new...
I’ve found myself rather reflective, cleaning out old boxes and amazed at what was in there, dreaming — and remembering — very wild nightdreams, staring into space and finding myself amazed at what comes about this year. Each one had been difficult the last few months to bring forward into awakening. At least until now.
Yes, it is a new year. Even more so, I think, a new season, back to the changing of the guard…darkness switching with light. What we began at the solstice pinnacle.
With Healing Touch we practice many ways of beginning again, of allowing wind and life to find Its way into places in need of newness, of learning to be with oneself with the gentle assistance of another.
It's quite profound what is possible with something so simple as gentle touch.
And there's no magic about it, no attunement from a master necessary. Healing Touch reminds us very democratically that we all are healers, wholers, WHOLE.
Perhaps this is the year you'll consider finding out for yourself...
either by taking a Level 1...a few spots still available for the Jan 15-16 class though you must register by this Thurs, Jan 6!
or by finding out what Healing Touch Worldwide Foundation is broadcasting, even forecasting through this year of fun...and I contributed a piece to it so please consider checking it out...the bridge and perhaps even new paradigm that encompasses Healing Touch, Feldenkrais, massage, meditation, all of it...
http://www.energetic-forecast.htwfoundation.org/brian-shircliff-home
If you register for this series through this affiliate link, VITALITY earns half of the registration fee which we'll put toward Healing Touch scholarships, our Peter Buswinka Healing Touch Fund.
Could your life be transformed by simply becoming aware of your own touch...the power that every human being can offer their own selves and one another?
Let's find out even more, friends. There's always more...!
Happy New.
Brian Shircliff
513.300.5174
solstice dreams and dances
We humans have plenty of ways to mark time.
Holidays of all sorts, birthdays, rituals…even clocks. We all have our own orbits, our own pathways to mark something as special, changing, different from before...how we change with time.
The sun, the moon, and the Earth have their own ways of marking time in their relationships with one another. Light and darkness, and how they swim into and out of each other.
I’ve been amazed lately by the intense bed-time darkness at 6pm! Maybe you have too as we’ve tumbled toward darkness…these darkest nights of the year in the northern hemisphere of our planet Earth.
And in just a few days, all of that changes again…we find ourselves marinating in a few more minutes of light each day, for months. What’s a month…? A *moonth*…those 28-day cycles more dependable than our own calendar.
Whether we notice or not, whether we mark this change or not, change is happening.
What will you do to dance with it?
Will you mamba, tango, pirouette, hip-hop, jump, two-step? Will you do as Lorca noted of the 80 year old lady who stomped only the last beat of the flamenco to win the competition against the teens and twenty-year-olds in all their youthful beauty and sultry, limber moves? Will you twirl wildly in your own orbit, moving to some ecstatic invitation that seems only you recognize, that something that captures you...the duende that Lorca so sagely described?
Will you let the breeze move you, as you participate with your breath?
Will you sit?
What will you do?
Consider gathering with us for our annual Winter Solstice journaling and conversation this Tuesday, Dec 21 at 6:30pm via Zoom. Penny Costilla has led this gathering for 10 years now already, and you're most welcome to join us. Reply to this email for the Zoom link.
What will your pen dance onto the page for you that might have some important meaning for you?
Come, let's find out! Set yourself up right in this new season marking itself out with emerging light.
Brian Shircliff
the whole of It
One of the deadliest forces on the planet is a human being who thinks the world, their body, or even the Universe is a collection of parts.
A nervous system -- brain, nerves, and the estimated 100 trillion synapses in a human being who walks the planet -- can't exist for long without lungs and heart and stomach and every organ imaginable.
And a nervous system that wants to move must grow and develop a body that can move...bones and muscles that not only work together but are together. Where do you separate muscle from bone? At the tendon? At the ligament? This is more of that 'parting' things up to try to make sense of the whole creature...often with not-so-happy consequences.
No muscle or bone can move without a nervous system, those 100 trillion synapses!
No living organ or tissue of any sort within a human body is separate from another tissue...especially considering all the internal-tubes that feed a human body so many things.
What is it that anatomist Tom Myers says...that without a knife there is only one muscle in the human body. All that anatomist lingo about naming this one the 'quadriceps' and that one the 'gluteus maximus' can be misleading if we forget that when one muscle moves, every muscle moves. And what directed the movement...? What sensed the context of the movement and responded to that context, that environment?
Ever have an experience of yourself when you felt the wholeness of yourself?
Ever have an experience of yourself as a Whole Person within the Whole of the Universe...an ecstatic-glimpse of THE ALL?
Tell me about it please! I've been writing a book on ecstatic-experience for almost a year now and would love -- would be ecstatic -- to hear your story!
Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais' ideas have helped me a lot to know myself differently, as a whole.
With the Feldenkrais Method and Movement Intelligence, we explore experiences that invite a whole awareness of oneself. It might take a few experiences to figure out how what we're saying here and inviting here is probably different from your yoga class or your boot camp or your walking group...unless you all conceive of a human being as a whole and as a whole creature within a whole universe.
After all, the seemingly separate molecule of oxygen that sails into me and becomes me for a time leaves me and joins a plant and then maybe another creature or plant and then spins through the air and sails into you and becomes you for a time.
With a holistic understanding, is there such a thing then as a separate molecule of oxygen when it's inside of you and later inside of me? Are you and I even separate creatures or are we alive within a Living Whole?
Consider joining our holistic experiences of moving-breathing-resting and discover if your ways of knowing yourself and the Universe / One-Verse grow....
Peace, friends!
Brian Shircliff
513.300.5174
PS...Thanks to all who have already RSVPd for Carol T Yeazell's party...join us to celebrate, thank, and send her on this exciting new life-journey in Colorado!
Sat, Nov 13 from 2 - 4 pm (stories at 3pm)
Gorman Heritage Farm - 10052 Reading Rd, Cincinnati, OH 45241
outdoors in the Pavilion…if it’s cold/rainy, by Zoom
can't make it? send a card to me to share with Carol:
5902 Kimberly Ave, Cincinnati, OH 45213
Bones for Life pop-up replay
Two simple and easy movement-invitations here with this replay from yesterday's Bones for Life pop up -- so simple they could change your life a whole lot:
Check them out, let me know what happens for you as you explore, and consider joining us for the immersions beginning this Oct -- very limited spots available as we like to keep the groups small, friendly, and fun.
Brian Shircliff
Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner
Movement Intelligence / Bones for Life Teacher
513.300.5174
Pop in Thursday and GROW -- Maybe an Inch!
Save some time this Thursday, Sept 16 at 12:30pm ET for a free Bones for Life pop-up via Zoom!
I'll share...
- 2 easy-to-learn Bones for Life processes to discover ease with walking, with every move you make
- the story of how and why Bones for Life was created
- a few stories of participants and how they've grown -- literally -- from Bones for Life
- how you can join an immersion via Zoom this October
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83143165113?pwd=MzFjOGR3MWtaRU1CSXhEd0JYajNaUT09
Meeting ID: 831 4316 5113
Passcode: Bones
My story of how I first experienced Bones for Life is pretty funny, and I'll share it at the pop-up.
Bones for Life / Movement Intelligence is an organic way of learning through slow, gentle movement...organic in that we learned this way as babies first navigating this gravity-rich planet and continue to learn this way, even as 100+ year olds.
In Bones for Life we explore often on the floor or even your own bed (hey, we're on Zoom!), from a chair, standing, walking. It's very different from yoga. And the full immersions take place from the comfort of your home beginning Oct 17: click here for details and to sign up if you're ready to join this great group.
As I've shared with you already, it's been the best course of movement-study and experience I've ever undertaken -- my body changed soooo much, my sense of myself grew into even more authenticity, everything got easier!
I'm thrilled to be able to offer this free pop-up this Thursday. See you then!
Brian Shircliff
Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner
Movement Intelligence Teacher
513.300.5174
PS photo credits: Tina Gutierrez - yay!
why labor?
It takes a lot of effort to do the things we want to do and need to do.
But does it have to?
Could there be easier ways to move, to live, even to imagine and think?
Our Movement Intelligence / Bones for Life immersions are wonderful ways to discover the pleasure of movement -- no matter your age! We've had 20 year olds through 80+ year olds participate in the immersions...with great success and happiness. Our participants report that decades-old aches and pains have disappeared through their experiences with these immersions. One famous 80 year old grew an inch and a half!
Cynthia Allen of Future Life Now and I have loved every minute of leading these immersions. I'm offering some new immersions -- either on Sundays or Mondays, your choice, 10am - 2:30pm ET -- beginning Oct 17. Click here for details and to sign up.
Last week I mentioned that putting one's body in some different gentle shape or giving oneself some different, gentle movements changes us all forever...especially when we continue to find new ways to move that are gentle...because a nervous system best learns things in profound and long-term ways when experiences are gentle, easy, pleasurable, curiosity-led, within oneself...not based on what some authority tells us. Cynthia shares quite a bit about this in this webinar on Bones for Life. Quality movement matters!
Movement Intelligence is an organic way of learning through slow, gentle movement...often on the floor or even your own bed (hey, we're on Zoom!), from a chair, standing, walking. It's very different from yoga. And it's from the comfort of your home -- amazing!
Hope you'll consider giving yourself a Fall gift -- to improve your life even during a pandemic, from the comfort of your home, as 100s of people around the world have joined us for these immersions the past 18 months.
It's been the best course of study I've ever undertaken, and I'm thrilled to be able to offer it to you!
Brian Shircliff
Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner
Movement Intelligence Teacher
513.300.5174
PS Our 300-hour Yoga Training Group is an incredible group of people -- and they graduate Sun, Sept 19 with an outdoor party beginning at noon, we're hoping at a shelter at Mt. Airy Forest. We hope you consider joining us! Happy to let you know where we'll meet if you reach out. This group studied Movement Intelligence as part of their training!
PPS photo credit below: Tina Gutierrez - yay!
the future looks scary...or better than ever?
The future looks scary sometimes, doesn't it?
Pandemics and earthquakes and fires and droughts and heavy rains and hurricanes and floods out of nowhere. Human beings and wavering economies reacting to these unpredictable natural events often do not make it any easier.
Something new is being born -- some new way of life on this amazing planet.
Perhaps it's in how we choose to respond that matters most -- in creative ways, in ways that are tuned to finding joy in the strangest moments, in ways that acknowledge all that we're feeling and at the same time discover flexibility when things around us are wild, unpredictable.
Our Birthing a New Age membership is open for a few more days -- until Monday -- so that curious friends like you and me can gather and talk and wonder together...and discover creativity and peace of mind together.
Last week I shared with you what Helen and Mike had to say about this circle of friends -- new and lifetime friends -- we call Birthing a New Age.
Here's what Alex shares:
“Birthing a New Age has been a great way to get together with new people in a space that fosters creativity and noticing—things that are so often missing from our busy day-to-day life. It has been a true gem to connect with others who notice and care.”
And it all happens on Zoom -- something that will become increasingly more important as move into the cooler and darker September evenings...change.
What do you get with your membership?
- access to a circle of friends who will meet 5 times starting Thurs, Sept 2 at 7:15pm EDT -- friends who want to hear what you say
- unlimited weekly VITALITY classes via Zoom or in-person for 6 weeks
- a year's worth of weekly short 2 - 7 minute invitations to grow your senses, your creativity, your flexible mind, and your ease of living...ideas from Feldenkrais Method, Neuro Linguistic Programming, meditation, and Healing Touch self-care
- an opportunity to get your ideas or artwork published with VITALITY's new press...through VITALITY's annual Birthing a New Age journal or through your very own book!
- once our five meetings in Sept-Oct conclude, you'll be able to join previous and future Birthing a New Age circles to continue the conversation for the year of your membership
ALL FOR ONLY $97!
You must register by Monday! https://vitalitycincinnati.org/programs/birthing-a-new-age/
Could the years ahead be even better than the years behind us? Let's find out together!
Brian Shircliff
program director
513.300.5174
feel it? it opens TODAY!
You feel it too?
The subtle coolness in the hot air?
Something new is happening here.
And I'm not just talking about the weather!
Our first Birthing a New Age group wrapped up last Thursday -- an incredible group of people sharing stories and questions, wondering and wandering together, listening together, laughing together, discovering new pathways forward.
Talk about a change!
Why?
We were a pretty diverse group -- that's for sure! Ages 20s to 80s, logging in from five states at one point, so many different life experiences. I suspect we have very different political ideas too, though we didn't talk about that.
And we found a way to befriend each other through wondering about a new age emerging.
Take it from our participants:
"How exciting to sit with a group who envisions possible futures. The experience affirmed and clarified my own role as an elder in birthing a new age." Helen Buswinka
"Do you float through life and sometimes wonder where to land? Come find kindred spirits seeking a new Way to a new Age." Mike Eck
Registration opens today for the next group which begins via Zoom on Sept 2 at 7:15pm EDT. The membership will be open for a short time, and there's room for only 20 of us in the next circle.
Check out all you get with your membership by clicking here. FOR ONLY $97!
The new air is inviting BOLDNESS...perhaps your joining this circle will enliven even more boldness and positive change in your life and in our world.
May we all be so bold!
Brian Shircliff
program director
513.300.5174
have a bold August!
I’ve been feeling the need to be bold lately.
I do not fit into my old life, my pre-pandemic life. No matter how hard I try to do what was easy and pleasurable before March 2020, my soul was enlarged by the different routines, the living in two-week increments of quarantine and then seeing people and then quarantine again.
Something in me longs to do some of the the things I’ve always wanted to do. And to leave behind what’s no longer needed, something of my ‘old’ life.
What about you?
August is nearly here. August.
It’s a strange word, yes?
A bold word.
It was used to name a particular heralded king, a caesar. But the word existed long before that, used to describe one (an augur) who foretold the future through the close observation of details of the present...things readily observable by anyone and everyone who is curious.
We all do something of this, you know...like when you see two people in love -- even early in their relationship -- and say, "Look at those two -- they're going to have an amazing life together!"
An augur’s bold ideas and bold ways of coming to know different realities and shapeshift into them and out of them is the heart of the shamanic tradition…whether that shamanic tradition is in the much older bordercrossing tradition of the prophets/ecstatics of Ancient Israel's mountaintops or any culture that stays close to the ground out of a desire for wisdom. (The word ‘Hebrew’ actually means ‘bordercrosser,’ by the way.) Modern biblical scholars often now boldly proclaim that Jesus was a shaman with his bold ways of healing (telling people to get up!!) — much to the unhappiness of the authorities who wanted healing to flow only through them.
Nature includes all, THE ALL, after all and has far different plans than authorities alone can try to muster. Perhaps 'healing' is simply a process of participating with nature, right? 'Healing' and 'wholing'...realizing we're swimming in a much larger ocean, THE ALL.
Maybe you’re being invited to be bold in some way this August…to do something you’ve always wanted to do, and with that to leave behind something you no longer need.
Let us all know here at VITALITY, either by replying to this email or through social media by tagging us #vitalitycincinnati. I’ll be starting a special Facebook group called ‘A Bold August’ and invite you to join if you’re still using that platform. Let's find ways to support each other, encourage one another in our bold new moves...that we might give birth to some newness on our amazing planet during a time when birthing new ways and realizations seems to be happening so readily.
Maybe you’re even being called to join the upcoming Aug 14-15 Healing Touch Level 1 with Mary Duennes and Stephanie Beck Borden. And guess what…we ask you to register by the beginning of August...Aug 1 — this Sunday. I'm happy to send you the details for the class, just reach out.
Our human-lives needs boldness, newness, yes?
May we be so bold...and ripen into our authenticity!
Brian Shircliff
program director
513.300.5174
Claire Long and Mike Eck celebrating their new coloring book, With You in Our Dreams!
Just A Day Left To Jump Into Our Yoga Immersions This Year!
There's only a day left to join our yoga caravan this year.
We are welcoming a few friends into Immersion 2 before we set off more deeply on this journey.
You'd be joining an incredible group of people who have been traveling together for a few weeks...all of us wondering if the real magic of yoga is not the shapes themselves but the spaces between the shapes.
Those pauses and small, slow moves between the shapes are essentially developmental moves, moves most humans make in their efforts to walk on this gravity-rich planet.
One of the geniuses of the 20th century -- Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais -- wondered deeply about these early developmental moves like sliding a foot into standing and pushing that foot into the ground and rolling and creeping and crawling and finding all kinds of ways to come to sitting and standing and walking. Seems strange that a guy who helped invent radium and SONAR would have such interest in baby moves, right?
Well, he wanted to learn to walk again after serious injuries to his knee. His doctor told him he'd never walk again, at least not without surgery.
But Moshe walked -- all by gently engaging those early moves that babies play with to get to the toy or friend they love. Through play! Through curiosity!
One of the participants in Immersion 1 recently said, "I've never thought of yoga in this way. And I'm feeling a lot better and enjoying life more."
Is this calling your name? https://vitalitycincinnati.org/immersions/yoga/
After tomorrow night, the next yoga immersions with Tonia Smith and me won't open until next Spring. Join the yoga caravan on this wild journey for your health & curiosity or to become a yoga teacher!
Brian Shircliff
program director
513.300.5174
PS...a reminder about the upcoming parties...
tomorrow/Sat, July 17...poet Evan Underbrink shares his poems and stories at Jesuit Spiritual Center at Milford's Rock House at 4pm...BYOD, some snacks provided, and pre-order his new book so we can get it to press and out into the world
Sat, July 24...VITALITY picnic at Gorman Heritage Farm from 2-5pm...rain or shine as we're under a big Pavilion...come tell us how you're doing and celebrate Mike Eck & Claire Long's new reading & coloring book With You in Our Dreams...bring an appetizer or dessert to share
Gratitude to incredible artist Parrish Monk for his inspiring painting pictured here, "Universal Traveler." This painting is on the cover of VITALITY's yoga book which includes the stories of so many people, including Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais.
