While learning posture’s subtle balance between surrendering and aligning, a student questioned, “shouldn’t good posture be natural––balancing attention between tension and strength is hard?!” I felt that his sentiment should be true, but my experience working with bodies showed otherwise. So I slept on it. (My go-to place when stumped!) As I laid down that […]
I sat on the arm of a client’s couch while she took a phone call. The call was extensive; long enough to change my training plan for her. Rather than getting agitated, I aligned my body with gravity and relaxed into a deeper experience of Self. With each breath I could feel my emotional tension […]
You workout, yet you still feel worn out by life. Every demand, expectation and responsibility adds weight to the gravity of your day. What carries your workout vitality into your life? Proper posture is the energy conductor that plugs you into your strength. Posture that is relaxed and aligned wakes up your mind and […]
I was told that telling a story while you’re still bleeding from it puts the audience in the seat of the therapist, or at least, not the receiver. And while I fully hear that and can’t disagree, I was determined to tell the story that prompted my book: The Art of Strength. After many practice […]
Chase the Carrot or Eat the Carrot The choice between being tough or strong is a conversation about what you want running your life, tension or strength. I’ve come to realize that tough is protective gear masquerading as strength. So, when training folks, I work to keep it honest. Challenge their strength’s potential AND learn […]
Do you experience your body as a spiritual instrument or a mechanical frame? If we recognize “spiritual” as a connection with the greater whole––Creation––and the body’s relationship with gravity as a connection with the Universe, then our physical relationship with gravity is a spiritual practice. Our physical posture is a part of Nature’s spiritual […]
Let’s face it, pain S-U-C-K-S! It robs us of our vitality. But I trust my body’s wisdom. And pain is it’s only way of letting me know I’m out of alignment. It’s my body asking me to listen to its message. And I’ve learned it will continue to escalate until I face it’s insistence. Trauma, […]
I know when my body’s tension is leading the show. I feel insatiably reactive. My muscles grip the need to succeed or survive. And when successful, I experience this toughness as strength. The harder I push the tougher I get. I applaud my toughness in one moment… but judge it’s limitations in another. Problem is, […]
Why a difference of opinion feels like conflict My book’s purpose is to share tools that have helped me to take responsibility for the quality of my own life. It uses physical posture to relax emotional triggers so that the comfort of underlying truths are realized. The effectiveness of these tools is unquestionable to me. […]
Is it Tao te Ching or Dao de Jing? The spelling of Chinese words is confusing and inconsistent. Here’s an explanation. Chinese writing consists of simplified images called pictograms, which represent words. Many Chinese pictograms combine two or more images. So the word for forest is simply a few trees combined into one pictogram. The […]