Workshop #1710

Release Tension Patterns

60 min - Workshop
112 likes

Description

Join Mary Bowen as she teaches new ways to release chronic tension patterns through subtle, nuanced proprioception of one’s own body. She shows how to eliminate holding patterns which inhibit breathing. We all have such patterns, so it is important to take care of our bodies.

Objectives

- Learn how to look at animals, especially cats, to see how you should be able to move

- Learn yawning exercises to help release tension in the jaw and shoulders

- Learn new ways to find more space in the body and eliminate strain in the lower back

What You'll Need: No props needed

About This Video

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Sep 12, 2014
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Transcript

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Chapter 1

Cats are the Greatest Creation

How many of you have a dog? Oh, lots of dogs. And how many of you have a cat? Oh, they're the best. They're the best because they relaxed the best in tech Joe joke. Joe's PyLadies was the most unlike a cat you ever saw. He was more like a warthog and, and, and yet he would, he'd set in and I had, I had gotten my cat apart from Joe, but when I get to Joe and I got my cat, same year, 29 years old, and I got a cat because I didn't know how to sit down unless I was at a dinner or a movie or something where it was obvious you had to sit down.

I just never sat down and constant motion. And I s I just had the intuition, the capitol teach me who we helped me with that and, and he, he was, he, this is as, as flower. He is. I ever heard him go because he was so square and he said the greatest creation of the Almighty was the cat. That it does everything the best. And, and, um, it's really, I've had cat since that, that can probably 55 by now and every one of them is taught me something and their psyches are not so different from ours. So, um, you know, they're, they have type two, they're introverted or extroverted. Some of them are very sensate and feeling and they just want love all the time.

Touch, we touched, we touched me. And then another one is an intuitive thinker. He won't stop very you to pet him because he's doing things, looking for things to do all the time. It's very interesting that there's no, they're not so different from us, you know, uh, all in variation and they have a little more trouble, uh, claiming their space because they're on an instinctive level, which means that you don't ever assume that you could walk through this room without checking out that it's safe to do. Even in your own family, you know, very aware of, very aware of everything. Dog is not just wants to go out or want somebody, he's not studying you and the cats just study. And I think for years they just wish I could sit down. If I sit down, then they get on me and then they get them loving and affectionate. But they can't, they can't get on me if this moving back to so you know, they tell you what you're doing and they remind you, you doing too much of something and it's very gentle teaching.

But they teach you more and more if you're a woman, how to be female. And um, we are very male American women are because it's our unconscious is male. Our unconscious is the biggest part of us. And so the spirit and the push coming from that male and young called it animous, that's it. And he called the part of the equivalent part is the male anema so that they're both spirits but they rule and the, the men sit around an awful lot, don't she think?

I mean they have no trouble sitting down and not movie. Is that true? I mean, you know, they, unless they are intuitive, they are not having to move or do something all the time. They do it find while they're up there. And then they just sit and, and they don't need to pee or anything for hours and we don't, we usually the woman is the animacy is still thinking I have about six, maybe 10 things to do before I can go to bed tonight. And then every creature that walks by, whether it's a child or a or an animal, that's another thing. You gotta do something for that. And then there's a water dishes and it's endless. And that's w the woman's live and the man, he'll bask as much as he can in appreciating how much she's doing.

And then to get him to do the thing you really know need to doing. A lot of them won't want to do anything unless they feel like it. And, and you know, I've learned way two years on most things when it gets beyond that. I've got a generator big fit and if I can get energy, they have a big bitch fit, it'll start to move. But it's at the time I never come otherwise.

That's an interesting thing. And with us it will be, we don't look too, you need to do that today. This is partly why we tend so much. You don't have to, why don't you let that way for another day? That's like amazing to think of her woman. You know, we men are thinking that all the time tomorrow. Okay.

Chapter 2

Holding Inhibits Breath

So how many of you have been asked do, uh, even say 20 minute session for yourself? Uh, not planned that, you know, you feel something in your shoulder, in your back or you can't stretch for your joy.

You've gotta yawn for your jaw. But, um, that we would just take the time to just let the body open up and give some time to it. And Eh, it would be good every day. But how many of you really do take that time where it's not a workout, it's just time to, to address what's ailing you. You know, you don't feel you do it. So, and then do you have your studio in your home or do you have a thing? Do you do that in your home and have enough equipment to do it? And like balls or uh, here, [inaudible] and anybody have their studio in their home. So you could go to the Cadillac or do you ever do that? [inaudible] yeah, and, and, and at some point, maybe it'd be amazing this year I'm going to show that this is the best massage tool you've ever had. You know, every bit of you you can get rubbed out, ironed out, and, uh, there's no end in sight. This, this piece of apparatus could do. There's so many.

You have so many options. And, um, I, it's my, my dead favorite, but it was Joe's favorite to the most insulated people. He, he got, uh, moving into the tower and a lot of people are scared of the tower. They won't give that to anybody. Well, you modify it, but, um, he'll, he, he, if he had a sick enough woman, and he did in the few pay cases, he could be very slow and very gentle. But if he had a man, it was push hard, you know, pushed to the place where you'd be black and blue maybe. And, uh, I don't think we teach buddies that way anymore. The only thing they attitude is, is that, uh, that we have to condition ourselves to great effort. But if you just sit there and you bring your navels side as you can to your spine, you know, just as tight as you can, it's more than you.

It's much more than when you're in your core. Just take it all the way back there and there will be some tension that's coming also into the wrong of him that the now squeeze your glutes at the same time as much as you can. You're going to sit higher. No [inaudible] that's held all the time and the way we did it with y'all for years. Now take a deep breath and see where you are, where you cannot go and where you have to go. Gucci, Titan, you sense that it has to go up and, and uh, it can't go down. It can be a whole breath. And so, uh, I think that's why I had a big chest because he really, he would read well, but they're all went up here and just grew this bearable. No. Mm.

So we do plot these better than we did it when Joe was around much better with more regard to the intellectual knowledge about the body and to just natural movement. And, um, dance is very changed film the way it was. And there's still one place that we're not doing enough with. And I think it's cultural and it's, uh, it's, it's a part of the evolution of, of, of humans. But we're not using from the hip crest all the way up to here.

Enough. We hold it and um, you, you hold it almost as a postural thing. Many people, uh, they think that that now that's better than this, you know, so if they can even get to there, that's good. But if you hold it, you can't read anything. You holding your inhibiting breath. So if you really take your time and close your eyes and go deeply and you check out, check out your forehead, is it, is it released? Check out your scalp. Is it released enough that you could almost let energy out the top of it and you, it would almost levitate you a little and lengthen your spine. Then how about the occiput? Could you have French doors there where that lets go a lot and it's wider.

How about your ears? Could you imagine your ears going more away from each other to the side and then you get a sense of relaxation right inside the skull. Do you feel that that's the relaxation of the top of your spine and mostly that's held, you know, and if there's too much, yeah, it emphasis put on being smart and in your head and you're thinking that tightens it. And um, then you come down inside your mouth, you know, up about where you, your upper jaw and your lower jaw are. And this just outside your ear.

You put your hands there to feel the movement of the jaw where it started right there by the ear. Now can that really let go and the lower jaw would just drop? No, no way. It's just, it's just not, you know, not an effort. And if it's left alone and it just drops, it's going to be back a bit towards your spine is not going to beach forward. You'll notice some of these women who read the news or even some of them in government, they come on until [inaudible] those jaws forward.

You know that you can just see when it wears a male and the woman has charge of her. Well, she's having to do, he's so smart all the time and it's lopsided. Thinking's no more important than feeling and the body is no less important than intuition. They're all equally important. So all those four parts of us, if we can develop to them, we are going to be easy for you because they're up in your conscious life. But two of them, we're going to be an unconscious and you only get all of them so that at any point you could, you could call on anyone to speak. They'd be developed more. Even though unconscious will never be as available as the two that are on top for us. It depends what you're born. As. I am on time in Austin, Texas, I said, we need to be more animal and nobody knew what I meant.

You know, we'd see them. It's like it was a negative thing, I think. But one woman in Zurich said, um, I finally understood something and what was it? Well, when you said, we're an animal with a head on top, I got it. You know, she, she'd never felt animal inner, you know, and so your mind can be a great support or it can be your worst enemy if it tries to be in charge all the time, then you've got Joe Palabra too much in you, you know, he, he, everything you did, you did to the body. And every one would say it's the mind that makes the body behave well and that's insulting his body. You know, it's, it's the body that teaches is how to be, you know, uh, you can't, you can't find the body through the mind. You can work on it, but you never, never get a connection to it and be like, of the nature of nature from the head. It's just talk and it's all right because anything starts from this talk and everyone, when you started, how many of you have done is five years, more than five years? 20 years?

You know, you give begin to feel that it's, it's part of you

Chapter 3

Performing vs. Experiencing Pilates

polite is, is something that his printers or something to live not to do. And he would have you do it because he was male and you did it and, and, and it was an effort and you were muscular in it and he were like a man in it, you know, and he said a lot of women there. Um, but I mean it was a good thing to be doing it rather than the not doing it. And then you finally evolve enough that more of you will enter into it and you see the difference of letting a spine do something rather than the mind saying to do it. Very devil one has an experience in it. The other is sort of like you as a teacher or something, it doesn't have an experience, you are doing it too much as a performance. So I would say there's a very big difference between, performing is like a, like a show off thing too.

But even just any of us and experiencing it. So look for the experience. I want you to to be aware wherever you're sitting right now, close your eyes and imagine that you're standing in an elevator for a long time so you try and get resigned. We'll elevator every car and you're going to have to wait cause it's important to get somewhere there. So lawyer Subsea. Well now if you relax enough and are compliant with the weighting and now you focus on your spine, feel your Coxie and you let it relax and then you go up through the lumbar and you go up through this harassing and you go up to the cervical.

Do you notice that you think is you just going to live so little and you can go out your head and you go towards this guy. Did you notice even led in your focus, be on your spine, lengthen juice? Fine. No, there's much more than that. That the potential if he's hurt lived with the cat. You know exactly what the spine is capable of is you have a regular size cat.

What? Bigger little. That's the size that cat is when it stands up, when it gets on the floor is that size. How did that happen? It didn't grow longer. Legs or feet grow a longer neck and that is fine girl. It just relaxed and that's just built into our spine as a potential. We're no different.

No. And uh, [inaudible] I, I enjoyed in teacher because he was controlling everything and there was more effort than there was release and, and even though he meant flexibility, it's give and take. It isn't that they didn't understand that there is a letting go and there is an effort and there should be almost a little letting go before every effort. And same thing in singing. There is a pause and then a then a note. Well I think it's too female for him to have done it because to let life happen and to go with what happens is a feminine way to live, to make things happen is it is a male in us making it in which one is better? Well, you know, one, either one get, get something done.

But um, no, this is for the mail to him it would be you can make it happen or you can just, but most mail does. He sits so easily down then he's going to stop being pregnant. You know, he's going to have, um, a lot of them if they're sensate they're so happy with themselves and they're happy with who they are and if they're essentially thinking, well, you, you're just naturally in charge of yourself and I about everything else so you can get a handle on. It's not something that lacks confidence and the women are not. So we don't have that confidence yet.

We've been squished to many centuries and we're getting, we're getting pretty active and pretty, pretty, uh, new, uh, expressive here in the u s probably more than any place in the world because this is where the new stuff comes through. You know, as long as we don't have the wrong people in charge who are trying to get in charge, then everything stops again. But there is an invitation to become yourself in this country. You don't feel that, you don't feel it in England, you don't feel it anywhere. You don't see that at all in France. You say that's supposed to be the romantic capital of the world. You know, that's, that's a cliche.

And you get over there and you talk to those women and they don't even tell their husbands how they feel. Not at all, because they're living a farm. They're living what a marriage is supposed to be. It is a form. They're not living the content of themselves. That was shocking to me. I didn't understand it was that cold place.

No, it's just interesting to travel around and, and you go to Japan and the young people are ready to go. But, um, the SLS is so male dominant and they don't want to be that. The young ones, they want to be both hand. But, um, you just, you, you have politesse teachers and it's very good to be a bloody teacher because you're really moving from one to the other in a very helpful way. It's, it is not passive, you know, and, and you can be creative in it. And when they're there, you wouldn't see that they're so different from us when they would be on floor teaching because we've taught them anyway. So they teach like one school or another school, one woman. And well, as the thing ended, the, the leader, uh, of the studio said Mary, tell them about your husband. Um, oh, he wanted me to say that ms my second husband. Um, I thought I'd never married again when the first one walks out.

I don't think men were worth it, you know, but that, uh, you, you fall in love, you know, and then, and um, but he, he wanted me to say my husband's 19 years younger than I am. So I was 47. He was 29 when we got married. And, um, we, I had a serious talk. I said, you know, I'm not going to have children. He said, never. It's been important to me, that mattered to me. And, and first we, we'd known something within the huffing. He was very musical. He had bands, he was writing his own music and, and he was English and uh, over here since he was 14, but still with a Lancashire accent and, and he was in a quest for long lunches. He was in a quest for the meaning of his life and wanted to know to remember his dreams and work on them. And I mean, he was just too perfect, you know, it was meeting me everywhere. So, um, but um, one person came up and I told the whole love story to this audience and he didn't expect, I tell all that, but the, I did, I tell how it worked in when I, when we got together and all this, all of it. And one room we came up with the end and she said, I have just had a relationship. And, and she said, you have given me hope now. It doesn't mean you never know what party is going to help, which one, you know, it's in your life. It's so, so good. And one woman said, oh, Woo, Woo. She's very shy about wanting to see what it was like.

This, is there any one thing that would be difficult with between the two of you because of the difference in your ages and uh, I said, well there is one thing that could, it could, uh, it has it but it could, what would you mind having? We will. Yes. Well I might need a younger man

Chapter 4

Pilates for the Whole Self

all your whole life into this fee subject of tension and there's a way where we're not being natural yet. If, if we're it, let's talk about a typology. A sensate person, little person, boy or girl born as in the body there, they have a better chance not to carry as much tension cause they come in as a natural little animal that they are very frightened of intuition there their expectation is that because the intuitive is, is what's to come and because it's in the darkest place in their psyche, it's held, it's going to come or things are not going to work out. And so a lot of them never do any exploring because they already have decided it wouldn't work. And that's just shutting life right off. That's the danger of having the borne in your body. But we born at the opposite. If you born intuitive out of your body, up in east or somewhere, your body is in the most frightened place.

So you know any of your intuitive clients are going to be very tight inside and, and they're going to be holding their breath. And it's natural because everything in that position in the psyche is contracted. It's not, it's not in our normal life. And as we make a really deep journey to try to bring it along and it's like a retarded child. It's like, it's like an orphan. It's like someone in the back wards of the hospital that nobody's ever come to see. I mean, he's in a terrible state and that's, that's when we are not working with the whole of ourselves. So then if you, if you are a thinker, uh, you can't relate with your heart, anything to second half of your life really. We, you might love your dog.

But when you say you love your mother and your father, I don't think, you know, you don't know how they love at all. Because if feeling is, is so far down deep that you use, just trying to not make waves and very, uh, circle of containment around you that you learn. If your client is a thinker, you'll be very fond of that person probably cause you just get to be fond of everybody working with but don't have that person because they don't know what to do with it. And the h frightening. And uh, you wait until they hug you then and then something is moving. Like you can wait usually that, you know. Uh, I had one woman 20 years with me in analysis, brilliant woman, the Dean and all sorts of things as a university of there. And uh, in that, in that position she could be as vocal and as, as just a quick silver whether Internet.

But when she came to me for the thing she couldn't do, she like a mute and because she knew she was needing to speak from feeling, no way she could, she was mute. So I think for 20 years I just reacting, reacting, reacting, a woman, anything I could think of to say anything because she was not going to be able to do that. And it's very worthwhile to be with sitting, waiting for doomsday if necessary. And you have clients that you only have hearts in yourself like that really we all do that are nowhere developed yet and they're going to take a lot of patient reaching for and attention to. And if you are asked that part of you, what would you like to do? Nothing comes up because that place hasn't lived in you. He head, you know, if you're an intuitive, that's your body. So it's a very great thing to become a philosophy teacher.

You're going to have to work on your body. If he tell him you're doing Valadez, you know, and any, any introvert, they're scared to talk and they're shy. Well you got to get over that when you teach polities it's a perfect cure for it. So they get so used to talking. So that's not a problem anymore. I mean, philosophies does more than work for the body. It works for the whole cell. So it's a tool you could say in a very, very, um, circle in a way of reaching all, all of you. And, and the wonderful thing about Joe was it was always all of you. It was, no matter what you doing, it was all of you involved in that. And like even your toenails are involved in that mean every single thing is watching you and in on what you're doing. That's brilliant.

That makes an integrated body. No, and I don't think I found it in any other exercises to where you have to be that aware. And I think people don't know what that is. I either give them something so hard that [inaudible] they have to feel more, you know, but I like the metaphor of elephants that make a circle. And if there's a bell burst, we coming in the middle of an elephant giving birth or if there's an elephant dying, there's a circle. And that's with the all the eyes and focus on that circle in that one in the middle. And if that elephant dies, they don't away.

They stay after the death. And then they rape away and then they all return again. I mean, this is really beautiful. Talk about focus and honoring a moment or honoring experience. No of animals can make us more aware. Our minds go so fast and they take on too much.

We're not half aware of what's going on around us. One of my clients is professor, a tenured professor of mathematics at Smith College and, and a really, he's an artist and, and he was just good at math. So, but he really is more of an artist in most people in art school. But he went home to Spain and he came back and when he came back from his brother's death, it was over there two months and he came back and he was in New York City. They have a place here and a place in North Hampton. He said, I can't, I can't stand this way. It's very, uh, uh, New York was such a shock to him because everyone in Japan talks to everyone. The butcher there, anybody, you just all talking humanly to everyone and, and it's this big human family who's in New York. You just go your own way. You, you just, you just do your own thing. And we were doing the same, unless there's a blackout or there's a crisis, then everybody's talking to everybody now, but left alone.

You just mind your own business. Let's do a dig in now to the jaw and,

Chapter 5

Yawning Exercises

and go and see first what you feel. Do you sense that there is a kind of sharing of energy around the taste or the jaw, a little energy factory there. Do you feel that any of you were lastly that's coming from the occiput? The occiput is your action centers of the brain and the sending the to do the do, do, do thing. And so the job gets caught in that and, and it, it becomes like a teacher pronation place where if you're most like a mule, you know that place where without being able to, to tighten up and, and be that motivated to move, you probably wouldn't get things done. But if you can't actually living there, so see that. Ah, okay.

Go there and then go inside more to see if you can just follow what I say in yourself. Can you let the lower jaw drop away from the top? Beautiful. I think we don't open our mouth as much as adult kids do. They open their mouth all the way, but when they're, when they talk in their babies too.

It's not unusual though. Yeah. To heal all that space. Now, while you joys down there that yourself taking some air through the nostrils, count to seven. Do you feel space getting bigger and not only in the ribs, but in a, you keep your inhale going, we guarantee you the inside of the mouth space getting bigger. Where's the tongue? Is it held down in this road? Uh, what about the back of the throat? The pharynx.

If that moves away from the tone and you start doming up towards the roof of your mouth, you get it close to yachting. [inaudible] her into a young. Now that's a new beginning. I might voice grounded. Everything is brand new. It's a new start on every task you're doing is take the on now beginning thing.

Oh my God, I wasn't even here before. You know, it is so fundamental in balancing the whole sales. If you think of it could, you could stand up a moment out of your chair and I want you to feel that, you know, I never see you, but I hope they will come when I succeeded. Everybody understands. How important is this because we've been taught so well not to yawn, that we just terribly inhibited. You know, and so don't you arch of your foot and then go and come up your legs. Don't your pelvic floor come up into the rib cage dome the diaphragm go up into the back of his throat, pass the tongue into the roof of the mouth. You got four domes going that should be able to help you get to New York in New York. Times can have sound, they can help you.

Then anything the body says it makes sound is not you. You're free. Ooh, Ooh, mm mm. And you can get in when you get almost there and you're not quite there. That's like a woman who can't get to an orgasm. You know, you just, he just on the brink, but you can't do it. That's tension in both cases. It's, it's experienced. We all know it as good.

Now threw it on one more time and see if you can get into the levity that it's, it's lightning as you come up. Foot, legs, pelvic floor. Woo. [inaudible] you could even feel under your tongue under a time trying to draw up and the roof of your mouth. And she, we're pretty stuck in here and not much of a dorm happening yet because that's where it's held right into the lower jaw. Back to the occiput. But [inaudible] whew. [inaudible] good.

You know it easy in animals seeing if anyone sounds come out. If he, that's good. He's getting more into the body. Mm hmm. No, chill your to your tongue and think of your awning. [inaudible] Woo. It did the real troubles right in here and what have you.

That site in his throat, that's reading problem. Yes. Good. She's, she's going to get to it through movement. You know, you, when you go into your yawning exercise place, you go and find all kinds of sensations. You've never, never been aware of, but you know, you can feel like as a busy-ness there, that is preventing the naturally arm. Um, I want you to feel that you have drawn us aligned right down your nose, forehead, chin, and you have a left side of the face and right-sided as haze. Now compare how those feel. Go to the left and see what it feels like there. And go to the right. And there'll be a difference. Usually big.

So which one is the busiest, right or left in your case? He can you sense that one's crowded and one's not? And, and I'd be, raise your hand for where the crowdedness is in the left side and the right side. And how many of you with the right side crowding is, have kids at home. Yeah, I mean that we'll make a right size crowdedness cause there's no time for you and, and uh, and there's a kind of agony underneath you if you could do this.

You know, cause you don't get to you. Well, the ones with the left side, that's the male, uh, in, it's a female in you. And if she's pushing, then that's, that's good. That's good. But in us it's like a prick pushing it is just unrelenting and, and it feels like you couldn't even separate all the stuff in there. That's, that's the unconscious side is you left it a lot of work you have to do with the unconscious. Yeah. But if it isn't that fool, you might not get to it, you know? But it's almost like this is a scowl and just Ooh, traffic. And really, and this is like a passion, a pasture. But that's, if we don't have little kids at home here with anybody who's so active in life, the daily life will have a crowded right side.

But that's just very interesting to, to discover about yourself. So when you're going inside your mouth and we're going to go right in there and make a bigger space, just imagine that your, your moving your mouth lifts up. This is the floppy ferries moves back. You all move out other company, bigger and bigger space. You're going to, you see how you, your neck is changing your shoulders, you're changing. So most of that tension I think initiates here with it head.

And then the shoulders are overworked and tired of because there's too much going on and no, not enough pissed on of quiet or just neutral gear. The Yawn will put you in neutral gear and you have people who have never felt that in their lives. You get them yawning, they've had arrest, and now there there's no agenda for a moment that's neutral. Very important to find in yourself. You tell anybody if you like that there's an elephant foot on their chest. I mean, wait, you wouldn't, is used to taking care of your chest, but she doesn't, she's not taking care of her body. She thinks what?

She's got a wonderful chest and wonderful shoulders that just heaven sent. Hmm. Well, oh, I want to take your tongue. MMM MMM. First one simple. Just chew it lightly. That's like a baby with pie, with tongue [inaudible] and with food. The root of the tongue.

So attitude tried to send you into your [inaudible]. Hmm. It's like, what do we covered over when? Like when Mommy vide with all this isn't just available yet. You know? Huh? That's good. Yup. Yeah.

[inaudible] like rubber sometimes just work your face like rubber. It's this passive thing like the stone we walk around with too and there's mostly, we were about the things we have to do. I think, you know, in the schedule we on. That's the human eye. That's just what's happened to it. Hmm. Okay. So no, this is a funny one. And you'll never felt anything like it.

New Goalie tone along the backside of your lower jaw teeth go all the way, um, of should cover that space. Oh, a cute cheek. Bam Man. That little look, um, other milk. I'll let you go through that and look again and push into it. Hello. Well it's starting to unsettle those road and uh, the root of the tongue. Now go down below your lower teeth, down towards the roots. Other than the nerve way down your bottom. He first share pushes.

Yeah. Oh Way. Oh that. Okay. Even get there. Tell him down cause there's so much stanchion. Okay. I've never had a massage there before. Boom. Bam. Go right. Boom. Hello, chuck first.

Clyde, Bella halfway. Honey, you say Beta. Mm. Oh, good food. We're really opening up a whole [inaudible] a whole other, okay. This row [inaudible] effect. It's Terminal Mesh, right at learning to be with be young. Oh, okay. Cool. Uh, can you feel the young coming kind feel young coming out? [inaudible] when the flu shoot with you did this is freeing so much inside the mouth and under the Chin and down this road.

Who as who push [inaudible] something you tune on [inaudible] [inaudible] how you look. That is not of consequence. So a lot of women were afraid to do it. Mm hmm. Proofing. Opening up [inaudible] Ooo, oh, milk into a yarn. Whoo. Whoo, whoo, whoo, whoo, whoo, whoo.

I wounded. Animal has been cage, all's life. Ah hmm. Maybe we have not to just forget about all these as body minds here and it'll just drive the whole thing. But this is very for Lauren. It's not, but open. And, and if you go with yourself doing that, you can see in minute now if you want you, you will, you will feel something new of, whew. It's very hard to yawn when you're presenting. Let's, uh,

Chapter 6

Releasing Shoulder Tension

talk about the people here in the shoulders. That's us too. Especially it's going to come down. It's going to grab that.

It's going to grab the scapular, it's going to grab the steering him and, and the whole thing in most all of us is pulled in and not, not let go. And only breath I know of that can open the whole thing is the on anything else it's too thought of. And so it's not really happening fully. Well, um, this is t tests. Let your head fall to the right and then let it lifted and let it fall to the lab. Right? You sent it as a difference in, in one side. See, let it hang there. So you have the stretch all the way up to the ear load and let go your shoulder there on the opposite side from your head. Is it pretty tight?

[inaudible] chew a minute there and see what happens. Hmm. Because there's a feeling of the jaw and the tongue had any influence on that. The neck might never let go. If you can get a yawn and now I'll teach you something fabulous.

If you can go to yard wire has had a year [inaudible] and then, and then let the exhale all out and we guard that space. It was tight before you can let it go more. Do you notice that after every single yawns exhale, space opens and opens and open and you can't believe it and that that's in you. All that open space to still go and um, move my feet into heel. Try on again. See if it works for this side.

Hmm. Because when you chew of it, you go all the way down to the base of your throat and start opening up what hell mm. And then exhale and then it can just, we'll just dropped away, man. That one just let go. Like, well, we could live with that. Well, if we breathe differently, but when we're talking about yawning, that's not all the things we have to do.

That's not the things that the mind gets hold up. So it literally cools down the mind to, to yawn at one of the things that doctors teach the low back people who have

Chapter 7

Finding More Space in Your Body

strain in the low back. When you get on your, on your bed or anything, it's all right for your knees and, and hang your butt on fit and that you had to go forward. And you know, the farther you go, aw. And just let, wait, let the weight go and, and all this tissue widens. Think of it that way. And one side will need it more than the other. And usually it's [inaudible] upside that is carrying the tension because most of us, whether we're right or left handed, we are leading in this world is made for right-handed people.

So there's so much going this way, whether it's the gas pedal or whatever it's made for, it's made for right handed person so that hip tends to be forward, ready to go, like the dog going out that sends this when I, if this isn't back in even nine and three o'clock, then you, you're going to be more like eight and two and that's most people's problem. And so that's why these are here. Uh, the egg is the best, the safest thing for anybody of any age. And it's also the safest thing. Uh, oh, we got this. I want to just show you this and you can follow it up when the time is right for you or you can try it in the moment. Um, this, these things these days, my husband made these things. I did this, this is a release from the shoulder and it's straddle you and only mine.

Is it, uh, Joe, uh, Joe proportion. I can straddle this. I'd have to sit on a box and, and just so that, yeah, a box will, I don't even know. [inaudible] Hey, you're riding a horse. Okay, but now, no, no, no. It won't work because you need, we need to also lay the wide Cadillacs and get them narrowed down. You could even use this and just know it done, but and cut it just hits you up more. It's not have a lot of his exercises are lost because you cannot go forward with this way. A lot of the things we did, and you can't straddle it easily unless you happen to be born able to split.

No, but this would DM not far enough down. I need to be all the way down for this to the arm to weight it. But you can you any kinds of things you can do from your ribs and you can differentiate the rib cage initiating instead of the shoulder, the shoulders taken care of by this. And that's very helpful, you know, um, find fun ways to do things differently. You know, it's, it's, it's an exploration. This I thought of when I was 78 and I just one day thought, why don't I put the ball up out?

And then I started with a round ball. But the better to have an egg and this, the smaller egg, if you're tall, then it's easy for you to, to go. And all of these are just different. You go off and that whole left side and all the QL, you had the chance to just drop into gravity and it's just wonderful and it'll ake it first and you wait till there's no sensation and you yawn, yawn, watch, what's the drop? They come down to young. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.

Okay. See that you have a way you could, you could do it even more. You want to get into the whole hip, you do it all the way through the hemstry and, and you can, you can move with it. Uh, some people will release better with movements, some people who release better to staying still and waiting until it subsides. And God, that gets into everything. And gravity is a, is the thing that's so helpful. Just draw no intention. And if this is too hard on where is my other strap, I didn't get it back on. Oh, two of them are not on here. That's all right.

If there's one that has different layers of handholds for people that you don't want to be in your shoulder. So then you put a smaller person on a tee, on a higher egg and then they're easy in their shoulders and then you can get them, you can get a whole, whole side. I mean, that is gorgeous. You know, and there's, we don't, we don't get this in a regular day and then I really get alive and the Cadillacs is waiting for you to catch onto that, you know, so you do, you do that on both sides and you're going to find the right size much easier cause all the tensions in the left usually, unless there's been some accident that might be make a difference. And then you, then you also, you also, you have to be in the center. That's okay. I'm used to it. Um, I would say every time I knock my head I get smarter. Okay. So that's the total drop. It's very easy, easy on you and you can just feel the things come, you feel the release longer and longer and longer and longer. And now it's, it is, it's suddenly you would like to have in your life. If you can experience it.

My God, why don't you do this every day? And I'll go a week and I won't do it. And it's just across the lawn when we can be so stupid. We get so involved. But it's all important, I guess. I mean we're doing way much more than most people ever did before. And if you are intuitive, really too much because you, there's no, no too much you're used to taking on forever, as long as you pointing toward listening to the body, being aware of what is the sensation and you have those phrases you spoke about.

Um, then being with them more and if you with the more you have more imagination how to change that sensations, it's something that opens instead of staying shot. We're always trying to open everything more, every exercise, everything in the body and find more space, more space inside the belly, more space, more space to be in. And you know, if you just think it, it certainly happen. You know, this is sort of an automatic so that you're very like, you know, instead of heavy, entire, you know, the way going down is I think we too tired. We, if we can't float as we say, flow that we walk and be like, well I'm talking the US who know the difference as teachers then uh, we probably too tired cause we don't mean to be letting go all the way going into the lower back and with you, you, you, if you lower back bothers you, you wanting, you need this kind of thing so, so you can drop and you need to feel that the energy is always going up and the weight of the food is taken care that the soul foot's going deeper into the earth. There's always this dual energy, but, but if we are not right, we are not right. You know, you can say that when the light is right. You know, you don't see animals lugging their legs around or in the air to be run over by a car and then a cast they there. I love to watch the animals move. My God is beautiful.

You are just like to live your life and I want these balls. It'd be just perfectly fine if someone else would do all the work and you, you could do your teaching for me or you could teach very well how they're doing that. He couldn't do the goofy and he couldn't do the computer. Well, we know what to tell everybody else to do. And do we do it? That's it. That's the ticket. Are you doing it or are you just saying it? You don't let anybody else do it.

It's very dangerous to the [inaudible] teacher to get in that position. And you know, you hope that well, I just hope my body forgives me for all the lack of attention that I gave it and taking it. So for granted. It's all the things you swore you would never do when you fell in love with your husband. I May, I never take you for granted. We'll have to 37 years. You just do, you know, and, and, and you have to apologize. You shouldn't, you know, certain while the our town play our town. And Emily was, came back from the dead and we visited her mother and family in the kitchen and she said, nobody looks at anybody.

This is what her feeling was. She return that they don't read as a treasure. There is to be with each other. They have a family to have a partner to have and have a life that is, that you live in that has a shape and a form. And you know, w if you don't have it, you die in for it.

And if you have it, you stop, uh, celebrating it. And probably the key to that is celebrating yourself too little. No. And I thought to say, we can see it will never be conceded. Women will never inflate in this lifetime, which maybe been deflated too long, but we ought to be able to get this up, you know, and, and imitate the animals. And, and I do hope you read an article on yawning and add that to something required of you. The body requires of, you know, just a, uh, it's, it's wonderfully freeing. And integrating, and I don't, I don't think anything but the on that ever made me be in neutral gear, whether it was nothing but this moment, that's what the intuit is looking for.

Just being in the moment and yawn will get you there faster than anything. I know the mind's not going to do it.

Comments

Ann S
2 people like this.
Thanks for sharing, Mary. You are so inspiring. Your stretches are amazing.
Mary, you are such an inspiration and you never change. Still looking fit.
Helen A
Fascinating! Thank you so much.
1 person likes this.
What a poet she is-- thank you
1 person likes this.
Thank you for sending me comments on my workshop with you. I am glad for the positive
response. That's good to hear;
1 person likes this.
I am loving her talk, thank you!
I am glad that I took the time to watch and listen, and get a glimpse of the wisdom that Mary Bowen offers! Even though I can not fully share some thoughts on "men and woman", I get the point and see it more as the feminine and male principles in all of us. But besides that I definitely took advantage of the thoughts on "holding", - tension in the muscles and tissue and in our mind. I will work with the Yawning! It already helped me freeing up my neck! Thank you so much and all the best to Mary!
1 person likes this.
Love the yawning and melting of tension.
1 person likes this.
Chewing with the tongue and yawning: simple exercises but they are wonderful ways to release the muscles of the neck and shoulders. I have tried them on myself!
Excellent loved listening to Ms. Bowen, so much knowledge and wisdom a true guru,
Thank you.
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