May 012017
 

A dear client recently mentioned to me that one of the worst things about being single and aging is the absence of touch.

 

Approximately a decade ago I picked up a random book at the Florida School of Massage, it’s title was simple enough: “Touching” and I was struck by how large the book was for such a simple topic.  As I dove into it I was completely blown away; it became one of those books that I recommended and referenced many times and that defined a moment in my life.
I recall the author, Ashley Montagu, mentioning research showing that infant mammals deprived of touch (but still fed) quickly died.  I recall him describing how gestures we often consider to be affection (such as a mother dog licking her pups) do so much more such as engage the digestive system and stimulate vital neural responses.  Touch influences our physical development, our emotional development, our cognitive development… it helps us both know ourselves and know our surroundings.  Oh, and what is largest human organ?  Our skin.

As infants we are, hopefully, touched all the time.  We are tickled, carried around, cleaned, snuggled, massaged, rolled around, thrown up in the air, hung upside down by our feet, raspberried, and many more forms of touch.  There is numerous research on the positive effects of touch on newborns and on the negative effects of the deprivation of touch; and even though I think that information still needs to be emphasized I actually want to point to the later stages of life.
You, as a single adult, how many times were you touched today?  What was the context and content of that touch?  How much of it was for a positive reason and had positive effects?
And you, the adult in a relationship, how many times were you touched today?  Touched by your partner of 5, 15, 40yrs?  Touched by your kids?  Touched by a friend?  And in what way did it affect you?
When was the last time you were touched in a way that moved you deeply?

I am not writing an article here, just wanting to invite your thoughts and to share mine.  I’ve grown to understand that there are several things in life for which we cannot correctly use our reasoning mind; for those things we need to use other ways of seeing.  The Franciscan priest Richard Rohr says there are 6 things which we cannot have “any honest notion of” by using our reasoning minds, those are: 1- Love, 2-Death, 3- Suffering, 4- the Infinity or Eternity, 5- God, 6- Sexuality.
We need to use reasoning to figure out the total costs involved on a trip to the grocery store, we need to use reasoning to drive our bicycle or car, we use reason even to read a book or watch a movie (though at times we can find ourselves emotional at a particularly good moment in those).  But then we end up defaulting to reason when we do other things such as non-business communication, or when we look at Nature, or think of God, or have sex, when we ask ourselves if we love someone, and when we try to empathize with someone, in those occasions we cannot accurately understand the situation by using our reasoning brain and we really should be using our hearts.
Our reasoning mind tells us that we can easily survive without touching each other, we do it all the time, yet I believe that when observed with our hearts it is an evident truth that we are lacking in touch.

 

 

Some references:

Touching – Ashley Montagu

On Being (podcast) – Richard Rohr with Krista Tippett – April 13 2017

http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/power-touch

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wired-success/201503/8-reasons-why-we-need-human-touch-more-ever

https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201303/the-power-touch

https://psychcentral.com/lib/are-we-touching-each-other-enough/

Jan 042016
 

2015 is behind us

I haven’t posted in a couple of weeks but I have been producing content and actually posting it on my Facebook page.  I’m excited to post some of those updates here as well as get my videos page up to date.

But firstly I wanted to share a few pictures of the latest art I made first this past Christmas.  IMG_0881IMG_0884IMG_0878IMG_0880I’m reminded of the quote:

It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
― William Carlos Williams, Asphodel, That Greeny Flower and Other Love Poems: That Greeny Flower

Art is poetry and seems to be undervalued in schools and our everyday life.  Sure there are poets and artists but we are all poets and artists and need to care for that part of ourselves… or we too may die miserably from that absence.

I made this feather inspired on the style of beading that is found in Native American art; it was made for my daughter who has Native American blood.  The 4 colors red, blue, yellow, green represent both the 4 directions as well as the four elements in her family in this home (though she has a much larger family); I wanted to weave those 4 elements to indicate how they are all deeply bound together.  The feathers are owl feathers which, from what I am told, are not traditionally used by Native American culture for ceremony but my daughter found them and has wanted to honor them for a long time.

 

Jul 212014
 
20120829113504-Marion_Woodman

9780670893744This beautiful book (the cover art is really beautiful) was handed to me by a friend and, though my wife already had a copy, we decided to keep it so I could read it and tag it all I wanted. Someone had already gone ahead and written in the book in pen (someone called Marion Woodman) so I didn’t feel as bad about adding my notes.

This book is made up of diary excerpts from a period in Woodman’s life when she was diagnosed and treated for cancer; the entries are from November 1993 to April 1995. It is now 2014, 20 years later, and Woodman is still alive.

20120829113504-Marion_Woodman

Her dedication to life, to studying life and being fully present really comes across and is very inspirational. At one point she goes through all her photo albums and her family photo albums and burns all but a select few of the pictures in order to simplify her life to the point where there is no clutter to interfere with her ability to perceive life in all its subtleties and also her ability to exactly connect intention/visualizations to physicality.

I strongly recommend this book and I’ll now add some excerpts.

Bone is also about the stark truth of growing older. (…) What does it mean to be an elder in this culture? What are my new responsibilities? What has to be let go to make room for the transformations of energy that are ready to pour through the body-soul? I don’t want to be here if I can’t carry my own weight. As life asks new things of me, I feel I must pause, go inward, and ask, “What is my weight now? What are my new values? Who am I and not-I at this stage? Do I have the courage to live with this evolving me?”

Death present in cancer was death asking to be accepted into my life.

Ross and I went grocery shopping today. As we drove past St. Jo’s I tried to understand I was going in there tomorrow to be operated on for cancer. Dear God, it is amazing how we go about the ordinary tasks in the face of the mystery.

Mysticism must rest on crystal clear honesty, can only come after things have been stripped down to their naked reality. – Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life

This walk with Death makes me realize yet deeper that ther is no freedom without discipline–physically, emotionally, spiritually.

The anorexic takes the rage in and kills herself; the adolescent boys take it out and kill the power-crazy drunken patriarchs who are their fathers or surrogate fathers.

Repressed energy returns to haunt us in symbol and symptom.

What we [Marion and her husband Ross] are experiencing is what a Japanese martial arts master once explained to me. What you watch for in your opponent is a suki–a moment when his mind goes out of his body. If you are present, your conscious mind in your body will know instantly if his conscious mind leaves his body. He is finished once that happens. We aren’t sparring, just holding presence. We are accepting the gifts of science that can spare my life immediately; we are also focusing on spiritual and alternative medicines for the future. We’re relaxing into the blend of science and soul.

Simplifying becomes my total focus. I’m noting how anxious I become when I fail to simplify or cannot simplify because of what starts happening around me–phone, TV, letters, ad infinitum. I believe that failure to simplify could lead me back into cancer because I would lose touch with my life vibration–my tone that sustains my life force.
(…)
Anxiety is stripped away by concentrated listening and perceiving. Concentrated vision operating in all the senses is what I mean by simplifying. The more I listen to my soul, the more clearly I hear the truth of other people, of animals, birds, the universe.
(…)
I must stay in touch with whatever keeps me focused on the still point–the place of exact harmony in body and psyche. Simplify life to that point where the dance can happen–the dance between consciousness and the unconscious. So long as I constantly allow other things to interfere, I will never find the moments in each day to reach those listening points of harmony–those seeing points of perception.

Jun 112014
 
whirling-dervishes

Walking a Sacred Path – Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual Tool
by Dr. Lauren Artress

I walked into the Friends of the Library booksale in Gainesville, Florida, a glorious event which just happened to coincide with my month-long sabbatical in Gainesville.
My wife and daughter quickly appropriated shopping carts and began filling them up with books and magazines.  I took one walk around and, right at the beginning of the walk, came across the only book I was to buy: Walking a Sacred Path:

Walking a sacred path

I am extremely curious and constantly find myself wanting to learn a million different trades, yet, at the same time, I have learned to become aware of the channel or thread in my life, of the river I’m flowing along and how its currents give me a sense of the turns ahead.  Shortly before this I had turned for the first time.  I had visited a Sufi family and, in their beautifully simple and sacred livingroom, had learned to turn or whirl for the first time.

whirling-dervishes

I told the lady, Hilal, right from the beginning that I get dizzy fast (takes less than 2 spins with my daughter or son to feel like the world is all wrong) yet I handed over my person to this age-old practice.  That night I was invited to turn and I did so twice for 30 minutes each time.  I could feel my body grow cold and sweaty/clammy; I turned until I stopped turning and the world began turning around me; I turned together with others and I lost myself in the practice and came out changed.
Sufi’s work hard in their spiritual practice.  It is hard work.  Physically and mentally.

The similarities between the Sufi practice of turning and the Christian-mysticisms practice of walking the labyrinth are evident.  Both practices involve a surrender to the present moment, to a loss of attaining a goal because the practice itself is so hard that only staying in the very instant will get you through; both involve circling or spiraling, a loss of linear external orientation and an entering into an internal compass; both are physical practices for spiritual goals.

This book felt small, concise, sharp (for the most part… sometimes felt a little convince-y) and written from a passionate and knowledgeable perspective.  I definitely recommend it.  Dr. Lauren Artress found herself drawn to the labyrinth in her personal life path and then worked to understand it in the context of Christian spiritual practice and did extensive work to divulge/reanimate it.
I strongly agree with the author’s emphasis on spirituality being a personal experience and a personal endeavour and what we need is tools for assisting the individual’s connection to spirit, to their spiritual path, rather than an an external entity dictating our spiritual path.  The labyrinth is one tool for connection to spirit.

“To walk a sacred path, each of us must find our own touchstone that puts us in contact with the invisible thread.  This touchstone can be nature (as it was for me early on), sharing with our friends, playing with our children, painting on our day off, or walking in the country.  It may be the Sunday-morning liturgy and Eucharist.  Walking a sacred path means that we know the importance of returning to the touchstone that moves us.  The labyrinth can serve as a touchstone.”

“It is a container for the creative imagination to align with our heart’s desire, it is a place where we can profoundly, yet playfully, experience our soul’s longing and intention.”

“The experience is different for everyone because each of us brings different raw material to the labyrinth.”

“We need to be shaken out of our complacency and begin to use our short time here creatively so we don’t look back in regret.  …  To be pilgrims walking on a path to the next century, we need to participate in the dance between silence and image, ear and eye, inner and outer.  We need to change our seeking into discovery, our drifting into pilgrimage.”

Enjoy this book

Jun 102014
 

Screen Shot 2014-06-09 at 8.37.24 PM

I’ve been meaning to write about this movement towards stillness that my work has recently taken and, particularly, about my experience during a recent session in this Stillness Project.  The session first.

There was very little initial check-in other than the most important points such “is there anything I need to know?” and then I sat down cross-legged and the client lay down resting their head on my hands.  And it could be said that the session both started and ended right there as between beginning and end we find story and action where here there was none.

There was no story, no action, and no intention either.

And in this goal-lessness there arose a strong connection to my heart.  Without looking or asking or searching I noticed the presence of Heart in and around me.  I would venture to say that the lack of looking and asking and seeking allowed me to notice the presence of Heart that was there in the deeper fabric of experience.

From stillness arises heart.

Carl Jung visited the Indians of New Mexico and met with Ochwiay Biano (Mountain Lake), a chief of the Taos pueblos.  He related this interaction with the chief:

“See,” Ochwiay Biano said, “how cruel the whites look. Their lips are thin, their noses sharp, their faces furrowed and distorted by folds. Their eyes have a staring expression; they are always seeking something. What are they seeking? The whites always want something; they are always uneasy and restless. We do not know what they want. We do not understand them. We think that they are mad.”

I asked him why he thought the whites were all mad.

“They say that they think with their heads,” he replied.

“Why of course. What do you think with?” I asked him in surprise.

“We think here,” he said, indicating his heart.

May we learn to be without seeking and thus allow for our heart to be our guide.