Weekly Reflection #249

Here are a few interesting ideas and activities I have found recently and you may find intriguing too:

1. Joe Hudson is a sought-after executive coach in Silicon Valley. Some of his live coaching sessions are very compelling and unique, and available on YouTube on his channel. Notice how he asks questions, stays with the silence whenever it naturally arises, and sometimes stops people while they are giving seeming answers that are in fact just a dive into the rabbit hole of distortions and stories developed over time to explain who we are, what we do, and why we are how we are.
2. The Rainbow body is a phenomenon of realizing oneself fully through death. It is especially practiced among Tibetan monks and has a long tradition. This is an interesting practice that somewhat reminds me of the Stoic Memento Mori and death visualization practice. Though rainbow body goes much more in depth, and it is also embodied, not just at the conceptual level. There are some reports of monks dissolving at the moment of their death, with rainbows appearing in the sky right then.
3. We often believe that the most correct human posture is upright like a stick, with shoulders back and spine straight. When you observe people who live naturally and in touch with nature, though, that's not what you notice, and they can get into "sophisticated" positions (e.g., resting squat) without flinching and staying there for a long time, while we mechanize the squat to be a step-by-step exercise that reinforces the legs and needs to follow a very specific "linear" pattern.

Movements are fluid, continuous, everlasting, cutting through past, present, and future. The dancers and movers we find inspiring and beautiful do not follow straight lines (sometimes they do) — they flow seamlessly and with great engagement and self-control through many non-linear patterns. On a practical level, we can relax more, living in a state of parasympathetic activation. Face relaxed; shoulders relaxed; hips relaxed; knees relaxed; feet fully connected with the floor and relaxed. We can do this via breathing practices that slow down breathing or similar meditation techniques that do or do not involve movement.