Apr

Room To Breathe

Nashville is a hilly place. East Nashville is full of quick, steep hills that take a Sunday jog to intense heart rate heights.

Easter Sunday, after a sunrise service and breakfast, I laced up and headed out for a sunny jog through the neighborhood. At North 17th Street a long and quite vertical stretch climbs to Lockland Elementary School on Woodland. By the time I conquered that doozie I was gasping, lungs heaving, for air. I am definitely an in-shape person, but hills will always beat a runner, and this one had me licked.

And as I continued on my route, heaving and now walking, I did something I always do and that I feel needs to be addressed: I rolled my sports bra up to my collar bones. I had to get it off my diaphragm. When my ribs needed space to expand and contract rapidly, and my lungs and diaphragm needed room to get big and full, I had to move that constricting band of female accoutrement out of the way. I figured that’s a story worth sharing if anyone else needs an excuse or permission to free the ribs and lungs, whether for exercise or otherwise.

This morning on the way to work I engaged my diaphragm again to increase oxygen to my sleepy morning self. This is “fast breathing” in yoga, punching the belly in rapidly, sending air out the nostrils in repetitive bursts. Thinking of the area of the solar plexus, that soft spot where the two halves of the rib cage come together in the front, will engage the area surrounding the diaphragm. Try thirty breaths at the desk or in the car to increase oxygen in the blood for a calmer, more clear mind.

Also, come to class tomorrow! 5:30pm at Pilates of Cool Springs.

Blessings,

Tara

39 days ago Short URL Comments

Uncategorized

running

Mar

Puppy Love

We are expert mind readers. We sense micro-expressions on people’s faces to determine their mood and feelings. We perceive tones of voice and body language that tell a more complete story than the words a person says.

Sitting at my desk just now I was distracted from my work. I paused and smiled as I heard the tones of a new crush walking down the hall behind me. I did not yet distinguish to whom the voices belong, nor was I fully aware of the content of the conversation. I was surprised when I turned to see who the students were, and the boy was one of my absolute favorite students. How did I not recognize his voice? We’ve been talking football since he was a tenth grader! Only then did the personal tones of the kids’ voices register in my ear.

Furthermore, when I saw them with my eyes, I saw how obvious the flirting was! She fidgeted with her jacket zipper, he swept his bangs across his face. They both repeatedly glanced at each other and then quickly flicked their eyes away. My own eyes confirmed what all my senses perceived when I heard them approaching up the hall.

If I tried to break what told me the circumstance before I knew any context, I couldn’t. That unconscious knowledge, that wisdom embodied in us doesn’t like to be unpacked. I thought it was an interesting moment. One of the most recognizable voices to me, and I didn’t recognize it at all. But I did clearly pick up on the sweet tones of a young flirtation.

How attuned are you to the knowledge that you don’t know you know?

Blessings,

Tara

53 days ago Short URL Comments

Uncategorized

Mar

The Work Is Not Done

in Haiti. Earthquake recovery looks like it’s hardly begun in many places. Look at these images, and if you feel so compelled, send your support. See you next week.

http://baronbatch.com/gallery/haiti/

Blessings,

Tara

60 days ago Short URL Comments

Uncategorized

haiti

Mar

Days Before Haiti

“My purpose is to allow people to move closer to actually being creatures of free choice, to genuinely reflect individual creativity and emotion, freeing the body of habitual tensions and wired-patterns of behavior so that it may respond without inhibition to do what the person wants.” – Moshe Feldenkrais

Lest I embody habitual tensions imbued from our American society, I will spend a week in Haiti with eight high school women from this Saturday to next. There will be no Awareness Through Movement class next week while I’m gone.

Joins us this Thursday at 5:30 pm or Friday at 10 am at Pilates of Cool Springs. If this is your first Feldenkrais experience, please enjoy this $18 class as my gift to you.

Blessings,

Tara

67 days ago Short URL Comments

Uncategorized

challenges/habits/haiti

Mar

Body, Mind, and Spirit — Or Not?

“I believe that the unity of mind and body is an objective reality. They are not just parts somehow related to each other, but an inseparable whole while functioning. A brain without a body could not think.”
- Moshe Feldenkrais

I’m a lifelong YMCA member, which has a philosophy of serving body, mind, and spirit. The school I attended growing up states its mission to “nurture and challenge the whole person – body, mind and spirit.”

But we, human beings, are not compartments. We do not house our minds on the mantle, our spirits in a cabinet, and our bodies in the garage. We are each of us one united being, and body, mind and spirit are as able to be separated as tea and sugar from water once it’s the sweet tea’s been brewed. I believe the sooner each of us integrates that fact to our thinking and being, we will become a more full, more potent version of ourselves.

No more should we think, “Today I’m going to work on my spiritual life. Tomorrow morning I will work on my physical well-being, and then in the evening I’ll sharpen my intellect.” Please, oh please, for your sake and the sake of those around you, begin to recognize that each “piece” is wholly inseparable from the whole — YOU!

Blessings,

Tara

74 days ago Short URL Comments

Uncategorized

compartmentalizing/wholeness

Feb

Anxiety Exposed

“Find your true weakness and surrender to it. Therein lies the path to genius. Most people spend their lives using their strengths to overcome or cover up their weaknesses. Those few who use their strengths to incorporate their weaknesses, who don’t divide themselves, those people are very rare. In any generation there are a few and they lead their generation. ” -Moshe Feldenkrais

Imagine what someone does physically in order to appear strong. What do you picture? Think of how someone might hold his chest, jaw, and back. What about the hands or the mouth? Can you feel it in your own body now that you’re thinking of it?

Here’s what I picture: The chest is held stiff and slightly bowed. The mouth is pursed, the teeth ground and the jaw tight. Hands are fixed, not to the extreme of a fist, but not loose.

That tight chest inhibits movement of the rib cage and shoulder girdle to force short, shallow breath. A mouth and jaw held firmly contribute to immobility in the neck and shoulders and TMJ pain. Hands and fingers, too, when constantly tense, contribute to an entire nervous system of heightened activity.

Could it be that in attempt to cover up those weaknesses that we all hope will never be exposed, we put ourselves in physical postures of fear and anxiety? What if instead we accepted, explored, became curious about our weaknesses? Might we eventually come to live with ease and levity that have no secrets or shame?

Blessings,

Tara

81 days ago Short URL Comments

Uncategorized

anxiety/fear/form/posture/strength/weakness

Feb

You’re Doing It Wrong!

“In order to arrive at the right movement, it is first necessary to think of a better movement rather than the right, the right movement has no future development, the latter can be improved – the right remains the limit forever.” — Moshe Feldenkrais

Imagine if we banished the word “right” when we think about our bodies and how they move and function. Just think! There would never be some mythical “right” or “perfect” to attain at the gym or on the trail or in the studio. Every endeavor would be an exploration, a curiosity explored, of how to improve and expand. There would be no reprimand of a poor performance, but simply more information gathered.

Come gather more information about how to move better instead of right at Awareness Through Movement next Thursday at 5:30pm or Friday at 10 am at Pilates of Cool Springs to begin this journey for yourself. If you are a first-timer, please enjoy this $18 class as my gift to you.

Blessings,

Tara

88 days ago Short URL Comments

Uncategorized

form/perfect/posture/wrong

Feb

Do This At Your Desk

Take a slow breath.

Take another, and then another.

Continue to allow the breath to fill your abdomen until you’re not breathing by effort, counting to four or five or whatever, but because the breaths are coming in succession likes waves in the water.

As you continue to breathe, observe what you feel moving. Take your attention to your abdomen. Take your attention to your ribs in the front of yourself, your ribs in the back of yourself and on your sides.

What about your seat? Do you rock forward or back on the inhale or exhale?

Can you continue to breathe in such a way that your head begins to nod? Perhaps your knees move slightly forward in your chair.

As you continue, can you observe any reaction to the movement in your breath in the way your feet contact the floor? Maybe you notice the subtle shift of weight forward and back on your feet as your body freely rocks with the breath.

Breath is life. When breathing stops, life stops. Every breath is a whole-body movement.

“Movement is life. Life is a process. Improve the quality of the process and you improve the quality of life itself.”
-Moshe Feldenkrais

Join us Thursday evening at 5:30 or Friday at 10 am at Pilates of Cool Springs to begin this journey for yourself. If you are a first-timer, please enjoy this $18 class as my gift to you.

Blessings,

Tara

95 days ago Short URL Comments

Uncategorized

Feb

“with minimum effort”

“The aim [of the Feldenkrais Method] is a person that is organized to move with minimum effort and maximum efficiency, not through muscular strength, but through increased consciousness of how movement works.”
-Moshe Feldenkrais, PhD

Women tend to be better — or at least to assimilate more quickly to the task — than men at rock climbing. Why?

Because women, who don’t always come to the work with the same brawn as men cannot muscle their way up a surface. Women must think, plan, and problem-solve their way up, relying on physics, mechanics, and to some degree, flexibility. Men will fatigue sooner because they relied on sheer muscular strength to climb.

In Feldenkrais we aim to be more like women who climb. We want to be smarter about how we use our bodies. We can achieve the same result (climbing a mountain face, for instance) with less work. By definition this is efficiency, and we can obtain it slowly and gradually through the deliberate and gentle movements of the Feldenkrais Method.

Join us Thursday evening at 5:30 or Friday at 10 am at Pilates of Cool Springs to begin this journey for yourself. If you are a first-timer, please enjoy this $18 class as my gift to you.

Blessings,

Tara

102 days ago Short URL Comments

Uncategorized

Jan