to the task through the moments of doing it? Precisely because your thoughts are likely either ahead of the teeth brushing moment and planning the next or resisting some past or future moment or you are just disengaged in your thoughts…..lost. It is highly likely due to the loss of presence, you are creating at least some (even if miniscule) amount of unnecessary effort in the mundane task of brushing your teeth. Add up the hundreds of mundane tasks you do each day without noticing and soon you have a considerable amount of effort accumulated. You also have developed very well-traveled ‘grooves’ or patterns of ‘how’ you do or be what you do or be. And you are completely unaware of any of it.

CHOOSE TO NOTICE

Tomorrow morning when you brush your teeth, try this. Choose consciously to pay attention at least three times during the task of brushing. Begin the task as usual and soon after beginning the task (without stopping but noticing while continuing to brush– slightly slower than usual), turn your noticing skills inward and just feel ‘how’ you brush your teeth. Feel the contact of the brush on your teeth, the contact of the handle in your had, how much work is being done to hold the brush, how free is your breath, how available is your shoulder, trunk, pelvis, and legs to distribute gently the force being generated through your brushing? How easy is it for you to notice without adding to or resisting your noticing with a should or a shouldn’t?

Ask yourself–can I allow less effort anywhere within myself? Can I allow a smoother sense of my whole self within this task? Ask and then notice your internal response as your wise internal sensing self makes likely adjustments for any effort noticed. You may possibly notice some part or parts of you reducing unneeded tension or excessive effort within the task thereby changing slightly the pressures or the angles of your movements. This is the wise loop of aware noticing changing your doing and being.

NOTICE WITH FRESHNESS

Now continue the task without as much wondering. In other words, allow yourself to just brush for a few moments. Then specifically choose a few moments later to take a fresh and curious noticing stance again. Without any preconceived ideas of how it always is, always is the same. Have no expectations. Freshly wonder and notice your internal sense of how you are brushing now. Is there a difference? You may likely notice a change quickly. It may also be possible that you don’t perceive anything new. You may note—I feel the same.

Can you allow yourself to just continue to notice the ‘sameness’ without getting in there right away and changing it—trying to effort or trying to make it better? Can you just open your awareness to the sameness itself and allow the sameness? Allow the qualities of the sameness to just be. Can you allow your awareness to gently expand by just feeling the full vibrancy of the sameness of the moment within you? Feel the qualities of pressure, weight shift, contact, movement forces moving through you or whatever else is alive and vibrantly felt within you? Can you do this freshly again a third time a little later during brushing?

The guaranteed constancy of change within the nature of things along with your fresh just allowing engagement with the sameness moment will eventually make available to you a possible change in the moment and a new way of noticing yourself. If you can allow yourself to just ‘be’ fully vibrantly alive in the sameness of things without attempting to change the moment but allowing the inevitability of change to occur on it’s own. You will likely then move to another possibility of perception within yourself.

Freshness, Curiosity, Wonder, Just Noticing. Allowing and then repeating. Freshness, Curiosity, Wondering…..

Can you freshly wonder and be curious during a sameness moment tomorrow? Notice the amazing possibility for novelty and wise knowing of increased ease to arise form this engaged noticing of the mundane. Stay tuned in an upcoming blog for more on this topic in how we keep our internal ‘images’ of ourselves and of our perceptions of others the ‘same’ in this same way.

Join Carrie at Feldenkrais and Qi Gong in Seattle for a private session, a group class or a workshop. She can be contacted at http://www.movementfromwithin.net, (206) 459-1773, or at feldychi@comcast.net.

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The breeze is cool and brisk. The sun is shining brightly on the greenish-bluish indigo waters of the Sound. I hear the repeating rhythm of the crash of waves on the shore. It is a gorgeous sunny day in October in Seattle. My heart swells with gratitude and joy for the abundance in my life and this lovely moment in space/time on Mother Earth.

CONNECTING

The moment is full of connection. Most primally the connection I feel to my sitting bones on the shifting sand beneath me. I observe the connection of the white billowy clouds hanging somewhere along the middle of the Olympic range like a very long mass of down feathers inviting the slight peek of the peaks above to just ‘rest’ in their softness. I observe the connection of the countless sails in the distance at times poking up and at times laying down very near the indigo waters like leaning sentinels between the sky and the water. I observe people in the distance on the beach—families flying kites, lovers walking hand in hand, a small girl in pink leaning over just at the shore and intentfully picking up rocks and shells. I observe the two windsurfers in the water leaning back and lightly ‘dancing’ the board in the waves patiently waiting for the wind to bring them upright over the board. I observe a flock of birds flying against the blue sky changing shape gracefully as a whole like a lovely gray scarf in a breeze.

All types of connection—each evoking a different type of ‘feel’ within me. I observe my own inner state and the changing sensations as I allow each of these observations to be beholden within me and flow outward as words on this page.

How do you know connecting? Just experiencing…..just this moment. We all long to feel connected, to be connecting……to Source……to All That Is. In all of the manifestations of that being and knowing.

When I first sat down to write, leaning against the rock behind me, wrapping my legs in a blanket, and just sitting with the experiencing of the moment, I waited. To taste, feel, smell, and sense the moment. Not think ‘about’ the moment or to describe it internally but to just feel. Experiencing occurs only in the unfolding moment.

TASTE THE STRAWBERRY

Imagine the first fully ripe and juicy bright red strawberry of the season. Look at it briefly and imagine putting it in your mouth and savoring the unfolding taste, texture, aroma, and sensations that are evolved within you. Now imagine someone in your presence who is from a remote part of the world who has never seen or tasted a strawberry. How would you share with them what a strawberry tastes like? You couldn’t. Not truly–not in the realm of experiencing–that can only be brought about by them eating their own strawberry and observing what comes alive within them. Otherwise it is is in the realm of thinking or describing ‘about’ an experience which is the beginning of ‘the story’ or the labeling we begin after an initial sensing experience of an unfolding moment.

On the most primal level there are only four sensations that arise in our inner world. These sensations are pleasant, unpleasant, ‘unregistered’ or sort of ‘lost’ to us, and the fourth is a complexly simple engaging with just what is……just simply tasting the strawberry—-with awareness.

Without the fourth way of engaging with our world (inner and outer— as they are the same), we are really just like an amoeba. When we experience a pleasant sensation we reactively move towards it—leaning and grasping forwards. When we experience an unpleasant sensation we reactively move away from it–’pulling back’ or pushing away and closing in. When we experience an ‘unrecognized’ sensation we are disengaged from the authenticity of the moment and deluded or lost for a moment—once again a reaction. Only the fourth way allows a clear connecting—a clear connection with the moment arising within us. This type of moment is fully alive within us and non-reactive. We are just in the experience and not grasping towards the continuance of the moment, not repulsed by the continuance of the moment and not disengaged in the moment.

THE FOURTH WAY

We long for these ‘fourth way’ moments. The fourth way vibrant, fully awake and aware moments of our experiencing. We long for them between ourselves and ourselves, between ourselves and our outer world of experiences with things and with other people. We perceive ourselves, outer things and other people to be separate from us. In an awake and aware fourth way moment, we recognize the dissolution of that ‘separate’ border. We recognize the oneness of unity of all–we ‘just taste the strawberry.’

I am observing my own longings within. I am observing moments of connecting in my life and in the lives of those around me. I am observing friends dancing lightly the ‘zone’ of aging parents and how to navigate that emotional and delicate zone. I am observing significant challenges in the zone of physical health for numerous around me. I am observing how the dance of connecting unfolds between parents and teen-agers who cross my path in this world. I am observing the ride on the wave of financial challenges for some. I am observing the journey of delicate maneuvering of how some long-term partners can remain committed through continued unfolding connecting.

How do we dance the above ones (and so many others)? It requires more and more ‘fourth way’ moments. Awake, aware, sensing and allowing engagement with what is. Just tasting the strawberry-whether it is perfectly sweet and ripe, rotten and sour, or just plain flavorless. It is such a a delicate and nuanced way to dance the zone between our healthy ‘longing’ for knowing our inherent connecting to self, Nature and others and our grasping at, repulsion towards or just plain ‘losing’ the unfolding moments.

Just like the waves that were very close to me when I first arrived today—-experiencing them without being repulsed by the possibility of the wave crashing over me and getting me wet, or grasping at the exhilaration of the same possibility of getting wet, or potentially ‘losing’ the moments later on when the receding waves were more subtlety present and possibly unnoticeable. Just experiencing the waves………as they are.

I believe that the powerful changes that are alive in our world–globally, nationally, familially, and individually are all opportunities to know our connection to All That Is. To reclaim and rediscover the connecting that always is. It requires kindness, warm-heartedness, courage, gentle persistence, and an opening to practicing fourth way moments. It requires all of these to know the difference between the authentic ‘longing’ for connecting and the grasping, repulsing or ‘losing’ the moment—- as they sit very near and often deeply entangled together within our inner worlds.

Choose the path of awakening…..the path of connecting. Open to the the study of the Movement From Within. Join Carrie in an upcoming class or Workshop at Feldenkrais and Qi Gong in Seattle. She can be contacted at feldychi@comcast.net or (206) 459-1773. She can also be found at http://www.movementfromwithin.net.

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Dark and Light. Doing and Being. Constraints and Possibilities. Passionate Action and Sacred Connection. What happens at the juncture of any of these dualities? The juncture is life—a vibrant co-mingling of dark and light—constantly morphing and changing. The zone of alchemical change or transmutation to a meaningful blending of dark and light. Life occurs in an interconnected way only by our remaining open to the very transmutational process at that zone. This requires our opening to being vulnerable–open to sitting in and with the unknown right at the zone of the “rub”.

Hunab Ku Symbol--Mayan Version of Yin/Yang Symbol

We are multi-dimensional beings. Opening to and wondering about all of our possible ways of sensing a moment at the zone of alchemy can create the conditions for powerful insights and new ways of perceiving life to occur. Insights, clear-seeing, and clear-knowing only arise from the zone of alchemy. They cannot and do not arise from a place of duality. Duality–the ‘either/or’ world– does not include all the possibilities that exist—that is included in the world of ‘and’.

Our very human form lives at the zone of alchemy. we are dark and light—matter and consciousness– made from and still connected to Heaven (or Cosmos if you prefer) and Earth. We access and receive insights and clear-knowing by way of our multi-dimensional self. We are rooted in Earth and expanding toward the Cosmos at all time. Our awareness of dimensions ‘seen’ and ‘unseen’ arise in between.

The microcosm of further alchemy occurs within our human alchemical form. There are only sensations and action at that zone. Arising sensations within travel on two pahtways to action. The pathways of thoughts and feelings. Awareness—our state of interconnectedness to Source–contains it all. As the language of sensations within are translated into our thoughts and feeling, we can enter the zone of alchemy if we stay connected to our inner sense of allowing. This allowing is the inner zone of alchemy and invites the arising sensations to be created into actions that always serve the highest good of all.

Sights, sounds, and smells, thoughts and feelings are only sensations at their most basic level. Letting ourselves receive clear-knowing from our undisturbed allowing of these sensations as they occur then shows back up as increased intuition and a heightened access to our multi-dimensional self. Access in all those dimensions –seen and unseen– become available to us.

THE NEXT ENERGETIC SHIFT

The Mayan Calendar is a multi-dimensional cyclical keeper of the evolution of consciousness. Please see my blog post–Conscious Convergence–Choosing to Co-Create for details on the highly complex inter-weavings of the Mayan Calendar. The Calendar follows energetic ‘waves’ of dark and light to a potential alchemical union of these energies within the human individual and collective consciousness. As each of these shifts occurs, there is a quantum complete change in energy from dark to light or light to dark. These shifts also occur in periods of time that are connected in a fractal way occurring closer and closer together as linear time goes on. When there is one of these shifts, the effects on the human consciousness is profound. The next shift from dark to light energy is occurring Nov 3, 2010.

This shift means the zone of alchemy will be highlighted within our individual and collective consciousness. The veil is much more thin at these moments and we have easier access to swim around in the zone of alchemy. Swim around and pick up new multi-dimensional ways of clear-knowing for entering the new period of light. This would allow the new energy wave to be navigated in a more graceful and easy way, with the sensations and actions arising from it serving the highest good of all.

Join Carrie’s workshop “Embracing the Shifting Moment” for experiential practices in navigating the upcoming energetic shift. You can join at Feldenkrais and Qi Gong in Seattle on Sunday, Nov 7. Carrie can be contacted at http://www.movementfromwithin.net or feldychi@comcast.net or at (206) 459-1773.

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Our species is at an evolutionary crossroads---to evolve to know our interconnectedness to All That Is. This requires an alchemical mixing of dark and light--not an annihilation of one for the other or by the other. This alchemy is what we are and All That Is is--a dynamic and vibrant ever-changing continuum of gray. This interconnected world is the world of "and", not the world of "or". Just like the traditional Yin/Yang symbol --in every moment of dark is a moment of light and in every moment of light there is a moment of dark--or-shadow--what's not in the light.

Yin/Yang Symbol

We are currently in an unprecedented and monumental time for opening towards and shining the light of our awareness on the shadow--our own personal shadow and the collective human shadow.

OPENING TO THE SHADOW

What does it mean to open to our shadow? One has to gently and with persistence shine the light of awareness in the dark corners and along the dark edges of what is known. All this can be done to integrate the shades of shadow into the light and enfold not knowing into knowing. The new moment then has a 'knowing' of the dark embedded within the light making a new shade of gray.

I am writing this at dusk at a high alpine lake as the waxing moonlight is growing. The massive mountain in front of me has constantly changing light on it. The snowfields that I knew during the sunlight are slowly morphing into interesting shapes and figures coming alive with a presence of their own. This is all due to the changing light and therefore the changing shadows of the rock, trees and surrounding vegetation. This vibrant diversity would not be present without this awesome continuous shifting of the light and shadow on All That Is.

It takes courage, a gentle persistence, and unconditional warmth to what is found to open to the shadow. We often find murk that we don't like or are afraid of and shining the light of unconditionally warm friendliness towards the moment can allow for a more clear being with the moment as is. Allowing this "being-ness' to hold the darkness can transmute the murk often one tiny bit at a time transforming them to the conditions for growth. There is an ancient Chinese saying that the most pure lotus flower grows out of the darkest muck with the strongest stench.

THE COLLECTIVE SHADOW

Humanity's shadow has much in it right now. Greed, disconnection from Nature and our inseparableness from Nature, a belief in hierarchical power, a loss of community as a species living interrelated with the planet and each other, and a disbelief and/or denial in the mysterious or things unseen.

Sitting with and opening towards the shadow within is more possible, gentle, and easy when we learn to open our awareness to the moment at hand without trying to fix, correct, or change it. If a difficult emotion is encountered with all of the embedded physical sensations and thoughts, we can slowly learn and then practice turning towards the moment with an open friendly, unconditionally warm awareness.

Having a non-forced but possible open awareness is like having a gallon sized container to hold one cup of water as opposed to only a one cup container to hold the same amount of water. If the cup of water is analogous to the difficult emotion and all of it's attached sensations, then allowing that whole experience to be felt within a larger unconditionally warm gallon-sized awareness is much easier than filling up the one-cup capacity with the difficulty. There is more space and allowance for expansion to experience, allow and then transmute the difficulty.

EXPANDING AWARENESS MAKES IT EASIER

With a consistent awareness practice we can grow that gallon-sized container to an infinite-sized one, therefore allowing the darkness and the shadow challenges to be held more gently. An awareness practice that leads to increased consciousness and therefore spiritual evolution requires a direct opening to and communicating with the shadow.

We all have a personal shadow and are included in and create humanity's collective shadow. We are all in this together. The path for our continued evolution (and probably for our survival as a species) requires us to open to and look at the shadow. When open awareness is combined with gentle persistence and unconditional warmth in the face of the dark shadow, the murkiness becomes more clear with the newly available insight and wisdom. When this insight and wisdom is combined with universal compassion for All That Is and mixed with the individual flame of your deepest soul's purpose and passion here on the planet, all kinds of previously unknown possibilities can arise. These possibilities that arise from this alchemical union of dark and light can bring wholeness or 'heal' previously thought of impossibilities.

The time has come for an opening to our personal and our collective shadow to occur. Can you move forward to courageously and gently face your own shadow and the collective one?

It takes building presence through an internal awareness practice of your own to find your deepest soul's passionate purpose and marry it to your shadow with the light of unconditionally warm awareness.

Start now with an internal awareness practice with Feldenkrais and Qi Gong in Seattle with Carrie Lafferty, PT, GCFP. She can be contacted at feldychi@comcast.net and more information can be found at www.movementfromwithin.net.

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