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66. Living Space 01/25/05
“Basic goodness is something like a sneeze. When you sneeze, there is no time to create or refer to a reference point. You just sneeze, or you just cough. Similarly, when a person has an orgasm, there's no room or time to compare that experience with anything else. That simplicity and fundamental healthiness and that capability of having your own personal experience is called basic goodness…”
CHOGYAM TRUNGPA
Having open space in our home or apartment for doing bodywork is important. If we want to do the many sessions previously outlined in this blog as well as sessions for releasing the body while standing or walking, having the room in our living space is quite useful.
Looking in at workout centers, with rows of machinery makes
me shudder. I prefer open space where I can walk around and explore what the
body feels like doing while breathing and occupying the space of my body. This
to me is a natural form of working out which works well for people of all ages.
Working to apply the feeling of alignment and following the natural rhythm of
the body, with its intuitive play, has more to do with health and well being
then pumping iron, or pushing and pulling different apparatuses, I do believe. I
am referring to the majority of us as opposed to the professional athlete’s
whose training may require doing many things to the body for competitive
reasons.
Certainly, the concepts of being in shape and working the
body, by using ‘others’ ideas of what is good for it, needs our discernment. I
feel, along with regular natural activity, breathing and applying alignment
principles will keep us fairly sound physically and give us more then what is
offered by most workouts that deal in straight lines and patterned motion. We
each tend to develop a unique way of feeling and moving our bodies, working with
that and the intuitive process we can find comfortable zones for being with our
body.
This week, I had a friend over that I worked with who is 64. He understands body work and alignment, but his body needed something more physically active, which he gets little chance for. He started to get a large belly and felt winded when he walked stairs or did any thing heavy duty.
I put him on the rebounder and had him do a 2 minute bounce. Before my eyes I observed how the body responded to this activity and actually helped the body to elongate! He doesn’t usually do anything physically athletic and this apparatus had him balancing the body and feeling it in new ways. Applying the full breathing while using the rebounder (which Jordan Gruber writes about and will have a book out shortly) helped him immediately work with handling the over weighted problem. The manifest benefits of using the rebounder in your own living space, I find, is worth strong consideration.
So, we could use some open areas in our living space to work and discover what helps us feel good. The full breathing, as we have covered in the past, also brings our attention to the immediate physical situation, which is a harmonic element for health and fitness. Working in our own living space provides us with a sense of being physically fine while unfolding the different releases that are unique to our own being. Call it working out or playing, the point is we can move the body in unpatterned ways that arise from the body. Again this can feel more child like, because we are not moving by any standards that are considered grown up or mature, what ever that means!
“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he
finds it attached to the rest of the world.”
. -John Muir, naturalist, (1838-1914)
Posted by harmon at January 25, 2005
Comments
Marvelous Harmon..I do so enjoy listening to your points of view...life is full and my living room is open for movement....lovely day harmon......Molly
Posted by: Molly on January 25, 2005
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