Be the change you want to see.

getting over a nasty sinus infection that settled in my chest. Again.

it got bad enough this weekend that I couldn't sleep and my abdominal muscles started locking up after the violence of the spasmodic coughing.

never again will I wait so long before seeking help.

One: I have two kinds of bronchial inhalers, I will use BOTH, I will remember that I HAVE both and will use both when I start getting in trouble.

Two: one night of no-sleep is the dealbreaker now. One night, then get the doctor.

Three: try and figure out wtf is the problem with my head (I know, my mom was like this too) that makes it so I'd rather harm myself literally than perceive that I was disappointing other people.

Four: the doctor is there to help preserve your health and life. they're not put out when you go to see them with an actual problem, and if they are, then you need to see another doctor.

Five: crowdsourcing your health advice is a not-horrible option when you have people who actually do give a shit about you and not just posting clever quips. (My friends DO give a shit, I've seen other people get much less helpful comments, the bastards)

Six: saying I CAN'T BREATHE WELL if true, is an excellent way to get taken seriously with my HMO.

Seven: My HMO did good work again, I'm just saying.

Eight: it's time to write down all the meds I'm taking and when, so I can make sure to take ALL OF THEM (I forgot to do the inhalers till well around dinner time and it wasn't very fun.

Nine: More water, more hydration, and I want to go pick up some of that guaifenisin stuff to add to the regimen; and I need to get more sleep.

10: I'll be done with the antibiotics by this time next week but I need to keep using the inhalers through the first week of August (21 days since onset, minimum)

Ten things make a list, ergo a blog post. Sorry this is boring, glad I'm not dead (or suffering like I was before).

Having this broken hand , has been a whole exercise in how to put up with doing things imperfectly. (she says as she edits the post)

Dictation at the moment, speech-to-text, it's one of the accommodations I started using pretty early on in the healing process after breaking the base of my pinky and top off of my radius my right hand , on New Year's Eve. Doing things imperfectly doesn't come easy to me. More prone to refusing to try to do something. I'm more likely to give up easy after trying to do something if it doesn't come easy. One positive thing for me about the ADHD: learning that that's a trait! it's a thing about the way that this kind of brain works.

But actually I was swimming (wtf? not even close to what I said) to post about this today because had a lovely visit with Allison and Fritz , including a delicious dinner, a seriously delicious dinner. But something about walking into their house today for some reason gave me an insight into something new that I needed to do for my hand? I suddenly flashed on there was a new place to try to massage and stretch that I hadn't tried before.

Maybe this has to do somehow with Alison being a massage therapist but anyway I found some incredibly painful and Incredibly needed places in between my fingers to massage right at the point where the fingers' flesh joins each other to become the hand and had a breakthrough! (sudden breakup/breakdown of incredibly tight fascia according to Alison.)

I woke up a little while ago or half woke up cuz it's quarter to 5 in the morning right now, full moon is still out and shining through the bedroom window, I woke myself up massaging my hand again and doing Hand Therapy again. It feels different now, than it did yesterday because of the work I was figuring out how to do today and then Allison worked on my hand a little bit too which also helped and she had a heating kind of massage oil which seems to be very effective so high hopes for the flexibility in the healing of my hand and arm to maybe we've turned up what do they call it maybe I've turned a corner? I think that's the right turn of phrase so I just wanted to get up, empty my brain for a minute, and I'm going to have to edit this later because speech to text never works perfectly.

Hopefully I'll be able to go get some more sleep now. And forgive all the weird word choices from this very very stream of consciousness post. And wish me well with my hand? Suddenly feeling much less angra vated (wtf speech to text that's not even a word?) AGGRAVATED with it and the long long time it has been taking to heal.

thanks for listening.

Ground, Center, Shield
April 16, 2014 at 7:08pm
A friend elsenet asked for more information about these skills. Thought I'd save my notes here for future reference.



Have you ever been taught how to ground and center? Many folk I know who are empathic, who collect energies from around them, use the technique for energy management, it works as mood management/meditation for me also.

Let me tell you how I do it. My training involved learning about chakras, which I use, but it's not required.

quickest method of *grounding* is to use whatever visualization works best for you. Here are a few I have used.



1) hug a tree. Press your chest and face against the bark. Feel your heart full of everything that is Just Too Much, and gently push that whole tangle forward, envisioning the tree soaking it in like the earth soaks in rain, and then running down in its various strands, to the roots of the tree to disperse harmlessly into the earth.

2) Take a palm sized stone in your hand. You'll know a good stone for the purpose, it will just feel right. I hold it up next to my heart (I have two for this), and similarly to the tree-hug technique, push everything you don't need out into the stone. If you'll be using this technique often, a "quick" recharge of such a stone can involve a salt-water soaking, set it outside where the sun can bake it and the moon can shine on it for 24 hours, or bury it briefly in living earth (couple hours would do).

3a) I learned that for me, images from the classic Greek Elements work best; (part of my training and habituation). a Water grounding involves sitting quietly somewhere, and envisioning all the disturbing energies starting to gather and pool at the base of my spine, and then slowly drawing fresh "water" up through me, washing the brackish disturbing energies up and out through the top of my head, washing down the back of my head and back, to flow back into the earth.

3b) Another kind of Water grounding I find effective works when I am lying down in bed, on the floor, or on a couch, wherever I can sprawl comfortably and not feel constricted at all. Close your eyes and remember times you've floated freely in water, how your limbs feel, maybe your hair floats around you. The water laps at you with gentle waves and carries off everything you don't need, gradually, till your mind is at piece.

4) a Fire grounding might involve very intentionally feeling everything very intensely, while envisioning a fiery inferno engulfing this "fuel". Continue envisioning the fire as it dies down to low flames, to coals, to embers, to sparks, to cold ash. Then sweep your "hearth" and dig the "ashes" into your garden for fertilizer.


**oh, and slow deep steady breathing for 1, 2, 3a, 3b, throughout the exercise; 4 probably wants something closer to quick deep breaths, inhale-exhale, and the slow breaths once the fire is done.



Centering is what you do after you've grounded. The sequence is: Ground. Center. Shield.

We ground to rid ourselves of the unwanted, and to reconnect with what makes us feel clean and strong in ourselves.

Centering is the regathering of your faculties and the energies that are uniquely you. You may want to think of it as a crystallization, like compressing a diamond from coal, or like a hug, but a hug that encompasses your whole body in a gentle loving pressure. I sort of feel my bones more strongly in where they are, and my spine gets straighter, my feet more flat on the floor if I'm sitting in a chair.



Shielding is just what it sounds like. You develop your own meditation that feels like shielding yourself from anything you don't want.



Some people may visualize that as walls. Some as a mirrored bubble, or an invisibility cloak. Or perhaps a suit of armor, or a kevlar superhero suit. Mine is lighter than any of those, because I want energy to be free to move in and out, but to select AGAINST the kind of energy I don't want to have in my system. Selective deflection, if you like. Maybe a bit like Diana Prince's bracelets. *grin*

Fortunately I now live a life where I don't have to shield very often. (this wasn't always the case, and I didn't always know how to ground, or center, or shield. *wince*)

But grounding, if you practice, starts to become intuitive. Jewelry can ground me, or ornamental stones (OMG hematite and bronze work SO well for me!), or just patting a tree trunk or the wall of my house. Cats can help me ground, so can exercise. My own bones ground me. You can ground in other people, as long as consent is present. I channel for friends in this way occasionally.



Please let me know if you have any questions or if any of this is unclear. I've run into several reputable pagan authors who describe the process similarly; I can check my library for recommendations if you would like.

Peace be with you.



NOTE: You may use these notes freely yourself, If you share them please make certain to include credit.

Thanks.

I've been thinking for the last few years, that attention is the rent we pay for being in relationship, for being in community.

It was never such a privilege to pay attention as it was, many years ago, when I was teaching high school reading and drama classes, and became the advisor for the Improv Comedy Club. Thinking back, I marvel at the quick wit and facility with ideas, language and expression that these teenagers had. How fluent and adaptable they were to performance situations where anything could change (and did) with the drop of a word or addition of a new gesture!

Nick was a wiry, nervous Italian looking kid, earnest and new to the Improv team, often half-a-beat late with his responses, or just this side of awkward, in its own kind of funny. Mariel was a comic genius, with a rounded buxom figure, huge brown eyes and an impressive range of physical expression, and she could also get really LOUD in all the good ways. Tawd was clever, almost effortlessly funny both onstage and off, and a deceptively mellow, slow voice. He's the reason I acquired a nickname among the drama classes, and I remember him fondly for that. Aliza was slim, sly, sarcastic, with a drawling kind of vocal delivery that could quicksilver turn to something manic and panicked if the character called for it. Lucas was tall, with what his friends teased him was "emo kid hair", at that gangly teenage stage where his every gesture seemed floppy, but he sure knew how to use that puppety-ness to his advantage, like a Tim Burton character. Brandon was short and compact. He had a deep voice that belied his small frame, and an onstage poise and speed on the uptake that was nothing short of marvellous. Adam was blond, almost with ringlets, and our tech guy when he wasn't onstage. He was ridiculously silly and ridiculously smart, and I still remember one skit where he was spontaneously, slowly, somersaulting around the stage for no apparent reason.

They were all, every one of them, hilarious, but Parker felt like the ringleader. That kid... well. Damn, that kid was a force to be reckoned with. Sandy sort of dishwater brown hair (and I'm not just saying that because he had a positive TALENT for pissing me off), a nondescript sort of everyman face, and sleepy-looking hooded eyes, he was an absolute fucking chameleon onstage, with a rubber face and a skill at vocal characterization that reminded me of the young Jimmy Stewart. He's the one who I remember (with Mariel and Tawd) as starting the club and teaching the other kids all the improv games. He had a very strong personality, and he pushed hard to get the team members to practice all the different kinds of games and to get them in shape for competitive Improv Comedy events with other schools.

Parker was so funny and occasionally so bizarre... I remember how impressed I was with how much he knew about comedy and improvisation. I was brand new to the drama gig, and I don't mind at all saying that I learned virtually everything I know about improv and theater games from these kids. From Highway Patrol to New Choice, tongue-twisters and physical warmups, their speed and sarcasm and joy and silliness just delighted me. I would watch from the audience space and sometimes grade papers as they worked and played and tried new things, always new things, even with the old games they all knew well.

Building characters and scenes with zero stage props or maybe only hats or scarves or a couple of chairs from the audience is what made me think of them when I saw this week's prompt. These kids? I could imagine them EASILY getting a "confession from the chair." You'd be laughing at the one-sided conversation, imagining the chair's responses, and then cheering as the chair is dragged offstage. Of course, there'd be implications that a well-deserved beat-down will happen once the chair is in lockup.

It was a privilege to pay the rent there, to be on the sidelines watching the worldbuilding these kids could do in the blink of an eye. I got no call to be proud of them, I didn't teach them anything. They did it all themselves, but I'm proud of them nevertheless. It was a pleasure to know them.

I hope they are all still finding joy in words and connection and their own quick minds, making creative and subversive things in the world, and messing with people's heads.


This has been my entry for therealljidol . This week's prompt was, as I mentioned, "Confession from the Chair."

Here is a link to one place you can find short descriptions of improv comedy games, you can also google "theater games" or improv games if you would be interested in learning more. Also I recommend comedysportz san jose as an example of improv comedy as a hell of a lot of fun for an evening's entertainment. (hmmm, I need to get out and see that again sometime soon!)

So here's the thing: people pick on other people. They call people mean names, hit, shove, intimidate, say and do horrible things.

I know we usually soothe the people who've suffered such things with declarations of no-fault: "that girl is insecure and lashing out" "that guy was bullied as a child and he's continuing the cycle" "it's not about you, it's about THEM."

I'm about to say something that may get people pissed off at me. I've come to believe that we look at this situation, of bullying and harassment, and folks often say, it's all the bully's fault. Or perhaps that it's society's fault, or that parents have failed, or schools didn't provide proper guidance.

Believe me, I understand that bullying, harassment, domineering and controlling, assholish behavior has a bewildering complexity of causes.

And people also will point out (because often times the media and some individuals need reminding) that "victim-blaming", as a thing, is unfair, wrong, or bad.

Unfair, I grant. Unhelpful, I concede, and bad? Victim blaming is a mark of both lazy thinking and dishonest, delusional assumptions about interpersonal dynamics.

Wrong it may be to say the victim was at blame for their victimhood, but is it entirely incorrect?

I was alternately bullied and ignored throughout school. I entered into relationships with sarcastic, belittling partners and stayed there for years. I know now that patterns of behavior I learned at home shaped my childhood social experiences, my choices of romantic partners, and my willingness to trust... Actually to trust anyone at all, was a huge struggle, for many years.

I gained confidence and life experience, learned to thrive in nourishing relationships, and learned to survive and end verbally abusive relationships in work and romantic life.

What I eventually learned was that my assumptions influenced how my reality manifested. If you feel insecure, it shows in how you move, stand, hold yourself. Confidence or insecurity show in tone of voice and in your word choices too.

Humans everywhere in the world read body language fluently. Bullies and predators, consciously (or unconsciously) select people for body language that shows insecurity or wishy-washiness.

Radical honesty and being an adult demands that we must look deeply and unflinchingly at ourselves so we can solve the problem with accurate information, not self delusion.

* Am I complicit in being picked on, in any way?
* Do my assumptions about how I will be treated, or how the world works, affect how I AM treated, or how the world responds to me?
* If either of these are true, what can I do to recognize and change my habits of behavior and thought?

Suppose you've done serious reflection on your life and your attitudes or expectations to recognize that you contribute(d) to your own victimhood in some ways. You may expect people in your life to be rude, dismissive, disparaging, or sarcastic. You may have internal voices telling you you aren't good enough, aren't worth the effort.

And then you realize that you would NEVER speak even to your worst enemy with the language and tone you hear in your head. (The moment I realized this is clear in my head, even eight years later.)

Please be welcome to feel feelings about this discovery, but try to just feel them, not to judge yourself or beat yourself up for it. That helps nobody figure it out, it just gets in the way of discovery and change to a better paradigm for your inner sanctum.

It's definitely possible to start learning to present a more confident façade.
Think about the truism "fake it till you make it." Look around at people you know, or people you see, who look confident and calm, people who move happy, if that makes sense. People who move fluently and with purpose. If you're like I was at this stage, you're probably envious of those people. Use that. You want what they've got, start emulating them.

One of the first things I consciously did to conquer my fears was change how I walked. I lived in a not-great neighborhood, and so I thought about how to look like a not-target. I started to walk big, wear shoes that let me walk stompy, fast, strong. I stopped walking while reading or while checking my phone. I looked at people around me, and kept my chin up. Made eye contact occasionally, when I felt like it. That started happening more often as I built confidence. Nodding or waving or smiling slightly at neighbors started feeling comfortable. I worked on having straighter posture, and open, relaxed body language.

Now I look at the process as giving myself acting lessons. Really, they're acting lessons for your life, rather like the advice I've heard of dressing up to the job you want to have.

As an adult who's working to solve a problem, you'll immediately start to recognize victim body language or posture as you observe others, and how different it looks from confident body language or posture. And if your goal is to change your own behavior, you can start selecting habits that work better for your life, and work to change how you present yourself to the world.

The best part of fake it till you make it? As your body learns, your brain comes to believe what the body tells it. As you practice confident stances and postures, a strong movement style, aware and alert reactions to the people in your environment, not only will people treat you differently, YOU will start to feel differently about yourself. And that's a really big part of the solution.

Start research on techniques to build up your own resilience, tough mindedness, and compassion for yourself. This kind of interior remodeling job is worth the effort. And, if you already possess these skills? Please think about reaching out and lending a hand to someone who needs them.

(And let me say THANK you to all the families and teachers out there who are consciously working to raise strong, self confident children. You give me hope for the future.)



This has been my Week Four entry for therealljidol, and the prompt was a quotation from Dr.Martin Luther King Jr:
“Nobody can ride your back if your back's not bent”.

Beta-readings done by alycewilson !

Please go read and enjoy my colleagues' entries here. To vote for my entry, link is *here* scroll down to Tribe 5. soon after Monday April 7th, once the poll's posted.

Thank you for reading!


My Recommended reading list on this topic:
Oriah Mountain Dreamer's The Invitation
Trina Paulus' Hope For The Flowers
Dr. Patricia Evans' The Verbally Abusive Relationship
SARK's Bodacious Book of Succulence (and all her other books)
Dr. Jean Shinoda Bolen's Goddesses in Everywoman and Gods in Everyman
Osho's COURAGE: The Joy of Living Dangerously

Once upon a time there was a little girl.
This little girl trustingly swallowed, hook, line, and sinker, the cultural meme that having more stuff will make you happier. She was not a happy little girl, and there were many hungers in her life that were never properly satisfied.

She started accumulating and collecting stuff. Meanwhile she was puzzled about why she seemed no happier, because she continued to hear the message that having enough stuff, will make you happy. She continued accumulating stuff.

Of course it wasn't really about the STUFF. It was about the unsatisfied hungers.
But it took her many many years to realize, that if you find out what the shape of the hunger is, and you feed yourself appropriately to satisfy all of your hungers, you don't need your "STUFF" as a pacifyer anymore.

and then you can get rid of the pacifyer.

I take teaching jobs in San Jose because it's a fairly reliable source of work, just from the three schools I get called to work at.

It is a bit depressing though, driving through the gang and other graffiti, the constant construction on Capitol Expressway, the emotionally needy and demanding kids. =/
The schools have mandatory school uniforms. Which oscillates between being depressing and reassuring, for me...

The neighborhoods are frequently full of litter, as are the school grounds. Stuff just feels dirty.

...

I was driving back home after an early release day (the teacher I worked for has a last period prep, and the front office had proposed I was needed for coverage of someone else's classroom that period, but it didn't turn out like that).

It occurred to me as I was (gratefully!) starting on my way home, to my beautiful and somewhat well groomed home in Mountain View, a beautiful and well-groomed town, how lucky I was to be ABLE to leave that part of San Jose. To have someplace ELSE that I call home, someplace nicer, wealthier, more polite, cleaner, where the graffiti is cleaned off almost before us regular joes even see it.

Those kids don't have the option to leave.
They have to stay there, live with that, every day.
They probably don't even have much experience with the kind of beauty and calm I have been blessed to be able to start taking for granted.
EVER.

...
This realization makes me want to DO SOMETHING only I don't know what that something IS.

I used to feel like I was only of service to the world when I was doing something useful for other people.
I have been uncomfortable about and procrastinated on tasks that were "only" useful to me or that took care of me only, whether physically, emotionally or spiritually.

I'm learning how to value taking care of myself, getting water, good food, exercise, and enough social or spiritual time to nourish myself and keep from feeling lonely.

Has this been true in your life? or if someone you love acts like this, can I get an AMEN?

Wrestling with the Threefold Social Order in my Waldorf lectures. We're singing again (yay!) and I am "the strong alto" who knows the alto line on the Christmas Carols (thanks to MDUUC choir and coyote3502!) and several first-years want to sing next to me.

I, however, want to sing next to Anne-Marie, who's a strong SOPRANO, and who's in my year, so I can hear what the music's supposed to sound like. I can find the blend/harmony easier when I can hear her.

I want to talk more about, oddly, Economics and the Waldorf school (part of the Threefold Social Order, the other parts are the Cultural sphere and the Rights/Political/Lawmaking sphere) but not at the moment.

tonight, going for burritos with zpdiduda for her birthday. Nom nom nom.

p.s. Six days and counting till MY birthday. Heh heh heh. Looks like it will be quieter than I thought, but that's okay.

In other life news, today finishes the second full week of the summer Waldorf teacher credentialling session.
I am STARVING. I am always starving when I come home after classes. AND I eat like a pig at snack (11:00) and at lunch (1:00) ... but I'm not changing shape at all, unless i'm gaining a little bit of muscle ... I suppose it helps that we are dancing for an hour every morning, and doing sculpture in the afternoon, and I'm THINKING like a hard-working thinking-thing the rest of the day (my Creative Writing teacher and Program Director, Dorit would have FITS about that description, not to mention all my parenthetical habits and multiple-adjective descriptors, hee!)

Other teachers and students refer to the work we are doing as spiritual work. And that it's HARD work I do not deny, nor do I deny its spiritual nature. But spiritual work burning this many calories, is just something I have to make an effort to wrap my head around.

Snack and lunch are incredibly tasty affairs at summer session. Today the snack table had berry scones, a variety of bagels, cream cheese, corn bread with honey butter to spread on it, melons and berries in an attractive display, hummus and sliced peppers and cucumbers and tzatziki... plus very tasty coffee with honey, brown sugar, whole milk and half-n-half, and a variety of teas, both caf. and decaf.

Lunch has been fresh, organic, and varied, and incredibly tasty as well.

I love my sculpture class. Ken Smith is also our Art History teacher, and he's built like a short balding blacksmith, with a gentle New Zealand accent and a puckish sense of humor. Really devoted to his subject, and very heart centered. Unfailingly polite and helpful, even when our class is feeling our oats and we start to talk over him. I thought sculpture would be kind of scary, you know, new means of expression, but he's so approachable, it's very easy to ask questions and get help.

I love my eurythmy (dance) class. Glenda was born in South Africa, has lived and worked all over the world so she has this intriguing mixy accent, and she's SO graceful and warm and welcoming and sweetly funny. I told her today what an amazing "stage ninja" she was, backstage (behind a simple curtain) at the first Wednesday night performance... she was unnoticeable, and I was LOOKING, and on top of that, managed to change costume back there, utterly unobtrusively... the way she walks is amazing, the variety of movement styles, accents she flows between, the real gentility of her manner... wow. I will be sad when I no longer get to work with her every day. I will really miss her. And I love the range of movement she has us doing, and doing beautifully, in class. She is unstinting with praise and warm eye contact, and I love that about her also.

I love my Language Arts class. Roberta is an experienced Waldorf teacher, having ushered two classes through from first to eighth grade, and now teaches teachers and, I believe, works part time in another Waldorf school with students having reading difficulty. She's profoundly deaf and relies on hearing aids, which gives her speaking voice a kind of metallic, flat affect, but her enthusiasm and encyclopedic memory for verse, rhyme, game, and story makes her a real force to be reckoned with. I hope my mind is as sharp and my will as enthusiastic by the time I'm her age (which I don't know, but she's got white white hair and an 8 year old granddaughter, so...)

I am having a time of it in the creative writing class. *wry*
Dorit, I am discovering through the grapevine, lacks certain social skills like tact and communicating the parameters of an assignment. She knows her subject, that's for sure, but when her way of telling you how she wants you to write an assignment consists of saying, write three sentences using these subjects, and then proceeds to just rip every body's work in front of the class? Hm. So she's letting everyone make their natural mistakes first, then bringing examples to the class for correction and suggestions... which is not too bad, everyone can give suggestions for improvement... kinda makes her the bad guy, but she's almost gleeful about it (funny, for a melancholic personality!) so yeah. She's maybe harsh but I don't see anyone crying on the way out of the room so it's probably all right.

And honestly? if anyone can break me of the remains of my codependent habit of trying to please authority figures? It'll be Dorit. Nothing I do seems to please her, I seem to irritate her somehow (no, really I have evidence) and tbh she's starting to irritate me also, though I'm trying to be compassionate about it. I'll work to stop trying to make her notice me and just pay attention to doing the work properly. And I have to admit I haven't given it as much thought as I have the other classes, cos hey, I can write already! I am a Writer. </ poncy pretension> heh. I need to give those assignments decent focus and not dash something off as I have been doing. I need to go ahead and draft something, work on the draft and change and experiment and fix things... I need to really friggin' WRITE, and do myself proud.

Lots of progress being made now. This is the halfway point, I can't believe we're already half-over, it's gone by swift as the wind over the El Sobrante hillsides...

I. Am. Loving. It.