chapter one

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Theme: Body/Kinesthetics

The Lazy Person’s Guide to Health and Happiness

I was slated for the Body / Health / Kinesthetic segment of Beth’s “Living Chapters” experiment. This is the subject I’m least interested in and the one in which I need the most help. I know that I should be a better caretaker of this body and have made sporadic and unsuccessful attempts to act accordingly. This is something Beth and I share. We both lack dedication, fortitude, and discipline in this area. For those who may be experts, the following prescription might seem laughable or naïve. Rather than scoff at my ineptitude, feel free to add mettle to the following outline.  

DIET: The Haves & Have Nots

The “don’ts” out weigh the “dos” in this case. I don’t know what your basic diet is like, Beth, but if you’re living on a boat I’m guessing that your culinary spectrum is limited. The following lists were compiled in honor of your lack of physical space, your tiny refrigerator, minimal storage capacity, and your lack of active passion for the culinary arts. As far as preparing anything on my list your hot plate, toaster oven, and ingenuity is all you’ll need.

The Have Nots

Because I’m a big believer in negative reinforcement I want to start with the food and drink that would be better to avoid… So for June, to the best of your ability, I ask you to forego:

  • Fast Food
  • Junk Food
  • Processed Foods
  • Sodas and other drinks high in sugar
  • Any food dripping with fat, grease, or other emulsions

The Haves

Breakfast:

  • Hard Boiled Eggs (you can keep a bowl of them around)
  • Fruit (if you have two bowls you can keep fruit in one of them)
  • Any kind of cereal (as long as it’s not laden with sugar and fake crap): loose granola, muesli, and things like that (if you don’t have a third bowl, improvise)
  • Yogurt (plain is suggested, you can add fruit or cereal to it, even put a little honey or syrup in it)
  • Granola Bars
  • Bread / Toast / Bagels: go for whole wheat (or at least strive for something darker than white bread…)
  • I’m sure there’s more to it than the above, but my imagination is lacking in this area. Whatever you eat, just consider its origins. We’re just shooting for a diet that is wholesome and simple enough to satisfy your rustic and restless palate.

Lunch / Dinner:

You can improvise off of this list, but they’re basically vegetables and grains, etc. Not much of a fuss should go into putting any dish together. Doesn’t mean it won’t taste good, but that all depends on your ability to improvise with spices, condiments, and the like:

  • Fresh vegetables
  • Make a big pot of brown rice… it can hang around for a few days without going bad…
  • Canned beans
  • Canned fish (if you can’t get the fish fresh)
  • Wraps laced with vegetables, leafy greens, nuts, raisins or cranberries of some sort (you can also use dressing, real meat or chicken
  • Miso soup (just boil water and dump Miso paste into it… add any vegetables you like… if you like tofu, by all means…
  • Salads of any kind using all or some of the ingredients above
  • Whenever you can, eat at someone else’s place and enjoy what they serve without being a food snob (in other words if you even improve your diet 75% of the time it’ll be a big improvement)

The above may seem simple, but since we eat every day, it will have to become a discipline, a regular practice that may at first be an enjoyable diversion, but may ultimately become a pain in the ass…

Exercise

You mentioned that you hate exercising, don’t exercise, and can’t motivate yourself to do so. That is why I am going to make a contract with you that we should stretch daily (for at least 15 minutes) and jog / run sprints, etc. at least 2 or 3 times a week for the month of June. Also you mentioned that you’d like to work on strength. I included a video that features upper body strength that might be a start in the right direction. To ensure success in this area you might want find someone to exercise with so you can hold each other accountable.

Stretching: Good for flexibility (into old age), builds musculature, defines and tones…

Video: This is one of the videos that I found to be less nauseating videos I found on YouTube… let this be your guiding light (or you can surf the web for something more your style) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBV4P7BogKU (15 minutes sessions)

Video for upper body strength: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrpGbulGprA

Jogging / Sprinting is good, too (after loosening up with some stretches)… The idea is get your heart pounding enough so you break out in a sweat (or vice versa). You can indulge in some sprints of increasing speed and length. And alternately build up stamina for a 20-minute jog, which might be more enjoyable.

Power Walking: If it’s too hot or muggy outside try a 15 to 20 minute power walk.

Other things to consider:

  • Walk rather than drive, walk whenever possible. Even better, find someone to take a brisk walk with…
  • You can also get a bicycle.
  • Jump rope (for exercise, not travel)
  • Or you can learn how to play like a dog by chasing a soccer ball around an open field.
  • Or you can go swimming.

Muscle Memory

Recently I asked you whether you were still playing guitar… I now propose, Beth, that you find a way to fit the guitar on your boat. If there’s no place for it on the boat, how about keeping it in your car? The idea here is Muscle Memory. Your fingers will remember what you think you’ve forgotten as soon as you start playing with any regularity.

Although this may not fit into the scheme of my assignment, I propose you gather a bunch of people who play and sing and invite them onto your boat for a late Sunday afternoon songfest. Maybe learn some sea chanties for the occasion (optional, of course).

A Few Exercises Regarding Muscle Memory and the Senses

Basically, Beth, the idea is to become aware of the affect the senses have upon the body. It’s another way of becoming aware of what makes a difference to you and the degree to which it does. It occurred to me the other day that fewer sensations seem to cut through the morass of my daily life, however, when I started to apply some of the methods as described below, I realized that I was just not paying attention. So these exercises are just a way of reminding us to pay attention, stay awake, and take heed when the little voices that sing within us creep to the surface.

Attention Exercise: Look at the second hand of a watch and see how long you can pay attention to it before your mind starts drifting.

Hearing: I learned how to experience music after reading the book The World Is Sound: Music and the Landscape of Consciousness by Joachim-Ernst Berendt. It’s a subtle thing but if you try to listen to music with your whole body (volume is not always necessary) you should become more affected by it.

  • The more familiar we are with a piece of music the less we tend to actually listen to it. As an experiment choose a piece of music that you have never heard before and take the time to actually listen with your whole body and see what happens. Then take a piece of music that you love, try to listen to it in a new way and see what happens.
  • So much of the experience we have with art is associative… what associations come up through the act of listening, viewing photographs, etc.

Voices: note how certain voices irritate, dredge up assumptions, resentments or have the power to seduce you or induce a coma…

Speaking: Be aware of what goes in different parts of your body when you tell a lie, when you relate a rarely spoken but necessary truth to a friend, when you run into someone and exchange banalities, when you accidentally insult someone, say something that’s funny, say something else that’s not funny or in bad taste… It’s interesting to note where in your body you feel a weird twinge or an abrupt shift of consciousness.

Also be aware of what happens when you are on the listening end…

Silence: If you experience an uncomfortable silence try to milk it for all of the discomfort you can get. Also, recognize the comfortable silences, too… It’s not always obvious what the quality of any silence is, so give it an extra heartbeat, just to make sure.

  • Exercise: See what happens if you are not the one to break the silence (after you, of course, locate where the discomfort within the body resides).

And this concludes the Living Chapter for the month of June.

To learn more about the themes for the 12 months, read The Roles and Rules.

 

 

“why do this?” … am I crazy?

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The most asked question of me about this project, before it has even started, is “Why do this? Are you crazy?” and then comes…“Where did this idea come from? Did you come up with this?” Living Chapters is really no original idea nor did it come from me alone.  I feel like it has been an idea growing within me for a long time. As a collector of stories and images, I have witnessed, listened and observed others in my life. Fascinated with the fact that others manage to navigate through the world in such a wide variety of ways. I guess I feel that now is the time for me to respond with my own voice and actions.   It’s time to be or enact the story, rather than just observe it.

I use to cringe at people who created “personal growth projects”, artists or writers who were (what I thought to be) stuck in their heads reflecting on their life stories and experiences with the world. I think this is why I have never attempted writing and have honestly been intimidated by the process. I didn’t want to be that person stuck in my own experience. But how do we really interact honestly with others and the world if we are not able to reflect upon and understand ourselves? What happens if we never get past the things that intimidate us?

I am using this blog/project to force myself to write about that. It’s a structured way of making myself to become more accountable.  To quote the first writer of this project, Joe Gall, “the time to pretend to be, is over” If we are going to stop pretending and start to be who we want to be, do what we want to do, and be with the people we want to be with, the time is now.   So my challenge to myself (and anyone else reading) for the next 12 months is to do so.  I don’t think that sounds so crazy.

Ask me again in a few months (or even in a couple days)… after the chapters start rolling in.

before the beginning

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In the past month, I have been unveiling the idea of “Living Chapters” to those outside of the participating players list and I have to admit not without a bit of anxiety along with a great sense of excitement. The process of telling people about the decision to do this made it all the more “real”. Talking about the project as if it were a new “life change” itself, a new job, house or relationship.  I told my mother, I told my professional colleagues, I told a stranger at a conference I attended.  Each time, getting a bit more comfortable, trying out this new role of blending my personal and professional life.  No use compartmentalizing the pieces of my life now, or holding back.  Everything is about to become transparent.

As the point of living chapters, is to push boundaries and test comfort levels, I specifically asked the writers to find the sore spots, throw me into uncharted territory, and pin-point my weaknesses (or if I want to be nicer to myself) areas with room for improvement.  Really now, what is a more uncomfortable than highlighting these aspects of yourself, not only to your friends and colleagues, but also to a potential audience of online followers? So here we go, the holiday weekend is over and I have a few days left to give myself some advice before it all begins. Below are the directives that I give myself for the process. If I stray along the way, please don’t hesitate to remind me of them.

Step one: Let go of control

Step two: Trust in my instincts

Step three: In case of emergency, be creative

What do you think? Did I miss a step… I’m in a good place to take suggestions for the next year.

the prologue

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This June will be the 18th anniversary of my high school graduation, one of the few moments in life when we all focus on and celebrate the idea of branching out and breaking free from the years of guidance and training from school and our families. We are told to set out and find ourselves but yet are not given a map.

Well it’s been 18 years since I was 18, and I am not sure if I have plotted the correct path to any eminent successful future, but I have found my way to my own voice and guidance and have started listening more intently to it.  Ironically, the message I keep hearing is “Stop planning, forget the map and just let go!” For some reason, I believe that now more than ever is the right time to take my own advice and follow through.

On June 1st, Living Chapters officially begins. Although I feel as if I have been living out chapters my entire life, I at this moment feel strongly about the importance of letting go of the planning and directing that I have been doing thus far in search of that specific outcome or greener grasses. Living Chapters is a process I have created to help achieve this goal of letting go.  I see it as an experiment or a performance of sorts, playing out, witnessing and examining this art form that we live and breathe each day.  It’s a chance to live out different plot twists and directions that I may have never chosen or found alone. An exercise in trust and collaboration and an uncommon chance to reflect on the decisions we make when faced with change, challenge, and discomfort.  It is a rare opportunity and moment in my life that I am able to devote this period of time to the observation of what can be learned if we decide to let go of the reins we hold so tightly over our lives.

OR – it’s simply an elaborate creative way to force myself into doing all the things I’ve been meaning to do in the self-improvement department over the past few years.  A way to follow through with all those un-kept new years resolutions and untapped adventures I’ve been hoping to engage in.  Either way it’s on! And as of June 1st I’m accountable not only to the 28 other individuals that I roped into this scenario but to myself to follow through with all the rules of engagement and whichever direction this may take.

I do not consider myself a person who unearths new wisdom, philosophy, or creates reflective prose, witty remarks or even humorous ramblings.  This is not what I hope to share in this upcoming blog – I do however lead a fluid and free existence transitioning often from one thing to the next, falling into new situations and engaging with a multitude of amazing people along the way. At the very least this project was born to share that.