Here is a Transformational 4 Step to live life on the vital side.

1. Become more aware of your body.

Body awareness is not a given. There are many parts, places, areas and relationships within your physical self that may lack awareness, so there is no conscious feedback loop to work from.

2. Become aware of a mind-set related to a posture, or to the way you move.

If you pay a little attention to your body you may notice that adjustments in your posture and physical organisation relate to changes in perception. They relate to the way you may be subconsciously thinking about a situation. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to become aware of how you are viewing something via awareness of your posturing / gesturing???

3. Change the Loop.

Posture is mind set, and mind set is posture. One can reinforce the other, and most certainly does at times. Create change in the patterns by re-organising the relationships within your physical body. The fibers of your body need the opportunity to open and align around a new sense of your self. This is what Body Harmony® does. Make a little adjustment to your way you hold your head while in conversation and see what happens. Or locate your feet more directly underneath you or STAND ON BOTH FEET evenly.

4. Go Along Your Merry Way.

Options, – this is all about creating behavioral options for yourself. Imagine opening the doorway to a new stream of responses, – a liberation from the obligation to respond as you always may have. The door is open, and as many people are experiencing, this kind of change becomes positively reinforcing because it feels so right.

A Most Outstanding Opportunity Is Almost Upon Us

Spring is here and so is the 10th One Month Body Harmony Retreat. It’s held in our seminar room on our 42 acre property in the Noosa hinterland, Alaya Verde. We are just over 15 minutes from Noosa. And once again we are pleased and inspired to have who we consider to be THE greatest manual therapy magician of our time, Dr Don McFarland. Don is not only a remarkable practitioner, – his teaching skills are quite exceptional. Thousands of individuals and practitioners from around the world have been the beneficiaries of new life and bodywork skills as a result of his teaching. And Don – the founder of Body Harmony®- is joined by 3 of the most experienced Body Harmony teachers in the world, Linda Haxby-McFarland, Gina Carruthers and Duncan Hogg.

Participation Options Are Flexible

You can now choose from 2 days of class right through to the full month program. New participants are required to commence from the beginning. To see what is available take a look below.

October 15 & 16 – Saturday & Sunday – An Introduction to Body Harmony® with the founder, Dr Don McFarland. Start here and you can continue on with other parts of the class for people new to Body Harmony®.

October 15 – 20 – Saturday through Thursday – Towards A Healthier Physiology – Learning the art of Body Harmony® – bodywork applied consciously. AUD$1350.00

October 22 – 26 – Saturday through Wednesday – Block 1 of an 11 Session Sequence covering the entire body. AUD$3125.00 for 15 days or pro-rata for 5 day segment*

October 28 – Nov 1 – Friday through Tuesday – Block 2 of an 11 Session Sequence covering the entire body.

Nov 5 – 9 – Saturday through Wednesday – Block 3 of an 11 Session Sequence covering the entire body.

Nov 11 – 13 – Friday through Sunday – This 3 day class specifically presents the information to help you reorient your perception towards the wondrous, and the miraculous. Learn to use your relationship to your body to ‘see the cup half full’.

Camping On-Site Is An Option

If you would like to enhance your experience and minimise your costs, camping at Alaya Verde is an option. Previous campers would drive to the beach for a swim before class! Camping costs: $25/night.

Why Participate In This Class

1. You want to learn about bodywork and develop a hands-on aspect to your skills.
2. You are interested in healing.
3. You need a break and don’t realise that this is an outstanding opportunity to revitalise.
4. Your body is tired and carrying excess stress detrimental to your health.
5. You’ve always been interested in psychology and are wondering how it relates to your body.
6. You’ve recognised behaviors that do not appear to support your goals, desires and intentions and would like to change them.
7. You’re a previous participant and remember how valuable the class is.

Pay Your Deposit by October 5 and receive a 5% discount.

Connect with the Body Harmony One Month Retreat on Facebook.

Email Duncan to discuss your participation.

* 5 day segments for new participants must be undertaken sequentially ie you have to start at the beginning.

Firstly, thank you for your time and attendance at the talk and apologies for the delay in listing this information. Thank you to Lauren Ashby for the invitation to present. I am offering anybody who attended this talk the opportunity to receive a 50% discount off the regular cost of a private treatment and consultation (the offer is good throughout 2011). Contact me via email.

Notes

The most useful information to be gained about posture will come from you yourself trying on suggestions and seeing how they can work best for you. There is no perfect posture, however there are ways of organising yourself when it comes to sitting that will be easier, more mobile (ie you can move more freely) and have a better outcome for your body over the course of time.

I mentioned in the talk that the collagen fibers of your body will begin to adapt to whatever position they are arranged in after about 20 minutes, so if you sit in a position that compromises your overall alignment and ease of movement you are educating your body to that positioning/posture.

The word posture is more commonly thought of as a noun, although in reality it is more correctly a verb, – think of how your arrange yourself to sitting as an element of your ‘posturing’. Consider it more of a dynamic process that does involve you in so much as you are free to choose moment by moment how you organise yourself physically to undertake the task of your interactions at the desk.

I discussed the idea of feedback loops in the class, and I communicated about this in relationship to the signals your body gives you that require consideration and then response. I used the example of thirst, or your bodies need for water as an example of one form of biofeedback, however there are many. Painful sensations are communications from your body that require some kind of responding. Adjust to find comfort, move to find comfort.

Some of you may be in the habit of dulling down the sensations or awareness of your body in order to complete a task. If this is you I would request that you consider whether this is for your ultimate good. This may take the form of disregarding or invalidating your physiological needs while you focus on a piece of work. In my experience it most commonly is accompanied by somehow having your head no longer centered over your body. It is also commonly associated with shallow breathing. My suggestion is as follows: do the exercise we did in class where you align or center yourself (sitting or standing), close your eyes and slowly, slowly, slowly allow your head to come forward (think chin to chest) until you go as far forward as you can without strain. Then move slowly, slowly, slowly in the opposite direction, keeping eyes closed as you tilt your head back all the way, breathing consciously during the process. Then slowly, slowly, slowly come forward until you feel your head is no longer forward, nor backward, but where you feel it ultimately centred and in a neutral location. Allow your eyes to drift open and register the new location. Take a minute to allow the rest of your body to adjust and then continue to go about your business from this new position.

Remember the breathing exercise we started with? I asked you to sit on the edge of the chair and gently accentuate the movement of your spine as you inhaled and then exhaled. As you inhaled you allowed your head to gently arch back as you reached the top of your inhale. As you exhaled you allowed your chest cavity to fall with gravity and your head to come forward as you released the air on your exhale. Is this something you could practice on occasion? Be sure to involve your lower spine and pelvis in the rhythm of this breathing exercise.

The greatest challenge I see facing people who sit as long as you do is this, – without awareness you will naturally function out of habit. You may function largely unconsciously with respect to your posturing. If you learned wonderful habits related to the organisation of your body in the past then you will have good unconscious habits related to sitting. If you didn’t then now is a good time to begin the re-education. If you feel that it is too late or too difficult etc you might consider this response as something arising from your current posturing rather than to be any true statement of what is possible for you. So if you function out of habit (as everyone generally does), and your habit is to sit forward or slouch back or lean on one hip this will be the way you operate. I mentioned that we are consciously considered to be able to process 40 bits of information per second, whereas we are unconsciously processing 10,000,000 bits of information in the same second. Those 40 bits of information can leverage a change in the functioning of the unconscious operation with 2 important qualities, – intention and willingness.

The real question we are facing is to do with movement and I need to qualify what is meant here. I mentioned the collagen fibres and how they adapt, and no doubt they have adapted over time to make certain postures feel ‘easier’ or more familiar although they are well and truly ‘out of alignment’. The movement I am talking about is actually something called ‘motility’ – or internal movement. It is an expression of how freely your body allows the translation of movement. It is expressed, as one example, in how freely you can breath and how much the translation of each breath washes through the fibres of your body. You are approximately 60% water. Habituated posturing that can occur while you work for a couple of hours without even thinking about your body – having a compressive effect on your natural rhythms, and these natural rhythms need internal space to operate optimally.

One way I am considering you can respond to the physical effects of your interaction with your working environment then is movement. Breath with awareness for 5 minutes from an aligned perspective. Keep your knees slightly below your hips to allow mobility of your lower spine. How you do an exercise is of ultimate importance to the outcome, so I suggest you do such exercises slowly, consciously, and listen to your body.

There are many things you can do to improve the overall awareness of your body. The value in improving your body awareness is that you can now respond to sensations and feedback that may have been forgotten. I did the exercise of touching each others spine to indicate that some areas have more sensation than others. The more aware you are of your body, the greater the opportunity to take care of issues before they become problems.

I mentioned an article worth reading, and here is the reference: New Scientist article (Mag issue 2747 – can be purchased online) The healing touch – The secret to repairing our bodies and growing new organs is getting all touchy-feely”. The article is written by Bob Holmes.

Thanks to Paul Barraclough for reading New Scientist and forwarding us a remarkably interesting article. It, along with a short reference from the ABC’s program ‘Catalyst’ conveys information directly relevant to the significance of receiving good bodywork. It is certainly very validating and inspiring information and forms the basis of this month’s article. I would also like to thank the ATO. The Australian Tax Office has booked me to present a class on posture next month as part of their well-being program. Please contact us if you would like to take advantage of a presentation in your work-place or area. Educating people in effectively developing and utilising their awareness of posture and movement is part of our area of expertise.

This month’s Body Harmony® update has five items:

A reminder about New Orleans in May. The time is drawing closer and you can still enroll . Call me 0n +61 (0)7 5485 3099 and check out the post at http://healthinperspective.org/general/neworleans2011/

Body Harmony®  – the Gold Coast Sunday March 27 Upper Beechmont – afternoon information session and private sessions with Duncan Hogg. Contact Scott Quilliam for details.

Private treatments with Duncan Hogg for one day on the Gold Coast, Queensland. Monday, March 28. To book, email Duncan.

The One Month Program - is now open to your enrollment. To download the brochure please – follow this link. The event runs from October 15 – November 13 with Dr Don McFarland - the founder of Body Harmony® and a bona-fide legend of manual medicine. Read the article below and find out why this event will be of tremendous benefit.

Genes, Behavior, Movement & Body Harmony®

This article helps to convey a little more light on the value of Body Harmony® and it comes from a brief viewing of an Australian science television program called ‘Catalyst’, broadcast on the ABC network in Australia. This program aired in 2005. It was a study of the link between genes and behavior. In the study psychologist Dr Richie Poulton of Otago University in New Zealand asked the question, “Could there be behavior genes that were triggered by the environment?”

Well the answer to that question is yes. The concurrent study of life experience and genetics has been remarkably revealing. Genes were found for predisposition to anger and depression in times of stress. The findings, based on what is considered to be one of the best studies of it’s kind in the world, found that, put simply, if you have the violence gene and a traumatic childhood you become prone to violence as a behavioral expression. If you have the gene, but not the upbringing, the violent behavioral expression is absent.

For me, the logical question is how. How do these traumatic life experiences engage the ‘anger’ gene or other such behavioral predispositions? A likely contender from my point of view is posture. Yes, posture. Posture is the physical expression or embodiment of these events – the unresolved adaptations if you like. Perpetuated physical survival responses change the stresses acting upon and within your cells and cellular matrix. It changes the movement and energetic patterns of the individual. Let us consider the revelations of the ‘New Scientist’ article entitled “The healing touch – The secret to repairing our bodies and growing new organs is getting all touchy-feely”. The article is written by Bob Holmes.

Our sense of touch, it appears, is also experienced by our cells, – they have a sense of touch also. And it seems that this sense of touch, which can also be considered as the way the surrounding environment is being received by the cell, is having remarkably deterministic effects on the activities of each cell. In recent years the tools to register such tiny forces acting upon our cells has come in the form of devices such as Atomic Force Microscopes (AFM). To quote Wikipedia, “The AFM is one of the foremost tools for imaging, measuring, and manipulating matter at the nanoscale.” Denis Discher, a biophysical engineer from the university of Pennsylvania conducted some experiments with an AFM using ‘mesenchymal stem cells’ – which become or evolve into various cell types including muscle and bone. In the experiment they manipulated levels of stiffness -  “the resistance of an elastic body to deformation by an applied force…”* each resulting in a different type of cell evolving from the stem cells. Essentially the direction the stem cell takes is influenced by it’s recognition of the environment in which it finds itself and this communication of ‘isometric pressure’ is effected through the cell membrane. And now my favourite quote from the New Scientist article,
“in practice, this means changes in external tension – such as differences in the stiffness of the matrix, or the everyday stresses and strains of normal muscle movement – can be transmitted into the cell and ultimately to the nucleus, where they can direct the cell’s eventual fate.”

Dr Don McFarland DC, the founder of Body Harmony® has lectured for decades about posture and mindset. He has stated for many years that “The issue is in the tissue but it doesn’t have to stay there”. Environment, whether it be the environment of your childhood, or the environment of your (internal) cellular matrix, is having a determinant effect on your well-being. The internalising of your environment and experiences of life – your process of ‘embodiment’ – becomes a personally incorporated influence apparently on and within your cells, which inevitable determines the quality of your experience, ie your day-to-day experience. It may just be responsible for ‘turning on’ (or off) certain genes. This physical process of embodiment, expressing in posture(s) may also be accompanied by areas in your body of movement restriction and energetic inactivity. And this becomes a point of reference for the interpretation of your world. These movement restrictions may also ultimately determine the behavior of your stem cells, if indeed the stem cells rely on information from their environment to determine what they actually become.
This New Scientist article (Mag issue 2747 – can be purchased online) is particularly validating for anyone who has spent time in the Body Harmony® classroom, or as a client. Our focus on pulsation, consent, wave motion and other salient features of touch, which have been evolved from listening to the feedback offered by many different bodies, may well have arrested the development of many disease processes along with supporting desirable behavioral change. It has certainly changed the life and health of many participants. Movement may well become recognised as the true medicine of our bodies. Not chaotic, jarring movement but pulsating, rhythmical, innate and flowing movement. Movement that brings harmony back to the entire organism, unifying the fragmented aspects of our internal relationships.

And so the question arises, – how are you, within yourself. Could you become a more cohesive physical, functional whole? How are you breathing?  Do you need to bring some focus to your body? What new behaviors could you choose to make a difference. A new world awaits.

The 2011 One Month Program is open for enrollment. Early registration discounts apply. Payment plans available.

Health & Happiness

Duncan Hogg & Gina Carruthers

* Wikipedia definition

Just a little update for those who have checked in with us about the weather lately. Where we live we had approximately 650 mm of rain in December and 750 mm of rain in January. That’s a total of 1400 mm or 56 inches. Our ducks liked it. The devastation this caused in other parts of south east Queensland was massive and experiences like these are traumatic for all involved. It does bring out the best in people though. Friends of ours – Jon & Judy Durand from Beech Mountain Pottery – filled their van with the water purifiers they make, drove to the worst affected valley and started handing them out to people. Awesome. Now cyclone Yasi is bearing down on northern Queensland – a catagory 4 cyclone (5 is the highest) and the system is HUGE. Wind gusts are anticipated to be up to 240 klm or 150 miles an hour. Preparations are underway. It is well north of us on its current trajectory.

So this month’s Body Harmony® update has four items:

1. A reminder about New Orleans in May. People are enrolling now to receive the discount applicable to registrations prior to February 5. Call me if you are interested, +61 (0)7 5485 3099 and check out the post at http://healthinperspective.org/general/neworleans2011/

2. Body Harmony  – the Gold Coast Feb 15 – late afternoon/evening information session and private sessions with Duncan Hogg. Contact Scott Quilliam for details.

3. Bringing the principals of Body Harmony to your area, office, group etc If you are interested in hosting an educational event contact Duncan to discuss the options.

4. A short article of interest. I recently watched a very interesting program on SBS Mind Over Money that looked at emotional factors affecting financial decision-making. It certainly spiked my attention. Behavior is paramount in my mind. Understanding and appreciating the processes that underpin human functioning through behavioral choice is key to success. Posture – or more correctly posturing – refers to the way you organize the internal relationships of your physical body to meet incoming information or situations. This article looks at how decision-making is influenced by your posture. It draws on some of the revelations of Harvard trained social psychologist Karen S Lerner, whose research was sited in Mind Over Money along with my 25 years of studying posture, body language and bodywork through practicing Body Harmony®.

May I begin with this quote from the article The Emotional Decision Maker by Peter Zimmerman and Jennifer S. Lerner, Harvard University.

“To begin with, most human cognition is unconscious – that is, we lack awareness of our mental processes. We absorb millions of bits of data per second through our senses; we compress, screen, and process this data automatically through various shortcuts in the brain. What emerges in our conscious awareness are the snap judgments, instant recognition, the sense of certainty and the intuitions that we can’t fully explain. Though wondrously efficient, these processes generate cognitive biases and errors.”

For many people, the link between posture and behavior is not obviously apparent. This is beyond the popular ideology of ‘good posture – bad posture’. This is recognition that we have multiple postures – much like personalities. These organizational patterns – which are what postures are by definition – when engaged appear to have a one-to-one relationship to behavior.  The postures themselves appear to be considered necessary tools used to engage our world – although this is happening outside of our awareness.

The details are all important here. In a posture all sorts of internal adaptations can be made that determine the patterns of use (or disuse) of areas of our bodies. This is all about how you do what you do. For example how you do your posture of frustration, or your posture of rebellion, or happiness and so forth. One element is how you do it, and another element is when – under what circumstances. What circumstances arouse a particular postural response from within you?

A posture may be evaluated by recognition of its impact within you and there are basically two criteria here. Does it unify you or does it fragment you. Does it bring ease of function or does it restrict your freedom of movement. Dr Don McFarland, the founder of Body Harmony®, speaks of the internal dynamics of various postures, where the competing agendas appear to cause actual tearing in the tissue by virtue of being attracted and wanting to avoid something simultaneously, – a literal push/pull expressed in the mixed messages being played out in the fibers of your body.

In the article previously referenced by Zimmerman & Lerner a distinction is made as to two different kinds of emotion affecting decision-making. Integral emotion refers to the legitimate emotional considerations generated by the decision at hand. An example being you want to go swimming but the large waves and strong current generate a realistic fear that the conditions are not safe. This apprehension is an integral emotion.

The second type of emotion is called incidental emotions, – and these “arise from past events and carry over to influence subsequent judgments or choices”. Daniel Goleman in his book Emotional Intelligence writes informatively on the neuronal and physiological aspects of the influence of incidental emotions. The most striking aspect of this kind of processing is that irrelevant information is brought to bear on current circumstances without awareness! Once again, to quote the Zimmerman & Lerner article,

“countless studies conducted in the Harvard Decision Science Laboratory reveal that incidental emotions affect us all, whether or not we are aware of them.”

Incidental emotions seem most closely associated with fragmenting postures, or postures that compromise the flow of energy and information throughout our bodies. And under these circumstances very little of what is a person’s environment is being perceived. More accurately, and as is the case with our brains at times, we fill in our gaps of perception with our expectations, – we simply make things up to fill in the picture. Under such conditions our responses are not well matched to our circumstances. This represents a tremendous growth opportunity.

It is precisely in these gray areas of perception that Body Harmony® allows a new possibility to flourish. Artistically applied, Body Harmony® provides a transformational context for healing. Given the support of one’s personal intention, an opportunity becomes available to choose consciously a pathway of behavior that aligns one’s posture, perception and intentions. Your body, if you choose to pay attention to it, can become an ally in your travels. I am reminded of that simple piece of wisdom that states “Do what you always do, get what you always get.” Sometimes the most striking of experiences is realizing a choice or an option exists where assumption had taken the throne.

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If you would like to join the next main event for Body Harmony®, Dr Don McFarland, myself and a host of other teachers are participating in an International Event in New Orleans May 8 – 21. Discount tuition applies to registrations processed before February 5.

Web References

New Orleans Conference http://healthinperspective.org/general/neworleans2011/ Jennifer Lerner’s papers http://content.ksg.harvard.edu/lernerlab/papers/

Thank you for your involvement!