Slowed to a crawl, my body was having its way with me. Lethargic, despondent, lost and out of sorts. Finally, I had no choice but to take its lead and stop, really STOP, get simple and find my way back to myself.

I have been certain for a long time that it is meaningful and necessary to allow the body to lead. We are always so busy thinking, strategizing, affirming, doing, figuring it out – often to the exclusion of what is going on with and for the body. It is challenging, not only to pay attention to the messages of the body, but also respect that innate bodily wisdom enough to allow it to lead the way.

I hadn’t been feeling well for quite some time, I’d say my overall sense of well-being was at about 40% – even though I was taking many steps and exploring several avenues to regain my health, it continued to elude me. Affecting all aspects of my life – it was as though every part of me was crying out for a break, some breathing room, a time-out. But I continued to effort, to try to push through and get done what I thought I needed to do. It felt unacceptable to do what I really was longing to do and that was to take a nap, read, stare out the window . . . I just kept going – it was like trying to run in knee deep mud.

Judgment crept in and started asking accusatory questions: Why in the world am I here? What purpose do I serve? What is wrong with me that I can’t seem to move forward? Why is success so elusive? I became cynical. Exhausted and uninspired, I was shutting down, closing my mind and my heart.

Until . . .

I gave myself permission to stop – full permission to stop all efforting.

Stop the judgment. Stop trying to find purpose. Stop trying to figure it out. And get simple, really simple. Chop wood. Carry water. Stop fighting what is NOT and be with what is. FULL STOP. Surrender to being nothing, going nowhere.

What a relief. Waves and waves of relief – to be in my life without the overlay of being someone who is doing something that has meaning and purpose, simply – living . . .

And it has been a challenge! To stop means to dis-identify with all the doing, with who I think I am or should be, to not have an agenda, a strategy or even a vision – to set the gear shift in neutral. It has taken time to stop. It has taken practice get simple. It has taken deep discipline let go.

And through that, there have been moments when I have been able to be still and quiet enough to access the great nothing that is everything, the immense nowhere that is everywhere and to rest there in the heartbeat of my life. My mind is open and receptive. My body is less defended and beginning to heal. My heart is soft. And I feel the gentle stirrings of inspiration. I am grateful for the wisdom of my body to lead me to this time of grace in my life.

And – if you’re wondering what all that looks like in relationship to my day to day business: I continue to be in my business as it presents itself to me. I want to allow it to reveal itself without the overlay of what I think it should be or who I should be within it. I will continue to teach classes, courses, workshops and individuals and create what comes to me to create from this non-doing place. Stay tuned as I continue to explore and share with you my discoveries of this great Mystery.

“Nothing but Mystery. Only Mystery. Getting this right to our marrow leaves us undressed at the corner of Nowhere and Nowhere with every road an endless ribboning carrying both an infinity of passengers and no one at all. This leaves our mind speechless, as everything morphs in and out of an everwild, familiarity-shredding arising that has no edge, no mappable infrastructure, no obligation to make sense . . .” Robert Masters

Learning about the body is so intriguing! I am continually amazed by its capacity and encouraged in my certainty of its place in living a conscious and evolved life! In The Body Has a Mind of Its Own, the authors, Sandra and Matthew Blakeslee, present the emerging science of body maps; how mind and body intertwine to create your embodied, feeling self. I am quickened and delighted by this material – and I have only read the first few chapters! The thing of it is; this information feels familiar – I may not have thought about in exactly these terms, but I recognize this information as holding fundamental truths, truths that movement and teaching movement have revealed to me.

In the introduction, they ask you to use your arms, legs, head, neck, tongue, torso, butt to explore the invisible space all around your body and state, “This invisible volume of space around your body out to arm’s length—what neuroscientists call peripersonal space—is part of you.”

They go on to say, “This is not a metaphor, but a recently discovered physiological fact. Through a special mapping procedure, your brain annexes this space to your limbs and body, clothing you in it like an extended, ghostly skin. The maps that encode your physical body are connected directly, immediately, personally to a map of every point in that space and also map out your potential to perform actions in that space. Your self does not end where your flesh ends, but suffuses and blends with the world, including other beings.”

Fascinating – yes? Your brain appropriates this space for use by the body!

For quite some time, I have coached students to imagine the space around them as part of the movement – and this information augments that idea. And it is more than an idea, it’s real! It has substance! And it has already proven to be a source of support and inspiration to my students. For instance – I have a student who has struggled with the weight of her head in the curl up (long bow) position, causing tension in her neck. I encouraged her to become aware of the full circle of space all around her, suggesting she use the bottom side of the circle to support her head – she found relief and strength as she pressed the back of her head into this “imaginary circle.”

See if you can feel into this annexing of space. Notice how it supports you. Has your brain annexed the chair you are sitting in and has it become part of the support system that your body is using? The next time you workout, see if you can feel how the equipment you are using has been commandeered as part of your potential to perform. The possibilities are endless and intriguing. And I can’t wait to see how this information grows our ability to be more thoroughly embodied!

Deep blessings, Carol

Here’s a great way to Liven Up! Attend the upcoming body rolling class for your feet, knees and hips. After 2 hours of rolling you will feel deeply released, vibrantly alive, fully present,  and at peace. Really! I know it sounds like lofty promises, but this work delivers. Hope you can join me!

Save Your Feet, Knees & Hips!

A comprehensive class where you will be expertly guided
in how to support and release your feet, knees and hips.

Saturday • November 13, 2010
11:00 am – 1:00 pm • Price $45

Join us for this invigorating class that will help you lengthen and tone your feet, knees and hips. This course will supply the basic, experiential information you need to keep these 3 areas unrestricted, aligned and fully functioning. If you have issues with stiffness, pain, lack of mobility or weakness in any of these areas, this class is for you! You will leave with a sense of spacious freedom in your body, a quiet yet awake mind and an overall sense of peace and well-being.

If you feel like you’ve been there, done that – think again. This is all new work from Yamuna’s “Save Your Body Parts,” created to give you ways to keep all your parts in good working order Now and in the Future. She has simplified and clarified this work so that you understand what each body part needs to prevent the common breakdowns.

Please join me!

Taking this time to create length, strength and space in your body will
leave you with a sense of freedom and a feeling
of being quietly energized and profoundly present.

You will feel absolutely fantastic!!!!

Contact Carol for information and registration

I’m reading Spiritual Bypassing: When Spirituality Disconnects Us from What Really Matters by Robert Masters, and found myself particularly intrigued by the chapter, “Disembodied Spirituality and Embodied Being.” Here are some excerpts I thought you might find meaningful:
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. . . no matter how much we might neglect or mistreat it, our body calls us back through its aches and pains and imbalances to take real care of it, to integrate it with the rest of our being, to honor and love it, and recognize it as an expression of who and what we truly are. It is essential that we rediscover and treat the body as an inherently sacred expression of our fundamental nature, and that we outgrow our dissociative tendencies and judgment about body image. Somatic idealism has done incredible damage to us, as exemplified by the unending obsession with how we – and others – look.  Until we get under the skin of our distorted body image, journeying into and through its psychological origins, we will be at its mercy, held hostage by its ubiquitous mirrors. “The flesh” has been slapped with negative press for millennia, being associated with sin, carnality, moral weakness, and disease. Many of us don’t seem to like our body very much, or we may like it but not want it to change, as it inevitably must. In either case, we are burdening our body with unrealistic expectations, central among them our obsession with not showing signs of aging. Our body not only reveals what’s going on for us emotionally – through its posture, gestures, expression, but also signals our impermanent nature, no matter how much we try to stave off change through endless exercise, diet, or plastic surgery. If we don’t want to be reminded of our mortality, we are going to keep our distance from our body, despite the attention we may seem to lavish on it. So what’s a body to do?

As consciously as possible, bring awareness – compassionately wakeful attentiveness – into sensation, into emotion, and into the energetic  patternings and psychological holdings of the body. Moving toward and into emotion, feeling it in the raw and giving it room for expression while understanding its connection to events in our life, is an especially effective way to reconnect with the body. We may be resistant to doing this, given that there might be considerable pain and perhaps also trauma embedded in the deeper layers of emotion, but in contacting and freeing up such zones of feeling, we become more integrated, more intimate with our body.

and later in the chapter . . .

Getting back to the body means doing whatever is needed to cut through our disembodied experience, which in part means a journey into and through the very pain that first drove us to disown and dissociate from our body.

The first step is to name this pain, to openly acknowledge the reality of it. The second step is to turn toward it, however counterintuitive this might seem to us, so that we are directly facing it, and the third step is to enter it, getting beneath its surface and encountering its originating dynamics. In so doing we become not only more intimate with our pain, but also more intimate with our resistance to entering our pain. As we engage in this process, we find ourselves more and more immersed in our somatic reality, with a considerable deepening  of both our sensory and emotional awareness. We feel more deeply – feeling into, feeling for, feeling with – becoming increasingly present to our body. Instead of just thinking as we walk, we become more aware of the actual process of walking, enjoying the sensory flow and particulars of our experience. We may still feel much of our old pain, but now we can hold it in a way that catalyzes its healing.

Food for thought – eh?

in body & soul, Carol

“Who we are makes its appearance not in a body but as a body. This does not necessarily mean that we literally are our body, but that our body expresses rather than contains us.”

“To really feel our body is an art in which compassion, patience, and the spirit of exploration all coexist.”

Robert Masters

Being human is quite a conundrum. This is the only earthly vehicle we have for living an enlightened life, yet we are prone to resist it, hate it, abandon it, abuse it, judge it, ignore it . . . In general, we seem to be busy in a myriad of strategies to deal with this thing called life. How then, do we navigate the complex terrain of living a human life that neither idolizes nor devalues the body’s rightful place in the scheme of living a fully realized life?

I think of being human as a grand experiment of the soul: Is it possible to live as conscious matter, fully expressing and experiencing life in a body? And can we find ease and pleasure in being a complex integration of form and formless? Is it truly feasible to touch the infinite from the finite construct of our physicality? Could we stop fighting or resisting our life and just relax into all sensations as dancing energy? Can we open the vastness of our hearts and brilliance of our minds to allow our flesh and bone to fully participate in the awakening of consciousness and the evolution of the soul?

I have been actively traversing the maze of embodiment for quite some time and am very familiar with the quirks and pitfalls inherent in this endeavor. I am also keenly aware of the joyful moments of intimacy, ease and peace that are the over-arcing consequence of relaxing into the soul-filled enjoyment of this human life.

We so often feel alone – lost in this maze of confusion about the body and what it means to be human. You don’t have to be alone in this endeavor. Let me join you as a guide and co-conspirator to:

• shift your relationship to your body to one of clarity, strength, appreciation and pleasure
• walk with you as we tease apart the ways in which the ego holds your body captive in a jail of judgment
• discover your soul’s intimate, deliberate, devoted and affectionate union with your body
• recapture your exuberance for this life, in this body, at this time and in this space

With that in mind, I am offering a year long program:

Body and Soul: A Compassionate Conspiracy. This will include – 15 individual sessions (3 the first month, 2 the second month and once a month thereafter) and a full year of weekly Gyrokinesis classes. Together, we will approach this from many angles, including spiritual, psychological, physical, belief systems, movement, sensations – and who knows where else our co-conspiracy will take us.

Don’t underestimate what it means to be human.
Let’s journey together to:
Explore it. Embrace it. Co-create it
Respect it. Embellish it. Enjoy it.
Embody it!

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Here are the details:
Pay in Full: $1275
($975 for the 15 sessions which works out to be $65 per session / $300 for a year of weekly Gyrokinesis classes, a $600 value). You save $120 by paying in full.

Pay Monthly: $116

Sliding scale is a possibility, depending on your circumstance.

If the weekly Gyrokinesis classes don’t work for you, there are other possibilities that we can work with. And if you don’t live locally we can work with that as well.

This offering is near and dear to my heart and I would love to compassionately co-conspire with you to consciously explore the dynamic relationship of body and soul.

Please contact me for more information or to simply schedule your first session.

in body & soul, Carol

“Our imperfection is one of the most astonishingly beautiful facets of being human, for it is our imperfection that compels us forward. And it is our imperfection that must be met with the open embrace of unconditional love and compassionate kindness. It is our deep acceptance – and not our judgment – of our humanity that creates a more authentic, purposeful and joyful life.”

Carol McAnally

Your body loves to feel good – it is constantly striving to feel its best. Through its eloquent language of sensation, it is communicating with you in every moment, letting you know about pain, tension, pleasure, need. By paying attention, you can begin to respond and support the body to feel the best that it can today. To tune in and respond to your body, try this:

• Sitting in a comfortable, supported position, close your eyes. Allow your body to relax completely. Release any tension in your face and throat. Let your belly soften and your limbs be heavy. Take a moment to let this unfold.
• Become aware of any sensations you are having in your body. Can you feel the backs of your legs on the chair? Can you feel the points of pressure where your back is against the chair? Become aware of the feel of your clothes on your skin.
• Keep tuning into the subtleties of the sensations you are having in this moment. Begin to scan more specifically. Are you feeling pain, tension, pleasure, relaxation, freedom, constrictions? Are there certain areas of your body you are more aware of than others?
• Now that you are tuned in, can you feel what you might wish for your body? “My wish for my body is that it: breathes easy; has relaxed shoulders; is free of tension, feels healthy . . .” You get the idea — whatever it is that might help the body to feel good, create a wish. How many wishes can you fulfill in any given moment?

Write some of these wishes down, play with them throughout the day and the week. See what kind of difference it makes to create and fulfill your body’s wishes.