Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. ― Mary Oliver I was walking along a busy city street last week, and I was busy myself, inside my head, when the scent of roses stopped me in my tracks and I had to reverse my steps to find the rose bush […]
Without judgment, take a minute to listen and to know. What do you feel right now? Notice your body, your tensions, where you hold. Bring you attention to your energy, your creative life force, is it lively or flat? There is no right or wrong answer, no way you ‘should’ be, just the truth of
Tell me that you’re disappointed with the unfinished chores you see, but calling me ‘irresponsible’ is no way to motivate me. And tell me that you’re feeling hurt when I say ‘no’ to your advances, but calling me a frigid man won’t increase your future chances. Marshall Rosenberg Non-Violent Communication: A language of life http://www.cnvc.org/about/marshall-rosenberg.html,
When the tissues and structures of the body are engaged and held in stillness… In that stillness there is opportunity for change and enhanced self-awareness. Phil Greenfield I attended Phil Greenfield’s http://www.corealignment.co.uk/ talk on Zero Balancing this week. It seemed very timely following my experience with Authentic Movement therapy. One of the descriptions he used, regarding
Psychotherapy Without Words Read Post »
Yesterday I spoke of dancing with ourselves, and finding our own natural rhythms, adjustments, fluidity of movements, that come out of listening to ourselves and our bodies. I wonder if it is co-incidence that as a society we have moved from dancing in couples to dancing individually in large groups? It seems a significant reflection
Dancing Without Choreography Read Post »
Dance like no one is watching… Last week I had a further valuable experience of ‘going within’ with eyes closed. I was experiencing a therapy called Authentic Movement Therapy on a workshop. I won’t explain all that we did on this training, but just describe that by the second half of the workshop we were
When Imogen http://www.imogenragone.net/blog/ was helping me with releasing the tension in my body during an Alexander Technique Lesson a couple of weeks ago. She observed that I closed my eyes while adjusting. I found that this helped me get a sense of my new position, that I could feel the difference in my body more easily.
“It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection.” ― Anonymous, The Bhagavad Gita Last week, I was reflecting on how empathy is a powerful re-iteration of the paradoxical theory of change. Instead of saying, “Don’t be like that”, to ourselves or others, we sit with
The Way of Imperfection Read Post »
I’ve just returned from a family outing to Markeaton Park where we all took part in an archaeological excavation of the old hall. We clambered down into the trench where we were shown an old floor and with trowels and brushes we cleared away the soil and debris, carefully exposing the pattern of bricks beneath.
An Archaeological Experience Read Post »
A character in my favourite musical, Wicked, sings about ‘Dancing through Life’, he proclaims, why invite stress in? Stop studying strife And learn to live “the unexamined life”.. As appealing as his approach may sound, we don’t always have the choice to ‘skim the surface’. Martin Israel writes in his book The Pain that Heals: The
The Unexamined Life Read Post »