Gratitude vs the negitivity bias

My young adult daughter and I just had our coffee date, we were talking about her Dad being pushed into college by his mother when he was her age.  I was feeling what I call “that good mama feeling”; connected, proud of her, content with my values and choices.  Then she said “oh is that why you never pushed me?” “humm, that may have  influenced me some” I said.  Upon my further questioning she gently said “yeah, you could have done more by me”.  It’s true; there were times in her teen years that more advocacy or more motivation from me could have been beneficial and she believes it as well.

Now one week later my mind keeps returning again to how I didn’t perform so well.  Ever notice how your thoughts can go rushing past what was good and right to look at the big glaring mistake throbbing for attention.  I’m sure you’ve had a few of these experiences.  An evaluation at work which is full of compliments and good marks will be marred with one criticism that gobbles up all your attention and drowns out everything else.  Psychologists give this phenomenon a name “the negativity bias”, the way we alert to and fix on what is wrong.  We have evolution to thank for this; paying attention to danger, to potential problems is the survival smart thing to do.  Pollyanna will be mauled and eaten by that predator she doesn’t notice a blissfully beautiful natural scene.  If we go back and look at survival necessity it makes good biological sense to pay extra attention to the negative, we are better safe than sorry.  Neuro scientists are saying negative input carries ten times the weight of positive.  That’s a big physiological load to counter.

But in today’s world, is running fast or mobilizing to fight, the strategy that will keep me safe?  Do I really need an off handed remark to keep me on my toes?  I didn’t have a full fight or flee response, the modulation of my cortex told my lower brain to back off cause there is no real danger here in this moment.  The rumination, coming back again and again to examine if I should change my behavior in some way; is repetition that increases the stress hormones, and makes me less effective in the present moment.

Okay so now what can I do?  My brain will alert as it should, but paying attention to the alert can give me a momentary pause, to clear a little space in my brainbody.  A space to ask “Am I really feeling distressed and terrible about what a loser I am or is there some negative information that just captured my mind?”  Name it and let yourself know that if that negative comment had been a wild hungry beast you would have taken action and saved yourself.  Yes, there’s no wild hungry beast and now you may have some stress hormones in your bloodstream.  Remember it’s going to take ten times the number of positives to counterbalance this negative one.  While you’ve got your attention, try naming some of those positives. Even some of the obvious ones can help get you started; I’m not mangled or dead, I can think and notice things, I’m warm enough or well fed or…… Gratitude practices, taking a few moments, every day to name that which is good and feeling the gratitude, have been shown to lower blood pressure and restore equilibrium.

My daughter is talking to me in an intimate meaningful way.  We have the resources to go out together and have a cup of coffee.  I have a car that gets us places safely.  I’m going home to a comfortable/safe place.  My whole family is pretty healthy.  I have a beautiful natural environment around my house.  I have meaningful work.  I have people I like to dance with.  There are still some trillum on my street. It’s spring andtrillum the new hens are being to lay beautiful rich yolked eggs.  I am thinking of a particular friend who has loved and supported me for 40 years.  Well that’s one more than ten, having some gratitude in the bank is a good thing.

 

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Lateral Line

I had a wonderful experience today on a Thai massage platform under the hands of my favorite massage therapist.  As I lay on my side she worked on my upside at the hip and waist.  I had the experience of my laterality having so much more dimension.  The sides of me filled into front and back adding depth to the up down focus of my lateral line.

If you’ve attended any of my workshops you probably experienced your lateral line.  Often standing in a circle we will move the fish swish, an exploration I learned from BodyStories author Andrea Olsen in 2002.  We focus on moving the torso in a side side motion and stimulating lateral awareness through touch from armpit to hip on each side.  This lateral line is important in fish communication, the force and direction of water flow is perceived along a fish’s lateral line, telling the members of their school which way to turn.  In my community we are extending our awareness though our sides to each other and tuning into how we communicate and move together in our circle.fish

I like opening a group with this fish swish. It gets the spine warmed up with more awareness and the schooling fish images get us tuned into how much we affect each other in space and movement.  Our forgotten sidedness, it’s not the movement most of us think of when we want to get our spines moving.  It may be obvious without saying it but as a people we are very oriented to our front space. Our expressive faces, seeing eyes, articulate range of the arms moving, our speaking mouths; there are good reasons our communication privileges our front space.  It’s even most of what we can see of ourselves.

Knowing that we may have some awareness of not paying enough heed to our backs.  Our backs that ache are stiff or tense, where we carry our burdens literally and metaphorically.  If I simply invite participants to warm up their spines some will try to do a very good job with big range of motion and try for the extremes.  Missing the subtle small muscles close to the spine that the fish swish tickles awake; and risking injury.   Move your sides? That is the gift of an exploration like fish swish.

Today I had a perceptual shift; I experienced my sidedness in a new way.  The tactile and  proprioceptive stimulus came through a different sequence, via the skilled and perceptive touch of another.  The information through the lateral line came in a novel way and my brain ever hungry for new information seized that input combined it with related association networks and gave birth to a new perception, more three dimensional than what I’m used to.

We do get stuck in our same old perceptions of ourselves whether they are emotional, cognitive or physical.  And if you know me even a little you know what’s next.  All our perceptions are based in our physicality; our self-concepts originate in our physical experience.  I know that having a new physical perception can shake up my self-concept.  My body has experienced a more three dimensional perception of sidedness.  As I sit writing this I stop for a moment and feel into it, both visually and sensorial, reinforcing the new brain map I am establishing of my lateral line.

 

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Exercise Boosts Brain Power

boost brain power

Exercise boosts brain power is rule number one in John Medina’s Brain RulesExercise that dreaded word.  Really, when you read the sentence “Exercise boosts brain power” does all of you get to the last word or has a part of you exited your body?  Not wanting to feel the “I should…” or “I’m not…”or “I’ll never be…” we drift away losing the bad feeling by losing all feeling.   I can notice a disconnection, the part of me that feels responsibility and guilt for not taking care of my physicality every day was more than I wanted to experience.  So with a little acknowledgement, “yes, there is a part of me that feels guilt/shame”, and “hello, I notice that part”,  the unwanted part of me doesn’t need to be eradicated, just acknowledged.  Here is a deep breath, now I can go on exploring the idea of using movement to keep my brain humming.

The value of exercise has been highly documented.  Many a rat has run many a wheel and then had their neurons mapped.  And many a person has given a positive subjective report from their experience of exercise. On a physiological level exercise increases oxygen intake. The oxygen rich blood sponges up free radicals and transports them via carbon dioxide out of the body through breath, nice system.  That increased blood flow stimulates blood vessel growth transporting blood and its gifts further into more tissue, helping each cell do what it is meant to do more efficiently.  And as I noted in the blog about play, voluntary exercise stimulates Brain Derived Neurotropic Factor (BDNF).  BDNF is a protein which supports neuronal health and new neuronal growth.  This new growth or neurogenesis is most noticeable in the hippocampus the brain area associated with formation of memory. Memory, learning, cognitive function we’re on a roll.

Our bodies just weren’t designed to sit for eight plus hours a day (I’m not differentiating  brain from body.)  Scientists say long ago our early people walked about 12 miles a day.  We needed to move to forage, to hunt, to connect with our people in dance, song and play.  We evolved a brain/body perfectly suited to those needs.  All that moving makes every part of us function better.

I teach people to take movement breaks when they need more brain power and that helps me remember to do it for myself.   One of the easiest brain boosters to remember is cross crawl, right elbow to left knee and left elbow to right knee, you can even do it in your chair.  Sure I encourage you to get out of your chair but I’ve done this on cramped airplane seats, you do what you can manage. A little can be a lot, it’s not the equivalent of a trip to the gym but 3 minutes can make a difference in your ability to concentrate.

Set your phone alarm for three minutes and move continually in any way your body likes until that timer chimes.  Then notice; how is your attention? Do you feel more with it?  I also teach a sequence called BrainDance, it will take 7-8 minutes and stimulates multiple brain areas. The possibilities are innumerable.  I know a lot of movement educators, fitness professionals who can offer a lot, and if you can work with any of them it will be worth every bit of your time and money.  But in our culture of consult the experts we forget we can just move, listening to and following our bodies impulses to feel energized and satisfied.

Some of you, like me, have body parts that have been injured or are prone to injury; and we must learn to work with our limitations.  Maybe you can’t do yoga or Zumba or distance running but you can do something.  Discover how you can exercise, and if it’s not really fun at least notice how great you feel as a result.  Are your joints, lungs, heart or brain working better?  If so revel in that and remember it is in your power to move, to dance, to exercise, to walk, to run and support your brain to function at the high level it is meant to.

 

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What’s your favorite sense?

girls hugWhat’s your favorite sense?  That is a question I often ask workshop participants.  All of the work I teach is grounded in sensory awareness and what better place to start than taking stock of sensory preferences in the room.  I don’t expect you to limit it to the five you learned in grade school.   Many years ago I read that up to 32 senses had been documented.  And since Diane Ackerman didn’t list them in A Natural History of the Senses; I’ve had to puzzle on what they could possibly be.  So I ask people about their sensing of the world and I  try to notice different ways I get information. My active imagination is a great place to start; and this will be messy if you believe in nothing without scientific documentation.

Most of us learned the five senses, sight, smell, hearing, touch, taste; and that was enough; well not enough to really tell about our experiences.  Maybe you have gone on to learn about the vestibular sense, the one that keeps us balanced, by letting us know where we are going in relation to gravity.  This vestibular sense, which is controlled by the first cranial nerve to myelinate in utero, is a kind of great grandmother to all the other senses.  Then there is my favorite, proprioception, the ability to know where we are in space and where our bodies’ parts are.  It not that we have forgotten where we put them last; we are forgetting that we have parts when we ignore our sensory messages because of tension, dissociation or injury. And so we experience a kind of self forgetting, living only in thought.  Proprioceptive information travels to the lower brain to combine with input from the vestibular and tactile senses.  These three are foundational and so named “the tripod of the nervous system” by Stephen Cool. I think I might call them the sacred trinity of being.

Why do I love proprioception so much?  For starters proprioceptors get stimulated when you get a good hug and squeeze. They are the nerve receptors that gather information about muscle stretch, tendon pull, joint compression and where our heads are in relation to gravity.  Their name means “self-receivers”, I like that.  I like more than the name; I like the nervous systems response to firm even pressure to my joints, which is to let out a deep sigh, settle and calm.  It is organizing for a discombobulated nervous system.  We get proprioceptive input from a good hug, piles of heavy blankets, tight stretchy clothing, pushing heavy objects, working out, or jumping on a trampoline.

We all have different needs for different amounts of proprioceptive input. Everybody needs some and you can’t go wrong with firm pressure especially if you’re in control of how much, some of us crave more.  If you have read anything about Temple Grandin she built herself a squeeze machine for this very need.  Some children with sensory integration disorder wear tight lycra body suits, it help keep them calm and organized. I like to lie beneath heavy blankets.  I have some sand stuffed lycra lizards in my studio to drape across your shoulders or lap and weighted balls, nice to roll in your hands or against your legs when sitting and talking. I invite people to notice if that weight makes them feel more settled.

What about the other senses?  If you think about all the subtle changes you notice, all the information you have about your environment that doesn’t quite fit into the basic five (or seven), you know we’re missing some data on sensing .  Have you noticed how some people always know what direction is north while others have no clue?  We are sensitive to electromagnetic fields and the poles do have a magnetic pull.  And the changes in barometric pressure,  most of us have some sense of weather change, maybe you feel moisture changes in the air. It seems there is a density as it increases and some times a heavy cloud cover feels oppressive. We also feel changes in the moods of others, is it pheromones changes we smell? Or electromagnetic field shifts?  Our hearts and brains do put out electromagnetic energy and the heart actually puts out the most.  Hearing is not just sound but vibration and some sounds we feel more than we hear.   Have you heard of synesthesia?  The crossing or combining of senses, that some say is rare and other say it’s more common that you would think. People with synesthesia might see color when they are hearing sound or perceive forms for tastes or other combinations of sensation to perception.When I’m driving I’m intrigued that I can pick up the intent of another driver to change lanes before they indicate in any visible way.   There must be someway this information in conveyed and some way my amazing body interprets it.  What senses do you experience or imagine?

Right now, without moving, notice how you are sitting (or standing). Can you know what your body shape looks like?  Where are your limbs placed in relation to each other? And when you move them can you feel where they are going?  Try it with your eyes closed, shutting off that very dominant sense and listening more closely to the proprioceptors. This kind of exploration is a work out for your cerebellum, where you plan and anticipate movement.  I bet you have experienced the times your cerebellum is anticipating another step down and when it’s not there you have a strange jarring surprise.  Your thinking was busy somewhere and your cerebellum was planning how to adjust to the next step anticipating different information than it received from your proprioceptors.  I invite you to play with your “self-receivers” and notice how much you can know yourself and where you are.

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Smell this

“The nose knows” But what does it know?  A lot, oh yes, a lot.  You have probably experienced a waft of scent transporting you to another time and place.sunflower face  Smell is already quite acute at birth, logging important information, learning about who is who and what is safe and what to be on alert for.  Scent is formed from a combination of chemicals in the air that stimulate the billions of tiny hairs cells in the bridge of the nose and activating nerve networks for every smell known to humans.  Of course, you may not know a particular smell in words or descriptive labels or chemical names but you know it in feeling, perception and unconscious responses.

I am so fascinated by the sense of smell; maybe because it is so primitive, so essential.  I love learning about what is foundational, biologically, evolutionarily.   Smell has direct access to the hippocampus, the brain area involved in memory formation.  There by taking a more direct route to perception than the other senses that all pass through the thalamus for routing information.  It seems that smell was developed at a much earlier stage in evolution, as so essential for survival.  As modern humans we do not give it the full respect and attention that our four legged friends do.  In fact we associate it with being uncouth and animal like.

Our American culture is very smell phobic, covering or trying to eliminate body odor of any kind.  Making sure our environments, body products, cleaning supplies are pleasant and/or non-offensive.  The tactic to make everything smell like vanilla or chocolate or fruit is at best limiting and boring.   But in the crusade to make things smell good, excess is often the result and smell sensitive people have reactions of overwhelm, triggering headaches or nausea.

I would say our culture underutilizes our olfactory abilities. Some forms of medicine require the physician to identify their patient’s odor as a key component of the diagnostic procedure.   “The Nose” is the most important position held in perfume manufacture, this is the person who fine tunes the formulas for the perfect combination of fragrances.  Then there is the love apple story, a woman would carry a small apple between her breasts for weeks and then send it to her lover who could then carry and inhale the essence of her.

Smell alerts us to danger, animals, smoke, spoiled food, anything in the environment that we need to know about.  All of us can register the smell of fear and some people have an awareness of it as odor.  Others call it the smell of fear but feel it as a sensation; a sensation which is probably a response to perceiving the chemicals in the air.   I had an old farmer friend who said he lost his sense of smell after working for years putting up silage.  Silage is fermented hay or grains and extremely pungent.  He said he would get an initial hint of any smell and then it would be gone.  I think his brain learned to stop smelling; unfortunately this unconscious learning didn’t turn off just the silage but every odor after its initial perception.   As a toddler, my son actively inhaled when in the arms of someone he loved and had not seen for a long time.  Without direct prompting he learned to downplay his acute sense of smell because it is not a trait our polite society wants to acknowledge.   But he still has it.  Sometime recently he asked if the friend’s house we went to was one he had been at as a small child, because he remembers the smell of it as belonging to a house we visited years ago.

One developmental expert suggests we massage the bridge of the nose to get those hair cells stimulated and assist in learning something we would like to remember.  It’s worth a try before studying what is important to us.  We know sensory stimulation through movement is a great warm up for learning so why wouldn’t stimulating smell, which has a direct route to memory, be a great learning aid as well.

Right left brain differentiation and activation through all sensory input is fascinating; and up to eighty percent of the energy used by the nervous system is taken up in sensory processing.   Smell is just one of the most fascinating.   Smell to the right nostril stimulates the right brain and left nostril to left brain, unlike the rest of the body’s cross lateral connection wiring where right controls and inputs left and vice versa. That’s just one more way smell follows different rules.   If we want to stimulate the temporal left brain then inhale chocolate, lavender, rose, strawberry, banana (among others).  Or for the right temporal lobe try black pepper, coffee, peppermint, lime, eucalyptus, fish oil to the right nostril.  I’ve just learned about this and am excited to play with it, noticing what effects I will perceive.  So wake up and smell the coffee; and make sure your left nostril is plugged.

There are yogic breathing techniques that emphasize alternate nostril use.  When I do them I feel more alert and present; ready but not keyed up.  The one I learned starts and ends with the left nostril.  I did read once that left nostril breathing stimulates a parasympathetic response; it has a calming effect (I’m sorry I can’t find the source).   Yet we do use the left brain frontal lobes to calm an overwrought nervous system.  And the right brain is more active in distress learning and distress memory. But that’s just one aspect of hemispheric differentiation; nothing is simply done in one brain region or hemisphere.   I just might be trying to put things in an order that may not be directly causal but it is provocative to dive into the possibilities and wonder about the interrelationships of our magnificent sensory capabilities.

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V-day in our hearts

It’s the week of Valentine’s Day and everyone is talking about love and the heart.  Stylized hearts in reds and pinks abound as businesses encourage us to purchase in honor of love.  News stories tell of love, gained or lost, enduring or fleeting.  I am no different; I want to speak of the heart today as well.

The heart is the primary oscillator in the body; its rhythms bring every other body system into coherence.  Its electromagnetic extends for many feet beyond the body, out distancing the field of the brain by up to 5xs.  An influence we can notice when someone walks into the room whether we become conscious of it or not.

The heart has been called the seat of the soul and the wellspring of love.  When we are sad our hearts literally ache; when we’re emotionally touched, unthinking we bring a hand to our hearts, accessing warmth, increasing sensation and basking in the feeling.

Focusing attention on the heart increases our sense of well being, as researched by the HeartMath Institute.  In part because of ANF (atrial natriuretic factor), a hormone produced and secreted by the heart, which among other things, inhibits release of stress hormones and balances regulatory regions in the brain.

When we “speak from the heart” powerful emotions can ensue.  Noradrenaline and dopamine are neurotransmitters which mediate emotions; they are also synthesized and released in the heart.  So when the heart speaks the brain does listen.  No wonder for millennia people have “felt” the hearts importance in emotion.

Sometime you have probably been advised to ‘follow your heart” and how might you do that?  Spending quiet moments breathing with a focus on your heart, its sensations and rhythms will guide your mind.  The mind does not only arise from the brain in the skull but also the brain in the heart and the brain in the gut and all the sensory information from your body, forming what we experience as mind.  There is really no mind body split; the body is the mind, the mind is the body.

The coherence of many moving, singing, embodying the same intention in a large group is a powerful message.  We find ourselves drawn to the rhythm, seeking entrainment with the field created by many hearts, minds and bodies.  I am looking forward to experiencing that tomorrow as I step into my local V-day, One Billion Rising event to stop violence against women.  A few hundred dancing, same movements, same song, with people all over the globe.  You can be sure I will notice how my heart feels, how my body-mind responds.  I hope you will have an opportunity to connect with the power of One /billion Rising in the place you live.  And most importantly the place you live in your heart.

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Tightness I can’t run from

I’m endlessly fascinated with myself. I can spend a lot of time rolling on the floor, noticing, wondering, sensing, but I easily forget that I can. My lists of things I want to do, I think I should do, and I have to do keep my attention from the quiet whisperings of my interceptors.  Until a hip finally screams, notice me!

“Tightness in your joints is movement you wanted to make but couldn’t,” the workshop leader said.  My aching joints said, “Oh yeah, that’s me.”  Now years later I can’t recall who said this. Maybe it was Body Psychotherapist Susan Aposhyan, who says that when we don’t move through a stress producing event (or thought) the options left for our muscles are to hold, or to bind, or to collapse.

So when we can’t, or we believe we can’t, respond by fleeing or fighting our way out of the upsetting situation, what do we do with all that energy? Hold, bind, collapse.  And we sure won’t want our response seen, so the binding, holding or collapsing will be close to the core, effecting the torso or hips or shoulders.

Which of these responses to being thwarted are you most familiar with?  Holding is a stop, a freeze, no breath, no sound, no movement.  Binding is a pull inward, being small, tightening, protecting.  Collapsing, is giving up, becoming deflated, exhausted, weak.  Try experiencing the differences in your body.  It takes a little discernment. Be endlessly fascinated with yourself.  What are each of them like? And how are they different?  If your curiosity is piqued, give yourself a few breaths and a little movement to fully relax and feel embodied, then bring to mind something that is distressful.  Can you sense how your muscles respond?  What is your familiar choice?

It’s misleading to speak of a response that is below conscious awareness as a “choice” or a “decision,” which makes it sound like a thinking process. Thinking is much too slow and awkward when it comes to safety and survival.  This is a nervous system choice, a very smart body reaction.  This is why, Dr. Stephen Porges coined the term “neuroception” for the body’s process of sensing, perceiving, and acting. It’s an autonomic process which may or may not inform our conscious awareness.

Me? What’s my tried and true solution?  I bind. It’s my strategy when I experience unpleasantness that I perceive I can’t get away from.  I take the energy my body is rallying for action and tighten it down.  I bet I’ve been doing this for over 60 years. It’s a well-established pattern, no thinking, no evaluation needed, pure neuroception.  Now my joints can be a bit achy and tight from all that binding.  It’s true most of the time I don’t have to jump out of the way of a runaway truck or fight off a pouncing cougar.  Historically our biological strategies weren’t designed to attack an overdrawn bank account, there’s nothing to pounce on, so where does that energy go?  You got it: to hold, bind, or collapse.

There are techniques I’ve gleaned from movement modalities and traditions, actions to lessen the effects of binding.  I vibrate and shake, while keeping the range of movement minimal and the vibration maximal. Opening my throat and allowing a little sound increases the benefits.  Or I move slowly, gently, yielding to gravity with a focus on flow, and at times imagine lubricating my joints with warm fragrant oil.  Stretching or the action of lengthening isn’t very effective for this tension. It is movement which provides the responsive resiliency I desire.

Being endlessly fascinated with myself, I’m training to notice when something distresses me and then move the energy through my limbs.  If there is a particular situation I wanted to get away from, I take some time in my own private space to explore the impulses. Slowly with awareness, I play with both fighting and running away movement.  Mostly it’s the accumulated dings and bangs of life that I want to clear out.  Someday I might not instantly bind.  Someday I will find that tiny space between sensory awareness and conscious awareness to make the choice to move in the moment.  If not, I can take the time and space to un-bind the energy later, moving my muscles and joints in full expressive vitality. I no longer want to wait until my tight joints begin screaming at me.

 

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Embodiment and Self Regulation

To be embodied is to experience and process interactions, thoughts and experiences with oneself, others and the environment through sensation and movement. When you are embodied you can think and feel simultaneously.  It’s something that I teach probably because it is a state I seek.  My experience in Authentic Movement is a sure way for me to become embodied and working with clients getting them in touch with their bodybrain brings me to mine.

Katya Bloom defines embodiment as: “the tendency toward balance and integration of the different aspects of the self— sensory, emotional, and mental—within the containing confines of the bodily structure, bounded by the skin and responsive to internal and external stimuli.”  A bit academic but on the mark, I like: “within the containing confines of the bodily structure”, embodiment isn’t out there somewhere it’s in here, within me.

The first step in embodiment is self-regulation.   Self-regulation is the ability to create and sustain balance in the nervous system.  This means knowing how to calm when you’re over activated and how to alert when you need to pay attention. People who can self-regulate are often called grounded or well resourced.

When I’m embodied I feel held up by gravity and am aware of my responses.  When I’m exhausted, agitated or both, likely I haven’t been self-aware enough to stay in balance, probably I am asking myself to keep going when my bodybrain needs to recuperate.  I know I’m dis-regulated when my agitation with too many objects in my environment doesn’t let my attention go anywhere else.  And I can’t get them all put away, they seem endless.  It looks so different when I’m self-regulated.

What are your own personal cues to dis-regulation?  Nail biting, squirming, drowsiness, space out, holding breath, increased heart rate, tensing or clenching, or agitation are some possible cues. Trying to stop the behavior may not be the way to self-regulate, sometimes what we negatively label as distraction is really a bid for self-regulation.  Like fidgeting which can be an attempt to increase sensory input and get the nervous system integrating information and energy. And sometimes folding a big pile of laundry does help me.

How do you resource yourself and return to a regulated state?    Right brain activities are often re-balancing, many years ago I found myself coloring, it was so satisfying I began to look for things to color in, allowing myself to indulge this whim.   We also self-regulate by connecting with someone who is calm and self-regulated.   Are there certain people who you like to be with when you’re distressed?  Just being with them feels good. That’s the way a parent calms a baby, their regulated state will calm the infants immature nervous system.  One of the few self-regulating skills an infant has is to go to sleep.  Connecting with well-regulated adults teaches their developing nervous system how to settle.

If you have the ability to focus your attention on movement, sensation, breath, or imagery; that connection with self is likely to bring you to regulation.  From a self-regulated place the next step in embodiment is allowing ones process to unfold with awareness.  Cultivate body awareness: “What does this sensation want to do?  What inner movement or impulse wants to come forth?”  As you begin to follow the body’s process you become more embodied.  Like any other skill when we first begin to practice embodiment it seems awkward and takes a lot of attention.  Start small, breathe and notice, shift your body position and notice, imagine yourself as a mountain, as a river, the deep ocean, (create the image of the quality you want to embody) and notice changes in sensation and perception.  Welcome back to your body the place you’ll spend the rest of your life.

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natural movement

I’ve always been curious about our understanding of the word “natural”. Once embraced by alternative culture (applying to foods, parenting, livelihood, housing, etc.) natural became a ubiquitous label and now it is more meaningless marketing.   When I taught Modern Dance Technique, a student would often say “doing it this way feels more natural than what you are asking us to do.”  Indoctrinated by the culture of natural is better, they were going for what felt easy to their bodies.  I continue to hear from clients who work with me in alignment and movement fundamentals, “that doesn’t feel as natural as the way I do it”.  I explain that what they are experiencing as “natural” is actually “habitual”.  It is a way their body has answered a functional problem that may not be anatomically or physiologically sound.  So I wonder; is movement that is more anatomically functional and efficient more natural?  Or is our experience of natural so personally subjective that it only ever references ourselves, our experience?lily me BW

When I think about the ways we have defined dance over the last hundred years it seems Isadora Duncan created a more natural form of dance.  Did she call it natural because it was her personal experience?  Did others call it natural because they had a kinesthetic response when viewing it?  Or did it appear natural only in contrast to the ballet of that time?  Greater use of mobility in the torso, successive movement off vertical, phrasing with continuity rather than quickness are some ways I might describe a few of the differences.  When the next revolution in dance led by Martha Graham appeared was it felt or seen as more natural?  Lots of strength and use of gravity, torso contracting, limbs pouring outward. And finally Post Modern Dance, natural in its use of pedestrian movement, walking, running with ease, a relaxed even flow of energy.  What could be more natural?

I wonder do we feel a sense of natural in us as viewers or as movers?  Think for a moment what you mean when you refer to something as natural, and how do you apply that to your body movement?  I challenge you to notice is what you sense as natural, better defined as familiar, normal, habitual? Can it sustain rather than stress your body over time? Is there an ease of execution, or a fluid quality, an emotional response to it? I care less about defining the word natural and much more about defining the experience of the mover.  What are the sensations, emotions, dynamic qualities and poetic language that define your natural movement?

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prosody

What distinguishes mammals from other critters?  Well what first comes to mind is birthing live offspring and nursing their young.  Recently I heard again another characteristic, mammals have two tiny middle ear bones, and these two smallest bones in the body are coordinated by the two smallest muscles.  But why?  Well mammals are largely social creatures and even those who are more solitary as adults begin life very dependent on their mothers, creating a social, emotional and physiological bond.  The little ones have to communicate their needs and their mamas have to understand that communication and respond appropriately.  Here’s where the little bones come in.

Sound is made of vibrations.  The vibrations of sound are exquisitely attended to by the middle ear; which allows us to hear prosody, the changes in intonation and pitch that emotionally communicate moods, states and intentions.  The middle ear is designed to attend to communication at that subtle level.  When we feel safe in relationship with another, our limbic (mammalian) brain wants to understand all the nuances and we take in lots of information about the other and adjust our behavior so we can be a part of the tribe or pack.  Imagine that cute little critter snuggled against its Mama cooing, chortling or whimpering.  Mama adjusts her behavior to his/her needs and vocalizes back.  But if the situation suddenly turns dangerous the middle ear information and those sweet little babbles are ignored.  All of the auditory energy becomes focused on picking up information from the background, sweeping outward, assessing the danger.

You may have noticed it when you were worried or afraid; you couldn’t quite take in or understand the words or meaning of the voice next to you.  It just couldn’t compete with the sounds of traffic or machinery or the talk of others.  Our old reptilian brain always trumps the newer more complex functions, of our mammal brain.   Because what’s all important is, are we safe?  Yes, stress makes it a bit harder to connect, to be social, to feel safe and we lose the ability to tune into prosody, the intonationsfamily dance kayak homecoming 035 - Copy in speech.

Me, I love wordless vocalization; I love to play the game of speaking gibberish, when I must increase my prosody to get a message across.  I find it satisfying, fun, silly and all the better if someone else engages with me in these nonsense sounds.  We rekindle closeness, the kind without words, our meaning more elemental and less abstract.  I invite you to try it, leave the logic or your left brain for a mini holiday of silliness and sensation and mammalian communication.

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