Experiencing technical difficulties…therefore nudibranchs.

Tags

nature, weirdness

This morning, my computer decided to start behaving strangely in ways that were highly alarming. As I struggle to back up some files and photos that I’d been neglectful of before they disappear forever into the ether, I am lacking time to write a coherent blog post.

However, just this weekend, I discovered that there are these wondrous animals I didn’t know about.

They look like this.

Or this:

Or this:

Or this.

Or really any number of other magnificent things. When things are difficult, it’s helpful to remember that there are such things in the world as this.

Oh and this:

A great description of a Rubenfeld session

Tags

bodymind, childhood sexual abuse, health, holistic, ilana rubenfeld, links, rubenfeld synergy, sessions

One of the better descriptions I’ve seen of a first and second Rubenfeld Synergy session, performed by veteran Judy Swallow in New York on an experiential journalist who covers holistic health there.

Check it out here in the Poughkeepsie Journal.

Trigger warning: non-graphic description of childhood sexual abuse – and a healing from it.

Some highlights:

She asks what’s going on, and I tell her my shoulders feel like a wooden coat hanger, holding up the weight of the world. She asks me to imagine myself at a younger age when I started taking responsibility for everything, and I see myself at 9. She asks what I am wearing, and I see me in a yellow dress. She asks what I would tell Little Linda, and I say I don’t have to be so scared, that I should take chances, that I was going to grow up to be great….

Afterward, she helps me sit up, and I feel a little lightheaded, and light-hearted. She guides me around the room, and I can feel myself walking solidly, my arms hanging freely from my shoulders. It is an amazing feeling, as if I had just received an hour of intensive body work instead of just this light touch and talk….

By using bodily sensations as a metaphor for life experiences, Rubenfeld Synergy Method can dive into long-held emotions, pain and beliefs. Experiencing them in the here and now — not as a static story but as something you can shift — is powerful and liberating.

 

Gone mad

Tags

links, mental-health

Gone mad

A rather brilliant, and frightening, description from the great Margaret Atwood.

Gardening, or, Doing What Makes You Happy

Tags

akrasia, bodymind, gardening, ground, habitual behavior, health, holistic, life

Yesterday, I spent a few hours out on the patio around the old, drained pool that accompanies my house.  Slowly, and in as cost-effective a way as possible (read: free), we’re filling the pool to make it into a garden bed.  Until then, though, we’re managing a bunch of containers, and yesterday was the first real chance I got to get out there and deal with them.  I pulled countless cosmos, morning glory, and maple seedlings, as well as other unnamed weeds.  I stirred up and amended the soil with compost from the past year.  I swept the concrete patio and threw everything into the empty pool.  And I planted lettuce, peas, cucumbers, carrots, and beans.

It only took a moment of pulling weeds and putting my hands in the rich soil to be reminded of how much I love doing this, how fulfilling I find growing things, eating things I’ve grown, and just playing in the dirt.  It grounds me, works my body, focuses my mind and nourishes my spirit – similar to rock climbing, really.  I’ve written elsewhere about akrasia, or the tendency to do things that don’t serve you, and avoid things that do, even though you know what’s going to make you feel good.  I’m not sure why it took so long for me to get out into the garden, in spite of all the good weather we’ve had: somehow, other things always seemed more important.

In any case, I got out there, I did some work, I got some sun, and I felt really good.  What have you done in the past few days that makes your body and spirit thank you for it?

 

Brief, but important.

Tags

body, gender, giving a voice, marketing, relationships, rubenfeld synergy, sexuality

A question I mean to put in my upcoming marketing materials, which the fabulous Julie Connor helped me crystallize the other day:

People who are exploring questions of gender, sexuality, or relationship styles…How would it feel to live comfortably, securely and proudly in your body for who you are?

I think that pretty much says it about how I want to be helping people.

Make an appointment with me here.

The stories we tell ourselves

Tags

befriend your body, body, bodymind, choice, feminism, health, inspiration, language, narrative, stories, wisdom of the body, women

I didn’t think I was an action hero, either. Photo by Christine Banna, 2010.

A few days ago, I came across a fantastic post about narrative, and how easy it is, given that we’re narrative creatures with storytelling in our DNA, to tell the same stories over and over about things, even when they aren’t true.

The title of the post is “‘We Have Always Fought’: Challenging the ‘Women, Cattle and Slaves’ Narrative,” and it’s by Kameron Hurley, who besides having a name very similar to my maiden name, is obviously awesome.

The gist of it is: we look at history and decide that women had only one role for the most part: male property.  Women weren’t fighters, or soldiers, or warriors.  But a growing mass of evidence – including DNA testing of Viking skeletons – shows that in fact, women did fight.  Often, and in great numbers.  Yet even the stories we currently tell – in films, books, video games, and so on – tell a different story: the story that we already “know” to be “true.”

This is an important lesson for the ways in which convenient, but untrue, narratives become True Actual Facts in our cultural lexicon.  But how many of us do this in our day to day lives – or have cultural narratives pressed upon us in ways we aren’t even aware of?

The work I do begins in the body, and the new theme of the Rubenfeld Synergy Method brand is “Befriend Your Body, Transform Your Life.”  Part of the reason for this new slogan is the realization of how much daily, lowercase-t trauma people go through around their bodies, just from the narratives that surround them.  How many women go around thinking they’re fat, constantly dieting and obsessing about their shapes?  How many men think their desires are shameful, due to oppressive religious ideas or traditional “family values”?  How many people out there truly love their bodies, think of them as an invaluable resource, their best friends?  Mostly, the prevailing narrative of the body in this culture is of shame, oversexualization (with very few acceptable notions of attractiveness), and forceful transformation: by our culture’s mainstream standards, our bodies are vehicles to carry our brains around, or else meat machines to be molded to our wills into a shape that is more desirable by the standards of Madison Avenue and Hollywood.

What about the things that are true on the ground: that people come in all shapes and sizes, and that many of them are healthy?  That people have a wide range of gender and sexual identities, not just the ones we regularly see on TV?  That beauty is everywhere, and in everyone?

And what about all the subtler ways we tell ourselves stories about our bodies?  I’m a climber, and I find myself constantly telling myself what I can’t do.  Imagine my surprise when one day I realized that I was consistently successfully climbing a level above what I’d been doing.  How often do you tell yourself, “I can’t,” or “Nice girls don’t,” or “Real men don’t do that,” or “That’s for other people?”

Yes, you can; you just haven’t tried.  Yes, nice girls do.  Real men eat quiche, garden, wear skirts, and dance.

Women have always fought. 

What might happen if you decided, today, right now, that your body was your greatest ally, instead of your enemy?

Welcome, new readers, and thanks!

Tags

bdsm, links, mental-health, rubenfeld synergy, sexuality, welcome

So, this little post kind of took off in the past couple of days, and in three days I’ve gotten more hits, I think, then I’d gotten previously total!  So thank you all for visiting, and I hope a lot of you will stick around!  I talk here about Rubenfeld Synergy Method – a talk plus touch healing modality, as well as its connection to theatre, music, sexuality, relationships, and, well, life.

I want to especially thank Kaz, though I don’t have any way to really link to her: she’s on Facebook, though!

If you want to look around here a bit and see if it’s a place you’d like to stay, here’s a good spot to start: My top 15 posts from my first year of blogging.

And finally, a brief article on a new study showing that people into BDSM may be more mentally healthy than the rest of the population.  (Also linked from Kaz; thanks!)

Childhood, consent, and learning to be human

Tags

childhood, choice, inspiration, leadership, links, rape culture, trauma, verbal consent

Can’t we do better?

What imprints do we receive as children?  When you were five, or six, or seven, what messages really stuck and taught you how people ought to treat each other, how you deserved to be treated, and what options you had for interaction with others?

I know for my part, I was teased a lot as a kid.  I was overly tall, overly smart, and overly quiet.  I was an only child, I moved a lot, and I didn’t get a lot of lessons on how to interact with kids my own age.  When I reported my tortures, I was told to ignore them because “they were just jealous.”  Even at six, I could tell that this was 1. patently untrue, and 2. totally useless to me in salving my pain.

A couple of pieces have crossed my path this week, too, about the power of adults to help kids negotiate consent with one another.  While one piece focused on how rape culture starts young, with the pernicious “boys will be boys” narrative, the other focused on the solution: how do we teach children to ask each other for consent, and to honor that consent?

I think it’s important that teasing and bullying be stopped by adults, and punished.  But I also wonder how much more we could do with teaching kids about how to ask each other permission, even for things they might initially think are definitely going to be a no?  “The ‘overarching attitudinal characteristic‘ of abusive men,” says Kate Elliott in the piece I linked above, “is entitlement.”  How much better might the world be – both for young people and for the adults they will become – if we taught kids to respect each other’s bodies at an early age?

As an illustration of this, I present this adorable story from my friend Kaz, who teaches swimming to kids at MIT.  It makes me wistful: I wonder what my childhood could have been like with a teacher like her, who not only called out bad behavior but sought to teach kids how to deal with each other like the little human beings they are.

Story below, in its entirety.

***

Ah teachable moments. Today I actually got to educate my kids about what consent is, in a completely non-sexual context. This one little boy, who’s totally the sort who will try to get attention any which way but how, splashed one of his classmates, right in the face.

Me: Hey, buddy, I saw what you did there. That’s hardly friendly. ::to the little girl in question:: You okay?

Little girl: Yeah, but now my eyes sting. (this happened when she had her goggles off)

Me: ::to the little boy:: That really wasn’t nice. Would you please apologize to her?

Little boy:: ::sheepishly cause he totally got caught:: I’m sorry.

Me: Now, that might have been okay if you had just asked her first.

Little boy:: What? ::stunned look on face::

Me: Splashing can be fun. Some people don’t mind being splashed as long as it’s their choice. But you have to ask. It’s called getting consent. It means that the thing you want to do is accepted by the other person, and isn’t a bad surprise. The other person may say, no. If that happens you can’t hassle them about it. You accept their no, but you may still ask other questions. For instance, you may ask if it’s okay to ask again at some other time. Regardless, other person may also say yes. Either way, it’s a good idea to ask. Plus, it can make things more fun.

Little boy: ::mind blown:: Really?

Me: Yup. Here, I’ll show you how it’s done. ::to little girl:: Hey. I really want to splash water in your face. Right now. Can I?

Little girl: No, thank you.

Me: Okay, then I won’t. Maybe some other time?

Little Girl: *giggling* Wait, I want you to ask me again.

Me: Okay. Hey, I’d still really like to splash water in your face. Can I?

Little Girl: Yes. As long as I get to splash back.

Me: Sounds great. Let’s! ::we splash one another and laugh about it::

For frame of reference these kids are around age 7. After I explained, they suddenly got much better about asking one another for consent about all sorts of things. “Hey, I’d like to go first this time (for dives) can I?” So on and so forth. It was kinda of mega awesome. I feel all spiffy.

 

Defining – and reaching – my specific audience.

Tags

clients, community, language, rubenfeld synergy, sexuality, society

“What’s your name when you’re at home?”  -Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Apologies for disappearing last week; I’m beginning work on a total revamp of the materials I use to reach the people I want to help.  In the course of this transition, I may be blogging here a bit less, but I’m hoping to keep it up at least once a week.

The thing that I’m recognizing is that while I am open to helping just about anyone who comes through my door, I really need to focus on reaching those people I enjoy working with the most, and whom I can most effectively help.  Over and over, I’m finding both that the people who reach out to me, and the people I enjoy working with, are people who have sexualities, gender presentations/identities, or relationship styles that are non-standard to the mainstream.

I am fortunate enough to live in a community of people who are open and accepting, and who both have and offer support to one another.  Included in this community are gays and lesbians and bisexual/pansexual folks, transgender and genderqueer people, polyamorous individuals, couples and families, and people into alternative expressions of sexuality like BDSM or “kink.”  It’s a loving network of human beings who have proved to be invaluable resources to one another, countless times in my experience, while they’re busy having regular lives – jobs, houses, kids, pets, family members who get sick and die, celebrations and tragedies.

Often, though, I realize how spoiled I am by this abundance.  People have contacted me who aren’t living openly, who don’t have this kind of community, who are scared of who they are, of their desires, and have not received the kind of loving support they need.

I want to help these people connect to their true selves, to their authentic and unique beauty, so they can experience the loving connection they desire and deserve.

So, having set this intention: the search for these clients begins.  But I want your help.

If you are reading this, and you identify yourself as falling into the population I describe above: how do you describe yourself?  Particularly to people outside of your immediate circles.  For instance: many people I know are comfortable using the word “queer” and throw it around amongst themselves.  However, I’m unsure to what degree those same people would use that terminology when attempting to describe themselves to someone who was outside of that group.

So: what do you call yourself to your community, and what do you call yourself when you’re identifying your sexuality outside of your community?

Finally: can you think of an umbrella term that covers everyone I’m talking about?  The LGBTQI label is nice, but seems not to include poly or kinky people per se.  Are there terms for this that you enjoy?  That you find insulting?  That you identify with, or strongly do not?

Your comments wanted.

Moving from habit to choice, part 2: true is not the same as right

Tags

bodymind, choice, diet, self-compassion, wisdom of the body

A long while back, I made a post about akrasia: our tendency to do things we know are bad for us in spite of ourselves.  Recently, I’ve been trying to make a fairly major dietary change in myself, based on a bunch of research and things I’ve observed to be healthier for my overall state than the Standard American Diet.

Unfortunately, though, giving up a lot of the junk – and in particular, ditching grains and sugar – tends to have a mixed effect in the first few weeks I try it.  For the first week I tend to feel pretty great – energized, satiated, filled with foods that are nourishing to me.  Around the end of the first week, though, I tend to get tired, even a bit depressed: sleeping too long, not feeling motivated, and at times, having brain-fog.

For these reasons, I’ve never made it past the 2-week mark on any kind of lower-carb diet.  According to a lot of people who try them, though, the first two weeks are the hardest, as your body adjusts; after that, chronic pains and symptoms start to disappear, body composition changes, energy levels rise, and so on and so forth.

I’m looking forward to that bit, but it’s awfully hard to get past the initial messages of the body in the moment – especially for someone who has studied and believes in the power of the body’s truth!  How can I listen to my body saying, “Gee, I’d be a lot happier if you gave me a cookie right now,” and ignore it?  Or more generally: where is the line between listening to your body with the knowledge that it always tells the truth, and getting stuck in bad habits because you can’t get past the body’s usual patterns?

Depression and anxiety can both have these problems, where we get caught in loops of what we think we want versus what would be best for us.  “I just want to sleep,” our depressed brain might say to us, when getting up and moving around would do us the most good.  “Eat that cookie,” says some part of me, and another part – ostensibly my brain – says, “No, have this apple instead.”  What do we do when our bodies – which we’ve established can only tell the truth in the present moment – are telling us to do things that don’t benefit us?

This is part of the trick of getting to know ourselves in all of our parts, as a prayer I’m fond of goes.  While getting to know our bodies and listen to their messages is essential to optimum health, it’s important not to mistake “always telling the truth” for “being an unerring guide for action.”  It takes our thinking, reasoning minds and our wise, compassionate spirits to translate the bare truths of our bodies into appropriate actions.

I believe that the more we listen to our bodies’ truths, the more often our thoughts, emotions and bodies come into alignment, or congruence, with one another.  At times like this, though, there are old patterns to get past: things my body has been doing for so long that they seem like the only right way.  If we carefully listen, and carefully honor ourselves, making life changes does get easier.  But it’s never a piece of cake.  Or an apple, for that matter.