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C. R. Red

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The Bountiful Body

September 8, 2014

We live in a culture where women are constantly modifying the body they were naturally born with. There’s a relentless emphasis to morph, sculpt, tone our womanly form to look like a twelve year old boy, wax our innately hairy bodies, enhance female areas, color our hair, inject or even alter our faces,  suck out “imperfections,” I could keep going, but I’m really quite tired of it all.

Ultimately, we are conditioned to feel a sense of lack when we view and observe our bodies. There’s always an urge to improve upon what is naturally there. And there is an exhausting focus and energy given to enhancing our perceived lacking selves.  We end up trying to fit into an “idea” of who we should look like, and thus fall ever short to that ideal.  Of course we are then left to look at ourselves with constant disappointment. So sad!

 In reality, we should restructure our homogenized concept of the ideal to refit an individualized admiration for our unique selves.  

“It is a revolutionary act to embrace who we are, just as we are.”
— Dr. Jessica Zucker

Indeed, it is quite radical to release ourselves from this conditioned obsession to “fix” our bodies. Our shallow visual relationship with our body can and should become more comprehensive and bonded.  

Often we feel it is best to relinquish all feeling and sentiment toward our physical frames and direct all our energy and attention entirely to our inner selves; but this is not the answer. We never should become impassive and aloof from our bodies. We must continue to care for, respect, honor, nurture, and sustain them—these structures marvelously formed from matter.  Because it is through our bodies that we experience life. And the more disconnected from our bodies we become, the more disconnected we become from life.

In the words of a past university professor of mine:

“The body is the cup in which to drink the world.”
— George Handley, "Home Waters"

And when we acknowledge this one true fact, our focus shifts from befitting an unavailing ideal, to honoring an already present body, a body that is constantly giving, constantly enabling.  We then come to admire the nuances that make up our own body, the differences that separate our form from all the others. And instead of tweaking, breaking, altering, criticizing our physical forms, we desire to give back to this gratuitous body that allows us to inhale and exhale life.

When our attention to bodily appearance converts to bodily appreciation, we are then awakened to the wide expanse of life that is pumping, respiring, moving all about us. And this process of body nourishment and cultivation becomes circuitous, as our bodies in return, allow us to engage more completely with all of life’s interactions. It is a bountiful transaction rooted in giving and receiving, and giving and receiving again.  

Discovering and admiring our individual forms requires a shift in how we view ourselves and how we view others. And this can take time, especially because our culture will continue to condition our minds with its habitual, hollow message of glorified "ideal" body imaging. It will take active and diligent persuasion, personal persuasion, to nourish ourselves with bodily appreciation and cultivation. But as we begin to enjoy our variations, the parts of us that differentiate us from everybody else, we will also begin to discover and delight in all the diversity existing among us. And our concept of beauty will become far- reaching, expansive and abundant, and our confidence will grow unbounded... when we come to realize how bountiful a life our body is giving us. 

 

(Photo: "Deep Sea Diver" by Brad Tennant)

In Body, Being Tags women, bodies, georgehandley, jessicazucker, nutrition, health
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What the Darkness Taught

August 19, 2014

Growing up in the Utah high desert I constantly complained about the summer heat and the contrasting frigid winters. I longed to get out and find a milder climate. And I did. London, Hawaii, then Oregon all brought calmer weather. Snow days were rare, or even obsolete; and summers were in a word, idyllic.

But in lush gorgeous Portland, for the five years we were there, I felt wet most of the time. Yes, the temperatures rarely dropped below the mid 40’s, yet the whole world seemed so soggy.  But mostly, beyond all the sogginess, I ached for the sun.  No living organism is bright and alive without the sun; basic biology tells us this. It was normal that I wanted my being to feel warmth. Light. Joy.

And yet the world kept going and we all stayed alive somehow, despite the absence of light. But the life and light I had inside started to fade, diminish. The darkness outside made my insides all dark too. 

There existed in the landscape an almost unearthly physical splendor, and the people, and land, and food, and culture were genuine and real and true. And these things brought me light. Portland was alive and rich in so many ways.  And I fell in love with it all, a deep love. Yet there was this perennial hole within me, and I was never fully alive, in bloom. I needed more sunlight.

And now we have moved back to the desert, my place of beginning. And this desert heat envelopes the land of where I live. And it is curious how before, that heat was so undesired, so disruptive. 

And now, because of experience, because of opposition, I soak in the energizing light and the warmness of the sun. Allowing my soul, both body and spirit, to absorb its life giving rays.  The heat nourishes my once dampened, dire self and the light lifts my mind, my soul, even my freckles, freckles that had gone missing for awhile.

And even in the long icy winters the sunlight streams through my windows and I can actually feel of its warmth.

So long this light had gone missing.  But I now perceive how that period of darkness was imperative. It was there in the darkness that I recognized how precious, how desirable light was and is to me.  Without light’s absence, I was incapable of seeing light’s life preserving gifts. The darkness taught me to cultivate light, to feel exceptional appreciation and joy when I am touched by its warmth.

As humans we endure misfortune, pain, distress. And our lights, once so illuminating, begin to fade. Yet, we must remember that within darkness, in pain, in suffering we are acquiring the ability to ascertain the light, the moments of joy and life and beauty.  And then when the cold darkness weakens and we feel warmness reaching through, we will abide in its comfort like never before. We will have enlightened aptitude in perceiving the wonder and joy that does exist. And this keener awareness will allow life to feel even sweeter than ever before. All because the darkness taught us.

 

(Image via avogageforever)

In Being, Body Tags portland, utah, light, darkness, opposition, warmth
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Loving it Here

July 16, 2014

Living in the moment, or living more "horizontally" as I like to put it, has been at the heart of this blog.  And the purpose in reconciling with this concept, again and again, is so that we learn to attach ourselves to the life we are living--right now.

And to immerse our entire selves into every day and every moment and every encounter, with the help of our innate sensory abilities. Using these bodily abilities enables us to pursue an astonishingly more exciting, fulfilling, joyful continuation of living.

Life beyond sheer survival. 

“We think through the mind, but we live through the body... who delights in color and music and texture and fragrance—and the five senses are our windows onto this world of sight and sound and taste.
...Certainly, it makes more sense to see the bodily senses as portals of joy.”
— Terryl Givens, Fiona Givens

I'm sure many of you readers are familiar with the site, or feed, Humans of New York. I recently fell across this post of a daughter with her mother and was overwhelmed by the simple sagacity it contained.

This lovely woman embodies horizontal living. She radiates life and hope to all of us who are exhausted and laden with much surrounding ache and distress. She shows succinctly that there is enduring wonder and light. Even here in this place.  

There is much to be glad of, if we only are keen enough to notice.

Here is the post:

““What’s your favorite thing about your mother?”

”She loves life more than anyone I’ve ever known. I hope she doesn’t mind me telling you this, but recently she’s had some health problems. And her health got so bad at one point, she called me and said: ‘I was starting to wonder if there was any reason to go on. But then I had the most delicious pear!’”
”
— Humans of New York : Saturday 28 June 2014
In Being, Body Tags horizontalliving, pear, humansofnewyork, lovingithere, kentandreasen
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Original Food

June 10, 2014

In keeping within the vein of what is real, I have been pleased with our national culture’s current discourse concerning food and the significance of returning our society’s eating habits back to, what I call, real food. The authentic, substantial stuff that is naturally and originally grown and sown from the ground.

Food documentaries, novels, articles, blogs all have gained increasing momentum within our culture exposing the detriment of our attitudes and habits regarding food. We have created discussion that is disrupting the hegemonic basis of an industry that has little concern for our actual well-being; and we are taking control over what we and our families ingest.

Yet, we are a nation still caught within a spectrum of diet fads and confusing food labels; how might we navigate what is genuinely beneficial for our bodies? To be sure, entire novels and movements have ensued in response to this single question, but there is one simple tenet that I am motivated to adhere to when I am discerning how to feed my body and this is it: is this food really real?

So much of our food is grown and processed and pumped with pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics, hormones, sugar and synthetic who knows what. And before I eat, or go out to eat, I want to know if the food I am consuming and my kids are consuming is unhampered, real, original.

Of course there is that Portlandia episode where before ordering chicken at a local restaurant, the customers desire to know the name of their chicken (Colin) and his family and details of his life on the farm (and p.s. this portrayal of Portlandians isn’t as exaggerated as you might think!)

Eating whole and good and real needn’t be this radical.  But there is an inherent custody of an awareness to what is going inside our bodies. Our bodies that live and breathe and feel and act and react and experience the life we are all living. And the fuel we are absorbing to keep going in this life can greatly enhance or detract from the overall experience.

“We are part of nature. We depend on it. It’s really what is giving us our nourishment and we need to treasure [it] (food), we need to take care of the land. That’s a beautiful pleasure of life.”
— Alice Waters

I think this short video is quite wise. And so I wanted you to see it. It was created by Michael Pollan, food journalist and author of pivotal works such as, The Omnivore's Dilemma and In the Defense of Food.  

This simple video has influenced my own cognitive regard and physical choices in relation to food, and I hope it conveys more clearly my point. Eventually there is a hope in which our entire culture will value food that is wholesome and real above that which is cheap and easy. And eventually our society will free itself from its bondage of food issues and will more readily relish in the celebration and joyful life giving source that food actually and really is.

Can you really have your cake and eat it? According to Michael Pollan, you can. In this fun RSA Short, Pollan explains how to eat well by following one simple rule without the need for fad diets or deprivation.

 (Photography above by Adam Ferguson for The New York Times)

In Body, Bites Tags realfood, food, michaelpollan, rsashort, foodissues
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Staying Alive

May 16, 2014

In motion all day. Never stopping.

Night time hits. All kids asleep. Finally.

Absurdly quiet. Aching to veg. First moment alone with myself. 

I let my haggard body sink, melt, dissolve into the cushions of my couch.

House Hunters International is on. It's always on this time of night. TV power -- click... And I feel freedom. 

But not really. 

Because I realize that all day I have been nourishing, mending, loving, feeding brains and bodies and spirits outside of my own. And my brain, body, spirit is hungry for care.  And although so much of me desires to be swallowed up whole into that couch, there is more of me that wants real nutrition. The kind of nutrition that will feed my entire soul: brain, body and spirit. 

I pick my body, all exhausted, off the couch, and put on walking shoes and a jacket. I leave the house, detaching myself from that world in there; that world that I love, but a world that is always in need of my perpetual attention.

I walk in silence for awhile; then eventually put in ear-buds. A book, a talk, a song, awakens me from all of the vacuous monotony.  I drink in the real sustenance I have been yearning.  

Some days I find it in writing, or reading, running, breathing, bending, creating good food, or eating good food, photo taking, photo editing, learning, really learning, listening, befriending, remembering.

All of which require action on my part. 

This kind of nurturing, this kind of freedom, takes effort. And sometimes I just feel completely out of effort. So achieving this can be admittedly hard.

But only in the beginning.  It's hard in that first movement, that first choice that gets us off the couch.  But once we are in motion, we find we are absorbing it all so intently. We must have been so thirsty.

And when nourished in this manner day by day, we become more eager and we realize our lives are richer. 

Every day we must urge our tired beings to do something, at least one thing, that seems hard but that is feeding us personally. Something which inspires, challenges, arouses, enlivens us. 

We will then recognize we are revived, restored, more awake. We will have more to give because there is more of us that can give. 

All because we made the effort to get up and stay alive.

(Photos taken by Laura D'art)

In Body, Brain, Being Tags stayingalive, horsephoto, nurturing, feeding, alive, awake
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Tom Jamieson for The New York Times

Motionless Movement

April 3, 2014

There’s this book, a favorite of mine, where its passages, ideas, even phrases are randomly brought to surface in my everyday living, but most especially as I compose posts for this blog.  It’s a French novel: The Elegance of the Hedgehog, authored by Muriel Barbery.  And like most French story-telling, particularly in film and literature, the dénouement, or finale, to the story ends emitting soberness; much unlike our American tradition of happily ever after. However, there is sublime and stirring beauty amidst the soberness, all gained from generally unnoticed yet profound encounters experienced by the protagonists.  I dare say, the French promote reality, while us Americans are obsessed with idealities. 

Anyways, Paloma, one of the two main female leads, is a 12 year old, burdened with genius and struck with an inability to find purpose in human existence. Living within a family of wealthy pseudointellectuals, Paloma philosophizes that if life is pointless, than it is pointless to be living it.  But before entirely giving in, she begins a journal to record “any beauty that there is in the world, things that, being part of the movement of life, elevate us” (Barbery 38).  It is her resolved attempt at giving life one more opportunity to prove its purport before ending it.

I mentioned in last week’s post, that I, at times, feel life is more about enduring than enjoying.

 And as Paloma, I have made an effort to be more keenly observant of my collision with life.

I want there to be joy amidst the enduring. 

And I’m convinced it is found in what Paloma calls “motionless movement”, where we aren’t moving “toward,” but remaining fully present in the moment, grounded, nonfragmented, centered (39, 41).  It’s what we have been referring to as horizontal living. 

For our futures are concealed from us.  And our past is gone from us. And seeking life behind us or beyond us, fragments us from life happening in the now. 

And so, in this favorite book of mine, we witness Paloma discover the beauty in everyday movement, and ultimately find an objective for living, even joy-- in this life... throughout the persisting and amongst the enduring.

What follows is a record of her encounter with a moment of motionless movement entitled:

Journal of the Movement of the World No.4

A choir is a beautiful thing

Yesterday afternoon was my school’s choir performance.  In my posh neighborhood school, there is a choir: nobody thinks it’s square and everyone competes to join but it’s exclusive….

Every time, it’s a miracle. Here are all these people, full of heartache or hatred or desire, and we all have our troubles and the school year is filled with vulgarity and triviality and consequence, and there are all these teachers and kids of every shape and size, and there’s this life we’re struggling through full of shouting and tears and laughter and fights and break-ups and dashed hopes and unexpected luck—it all disappears, just like that, when the choir begins to sing.  Everyday life vanishes into song, you are suddenly overcome with a feeling of brotherhood, of deep solidarity, even love, and it diffuses the ugliness of everyday life into a spirit of perfect communion.  Even the singers’ faces are transformed: it’s no longer Achille Grand-Fernet that I’m looking at (he is a very fine tenor), or Déborah Lemeur or Ségolène Rachet or Charles Saint-Sauveur.  I see human beings, surrendering to music.

I feel like crying, my throat goes all tight and I do the best I can to control myself but sometimes it gets close: I can hardly keep myself from sobbing.  So when they sing a canon I look down at the ground because it’s just too much emotion at once: it’s too beautiful, and everyone singing together, this marvelous sharing.  I’m no longer myself, I am just one part of a sublime whole, to which the others also belong, and I always wonder at such moments why this cannot be the rule of everyday life, instead of being an exceptional moment, during a choir.  When the music stops, everyone applauds, their faces all lit up, the choir radiant.  It is so beautiful.

Observing and uncovering the beauty in everyday living, and becoming really enraptured with the bounty possible, we become fuller and more complete; we are less fragmented and disjoined.  Paloma sought for it and found it. Look for it. And I promise, you too will find it.

Tom Jamieson for The New York Times

In Being, Body Tags motionlessmovement, movement, viennaboyschoir, choir, murielbarbery, hedgehog, enduring
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Stuck in the Moment

March 18, 2014

In an earlier post, well actually, this blog’s introductory post, I wrote of the benefit of learning to live more horizontally, and by that I meant living more in the moment by feeling more in the moment.  Horizontal living entails greater awareness of the sensory experiences occurring all around us.  And in succeeding posts, the goal of this blog has been to help facilitate your ability to access this “horizontal” awareness. 

Really being “in” the moment requires our ability to see and feel and touch and taste and hear the ongoing’s of life surrounding us. However, it is our human nature to be one step ahead preparing for future moments; and many times our thoughts are looking behind and dwelling back there, at life already lived.  It is quite hard to suspend ourselves from the vertical onslaught of time, and experience a moment contained and exclusive to itself.  Yet, if we voluntarily access our senses within a given moment, our senses give us the ability to engage and become absorbed into a span of time where we feel most alive and most connected, integrated throughout the soul and the body.

For instance, I’m rocking my one year old, reading him a book before his afternoon nap.  And unintentionally my mind is wandering to the unfinished laundry, and the unachieved run I was probably never going to get in that morning, and oh, I forgot to renew the library books online, and gross, is my leg hair really that prickly? Lucky husband…. And abruptly I pop back to the rocking chair I’m sitting in.

 Suddenly I realize that this boy is heavy. He is no longer a baby.  He will only get older, heavier, more independent. And I am missing it.  I feel overwhelmingly ill that there have been so many instances inadvertently squandered, due to my own disconnection from a beautiful moment with this boy, who is fleeing babyhood, moments never to be regained.

And so I refocus. I begin to feel the tops of his feet all porcelain and smooth. And I smell his newly cleansed, lavender emanating, curly hair. I look into his big brown perfect eyes. And hear his enthusiastic gibberish pointing out familiar animals on pages that we've read a thousand times.  And suddenly I’m fully aware. I’m “in” this moment and I am consequently satiated with intense love and happiness for this boy's life that is mine to care for. 

Ultimately, when we engage with our senses, we immerse our entire self into a life’s moment and in return we gain greater purpose, connection and life affirmation.

I enjoy reading Michael Gerson’s opinion column he writes for The Washington Post; and recently I read a personal article he wrote, “After my cancer diagnosis, seeing mortality in the near distance.” He remarks on his change in perspective caused by this cancer diagnosis.  I love what he notes concerning his “intensification of physical experience;” he writes,

I was fortunate to see mortality in the near distance. As I awaited to learn my fate, I noticed an effect on matter — an odd intensification of physical experience. Things around you offer more friction and hold your attention longer. Commonplace things like the bumps on tree bark. The light filtering through floating dust. The wetness of water. A contrast knob is turned, revealing the vivid pleasures of merely existing.

This heightened awareness applies to strangers in the street, who suddenly have faces. An unsolicited smile, the obvious creases of worry or pain, engage your emotions...All of this is a function of a shifting perception of time. When the days seem limited, we more fully inhabit them. The arrow of time makes decay inevitable — and each moment unrecoverable. So we gain in appreciation for things as they are when we realize they will eventually be otherwise.

It is my issue to readers to participate in this heightened physical awareness, this horizontal experiential style of living where we fully engage ourselves with multisensory consciousness.  Practice just feeling the grass underfoot and what that sensation brings.  Smell the earth awakening from deadened winter.  Go up and touch the buds starting to emerge from barren trees. Look and observe and really hear the emotion of your loved ones, as you engage in seemingly simple conversation.

 And suddenly you will be connected to not only the moment, but to the earth you stand on, and the body you live in, and most significantly the people you interact with.  And from this connectedness you will experience a more full life.  Like Mr. Gerson said, you will begin to “reveal the vivid pleasures of merely existing.”

In Being, Bonds, Body Tags horizontalliving, michaelgerson, multisensory
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From Girlhood to Womanhood

March 12, 2014

It is weird being grown up. It never feels real. I keep waiting for the consummate moment when I will feel a woman, no longer a girl.  Even after 3 children and almost a decade of marriage, I feel inadequately aged.  Like I am an adult charade.  I even feel foreign in this grown up body, curved and matured. 

Surviving inside me is that small girl who spins in the wind, and cries when she falls down, but inhales the smell of grass stains, and even, every now and then, wants to be calmed to sleep. 

I've long contemplated and deliberated over the essence and mantle of womanhood, the kind of womanhood expanding across culture and continent.  What makes girls become women? Does becoming a women reach beyond just a physical transformation?  Is there also a spiritual metamorphosis accompanying girlhood to womanhood?

This is what I have learned: I have determined that girls become women when they exist for more than just themselves. A woman’s purpose generates beyond the individual and ruminates within lives outside their own.  And a girl feels she has become a woman when she embraces her otherness, the life she gives in addition to her own life.  This life giving source not only lives in the physicality of child bearing, but also in the creating, strengthening, educating and growth of souls. 

And when a girl fulfills this role of vitality, she has matured into and received the distinction of “Woman.”

In regards to that girlish wonder that is still thriving within, it is never lost. A woman gets to keep that. For from that wonder a woman implants hope to lives that are thirsty for life.

Even seeing our grown bodies as life giving emblems, bodies created after the pattern of the “mother of all-living”, we are reminded to breathe hope and nourishment into our fellow men. And we may eventually experience comfort in our mature frames, knowing they are a symbol of our life-giving abilities to both bodies and souls.

We must never let life experience, relationships, or trauma suffocate our capacity to sustain and nourish mankind.  If we no longer feel capable of creating, we aren't whole; we are at the crux where we must regain our womanhood.  It is imperative to reclaim. And the world at large will undoubtedly benefit by us doing so. 

"It is like when you throw a stone into a pool, and the concentric waves spread out further and further. Who knows where it will end? Redeemed humanity is still young, it has hardly come to its full strength. But already there is joy enough in the little finger of a great saint such as yonder lady to waken all the dead things of the universe into life."

                                     - C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

In Being, Body, Bonds Tags womanhood, girl, love, service
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