Upside Down and the Outside goes In

Inverted on Sleg's inversion bar for a few minutes this morning.  I recalled something the massage therapist was telling me about muscle cells and how, scattered through every muscle are spindle cells whose function is to seize up if the muscle is over-stretched, to keep it from tearing.  To get into the deeper stretching - at which level it really feels like releasing the years of never-stretched tightness, you have to slowly settle to bypass the spindle cell reflex tightening.  I'm sure i'm off on the details but this is the picture I have in my mind and am navigating into the deeper channels using it as my map.

So me inverted, Mindfolded and finding the focus of tightness to be in my hips and groin and as I breathed into these places, i could slowly feel my skeleton separating, opening and closing with my breath.  Even as I sit on the floor typing this i can feel the pelvic bones tentatively settling into a slightly more open position.  Now the next thought is how to continue to engage these muscles which have been held tight in compensatory positions for years without over-doing it and injuring myself...how does one strengthen the psoas?

Stereolaboratory

It is official.  Stereolab still has it.  And they were giving it away last night.  I was even impressed with the opening act Atlas Sound which was a soundscape created by one geeky guy.  

Stereolab did only have the one female lead singer but they played some of the songs they both sang on, which was awesome because they are some of my favorites. During these it sounded as if they were playing a recording of her singing in the background - that or one of the guys was impersonating her voice quite well. 

Prana

There's something about waking up drunk at 11am, feeling a bout of panic and to alleviate it scribbling out a rent check and mailing it to a town two states away.  I am going to go do a headstand to Moby's 'Ambient.'

So that headstand turned into an hour and a half of yoga.  Had to switch from Moby to Art of Noise (Moments in Love is a secret place that only few know about).  The yoga was a payoff for all the years i've been working with my body to keep it bodying...it was the single greatest session of yoga i've ever done.  My psoas muscles released opening my hips and relaxing my pelvis.  I can't put into words how this makes me feel, its like receiving a new body, the sensation of the inner pelvis stretched apart what might not even be measurable in milllimeters and the consequences of my legs turning inwarder is so strengthening/releiving/releasing/refreshing that I walked around the house like David Bowie for half an hour rolling my femur balls in the hip sockets and feeling my pelvis work in symmetrical halves instead of as a fixed unit.  The sensation of my frontal groin bone being moveable is both eerie, for its sudden differentness, and like coming home.  

I laid in corpse pose for ten minutes, listening to Moments in Love again, breathing into my now-opener skeleton and the muscles all twisted around it.  Having received a most spectacular massage two days ago all my muslces were primed for this session of stretching.  The connection made obvious between the deepness into the core of my body and the awesome massage (i'll gladly recommend her if you ask me) has me pining for regular yoga instructed practice and more massages!  Also I can't help but notice this occurred on a day after a night of a good deal of alcohol, lets be honest, and how it acted like a dye put in the body sending toxic flashes where it was most concentrated, in those deep tight recesses, and that instigated me to want to move my consciousness deeper and deeper into my sensation, like scratching an itch.  

Having come out on the other side i'm in a post-elation downer, but am gonna keep moving towards the Stereolaboratory being constructed in the Variety Playhouse tonight.  This could make it into the Book of the Greatest of Days.

Stereolab

This is why I love Stereolab and why we are gonna Ride the Sharks into the ATL tomorrow night!!!

Dialogue in the Dark

So the Rogue Therapist collective got together to attend Dialogue in the Dark.  After purchasing tickets at the booth where Sleg said "they will pull this student I.D. card from my cold, dead hand" as we both got discounts, we began debating on whether we should Mindfold into the building or not.  It ended up with Ishkur and my's elf Mindfolding into the exhibit with Sleg playing Seer.  We actually got some cheering and applause for our entrance, which led me to believe the lights were on in the building so far.  

Surprisingly the people who came to usher us to the lockers and take our tickets were not very adept at working with sightless people as Sleg described later, 'it was pretty funny because she had a look on her face as if you were stupid for not taking the ticket from her when you couldn't see her holding the ticket stub at you.'  

So there is an interesting validation of the Mindfold training, our acuity of sightless interaction lends perspective when not Mindfolding/seeing things.

I don't want to spoil the actual exhibit by describing it here so let me just say that it is a pretty well-crafted set of experiences that you are guided through in an hour.  

At the end of it we three talked about how easy it was for us to move through.  The canes we were handed were more in the way then helpful, but that was probably from the close quarters and being in a group of people.  They take you in in groups of seven so if you can gather a crew of like minds attend in that fashion.  

Overall a great intro into being deprived of sight.  And something we will undoubtedly pull from in future Mindfold introductions.

One thing I particularly noticed was that most everyone seemed to be upright when moving (judging from where people were when I bumped into them) while the Mindfolding we've played with has led us to move lower, crouched or even on all fours for more safety and efficiency when exploring unfamiliar surroundings.