8/29/10 - Road Trips
I know someone who is traveling in the desert right now on a sort of pilgrimage, and then I did a little driving today to meet friends for a movie and to buy groceries, so I was thinking of being on the road. I love that feeling of driving in the car somewhere and it's hot and it's summer and you roll the window down and stick one of your feet into that fast car breeze. And I know that driving and using gas is not terribly ecological, so please translate all this in your head to driving an oxcart or riding a horse, because they're more ecological, if slower, and I'd gladly substitute if I had to. Or translate it to running on my own two feet, yes, I would do the road trip making my own tracks if it meant I got to travel and see the world to the side speeding by my cheeks.
I read Jack Kerouac's book sometime in college, I don't remember if it was before or after my best road trip, but I love the maniacal feeling of going over the road with friends and time and rest be damned--we'll get there as soon as we can. Driving the graveyard shift was my specialty on that great road trip when I was 21--four people in a little Chevette that kept having problems--the muffler almost fell off in PA, and the radiator starting leaking in Arizona, so we had to turn on the heat to keep the engine cool--that's right, we had the heat on in the Arizona desert in June. And it took 3 1/2 days from Boston to LA, and I loved driving overnight, but I also loved when we stopped, piled out and unrolled sleeping bags under the stars.
Road trips, tossing all your necessities into the back seat and letting them toss around like suitcase salad, as you take out stuff you need & put things back at random. Naming the clouds that go by, making friends with the trees, their clumps of leaves nodding in the prairie wind. Putting your hand out the window to feel the passing, of place, of time, of air.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
8/28/10 – Summertime – the Heat
The Heat: One time, I participated in a sweat lodge at a summer gathering. The sweat was lead by a woman who had done sundance for many years, and she had been trained in sweat lodge by a Lakota elder. I remember feeling the heat of the stones and our huddled bodies inside the lodge, as well as the steam condensing and running down my skin as water was ladled onto the stones. I was at first uncomfortable, and then, encouraged by the leader’s and other participants’ meditations and prayers, felt oneness with the hot air, the earth, the elements. As the lodge went on, my feeling of oneness and euphoria actually increased, to the point that I was wishing for more stones, more heat, more steam, more time in the lodge. It seemed there was no discomfort, only a different kind of environment that just took some focus.
(What I have learned, then and more recently, about safety and respect regarding sweat lodge: Money is never exchanged for ceremony in native tradition. Common sense is welcome. Overthinking one’s issues can be counterproductive. It is important to sweat with a trained elder so that the proper prayers can be intoned, and the appropriate spirit helpers and protectors can be called upon. If an improperly trained person leads a sweat, there can be a risk of ill health or unhelpful spirits who might add imbalance. Also, the strength and effectiveness of a ceremony are diluted over time if it is conducted improperly. I don’t know anyone (non-native) doing sweat lodge who does not in their heart admire the native traditions that created it and handed it down over generations. So why not take the extra step to safeguard those traditions and the integrity of the sweat ceremony by searching out a trained native american elder? Your efforts might also support and shore up the beautiful native traditions that have helped keep this continent abundant and balanced for so many generations, and that are surely instrumental in leading us through the current global crises.)
I have carried the teachings of that sweat lodge with me for a long time. A month or so after that sweat, I moved my household in the Boston area. On my moving day, the temperature was between 100-103 degrees in that Boston humidity. The friends I had help me, and the guy with the van that I hired, were extremely uncomfortable, but I remember skipping up and down the front steps, dripping sweat of course, but with unflagging energy, feeling that oneness with the heat. I felt no difference between that summer day and myself.
Heat is purifying, it’s true. I’m part Scandinavian, and some of my ancestry speaks of saunas and steam baths. I’m sure the Scandinavian parts of my ancestry learned the benefits of sweating from the indigenous people whom they met—the Sami (Laplanders) in northern Scandinavia. Sweating is great. Some people call skin the largest organ of the body. Others call skin the largest excretory organ of the body. When I do deeper massage work on people, sometimes they sweat, and sometimes in the sweat, you can smell the toxins that they have been in touch with, such as commercial solvents that get absorbed by the skin if they have done construction work. Sweat contains urea, lactate and trace minerals, including, I’m sure, some minerals/metals that should not be in the body. I keep thinking sweating has to do with clearing out the lymphatic system (so important to overall health, especially in freedom from and treatment of cancer) So I looked it up. The way sweat glands create sweat is by secreting fluid they get from interstitial fluid (that’s lymph!), and secreting that into little ducts around the sweat gland. So sweating, by my reckoning, is essential to good health, by pumping more fluid through the lymph system, allowing it to cleanse itself.
All this background is leading up to my opinion: I really think it’s normal and important to spend the summer sweating. I think that sweating in the summer heat is a natural sauna, a natural way of purifying the body of toxins that it builds up over the other three seasons. But air conditioning in the summer is such a norm in the affluent Western world, that no one questions why we do it. I find air conditioning to be expensive and unnecessary—part of the sense of entitlement of the western world. I’m not trying to justify my stinginess about the electric bill. I really think that sweating through the summer is healthy. Is it a coincidence that the rise of AC use has coincided with a rise in degenerative disease in the US and the West? If we let ourselves sweat a little more in the summer, don’t you think we could slow global warming a little bit by using less energy, and also be healthier? Could we stop complaining about how hot it is, and start accepting it for what it is? A great opportunity to heal.
The Heat: One time, I participated in a sweat lodge at a summer gathering. The sweat was lead by a woman who had done sundance for many years, and she had been trained in sweat lodge by a Lakota elder. I remember feeling the heat of the stones and our huddled bodies inside the lodge, as well as the steam condensing and running down my skin as water was ladled onto the stones. I was at first uncomfortable, and then, encouraged by the leader’s and other participants’ meditations and prayers, felt oneness with the hot air, the earth, the elements. As the lodge went on, my feeling of oneness and euphoria actually increased, to the point that I was wishing for more stones, more heat, more steam, more time in the lodge. It seemed there was no discomfort, only a different kind of environment that just took some focus.
(What I have learned, then and more recently, about safety and respect regarding sweat lodge: Money is never exchanged for ceremony in native tradition. Common sense is welcome. Overthinking one’s issues can be counterproductive. It is important to sweat with a trained elder so that the proper prayers can be intoned, and the appropriate spirit helpers and protectors can be called upon. If an improperly trained person leads a sweat, there can be a risk of ill health or unhelpful spirits who might add imbalance. Also, the strength and effectiveness of a ceremony are diluted over time if it is conducted improperly. I don’t know anyone (non-native) doing sweat lodge who does not in their heart admire the native traditions that created it and handed it down over generations. So why not take the extra step to safeguard those traditions and the integrity of the sweat ceremony by searching out a trained native american elder? Your efforts might also support and shore up the beautiful native traditions that have helped keep this continent abundant and balanced for so many generations, and that are surely instrumental in leading us through the current global crises.)
I have carried the teachings of that sweat lodge with me for a long time. A month or so after that sweat, I moved my household in the Boston area. On my moving day, the temperature was between 100-103 degrees in that Boston humidity. The friends I had help me, and the guy with the van that I hired, were extremely uncomfortable, but I remember skipping up and down the front steps, dripping sweat of course, but with unflagging energy, feeling that oneness with the heat. I felt no difference between that summer day and myself.
Heat is purifying, it’s true. I’m part Scandinavian, and some of my ancestry speaks of saunas and steam baths. I’m sure the Scandinavian parts of my ancestry learned the benefits of sweating from the indigenous people whom they met—the Sami (Laplanders) in northern Scandinavia. Sweating is great. Some people call skin the largest organ of the body. Others call skin the largest excretory organ of the body. When I do deeper massage work on people, sometimes they sweat, and sometimes in the sweat, you can smell the toxins that they have been in touch with, such as commercial solvents that get absorbed by the skin if they have done construction work. Sweat contains urea, lactate and trace minerals, including, I’m sure, some minerals/metals that should not be in the body. I keep thinking sweating has to do with clearing out the lymphatic system (so important to overall health, especially in freedom from and treatment of cancer) So I looked it up. The way sweat glands create sweat is by secreting fluid they get from interstitial fluid (that’s lymph!), and secreting that into little ducts around the sweat gland. So sweating, by my reckoning, is essential to good health, by pumping more fluid through the lymph system, allowing it to cleanse itself.
All this background is leading up to my opinion: I really think it’s normal and important to spend the summer sweating. I think that sweating in the summer heat is a natural sauna, a natural way of purifying the body of toxins that it builds up over the other three seasons. But air conditioning in the summer is such a norm in the affluent Western world, that no one questions why we do it. I find air conditioning to be expensive and unnecessary—part of the sense of entitlement of the western world. I’m not trying to justify my stinginess about the electric bill. I really think that sweating through the summer is healthy. Is it a coincidence that the rise of AC use has coincided with a rise in degenerative disease in the US and the West? If we let ourselves sweat a little more in the summer, don’t you think we could slow global warming a little bit by using less energy, and also be healthier? Could we stop complaining about how hot it is, and start accepting it for what it is? A great opportunity to heal.
Friday, August 27, 2010
post for 8/25/10 - stupid love
The poet Paul Valery once said that "Love is being stupid together," which a lot of people seem to like & gets a lot of hits on a google search. Well, not really, because I can't find the original quote in French, and I'm pretty sure that it's been taken way out of context. These Romance languages have strict parallel structure, and I really think if he meant that love was being stupid together, he would have written, tomber amoureux est d'etre stupides ensemble, which maybe he did, I don't know, I browsed (quickly though) through his complete works in the library, and couldn't find anything that resembles that phrase.
But I think many people are attracted to the idea that falling head over heels for someone makes you forget stuff, lose track of time, trip over your own feet (I hope we're stopping short of the Idiocracy with falling in love). Love, then, is being a fool, a fool for love. Yeah, and I think we're talking about the infatuation stage of love, but wouldn't it be sweet for people who have been together for who knows how long, to have those moments of idiocy, when they lose track of themselves and get all sweet on their beloved. I've seen it every now & then in friends' relationships, and I pray it happens to everyone in the world, in a safe way, to lose track of the world, to lose your bearings sweetly with someone, to dangle by your ankle over a cliff, maybe, because that's the best way to see your beloved eye-to-eye.
Plus, okay, Valery also wrote this: "Mes chaudes mains, baigne-les/Dans les tiennes... Rien ne calm/ Comme d'amour ondules/Les passages d'une palme." in his poem, "La Caresse." Really, could someone who thinks love is stupid have written something like that about the sense of touch between lovers???
The poet Paul Valery once said that "Love is being stupid together," which a lot of people seem to like & gets a lot of hits on a google search. Well, not really, because I can't find the original quote in French, and I'm pretty sure that it's been taken way out of context. These Romance languages have strict parallel structure, and I really think if he meant that love was being stupid together, he would have written, tomber amoureux est d'etre stupides ensemble, which maybe he did, I don't know, I browsed (quickly though) through his complete works in the library, and couldn't find anything that resembles that phrase.
But I think many people are attracted to the idea that falling head over heels for someone makes you forget stuff, lose track of time, trip over your own feet (I hope we're stopping short of the Idiocracy with falling in love). Love, then, is being a fool, a fool for love. Yeah, and I think we're talking about the infatuation stage of love, but wouldn't it be sweet for people who have been together for who knows how long, to have those moments of idiocy, when they lose track of themselves and get all sweet on their beloved. I've seen it every now & then in friends' relationships, and I pray it happens to everyone in the world, in a safe way, to lose track of the world, to lose your bearings sweetly with someone, to dangle by your ankle over a cliff, maybe, because that's the best way to see your beloved eye-to-eye.
Plus, okay, Valery also wrote this: "Mes chaudes mains, baigne-les/Dans les tiennes... Rien ne calm/ Comme d'amour ondules/Les passages d'une palme." in his poem, "La Caresse." Really, could someone who thinks love is stupid have written something like that about the sense of touch between lovers???
08/27/2010 - The wind
…The wind does, working like a hand
Whose fingers brush the sky,
Then quiver down, with tufts of tune
Permitted gods and me.
--Emily Dickinson
When my son was a dozy, arm-held chubby thing, I remember taking him out to the porch one spring day, when it was fresh out. He was a midwinter baby, and I guess I hadn’t had him outside too much, or else too well protected from the weather. At the edge of the front porch, checking out the yard, a sudden north wind came through that whipped our jackets and teased our faces a little. Zeke jumped in my arms in surprise, then looked up at me, his expression asking, “what the heck?—“
I’d like to cultivate a similar feeling of newness around the wind, a startle reaction, a surprise, a noticing of that thing that is always present. We are all touched by air, feel the pressure of this constant movement, the constant play of gasses against our skin and clothes, but how often do we really notice it? Does it have to be outrageously wild, or can it be just a normal spring trill? Can I become aware enough to notice the subtle movements of air on a breezeless day? Or what about the wild tempests?
I took out my old anthology of Romantic Poetry & looked up Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind. (where the heck did I put that thing?). And Shelley’s Ode reminds me of a hike I made once with a friend up Mount Katahdin in Maine. We were looking for adventure and found it with straight-line winds on a ridge trail, over a field of boulders lit by lightning strikes.
It’s everywhere. Have I ever been without moving air, wrapping me like a blanket, messing my hair, coaxing the trees to speak, whispering secrets? What is the wind? What is the wind to you?
…The wind does, working like a hand
Whose fingers brush the sky,
Then quiver down, with tufts of tune
Permitted gods and me.
--Emily Dickinson
When my son was a dozy, arm-held chubby thing, I remember taking him out to the porch one spring day, when it was fresh out. He was a midwinter baby, and I guess I hadn’t had him outside too much, or else too well protected from the weather. At the edge of the front porch, checking out the yard, a sudden north wind came through that whipped our jackets and teased our faces a little. Zeke jumped in my arms in surprise, then looked up at me, his expression asking, “what the heck?—“
I’d like to cultivate a similar feeling of newness around the wind, a startle reaction, a surprise, a noticing of that thing that is always present. We are all touched by air, feel the pressure of this constant movement, the constant play of gasses against our skin and clothes, but how often do we really notice it? Does it have to be outrageously wild, or can it be just a normal spring trill? Can I become aware enough to notice the subtle movements of air on a breezeless day? Or what about the wild tempests?
I took out my old anthology of Romantic Poetry & looked up Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind. (where the heck did I put that thing?). And Shelley’s Ode reminds me of a hike I made once with a friend up Mount Katahdin in Maine. We were looking for adventure and found it with straight-line winds on a ridge trail, over a field of boulders lit by lightning strikes.
It’s everywhere. Have I ever been without moving air, wrapping me like a blanket, messing my hair, coaxing the trees to speak, whispering secrets? What is the wind? What is the wind to you?
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
8/24/10 Telepathy
I’ve taken classes in energy healing, where you learn to trust your intuition, to read people’s energy, to focus those prickly and/or eerie sensations we all have so that you can direct them for someone’s health benefit. One of the ideas espoused by this one healer that I took workshops from, (Barbara Brennan) is that you don’t have to believe something is true, for it to be useful to you. That’s it. Don’t believe in psychic connections? Don’t believe in past lives? Don’t even believe in this energy healing crap? Fine. But if this session is useful to you (relaxing, calming, even caring or friendly), so be it. You don’t have to believe it’s true to derive a benefit. One of the most skeptical people I ever met was this IT computer person who was married to this total new age gal. He kind of repeated the phrases, “I’m not sure about any of this,” and “I really don’t know if I believe it,” as his mantras whenever our meditation group met. He and his gal pal were clearly attuned to each others’ needs, and except for his professed skepticism, this man seemed at home and a positive contributor to every meditation session and he seemed to really enjoy them.
Another skeptic I know has an amazing psychic bond with his daughter, who is a friend of mine. Truly, this pair knows each others’ thoughts and feelings, and can sense good or ill moods and health in each other from 3 hours away. He doesn’t believe in this stuff either.
Even skeptics out there can cite examples where they know who is on the phone before they pick up, or they know exactly what someone is going to say before they open their mouth. We are all so psychic all the time, reading each others’ thoughts and feelings and body language, that it’s a wonder sometimes we even need to speak.
I love when telepathy happens. My favorite kind is having a long conversation with someone I wish I knew, or whose book I’m reading, or even someone I think may not know me too well, or have my best interests at heart. Through having a conversation in my mind (okay, some might call it just an overactive imagination), I feel like I can reach a wiser, deeper place in myself, to learn from these authors or teachers that I don’t know, or to heal and transform issues in friendships that aren’t working well.
I’ve taken classes in energy healing, where you learn to trust your intuition, to read people’s energy, to focus those prickly and/or eerie sensations we all have so that you can direct them for someone’s health benefit. One of the ideas espoused by this one healer that I took workshops from, (Barbara Brennan) is that you don’t have to believe something is true, for it to be useful to you. That’s it. Don’t believe in psychic connections? Don’t believe in past lives? Don’t even believe in this energy healing crap? Fine. But if this session is useful to you (relaxing, calming, even caring or friendly), so be it. You don’t have to believe it’s true to derive a benefit. One of the most skeptical people I ever met was this IT computer person who was married to this total new age gal. He kind of repeated the phrases, “I’m not sure about any of this,” and “I really don’t know if I believe it,” as his mantras whenever our meditation group met. He and his gal pal were clearly attuned to each others’ needs, and except for his professed skepticism, this man seemed at home and a positive contributor to every meditation session and he seemed to really enjoy them.
Another skeptic I know has an amazing psychic bond with his daughter, who is a friend of mine. Truly, this pair knows each others’ thoughts and feelings, and can sense good or ill moods and health in each other from 3 hours away. He doesn’t believe in this stuff either.
Even skeptics out there can cite examples where they know who is on the phone before they pick up, or they know exactly what someone is going to say before they open their mouth. We are all so psychic all the time, reading each others’ thoughts and feelings and body language, that it’s a wonder sometimes we even need to speak.
I love when telepathy happens. My favorite kind is having a long conversation with someone I wish I knew, or whose book I’m reading, or even someone I think may not know me too well, or have my best interests at heart. Through having a conversation in my mind (okay, some might call it just an overactive imagination), I feel like I can reach a wiser, deeper place in myself, to learn from these authors or teachers that I don’t know, or to heal and transform issues in friendships that aren’t working well.
post for 8/23/10 - pain
Yes, the ecstasy for Monday the 23rd is pain. We all need to come to terms with pain, to revel in it, to set aside time for it, to truly enjoy it when it happens. How do we do this? It’s like the yin-yang symbol, how within darkness, there is the seed of light (and within light, the seed of darkness). It’s one of the great paradoxes I think, and it’s partly a matter of disciplining the mind.
I know a few people who are midwives, and I studied for a while myself to be a midwife. Just when I was realizing that attending someone’s labor for days at a time wasn’t a good fit for my family and me, I took a workshop where midwives were talking about hypnobirthing. In the 1990’s it seemed like the best, most workable pain-free childbirth, where women learn to put themselves in a kind of trance in labor, and it allows them to dilate and push with minimal discomfort, theoretically. I’m sure it works for some people, and I think our minds are built for that.
But here are my two examples of pain being an ecstasy, and one of them is childbirth. I won’t go into too many details except to say that I had a hard time at first dealing with the pain of contractions. And because I didn’t want myself or my baby to be groggy, I didn’t want any meds. So I meditated. It was best when my healer arrived and breathed with me. She was completely unafraid and encouraged me to approach the source of the pain. I dropped my awareness to my bottom, and as the baby’s head hit every two minutes, instead of feeling a stabbing pain, as I had been in my fear, I stayed with it, and it ended up feeling like a really hard thud, and not excruciating. As I got the hang of going into the pain, it really got easier, although it took all my focus, to the point of being like, this is really hard, but kind of fun. And then, here’s the next contraction, and let me see how I can disperse this one. And to this day, I still remember the thuds, not pain, with joy.
A few years later, I was taking a walk with a friend along a rocky beach on the North Shore. I was wallowing in self-pity at the time, which took attention away from my footsteps. So I didn’t watch where I was going and fell and got a huge scrape on my thigh. Seriously, the whole outside of the upper part of my leg was raw and bleeding like hamburger. And I felt like an idiot, because I knew what I really wanted was sympathy, but it wasn't the right time or place. So I focused my consciousness on my hamburger-colored scrape, got into it so I could feel the throbbing of blood through the site, and then all I felt was warmth & expansion, not the sharp tenderness I had felt a moment before.
What happens when we bring our focus to staying present with pain, instead of recoiling from it, is that the sensation changes from a tight horrible feeling to the joy of intense focus and accomplishment. Yes, I know, an ecstasy.
A version of this works for emotional pain as well, but that's a topic for another day.
Yes, the ecstasy for Monday the 23rd is pain. We all need to come to terms with pain, to revel in it, to set aside time for it, to truly enjoy it when it happens. How do we do this? It’s like the yin-yang symbol, how within darkness, there is the seed of light (and within light, the seed of darkness). It’s one of the great paradoxes I think, and it’s partly a matter of disciplining the mind.
I know a few people who are midwives, and I studied for a while myself to be a midwife. Just when I was realizing that attending someone’s labor for days at a time wasn’t a good fit for my family and me, I took a workshop where midwives were talking about hypnobirthing. In the 1990’s it seemed like the best, most workable pain-free childbirth, where women learn to put themselves in a kind of trance in labor, and it allows them to dilate and push with minimal discomfort, theoretically. I’m sure it works for some people, and I think our minds are built for that.
But here are my two examples of pain being an ecstasy, and one of them is childbirth. I won’t go into too many details except to say that I had a hard time at first dealing with the pain of contractions. And because I didn’t want myself or my baby to be groggy, I didn’t want any meds. So I meditated. It was best when my healer arrived and breathed with me. She was completely unafraid and encouraged me to approach the source of the pain. I dropped my awareness to my bottom, and as the baby’s head hit every two minutes, instead of feeling a stabbing pain, as I had been in my fear, I stayed with it, and it ended up feeling like a really hard thud, and not excruciating. As I got the hang of going into the pain, it really got easier, although it took all my focus, to the point of being like, this is really hard, but kind of fun. And then, here’s the next contraction, and let me see how I can disperse this one. And to this day, I still remember the thuds, not pain, with joy.
A few years later, I was taking a walk with a friend along a rocky beach on the North Shore. I was wallowing in self-pity at the time, which took attention away from my footsteps. So I didn’t watch where I was going and fell and got a huge scrape on my thigh. Seriously, the whole outside of the upper part of my leg was raw and bleeding like hamburger. And I felt like an idiot, because I knew what I really wanted was sympathy, but it wasn't the right time or place. So I focused my consciousness on my hamburger-colored scrape, got into it so I could feel the throbbing of blood through the site, and then all I felt was warmth & expansion, not the sharp tenderness I had felt a moment before.
What happens when we bring our focus to staying present with pain, instead of recoiling from it, is that the sensation changes from a tight horrible feeling to the joy of intense focus and accomplishment. Yes, I know, an ecstasy.
A version of this works for emotional pain as well, but that's a topic for another day.
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