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

Even though I haven’t been posting, I have been exploring “Both/And.” Which includes everything! There is nothing that is excluded from the ebb and flow of form and formless, finite and infinite . . The field is wide open as to how to engage this material.

I’ve been spending quite a bit of time with Robert Masters book, Spiritual Bypassing - a worthy read as it clears up so many of the ways we misuse our spirituality to avoid rather that include – everything. Today I’d like to share a passage from his book about nondual teachings. Wonderful fodder for the inescapable inquiry!

“In nonduality there is no dissociation from phenomena, no withdrawal from life, no bypassing, no avoidance of manifesting as form. And there is no truly separate self, no discrete knower, no autonomous entity standing apart from and seeing all of this. There is no past, no future, and nowhere to go, just a freedom beyond imagining. This may sound like madness to our usual self but not to who we really are. To our mind, nonduality is inescapably and unyieldingly paradoxical, but to our heart of hearts, it is living truth. In nondual awareness the personality is no longer the locus of self but nonetheless still persists – and why shouldn’t it? If we are truly at home in (and as) the nondual, then personality, like everything else, is just one more nonbinding expression of nondual being, needing not annihilation but rather recognition and acceptance. To nondual awareness, everything is God – anger, joy, duality, personality, clouds, wonder, fear. There is only the Real, only the One, only the Mystery, outshining any language with which we attempt to describe it – and if we genuinely recognize this, there is no abandonment of our humanness, no employing of nondual teachings to separate out from the more difficult challenges of life, no turning away from the demands of relationship.” Robert Masters

Good Morning – I began my day today with movement, particularly spinal articulation; what I consider to be a form of body prayer. I followed that with a brief meditation. How about you?

As I was contemplating the “Both/And,” it occurred to me that we spend an inordinate amount of time and energy resisting what we cannot understand, defending against the ambiguity that we are form and formless, unique and one, matter and non-matter – definitely boggles the mind! This resistance creates a wall of tension around our capacity to be fully who we are. So today’s “practice prompt” is to notice the ways in which you hold tension and then see if you can relax into the uncertainty in order to open to the possibility of full expression.

Good morning and welcome to our 30-day art and practice of “Both, And.”

I’d like to know who is on board with this immersion, so let’s begin with a simple introduction and intention for this 30-day journey. I’ll start . . .

I’m Carol McAnally and I have a few intentions. I am perpetually intrigued by the mystery and the challenge inherent in being human. My practice that supports tuning in, being present and course correction is floundering, so I am committing today to revitalize and deepen my practice – to breathe new life into it through this rich exploration of “Both, And.” Also, I very much want to do this in community. My tendency is to be a lone-wolf in my practice, which has its place, and – it is also imperative to come together with people moving along similar trajectories for support, wisdom, accountability, insight, vulnerability – and for me, to break through the isolation that is so ingrained.

As the facilitator, I will post daily conversation starters, practice prompts, quotes and whatever else comes forward – as well as sharing my own experience.

OK – your turn. You must be on the blog page, in order to respond to the group as a whole. Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page (the comment box is, for some reason, way down the page – a bug to be worked out), write your intro/intention and click the “post as” button, you will be prompted to subscribe to disqus (provides the comment program). Just add your name email address, you’ll be sent an email to confirm that info – and away we go! We’ll see how this system of community interaction works and revise as needed.

Happy Immersion, Carol

We are unique and individual.

We are one with everything.

Seemingly disparate and oppositional statements. Both are true and both arise simultaneously in every moment

How can that be?

This is what makes being human so fascinating. We are “both, and;” simultaneously unique and One – multi-dimensional and multi-faceted, distinct renderings of Life. And this only makes sense when we realize that we are, each and every one of us, an expression of the Divine – that is at once the Many as well as the One.

We tend to get lost in feeling separate, other, alone and disconnected – polarized in our uniqueness. What is important to realize is that our uniqueness does not make us separate; our belief in our separateness is the only thing that holds us apart from realizing our place in the all that is. The universal life force that animates everything (and that’s a lot!) expresses as the unique being that is you, me, them, us, we, thee . . . in all the infinite forms that can be expressed. Everything is a distinct interpretation and expression of God.

As a concept, this is doable, thinkable, perhaps even logical. As a reality, as a direct experience, it can be elusive. How then, do we make room for our uniqueness as an explicit expression of our universality?

Practice. There must be a deliberate turning toward the One in order for It to reveal you to yourself – an open-ended and sincere inquiry into the inescapable “both, and” that is your true nature as a human being. And, practice is, well, it’s unique – unique to each and every person! Perhaps it is meditation, or prayer, or mindful movement, or hiking, or chanting, or . . . the form does not matter as much as the intention with which you approach your practice and its relevance to you, your life and your way of being in the world. It seems to me that without an ongoing, meaningful and relevant practice, each of us will stay mired in suffering; the belief that “I am separate.”

I must confess, I’ve been a bit lax in my own practice lately and can feel the effect. I am more prone to moods, less nurturing of myself and others, caught in feeling alone, more stuck in front of the computer, and, and, and . . . I’m thinking I am not the only one in this circumstance.

Here is what I propose. I would like to embark, with you, on a 30-day immersion into the art and practice of “Both, And;” exploring our uniqueness as an expression of the One. And because the e-rhythm newsletter is not particularly interactive we could come together through my Rhythm of Life Blog (which you can subscribe to on the sidebar of my homepage: www.rolife.com). I will post my updates, practice prompts, insights, progress, challenges – and invite you to do the same through the response box at the end of each post. Also, when you subscribe to the blog you will receive “Liven Up” and “Notable Nuggets.”

Please join me – let’s create community around this worthy exploration of the inescapable, “both, and.” Let’s plan on starting on Monday November 1st and continue through the month.

in body & soul, Carol

The foot, by definition, is at once a foundation – a firm stable base of support – and a flexible, adaptable lever that can maneuver us through irregular terrain. Flexible, viable, strong feet, help us move through life with ease and pleasure. Here are a few ways to explore and free your feet:

• Take a moment to visually connect with your feet (this means you have to take off shoes and socks). Do any of the toes overlap? Do your toes lay flat or curl a bit? Does the arch lift off the ground or does the whole foot lay flat? Is your foot wide or narrow? Do your feet look like your mother’s or your father’s (my little toes are an exact replica of my father’s, thanks Dad!)? If your feet could tell you something about your life, what story would they tell?
• Here’s good news, the feet are readily accessible to the hands! Put your right ankle on your left knee so that you can work with your right foot. With the thumb and forefinger of the right hand, grab your big toe. With the thumb and forefinger of your left hand, grab the second toe. Now scissor them apart, pulling the big toe forward and little toe back, then reverse. Now pull them apart sideways. Do these same actions with the second and third toes and continue through the last pair of toes. Be gentle with this exercise, especially if your toes aren’t used to such attention.
• Still working with the right foot, use both hands to massage all along the foot from the heel, through the arch and all the way through the toes, nice and vigorous. Don’t forget the top of the foot as well.
• The ankle is an important part of foot mobility. With your right ankle still on your left knee, use your left hand to hold on to the ball of your right foot, and your right hand to hold just above the ankle. Use your left hand to guide your ankle in a circle – be sure to roll through a hard flex (a much neglected position). Do this several times in each direction.
• Put both feet flat on the floor. Take a moment to feel the difference between the left and right foot? What do you notice?
• Now do all the above with your left foot, it wants to feel that good too.

If you must, put your shoes back on. If you don’t have to, let your feet be free, just hanging out in your socks or in loose shoes – anything that allows your feet to be less confined, more mobile – free . . .

And, if you’d like to explore the feet and their relationship to the rest of your body, please join me for “Save Your Feet, Knees & Hips,” a Yamuna Body Rolling class, coming up on November 13th. Click HERE for more information.

Many of us (particularly women) have, at one time or another, been guilty of talkin’ trash to or about our bodies.  You know – words and phrases filled with the judgment and distaste we sometimes feel when we look in the mirror, have aches and pains or find it difficult to maneuver around our physical lives. These rubbish words are plentiful and easily identifiable. You know what I’m talking about – we each have our favorite areas of aversion and ongoing allegations against the body. These thoughts are the easy ones to catch because they are so blatantly mean. And, I trust that you are doing what you can to be aware of that nasty voice and to quiet it with the deep love and acceptance that you inherently have for your body.

What about the more subtle ways you disrespect your body? hold it in contempt?  make unreasonable demands of it? wish it were anything but what it is? hate that it hurts, is sensitive or sick? are disappointed that it is not as resilient as it used to be? ignore its communication and wish it would just shut up?

These subtle messages flow below the surface of awareness, are non-verbal and much more destructive than the obvious ones. Is the answer to go after all those sneaky, subversive ways of judging ourselves, identify and then try to undo each one? Yuk! That sounds overwhelming, exhausting, unproductive, zero fun and potentially depressing.

What to do? Here are a few ideas:

Instead of thinking of the body as an IT, think of your body as SHE or HE. This takes you out of an object orientation with your body and into the possibility of relationship, partnership and mutuality. How is SHE feeling? What does SHE need?  What brings HER joy? How can I help HER? See if you can feel the difference in this simple turn of phrase.

Accept HER as she is, right here and right now. This may seem like old news, a bit trite and overused. It isn’t. The internalized programming that we can only accept her under certain conditions (thin, pretty, pain free, graceful, athletic . . .) must be arrested and put asunder – not by convincing yourself that she already has these attributes, but by letting go of needing her to be anything but what she is. Wanting her to be other than who she is currently,places you firmly in the future, unable to appreciate her or even truly experience her right now.

Yesterday during my errands around town, I practiced deep acceptance – not only for myself but for every woman I saw. I looked at each imperfectly perfect body and sent her unconditional love and acceptance. A sigh of relief moved through me and I felt waves of deep appreciation for women and a softening toward the challenges that we face, as a collective – needing desperately to relax the hardness with which we judge our bodies and nurture a more joyous and pleasurable way of being with her and caring for her.

Deep blessings to you and your body,  Carol

“ . . . God has been here all along. In the noise and in the stillness, in the upheavals and in the rafts of peace. In each moment of kindness you lavish upon your breaking heart or the size of your thighs, with each breath you take – God has been here. She is you.” Geneen Roth