Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Every Moment Is A Moment

We still “shelter in place” though this morning I rose early and walked around my neighborhood.  No one was out; all are tucked.

I wonder if there is a collective fear I feel since all in my realm are fine, even though we are all separately tucked.  

My mantra continues to be the words of Charlotte Selver, my teacher of Sensory Awareness.  I first met Charlotte in 1993. Over and over again, she said, “Every moment is a moment.” “Every moment can be cherished.”

Sensory Awareness carried me through chemotherapy and radiation. I return again and again to her words.

“What we allow of sensitivity is closely associated with love and innocence. A person who is self-conscious cannot allow.”  

I wonder if the banding together that is now required as we figure out how to share and function as a community is allowing us to return to love and innocence.  We don’t know what’s coming but we do know we’re in this together. I isolate to protect others, to allow the pandemic to come to calm.  I’m not alone in this. I have my place to stand and rest, my place to cultivate peace.

Charlotte continues, “It must come out of the direct contact of our real inner connection.”

I continue to reach within, to feel and allow. I trust what’s there to come forth in support.

Yesterday on the Sensory Awareness call, Stefan Laeng played the songs of blackbirds he’d recorded. I felt my heart sing in response.

Charlotte said: “There is a certain relationship which I have to have with my inner functioning – that of respect and that of wonder.”

I marvel at the functioning of the natural world, the world within me, and the world of which I’m part.  Birds are singing and I hear their wings pulse as they fly. They are supported by the weight of movement and space in their structure. We share the air.

Jasmine climbs the fence, jubilantly luxurious in answering the call and thrust of Spring

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

More on Sensory Awareness

In my last post I wrote about Sensory Awareness and an experiment where one feels what happens when making a fist and letting it go.

Here is more explanation of what it can mean in one’s life. It comes from Lee Klinger Lesser’s website in the section on the History of Sensory Awareness.

http://www.returntooursenses.com

Living with Fear – Surviving the Nazis

The impact of this work was far reaching. Gindler continued to teach in Berlin throughout World War II. She hid Jewish people in her studio and worked in subtle and powerful ways to help her students endure and meet what they were facing. One of her students, who was Jewish, Johanna Kulbach, describes her experience:

“The effect of the work was that I lost the fear. I was very much afraid. They were terrible times; we had bomb attacks and besides that we never knew when we were going to be put in a concentration camp – you never knew. I learned instead of staying in fear, to live in spite of it. That’s what I learned. So I got stronger and healthier, instead of really ill, as so many people did. I remember one time we experimented in making a fist and feeling out what it did to us. It was not only the fist that was tight; my stomach was in knots, my breathing was tight – it was total tightness. If you hold this for a while and are aware how tight you are, you yearn for letting go. Gindler kept us at this until I had a good sensation of what it is to be tight. Then slowly, slowly, the fist came open, and I tried to feel what changes happened. For the first time I experienced what it means to change after being afraid. . . That is what the work is: that you learn to sense where you hold, where living processes are not permitted to function. And when you are aware of the holding – where you are not allowing yourself to function – then it’s possible to let it go. But you have to sense it…”
(Kulbach, 1978, p.15).

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Tender Touch

My Sensory Awareness Leader’s Group met this morning on Zoom.  There were 41 of us from five countries: the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Germany and Spain.

Coming together in this way, I felt as if each of us was holding a ribbon on a Maypole. We were circling with our ribbons, as we spun round and round.  Near the end of the over three hours, I felt the Maypole with its spinning ribbons and people attached center in my heart, and there was room for more, for the whole earth and even more in the widening center of my heart.  

Terry Ray began leading us to feel, sense, and ground.  I felt my shoulders were ten feet across, ready to hold the weight of the world. My pelvis felt tiny, squeezed small and rigid. The inside of my mouth was small and tight, a cave.  When I pressed my lips together, pursed them, I felt that press in my heart.  All of this changed with noticing and allowing, simply allowing what was needed to change.

Stefan Laeng led us to differentiate thinking and sensing.  When I let go of thinking, when I came into and dropped into my body, I felt fear, and as I stayed with the fear, I released into being breathed,  so simple, simply being breathed, no effort at all.

Lee Lesser led the third hour with a return to the mouth.  She continued to lead us in exploring and sensing, and then she read us something Elsa Gindler had done with her students during WWII in Berlin as she hid Jewish students from the Nazis. 

Experiment with it now. Make a fist. How does it feel to make and hold a fist? What happens, is happening? How is it then to slowly release the fist, to slowly open the hand? What happens to the breath, the feet, the heart?

You can check out the Sensory Awareness Foundation and the three leaders at the website: https://SensoryAwareness.org.

It’s time to come together and swing around the pole of connection, and come into tender touch with ourselves, and through that, touch with others, and the world.

Embrace the possibilities unfolding in and around us now.

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Embrace

On day 4 of “shelter in place”, the sun is shining, birds are singing, and flowers and leaves are rumbling and tumbling forth.

A friend points out this is not social distancing.  It’s physical distancing and social solidarity.  I like it!

Today, our neighbor hangs a fresh homemade sourdough mini loaf on our fence. 

Another friend suggests I read the book, Death: The End of Self-Improvement by Joan Tolifson.  Intrigued by the title, I open to the first page, words on the practice of meditation by Zoketsu Norman Fischer.

“Practice is not about overcoming human problems. It’s not about becoming serene and transcendent.”  (Oh, well, that was my hope.)

“It’s about embracing our lives as they really are, and understanding at every point how deep and profound and gorgeous everything is – even the suffering, even the difficulty. So we forgive ourselves for our limitations, and we forgive this world for its pain. We don’t say, “That’s not pain.”  It is pain.  You don’t say, “It’s not difficulty.” It is difficult. But when we embrace the difficulty … we see this is exactly the difficulty we need, and this difficulty is the most beautiful and poignant thing in this world.”

I pause knowing he wrote these words before this difficulty we are now in, and yet, I understand, of course, yes.

Rumi speaks on the next page of the book.

Don’t grieve.

Anything you lose comes round

in another form …. 

God’s joy moves from unmarked box

to unmarked box, from cell to cell.

As rainwater, down into flower bed.

As roses, up from ground.

Now it looks like a plate of rice and fish,

now a cliff covered with vines,

now a horse being saddled.

It hides within these, till one day

it cracks them open.

Buddha Cat

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Tranquility

The news is sobering.  My son knows my love of Jellies, not Jellyfish, because they are not fish.  He sends me this offering by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, a beautiful way to float on waves of tranquility and peace. And now a little bird sits outside my window and chirps.

Breathe Ease

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Flopping All About

When a friend sent me the six ways people were coping with “shelter in place”, I realized why my blog posts have been all over the map.  I’ve been flopping between all six things, more unsettled than ever.  

  1. I’m sleeping more.
  2. Sometimes I feel out of body and I’m not even sure what space is.
  3. I’m pacing.
  4. I’m keeping things clean though not redecorating.
  5. I’m creatively cooking, going through recipes and what’s on my shelves, figuring this is a time to return to favorite dishes and ignore the calorie count.  
  6. For some, who’ve always been at home, there is no change.  Though I thought I was mainly at home, this has allowed me to see I’m out and about more than I knew.  It shows me if I am to experience the deep sink this unexpected retreat is meant to bring, I have a ways to go. Evolved, I am not.

Today, Aurelia Priotto St. John, a friend and colleague who lives in Italy, sent this to the Rosen Method Bodywork and Movement community.  She said I could share it if I thought it would help people. Since it helped me, I’m sharing it with you. For me, it was helpful to know I wasn’t the only one struggling to understand what was happening.  I couldn’t take it in, and now slowly the seep is anchoring roots.

Aurelia: 

Yesterday I wrote a letter to my Movement students and also to my Bodywork clients. “yesterday”, I say, because it took time these last 2 weeks to realize what was happening, to let us be touched by a different kind of reality that our country was entering.

Personally, I felt the need to stop and to let this fact impact me. An unknown silence had suddenly filled up our squares and streets, NO movement of people, busses, cars, No sounds in the air.

Something very deep and strong was passing, is passing and touching our beings.

It became so clear there was, there is nothing I could “fix” — a deep feeling of respect, something beyond what I can “know” and that a pause was so needed for me to, little by little, grasp what was going on, to be informed by this event.

It took awhile to take in what was and is happening. It took a while to allow this change to penetrate the awareness and wake up new questions and meanings for our life.

Little by little this penetration has had time to enter us and to connect us to a deeper level.

Aurelia suggests we listen to music, a “Sacred Hymn in C Minor”, allow it to enter and lead us, allow our body to find its way to respond, like a “moving prayer”.  Move as a child would, “free from judgment and expectations”.

I’ve been at my computer more than usual which is saying a great deal, but I see how many are reaching to connect with meditation and a need to talk. We, as intelligent organisms respond, and create new ways to stay in touch and evolve.

Meanwhile, honor the flop as you adjust moment by moment to new and trusting ways of being.  We’re in this together – one planet – one scent – one breath.

Jasmine in my yard continues to open and bloom offering a sweet and pungent scent

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Switching Gears

This morning I’m with the words of John Donne written 400 years ago when he was ill in 1623.

No man is an island,

entire of itself;

every man is a piece of the continent,

a part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less,

as well as if a promontory were.

as well as if a manor of thy friend’s

or of thine own were.

Any man’s death diminishes me,

because I am involved in mankind;

and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

it tolls for thee.

Since we’re isolated in our home because of our age, our neighbor leaves gifts of food on our fence.  Today is strawberries from the Farmer’s Market, the most beautiful strawberries ever seen. They are bright red and juicy.  I think of all that is involved in getting them to me, and then there is the thoughtful wrapping of placing them in a bag, and tying the bag to our fence, so we can go outside and retrieve.  Each berry, the greatest gift, and then, there is this time of isolation, each moment, a church, temple, mosque, monument, tree, all nourished in fluidity.  

I felt a shift in my being when I read about the Italian family in New Jersey who loved to gather and feast.  The matriarch was a regular at church, and yet now not only has she died from the virus but her oldest son and daughter have passed away too.   Four of her children are hospitalized; three are in critical condition.

I don’t know where to put this other than to open and open and open.  How much can I embrace, embrace and release, an island in the sea?

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Touch

My intention is to calm and view this “shelter in place” as a retreat. One minute I’m calm, spacious, mindful, present, radiant, and the next, well, I won’t say.  

I have a beautiful place to be, a husband, two cats, trees, plants, air, so why am I struggling?

I feel like a two-year old.  “You can’t tell me what to do!  I’ll do as I please.” And yet this is serious, and I understand that.  There is a place to sit.

Perhaps the problem is I view a retreat as peaceful and forget that it allows a place for rumblings to emerge.  Who am I after all? Do I exist? Is there an I?

My mind swirls all about, looking for Mind, which of course is here, and I can settle into the hammock of it, and then, a thought pours in to drop me off a cliff where I trust I will be caught. I have skills, years of study, years of skills. I’ve been preparing for this all my life.

When I was a child in Des Moines, Iowa, I was obsessed with skills to survive a nuclear attack. Reading the newspaper, I followed a group of people who’d been placed in the desert to study how they’d do. I knew to preserve one’s urine, to recycle what pours through. Well, this isn’t a nuclear attack and we have skills as a civilization. We have knowledge and wisdom, love and connection, and we’ll make it through.

I meditate, and ground.  My breath is here, and it’s a thrill to focus on my nostrils and feel, honor, and appreciate how creatively breath moves in and out.  That should be enough excitement for any day. There’s no repetition at all. I’m amazing, and I want to keep this place of amazement, but then the words of Heraclitus flow in:

“No man (or woman) ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river, and he’s not the same man (or woman).

So true.

Yesterday, a man came to spray our oak trees.  With the rain last year, the Sudden Oak Death Syndrome returned, and like that, we lost one of our anchoring oaks.  This man boosts the immune system of the remaining trees with a special vitamin mix fertilizer, so no poison is used to kill the disease, but instead a strengthening system is sprayed and spread to build up the immunity of the trees. 

Immunotherapy for trees.  He sprayed in the fall, and when he came yesterday, he said it’s working.  The remaining trees are doing great, and spreading out branches and leaves to welcome spring.

He kept reassuring me as he stood eight feet away that he was “safe”.  He fishes in the morning, the kind of fishing where you stand alone on the bank with no one near, and he’s with trees in the afternoon.  He didn’t hand me the bill, but leaned down to tuck it under the rug. He did take the check from my hand, and putting it in his pocket said he would leave it there for a few days.

Meanwhile I sit with why I’m struggling.  I love isolation, time to sit, but I hadn’t realized how much I intersperse isolation with activity, with a balance of in and out, and how I love to go to the grocery store and choose my produce, and wander through aisles with other people, children, and carts.

I keep coming back to myself though since that’s who’s here. I’m here, a playground of radiance and entertainment with blood and breath flowing through. I’m connected, touched, and I’m always new!

In this exploration, I’m especially aware of sound and the lack of it. My ears have expanded to touch vibration as it comes, to reach for it.  Oh, yes, what delight is this meeting of vibration from outside as it enters and caresses my eardrum. Touch!

And the three tiny bones in the middle ear, the hammer, anvil, and stirrup. I’m back in fifth grade where I made a clay model of the ear. My ears are entertainment centers. Sound travels through my feet and gut. I’m one, one with my universe, our universe. Relationship abounds.

And here’s some humor for the day.

Prediction – There will be a minor baby boom in 9 months, and in 2033, we’ll witness the rise of the Quaranteens.

May this be so!

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

St. Patrick’s Day

It’s St. Patrick’s Day and the pink in the sky reminds me of my intention to wear pink today, not green. I intend to attract leprechauns, and their spray of fairy dust.  There is a place, many places in my yard where they hang out, but today is the day they venture more visibly forth.

Figuring we need to mobilize all we can, I toss a little magical thinking your way this day.

Legend states that the Christian missionary Patrick rid Ireland of snakes during the fifth century A.D by leading them to the sea.  Scientists say the climate of Ireland was not conducive to snakes since the Ice Age so one might ask themselves from where the story came.  

I conclude that like Buddha and Christ, Patrick was simply meeting and bringing forth his inner demons and leading them to the sea. There, begone, a gentle riddance, since demons snakes and salt are not a good mix.

Since many of us are sheltered in place and can’t visit the sea today, or maybe we don’t live near, I suggest we fill a glass or bowl with water, no salt, bless it with loving intention, and toss fear, anger, and sorrow into the glass or bowl. Then, visit a plant, and pour the water gently over, a baptism, a soothing release of fear, anger, and sorrow.

The plant will respond with a blast of oxygen, the fuel that sparks our bloom, and saintliness will cleanse the day. The moon is half right now, balancing yin and yang, as it strokes our heart with trust and liveliness that springs.

The moon , a light amidst ribbons of pink in the morning sky today

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Flatten the Curve: Shelter in Place

I’m feeling a bit shell-shocked.  We are home and sheltered in place.  I understand the purpose and our kitties are happy.  I’m wondering now if this is a plot by our pets. They are clapping their paws together; You mean you won’t leave.  Our dreams have come true. You’ve finally figured it out. We are the most important beings in your life. It’s always been so clear and you didn’t see, but now you do. Always faithful are we, and now together in our home we will be.

But, more seriously, what is this for each of us? I keep reading that this is a pause, a chance to reflect. Yes, and for me, the parameters haven’t sunk in. I’ve crossed out everything on my calendar, and now I sit with what I might do, and of course there’s plenty I can do.   What an opportunity I might think, but instead I feel sad.

I need time to feel and find my way to serenity.  I’m puzzled. What does this mean? When will I see my children and friends? What will happen to people without jobs? How can the economy shut down and people survive? When will this end? Will isolation do the trick?

I understand this is an opportunity to expand our idea of family, but right now I’m scared. 

What happened to the carousel that was my world? How could it come to a halt? I understand it’s up to me to make my world, to feel support, and I will, well, in a few moments, I will. I’m still sliding my feet, using them as brakes, screaming no, this isn’t what I want, and now all my skills are scattered around me like pick-up sticks, and slowly I’ll pick each one up and make a ladder and climb to a wider view.

Yes, in a few moments that’s what I’ll do, but right now I’m in a slump.

Tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day. I’m told we wear green so the leprechauns can’t see us. Wearing green, we blend into the emerald isle.

This year I’m going to wear pink and beckon the leprechauns to come out, and sprinkle leprechaun magic all about. Isolating allows our collective power to spread, and pressure turns carbon to diamond, and in this dance of mindful awareness, we spin new ways to connect and heal.

May this be so, and may we all be well!

A jellyfish waiting in the sand for the tide to carry it back to sea