mind-body connection Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Mind-Body Connection, Pt. 5 – Melita Mollohan

It is estimated that 40 million Americans now practice yoga. If that isn’t a cultural mind-shift, I don’t know what is.

Beginning with the counterculture of the ’60’s, slowly, ever so slowly, concepts like organic, vegetarianism, vegan, and meditation have taken hold in our commercial American culture. I have cynically said of my country that if Americans can’t place a dollar amount on something, we are mystified. And spiritualism, in any form outside of the go-to-church-on-Sunday variety, is often dismissed.

Yet, here we are, some five decades later, and these positive ideas are flourishing.

On meditation: "When you find the space between your thoughts, that little space, and if you can make that space bigger and bigger each time that you find that space, stay in that space as long as you can. Because that's where the real work's at and that's where the real benefit comes from.'

Fast forward to now and Melita Mollohan, based in Morgantown, has taken the best of these ideas and made it a lifestyle and a vocation. She treats patients with Bowen Therapy – a therapy that encourages the body’s own healing. Plus, she practices yoga, meditation and juicing. If that weren’t enough, she’s now in her second year of beekeeping!

A former accountant, she found something lacking in that line of work: happiness. Making a leap of faith, she followed her heart into her current work as healer and teacher.

Listen to part 1 of the interview: Babaji and Bowen Therapy.

Listen to part2 : Yoga, mind-body connection, meditation and juicing.

melita_molohan_part2.mp3

Part of the fun of following Melita on Face Book are her pictures of her greyhound, Babaji. Babaji’s sweet face is made even more adorable by the rather large proboscis, which I have dubbed The Beacon.

Mind-Body Connection, Pt. 4 – Merely Present

I am a dreamer.

Far worse when I was young when just about everything jolted me or made me fearful. To counterbalance, I developed a strong imagination. My mother told me that I never needed entertaining; that hours spent with clay, comics, TV or outside activities largely kept me engaged.

But my dreaming nature created a mind that easily left the room. In short, being truly present, controlling or crawling out of that dream state, was an issue that followed me through adolescence and well into my adult years.

Live performance can be a lightning bolt to our attention or “presentness.” I think that’s why I developed a love-hate relationship of performing live. A huge adrenaline rush, which is suppressed to stop shaky hands, and the inevitable feeling that an invisible glue has been poured over my fingers seems to be the norm. Plus, it always sounds better in the safe confines of rehearsal.

At least, that’s how I used to feel.

All aspects of living, including music making, are so much more in accord with one another these days. This is not to say things are in a state of perfection, but rather there seems to be a reckoning and reconciliation of all the disparate and contrary impulses that often haunt we creative types.

I attribute this largely to age. Besides the back issues, acid reflux, the perpetually high triglycerides and a host of health related hassles, experience brings a mellowing to all things.

But more important is feeling present to my life.

Robert Fripp has this to say:

"During the first week, some of you may have heard me banging on about being present. If we are not present, we are not. Nothing happens. But, problematically, nothing-happening generates a stream of inevitable consequences and repercussions which are, strictly, unnecessary; but accumulate alongside the necessary repercussions from our proper activities, and act to weigh us down. Becoming present is the beginning, and very simple beginning-to-begin is to bring part of our attention inside the right hand, or another limb: a touch inside. We experience the distinct quality of being alive, directly and immediately. One characteristic of this experience is that it takes place in the moment. Not yesterday, not tomorrow, but this particular now. From here, everything else follows. Otherwise, we are subject to the vagaries of weather. A key point, easily overlooked, is that to bring our attention within the hand requires both choice and decision. This engages the will, whatever we might understand by that. But, for now, good to have the information. What follows? We choose to become present, again. When our practice is more established, becoming-present we find something-already-waiting-for-us. We have become more substantial, better able to act on the promptings of what we see and feel to be the right course of action. Being more-fully who-we-are enables us to be more-fully with others, and working with others is necessary for us to become more-fully who-we-are. At a certain point, a group emerges from within a team, and in a group something becomes possible that, otherwise, would remain highly unlikely."

And I may add, “Amen.”

Mind-Body Connection, Pt. 2: The Morning Sitting

"Life without the morning sitting is like trying to walk without legs. This is the beginning, the foundation, of strengthening personal presence. If we are absent, then life is all stuff. Nothing real happens;" ~ Robert Fripp

"And so each venture Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate With shabby equipment always deteriorating… ~ TS Eliot

PREAMBLE: This is part of an ongoing series which deals with those physical-mental practices that have influenced me in a positive way and have helped me greatly with back/arm issues. One of the meditation-like practices I have learned is called the morning sitting. This is an extension of Alexander Technique (abbreviated AT) which we shall go into further depth in the next entry of this series.

How did you learn about this?

It was February 2008 and there was a blizzard atop Snowshoe Mountain. The trip up had been a beautiful, sunny winter drive up I-79, but once reaching the outskirts of Snowshoe, it was like entering a Stephen King novel. Up the winding mountain road, fog and a blinding snowstorm slowed driving to a crawl. Petrified by the inability to see the road more than a foot or two ahead, an angel of mercy must have led me to the fog-enshrouded “village” where the course was to take place.

It was a fitting beginning to a very intense four days with Robert Fripp and his students in what is referred to as Guitar Craft (Herein and henceforth abbreviated as GC). It is beyond the scope of this post to go into all the details of this course, but Mr. Fripp has an online diary which presents his perspective. Also, Guitar Craft has many defined terms (i.e. Guitar Craft, the morning sitting, etc.) on their website.

After dinner, we all descended to the basement and people were asked to share some brief biographical details and their goals for the course. Then Robert introduced us to the magical morning sitting. While the snow swirled and the wind howled outside, these 20 souls, 7 staff and 12 participants, listened in complete stillness as Robert lead us through this phenomenal exercise.

I became lost in a tangible silence. Silence was not the absence of talking, but a presence. A thick silence – a silence that is not emptiness, but is filled with a something. Something which defies words. From whence comes this silence? Was it our souls in communion? I don’t know.

All else faded away. Sitting in the room with us was not the world famous guitarist. All were equal, all were not one (as the cliché goes), all simply were.

Sounds like big stuff, yes? It is and yet it is practical. There is no mysticism, philosophy, religion here, but rather an awakening to ourselves in a way we never knew existed or was possible.

I began my morning sitting soon after that 2008 course, but my practice was rather spotty. I was on-off again for a while, but eventually it became part of my morning routine. At first, it’s an exercise in sitting still. I recently told a friend that, before he played a sound on his drum kit, to sit perfectly still for 15 minutes. His reply:”15 minutes? I don’t think I can lay still 15 minutes when I’m sleeping.”

What is this morning sitting business?

To be brief, it is a way of training the attention to be where we want it to be instead of it wandering hither and dither. It also sensitizes us to to our bodies, specifically our muscles so that we recognize unnecessary tension when we play an instrument or in any other activity of our lives. Over time, we can recognize the sharpening of this sensitivity as our morning sitting practice deepens. With more time and practice, an unexpected richness unfolds.

Why not just tell us what you do if it’s so practical?

Because it has to be experienced. I do not feel at all qualified to speak on this as much as those whose practice is much richer than mine. I was taught by Robert Fripp who studied with John G. Bennett who studied with George Gurdjieff. I have also taken guitar lessons with Tony Geballe, a long-time GC and AT student, and have discussed his approach to the morning sitting.

I will share what I know only by request. Send an email to (after you removed the underscores) jlange_@_wvpublic_.org.

Why do I need all this?

You may not. I do. We seem to inhabit a world that cannot shut off and must be habitually filled with noise, noise and more noise. There is no down time, nor time to refresh mind, body and soul. We must be doing something at every moment or we are wasting our lives.

That is precisely the problem. We have no “off” switch. Our minds are turbulent, grinding, repetition machines creating a mental noise which is non-stop. If the noise would stop, would we like what we would find? Who is inhabiting the being I refer to as “me”?

If this labyrinth of philosophy becomes too circular, consider it this way: because we have no “off” mode, our “on” mode is fatigued and lacks focus. No clear distinction between the focus of attention and relaxation diminishes both.

What then do we do to learn how to shut off? To be able to control our attention before the next commercial break, phone call, Facebook, text, ad nauseam?

Turns out that there are teachers who can help us.

Next: Interview with Sandra Bain Cushman – The Alexander Technique.

Mind-Body Connection, Pt. 1: To Begin Again

We begin again, constantly.~ Robert Fripp

Pain is a powerful motivation.

The pain I am experiencing is causing me to re-evaluate many things. Pain areas, specifically my back, are causing me some alarm. Each movement, even remotely involving bending forward, or a wrong twist at the hips, is carefully considered because any wrong turn could send electric-like shocks through my back that cause subsequent immobility.

Back issues, specifically those debilitating lower back lightning bolts, were first experienced my freshman year of college. Bending over to reach some socks, my lower back froze up and to the floor I went. Try as I did, the floor was where I stayed until those muscles relaxed. Young and invincible, how could this happen?

As if that weren’t enough, a new malady has arisen in the past year.

Now there is mysterious shaking of my right arm as it relates to guitar playing. Simply plucking a string with finger or plectrum now produces an tremulous wobble. The guitar has been a part of my life, both professional and personal, for over four decades. How can I overcome this devastating new obstacle before it becomes debilitating?

Luckily, I’m a pragmatic optimist living in a time when help is easily available. First was to seek pain relief without pills. Pills are not a cure, nor do they explain cause. They only dull mind, body and connection to life itself.

Enter massage therapy.

" It's a cleansing process. It really is. And if you can let go of being self-conscious, it can be a very freeing and emotional relieving space and time for that person."

Traci Levine is a Licensed Massage Therapist who works at The Folded Leaf, a place where yoga, massage and other wondrous mind-body activities abound.

My first massage was revelatory. I had no idea how much tension had come to “rest” in my back. The release of this tension and pain was a bit beyond description. For example, Traci worked on my Teres Major and Minor – muscles more-or-less near your shoulder blade. As she worked out the knots of tension, it felt like my muscles were on fire-not quite pain, but not really pleasure either.

When she first started, I wasn’t wholly convinced that this was going to be beneficial, let alone a lofty “transformative.” Somewhere, I let go and let her hands guide me where she wanted me to go. I lost track of time, place and person.

The after-effect was immediate and powerful: my muscles did not exist, bones felt like air, and it was difficult to re-inhabit my own body. I.e., walking was awkward. “Drink plenty of water, ” was her admonition. My muscles had been in a state of tension for so long that the release was substantial and real as I was sore for about three days.

It turns out, like most disciplines or professions, there’s a lot more involved than anyone might think. I interviewed Ms. Levine in January of 2014.

Then, the proverbial apple fell upon my head: with aging taken into the equation, what if I was the cause of my own problems?

This is a mind-body issue. I am operating on old habits, automatic behavior, not at all mindful of my own body. I do virtually no bodily maintenance (stretching, exercise) and am, in effect, absent. If we have no attention or focus in our lives, then things just happen to us. We effect no change. We are absent.

What? How could we not know our own bodies?

It turns out we know very little about ourselves; including our minds.

Next: Alexander Technique.