BrickhouseBodymind.com is a mind body fitness blog, encouraging personal transformation and bringing about total fitness through informative articles on integral lifestyle issues such as stress relief, sexuality and relationships, and transformative practices like strength training, meditation and yoga. The website is designed to help you train your body, sharpen your mind, and unleash your spirit, making total fitness a reality for everyone.
Okay, so a lot has been happening. I got sick, my precious 12-year-old golden retreiver, Grace died the middle of last week, and I have been assimilating some new training techniques. Long story short, I’m still working on the mindfulness in your workout article. However, I have the chance to watch a few more talks on TED.com, introduced in the last blog entry, and I thought it might be fun to share a couple of my favorites with you. This is, of course, a two-way street, so I’d love for you guys to share your favorite talks in the comments below. And the article on bringing more mindfulness to your workouts is coming soon, so stay tuned.
The purpose of this post is two-fold. 1) I want to introduce you guys to a terrific website at TED.com. 2) I want to prime your minds with a bit of homework for an article coming later this week on making all elements of your life better through the cultivation of mindfulness.
Last week my dad turned me on to a website called TED.com. It’s a fantastic resource for anyone interested in learning more about science, technology, art, design, business, culture, etc. The website’s subtitle is “Ideas worth spreading,” and it presents (completely free of charge) lectures on all aforementioned subjects by some very knowledgeable and compelling characters. The talke are generally around 20 minutes in length and are well worth the time.
So, homework assignment 1 - check out the following lecture from TED.com. If the player below doesn’t work for you, just follow this direct link. It’s 18 minutes 44 seconds.
Okay, how do you feel now? I for one was very enthralled by this talk. I can tell you I had a visceral reaction to her pulling out the actual brain and spinal cord there. The idea that so much flimsy meat is what controls everything my body does is at the same time astounding and a little sickening. It’s hard to imagine that lumpy mass with its slinky tail, housed inside the bony structures of my body is what makes my human awareness with all its exquisite obsessions possible.
And this brings me to my point. The integral approach seeks to understand life from all available perspectives. This lecture you’ve just watched is a perfect example of the different perspectives on the human mind.
There is an external, scientific perspective illustrated by bringing out the physical brain. This makes a lot of people (myself included) a little uncomfortable precisely because it reduces the special-ness of the human being to so much squishy flesh. It reminds us how vulnerable we really are.
There is an internal, personal perspective, which is what she describes as she experiences the stroke. Notice too, that this perspective changes as she goes back and forth from right-brain euphoria to left-brain panic.
There is finally an internal, interpersonal perspective illustrated by the phone call she makes to her colleague in an attempt to get help. Because of her situation, they have a difficult time communicating and agreeing on what’s happening in her head, but there is finally a mutual understanding that she needs help.
Now for homework assignment 2 - check out this video of Ken Wilber manipulating his brainwaves by meditating while hooked up to an EKG machine. It’s 10 minutes 10 seconds.
This again drives home the concept of multiple perspectives. What I really want you all to get a handle on before my next article on mindfulness is that our internal, personal experiences are inextricably linked to external, physical correlates. This is the mind-body connection we’ve all heard about for so long. It’s for real. Furthermore, this also works the other way. Our physical state of being manifests in our mental/emotional state of being.
You truly are a bodymind unit.
Please comment below if you have thoughts on the videos in this post, or if you want to share your own experiences with the body-mind connection. And be sure to check back later this week for tips on bringing more mindfulness into your life.
Okay, so this is a post announcing the first of what I hope will be many BrickhouseBodymind Blueprints. These are pdf documents and will be of the same nature as my posts here on the blog. The blueprints are printer-friendly, miniature e-books that are aesthetically designed and contain high-quality images where appropriate. They will cover subjects I consider to be core elements of the Brickhouse Bodymind integral fitness lifestyle. I hope these will be more user-friendly to readers than filling a long blog post with a bunch of pictures. We all know what a nightmare those can be to print.
This first one will be freely available at the link below for as long I feel like leaving it there. In the foreseeable future, these blueprints will remain free of charge to those who subscribe to my e-mail feed, so go ahead and jump on board if you like what you read. If you’re subscribed already via a feed reader, I’m going to try and figure a way to make these things available to you as well. I’ll let you all know how that goes.
This blueprint is a detailed discussion of the use of the yogic bandhas to insure proper structural alignment in posture practice, in general exercise, and in life. These techniques are best explored with an instructor to give you immediate feedback, but this document should give you a good idea of what’s happening and why it’s to your advantage to explore these actions in depth. They are obviously part of the yoga tradition – and as such have innumerable applications within the practice of hatha yoga – but their practice and benefits extend far beyond yoga asana. I practice these techniques lying in bed at night to calm my mind and first thing in the morning to loosen up and energize my core. I find they are fantastic tools for building and controlling sexual energy and for increasing sexual longevity. They are great for helping maintain proper alignment while lifting weights in a gym setting as well. The applications really are unlimited.
Okay, below is the second episode of BrickhouseBodymind TV. The movements demonstrated are designed to help you turn your morning (or afternoon) commute into a more positive experience. You may be intuitively doing some of this stuff already, and that’s great. This process is supposed to be an improvisational, intuitive practice that evolves as you identify areas of tension in your own body. The steering wheel can be a great tool, providing leverage for increased muscular traction during mobility exercises, but please remember to keep your eyes on the road. And special thanks goes to my cameraman, Robert for the use of his convertible!
As always, please comment below if you have any thoughts or suggestions. Hope you all enjoy!
First off, a quick apology for letting nearly two weeks go by without a post. I have been earnestly training for this race, as well as getting together material for a string of features over the next couple of weeks. There’s a new episode of BrickhouseBodymindTV going live tomorrow, followed closely by a long article on using the yogic bandhas to enhance core strength and ensure proper alignment in all you do, then I’ll be releasing the BrickhouseBodymind Blueprints for effective warmups and cooldowns that go along with the intelligent stretching articles. So again, sorry for the lengthy absence.
That said, the OT50 is actually two races, one that is 50 km (approximately 31 miles) and another that is 50 miles, both of which started at Maumelle Park just outside Little Rock at 6:00 a.m. on April 19, 2008. The bulk of the distance in both races ran along the Ouachita Trail from its trailhead at Pinnacle Mountain State Park and followed it around the north side of Lake Maumelle. The outbound leg included a jaunt up the east side of Pinnacle Mountain, which is a steep climb from about 400 feet above sea level to the summit at 1011 feet. Here’s a map of the course with landmarks and mile markers, or you can download this kmz file to scope out the Ouachita Trail 50k course for 2008 in Google Earth.
