Somatic Epiphanies and Four-Letter Words
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How can you get your somatic discoveries to become new habits of moving and being?
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Notes on Coaching Movement, Part 1
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A deeper level of somatic education can lead to lasting change in the way someone inhabits their body. This approach invites the client to become aware of their habitual movements and to explore sensations that stimulate new movement behaviors.
Read MoreSomatic Gratitude
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It’s easy to distinguish the feeling of gratitude from that of disappointment. But how do the sensations of gratitude differ from those of happiness, love, or relief? Could I find a way to more fully embody my thanksgiving?
Read MoreA Movement Disorder
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Exercise doesn’t increase dopamine levels in the brain but it does affect the efficiency with which available dopamine is recruited to serve brain circuitry.
Read MoreActing My Age
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Sometimes I think about Diane Feinstein running for Congress for the umteenth time. Or Dame Judi Dench making film after film. We are not all given the same energies and capacities and I have to respect that—respect myself in that.
Read MorePandiculate for Fascia Health
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Unlike cats and dogs, humans tend to stifle this natural urge. In polite company such movement expression is considered rude.
Read MoreEmbodiment During a Heatwave?
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Going outside felt like walking into an oven or like being punctured by thousands of hot little needles, one in every skin pore.
Read MoreMastectomy, Spatial Perception and Movement
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After explaining these phenomena to my client, I suggested she notice any sense of diminished movement on the affected side. To become more aware of the space around her body she could imagine a sphere—something like a snow globe—and standing within it, notice differences her sense of the qualities of the space on each side.
Read MorePosture and Politics #1
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I’ve decided to try a different tactic: I’m going to choose to watch him (and his henchmen) while at the same time drawing on every resource in my body awareness arsenal to sustain my space and energy.
Read MoreMorning Posture; Morning Attitude
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I also know that moving stiffly--ambulating with the bare minimum of joints engaged--becomes a habit that can’t entirely be blamed on my bodily tissues. Habits take place in the brain. The more often I move stiffly, the more familiar and less optional that way of moving becomes. I can choose how I move.
Read MoreSpatial Perception in Daily Life
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When we resist doing a task, part of the body is holding back. Instead of all your muscle units working together to finish the chore, a high percentage of them rebel and pull the opposite way. It’s like driving the car with the brakes on. The chore feels heavy, pressured and hurried.
Read MorePosture & Perception: Naked Skin Moments
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Contemporary living undervalues body awareness and overrides it most of the time. But could it be that listening to our interior body signals has an evolutionary advantage? If so, we undervalue this capacity to our detriment. We need to practice activating it.
Read MoreSitting with Pelvis Support
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When you’re feeling self-confident and assertive, there’s an automatic uplift to your chest, spine and neck—your posture automatically organizes itself for the better. But no one feels terrific all the time, right? By teaching yourself the physical sensations that correspond to a good mood, you can use your body-mind connectivity to good advantage. Body awareness helps you cultivate positive outlooks in humdrum situations…
Read MorePosture, Elbows and Consciousness
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As a Rolfing® practitioner, I've observed that tension in the elbows affects the whole body. Habitual flexion there, however slight, pulls the upper arm forward in its socket, starting a chain reaction that pulls the shoulder blades forward, and the collarbones and chest down, and the neck forward. Elbow tension often corresponds with flexion in the spine just behind the diaphragm, and that interferes with fullness of breath. The postural end result feels, and certainly looks, nothing like the upper crust ladies of Downton…
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