De-stress and calm
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Want clear-eyed, fully oxygenated, upright ease? This is a go-to lesson to settle down before bed, or to calm the system before any difficult task. It expands the restricted places in the chest and belly we don't even know we’re holding.
For more like this, see calming with the breath.
This lesson curls the toes, hands, and eyes. As you contract and let go many times tension starts to dissolve. It's very calming with its rhythmic combinations. Plus, it stops any stressful ruminating you might have running through your mind as you link up the different patterns.
For more pulsing and calming lessons, see:
Calming with the bell hand
Tapping and breathing: Help for anxiety
The Tanden (dantian in Chinese) is the center. In Western thinking we call it the center of gravity. This lesson focuses on gentle movement at the same time sensing the center.
I like it because the awareness of the center when speaking, presenting, or simply getting through the day, can be a state-change in itself. Try it: Speak normally to someone, then intentionally speak from the Tanden and see if there’s a difference!
For more flexion and flattening lessons, see basic flexion.
(AY359)
A short sequence to let go of tension in the jaw, neck, and chest. Feel how the chest and neck affect tightness in your jaw. Take a breath and bring some ease to these chronically tight areas. This lesson is also good before bed!
For more like this, see Release the jaw, neck, and face.
This lesson drops the anxiety level right down as you palm the eyes and look at the closed eyelids. It also frees the neck and head to rest easily on top of the spine. I feel my face soften and the eyes just rest, even if I didn’t know I was straining.
For more like this, see:
178 Rolling hands, palming eyes
234 Palming eyes, tracking fingers, freeing neck
227 Palming the eyes, free the neck, follow bouncing ball
12 Eye movements to smooth the vision and the release neck (Esalen version)
(based on AY10)
This lesson asks you to hold one knee and move the leg side to side in the hip socket, then roll the head in different relationships to the knee. The legs feel long, the hips open and flat, and the belly stops contracting so much, allowing you to take a nice, deep breath.
Then, you start doing the gentle pulsing of the fingers, the Bell Hand movement, and move the knee side to side to challenge the smooth pulsing of the fingers. Finally, there is a gentle rolling movement, testing how to shift the center of mass with the same lightness and ease.
Such a yummy, yummy lesson. Don’t be fooled by how simple it is. It’s almost hypnotic in its slow growing of various patterns of rolling and tilting.
For a more lessons like this, see:
125 Rolling head, coordinating hips
All bell hand lessons
Another lesson for entering a reverie, a kind of zoned-out state. Just do the movements and let the lesson emerge. If you can hang out in this space of “non-doing,” the intelligence of your nervous system will take over.
Tip: Make all the movements smooth. Any jerkiness and you're trying too hard.
For more lessons like this, see:
120 Hip and shoulder circles
201 Connect the shoulders with lines and arcs
456 Imagine hip and shoulder circles
4 Release the neck and shoulders
44 Loosening up to run
“We have to contact the path of our development as a person from the point at which we left it off. Many of us have left our own development long ago. Ever since the world developed brains, all the great teachers say, “know thyself,” without exception. ”