\u201cOne should have a daily practice\u201d encourages His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama. I\u2019ve maintained a daily practice throughout my adult life\u2014aside from a lifelong practice of ballet and\/or modern dance classes Monday through Saturdays, and from my 30\u2019s on, Classical and Fletcher Pilates Mat and Reformer work. By age 40 my movement practice expanded to include a discipline of cardio work on Elliptical machines and lastly, silent sitting meditation. Every year since, my practice has benefitted from listening deeply to this, my body\u2019s specific physio-psychic needs in order to bring and be my best self-in\/with-the-world. <\/p>\n
Now in my 60\u2019s, each morning begins with vigorous hand rubbing, and Qigong body shaking, 2-4 minutes that morphs into gentle vertical jumping jacks without the jacks: 12 sets of 16 mini jumps. Then and with mindful standing skeletal alignment, 12 sets of full-body vertical spine extension and spine-coiling (folding) flexion work with Yoga Sun Salutation arm\/breath work-\u2013the opening movements of The Swan Practice\u00ae\u2013and <\/em>integrating frontal contraction (abdominal) & stabilization and spinal spaciousness at each vertebra\u2013short contraction on one end equals long contraction on the opposite end of the body (attentive to the way our human-animal bodies are made to move \u2014 with efficiency). All of my somatic work integrates alignment: skeletal, muscular, fascia, and a self-in-the-world alignment with the Infinite Source of life. Prayers. Covenant. Fundaments of Sacrality. All other worldly matters take place after my early morning time and, the 3-minute rule shower ending with an integrative cold water rinse. Then, transitional time: reading (mostly philosophy), writing,\u2013whether for an essay, a public talk, a grant, <\/span>or grading papers (when I taught at university as a Humanities Lecturer 20017-2021); accompanied by a cuppa (tea, espresso, or golden milk), and correspondences. By 9-10 am I\u2019m ready to be engaged by and with the world.<\/span><\/p>\n An introvert-\u2013likely reinforced by being an only child for the first four years of my life\u2013I conversed silently with nature and the goings-on in my inner life; I was comfortable in silence. It was a childhood practice, and there\u2019s one experience that resonates in particular for me,\u2013being in relationship to a sense of what was beyond me, beyond my child sense of being,\u2013a sense of \u2018other\u2019 than my human-beingness. When the full volume of The Book of Knowledge<\/em> and The Encyclopedia Britannica <\/em>came to our door, it came with a large beautiful white faux-leather Bible which I began to read nightly; the prayer insets written on something like rice paper in a calligraphic hand immediately caught my attention. I\u2019d try to memorize the prayers by flashlight before going to sleep. <\/p>\n Another childhood experience piqued my intuition. I came home from Girl Scouts joyous with a plate of chocolate-chip cookies made by one of the den mothers. We\u2019d had a raffle that afternoon. I prayed to win the raffle. My imagination was ablaze with an image of the smiles my win would bring to my family, especially my brother. I silently prayed with my closed, vigorously. I won the raffle. When I walked into the dining room with the plate of cookies I told my parents how I prayed to win the raffle and \u201cI won!\u201d They were tickled. Though we were a secular family, my parents didn\u2019t nor would they think to diminish my ecstatic contagion and belief. Indeed, when I asked to go to \u2018church\u2019 like the other kids in my neighborhood, my dad took me to several nearby Christian churches. <\/p>\n I also attended Schule\u2014Hebrew School\u2014in my early teenage years, again on my request. However, I had to forfeit my Saturday morning ballet classes in order to go to Schule. After a while, I chose to return to Saturday ballet classes, never mind that I was already attending ballet classes four days a week. But the memory of being attending Schule remains steadfast: my religious imagination tended to.<\/p>\n A religious imagination\u2014fundaments of sacrality\u2014coupled with an innate aesthetic-poetic perceptual acumen remains an ever-entwined sensorial reality. This natural and relational perception establishes my life practice of maintaining covenant, and has informed my writings on \u2018Grace\u2019 \u2018Somatics\u2019 and \u2018Living Aesthetics.\u2019 I have always been interested in how peoples of the world express relationship of the soul\/spirit realm through their physical being as portals to beauty. Thus, perhaps, my pursuit of Myth studies and the rituals that express them.<\/p>\n \u201c[Perform] the asanas critically and in a studious manner, cultivating a taste for refinement which is concomitant with art\u201d <\/strong><\/em>(B.K.S. Iyengar).<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n \u201c[Beyond] a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself\u201d <\/i>(from, \u2018Desiderata\u2019 by Max Ehrmann, poet).<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cTo be alive is to give praise\u201d <\/i>(Hildegard von Bingen). \u201cOne should have a daily practice\u201d encourages His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama. I\u2019ve maintained a daily practice throughout my adult life\u2014aside from a lifelong practice of ballet and\/or modern dance classes Monday through Saturdays, and from my 30\u2019s on, Classical and Fletcher Pilates Mat and Reformer work. By age 40 my movement practice expanded […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":301,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-highlight"],"metadata":{"_edit_lock":["1675010474:301"]},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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