The training never stops.. Once you have begun your journey of body exploring and desire to achieve grace and ease in the physical body (paraphrasing Kit Laughlin's one line description of the Stretch Therapy™ system that he innovated), there comes a time where practice in specific sessions bleeds through into daily life. This process is similar in many other body-mind training systems - just pick the system(s) that you love the most and get practicing.
Speaking of Kit, what sparked today's blog for me was his blog POST for today - entitled 'Mindfulness in daily life'. Indeed, what I am talking about is the carrying over of cultivated body awareness (body-mindfulness) of the internal environment into daily life, through consciously seeking optimal tensional balance in the relationship between the soft tissues and bones in the body at any given moment - and just feeling the sensuous information coming from within.
When you approach a flight of stairs (you do take the stairs instead of the elevator, don't you..), it becomes an exercise in body-feel, alignment (yes, you also need the ability to react dynamically in all types of different alignments) and muscle activation patterning. When you are sitting, standing or moving; how little tension and energy is necessary to do the task smoothly and effectively?
Watching the body is also watching the mind. Another interesting thing to try is to pay attention to your various psycho-emotional states manifesting in the altered tension patterns of the body. First off you can try and find where these states express themselves in your body. With practice, you can catch these states at very low levels of increased tension; it would even seem, interestingly, that they come before your thoughts have even started being patterned by the state - or, at least, that is my personal experience of things.
Now, when you have attention on the internal state there is the practical detail of what's going on around you - so you obviously you have to have a dual awareness of 'inside' and 'outside'. Being so fascinated by the exploration inside the body that you knock you head on the lamp-shade (have done this many times) and stumble up/down a step is hardly being mindful, is it.
Kit Says:
ReplyDelete"The first time I heard this expression was on a train in Japan when Nigel and I were on our way back home from the amazing suburb Harajuku. Nigel was hanging onto the overhead bar in the subway and he had its training bag held out at arm's length in the hand of the other arm, level with the shoulders (so we would call it a deltoid lateral raise these days); he looked at me and said, "It never stops"! "
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