Rolfing! I'm seven weeks in with my 10-week series of deep tissue massage sessions. Each Wednesday I go to an office decorated with Buddhas and dream catchers to get constructively mauled by a short, stout 75 year old man in a Hawaiian shirt who looks me up and down while I'm standing in my underwear. Have I been taking bad acid in a Guantanamo Bay detention cell? Heck no, I'm paying for this stuff. He's worked my body all over with heavy duty massage, in order to loosen up my myo-facial system (muscles and the collagen that sheathes them). He's basically creating in me the potential for a great freedom of movement and possibility to realign my body in a stack that is harmonious with my anatomical structure and gravity. It's been really amazing to FEEL the difference between my usual somatic habits and what good posture can be. One incredible thing is that after having my feet and legs worked on, he suggested I go barefoot or just in sandals to let my arches stretch out. Historically, I've had really high arches and custom orthodics to support them. In the past I've been unable to go without orthodics for more than a few days before my arches begin to hurt. I'm now gone 6 weeks without them and haven't looked back, all after just my second session. Miracle cure? I don't know, but it feels good and liberating. If you want to know more, drop me a line.
Gestalt! I just did my weekend workshop this past Saturday up in Marin County. It's called the Empty Chair, and it involves getting in the middle of the circle of people and talking to an empty chair (in our case a cushion) where you put something or someone with whom you have unfinished business. I loved it. I talked about fears revolving around money and security, and my dreams of finding/creating a place that feels like a settled home that is safe and secure. Maybe everyone who's done more therapy than I already knew this, but talking about my issues and really OWNING all sides of my human experience is really liberating. That's one of the main thrusts of Gestalt work - acknowledging that we have polarities. We've got hate that goes with the love, greed that goes with the generosity, cruelty with the kindness, etc. They are all there, and that's fine. What a concept! It doesn't mean anything about what I need to go out and act on in my life, but owning all my feelings as opposed to cutting them off and resisting them is pretty freakin' sweet.
Wilderness! I'm headed in a few weeks up to the Sierra Nevada mountains to do some camping with friends, and a few solo nights as well. Yikes! I'm only afraid of the bears, and the deep darkness that feels like Nietzsche's abyss staring back at me. Wish me luck and mental stability.
Meditation! I've been facilitating a gathering of meditators here at my place (still at Magic in Palo Alto) each Saturday morning for a few months now. I say facilitating because I always feel strange when I say that I "lead" a meditation group. It's such a personal thing, I'm not leading squat. Often I'm barely able to hold on to my cushion for dear life and keep it together for that 30 minutes. But it feels so good to do it, and we've developed a small but determined community of sitters, pushing onward and always going Further. Afterwards we eat pancakes and talk about life, which is a great balance for the stillness in our sitting practice. If you're in the area, cornmeal buttermilk is the flapjack du jour these days.
Shifting gears...
I haven't been looking out at the world so much, which probably explains why I haven't blogged so much either. I assume business as usual is still going on. I saw a few days ago that drug companies lobbied heavily to get out their share of healthcare reform, complaining about taking too much of a hit or something like that. We are still a pretty sick culture, spending so much on guns and resisting a national healthcare system. When are we going to admit that private healthcare companies DON'T WORK? They certainly make huge amounts of money for people high up in their ranks. They certainly get good at boxing people out who might actually need healthcare, and therefore they save some money. But these for-profit companies (yes, I know technically they are non-profit, but that's the biggest pile of horse shit I can imagine. That's like Stanford University being a non-profit because it's an educational institution. When you've got $7 billion in your endowment, own thousands of acres, and partner with corporations and governments at the highest levels, you are basically just functioning like any other really large corporation. With that much money and politics involved, you may perhaps still be a non-profit in the letter of the law, but the spirit of it is completely gone.) Whoa, I got lost in my parentheses... Oh yes, medical Big Business. When the insurance companies are under pressure to perform and measure against the bottom line while paying tens or hundreds of millions in salaries, and when new drugs are multi-million dollar enterprises, we've got a system that is fundamentally BROKEN.
OK, so I guess I have been thinking about the outside world a bit. While I'm at it, when are we going to admit that capitalism in general has failed? When can we wake up and smell the viable socialist alternatives? Yes, there is all that reified (reified means ascribing human agency to an abstract idea, like "The company's quarterly report scared investors away.") crap about free markets "driving innovation" and competition "promoting" healthy survival of the fittest. I just don't like the feel of a system where 40 million people are without health insurance and we're barely going beyond twiddling our thumbs about it. How about the working poor and the homeless who have fallen off the bottom of the social ladder? Having been to a few countries with a functional government that actually tries to take care of all the people, it just seems like the more humane way to go.
I think many people in our country are motived by their fear of falling off that ladder. There's no parachute or trampoline there, just a scary future if you don't out-compete someone else. I don't like the idea of needing to compete. Doesn't anyone else feel like they'll sleep better knowing that they will be taken care of by a functioning welfare state (as in "your and my welfare", less about the mythical, lazy exploiters of welfare that we're supposed to fear from the Reagan years) when they get old or sick, or when their kids want to go to college? Does it seem so crazy to just hard cap everyone's personal income at $3,000,000 dollars and everything beyond that goes to taxes? Oh yeah, I'm totally sure that would instantly kill all motivation to work hard or innovate. I'm sure we'd all suddenly be living in a Maoist nightmare where we all have to rotate jobs and live in ugly concrete apartment blocks. I would just be crushed if I could ONLY earn $3,000,000 dollars a year while I had to grind my teeth knowing all my tax money went to take care of my elderly neighbors and folks in the neighborhood who came down with cancer. That would be a tragedy.
Hello sarcasm. Where'd that come from? Must be the Gestalt therapy helping me let it out...
Yes, I'm a dreamer, and possibly one who should go live in a socialist country. But I'm not the only one. Maybe the big theme on my mind these days is: Be Kind, to ourselves and others. We know that what goes around comes around. We know that most of our privilege in life is an accident of our birth (race, gender, how many Benjamins our parents have racked up in the bank). When can we let go of the fear and struggle and learn to share ourselves a little more with those around us? If we all turned the rat race down a notch, what might happen? I don't know, but I love the sound of that experiment. It's the only way I can imagine to move towards more love, peace, and taking care of each other. It's way too big a fish to fry in any quick fix, even for a country with a charismatic young President who has big hopes and a decent portion of the population behind him. It's going to take all of us resisting old fears and dysfunctional patterns. We need to re-invent how we live. We've got to slow down, eat well, listen to each other, get back into our bodies, stop these Wars Without End, own our fears about climate change, and spend time in a park with loved ones on the weekend.
My gray cells are firing and I'm thinking of you all, wishing you peace in your corner of the world. Big love going out to those who have just returned from the canoe trip up north to the Arctic. You are super stars and tough cookies! And a peace sign, thumbs up, California Right On to everyone who has written to tell me of what they've taken on this summer. Philadelphia, San Diego, Bethlehem, Guelph, New York, D.C., and others I don't even know of yet. You are my raison d'ecriver and owners of those beautiful gems known as Your Lives....
