It takes generosity to discover the whole through others. If you realize you are only a violin, you can open yourself up to the world by playing your role in the concert.
Jacques Yves Cousteau

Here is the mini form we worked on in the Blackrock class. I will post it from the front soon !! Enjoy your practice.

Ann's Mini Form (Yang style) from Heartworker on Vimeo.

" Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose. "
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
One warm summer afternoon about thirty years ago I wrecked my first car along a quiet country road in Co. Offaly. I miraculously escaped death because my seat belt didn't work, my door opened and the impact threw me out, the steering wheel ended up embedded in my seat (or so I'm told as I only regained consciousness in the ambulance).The time I spent in hospital was a turning point for me, a time when I connected again with my love for solitude and silence, which I seemed to have forgotten during my college years. The surgeon who wired my elbow, the elbow that pushed open the door and saved my life,was a kind and interesting man who heard me when I told him that the constant coming and going, the television , and the noise in the ward was driving me crazy. He had me moved to to a private room at the end of the corridor , a room that looked out and down on a stand if pine trees. I will never forget my first night in that room the healing in the view of green grass and trees and the bliss of finding peace and silence. I am ever grateful to that accident, to the kindness of ny doctor and to the reawakening of my love for silence.
We all have events that change our lives, give yourself the time to look within and connect with those mysterious happenings that have made you the amazing person that you are .

"Even after all this time, The sun never says to the earth,
"You owe me." Look what happens with A love like that.
It lights the whole sky."
-- Hafiz of Persia

" When an inner situation is not made conscious,

    it appears outside as fate. " 

         Carl Jung

   Love is Self

   and this is so complete 

   that it doesn't even need understanding

   There is nothing besides Love.

   It is the source of Joy.



   Here,

   Here is the Secret of Love:

   Here It Is!



   First Be in Love.

   Then if there is any time left you can speak of it. 

   No head is needed to speak of Love, only Heart.

   In this Heart there is no need for maps to get Home.



   The easiest thing is to be Here in this Love,

   all else is effort and takes effort. 



   Remove all ideas: This is Love.



       Papaji

 

   

"Every change in the physiological state is accompanied by an appropriate change in the mental emotional state conscious or unconscious, and conversely, every change in the mental emotional state, conscious or unconscious is accompanied by an appropriate change in the physiological state." Elmer Green (Mayo Clinic pioneer of biofeedback)

In the 1990's Howard Hall showed that the immune system could be consciously controlled.In the pivotal experiments he conducted at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, he instructed his human subjects in cyberphysiologic stratigies (self-regulatory practices such as relaxation and guided imagery, self-hypnosis, biofeedback-training and autogenic training). Using several control groups, Hall showed that those with cyberphysiologic preparation could use these techniques to consciously increase the stikiness of their white blood cells, as measured by saliva and blood tests. Hall was the first to show that psychological factors, that is conscious intervention, could directly affect cellular function in the immune system.

I love finding evidence of how we can have more influence (power) over our bodies and lives. I suppose it reassures me that spending so much of my time training my mind and body,and also reading and researching all I can about consciousness is actually a good use of this precious lifetime.

Crossing Hands from Heartworker on Vimeo.

I am digressing from my peptide ruminations to share this reflection on The Cultivation of Dormant Love
by Radhanath Swami

Mother Nature is always speaking. She speaks in a language understood within the peaceful mind of the sincere observer. Leopards, cobras, monkeys, rivers and trees; they all served as my teachers when I lived as a wanderer in the Himalayan foothills. They shared the kind of lessons that elevate the spirit.

One particularly illuminating lesson from the forest comes in the form of the Himalayan musk deer. The musk deer is referenced in Sanskrit poetry and philosophy owing to its peculiar behavior. Prized by the perfume industry for its exceptional aroma, musk is one of the world's most expensive natural products, fetching more than three times its weight in gold. The aroma of musk is so alluring that when the stag's sensitive nose catches wind of it he roams the forest day and night in pursuit of its source. He exhausts himself in a fruitless quest, never realizing the bitter irony: the sweet fragrance he was chasing resided nowhere but within himself. Musk, you see, is produced by a gland in the stag's very own navel: it was searching without for what was all along lying within.


The sages of India found in the musk deer an apt description of the human condition. We are all pleasure-seeking creatures wandering a forest of some sort -- replete with pleasures and perils alike. Moreover, we are prone to the same type of folly as the deer: we seek our happiness externally. Misconceiving our true needs, we wrongly equate our fulfillment and self-worth with possessions, positions, mental and sensual thrills. We are often drawn into superficial relationships which hold the promise of lasting satisfaction, yet leave us feeling empty.

The true treasure lies within. It is the underlying theme of the songs we sing, the shows we watch and the books we read. It is woven into the Psalms of the Bible, the ballads of the Beatles and practically every film ever made. What is that treasure? Love. Love is the nature of the Divine. Beneath the covering of the false ego it lies hidden. The purpose of human life is to uncover that divine love. The fulfillment that we're all seeking is found in the sharing of this love.

The power of love is most profound. It has various levels. In its crudest sense, the word love refers to acts of physical intimacy, and its influence over society is obvious. But on a deeper, more emotional level, not simply of the body but of the heart, there is no greater power than love. For the sake of money and prestige, one may be willing to work long hours, weekends, even holidays. A mother's love, on the other hand, is selfless and unconditional. There's nothing she won't do for the well-being of her child, and she asks for nothing in return.

When love is pure, it has the power to conquer. Lover and beloved conquer each other by their affection. [We are] willing and eager to not only be touched by love, but to be conquered by it. The cultivation of that dormant love is called the path of devotion.
Radhanath Swami

All the great mystics tell us of the interconnectedness or oneness of all and I really love when I come across evidence in science that confirms this. I hope you enjoy the following ...(It's from The Molecules of Emotion once again.)
" An era of discovery has began that is still in full swing, as neuroscientists began tracing the precise connections among all the parts of the body.
To cite just one recent example, Rita Valentono of the University of Pennsylvania has shown that the nucleus of Barrington in the hindbrain, formerly believed to control merely micturition ( bladder-emptying ), is connected through the vagus nerve to the most distant part of the large intestine, near the anus. Rita has proven that sensations of colonic distention (i.e., the feeling of needing to poop) as well as those of genetial arousal are carried back to the nucleus of Baerrington. From there there is a short neural connection that hooks up to the locus coeruleus ("pleasure pathway")also very high in opiate receptors. The pleasure pathway hooks up to the control area of these bathroom functions, which is located in the front of the brain. Goodness is any wonder that toilet training is associated with emotional stuff.
If we accept that peptides and other informational substances are the biochemicals of emotion, their distribution in the body's nerves has all kinds of significance, which Sigmund Freud, were alive today would gleefully point out as the molecular confirmation of his theories. The new work suggests that there are almost infinite pathways for the conscious mind to access - and modify - the unconscious mind and the body.

More about peptides and us.
"Dr Kendall and his associates at Columbia University have proven that biochemical changes wrought at the receptor level is the molecular basis of memory. These recent discoveries are important for appreciating how memories are stored not only in the brain, but in a psycosomatic network extending all the way out along pathways to internal organs and the very surface of our skin. The fact that memory is encoded or stored at receptor level suggests that memory processes are emotion-driven and unconscious(but like other receptor-mediated processes, can sometimes be made conscious)." - from The Molecule of Emotion
Consciousness training like tai chi and other forms of meditation are proven ways of gaining more awareness of these unconscious emotion-driven processes allowing in the possibility of choosing new ways of responding and thereby opening us up to new ways of experiencing our lives.

Having found myself in love with my wide eyed kittens earlier this week, the love seems to be spreading out and my awe and wonder at being lucky enough to be born into this amazing Species is constantly confronting me and so I'm compelled to share . . .
This is not a systematic list just observations and some of the wonderful information about how we work that I have come across in my reading.
"Conscious breathing, the technique employed by both the yogi and the woman in labor, is extremely powerful. There is a wealth of data showing that changes in the rate depth of of breathing produce changes in the quantity and kind of peptides that ere released from the brain stem. And vise versa! By bringing this process into consciousness and doing something to alter it - either holding your breath or breathing extra fast - you cause the peptides to diffuse rapidly throughout the cerebrospinal fluid, in an attempt to restore homeostasis, the body's feedback mechanism for restoring and maintaining balance. And since many of these peptides are endorphins, the body's natural opiates, as well as other kinds of pain-relieving substances, you soon achieve a diminution of your pain. So it's no wonder that so many modalities, both ancient and modern, have discovered the power of controlled breathing. The peptide-respiratory link is well documented: Virtually any peptide found anywhere else can be found in the respiratory center. This peptide substrate may provide the scientific rationale for the powerful healing effects of consciously controlled breath patterns." from Molecules of Emotion by Candice Pert.
( Dr. Candace Pert is an internationally recognized psychopharmacologist who, until recently, held a research professorship in the department of physiology and biophysics at Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C. She has published more than 250 scientific articles and has lectured worldwide on pharmacology, neuroanatomy, and her own leading-edge research on emotions and the bodymind connection. ) Enough science for today lots more that I'm looking forward to sharing.
If you want to be wonder struck by us watch it here

I have fallen completely in love with these wide eyed wonder struck kittens.