In Remembrance of All

On the heels of the tragedy in Connecticut, I attended another memorial this week of a dear friend who passed after six years of struggle. This is the sixth passing of personal friends and family so far this year. This year when my own mother passed, I remembered how empty I felt. I also remember how full I was with emotion.

In remembrance of All, who knew their days were numbered and befriended death as a natural part of the cycle of life, I say Peace Be With You; To All who never knew what hit them and died suddenly in innocence, I say "Blessed be the pure of heart for they shall see God."; To All who struggle daily with the reminder that death knocks harshly and violently at their village doors and city streets  I say "Blessed be the meek for they shall inherit the earth".  

I offer this poem to All. We are you, me, us and them. You and I are not separate from one another, we bleed the same...

THE CLAY BOWL'S DESTINY  by HAFIZ ( Persian mystic, Sufi master and Poet -1320-1389

               The

Ship you are riding on,

    Look where it is

           Heading:

Your body's port is the graveyard.

Realizing the destiny of each clay bowl

               Tossed into the sky

                  with no one to 

                      Catch it.

                      I finally

Accept the Beloved's kind offer

                 To enroll

                   In

           His sublime

     Ball-busting course

                  Of

               Spirit

                Love.

A Knot is a Not is a Know

Recently a client came to see me because he had extreme difficulty turning his neck and felt choked up in the throat. I inquired, as I always do, if there were any current or recent concerns, issues or events that could be contributing factors to one's physical symptoms. In this case, this individual had recently quit a job due to a verbally abusive employer.

Using very delicate healing touch to soothe the neck muscles that stretched from the back of the skull to the front of the throat, I slowly relaxed layers of tension from my client. At one point, there was a singular muscular knot of tension that was so tight, that it felt like a large acorn beneath my fingers. I asked my client to bring his attention to this area.  I shared with him, that often my experience as a body psychotherapist is, that knots in the body that wont release are negative messages or "nots" waiting to be addressed.

I asked him if there was "not" something that he was holding inside? Barely able to clear his throat to answer me, while his eyes slightly moistened, he whispered "self doubt".  It was then that he told me some of the derogatory messages that had been directed toward him by one particular boss at his work. Slowly over time, the seed of "self doubt" took hold and began to grow. His shared how he was slowly becoming less certain of his talents and questioned whether the boss was right after all. 

Two healing dynamics ensued: one, to continue to stay in contact with the physical knot in his neck that needed to dissolve and two, to resolve the emotional confusion around the deliberate attack on him and his power. My client came to realize that he need not doubt his own natural power; that he had what it took to succeed based on other professional feedback; he also learned that those who are secure in their own power need not attack another. When my client left my office, he left feeling whole again. His neck had full range of motion again. His self esteem was restored. He also discovered how his body, emotions and thoughts are inseparable. 

The Nourishment of Silence

On a recent visit to hear the Phila. Orchestra, I was struck by my own need, after the concert, for a pure silence to accompany me on my ride home. I thought it was a bit curious that I was so insistent and sensitive to this need for silence, until I tuned into my body and experienced just how 'full' I felt. I became aware that it wasn't possible for me to ingest anything more. I had partaken in an auditory, sensory feast that was  equivalent to the excellent meal that filled me on Thanksgiving Day. Now I simply had to digest the richness that had filled my senses. A protective womb of silence would provide the space I needed for me to do just that. 

This experience, although not new to me, got me thinking about silence as an essential factor in one's metabolic and psychic health. In our culture, learning to be comfortable in and with silence is easily swallowed up by our insatiable, addictive appetites for the latest information that comes across our air waves. Acquiring a developed taste for inner silence isn't easy to achieve on a constant full stomach.

I remember years ago working with a businessman that came to me for stress relief. Through our conversations about his lifestyle and work habits, he shared that he travelled most days and would end each evening, after a long day of meetings and sales, watching tv. until he fell asleep.  It became evident that what he suffered from was too much stimuli and a lack of silence that could have helped him tune into his own personal rhythm and decompress naturally. Although this isn't an uncommon scenario, it does speak to a broader social addiction that requires constant feeding and creates  a condition I refer to as a"psychic obesity".  How possible is it for one to extract the fullest sense of meaning, essence or nutrients from a present moment experience when systems are already operating on overload? How this translates to our bodies is a topic for another day.

   Fritz Perls , co-founder of Gestalt Therapy identified physio/psycho/emotional health as a human being's basic need to process life's experiences in an uninterrupted, metabolic fashion that could allow for proper assimilation, digestion and elimination. In other words, we are naturally hardwired to break down life experiences one bite at a time. Ask any dream therapist, psychotherapist, holistic doctor or nutritionist. Nothing that is worth chewing on escapes the inner self; and, what we choose to ignore always comes back to bite us in the .... Lastly, everything else that is indigestible requires our rightful refusal.  These principles are whole body wisdom.

 I have one simple exercise that I have developed and can share as a practice that will awaken and sensitize your body to the healing sound of silence and its enveloping presence. Bring you attention to your breath as a whole body activity. Let the inhale and exhale be a full body movement.  Stay with this sensation until you feel all of yourself is breathing. Now evoke the Presence of Silence into your surrounding space. Imagine Silence appears and envelops the atmosphere around you in a sacred, respectful way. Allow the power of Silence to filter out all other noise. Let silence contain you, so you may open up deeply into your space. Now allow yourself to listen to the fullness of Silence as a Presence. It asks nothing of you. Allow yourself to sense the power of Silence. It is fertile in its' emptiness.  If you evoke Silence as a Presence then it can envelop you in a gentle way. You will discover that your breathing relaxes, as does your body. You can begin to feel and take stock in what your body has actually absorbed that day and needs to assimilate, digest and eliminate. Silence provides a mantle of protection for you so you can take the necessary time to slow down and not lose yourself. Practice the art of just being.

Chado- The Art and Heart of Tea, a Zen Mindfulness Practice

Taeko Sensei at Inaugural Celebration 11/10/12 Twenty five years ago I witnessed my first Japanese Tea ceremony at an introductory event to the art of Chado or tea on the campus of LaSalle University. I recall that Brother Joseph Keenan, who founded the Urasenke La Salle School of Chado with friends, and who later became my dear friend and Sensei, announced to a full house of observers that anyone interested in learning more about the Japanese Tea ceremony could see him afterwards. Little did I know how fortuitous that day would be for me in my own personal, spiritual, professional and relational development.

Having spent the prior seventeen years being a yogini, I had learned how to breathe, move, stretch and meditated my way through university training, developing a holistic profession, two home births, folding laundry and  cooking meals for a family of four. What I failed to learn and needed to master was "the art of being", a working mother, lover, healer and friend who could remain in the present moment and engaged in all of my senses. In other words, tackle the mundane tasks of life, without feeling that I'd rather be doing or being somewhere else.

What I discovered through my ten year study and practice of Chado is simple yet complex.  The heart of Chado lies in the "intention" one holds in the moment. Through this awareness I began to experience the power of being present and having presence. It became clear that when I became attentive with intention, I embodied my movements, gestures and speech and my expressions imparted meaning and grace. I had discovered the secret of the ages. How to exalt the mundane to the sublime! Now, attending to  housework nor anything else was no longer experienced as a necessary interruption from what I deemed more valuable. Fateful as it was, the practice of tea, became another precursor to the development of my BodyWord® process.  It is this ancient body wisdom that spoke through my soul and compelled me to return to tea class, week after week for so many years.  Most people thought I was in the practice of making tea. It was love that I was making, in its most social form.

Chado is one of the oldest disciplines of Zen mindfulness that dates back to the sixteenth century in Japan by Buddhist monk, Sen no Rikyu.  Veiled in the modest offering of a bowl of tea, Chado engages all of the senses for both the host/hostess and the guest. The relationship between host and guest is of upmost importance and is elevated to its highest forms of respect through an artistry and purity of heart expressed in the symbolic cleansing, then offering, of tea in a  beautifully crafted pottery bowl. 

Urasenke LaSalle Tea School has now been absorbed into the newly recognized and inaugurated Chado Uranske Tankokai Philadelphia Association which will continue to teach classes and hold demonstrations of the Zen art and practice of Chado at Shofuso , the Japanese House and Garden, in Fairmount Park. Taeko (Shervin) Sensei and Mariko Sensei continue to teach, much in honor of our local  founder, Brother  Joseph Keenan who has passed away since those earliest days in 1987.

Body Inhabitance Asks Us to Live Fully in Our Bodies

Body Psychotherapist Ellen Gayda Defines 'Body Inhabitance' Asking 'Do You Live in Your Body or Have You Gone Fishing?' Anne of Carversville Health & Happiness

My client and now friend Anne Enke has become one of my most vocal advocates. Actually, Anne calls herself an apostle of my therapies. Because her website AnneofCarversville has such a large readership, Anne hopes to use her own therapeutic experiences to educate people about body psychotherapy and my approach to healing body, mind and spirit.

Anne asked me to define my concept of body inhabitance and the goals of my Women's Circle workshops. I shared these words with her readers:

Anne,to elaborate on what inhabitance in the body is, I would simply say that inhabitance, is an emotional, psychological and spiritual commitment to be in an intimate relationship with one’s own physical body or ,as poet John O”Donoghue would say, “the soul’s clay body”. It is no surprise as our world becomes more impersonal that intimacy isn’t understood correctly, because it is rarely experienced. The very nature of intimacy is an active state of receptivity.Learning to be receptive to oneself develops body wisdom.

Intimacy is personal. There is nothing more personal than being inhabited. I am dedicated to helping individuals experience one’s own body as a dwelling place that encourages healthy communication, no judgement and allows one’s creative consciousness to express itself in its’ many languages and intelligences. Healthy inhabitance can be equated to living in your dream home with a family that loves, supports and recognizes you for who you are! It is no wonder than most have hung a sign on their own bodies that say” Gone Fishing”. Living in our bodies as our home place can be a foreign concept, especially if home life as a child was undesirable.

The purpose of the workshop is to awaken such awareness and feelings and offer new perspectives that challenge one to reclaim inhabitance in the intimate body as the best address in town.

 It amused me to hear that Anne's readers were positively charmed by my hat. Just between us, I have about 40 -- one for every mood of my creative consciousness. Ellen