Via Lion's Roar: Use the Alexander Technique to Meditate More Comfortably

The Alexander Technique was developed in the 1800’s to help actors improve their posture and coordination. Now it’s gaining popularity among meditators. 

Photo by Megumi Yoshida. Illustration by Kyle Pierce.

Two things often go wrong once someone has received meditation instruction telling them how to hold their bodies and breathe. The first is that they receive the instruction in a rigid way and take up a posture that is a narrow imitation of the one they imagine being described. The second is that whatever rigid approach they take up in the beginning then becomes a tightly held habit, one that can take a lifetime to break. This can limit one’s practice and also lead to physical pain and even injury.

One way to work with these problems, which is finding traction among meditators, is the Alexander Technique. Developed in the late 1800s by Frederick Matthias Alexander, it helps bring awareness to the body’s posture and movement, focusing on the relationship between the head, neck, and spine to the rest of the body. Alexander, a Shakespearean actor, discovered that the habitual way he retracted his head into his neck and spine was causing him to lose his voice by the end of a performance. By freeing himself from this fundamental pattern of tension, he was able to overcome his vocal troubles. From this, he developed a program to help people undo their body’s harmful habits, which he went on to teach for more than fifty years.

The deeper goal is to free ourselves from habitual reactions to the moment-to-moment challenges of our daily lives, whether we are sitting still in meditation or running a marathon.

The Alexander Technique is well known for helping people improve their posture and their fluidity and coordination in movement. But according to Michael Ostrow, a longtime teacher at the New York Center for the Alexander Technique and a former Zen practitioner, although these are important benefits, the deeper goal is to free ourselves from habitual reactions to the moment-to-moment challenges of our daily lives, whether we are sitting still in meditation or running a marathon.

Training in the Alexander Technique is usually taught one on one and uses hands-on guidance to help convey new experiences of how to use the body. But to get a taste, we asked Ostrow to share some introductory guidelines for meditators.

Step 1: Become aware of the contact of your sit bones with whatever surface they are touching. Notice whether your pelvis is easily upright, or rolled under, or arched with the top tipped forward. Allow any tension around the sit bones to diminish. Let go of any tension holding the legs and pelvis together, particularly around the inner thighs and the tops of the thighs. Try gently rocking slightly backward and forward on your sit bones, with your pelvis and spine as a single unit. Even when sitting still, imagine that there is enough freedom between legs and pelvis that you could rock forward and back.

Step 2: Next, imagine water flowing up the spine from the firm foundation of the pelvis. Let the water support the skull as if it is unfixed from the top of the spine. Let the crown of the head be gently raised up by the stream of water so the head tilts slightly forward and the back of the neck lengthens slightly back and up.

Step 3: As you sense the support from your spine, let your awareness fill the whole three-dimensional volume of your body, then let it expand further so you have a sense of the space around you. Let go of the content of your thoughts and allow yourself to feel your thoughts in your body, so that you experience them as ripples within the energy field of your body rather than as noises in your head. In this way, you can begin to let go of the habitual feeling of your body as a kind of dense, isolated physical object with thoughts going on in a separate mind and tune in to the experience of your body as a living, breathing, open energy field, always relating to the environment around it. This is a part of awakening to your true self: whole, open, and alive.

You can learn more about the Alexander Technique and find local teachers by visiting alexandertechnique.com.

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Via Ram Dass

 

We see people through the veil of the fear-driven paranoia that comes from getting trapped in one’s separateness; and when we break out of that, we experience a compassion that is not pity and not kindness; but a compassion borne of identifying with the people around you.

- Ram Dass

Via Daily Dharma / Acceptance:

The more we can truly accept who we are, all the way to the point of becoming one with it, the more we give the precept a chance to manifest naturally.

—Roshi Nancy Mujo Baker, "Precious Energy"

Via Daily Dharma / Finding Forgiveness:

If you’ve suffered a great injustice, coming to forgiveness may include a long process of grief and outrage and sadness and loss and pain. Forgiveness is a deep process, which is repeated over and over and over again in our hearts. It honors the grief and it honors the betrayal. And in its own time, it ripens into the freedom to truly forgive.

—Gina Sharpe, "The Power of Forgiveness"

Via Daily Dharma / Improvise and Inquire

In the Tibetan Buddhist lojong teachings, one of the instructions for practice is “Don’t be so predictable.” As spiritual practitioners we need to have some curiosity about the unknown. When unexplored territory frightens us, we need to ask ourselves, “Where’s our sense of adventure?”

—Elizabeth Mattis, "Open Stillness"

A photo posted by Juan Manuel Granados (@juanmanuelgranados) on Jan 28, 2017 at 5:43pm PST

One Small Voice - Carole King

Stephen Lewis: Week in Review 144 — At a loss for words

Via Ram Dass

The first kind of love we are familiar with is the bio-chemical love, the, ‘Let’s make love.’ The second kind is romantic love, ‘Mary loves John and John loves Mary.’ This second kind of love, the romantic love and the need for love, has a polarity, which is hate and which involves jealousy and possessiveness. This kind of love is based on the fact that you don’t yet know who you are. And that the other person involved allows you to meet your true self by turning you on to the place inside yourself where you are love.

So you say “he and I” or “she and I are in love,” meaning we connect each other to the place in ourselves where we are love. This is needful love, because you need your connection, and if he or she splits, you can’t find the place in you where you are love. So you get frightened that you’re going to lose your connection.

The third quality of love is conscious love, where you have found that place in yourself and you become it. And you ‘are’ a statement of that love. And your every action is not consciously designed to assert that you love everyone, and everyone loves you, because you ‘are’ love.

Then, there is no more need for anyone to love you. All you experience is a feeling of present flow with everyone in the universe. You are in love with the universe. You are not actively loving, but you are ‘in’ love; you exist in the space of conscious love, which is Christ love. That’s what this whole game is about.

Via Engage the Enraged / FB:

Via Daily Dharma / Differently Abled Dharma:

Who is the one that sees? What is mind? I think with something like deafness or blindness—or specifically deaf-blindness, where you are so within yourself—it’s almost its own wisdom tradition.

—Oshin Liam Jennings, "This Buddhist Life"

Via Daily Dharma / Investigating Ourselves

Rather than accusing others of being the source of our misfortune, we need to investigate our situation well and see that we are being slain by the weapons we created through the force of our own self-grasping ignorance and the afflictions it nourishes.

—Thubten Chodron, "Brief Teachings"
 

Via Bilerico Report / FB: 5 things Trump did in his first week to make us fear for LGBT rights

Trump might not sound like a typical religious wingnut. He might have (actual) gay friends. But he showed this week that he will attempt to dismantle as many LGBT rights and protections as he can.

If it wasn’t totally obvious from his history of homophobic and transphobic remarks and his promises on policy during the campaign, he’s sending as strong of a signal as he can that he will do whatever he can to roll back LGBT rights now that he’s president.

Here are five things that happened in his first week in office that show that he opposes LGBT rights.

5. Press Secretary Sean Spicer said he didn’t know if Trump would overturn Obama’s bans on sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination

What happened: Trump has made overturning Barack Obama‘s executive orders one of his main campaign promises. The Press Secretary was asked if that included Obama’s executive orders that banned discrimination against LGBT people in the federal workforce and federal contractors, and he said he didn’t know.

Why this is a bad sign: The only correct answer to “Do you plan to allow discrimination in your workforce?” is “No.” Spicer couldn’t say that.

If this happened because of a lack of preparation – Trump has had plenty of time to decide which executive orders he wants to repeal – expect the worst. Trump has already shown that on issues that aren’t important to him he’s just going to implement policies that please the far-right.

4. Trump’s Attorney General nominee seems really excited to let people use religion as an excuse to discriminate against LGBT people

What happened: In confirmation hearings this week, Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions talked about the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA), a bill that Trump promised to sign that would allow people to discriminate against LGBT people if they claim they’re doing it for religious reasons. 
Sessions brought up an example of private colleges denying LGBT employees and students equal rights as a sign that the FADA is needed, saying that requiring institutions that receive federal money to follow federal law is “discriminatory” on the basis of religion.

In response to a separate question about his opposition to the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act (RHYA) in 2013, which included a ban on discrimination against LGBT homeless youth in services paid for by the government, Sessions said the protections would have “discriminated against faith-based organizations.”

Why this is a bad sign: Sessions, of course, doesn’t much care about freedom of religion. He defended Trump’s call to ban Muslim immigration in 2015, and even this week said that he wanted an immigrant’s religion to be a factor in the vetting process.

What he cares about is one religion’s freedom to impose its beliefs on other people. Sessions’s examples of “religious freedom” were about institutions that receive federal money being able to discriminate against LGBT people, even though federal funds are limited (especially for homeless youth) and no one is forcing religious organizations to take the money.

Sessions will have a lot of power to direct government resources when it comes to actually enforcing anti-discrimination rules. He appears much more excited to find creative ways to use those resources to promote discrimination.

3. Trump brought back the global gag rule (but more bigly this time)

What happened: Trump signed a presidential memorandum prohibiting global health organizations that receive US aid money from discussing abortion with their clients, even if the programs where abortion is discussed are funded separately. This is an old Republican policy, except Trump’s version applies to 15 times more funds than George W. Bush’s or Ronald Reagan’s gag rules.

Why this is a bad sign: If anyone thought that a thrice-married reality TV star from Manhattan wouldn’t pursue the religious right’s policy goals, then they have been proven wrong. Whether Trump is a true believer or is just using policies like this to appease his base, he’s signaling that his administration will give the likes of Focus on the Family whatever they want, and do so in such an extreme way that Bush and Reagan will look like free-love hippies next to him.

2. John Gore was appointed to lead the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Justice

What happened: John Gore, a lawyer who defended the anti-LGBT HB2 in North Carolina from claims that it violates the Constitution, has been appointed to lead the office in charge of upholding civil rights laws. Gore also has experience in defending voter suppression at the state level.

Why this is a bad sign: A lot of Trump’s appointees have been comically inappropriate for the roles they were chosen for. For example, Trump nominated a man who can’t remember that he wants to eliminate the Department of Energy to head the Department of Energy, and he nominated a CEO who wants to exploit his workers more to head the Department of Labor.

Gore’s appointment shows that civil rights will be no exception. The Office of Civil Rights is currently involved in a case about the federal ban on LGBT discrimination in health care plans and is charged with prosecuting hate crimes in accordance with the Matthew Shepard Act. Instead, the Office could move resources from defending civil rights to defending the right to discriminate, according to Lambda Legal.

1. The 3 people on Trump’s short list for the Supreme Court all have a history of rightwing extremism on social issues in their rulings

What happened: Politico reported earlier in the week that Trump has narrowed down the list of people to replace Antonin Scalia to three men: Neil Gorsuch, Thomas Hardiman, and William Pryor.

Gorsuch and Hardiman are solid conservatives without much of a record on LGBT cases . Gorsuch is best known for a very expansive definition of “religious freedom” in the Hobby Lobby and Little Sisters of the Poor cases, where he ruled that even requiring employers to say that they oppose contraception is a violation of their religious freedom. Hardiman once allowed a gay man to sue for discrimination, but is better known for his doctrinaire conservative approach to guns and to civil rights.

Pryor has a history of anti-gay legal activity. He filed a brief in 2003 arguing in favor of sodomy laws, equating homosexuality with “polygamy, incest, pedophilia, prostitution, and adultery.” In 2005 Lambda Legal called him “the most demonstrably antigay judicial nominee in recent memory” when he was nominated to the 11th Circuit Court.

Why this is a bad sign: The court system has been extremely important to advancing LGBT rights, on issues like sodomy laws and marriage rights, and the Supreme Court will probably be hearing LGBT cases for the next few decades.

Trump can nominate one Supreme Court Justice right off the bat, and he says he’ll announce the nominee next week. This is because Senate Republicans refused to confirm Obama’s nominee last year.

This could become worse over Trump’s term, setting back LGBT rights for decades. Three reliably pro-LGBT Supreme Court Justices are, well, old: Ruth Bader Ginsberg is 83 (and a pancreatic cancer survivor), Stephen Breyer is 78, and Anthony Kennedy is 80. If Trump has a chance to replace at least one of them, then the Supreme Court will shift to a 5-4 balance against LGBT rights.

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A Couple Proves That Loves Conquers All

Via Black on Black

Buy one here

Via Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma / Learning to Live Together

To me the really defining question of our humanity and of our civil society right now is not can we agree. That’s kind of idealistic, and it’s not helping us. It’s more about how can we live together while we disagree about these things that are so personal. This requires much more of us spiritually and practically than the illusion that we’ll force agreement.

—Krista Tippett, "Talking with the Other Side"

Via Patheos: Leading Candidate For Supreme Court Would Criminalize Gay Sex

Trump’s shortlist for the Supreme Court includes Judge William Pryor, a vehemently anti-gay Christian extremist.
According to multiple reports President Donald Trump has narrowed his choice to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by Justice Antonin Scalia to three potential nominees: Judge William Pryor of Alabama, Judge Neil Gorsuch of Colorado, and Judge Thomas Hardiman of Pennsylvania. All of them are federal appeals court judges.

On that short list is William Pryor, who is considered to be “the most demonstrably anti-gay judicial nominee in recent memory” by the legal advocacy group Lambda Legal.

In the past, Pryor, who now sits on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, has made the deplorable argument that consensual sexual activity between same-sex partners should be criminalized.

Raw Story reports that in a 2003 legal brief Pryor argued in favor of a Texas law criminalizing consensual LGBT sex. Comparing consensual sexual activity between same-sex partners to “polygamy, incest, pedophilia, prostitution, and adultery,” Pryor argued that states should prosecute gay people as criminals, arguing that the rights of LGBT people as a group are not protected by the U.S. Constitution.
Pryor wrote:

This Court [the Supreme Court] has never recognized a fundamental right to engage in sexual activity outside of monogamous heterosexual marriage, let alone to engage in homosexual sodomy. Such a right would be antithetical to the ‘traditional relation of the family’ that is ‘as old and as fundamental as our entire civilization.

Pryor also argued that being lesbian or gay is harmful and that Texans needed protection from “homosexual sodomy”:

Texas is hardly alone in concluding that homosexual sodomy may have severe physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual consequences, which do not necessarily attend heterosexual sodomy, and from which Texas’s citizens need to be protected.

Pryor concluded:

(there is) no fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy just because it is done behind closed doors… Because homosexual sodomy has not historically been recognized in this country as a right — to the contrary, it has historically been recognized as a wrong — it is not a fundamental right.

People for the American Way (PFAW) has condemned Judge Pryor’s record, noting that Pryor has used the power of his office in an effort to push the law in an extreme far right direction harmful to the rights and interests of ordinary Americans.

Citing an Atlanta Journal-Constitution op-ed, PFAW highlights Pryor’s anti-gay religious extremism:

Pryor would deny gay men and lesbians the equal protection of the laws. He believes that it is constitutional to imprison gay men and lesbians for expressing their sexuality in the privacy of their own homes and has voluntarily filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court urging the Court to uphold a Texas law that criminalizes such private consensual activity.

PFAW also notes Pryor is a staunch opponent of a woman’s right to choose. He has called Roe v. Wade “the worst abomination of constitutional law in our history” and has supported efforts to erect unconstitutional barriers to the exercise of reproductive freedom.

In addition to openly advocating for the criminalization of gay sex, and his refusal to recognize a woman’s right to abortion, Pryor is also an advocate for prayer in school, and rejects the separation of church and state.

Trump is expected to announce his pick for the U.S. Supreme Court next week.

(Large portions of this post were previously published here: Trump Supreme Court Pick Would Criminalize Gay Sex)

Judge William Pryor (Image via Wikipedia)

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Via Sri Prem Baba