Written by Philip Walter on Feb 19 at 1:01 am.
This is Part 3 of a 5-part series of articles called The Search. Start from the beginning here.
Photo courtesy of Bryan Clifton.
Resonance, as I mentioned in the last section, is the second characteristic of generous understanding, and likewise it is the second obstacle to developing generous understanding. It takes sensitivity to tune a guitar, finding just the right pitch, not too sharp but not too flat. Likewise it takes sensitivity to find the things that truly resonate in our lives. Depth experiences can be many, but only a few will truly resonate in your key. The depth experience is like the sound coming off your guitar strings, while resonance is like the tuning fork telling you when the sound is true to you. And what’s left after tuning the thing, after finding those sounds that resonate? Well, then you get to play of course.
But maintaining resonance is often difficult, as every guitar player will tell you. Once he’s tuned and played on a set of strings long enough, he’s got to buy another set. So it’s a never-ending process of tuning, playing, and updating; but eventually it becomes a never-ending process of playing.
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Written by Philip Walter on Feb 18 at 1:10 am.
Everyone who’s been in a relationship knows that sex can be one of the most special things a couple shares, but it can also be a point of frustration and stagnation. Either way, sexuality is an integral part of sharing yourself with an intimate life partner. Love making strips us down, lays bare all our physical imperfections, and brings to light many of our emotional insecurities. If we are able to be honest and open throughout the process (and if our partner can do the same), we come out of the sexual experience more comfortable with ourselves and more able to deal with our natural neurotic axieties.
It is when we become closed off during sex that problems arise. Habits and pathologies from other aspects of our psyche inevitably surface in the bedroom, making it an excellent place to challenge those limiting patterns. I put together the following list of ways to spice up your love life to inspire you to break old habits and discover something new, both in yourself and in your lover.
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Written by Philip Walter on Feb 5 at 1:11 am.
This is Part 2 of a 5-part series of articles called The Search. Start from the beginning here.
Photo courtesy of Bryan Clifton.
William James was very pragmatic in his philosophy. He understood all too well that in the spiritual realm, individual experience holds the key to profundity. No amount of Sunday School lessons, inspired sermons, enlightenment weekends, or yoga retreats can turn you on like the graceful kick in the ass of life experience. However painful and difficult to deal with, one’s own personal experience can set him free.
The first line of Patanjali’s Yogasutras states, “Thus proceeds Yoga as I have observed it in the natural world.” And Socrates admitted centuries earlier, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Both these guys are saying just what the Bible says. As noted earlier, from Deuteronomy “…the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart…” and even more powerfully, from Jeremiah 31: 33-34,
“I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. All of them, high and low alike, will know me.”
And even more directly, from the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says to Arjuna,
“Give me back the fruits of my actions, you bastard! They are mine. Who said you could claim them for yourself? The fruits and the actions are mine. You are merely my instrument. Go forth and enjoy the delight of pulling the bowstring. Enjoy the satisfaction of hitting the mark, knowing that no one has ever been born, and no one ever dies, for there is but one, and that one is me. And I am Krishna and you are Krishna – that One is what we are.”
All these thoughts point to the same truth: that the higher power, that governing force, which makes all existence possible, indeed God, is in all of us. It is amazing how the truth resonates everywhere.
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Written by Philip Walter on Jan 30 at 11:11 pm.
So the subtitle on this website says “be powerful, flexible, creative, and fearless.” That’s a nice, tight summary of what it means to be a brickhouse bodymind. I often consider adding “be light” to that subtitle since it refers to more than just keeping your weight at a healthy number, but even with that addition, it would still be a concise description of the things we strive for in the brickhouse bodymind program.
In contrast to said subtitle, you can read numerous long, probably at times verbose articles on this site about developing your own brickhouse bodymind, and if you buy my forthcoming book, The House That Yoga Built, you can read in great detail about the program and it’s principles.
That said, I was inspired recently to bridge the gap between lengthy prose and tight verse by drafting a description of the brickhouse bodymind and the lifestyle one lives in 100 words or less.
Here is what I came up with.
Love life. Live free of attachment. Consume foods in their natural form. Cook at home more often than not. Eat enough to sustain your activity but not so much that you carry unnecessary weight. Be proficient at manipulating your bodyweight with all four limbs, in positions familiar and awkward, upright and inverted. Learn balance – of body and mind. Smile, laugh, and dance often. Play an instrument. Play multiple sports. Read. Exchange ideas. Respect others. Put yourself out there … everywhere.
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Written by Philip Walter on Jan 29 at 6:30 pm.
So, I have developed a new obsession. More accurately, I found one new obsession, which subsequently led to a couple others. Blog posts here have been scarce because of said obsessions, actually.
I am training for a 25k trail run next month. This led to a 14.3-mile jog through Pinnacle Mountain State Park and along the Ouachita Trail. This in turn led to my need to map the jog for all see. I then became obsessed with Google Earth, which is an incredibly powerful (and free) program. So I mapped the trek, as you can see below. I have also made the KMZ file of my hike around Pinnacle and along the OT to the Scenic Vista waypoint available for you to download and open in Google Earth.
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So, I completed the course in about 3:21. That’s an average of roughly 14 minutes per mile. If you take out my 8-minute break at the Scenic Vista on the Ouachita Trail, you an average of 13.5 minutes per mile. I figure that’s pretty good, considering I climbed the East Summit Trail of Pinnacle (a steep 600 foot climb) during that time. Still, I’d like to run the Sylamore 25k in under 3 hours. To do that, I’ll have to push my average to under 12 minutes a mile. Difficult, but doable.
At any rate, this is my new obsession. I’ve added a category to the Mechanisms of Transformation to reflect this. I plan to post more about various hikes I do and make KMZ files available for those interested in such things. Maybe one day soon I can even afford a GPS device to make the tracking ultra easy.
Until next time, get outside and use those lungs!
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