find the midline pilates

Hi love, 

I don't want to be writing to you about COVID 19. It's a full moon, springtime, and the outdoors are beckoning us into a season of celebration, birth, and renewal. That said, I would be remiss If I didn't share something that's been on my mind. 

Way back in November of 2007, when I first began my certification in Pilates, I read something that struck me as interesting. It made its mark on my memory, and has stuck with me all this time. Here is an excerpt from my old Pilates manual,  "In 1918 a terrible epidemic of influenza swept the world, killing millions of people, tens of thousands in England. None of Joe's followers succumbed even though the camps were the hardest hit" (Power Pilates 2006).   

At the time, Joseph Pilates had been interned on the Isle of Man by the British. It was WWI, and he had come to England as an aspiring boxer, and circus performer. It was during his time in the intern camps that he conceived of and began to refine his...

I was talking to a friend recently about how stressful life has become, even under the most mundane of circumstances. We've known for a long time now that stress is a killer, it’s one of the most perilous forces of modern history. Despite knowing how terrible it is though, most of us keep moving forward without doing much about it. Diet and exercise help but even for those choosing to move well and eat right, these don’t prove to be a completely reliable path away from the negative effects of stress.

There are many reasons for this. One is our somewhat faulty design. We are naturally primed to pay more attention to negativity than what is positive. Evolutionarily this helped us to avoid danger, but the threats we face today differ from those of our ancient ancestors, the older parts of the brain that govern our relationship with fear and instability haven’t caught up to the hazards we experience in the modern world.

Similarly our nervous systems doesn’t...

As much as I think of winter as a time of deep listening, and spring for setting intentions, every new moon offers us an opportunity to be honest with ourselves about what is tugging at our heartstrings, and honor the changes we would like to see come to fruition in our lives.

Maybe it’s a new cycle in a relationship where both partners bring greater awareness to stubborn patterns, more patience as a parent, greater freedom, or time for creativity, a new job, or better pay.

No matter what it is that we are longing for it is important to acknowledge our desires.  One great way to give voice to these aspirations is through a New Moon Ritual.

Perhaps the idea of creating a ritual to spur transformation in your life sounds too far fetched. I can understand that, but I also know from my undergraduate and graduate studies in Religion and Psychology that rituals are powerful.

The subconscious mind is intelligent, and non linear, it exists just below the surface. It governs our...

 I think of Winter as the perfect time to embrace much needed quiet, a time for inner work, slowing down, and making space for deep meditation. If I get down to the basics, however, of why I would do any of those things, I believe the most important practice of Winter, is Listening.

Prevailing culture teaches us so much about action and logic; we think our way through things, or at least we try, inefficiently. Perpetual action, and loops of thinking cannot take us where we want to go if we don’t make time to experience our life on a deeper level. Perhaps that sounds funny. It should seem automatic that we know what is happening in our life. Life moves fast. Our electronics, entertainment, and myriads of distraction, make it feel like it is moving even faster.

Listening, deeply listening, is a lost art. I’m not talking about communication skills, or the kind of listening we do in relation to another person. Although those are important, I’m talking about the...

A few weeks back, I promised to write about the amygdala, and why practicing mindfulness, is particularly well suited for helping with anxiety, panic attacks, and emotional pain.

 The amygdala is an area of the brain that is correlated with fear and emotion. When we sense fear, it becomes active, and in situations where the amygdala has been damaged, the types of fear we would expect to see are not present~ for example, rats feeling comfortable enough to sleep with cats (la doux).

 While the brain is incredibly sophisticated, many parts of it hail from another time in our evolutionary history; a time when imminent threats were everywhere. It was necessary to continually scan our environment for danger. The older, more primal parts of our brain are conditioned to do this.

 Despite the fact that our living circumstances have changed, this deeply ingrained safety mechanism of the brain, has not. One prime example of this is evident in the popularity of negative...

A few weeks back I wrote about pain, and told you about my mother’s experience with acute pain after her surgery, and the power of meditation to effect this. I also made a guided meditation, you can access it here. While I touched on emotional pain, and relayed how meditation is good for both emotional and physical pain, I wanted to go a little deeper, because I believe this is an important topic. 

Emotional pain can be complex, and potentially one of the most challenging territories we navigate as human beings.

To recap from my last post, our experience of pain includes primary pain~ the pain itself, and secondary pain ~ which is the brain trying to understand our experience.

Secondary pain can get a bit dubious when it comes to emotion. This is because internal and external stimuli from our environment can trigger neural pathways in the brain that make old and unresolved pain feel as if it is happening in the present moment. I’ll get into this more next week,...

It’s happened a few times, right after I wake up in the morning, or after I come in from the cold. A tight feeling in my chest that sends a signal to my brain to say, “here we go, that’s congestion, and we’re about to get sick.” At another time in my life I would have felt hopeless, but learning the land where I live has served me in growing an herbal arsenal, which has been an incredible resource in many moments where I would not have otherwise known what to do.

Goldenrod is more commonly known for its super powers with healing kidney and liver issues. It’s a diuretic, good for expelling toxins; and it has a reputation for helping to heal urinary track infections. It is high in antioxidants, as well as helpful in mending burns, eczema and other topical wounds. The Zuni used it to treat sore throats, other indigenous groups use it for snakebites (Fischer-Rizzi, 127). Goldenrod's medicinal capabilities are extensive, but because I am prone to upper...

From the beginning, when I set out to create the FTML membership program, I had the intention to not only help people connect to nature but to the cycles in life. Understanding the cyclical aspects of nature, day into night, the seasons, phases of the moon, the greater life cycle, and more, give a beautiful opportunity to learn from the innate wisdom of nature.

As you may know, the major purpose behind my business is to help you find home within yourself, as well as within the greater context of where you live, locally /nationally/ and globally at home with the Earth herself. 

Man or woman, plant or animal, mammal or amphibious, if you are alive you are effected by cycles. This happens both on a physiological level, such as the way lunar cycles effect the feeding and mating habits of fish, but also in a way that leaves a deep impression on the unconscious as Winter Spring Summer and Fall, symbolically illustrate the life cycle.   

Whether symbolic or physiological,...

I’ve had a some experiences in the past few weeks that have me thinking a lot about pain, physical, mental, and emotional. My strong warrior solider of a mom is recuperating from an excruciatingly painful back surgery; I also have a few members of the Find the Midline community that have reached out for help from the chaos of transition, and the deep squeeze of emotional pain that that can bring.

Pain often comes in what feels like tidal waves. It comes when we need change, it comes for no reason at all, but when it comes it wakes us up.

Just like your nervous system alerts you when you are too close to the stove, pain resoundingly calls our attention.

In a strange way, there are few moments in life when we are more alive than when we are in the depths of harrowing pain.

Everything in us wants an escape, but the more we resist, the stronger it gets.

Pain Meditation here ...

 Research on pain, (consider this article from Psychology Today) is...

At a certain point last year I went through some serious heartache. We all go through it at one time or another. The blessing of heartache is that it expands us, we grow. During this time of emotional turmoil I needed a way of grounding my energy, a way to step out of my desire for control, and to quiet the noise of my fear. I increased my meditation time to 20 minutes twice a day. Adopting this habit changed my life. As I came to spend more time with my feelings rather than run away from them, I began to tap into something I call my inner home space. A place within where I could be deeply in touch with the narrative or story of all that was occurring in my life, yet also separate from stress, drama, and negative feelings. It’s hard to describe, but spending time in this inner home space, felt something like tapping into the eternal me or the largest version of myself- before childhood hurts, and before donning the roles we often get ushered into in life. It was very healing,...