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Video about the Integrative Learning Center

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Oldie but Goodie! | Somatics and Spirituality w/Cynthia Allen & Jon Nugent

2 Jan

Sometimes it is challenging to share anything more potent than one of our workshop participant's personal experience. This is one of those times.

Among the goals in the Somatic Education center is the intention enhance the traditional fields of physical and occupational therapy. We hope to expand therapists' options so they find their profession increasingly interesting and physically do-a-ble as a life-long pursuit. Hand-in-hand, we aim to provide a way of thinking and learning through awareness that yields unusual results in some of the most challenging situations. Whether coming to a workshop for one’s own health or to be a better clinician, we seek to create conditions that allow growth on all levels.

Under the auspices of Integrative Learning Center, we also have a Spiritual center and for those of you who have been curious about this, Jonathan Nugent’s piece muses about this aspect. After attending our workshops with Integral Human Gait and Bones for Life, Jon communicated his experience in such a rich way on all of the above issues that we are making it the center of this issue. 

~Cynthia Allen, CEO

Jonathan Nugent on His Experience with Somatics and Spirituality


I am finding the learning method of somatic education very fascinating. I now find myself to be an experiential learner, although I am not sure that was true when I took my first Feldenkrais course.

Recently, I seem to be connecting a lot more of my "fragmented education" from various classes and seminars and integrating it into a movement- centered framework, as opposed to applying it to specific diagnoses and conditions. It is very different from traditional lecture-type education and makes me wonder if education, in general, could be significantly improved with a more action-oriented approach.

Upon returning from the Bones for Life workshop, I was working with a patient in the pool giving him postural cues, and explaining some of the weekend work to my PT student. The student seemed somewhat skeptical, but one of the aquatic staff practically jogged over to ask what I was working on and asked me to show her more. She also told me she immediately noticed I was moving differently and standing much taller (making me wonder what my baseline looked like).

My student wasn't that interested in the weekend content until I had a full discussion of the kinematics involved, but the wellness staff was immediately interested. I think people from a wellness background already know what they do from experiential learning and are open to anything that furthers their personal understanding, but people who are academically trained usually have to run it through the "is this consistent with what I have been told" filter.

I am rather philosophical after a Feldenkrais weekend, which is a bit unusual for me.

I have wondered why there seems to be a spiritual aspect to somatic work and why spirituality is a portion of the Integrative Learning Center of Mid America.  As I reflect on my Christian journey; I started out being told what to believe, later resented being told what to believe, decided  for myself what to believe, accepted Christ, and now I have an authentic belief framework which has changed my world view tremendously.

Somatic education seems to have some of that same quality of allowing a person decide for themselves how they can improve, rather than being told what to do, and therefore it can facilitate a much more "authentic" healing process.  In my work with patients, I am learning to become more patient.  Prior when an exercise or movement didn’t seem do-a-ble, I might immediately move on to something else.  I have begun to see the value in helping them struggle with the struggle, and the importance of experimenting. I recognize that this is the process of learning and also the more “authentic” healing process.

Back to the clinical setting, I am finding exciting results in applying my new learning to patients with  a variety of conditions, although I am finding it especially useful working with those recovering from a stroke.

Jonathan Nugent is physical therapist with 20 years experience and works for the Drake Center, a rehabilitation hospital.

Comments [2]

 

While expecting hopefully that the environment will be changed by our collective efforts, we must also make sure...#quote Moshe #Feldenkrais

12 Jun

While expecting hopefully that the environment will be changed by our collective efforts, we must also make sure that everything amenable to human influence in each individual is used to facilitate adaptation. This will not only eliminate much misery in the present generation but also give a better chance to the next.

Moshe Feldenkrais
Body & Mature Behavior
A study of anxiety, sex, gravitation, & learning

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For any one of us who is moved by spiritual inspiration, it is important that we seek wholeheartedly until we find. And once we begin... #AndrewCohen #spirituality

1 May
"For any one of us who is moved by spiritual inspiration, it is important that we seek wholeheartedly until we find.  And once we begin to seek, we must not stop until we are convinced, at the deepest level of our being, of the mystical reality that God, or Spirit, is our own true Self...There will always be more for us to experience, to understand, and to realize, but once we are convinced of the reality of Spirit, at a soul level, we are no longer seekers.  And therefore, we have to take responsibility for what it means to be finders."
 
excerpt from Seek Until You Find by Andrew Cohen
EnlightenmentNext,  2011,  Issue 47
 

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...Let him say not merely, "Christ is risen," but "I shall rise." read more #quotes #easter

24 Apr
Victory

Let every man and woman count himself  immortal. 
Let him catch the revelation of Jesus in his resurrection. 
Let him say not merely, "Christ is risen," but "I shall rise."  ~Phillips Brooks

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I stood still. I forgot who I was...My worldliness was gone... St John of the Cross | Among The White Lilies #poetry

3 Apr
Lillies

In my chest full of flowers,
Flowering wholly and only for Him,
There He remained sleeping;
I cared for Him there,
And the fan of the high cedars cooled Him.
....
 
I stood still. I forgot who I was,
My face leaning against Him,
Everything stopped, abandoned me,
My worldliness was gone, forgotten
Among the white lilies.
 
Among The White Lilies by St John of the Cross (excerpt, version by Robert Bly)
Ten Poems to Change Your Life by Roger Housden

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An Ecology of Mind, The Gregory Bateson Documentary #youtube #bateson #ecology #integral

21 Mar

Bateson is likely someone that all of us who believe in proactive human evolution should know of and perhaps even study. 

His youngest daughter Nora, has unearthered his work documents and put together an award winning film on her father's contributions. A film to see, this short trailer has been released. 

 

Ecology_of_mind_animation_v1

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Now She Walks Free: Guest Post by Tim Carson

18 Jan

Bbc_aungsansuukyi

 

By Tim Carson, M.Div, D.Min, guest writer

Nelson Mandela spends decades in his Robin Island captivity, all the while his non-violent but persistent presence grows into a towering figure of moral strength and hope for those overcoming apartheid in South Africa. Martin Luther King, Jr., writes his letter from a Birmingham jail and the world listens in new ways, tuned to the frequency of one willing to suffer for the vision of a new united America. Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes letters from the Nazi prison where he is held for resisting the Reich and his words land with a potent power upon the ears of generations to come who strive for justice. The family of Ann Frank is sheltered by heroic neighbors who place themselves at great risk. Anne’s diary, posthumously, serves as a testament to humanity, self-sacrifice, courage and resilience. The apostle Paul dictates a letter to the faithful from prison and his words hold an unmistakable gravitas, the weight of one who has suffered for his God, his purpose, his convictions.

There is a special moral witness that manifests itself when the innocent demonstrate courage, grace and constancy in the face of tyranny, oppression and inhumanity. So very often their voices ring with a deeper clarity, one unrealized by those who have not experienced the same, or sacrificed as much.

And now, in this moment, Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi, known simply as “The Lady,” emerges from her confinement, the captivity of a repressive regime. For 15 of the last 21 years the military dictatorship kept her under lock and key. They mistakenly thought that if they kept her out of sight people would forget, lose her in the shadows. But no. With each passing year her stature grew and her influence multiplied. What is a dictator to do? Kill her? No, that would create an instant martyr, an unacceptable outcome, another Ghandi, another Jesus.

And now she walks free, a gentle soul with flowers in her hair. She speaks quietly and directly about democracy, oppression, reconciliation and freedom. She has a spiritual, a peace-making presence of active non-violent resistance. And she sports a winsome humor, a freedom, and a sense that no one can take anything else from her. Is that how courage is forged, when fear is overcome in the furnace of loss or suffering?

What can they do to this 65 year old woman now? Take her life? That has been tried before, throughout history it has. And it is the surest way to release the power of a life into the world, out where it can never again be put behind bars again. Oppressors know that; that’s why they fear the righteous. Evil always grimaces in the light of goodness.

Tim Carson is the Senior Minister of Broadway Christian Church, Columbia, Missouri. You may respond to him at timothylcarson@yahoo.com

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...to be nothing is to be like a single dot, and from a single dot a person can do whatever he wants - Pinchas of Koretz #kabala #feldenkrais #hasidic

29 Aug
"A person should consider himself as dumb, as nothing in his own eyes, in this way his brain is renewed,
both in a spiritual as well as in a physical sense, in his working life and in the health of his body,
and in all that belongs to him...

"...When, for example, a person falls ill, and is at a low point, nothing,
this is where the remedy comes from. Because to be nothing is to be like a single dot,
and from a single dot a person can do whatever he wants."
- Pinchas of Koretz
from Making Connections
Hasidic Roots and Resonance in the Teachings of Moshe Feldenkrais
by David Kaetz

Comments [2]

 

Is there anyone hotter than Seth Godin? You matter

2 Jul

Is there anyone hotter than Seth Godin? And for good reason. Ambitious, intelligent, easy to read and wait for it. ..a desire to be a kind person. 

Take a look at his short You Matter list.  It's potent.  Which ones speak to you? Would enjoy hearing from you.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/06/you-matter.html

I have been working on this one for a few years now:
"When you teach and forgive and teach more before you judge and demean, you matter"

Of late I have been considering the issue of generosity.  I am reflecting on his take on it as I ponder my perceived risks to having a generous spirit.

post by Cynthia Allen

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Ralph Waldo Emerson: The love of nature is.

13 Jun

"The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward sernses are still truly adjusted to each other;

who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood."

~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

One of the many things I love about social media is that I become informed by reading other people's posts. This morning Candadian Feldenkrais Practitioner, Irene Gutteridge and creator of The Next 25 Years (an incredible project) reblessed the world with the above Emerson quote.  Thanks Irene for the quote and the visionary project.

Posted via email from integrativecynthia's posterous

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