Me Bambi.
Life Godzilla.
Foot in Shoe |or| Kosmic Orgasm
Real consciousness is characterized
by allowing all things to be lived.
The transition from experience to experience
does not exclude the earlier, less mature adaptation.
It integrates it with that into which we are transitioning
so that the past (memory) is accepted, but transformed
by the new "emergence" of "old" into "new"
into something new
in which something of the old is recognizable.
Egoity
is just the gravitational attraction
of the strange attractor
that is our earlier adaptation
to itself.
Transcendence
is accepting the egoity
which is an adaptation
and creatively upgrading
the adaptation of egoity.
Transcendence is the motion
of emergence
as new adaptation
as egoity merges and integrates with motion
and self-transcends into a new form
in which something of the old self-form is recognizable.
If egoity is the activity of gravity,
What must be the activity of levity?
Inactivity?
No-self?
Making light?
Emergence?
What if they all are the same?
Emergent Self (mythic figure)
meets Egoic Self (memory figure)
and Egoic Self
meets Emergent Self
And which is which?
We no longer know which way to push.
(or pull).
We stop.
We let go.
We recognize the self-contraction in which we are set.
We recognize.
We release.
We breathe.
etc.
et c.
e t c .
by allowing all things to be lived.
The transition from experience to experience
does not exclude the earlier, less mature adaptation.
It integrates it with that into which we are transitioning
so that the past (memory) is accepted, but transformed
by the new "emergence" of "old" into "new"
into something new
in which something of the old is recognizable.
Egoity
is just the gravitational attraction
of the strange attractor
that is our earlier adaptation
to itself.
Transcendence
is accepting the egoity
which is an adaptation
and creatively upgrading
the adaptation of egoity.
Transcendence is the motion
of emergence
as new adaptation
as egoity merges and integrates with motion
and self-transcends into a new form
in which something of the old self-form is recognizable.
If egoity is the activity of gravity,
What must be the activity of levity?
Inactivity?
No-self?
Making light?
Emergence?
What if they all are the same?
Emergent Self (mythic figure)
meets Egoic Self (memory figure)
and Egoic Self
meets Emergent Self
And which is which?
We no longer know which way to push.
(or pull).
We stop.
We let go.
We recognize the self-contraction in which we are set.
We recognize.
We release.
We breathe.
etc.
et c.
e t c .
Spiritual practice is a little like trying to look up ones own nose.
Spiritual practice is a little like trying to look up ones own nose.
The seer is always unseen.
But there is a seer,
and that seer isn't just "pure witnessing",
it's laced with biases,
"lookings for"
motivations
memory-protection mechanisms.
It's a biased witnessing.
But we don't know that.
We don't know our own biases. They seem unbiased.
And so our witnessing
is biased witnessing,
focused on particular objects of interest
in space-time.
Our spiritual practice is based on the presumption of a certain kind of witnessing --
the presumption of unbiased witnessing.
Harrumph!
The seer,
this spiritual practitioner
we
however well-meaning and well motivated
is still the experience of a moving point of view --
not "experiencing" a moving point of view
but being the very experience of a moving point of view,
the personal viewpoint
of the spiritual practitioner
of we, ourselves,
with all the memory-based perceptual biases
of an individual viewpoint.
And so, the seer
the subject of spiritual practice --
we --
go unseen
and spiritual practice remains "outside the center"
the activity of "the" ego (3d person) or of "ego-I" (1st person)
the do-er
unknown
doing all the wild and wacky things we associated with the word, "ego". or "I" --
and sometimes in the name of, or for the sake of, spiritual practice
or "life experiment".
Spiritual practice conducted "on the ego"
is "ego-I" expressing as spiritual practice.
The unknown do-er
the ego-conductor of spiritual practice
the behind-the-scenes impressario who makes it all happen
is composed of many biases,
fixated positions that make everything else seem like "other"
duality appears --
but only because of our bias
which we commonly fail to recognize..
See?
As I said, spiritual practice is a little like trying to look up ones own nose. It involves opposing viewpoints, our being biased toward one or the other.
One technique of spiritual practice involves a reversal of position:
If we catch ourself in a bias
and explore its opposite
we've experienced both --
and more than that,
somewhat equalized our bias --
somewhat balanced the two positions.
In that equalization
we no longer really know where our bias really belongs,
no longer really know what is the "right" bias.
Since we've experienced both,
and since we can't really be sure,
we can let go of both.
Failsafe.
Even if we got it wrong,
we got it right.
Right?
The seer is always unseen.
But there is a seer,
and that seer isn't just "pure witnessing",
it's laced with biases,
"lookings for"
motivations
memory-protection mechanisms.
It's a biased witnessing.
But we don't know that.
We don't know our own biases. They seem unbiased.
And so our witnessing
is biased witnessing,
focused on particular objects of interest
in space-time.
Our spiritual practice is based on the presumption of a certain kind of witnessing --
the presumption of unbiased witnessing.
Harrumph!
The seer,
this spiritual practitioner
we
however well-meaning and well motivated
is still the experience of a moving point of view --
not "experiencing" a moving point of view
but being the very experience of a moving point of view,
the personal viewpoint
of the spiritual practitioner
of we, ourselves,
with all the memory-based perceptual biases
of an individual viewpoint.
And so, the seer
the subject of spiritual practice --
we --
go unseen
and spiritual practice remains "outside the center"
the activity of "the" ego (3d person) or of "ego-I" (1st person)
the do-er
unknown
doing all the wild and wacky things we associated with the word, "ego". or "I" --
and sometimes in the name of, or for the sake of, spiritual practice
or "life experiment".
Spiritual practice conducted "on the ego"
is "ego-I" expressing as spiritual practice.
The unknown do-er
the ego-conductor of spiritual practice
the behind-the-scenes impressario who makes it all happen
is composed of many biases,
fixated positions that make everything else seem like "other"
duality appears --
but only because of our bias
which we commonly fail to recognize..
See?
As I said, spiritual practice is a little like trying to look up ones own nose. It involves opposing viewpoints, our being biased toward one or the other.
One technique of spiritual practice involves a reversal of position:
If we catch ourself in a bias
and explore its opposite
we've experienced both --
and more than that,
somewhat equalized our bias --
somewhat balanced the two positions.
In that equalization
we no longer really know where our bias really belongs,
no longer really know what is the "right" bias.
Since we've experienced both,
and since we can't really be sure,
we can let go of both.
Failsafe.
Even if we got it wrong,
we got it right.
Right?
Intentionality
Generally, when "I make" intentions, they're based on ego-based memory (habit, conditioning, or "shoulds"). It seems that when intentions arise both from "within" and from the World Process, synchronously/simultaneously, they have more coherence than ONLY-ego-based intentions (which leave me subject to concerns about "was that right? useful? evolutionary?"). "Coherence" means "clear signal" or "intuitive vividness"; attention and intention congeal into a sense of focus characterized by quietness of mind or intuitive depth along with the intuitive sense of the thing intended ("form is emptiness"). The World Process and ego mutually reinforce and that mutual reinforcement creates a sense of "rightness", the experiential sense of the outcome/thing to be created, and empowerment -- of ego operating "beyond ego"; by contrast, one without the other creates a weak signal, inability to focus all that well, or the sense of being imposed upon by, and afraid of, circumstances (colloquially called "separateness" -- really, memory-based misalignment). So it seems to me.
Back Pain: to End It for Good
From your own experience, you probably know that traditional therapies for back pain usually produce only short-term, partial relief or require regular -- even lifelong -- care. It need no longer be that way. You can end back pain for good and prevent flare-ups from occurring.
A new discipline in the field of health care: clinical somatic education, gets to the root of back pain and brings it under your own control. Most back pain sufferers who resort to clinical somatic education should expect full recovery in a space of days or weeks.
What Clinical Somatic Education Does
Clinical somatic education retrains muscle/movement memory. Clients rapidly improve their muscular control and freedom of movement through a mind-brain-movement training process. Clinical somatic education affects the brain the way biofeedback does, but with importance differences, one being speed of results and the other being the durability of the improvement. Changes are usually definitive and need no further professional help.
Clinical somatic education recovers fitness for the activities of daily living.
A New Understanding of Back Pain
Spinal alignment and disc condition are secondary to something more basic: muscular tension -- muscle/movement memory.
Muscular tensions pull on the bones (that's their job) and in so doing, move the bones. That's how spinal curvature changes with movement. Muscle/movement memory sets our posture and the alignment to which we return, at rest -- that's why spinal alignment changes and gets stuck in misalignment.
Tight back muscles get fatigued and sore; they get prone to spasm; they pull vertebrae together and compress discs, causing bulges and degeneration; they cause nerve entrapment, such as sciatica.
Back muscles are virtually never too weak; they feel weak because they're tired from being tight all the time, musclebound. Spasm isn't a sign of weakness, but a sign of hair-trigger readiness to contract -- a completely different condition; weakness would be experienced as inability to do their job of keeping you upright.
Rest doesn't help, much. Muscle memory, not disease or misalignment, keep them tight. Resting doesn't change muscle memory. Muscle memory sets our postural and movement "set points".
This statement applies as much to people with degenerative disc disease and herniated discs to those who have only a twinge, now and then. The underlying cause is the same: muscle tension.
"If that's true," you may ask, "why doesn't my doctor (or therapist) know about it?"
The answer is that until recently, the connection between muscle memory and back pain wasn't recognized. Effects are typically mistaken for causes. No method existed that could rapidly change muscle memory enough to be clinically practical. Word takes time to spread and gain credibility. People are attached to their methods and ideas.
You may think, "Back spasms are too painful, too serious to be dismissed that quickly, or that easily."
That's understandable -- but a misunderstanding of your situation.
Get Free from That Back Pain
(self-relief program)To get a test-able preview of the new method referred to, here, click and send the email, blank. You will receive a quick-response message with the information.
Conventional Therapeutics and Back Muscle Spasms
Conventional treatment methods, as you already know, are not effective enough for most people. Most therapies try to strengthen, stretch, or adjust people out of back trouble by working on muscles or the skeletal system. But bones go where muscles pull them, the control center for the muscular system is the brain (not the therapist), and these approaches don't address the brain's control of muscle action, so the problem remains or returns. The problem isn't in your muscles; it's in your brain, the organ of learning and the seat of muscle/movement memory, which runs the show.
That's why the relief obtained by conventional therapeutic approaches to back spasms is usually temporary and you remain subject to re-injury and to prescribed limitations to movement, such as "neutral spine position".
Muscle/memory is acquired, learned. What's learned can be unlearned, and actually, relearning muscular control is the only approach that works for long term relief of back pain. You must dissolve the memory-based, reflexive grip of musclebound back muscles; it can't be manipulated away -- at least, not for long.
Get Free from That Back Pain
(self-relief program)To get a test-able preview of the new method referred to, here, click and send the email, blank. You will receive a quick-response message with the information.
Medical doctors, chiropractors, physical therapists, osteopaths, and bodyworkers use manipulative methods.
But problems arising from muscle/movement memory cannot be "cured" by manipulation because muscular tension is not a disease, but a habit maintained in the brain.
A Correct Understanding of 'Strengthening and Stretching'
The idea behind the common "strengthening and stretching" regimen for back spasms is usually based on a misunderstanding; it's a misunderstanding because the muscles involved are almost never weak, but tired; it's a misunderstanding because the muscles involved are not "short" and in need of stretching, but "in contraction" and in need of relaxation. Sore muscles don't need strengthening; they need relaxation and a chance to be refreshed, again.
You need to regain your ability to relax, something you can't regain by being manipulated by someone else; you regain it by relearning to relax -- a form of learning, albeit a specialized one for which you will probably need training.
Back Muscle Spasms May be Painful, but Not Themselves an Injury involving any Damage to Spine or Discs
One of the automatic reactions of the body to injury is to tighten up. That's part of the pain of most injuries, particularly of musculo-skeletal injuries. It's a reaction that protects the body from further injury. There are cases where the tightening up of back muscles is such a protective reaction, and a necessary one -- where actual damage has occurred, such as a ruptured disc or a violent accident. In such situations, surgery may be necessary and changing muscle memory will either not help or produce only temporary relief, at least until after surgery, unhappy news for some, but realistic.
If you've seen a doctor for your back spasms, he or she has either discovered that you need surgery or that you don't. Surgery is a last, desperate resort and most doctors are reluctant to recommend it. If you have been sent for therapy or given drugs, yours is not a surgical situation, meaning that your spasms are not a protective reaction against injury, but chronic activity.
In the majority of back spasms, there is no injury. The back spasms are just a movement malfunction -- a tension habit formed under stress. It's the "tension" part of "nervous tension."
So, why do back spasms occur? You now have part of the answer. Let's look a little more closely.
Your muscles obey your brain. Except for momentary reflexes controlled in the spinal cord (tested by your doctor's hammer tap), that's the whole story. So, if you have tight, spastic muscles, they're caused by your brain.
This answer is a "good news/bad news" type of answer. The bad news is that your muscles are out of control, and it's your brain's fault! Your brain isn't broken, just trapped by the memory of stress or injury in your history. The good news is that your brain can be relearn to relax those muscles.
Where do Back Muscle Spasms Come from?
One thing you will almost always notice about people with back spasms, if you exercise your powers of observation, is their high shoulders and swayback. Touch the muscles of their lower back, and you will find the same thing: hard, contracted muscles, not soft, weak, flabby muscles.
The major source of back spasms is the lifestyle of being "on the go" -- driven, driving, productive, on time, and responsive to every situation. Tense. This is a new idea for most people, so here's the explanation.
Our post-modern lifestyle triggers an ancient neuromuscular (bodily) response (known to developmental physiologists as the Landau Reaction); this reaction involves a tightening of the muscles of the spine in preparation for arising from rest (sitting or lying down) into activity (sitting, standing, walking, running). The Landau Reaction consists of the muscular responses involved in coming to a heightened state of alertness in preparation for moving into action. The reaction may be mild, moderate, strong, or extreme; triggered incessantly for years, a muscle/movement memory forms -- one that often outlasts the moment (or stage of life) when it was necessary and makes you vulnerable to episodes of spasm.
Many Back Pain Issues Come from the Same Cause
Though injuries from traffic accidents, falls, etc., also trigger muscular reactions that can become habitual, the Landau Reaction is behind most of the back-spasm epidemic in our society. It's a consequence of accumulated stress.
While you can't avoid the Landau Reaction (it's a necessary and appropriate part of life), you can avoid getting stuck in it. If your lifestyle puts you habitually in a state of reaction, you have to "de-habituate" yourself from it, so that your rise in tension occurs only as a momentary response to situations and does not become your chronic state.
Attempts to Break a Back Muscle Tension Habit
Cures for include relaxation techniques, hypnosis, massage, skeletal adjustments, electrical stimulation, muscle relaxant drugs, and at last (as at first) pain medications.
Until recently, there was nothing better. Now, an effective way exists to rapidly improve muscular control, freedom of movement, and physical comfort. Once you have gained control of your Landau Reaction, a brief daily regimen of certain movements is sufficient to keep you from accumulating the daily tensions of a driven and overloaded life. You can keep refreshing yourself, as needed.
If you have numbness or tingling in your extremities, your problem is more severe and requires a medical evaluation to rule out serious conditions. Even if you have surgery, you will still need to learn to relax the tight muscles that initially caused the problem. If yours is not a surgical situation, then somatic education is probably viable for you.
The new methods used to de-habituate Landau Reaction are highly reliable and have no adverse side effects, apart from occasional temporary soreness the day after a session, soreness that fades out in a day or two, leaving you flexible, comfortable and stronger than before.
MORE:
How to Self-Relieve Low Back Pain (article)
Somatic Exercise for Chronic Low Back Pain (explanation)
A new discipline in the field of health care: clinical somatic education, gets to the root of back pain and brings it under your own control. Most back pain sufferers who resort to clinical somatic education should expect full recovery in a space of days or weeks.
The 3 Biggest Mistakes Made by People
Trying to Get Out of Pain
What Clinical Somatic Education Does
Clinical somatic education retrains muscle/movement memory. Clients rapidly improve their muscular control and freedom of movement through a mind-brain-movement training process. Clinical somatic education affects the brain the way biofeedback does, but with importance differences, one being speed of results and the other being the durability of the improvement. Changes are usually definitive and need no further professional help.
Clinical somatic education recovers fitness for the activities of daily living.
A New Understanding of Back Pain
Spinal alignment and disc condition are secondary to something more basic: muscular tension -- muscle/movement memory.
Muscular tensions pull on the bones (that's their job) and in so doing, move the bones. That's how spinal curvature changes with movement. Muscle/movement memory sets our posture and the alignment to which we return, at rest -- that's why spinal alignment changes and gets stuck in misalignment.
Tight back muscles get fatigued and sore; they get prone to spasm; they pull vertebrae together and compress discs, causing bulges and degeneration; they cause nerve entrapment, such as sciatica.
Back muscles are virtually never too weak; they feel weak because they're tired from being tight all the time, musclebound. Spasm isn't a sign of weakness, but a sign of hair-trigger readiness to contract -- a completely different condition; weakness would be experienced as inability to do their job of keeping you upright.
Rest doesn't help, much. Muscle memory, not disease or misalignment, keep them tight. Resting doesn't change muscle memory. Muscle memory sets our postural and movement "set points".
This statement applies as much to people with degenerative disc disease and herniated discs to those who have only a twinge, now and then. The underlying cause is the same: muscle tension.
"If that's true," you may ask, "why doesn't my doctor (or therapist) know about it?"
The answer is that until recently, the connection between muscle memory and back pain wasn't recognized. Effects are typically mistaken for causes. No method existed that could rapidly change muscle memory enough to be clinically practical. Word takes time to spread and gain credibility. People are attached to their methods and ideas.
You may think, "Back spasms are too painful, too serious to be dismissed that quickly, or that easily."
That's understandable -- but a misunderstanding of your situation.
(self-relief program)To get a test-able preview of the new method referred to, here, click and send the email, blank. You will receive a quick-response message with the information.
Conventional Therapeutics and Back Muscle Spasms
Conventional treatment methods, as you already know, are not effective enough for most people. Most therapies try to strengthen, stretch, or adjust people out of back trouble by working on muscles or the skeletal system. But bones go where muscles pull them, the control center for the muscular system is the brain (not the therapist), and these approaches don't address the brain's control of muscle action, so the problem remains or returns. The problem isn't in your muscles; it's in your brain, the organ of learning and the seat of muscle/movement memory, which runs the show.
That's why the relief obtained by conventional therapeutic approaches to back spasms is usually temporary and you remain subject to re-injury and to prescribed limitations to movement, such as "neutral spine position".
Muscle/memory is acquired, learned. What's learned can be unlearned, and actually, relearning muscular control is the only approach that works for long term relief of back pain. You must dissolve the memory-based, reflexive grip of musclebound back muscles; it can't be manipulated away -- at least, not for long.
(self-relief program)To get a test-able preview of the new method referred to, here, click and send the email, blank. You will receive a quick-response message with the information.
Medical doctors, chiropractors, physical therapists, osteopaths, and bodyworkers use manipulative methods.
But problems arising from muscle/movement memory cannot be "cured" by manipulation because muscular tension is not a disease, but a habit maintained in the brain.
A Correct Understanding of 'Strengthening and Stretching'
The idea behind the common "strengthening and stretching" regimen for back spasms is usually based on a misunderstanding; it's a misunderstanding because the muscles involved are almost never weak, but tired; it's a misunderstanding because the muscles involved are not "short" and in need of stretching, but "in contraction" and in need of relaxation. Sore muscles don't need strengthening; they need relaxation and a chance to be refreshed, again.
You need to regain your ability to relax, something you can't regain by being manipulated by someone else; you regain it by relearning to relax -- a form of learning, albeit a specialized one for which you will probably need training.
One of the automatic reactions of the body to injury is to tighten up. That's part of the pain of most injuries, particularly of musculo-skeletal injuries. It's a reaction that protects the body from further injury. There are cases where the tightening up of back muscles is such a protective reaction, and a necessary one -- where actual damage has occurred, such as a ruptured disc or a violent accident. In such situations, surgery may be necessary and changing muscle memory will either not help or produce only temporary relief, at least until after surgery, unhappy news for some, but realistic.
If you've seen a doctor for your back spasms, he or she has either discovered that you need surgery or that you don't. Surgery is a last, desperate resort and most doctors are reluctant to recommend it. If you have been sent for therapy or given drugs, yours is not a surgical situation, meaning that your spasms are not a protective reaction against injury, but chronic activity.
In the majority of back spasms, there is no injury. The back spasms are just a movement malfunction -- a tension habit formed under stress. It's the "tension" part of "nervous tension."
So, why do back spasms occur? You now have part of the answer. Let's look a little more closely.
Your muscles obey your brain. Except for momentary reflexes controlled in the spinal cord (tested by your doctor's hammer tap), that's the whole story. So, if you have tight, spastic muscles, they're caused by your brain.
This answer is a "good news/bad news" type of answer. The bad news is that your muscles are out of control, and it's your brain's fault! Your brain isn't broken, just trapped by the memory of stress or injury in your history. The good news is that your brain can be relearn to relax those muscles.
Where do Back Muscle Spasms Come from?
One thing you will almost always notice about people with back spasms, if you exercise your powers of observation, is their high shoulders and swayback. Touch the muscles of their lower back, and you will find the same thing: hard, contracted muscles, not soft, weak, flabby muscles.
The major source of back spasms is the lifestyle of being "on the go" -- driven, driving, productive, on time, and responsive to every situation. Tense. This is a new idea for most people, so here's the explanation.
Our post-modern lifestyle triggers an ancient neuromuscular (bodily) response (known to developmental physiologists as the Landau Reaction); this reaction involves a tightening of the muscles of the spine in preparation for arising from rest (sitting or lying down) into activity (sitting, standing, walking, running). The Landau Reaction consists of the muscular responses involved in coming to a heightened state of alertness in preparation for moving into action. The reaction may be mild, moderate, strong, or extreme; triggered incessantly for years, a muscle/movement memory forms -- one that often outlasts the moment (or stage of life) when it was necessary and makes you vulnerable to episodes of spasm.
Many Back Pain Issues Come from the Same Cause
Though injuries from traffic accidents, falls, etc., also trigger muscular reactions that can become habitual, the Landau Reaction is behind most of the back-spasm epidemic in our society. It's a consequence of accumulated stress.
While you can't avoid the Landau Reaction (it's a necessary and appropriate part of life), you can avoid getting stuck in it. If your lifestyle puts you habitually in a state of reaction, you have to "de-habituate" yourself from it, so that your rise in tension occurs only as a momentary response to situations and does not become your chronic state.
Attempts to Break a Back Muscle Tension Habit
To get a preview of the new method referred to, here, click and send the email window that opens, blank.
Cures for include relaxation techniques, hypnosis, massage, skeletal adjustments, electrical stimulation, muscle relaxant drugs, and at last (as at first) pain medications.
Until recently, there was nothing better. Now, an effective way exists to rapidly improve muscular control, freedom of movement, and physical comfort. Once you have gained control of your Landau Reaction, a brief daily regimen of certain movements is sufficient to keep you from accumulating the daily tensions of a driven and overloaded life. You can keep refreshing yourself, as needed.
If you have numbness or tingling in your extremities, your problem is more severe and requires a medical evaluation to rule out serious conditions. Even if you have surgery, you will still need to learn to relax the tight muscles that initially caused the problem. If yours is not a surgical situation, then somatic education is probably viable for you.
The new methods used to de-habituate Landau Reaction are highly reliable and have no adverse side effects, apart from occasional temporary soreness the day after a session, soreness that fades out in a day or two, leaving you flexible, comfortable and stronger than before.
MORE:
How to Self-Relieve Low Back Pain (article)
Somatic Exercise for Chronic Low Back Pain (explanation)
Somatic Exercise Cycles -- The Power of Integration
Somatic exercise cycles are sequences of somatic exercises done repeatedly to accomplish a purpose.
Somatic exercises are methodically-done movement patterns that work with so-called "muscle memory" (actually, better stated as "movement memory") to dissolve habitual patterns of movement memory (implanted by trauma and stress, such as pain and stiffness associated with aging) and to replace them with healthier, more variable and free patterns of movement memory.
Now, if you've got that paragraph under your belt,
we may continue . . . . .
If not, better go back and get it, as everything that follows builds upon it.
There.
Now, each somatic exercise works with a single movement pattern -- examples being inhalation, exhalation, backward bending, forward bending, twisting, etc.
In life and movement, at least two movement patterns are always involved with any action. Every bending movement must have its opposite straightening movement; every twisting, its untwisting. Without its opposite, we are stuck. Imagine going through life bent over and twisted. Know somebody like that?
That's a small clue to the use of somatic exercises to undo unhealthy stuck patterns of movement. (What makes them unhealthy is the excessive muscular tension and lack of suppleness that's involved -- leading to nerve impingement, joint degeneration, chronic pain.) Movement patterns assemble into patterns of coordination.
Hence, the array of somatic exercises found in Thomas Hanna's "Myth of Aging" series and in my own "special purpose" somatic exercise programs. They fit together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle to constitute patterns of coordination for activity in daily life.
Somatic exercises work two ways:
So far, so good. Still with me?
OK.
Now, just as visual depth perception requires two viewpoints (left eye and right eye), and just as visual depth perception gives us more and different visual information than sight through one eye, more than one somatic exercise can address a habituated/stuck movement pattern or posture, and when more than one is used, we get a kind of kinesthetic depth perception that gives us both more sensory information and more control than we can get by one somatic exercise, alone.
Here's where somatic exercise cycles come into play.
There exists a way of using more than one (and more than two) somatic exercises to address especially stuck conditions or to get larger changes faster with not-so-stuck conditions.
The steps are these:
RELATED BY LARGER COORDINATION PATTERN
example: Lesson 1 of The Myth of Aging series
Landau Reaction is a movement/action pattern involved in sitting, standing, and walking. It involves the backs of the shoulders, spinal erector muscles, buttocks, and hamstrings. Its purpose is to bring the person erect through the action of backward extension.
Lesson 1 of this series, therefore, involves movement elements for each of these places, first done individually, then assembled into a single, larger pattern.
This exercise, when followed by Lesson 2 of The Myth of Aging series (which addresses the movement of curling forward), constitutes a "unit of movement" -- straightening and bending.
That understood, I can now identify four entire somatic exercise lessons that, when learned and then put into a cycle, get more done than any one of the exercises can, by itself:
The proper approach is to learn each of these exercises well and to get the result of each, then to cycle through them, (1.) - (4.), repeatedly.
Of course, other sequences of exercises, related by function, exist.
In the program, Free Your Psoas, the first exercise, "Locating the Center of Breathing", produces system-wide changes in the direction of greater freedom. The second exercise, "Slide and Turn", disarms muscular restrictions that force legs into a knee-out or knee-in twist that would interfere with the third exercise, Walking into the Floor, which requires that freedom (and awakening of sensory awareness) to reach the psoas muscles. The exercises that follow integrate the freedom resulting from the earlier exercises into a well-coordinated pattern.
So, I've just outlined two different approaches to using more than one somatic exercise to accomplish a single purpose.
RELATED BY THE SAME MUSCLE GROUP BEING INVOLVED
There exist situations where the trauma of an injury is so great that a person contracts (involuntarily) a single muscle or muscle group so strongly (with the physiological intention to immobilize), and in entanglement with other muscular actions that no one somatic exercise is sufficient to disarm the situation.
Here's where two or more somatic exercises that address the involved region can get the job done. It's a little like having more than one person reassure you that "everything is all right", vs. having just one person reassure you.
example: The Gluteus Medius Muscles
A condition of having your leg yanked in an accident (such as falling off a horse with your foot caught in the stirrup and being dragged for a quarter mile) provides a protective response of holding on to your leg for dear life. You prefer to keep your leg attached. So you (reflexively) contract all of the muscles around your hip joint.
Well and good. You've kept your leg; but you've lost freedom, as now those muscles are painfully contracted all the time.
It's not about any one muscle, but about an action involving muscle pulls from many directions, at once, but all summating/adding together to hold onto your leg.
The glueus medius muscles have several movement functions:
A corresponding combination might be:
So that outlines the principles and practices of cycling through somatic exercises.
MORE:
Muscle Memory Isn't Muscle Memory
An Entirely New Class of Therapeutic Exercises
All Somatic Exercise Programs | Free Your Psoas | Free Yourself from Back Pain
Somatic exercises are methodically-done movement patterns that work with so-called "muscle memory" (actually, better stated as "movement memory") to dissolve habitual patterns of movement memory (implanted by trauma and stress, such as pain and stiffness associated with aging) and to replace them with healthier, more variable and free patterns of movement memory.
Now, if you've got that paragraph under your belt,
we may continue . . . . .
If not, better go back and get it, as everything that follows builds upon it.
There.
Now, each somatic exercise works with a single movement pattern -- examples being inhalation, exhalation, backward bending, forward bending, twisting, etc.
In life and movement, at least two movement patterns are always involved with any action. Every bending movement must have its opposite straightening movement; every twisting, its untwisting. Without its opposite, we are stuck. Imagine going through life bent over and twisted. Know somebody like that?
That's a small clue to the use of somatic exercises to undo unhealthy stuck patterns of movement. (What makes them unhealthy is the excessive muscular tension and lack of suppleness that's involved -- leading to nerve impingement, joint degeneration, chronic pain.) Movement patterns assemble into patterns of coordination.
Hence, the array of somatic exercises found in Thomas Hanna's "Myth of Aging" series and in my own "special purpose" somatic exercise programs. They fit together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle to constitute patterns of coordination for activity in daily life.
Somatic exercises work two ways:
- to undo the habituation we might have in a posture or movement pattern
- to develop healthier patterns of posture and better control of movement -- generally free-er and better-functioning
So far, so good. Still with me?
OK.
Now, just as visual depth perception requires two viewpoints (left eye and right eye), and just as visual depth perception gives us more and different visual information than sight through one eye, more than one somatic exercise can address a habituated/stuck movement pattern or posture, and when more than one is used, we get a kind of kinesthetic depth perception that gives us both more sensory information and more control than we can get by one somatic exercise, alone.
Here's where somatic exercise cycles come into play.
There exists a way of using more than one (and more than two) somatic exercises to address especially stuck conditions or to get larger changes faster with not-so-stuck conditions.
The steps are these:
- Identify two or more related somatic exercises that either belong to the same larger coordination pattern or that address the same muscle groups in different ways.
- Practice each exercise until well-internalized (remembered and fruitful in producing its specifically-intended change. (rule of thumb: seven cycles or until "milked for all it's worth")
- Cycle through the identified exercises, one after the other.
RELATED BY LARGER COORDINATION PATTERN
example: Lesson 1 of The Myth of Aging series
Landau Reaction is a movement/action pattern involved in sitting, standing, and walking. It involves the backs of the shoulders, spinal erector muscles, buttocks, and hamstrings. Its purpose is to bring the person erect through the action of backward extension.
Lesson 1 of this series, therefore, involves movement elements for each of these places, first done individually, then assembled into a single, larger pattern.
This exercise, when followed by Lesson 2 of The Myth of Aging series (which addresses the movement of curling forward), constitutes a "unit of movement" -- straightening and bending.
That understood, I can now identify four entire somatic exercise lessons that, when learned and then put into a cycle, get more done than any one of the exercises can, by itself:
- Lesson 1 of The Myth of Aging series
- Somatic Exercise for Hip Joint Pain (posterior)
- Free Your Hamstrings
- The Athletes' Prayer for Loose Calves
The proper approach is to learn each of these exercises well and to get the result of each, then to cycle through them, (1.) - (4.), repeatedly.
Of course, other sequences of exercises, related by function, exist.
In the program, Free Your Psoas, the first exercise, "Locating the Center of Breathing", produces system-wide changes in the direction of greater freedom. The second exercise, "Slide and Turn", disarms muscular restrictions that force legs into a knee-out or knee-in twist that would interfere with the third exercise, Walking into the Floor, which requires that freedom (and awakening of sensory awareness) to reach the psoas muscles. The exercises that follow integrate the freedom resulting from the earlier exercises into a well-coordinated pattern.
So, I've just outlined two different approaches to using more than one somatic exercise to accomplish a single purpose.
RELATED BY THE SAME MUSCLE GROUP BEING INVOLVED
There exist situations where the trauma of an injury is so great that a person contracts (involuntarily) a single muscle or muscle group so strongly (with the physiological intention to immobilize), and in entanglement with other muscular actions that no one somatic exercise is sufficient to disarm the situation.
Here's where two or more somatic exercises that address the involved region can get the job done. It's a little like having more than one person reassure you that "everything is all right", vs. having just one person reassure you.
example: The Gluteus Medius Muscles
A condition of having your leg yanked in an accident (such as falling off a horse with your foot caught in the stirrup and being dragged for a quarter mile) provides a protective response of holding on to your leg for dear life. You prefer to keep your leg attached. So you (reflexively) contract all of the muscles around your hip joint.
Well and good. You've kept your leg; but you've lost freedom, as now those muscles are painfully contracted all the time.
It's not about any one muscle, but about an action involving muscle pulls from many directions, at once, but all summating/adding together to hold onto your leg.
The glueus medius muscles have several movement functions:
- providing stability during walking or running, as the pelvis turns from side-to-side (i.e., active external rotation of the thigh in the hip joint)
- movement of the leg backward (extension)
- pulling your hip bone and thigh together (hipbone/iliac crest down) in an action that lifts the opposite hip, in walking
- (Note that although these muscles can abduct (move sideways) the leg, that's not their typical function.)
A corresponding combination might be:
- Lesson 4 of the Myth of Aging series
- Somatic Exercise for Hip Joint Pain (posterior)
- Lesson 8 of the Myth of Aging series
So that outlines the principles and practices of cycling through somatic exercises.
MORE:
Muscle Memory Isn't Muscle Memory
An Entirely New Class of Therapeutic Exercises
All Somatic Exercise Programs | Free Your Psoas | Free Yourself from Back Pain
The Omniverse Dream of Existence
"Row, row, row your boat
gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
life is but a dream."
This sagacious verse recapitulates (restates, re-presents) a concept found in Enlightenment philosophy -- the idea that life is illusory (Maya, samsara). It also holds a clue to one of the "hard" questions of neuroscience: How do nervous impulses, electro-chemical pulses that travel along the length of nerves to, and within, the brain, get experienced as sensation?
It also, however, reinforces an error: that life is illusory and should not be given credence. Another term for this error is, irresponsibility.
This piece clarifies the idea and experience of "dreamed reality" and integrates it with the idea and experience of physical reality.
TENET 1: There is no escape from experience.
TENET 2: "Mind" and "body" are concepts that artificially and falsely suggest two separate things that are actually two perspectives -- a "field" perspective and a "particle" perspective -- of one thing. Sensation and mental events are "field" experiences; movements are "particle" experiences. Particle and field are one, just as sensation and movement are one and just as and mind-and-body are one.
TENET 3: Dreams have both a tangible (objective) aspect and an intangible (subjective) aspect.
Rapid eye movements (REM) and other changes of physical state during dreams, and moving of the lips and mouth when learning to read show that dreaming and thinking have a tangible component. It's the basis of the lie-detector test which, though not entirely reliable as a test of truth, is reliable as a way to measure subjective state.
TENET 4: The Universe is a "dream of many dreams." Obviously, there is the physical Universe, which, although measurable, we experience via the same kind of narratives and sensory experiences and thought processes by which we experience dreams -- and there are all the persons within that Universe, who, as individuals, have individual perspectives and unique dreams. So, the Universe is a "dream of many dreams."
TENET 5: The "physical" universe is a great domain where an indeterminate number of interaccommodating dreams co-exists within it.
TENET 6: The "physical" universe is a focal-location of converging, but all slightly different, neighboring dream-universes; in their overlap (similarity), these neighboring universes mutually reinforce one-another. With sufficient mutual reinforcement, matter congeals into tangible patterns, which we call physical reality, and those tangible patterns interact, which we call events.
An indeterminate number of "physical" universes exists, each being a slightly different focal-location where neighboring, more or less similar, intercommunicating dream-Universes converge and co-exist. They are all different, more or less. "Closer" dream-Universes are more similar (a definition of convenience). They are separated by (interface at) "zones of indeterminacy" (experienced by us as "zones of incomprehensibility").
TENET 7: Human consciousness is a "tuning" process whose dreams (imaginings or memories) tune in (or match up) to closest-matching "physicality-patterns," giving rise to experiences that seem to confirm the truth of what is remembered or imagined.
TENET 8: In physical reality, the statistical probability of any event occurring in the HERE-NOW moment of a local Universe is either 0% or 100%, nothing else.
Other seeming statistical probabilities than 0% or 100% come from a mathematical way of looking at remembered things, a way of integrating memories of past occurrences in a single, abstract (mental and general, not physically specific) view. Mathematical, statistical probability defines the position (probability) of this apparent universe in relation to the position (probability) of neighboring universes, in a balancing act of forces among them. But the actuality of anything is either 0% or 100%.
TENET 9: More fixated, less changeable forms of consciousness give rise to a "One Universe" experience, the way it gave rise to the "flat Earth" perception of the world. Most human consciousness is a leaky "One Universe" experience, where dreams and alternate possibilities may encroach, but cannot "anchor" and become tangible, and so deflect.
TENET 10: As consciousness (or somatic development) becomes more complex and flexible, it gives rise to more options for sensation and behavior, at first leading to development of new behaviors (and technology) drawn from closely neighboring universes, and eventually leading to the ability to attune to other "dreamed/actual" universes with different histories and futures (memories and imaginings, both tangible and intangible, objective and subjective).
TENET 11: With sufficient freedom to attune to neighboring universes ("non-attachment"), consciousness becomes able to shift its "center of gravity" by attuning to the feel of a neighboring universe, a phenomenon I call, "side-slipping". The first step is to "lift anchor" by dissolving the grip of memory; the second step is to attune to an imagining. Practically speaking, the old memory may serve as a "pushing off" point toward an imagining. Lifting anchor and pushing off lead to a shift -- but only if escape velocity from the attraction of the old memory is achieved (anchor really lifted). Death is a really good way for lifting anchor for a shift.
In such a shift, memories of the previous universe may persist ("I don't remember things being this way." "Something's changed.") or previous memories may dissolve (unnoticed side-slipping). Memories either persisting or dissolving set the relative degree of availability of the previous memory of "how things were." It's not that old experiences are "gone"; it's that they're improbable or hard to reach from the universe to which we are momentarily attuned. In other words, "You may not (or no longer) be able to "get there from here" -- but there are neighboring universes closer to "there" to which you can attune, and from one of those neighboring universes, "get there" from the new "here". Stepwise.
Alternately, instead of side-slipping, one may bring in information and capacities from a dream-universe into ones local universe. It may go either way.
"Row, row, row your boat
gently down the stream
-- any.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
life is but a dream
-- one among many."
So, Life is a dreamed reality -- one among many -- but a dream with sufficient organizing forces (integrating forces of probability, or tendency) to give pattern to matter (the "sub-dream", substrate, or first-order creation), and to create patterns of higher order, such as objects or living somas (e.g., persons) or relationships (life events).
The first-order dream -- physical, inanimate reality -- consists of balancings of opposing physical forces and oscillations into-and-out-of existence (primal "vibration"), which goes on throughout the sub-atomic world. The sub-atomic world scintillates. That's the nature of electron fields, why they have the shapes that they do.
Atoms are equilibrium vortices where scintillations are sufficiently synchronized in balance to define a stable pattern of function that doesn't just disappear, and sufficiently a-synchronously unbalanced to show up as activity. Synchronization/balance are functions of the field, the dreamed-probability field. (Don't bother asking, "Who is the dreamer?" None is needed. Dreaming is an emergent universal, or trans-universal, process, most primordial. "Dreamers" are third-order manifestations that occur, developmentally, long after the first-order dream of "materiality" occurs, with the appearance of somas).
During the "out of existence" phase, the local-universe balancing-of-opposing-forces (at specific locations) disappears and the changing forces of tendency (dream-forces) of neighboring universes prevail. The out-of-phase location of the universe comes back into existence instantaneously different -- as there exists no inertia in non-existence - influenced both by its own larger pattern-in-motion and by the pattern-in-motion of neighboring universes, in a kind of "Continental Drift" of the Universes. The drift occurs during the "out of existence" moments and then the local universe comes back into existence more-or-less changed or reshaped. It's a kind of Universe side-slipping. We call the alternation between in-existence (play of forces) and out-of-existence (no forces), "the dynamic of freedom", "activity", or "fundamental motion", or "fundamental time" -- Kosmic Foam, or Kosmic Alka-Seltzer -- relief for Existential Heartburn.
That side-slipping of the Universes, before the appearance of sentient beings with imagination, was the first form of side-slipping. The whole universe went as a whole.
With the appearance of somas (incarnate, sentient beings with memory and imagination), a new kind of vortex appeared at 100% probability : dream-vortices with the dream of autonomy, dream vortices that first perpetuated very primitive, consistent patterns of behavior (instincts), then more complex vortices able to perpetuate adaptive patterns of behavior (learning), and then, with humans, even more complex vortices with sufficient added capacity for attention-memory-imagination (visionary imagining), so that they could exceed learning, dream a new dream, and side-slip individually, in addition to the side-slipping of the local universe, into forms and conditions not ordinarily dominant in their recent local universe. Another degree of freedom appeared.
At least two orders of Drift exist in any local universe: (1) Universal Drift (of the whole physical universe limited by the expanding sphere of the "light-front" originating at the Big Flash (thought I was going to say, "Big Bang", didn't you?)) and (2) Individual Drift of the individual vortices (somatic local-consciousnesses) existing within it, as they attune to different probabilities, at first through dreams and memories, and then through deliberate imagination.
Even so, to any of those somas, even as they/we undergo Individual Drift, everything tangible is either 100% or 0%, even if, in mind, things may seem something in between. (NOTE: never more than 100% -- that's an improper use of "%", sort of like saying, "very unique", when "unique" means "one of a kind").
Within a more stable situation, somas play with probabilities within the scope of their remembered experience of Life. They play with existing alternatives, known things and known processes, and when they do, they create artifacts that have more-or-less stable existence -- objects of all sorts -- which are gatherings together of some of the "first-order dream" (matter and energy flow) into patterns that reflect and conform to the second-order dream (life-forms) to the third-order dream (conceptions, plans, designs, formulas). They create things that they keep or leave behind, the way the snail and the nautilus grow their shells as they live, then leave them behind when they die.
But through the encroachment of dreams into the waking state, new information is brought in, new information comes in and shows up as new behaviors and as new artifacts.
In either case, the dream pattern shows up tangibly, in material physical form.
That's a clue about how electro-chemical impulses in the nervous system show up as sensory/mental experience. Those electro-chemical impulses have a dream-component, the subtle field that shaped (during gestation) and shapes (during life) the organization of the biological person. There is a field, a "dream field". It is "the dream of body", or "the dream of soma". It's an outgrowth of the Universal "first-order dream" of physical reality and the "second-order dream of self-moving life". The outgrowth is a "super-dream" of somatic vortices, physically existing selves, self-perpetuating, locally conscious (always "here" to ourselves) with memory and the ability carry out, in actions, what is remembered and imagined; a "super-dream" of somatic vortices (conscious, individual selves) in both "sub-" (inanimate) and "super-(animate)", but generally subconscious and subliminal communication with somatic vortices in neighboring universes -- alternate selves, relatively similar or different, more or less accessible from our "local universe", or from more or less similar neighboring universes. Hence, the unpredictable and sometimes exotic nature of dreams.
The body is dreamed, all its parts are dreamed and remembered in the subtle organizing field, which is what gives pattern to matter and energy (particle and field). The physicality "remembers" the dream-field, physiologically, not just in the cells, but in the larger patterns of physiological state and behavior. It's dreamed, and the dream-field that gives rise to 100% actuality is the integrated probability focus of all more-or-less neighboring dream universes, ever-changing in Universal Drift and Individual Drift. Drifting dream, tangibly congealed and changing.
In cases of physical injury or drastic changes of life, a discontinuity occurs in memory that may displace the individual too far from his or her familiar dream-configuration to return without extraordinary measures -- a kind of amnesia with both physical and psychological manifestations.
Thus, the illusory (dream) nature of existence is the inner side of the material pattern and the material pattern is the outer side of the dream nature of existence. Both the inner side and the material pattern are at 100% probability -- actual -- the product of the changing equilibrium of Universal Drift and Individual Drift. For you Buddhists, this is an expansion of the doctrine of Interdependent (or Dependent) Origination.
The dream of self includes a sense of "local hereness" (wherever we are and however fast or slow we move, we are always, "here", to ourselves), a changing field of memory, an encroaching field of imagination (fantasy), a changing field of sensation, and the odd sense that what we are doing is happening "now", even though we sense our actions after they are underway. (It is the mysterious act of self-initiative, self-direction, and self-correction guided by imagination, enacted via intention, materially actual, and sensed again -- the feedback between action, sensation and ongoing action -- that gives the illusion of the "now-ness" of our actions and perceptions.)
The dream of self is a dream of movements between rest and activity involving various things and moving in various ways, dreams of accelerating ourselves into action and decelerating into rest -- moving toward things and interacting with them, or away from or around them, avoiding them -- life remembered, more or less, and imagined and enacted, leaving artifacts and evidence behind in an expanding, tangible trail of dreamed influence.
Those acts of acceleration and deceleration constitute a development beyond the Universe's developmental momentum, a new development. In the universe, gravity is an acceleration, but only lifeforms accelerate, decelerate, and accelerate again in new directions, and in more and more ways and more and more degrees -- just as the physical universe is expanding and accelerating in its expansion, as the omni-Universal Dream flowers in Universal Drift, with Individual Drift flowering within it.
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