A Spiritual Journey of Healing

“Wringing out my spine.

Breathing my body awake.”

As I was just lying in savasana (the ‘corpse pose’, you lie there almost as if you are dead… thoughtlessness is the aim…) actually it was towards the end of savasana, an hour of yoga, 20 minutes savasana, I decided to ask one question, Ben Franklin-ish style:

What are the first things that come to mind when I ask what good did this yoga do for me today?

“Wringing out my spine.

Breathing my body awake.”

I woke up to so much pain. I was having a playfully, pleasant dream, awoke to a pleasant boyfriend and pleasant dog… and I’m like, what gives? This is like freakin’ Groundhog Day. Awaking to the same nightmare, day in day out. Solution… hit the mat first thing. It’s what I’ve been doing all these months but now that I’m trying to convince people that I might be onto something… Sometimes, I believe in just throwing yourself out there… no thoughts, no questions…. Just allow the sleepwalk onto the mat and wake up a fresh new you.

As I sit here now, spine wrung out, body and mind awake, I laugh at the me that was stiff and silly. Whenever I first start the practice I’m surprised at how tight I am but once I get my flow on I’m like, Oh yeah, that’s why I’m addicted to this.

So I sleepwalk onto the mat… become aware of my breath, become present in the moment and feel and see the body-mind connection. I try to hold onto that for the entire hour, being extremely present. As the breath is being controlled and is flowing correctly my nervous system and circulation flow more harmoniously than any other method. And not only is it mat time… AS ABOVE, SO BELOW. What happens on the mat plays out in the day ahead of me. That is almost the best part. Life has become fun now because I can feel more empowered in the parts I need to play.

I sleepwalk on… there was one day in particular…. when I felt myself awaken. At the end of savasana you slowly move yourself to your side and then slowly push up with your hands so you kneeling on your legs.

As I pushed up with my hands my perspective was much different than the one I had known before. “Whoooooooaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh,” I thought as I was no longer the me I had known before. I felt infused. I felt like “I” was no longer “I”. And with the knowledge I learned from those books, I tried to hold onto that feeling. I got up and continued with my regular routine of making one of my healthy breakfasts. Whoooooahhhhhhhhh…. This issssss weeeeiiiirrrrddddd…… Wellllllllllllllllll, I’d much rather remain in this state as much as humanly possibly… than be a lost soul stuck in a bad dream.

Regarding my last post, I guess this must be February 3^rd. I said how waking up every day to pain was like the movie Groundhog Day. Wait, how did Bill Murray get out of “it”? Did he bang Andie MacDowell or something? Ha, I don’t even know if that was the moral of that story. I guess you could say me writing about it yesterday was my bang bang. Anyways, I started this blog to convey information, and oh, hahaha, I am already realizing, oh, this is a release. You sneaky subconscious, always doopin’ me, that’s if I listen.

In… for… mation. Yeah. So, if you are up to a major game change, I’m ready to lay it out there. Me gutty is telling me this is an esoteric realm we’re dealing with, but I don’t really know that, fer sureee. This will sound so simple, so silly. But the effect, not so simple or silly.

So yesterday I posted that I do a routine in the morning. Sleepwalk, yoga, breffast. Breakfast, not only the most important meal of the day say some champions, but I added to my recipe: Integrated. In Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous, in which I don’t know if I really recommend it, my gutty works found the book for me, and it had a lot of correlations with personal experiences, I didn’t even recommend it to my boyfriend, so I’ll just convey what stood out. The book is the account of an author, a seeker, following the philosopher George Gurdjieff.

Here’s the simplicity… if you are right handed… become left. I’m sure the same goes for the opposite, but I cannot attest. ??? I’m not talking train yourself to write or eat left handed. I’m talking open the refrigerator door, pick up the coffee cup, pet the dog, simple things. Whilst becoming left handed, you are doing this mindfully, almost sensually. See, you could try to become mindful using your right hand, but you spent your whole life using your right hand and the focus just isn’t there. Try it, touch something with your right hand, and try to really sense what you are touching. Now try it leftie. The more you do this the more you see. And the more you crack crack crack open your right (subconscious) brain… who cannot talk, but is trying to tell you……

Results don’t happen overnight. I forget if it took a couple of months, but in the words of Borat, “Wow wow wee wow!”

And the picture cred goes to my boyfriend, who made this one bored morning. It was great because I caught it in action, some old man pointing at it looking at me with a huge grin, “That ain’t no dawwwg!”

When we get down to it, what does everybody want? Forget all the ego driven desires like money and fame, it always comes back to happiness.

In my last post I was touching on the union of right brain and left brain, or at least a harmony that can begin. Left brain thinks he’s in control and thinks that brain is just brain. Brain is two brains. If you aren’t going to listen to your right brain, you are not whole.

Just so happens I went to the best art exhibit I ever went to in my life. (Sorry Van Gogh and Rembrandt!) It was appropriately titled, The Happy Show. I found it by chance… hee hee… and it just so happened to be the last day of a 4 or 5 month showing. Whew. When I walked down Walnut St. from this show I was on cloud 9. I just felt soo freakin good: This guy knows what I’m thinking about! The first quote I was blasted with was about how the right brain and left brain need to work harmoniously. Maybe that was the quote about the man riding the elephant, thinking he, the left brain is in control, when really he is riding around on the elephant.

So what am I getting at here. Well, there are different stages or levels or awarenesses of consciousness. And if you are in pain all the time… it’s like what the hell kind of hand was I dealt? Really? And I’m sure all people can say that about their life at some point. So what, fall victim? Fall to escapism? I tried that for 10 years and like I said before, that got me nowhere.

When you hear “rite of passage,” well when I hear it I think of movies, maybe because I took a lit through film class, but I think oh yeah, The Breakfast Club, coming of age… rite of passage film. No, I’m talking about shocking your brain so hard it blasts into the frontal lobe stimulating as many neurons as possible. South American cultures will send a young man into the jungle, or the aborigines’ into the desert, with no food, for 3 days. There is a list of ways to accomplish this. Buddha, sat under the Bodhi tree for 3 days. So what is the outcome from this snap? The Happy Brain. If you become present in the moment there is no room for worry. If you are continuously observing the world around you (and participating as well) you are not thinking about this pain or if you are not in pain, this worry. And that’s just where it begins…

The pictures in this post were mainly from the bathroom, as photography was not allowed. My boyfriend did get to capture the monkeys. Ha, “Everybody Thinks They Are Right.” How true. The yellow card was for visitors to draw what makes them happy and Mr. Sagmeister will upload them to his page. It did say no smiley faces. I started with a lotus, and thought… being aware of who I really am is the thing that makes me happiest. Eh, he’ll get it. Stefan Sagmeister – The Happy Show. Also, The Happy Film to come out in the near future. Oh, he did do a couple of TED talks. He is a designer, so maybe that’s why I like him.

Sha-Na-Na-Na-va-sina

Savasana, pronounced shah-vah-sah-nah, that damn corpse pose again, huh? Ya know, I think there is something to this pose, and if you are able to sleep on your back at night well then you can do this pose. I’m well aware that E.D.S. has a full spectrum of “followers”. Ha, sorry, it’s just that you can’t “escape” it. So as I do this yoga pose or that yoga pose nowadays I’m trying to imagine, eh, that might hurt someone’s knee, or this might hurt some guy’s arm for a week. UGH!

I had a testing-enough, not testing… testing-enough mid-week this week and I felt discouraged at times. But as I go and flow through it all I’m present and thinking, ok, what am I supposed to be learning from this? When I think and act like that I feel as if I ‘grow’ much much muchos quickeros. SO, my big realization of the week…. Be aware of your breath at all times. All times.

Sounds simple… sounds simple to do and sounds like it has no effect. But it’s the center of the storm of a hurricane. I heard a lady yesterday use the word ‘cane for hurricane. I’m all about truncating words… but do people do that? Say ‘cane nowadays? I know I’m out of touch but c’mon.

But yes, constant awareness of breath. Whoahwe jeese. Oh yeah, I was saying it sounds simple to do… but even if you try it… you quickly realize how quickly you become unaware of it. This Ra’Yoka practice, the alternative audio setting, really changed my life. I’m shocked that not one dvd, in the stack of my yoga dvds, addresses this way of breathing like she does. Once I started breathing like this I thought, what the hell, have I been breathing wrong for 28 years? And is everyone else breathing ‘backwards’, too?

It seems as if people try to fill up their lungs or their gutty when breathing in, and then you push that air out into the air. I’m trying to recreate ‘that’ now but it’s screwing up all my work here. The “other way”… you breathe in…. with your focus starting at your solar plexus, your core, the space above your belly button. As you breathe in, feel the breath rise up through the center of your body, and out to your skin, and feel as much surface area as possible. Feel your hands, your arms, your chest and eventually your feet… open. As you breathe out, feel the breath fall from your skin back down into your solar plexus. Try it. It feels almost like a flowering. It can get fancier with imagining the solar plexus as a yellow ball of energy. I try to feel the energy of the sun, or cosmic energy coming from another dimension or somewhere into my solar plexus and then through my body.

So try this now, seated, give it a shot. Take a couple breaths.

Inhale out to the skin….. exhale, slowly relax within.

……. …………………….. ………………………………..

Repeat that a few times, relaxing into it, breathing naturally if needed.

……. …………………….. ………………………………..

Inhale out to the skin….. exhale, slowly relax within.

Doesn’t that just feel good? It’s like what the hell have I been doing my whole life? I don’t need anything else but that! So other than breathing like this through any yoga practice… use it for any practice you try… a good place to imprint this style of breathing on yourself is in savasana. Not only does it imprint, but it affects.

To help facillitate this rewiring of my nervous system, I’ll stay in savasana for about 20-30 minutes. Some days I can only fit in 10 minutes. Today, I shocked myself because it ended up being 40 minutes. I want to keep pushing the time as I feel there is something to this meditative pose. I know some stay in it for 2 hours. I can only imagine what happens there.

I found this pose to be most beneficial after a yoga practice, because your body is wrung out and you can forget about your body a little easier that way. But if you are not ready to do yoga yet, just lie on your back, on the floor, spine aligned, legs spread about hip width apart, let your feet relax, lay your arms alongside your body, relaxed… and just breathe in. Feel free to add a rolled blanket under your knees to allow your lower back to relax.

The first breath is always nice because you really focus on it, like ::siiiiigggghhhhhh::. Allow your breath to relax all parts of your body. As you continue to breathe though… that’s where the thoughts come in. This is where people get discouraged and say, I don’t want to meditate, I can’t quiet my mind. Yeah, it ain’t easy. It’s not like a switch, especially with the society we have today we are constantly stimulating our minds. But all great meditators will say… just let the thoughts pass. Acknowledge them, don’t fight them, and then they fade. The first handful of times you meditate, this will be your task. I find that focusing on the breath, and the rising from solar plexus to skin, with the yellow ball of energy is a good place to start.

As I would start to become overwhelmed a few times the past couple of days I would instantly remember, just become aware of your breath. This is after weeks of ‘certain mindgames’ I’ve been playing with myself… but as soon as I felt the breath come through me, I would remember… this is ok. Ok. I get it.

And as of now these are just little afternoon sketches. Sleepwalk, yoga, breffast, write, sketch, walk…. Something is telling me I should give more time for the art. But for now, I’m just letting my right brain get itself out a little.

August 25 2012, 11:20 AM by Yoga4EDS

Tags: meditation meditating shamanism third eye pineal gland solar plexus blissful astral travel ehlers-danlos syndrome yoga

Another 40 minutes in Savasana. Just naturally stayed there for the same amount of time as yesterday. I wanted to post yesterday that I had read on Wikipedia that lying in Savasana actually repairs your organs and muscles. Then I noticed it read, citation needed. So I googled this statement and everyone quoted the Wikipedia statement…. So I hesitate to spread this… but I like to believe such, and maybe that is good enough.

If you are not ready to lie on the floor and have family members ask, what the hell are you doing?… I tried savasana before drifting to sleep for you. You can thank my dog, he is accustomed to me lying in the fetal position, not on my back. After doing such, and drifting peacefully to sleep, I realized trying savasana in bed with the solar plexus breathing is an easy place to start. To start.

I’ve had a few interesting things happen to me during and due to Savasana these past couple of months. Maybe I should just start at the beginning. In January, while in Savasana, only after a short while on this kick… I would all of a sudden get a flash of a piece of art. Whoah! I do collage work and that would be great! That image kept flashing for me, I wonder if I can see that again? Blam! There’s the same image! This is neat! Thank you, brain! A couple days later, same thing. A couple days after that I asked, how about another piece of art: “Queen Cow” was the phrase that came to mind as I saw a collage image of a glorified queen cow amongst flowers and other images. I was thinking… man, I can really use this gift! So again, a couple of days later, in Savasana, I said… another piece of art? When I hear something in my mind, it’s not really a voice, it’s more like the thought is implanted in my head, but it’s kind of like a voice. Well this time when I asked I heard almost scoldingly, “Stop asking me for ideas and start purifying yourself!!!”

………

That almost gives me the chills reliving that. When I “heard” that I was so thrown off. I thought I was just simply tapping into the right brain who I thought was all la la la miss art. This voice said stop asking ME? Who the fuck is Me?!

So, before this time, every time I ate a cheeseburger or some red meat, not necessarily steak, but burgers… when I was done eating… the feeling of having meat stuck in my teeth drove me nuts. I felt like a barbarian. This is also after learning that when you eat a burger, it’s not like it’s from one cow… there are like a thousand cows in that burger. Ugggggghhhhhhh! If one has a disease or anything… ughhhh. If you eat a steak, that’s one animal. And I’m not getting into ethics here, just the health aspect of it all. I even once thought, why would you kill an animal that gives you milk? Doesn’t seem logical.

Anyways… Oh yeah, Savasana Magic. Oh so, well for years I’ve been pretty healthy in the food and product departments. Ever since ” ” told me to purify myself…. I was unprepared for that…. I have been consciously and subconsciously been aware of everything I put in my body. I don’t even eat cereal anymore… not even cow milk. So, for months I was doing the yoga bit and meditating in Savasana. Nothing out of the ordinary jumps out to me from the months of spring. Oh yeah, I was seeing some characters from a book I was working on and I thought that was interesting so I was exploring that. Then in early summer something really interesting happened. I was lying in Savasana for maybe 20 minutes or so and I was really trying to focus on my third eye. I was trying to relax my two eyes, my two brains, and let go and focus on the third eye. I had a lot of interesting things happen when I did that meditating over the years. Then… I felt something like a tunnel open, to my forehead. That has happened before, but this was different. I started to feel the walls of the tunnel vibbrrraaattteeeeeee. The vibration was resonating to my head. I realized there was a shaman on the other side of the instrument, somewhere…through the clouds, far, far away. I was just allowing it all to happen, and he was blowing into this instrument, kind of like a didgeridoo, with his breath vibrating a very warm Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. I felt the vibration grow stronger, it was rocking my brain stronger, until all of a sudden… oh god… I felt the condensation that collected on my end of the instrument… I felt a couple beads of condensation hit my forehead and I instantly snapped out of it. What the hhheheeeeeeeeeehuhhhhhh? I have seen things… but to feel……?

Yeah, I think this was in June… so the next day I was ready to visit whatever that was again. And to try to not give into astonishment. So I did the yoga practice… was lying in Savasana for 20 minutes or more. I wasn’t really getting anywhere: it’s tough to balance wanting something and letting go. So, I knew it was like 20 minutes in or so. I was focusing on my third eye… I was getting somewhere relaxed… but not “there”. So I had snapped out of “it” a little bit and thought eh, maybe I should focus on my breath and solar plexus a little bit. Maybe I’m trying to focus on my third eye a little too much. As soon as I brought my attention to my solar plexus as a big glowing ball/sun of energy.. oh man… I blasted to an image of a sun…. I was somewhere else. BAM! I was looking across water…. The yellow glow was covering everything I could see. It was catching in all the ripples of the water. I was being blasted with the gold. Then, I realized, I was in a boat… with 3 shamans. But, I realized when I went to draw this image… I was understanding it was 3 shamans, it was definitely 3 shamans, but I had only seen 2. Language and communication in these places is more of an “unspoken” type… it’s just understood. I kind of destroyed my ego long ago… but something forced me to question… or something was like you idiot, you were the third shaman.

Who needs tv when you already have all the channels. Oooo, it’s 11:11. Maybe that means I’m done. 😉

Oh, no, I never brought up the cicadas. Duhs. We took a “family” walk last week, which means my boyfriend, my dog and I. We walked to the elementary school. I like walking there because there are trees, butterflies, squirrels, dogs, peeps… ya know, something always happens. It seems like my whole life, the closest I ever got to cicadas other than hearing them, was seeing their ugly brown shells all over the place. When I was a kid I thought that was the bug and thought it was amazing that I could fill up a butterfly net with them.

So, on our walk I spotted one, making short, zippy, circular flights amongst one of the big ol trees there. I pointed him out to my boyfriend: he’s on that leaf, right there, right there! As he got closer, buggy zipped away. I usually cut across the grass on a “Mommy & Yoda walk,” but thought, eh, Yoda likes to pee on that telephone pole, what the hell. So we walked farther towards the pole, and I heard a cicada louder than I have ever heard before. AHH! He’s on the pole! WHOAHhhhhh! Look how pretty they are! He had these two big black eyes that were spread far apart… just like Yoda’s… so I melted. Awwww…. He’s soooo cute! He’s not some ugly thing I always thought he was! My boyfriend walked up and Mr. Cicada put on a little show for us and we saw him play his song. WHOAHHHHH! Look at him!!! As soon as he was done, my boyfriend said, “I want to touch him.” I was thinking, NO DON’T!!!!!! I don’t know why… I just felt like NOOOO DON’T! My boyfriend gently stepped forward, gently put out his hand and with those big black eyes staring at us the back of my boyfriend’s pointer finger graced the Mr.’s back. It registered and the bug was like ok, I’m done, peace! And flew away. Hahaha, my boyfriend said, “That was probably the most novel thing to ever happen to him!”

I instantly shifted from NO DON’T TOUCH HIM… to… I wanna touch one!

I want to touch one.

So the next day I’m taking pooch for a walk and I always stretch my legs on this tree directly in front of my house. As I was stretching, something made me look down, and I saw a specific, pretty bug lying on his back. Ha, maybe he was in Savasana! Anyways, I thought…. HAHA, Universe…. Sooo funny. Yeah, just like the time we woke up at 5 a.m. in Florida to see the turtles come onto the beach. We were there, but they were not. And I said, I just really want to see a turtle on the beach. And then hours later, after a boat ride, there is a huge, beached, bleached by the sun, dead turtle on his back. HAHA, Universe. I think I have to be careful what I wish for, if anything. So…………….. I crouched down with a little stick in hand to flip him over, but I noticed his one leg stretch out. He’s alive! So I flipped him over and thought… how prettttyyyy! Yoda realized I was up to something and with his pug, flat face up against Mr. Cicada the 2^ndbreathed in a huge pug breath, like who are you Mr. Bug? And I thought, how novel for the bug. He gets this gentle giant dog who “has the love of Jesus in him” give him some acknowledgement… before he goes to the other side. So I got to pet the cicada, too.

The next day, I was in Savasana. I realized…. Oh man…. I should be humming Ommmmmmm while I’m lying here. That’s what the shaman was trying to tell me. When I sit and meditate, I do just that, but lying down, I just didn’t think that felt right. So after about 20 minutes of relaxation I’ll breathe out Ommmmmmmmmm a handful of times and the vibration comes on. And with what I have learned recently about the right brain and left brain, corpus callosum, and pineal gland, I try to imagine the vibration vibrating that connection point as well as my third eye. (My head is still vibrating and I meditated over an hour ago.) I get kinda tired of saying Om after a while and I want to just lie there and feel the effect. Well, on cool enough mornings, I leave the kitchen window open… so my head continues to vibrate to the beautiful cicada songs. Blissful meltie peaceful brain.

Ha, I had to take a break from drawing so I took a walk… and the whole time my mind was in blissful meltie peacefulness thanks to the cicadas. 😉

Walka Walka Walka

Fozzy Bear? Anyways, I guess I set myself up to talk about walking. Sleepwalk, yoga, breffast, write, draw, walk. Which is fine by me because that has been my experimenting zone since I last wrote. It’s been a couple of weeks, busy weeks… but I knew I needed some time to pull it all together.

I think walking is one of the most underestimated, undervalued experiences we get to experience on a daily basis. If you are unable to walk, I’m saying this to the walkers who are not taking advantage of this experience. I thank my dog for introducing walking into my life. He’ll be five soon, so for about five years I have been walking just about every day. Before I was ‘walking’, my circulation was horrible! I still have problems staying in one spot, but before, ugh, my feet would turn purple if I sat for just moments. My mother said she would ask her father, “Why do you walk to the store every day to get the newspaper? Why don’t you drive?” She said he would complain of having “slow circulation”.

Then it dawned on me one day. How long have we had cars? For how many thousands of years, HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of years have we walked!!!! No wonder everybody is sick or is complaining of something. All of a sudden, now that we are in the year of our Ford, we just about walk to the fridge or the car. I’m not dissin’, it’s just the truth. Your genes and cells are squirming.

What does the dyslexic, insomniac philosopher do?????????? He’s stays up allllll night wondering if Dog really exists! Ha, I love that joke! So, if you don’t have a dog… get one. Haha, well, you can do these walking exercises at any time. Heck, I was killing my soul in Target the other day. I really despise going in stores like that. The lighting, the people, the overstimulation of products of death. But, I did the following exercise whilst gracing through the store. I felt like a god. So, if you have no dog 😦 , if you don’t have the guts to just go out your front door and go! (which I recommend!), you can do the following anywhere. Actually, just go to a park or something. A trail is best. Overstimulation from nature is grand. The plant pheromones and fresh air ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Before I get into the whole Toroidal Action… this of course ties into with what I was talking about before. The savasana breathing, the solar plexus breathing. Breathing in from your center, out to your skin, and when you breathe out it falls back down to your center. Center, core, solar plexus, solar energy, cosmic energy. I mentioned how I tried this breathing in savasana in bed, rather than on the floor. I gave it a 2^nd go the other night and it just wasn’t the same. So the walking exercise might be best to get feel of what I’m saying.

It’s funny how caught up we are in this material world. Everybody thinks every-body is just that, a body. But everything is made up of atoms… and atoms are not dense… are not dense. So, it’s like we are an ever changing constant flow of an interchange of atoms. That’s a nice platform to start. You can forget about all the labels you or society or the doctors have put on you. No, that was just their observance of you at that time. You are you now. You have choice. You can create. You can combine and let go.

So since my last post I just had the feeling I would be talking about walking. So every walk I was observing and asking… Eh? Eh? What is the magic that is happening here? Other than the obvious benefits such as endorphin release, circulation stimulation, oxygen intake and distribution, bonding time with my dog, saying hello and possibly chatting with whomever we’d meet… ya know, all the good normal stuff you could probably think of… I wanted the meat. Or I guess the gold. So I realized… ohhhhhhhhhhhh. I’m doing Richard’s Three Step exercise. Silly me, I’ve been doing this all along, on our walks, in the store, through my house, down the hall. All, Richard’s Three Step. Ok, so who is Richard and is this a dance move? If….. you are interested…. Richard Chesher Ph.D. The website is Thread-Of-Awareness.com. Highly recommended, but I’m here to pull and summarize.

So I’ve been trying to not be in pain. So I’ve been trying to create scenarios or constant mindgames to train my mind to not be in pain. So, maybe if I’m always in the present moment I won’t be aware of my pain. The breathing exercises has a lot to do with this. Focusing of the mind onto the breath has a lot to do with this. I was able to kick it up a notch when I combined breathing and walking.

Richard’s Three Step

If you walk (or run) three steps

—– left – right – left —— while breathing in and
—– right – left – right ——- while breathing out,

your heart beat will synchronize with your footfalls.

Starting with your left foot, whilst walking, anywhere… you start breathing in. Continue your breath in for three steps, left, right, left. Then, you will be breathing out, right, left, right. I have inadvertently trained myself to always breathe and walk like this. Like I said, I was a God in Target.

Really, you are just going to have to try this, and imprint yourself with this to see the result I’m trying to convey here. Ha, I just heard David Byrne say on his new album, “the more I lost myself the more it set me free”.

The Richard 3 Step gets interesting, because you start to play with different aspects of breathing and walking, and becoming and letting go. Not only do you start to become aware of the the blip moments, between breaths, between the in and out… the zero point, place of no thought. But you also start to get the Torus Effect.

Rather than thinking, I’m in pain, this stinks, poor me. I’m allowing my atoms to mix with all of the atoms around me that are in the process of becoming:

I hear the acorns fall hard to the ground and I hope none of them bop Yoda on the head. This tree was once a seed. The fractal seed unfurls in all. I was once just a glimmer in an eye. Now I’m me, I’m here. Later, I’m hoping for paradise. We are not stagnant beings and the more I look around it seems as if everyone thinks they… well they don’t think. Haha, so they don’t think they are stagnant beings. They have become robots.

Everyday, Yoda and I, stop and stand on this giant tree stump. It’s funny because he stands there with me as I tell him, “Yoda, we’re standing ON the tree”. (He’s well versed in vocabulary). As we stand there, energized from continuous walking and breathing, we pause, and I feel the torus of me, tree and pup. I feel as tall as the tree once stood, but still grounded and rooted, and I carry this on for the rest of the day. Head in the stars and rooted to the center of the earth.

Who doesn’t like self-sustainment?

Simply put, the torus creates an energy vortex.

You can find the Torus Cycling… in… the earth’s electromagnetic field, the heart, space stations, electrical transformers, mmmmmmmmmmmm donutssssss.

Richard’s Three Step! Do it!

I push boundaries… because I have none.

I found that in one of my many notebooks of little jots I have been keeping since highschool. I feel I am at the forefront of something… and I say that only because as I look around for assurance… I only find ‘my’ guidance. It has taken me so long to write for a few reasons… but the two main ones are: 1-The topic I intend to write about, and 2-The massive collage I started for the art part of the post. Both heavy heavy. So, as I write this, I am not done the collage… in which my intention was to not write until I was done the collage. But I’ve been feeling the urge to write for the past couple of days and with my new yoga practice I just experienced this morning… I find myself sitting here, pug in lap, clicking away.

The topic. Surrender.

I’ve been through a lot for a human being. I feel as if every day I have lived a lifetime. So when I say surrendering is the most difficult thing I have ever tried to embrace, I am trying to say erase your mind of whatever definition you applied to surrender. Surrendering is the utmost backwards approach to reality that society tries to influence on you.

This topic. Surrender. Found me.

At the time of my last post… I was touching on feeling the torus whilst walking. Through some limited words I was trying to express losing yourself. In Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous, this is the intention. I shared before what stood out to me most from this book was the esoteric teaching of using your left hand. I treaded lightly here… because there is a lot to come out of this. What this is doing is training your mind to be aware in the moment. What I have been doing since I read this book is to be completely aware of every moment when I am alone. So when I am around someone else I have trained myself to no longer “be there.” This is months and months in the making… and I believe doing yoga everyday has played a major part in heightening my awareness. The one thing I left out about In Search of the Miraculous… which is probably the meat, or gold, that stood out to every reader, was the idea coined Self Remembering.

“Oh lotus-eyed one, sweet of touch, when singing, seeing, tasting, be aware you are and discover the ever-living.” -Shiva

From our parents, from our society, from early imprinting, from acceptance into culture… we are ever going out. I did that for 28 years and I found that leads one on a path of self destruction. I channeled that same energy flowing out of control, inwards… and I stand and look around… thinking… how can I convey this. THIS! Go ahead and google self remembering. Remember, I said before, Ouspensky was following George Gurdjieff… so really if you find sites with Gurdjieff’s teachings you are on the right track. Also, Osho was on the same wavelength. Most people walk around thinking “this is reality”… never once aware that “I” am in reality. Before this awareness, one is just reflecting the world around them. Once one becomes aware of the “I” in the moment, the reflection turns inwards. I didn’t bring this up before because this turns into a heady topic, one that takes practice, patience and time. Months of this… self-remembering and being aware in every moment when alone is how the almighty word of Surrender found me. Found me.

I knew I needed to explore this path and write about it when it started to appear in my journey. When I would start researching something… I just love clicking away on Wikipedia… following the thread of a web of portals… it always leads me to where I need to know. So in early September, I was losing myself in walking. Losing myself in making breakfast. Losing myself in practicing yoga. I was gracefully losing myself…. watching myself. I have felt since the start of this blog… that ‘every reader’ will be able to at least ‘pull one thing from my words’. And that is great. But I have also felt that ‘one reader’ will be able to ‘pull all my words’. To that person… and this is after months and months of training myself to be aware in the now and then “watching myself” in the now… which only lasts for a second at a time… the trick is to keep pushing that second. Then push that a little more. (Personally, balancing the idea of ‘effort’ and surrendering was difficult for me to grasp. It took me a while to realize I was watching too much and not giving enough effort. Still I’m circling around this.) In early September I was able to prolong these moments and this is where I speak of the most difficult thing I have ever attempted. Complete surrender. It is unlike anything.

Why I even attempt to explain this, and to others with Ehlers-Danlos, is possibly one in the same. In the Gurdjieff/Ouspensky line of thought, they believed one had to attend “schools” to attain and maintain these higher states of consciousness because man naturally shifts back down into mechanical thought and action. They believed one needed the constant presence of like-minded-others to keep your mind from shifting back to the mechanical thought… that 99% of people are caught in. It dawned on me one day I HAVE a constant reminder… I have a constant shock of “pain” through my system. Constant. And maybe… if I perceive my constant shock of pain as a constant flow of awareness through myself… I can………………..

And this is the ground I have found myself walking on. I want to say it hasn’t been a choice of mine, but I guess I did choose to give up on the path of self-destruction. I was faced literally with the choice: Here, self-destruct… or follow the thread. So on my Wikipedia-thread-following one day in early September, I found myself pulling out my debit card and ordering a book. The book I wanted was not in stock on Amazon, but “a customer also bought”… Samarpan: Living the Divine Connection. Samarpan, the process of unconditional self-surrender. That same week I went to a meeting of sorts and again the same topic, surrender. The next morning, the conversation with my doctor, surrender. I have an older friend who is losing his mind from a stroke and from dementia, and I witness him… and think… he’s close to the end… and his biggest lesson to learn… is surrender. To surrender… is to go against everything…. every thought, every temptation, everything that is engrained in your psyche. This is pushing the boundaries within and letting go.

Finding the book Samarpan, which I recently realized was written by the yogi that I quoted before, the one that wrote Kundalini Yoga… well finding this book… helped me realize… the path of surrender takes time. I was beating myself up at first thinking, why can’t I hold onto these moments of no-thought, of complete self surrender to whatever it is… God, the divine consciousness, or maybe it is just the higher workings of my brain. But the moment I read that it takes time, I felt more in the groove of flow of surrendering. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh….. allowing it to happen.

So I tried a new yoga dvd this morning. I find myself laughing at myself a lot. Sometimes I am able to step outside of myself and look at myself as some silly, silly girl. Oh jees, this silly girl has been waking up every morning and was doing the same yoga practice every morning. Yeah! I HAVE BEEN! You know why? Cuz it’s the best I have found. It makes me feel good!…. It makes Me feel Go(o)d! 😉 So I tried a new practice this morning… Shiva Rea: Fluid Power- Vinyasa Flow Yoga. I more or less settled on this dvd, but figured for 5 bucks or so it’s worth a shot. Game changer. The fluidity of movement. I was going to post on the Facebook page a week ago a video about QiGong, the ancient Chinese practice of moving Qi, or prana, or lifeforce energy throughout your body. When I started to look up a video to share I came across part of a practice where you feel a weight on your shoulders and you feel your head as if it is a balloon. Game changer! I’ve been walking around with such a screwed up neck, unable to find relief until that moment. I was already shifting my awareness waaaaaaay up “head in the stars”… but this QiGong mind and body trick was what I needed in my bag of magic. Then Miss Shiva Rea had to blow open another door by making me realize this morning that feeling the flow of qi is really feeling and moving the water around in your body! Sounds simple… but this is shattering. The precise moment it hit me:

In Baddha Konasana, which is pretty much you sitting upright with your feet together in front of you, “Indian style,” but not cross- legged, feet together… in the practice you bend forward in Baddha Konasana while breathing out…. Bring the top half up your body up while breathing in… and I think we did this a couple of times, as you are feeling “the rhythm,” and then you just fold forward and breath into a deeper stretch in Baddha Konasana. As I looked at the TV and thought “damn, she’s really stretching way past me,” she said, “many of my student friends, who feel quite stiff here, have a totally different experience when they move with the wave, keeping the fluid source of their flexibility, in play, in presence, in motion.” Ohhhhhhhh, now I can go deeper. I continued the practice… and felt the qi more as qi through the water of my body… being that we are made mainly of water.

I finished the practice as my boyfriend came downstairs for his cup of coffee. I thought, I feel pretty good. I feel more fluid, I like how that workout wasn’t stretchy, not as deep and intense as Rainbeau Mars’ but as an assessment… I dig. I dig. I rolled up my mat in the way that I do every morning, presently. Opened the curtains and the blinds to let in in the light, presently. As I put my mat on my series of National Geographics I realized I felt a fluidity. Hmmmm. I walked to the kitchen and noticed…. Whoahhhhhh….. I’m moving with more of a fluidity. What shall I make for our breakfast today? I washed off a bunch of blueberries in a bowl and, as I swirl them around to rinse off the Dr. Bronner’s (Magic All One Soap), my observer is observing the flow of the fluidity of the blueberries. All caught in a current, in a beautiful unison. Whoah! I felt the witnessing of the blueberries and the internal feel of my cells… VIBRATE…

A holy man is a man who is whole.

I wrote this post on 10/10/12. I made this collage on 10/16/12. It’s funny, because I almost felt like I wanted someone to let me know how much effort to give to find the right amount of grace under surrender. Well, I think I just helped myself realize this a little more. I totally surrendered to this collage. When I was looking for the images, surrender. When I was slicing them, surrender. When I was putting them together, surrender. Ummmm… to just completely surrender is a little crazy. There was about 15 times during this collage where I wanted to stop… thinking, what the hell am I doing? But that little voice that barely ever speaks up said, “Shut up! Just keep going!” Well I realized why I had to do this. I didn’t even glue anything down. I had to do this to realize that there has to be order to the chaos. There has to be balance. When I was done writing this post I wrote the line “A holy man is a man who is whole.” I thought… this doesn’t have much to do with that Heraclitus quote or blueberries… why did I just write that? Well, now I know why. I plan to take apart the parts I like from the collage and have more order to the chaos. I was very tempted to not share this collage… but I believe it is part of the journey and so far I have been sharing without questioning. Right brain, you’s a little crazy. 😉

“Oenuc APAN Atime tHeR WAS A FOX AND…”

I made it from the bottom to the top, and in a semi-clockwise fashion, so feel free to view accordingly.

11/30/12 – HA! I just found this picture in my phone today! I guess I took this at the time of making the collage… the National Geographics are in the background… but ha! A fox on Yoda’s head. The fox was a synchronicity for me at this time, and since.

Awwwww…. I guess he was helping me… like he usually does. 🙂

Swimming With the Infinite

Riding the natural pulse….

I have spent the last month, since the last post, coming back down. Sharing my secrets of Surrendering and Self-Remembering I felt as if I pushed it, a little. But just as natural as that felt for me, I’ve always been one to push things a little bit here a little bit there… I felt this natural flow to come back into a stillness. And I have been resting there, exploring there, for the past month.

I have not yet expressed how much yoga has changed my life. Snapshot of me a year ago and of me now and you would be inspired to do yoga every day, too. Going from that same strengthening yoga practice every day to the fluid practice for every two days and then the strengthening of the third day I have become even more in tune with my body. Now able to sit in a more available double pigeon, I find that I feel like an evolved being every time we go for a walk nowadays. My hips, once plagued with pain, having been born with dysplastic hips and sporting Forrest Gump braces for my first six months, now feel more lateral… they feel open and free to move. And from there my lower spine… open. My nervous system flows with energy… just booming with energy… from my lower spine, all my movements now feel full of life. I feel like a completely different person… taking every moment as a gift now.

But I’m human… or American I should say…. When I wake up every morning I just want to stay in bed. Even as I wash my face and “put in my eyes” I “don’t feel like doing yoga…uhhhh”. But last week I thought… “Dummy, you know yoga makes you feel good. Just moments into the practice you remember why you do this every day… so why not wake up feeling grateful for yoga.” Think, “I can’t wait to do yoga!” So, I changed my mindset… and I found myself with a completely different head. Instead of having a fear-based resistant mind I was open to the flow of becoming.

Some days I might express my gratitude for yoga, aloud. “Thank god I found this. Thank god it works.“ And my boyfriend, an intelligent skeptic, would ask, “Are you just setting up limits for yourself… that you ‘have’ to do yoga every day?” I would say…. “Nooooooooo. I know what I feel like when I don’t do yoga. I know what I feel like halfway through the practice when “the change” happens…. And I know what I feel like after the practice.” But the man had me thinking: Am I just setting up self-made limits? If I have been waking up and then practicing right away everyday… how would I really know?

So it was the second morning of new mind set, being excited for yoga. I’m in my living room and I only got to the second loading menu screen of my yoga dvd, when I hear water ‘raining’ in my house. But….. it’s not raining outside. I look into the foyer and sheets of water are raining ‘in’ my house. What a sight! Sheets of water are raining in the basement. Let’s just say I got to put this yoga thing to the test. A three hour delay due to a broken pipe tested me. My mind, more centered than ever, making quick decisions and aware of small details to save a light fixture from smashing or the basement from becoming flooded. But as far as my body… my electrical system was short circuited. My neck, ready to bulge with pressure. My wrists, every joint, no flow. Moral of story… awakening to yoga… if you are suffering from Ehlers-Danlos… it might seem like something you don’t feel like doing… but I’m sorry… seems like the only path to me.

Spending every two days with this new practice has probably been the reason for riding the wave back in deeper.

“Then diving more deeply,
expand into freedom.”

-From the beautiful Radiance Sutras (vijnana bhairava tantra)

The ra’yoKa practice doesn’t allow for deeper stretches, the flow is quicker. And to be honest I used to be skeptical of deep stretching with Ehlers-Danlos. Until I realized it is not about deep stretching your joints… this is deep stretching into the Source.

So looking at my snapshot… different person. From my point of view, what I feel within me… I feel in touch with that source… whatever it is, the stillness where everything is created from, qi, the lifeforce energy… my soul. I’m not one to label things… I’m more of an advocate of experiencing life than trying to explain, define and limit the essence of things.

I quoted Shiva Rea in my last post “many of my student friends, who feel quite stiff here, have a totally different experience when they move with the wave, keeping the fluid source of their flexibility, in play, in presence, in motion.” That was the first day of that practice… that was before I really started to feel the effects of this style of practice. She continues with, “so as you explore the landscape of your flexibility, visualize this, as a delta in which you can ride many tributaries down deeper into your source.” As a delta…. “Riding the many tributaries deeper into your source”. That has been my ‘mantra’ in a sense since I last wrote. With the solar plexus breathing, you really feel an awakening through your body. As any pendulum sways or as with any yin and yang, the force comes back. And this coming back, deep into relaxed state, riding the many tributaries deeper into the source is where I have been flowing lately. Whether at home, in the car, waiting in line at Trader Joe’s… I am still… riding the tributaries deep down.

I have reached the age of my parents, where my one parent had a minor heart attack. Within a couple years I will reach the age in which the other parent had a sub-dural hematoma… a blood vessel burst in the back of their head. I feel as if the torus breathing has had a great effect on my heart, it just seems to be in more of a working order nowadays. But my neck…. Ehhhhhhhh. So I thought, if I don’t think as much, if I center my mind… maybe my body will be in more of a working order. So with that came more awareness, but with that came awareness of pain, but I did not stop there. Rainbeau says often in her practices “What is in the way, is the way.” So from yoga, I have the centered mind as well as the synovial fluid flowing through my joints… but with the pain I often feel where my skull and spine meet, I’m just doomed. Unless I figure out alternatives. If I was a yogi meditating in a Himalayan cave all day I might be golden, but I’m an American Zebra. I’ve got shit to do.

As of late, my boyfriend has fallen in love with the fireplace, really as a way for cheap heat, but he is free to do as he pleases, so burn baby burn. For the past couple of weeks I rest in front of the fire, heart to hearth… and watch the blue and orange flames dance wildly, in and out of existence. I never ever think, “Why me?” when it comes to Ehlers-Danlos…. But as I lie there the thought arises, “Why anyone?” But in these moments, if I catch myself before I get too philosophical… I think… stop thinking… melt. Ride the tributaries. Ride the tributaries. Close your eyes for a moment… when you exhale back in from the solar plexus breathing… when you exhale back in feel your entire self melt….. feel the intelligence inside your body relax into tiny rivers… into tributaries…. Into the ground. And from that relaxed point is where to build from. Falling back into the source.

So I had a neat flashback to a flashback moment happen. In Shiva Rea’s Fluid Power Yoga she introduced a move I had never done before. Swimming with the Infinite. When I met up with “The Other’s” who have EDS I felt as if I was meeting my long lost brother and my long lost sister. To finally meet someone who has been through all the hell and confusion you have been through it is such a release. You also notice the similarities, and you feel not so alone anymore. The one thing I noticed… as we were all sitting around… is that they would feel this need to stretch out this arm or both legs. Constantly this wormy stretching. It dawned on me… I used to do that, too… before I was on the medications. Hmmmmm… but it was almost like they didn’t know when to stop stretching. It was this wildly motion of going out. Now that I’m getting in touch with my true nature… I’m finding the balance of that worming out. Even in my last post, I felt this going out feeling… but how to balance?

In Swimming with the Infinite… after either quite a core workout if using the Core Chapter scs sequence… or if using the Prana Yoga Slow Wave Chapter it is more of an intoxicating womb like feeling… you lay, starting on your right side…. With your right arm underneath you stretch your right arm so it is above your head, but underneath you. Then, as if you are swimming, stretch your left arm out in front of you, and pulllllll it in slowly, as if you are really swimming, bringing energy in, feeling it come into your center, your core, your source. Simultaneously your legs are also swimming feeling the stretch on out… but also tethered to your core. This is a very beautiful, creative flowing movement. Whoahhhhhh… this is like swimming in the womb………………………………………….

The flashback of a flashback, actually of a flashback. Haha.

About three years ago I was lucky enough to get myself into an Isolation Tank… a deprivation tank… a float tank. Whatever the name the game is sensory deprivation. This effect is possible due to the enclosed, soundproof nature of the tank as well as the 700 pounds of Epsom salts in the water of the tank. Also, the air temperature and water temperature of the tank are both set to about 93 degrees. The effect… you are floating in a dark enclosed space where the temperature all around you is the same as your skin. Total relaxation. Total boundary dissolution.

I’m not saying to go out and try it. It is not like a roller coaster ride where you will definitely have some grand experience. It is used as a healing tool if anything. Of the hour within the tank, you spend the first quarter of it getting used to the odd feeling Trying to center yourself in the tank is the trick it seems… because if you don’t you find yourself drifting to the edge, bumping your foot as you are trying to meditate.

My major assessment from my one time (I’m planning on visiting the tank later this winter), my major assessment at the time was that all those times I was meditating before the tank… I was NOWHERE close, NOWHERE EVEN close to a real relaxed state. I was completely unaware of how quiet the mind can get, how relaxed the mind can get. It was almost alarming to think I thought I was quieting my mind all those times before. I was kidding myself. Since this tank experience I have been doing yoga and meditating every day, but I also put aside fluoride and television three years ago. So I’m kinda excited to see how deep I can get this time.

So, I was relaxing in the tank and thought… my time is probably almost up. Let me see what time it is. I trudge through the thick water, and open the space capsule door to the mildly lit room to see I have been in for 50 minutes. 10 minutes to go. Cool. So I bring my head back in, shut myself within the capsule and as I’m bringing myself back through the tank to lay down I think “How did all these stars get in here!?!?” The top of the tank is now a night sky filled with stars! I reach my hands out, grasping, is this real? I have been staring at the top of this tank for 50 minutes and these stars were not here before! I later read as an old parlor trick, the eye will often hallucinate if it is submitted to darkness then light and then back to darkness again.

So I laid down, floating, and for some natural reason I close my eyes. Then, in my mind’s eye, I see an eyeball float out into the center of my vision. It starts out with an “eye shut” position and then goes to an “open” position. As it is opening, an arc of light is coming from the eyeball. I think to myself… whoah! I’m hallucinating! Hallucination in the tank is one of the possible effects. My boyfriend who was in before me did not hallucinate so I was very excited it was actually happening. The eye kept on opening and closing until I realized… Oh, I think it’s trying to tell me to open my eyes! I’m in complete darkness, open or closed didn’t seem to make a difference… well maybe it does! And I’m no longer staring at the stars, I am now flying through the stars at light speed. Weightless, mindless, with relaxed breath. At this point I’m picking up on some sort of Grecian or Roman bust. It is of a man. In the collage of my last post there is a Grecian bust to the lower right of the image… that was put there because of this experience. At the time I was thinking that this was my higher self because of something my boyfriend read to me. I don’t know who the Grecian was, but he was of a “perfect” being. I probably should have written what I hallucinated after that point because now I do not remember. Maybe because all of the hallucinations were overshadowed by “the ultimate point”:

I knew my time was coming to an end… so I started to move my body around. Up until this point I was focused on relaxing, so I could go deep into mind. But I thought, eh, I am always in pain, let me stretch these bones around while I’m floating in this weightlessness. Ahhhhhhhh….. Swimming with the infinite. Like I said earlier, I was born with dysplastic hips, which is where the ball and socket joint were not so connected… as I’m lying on my back, I think ehh, let me move my knees up and around to give my hips a little stretch… a little rotation. As my knees come up to the highest point they’ll naturally go I am hit with a lightening speed, all-encompassing moment. I’m flooded with the deepest of thoughts and feelings but at the same time an all-encompassing feeling of nothingness. The thought/moment/feeling: “This is a flashback of you being in the womb/ This is how it felt when you were in the womb/ You were meditating the whole time you were in the womb/ You were a guru meditating in the womb!” And just as fast as it came, it left. “That’s it!” That’s the feeling we are all striving for. Everyone… everything… just wants to feel that feeling again. So why not try to find it… and embrace it as long as humanly possible… sharing it with everyone, even if it is in the littlest of ways.

What a deep peace.

Post written and painted on 11/13/12. Happy Birthday to my bestest of friends!!!!!! Hmmmm, on my past birthday we fed the koi at the botanical gardens… in which we chose to go there rather than the float tanks. What a koi-ink-ee-dink! Happy Birthday my Scorpian Sister…. ❤ Your Fishie Piscean Friend 🙂

Swimming with the infinite, feeling the push and pull, that magnetic almost magical energy.

The blue and orange “complimentary colors” kept appearing these past couple of weeks… in these short but beautiful November sunsets as well as the dancing flames within my fireplace. The orange koi representing the Yang energy and the blue koi representing the Yin energy, they swim and play in a delicate balance, together creating harmony.