March 11, 2010

Ballast monsters and the samba-butterfly-crew…

The other day I was exploring some stuff with the awesomely wonderful Havi Brooks which involved wondering how to bring the samba-butterfly-crew from inside where they were creating a certain degree of havoc, to the outside, where they might better be able to help me biggify my business.

The resistance involved a deeply held belief that it’s really, really important ‘not to rock the boat ‘!! Which is kinda funny, given as Havi kindly pointed out, I’m something of a professional boat-rocker by trade. ‘So where did that one come from?’, we wondered collectively.

Indeed.

Diving into the where made it quickly apparent it was much more of a who that we were looking for … and the who had feet. Two of them. Huge ones. Huge enough to make a hobbit’s look dainty. They were sticking out from under my front door, and on opening to take a look, they belonged to an extremely short, hairy, pretty featureless (on account of the hair) monstery-troll type person. (Think cavemen from the Wacky Races with vertically-challenged issues.)

This, it turns out, is my Ballast Monster… (??!)

His job is to keep the boat from being rocked. He’s ideal. Huge feet and a seriously low centre of gravity. He’s made for the job.. and good at it. He’s certainly managed to keep me from any dangerous boat-rocking activities, like actually posting any of my explorations on here, or finding too many of my right people that might actually want to work with me. And so forth..

So I pointed out how good he’s been at doing his job. This boat aint rocking much. More’s the pity. But with him down there as ballast… I really don’t see what the problem is. He liked that. It’s always nice to be seen and appreciated, huh?

How about some gentle divine guidance for the boat? … Would he be into considering that, we wondered?

Bless him if he didn’t just think that was the bee’s knees, or the butterfly’s wings, of a suggestion, as it happens. Because no sooner had we asked, than the boat was being magically lifted, James-and-the-Giant-Peachwise, by hundreds of samba-butterfly-crew butterflies each attached to a gossamer thread … taking me off on solo-adventurer-traveller explorations (with the Ballast Monster too, of course, to ensure a degree of stability).

p.s. If you’re now feeling the urge to check out what monsters might be hiding in your own unique pantheon, or even just to see how you might go about doing that, I’d totally recommend heading over to the Fluent Self for some 101 on the how-to’s, including how to come out unscathed.

p.p.s. The Ballast Monster’s just agreed that the butterfly-powered boat explorations are kinda fun… it looks like we might get some more exploring done… and get to report back here too! Yay. Result!

March 9, 2010

Why my sitz-bone is glued to my heel…

…. so I’m kneeling, ok?  Watching Andrei Lappa introducing the awesomeness that is Shiva Nata . I have my just-a-little-bit-more-challenging-than-usual question in mind to be flailed into clarity by my practice (more of that later) and there are a bunch of butterflies doing sambas through my whole torso. Not just in my belly, oh no, this is no local butterfly-samba-crew jamming on a Tuesday morning… there’s a whole Rio’s worth of carnival going on in here.

So I notice this.

And I notice that there’s also a light tension in the base of my throat… which is probably keeping the butterflies from storming my brain and causing all hell to let loose. Can’t have that ….

And it’s at this point that a gap appears.

Or more precisely, a gap makes itself apparent. It’s a space. And also a non-connection. It’s between my right sitz-bone and my right heel.

I’m kneeling on a blanket in front of the fire (and the video). Everything points to the continued presence of gravity… you know, furniture on the floor and the like. So really there’s no particularly good reason I can see for my right sitz-bone not to be resting easily on my right heel, just like its partner the left one is.

No good reason other than ‘maintaining the status quo’. Hmmm… did I just say that? Further hmmm … I’ve discovered a status, and it has a quo. I wonder. Why would this sitz-bone choose to hold itself out of gravity this way? And even more interestingly, what would happen if it made a different choice?

And in the meantime, I breathe. Fully. Easily. Lightly.

Which is when the minor miracle happens..  gravity steps in and does its thing. With the combo of easy breathing and more focussed attention, my sitz bone expands its awareness and feels the pull of gravity more fully..and realises there are easier ways to be here…and in fact that it could even rest. On my heel! As the awesomeness of this information rushes in, it drops.

And my world subtly changes one more time. The tension holding back the samba-butterfly-crew at the base of my throat begins to dissipate as my mind’s-eye traces the connections. From knee-to-ankle base on the floor, up through my newly balanced working-together-as-a-pair sitz bones and pelvis, my spine stretches itself out, luxuriating in the samba rhythms now pulsing freely through each cell.

And all the butterflies ?  … they flutter excitedly into my head, brain and through my mind to spill out here as this first Postcard from Lindsay’s body.

Yeeha !