Cloverfield is coming...

Glad to see the Dems acting more civilly last night. At this point, it looks much as if the only way they can screw up their chances is if they shoot themselves in the foot. Don’t want that: I think that eight more years of what we’ve had, and this country won’t right itself in my lifetime.
#
“Cloverfield” looks like it’s going to be fantastic, “The Godzilla Witch Project,” a gigantic film told in completely personal terms. The buzz has been great, and it’s been too long since I’ve seen a really good giant critter movie. Can’t wait!
#
Speaking of “Cloverfield”…got off on Cloverfield avenue yesterday to work at Moonview Sanctuary. Their new marketing coordinator, Alexandria, asked me lotsa questions about what I do, and I had to laugh. I can barely describe it. But the approximate narrative goes something like this:
I knew that I had some big holes in my psyche, from the lack of a father in my home, the lack of cultural support, and a profound sense of fitting no-where. The physical violence (not severe, but chronic) sent me into the martial arts. Emotional problems there inhibited my ability to express motion freely, and I went looking for those missing pieces. NLP, Eriksonian hypnosis, Transcultural Shamanism, yoga, therapy, various meditation forms and almost anything else you can think of followed, for decades. As a science fiction writer, I was most interested in human mental and physical development, so I got to “cheat,” both theorizing about transformative technologies and interviewing experts for my books when what I really wanted was answers for myself. The introduction to Harley “Swiftdeer”Reagan was a major threshold—he taught me to connect the inner and outer worlds through concept and ceremony. But it was meeting Scott Sonnon, whose “Be Breathed”, “Flow State Performance Spiral” and “Fear Removal” ideas finally created a critical mass of all I’d studied. It collapsed into a singularity, and suddenly I understood what my teachers had been talking about all these years. In terms of my clients, I seem to have an understanding of something that can’t quite be put into words, and can communicate, or “conduct” it through personal, interactive work combining visualization, FlowFit, and Push-Hands type exercises combined with a theoretical framework tailored to the client’s background and needs.
##
So..how do I work with a client? First by getting them to define goals in all three major arenas. What would their lives look like if their problem didn’t exist? Then they commit to reaching their goals. Second, I teach them the “Be Breathed” exercise, moving so that the movement itself creates compressive exhalations. This allows you to train your body to get exactly the amount of air it actually needs, as well as returning you to a pre-intellectual breathing pattern similar to that of an infant. Third, I put stress on them (through complicating the “Be Breathed” into FlowFit, or using Push Hands drills to impact them emotionally) until they lose their breathing pattern or posture, then I re-integrate again and again. By giving them home-work to breathe five times a day (The Five Minute Miracle) for sixty seconds, we start re-wiring their nervous system, so that eventually we get a Pavlovian stimulus-response loop between Stress and re-integration.
Here’s the beautiful thing: if you confront the challenges that stand between you and the next level of your life, and can keep stress from becoming “strain”, the only thing your body and mind can do in response is grow, change, evolve.
##
That’s it. That’s all I do. I assume that within each of us is the strength and skill we need to reach any goal we can hold in our hearts and minds. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. I just love working with people. This year, I want to start making a shift toward making my Coaching work my “full time” job, and my writing a hobby. A hellaciously profitable hobby, to be sure…
##
I notice that I've been accused repeatedly of saying that "blacks have it worse than women," or "race is a more important issue than gender." Wow! Did no one notice that I never said that? NEVER. But that is what people hear. My point is that the only group who can judge are black women, since they are members of both groups. It's interesting how strongly people distort what is said, even if it's said repeatedly. I suspect that this particular problem arises because most people cannot think in terms other than "Y versus X". Without a hierarchy, they aren't comfortable. My dear friend Octavia Butler once said that she thought this tendency would be the death of us. She may be right.