A nice break from quite a bit of chatter. The chatter in the news and on social media. The chatter in my own head. We all have stuff to deal with, worry about, fuss over. And the rain keeps on raining, and the sun keeps on shining, and the moon keeps on rising.
All of this creates complex problems to be addressed. Power outages; drainage; food and shelter; loss of income; loss of housing. How do we allocate resources? How do we manage our individual and community responses to situations like this?
Sometimes you gotta just practice what you preach. Every time I teach a Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement lesson, there are instructions to pause in between movements. Sometimes short pauses; sometimes long pauses. Sometimes lots of pauses; sometimes few pauses.
Every day. So far, it’s been every day for 12 years! She mentioned that she had to go deep, to look more deeply, to go beyond the obvious.
Our brains work in amazing ways. We learn through patterns, we follow patterns, we create patterns, and sometimes we disrupt patterns. One of my favorite things is the expansion that happens, the lives that improve, when we activate this kind of learning.
Pairing some wool fiber and a beach ball is an odd choice. Odd, but fun. Who would have guessed how much fun you can have indoors with a ball, some soapy water, and a pile of colorful wool?
Maybe it would be easier to let go, if the imagined result looked more like spaciousness than emptiness.
It’s also a good day to consider what we individually might do to encourage peace. What might we say and do, that could make our world a more peaceful place, where we can find better ways to live together on this earth?
With all the stuff going on in the whole world and in our own little corners of the world, it’s nice to have small delights to make us smile, slow down, breathe a little better, and enjoy.
Nonetheless, I made it around a sort of circuit. My reward at the end was one of my favorite trees—a mimosa. It has delicate pink flowers—and such bold color!
