Deep Within Our Very Flesh

"The human body is not an instrument to be used, but a realm of one's being to be experienced, explored, enriched and, thereby, educated."
-  Thomas Hanna

"There is deep wisdom within our very flesh,  if we can only come to our senses and feel it."
 -  Elizabeth A. Behnke

"He who feels it, knows it more."-  Bob Marley  

"No matter how closely we look, it is difficult to find a mental act that can take place without the support of some physical function."
-  Moshe Feldenkrais  

"I would have touched it like a child
But knew my finger could but have touched
Cold stone and water.   I grew wild,
Even accusing heaven because
It had set down among its laws:
Nothing that we love over-much
Is ponderable to our touch."-  W. B. Yeats  

Touching, Feeling, Sensation: Quotations

The Five Senses

Walking is the Practice of Heartiness and Hardiness

"Walking is the great adventure, the first meditation,
a practice of heartiness and soul primary to humankind.
Walking is the exact balance between spirit and humility."
- Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild

"My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing."
- Aldous Huxley

While running in May, I fell, and I injured my right hip and knee.  I badly injured by left knee from a fall down some stairs in June. The injuries were painful, prevented many activities, and I was slow to recover.  My orthopedist did not recommend any immediate surgery, and I followed his advice on recovery methods.  

Rest, physical therapy, walking, and an elimination or restriction of some activities all helped me recover.  

I now walk 2 miles every day, and will increase to 3 miles in November.  I joined the TFFC gym this week, and will resume light weight lifting and yoga classes with caution.  

Ways of Walking Website

Day Hikes in Oregon 

Meditation

Walking Meditation

Create Yourself

Twenty Rules for Optimal Living in the 21st Century

1.  Face Reality
2.  Take Action
3.  Create Yourself
4.  Accept Responsibility
5.  Do It Now
6.  You Can't Change the Past 
7.  Act Like a Scientist 
8.  Work, Work, Work and Practice, Practice, Practice 
9.  Push Yourself 
10.  Do and Feel 
11.  There's No Gain Without Pain 
12.  Accept and Forgive Yourself Unconditionally 
13.  Live for Now and for the Future 
14.  Commit Yourself 
15.  Take Risks 
16.  Be Interested in Yourself and in Others  
17.  Remain Flexible  
18.  Use It Or Lose It 
19.  Accept Uncertainty 
20.  Don't Expect Heaven on Earth 

-  Albert Ellis and Emmett Verlten, Optimal Aging: Get Over Getting Older, 1998.  Aging Well

I've been reading a lot of Anthony Robbins lately.  I watched the Netflix documentary featuring the Date with Destiny event led by Anthony Robbins. (Personally, this workshop event did not appeal to me.)  I have listened to his lectures on CD.  His style is bold, energetic, and encouraging.  Adapt his suggestions for improving your attitude, emotions, and goals as needed, with individual adaptations.  

How to Live the Good Life: Advice from Wise Persons

Virtue Ethics

Bullards Beach State Park, Oregon

Karen and I visited Bullards Beach State Park, near Bandon, Oregon, on September 16th.  

Posting from Samsung S4

Returning to Our Home

Today, Karen and I drove by Interstate 5 from Vancouver, Washington, to Red Bluff, California.  Around 11 hours for 500 miles. 

We enjoyed visiting with family in their new homes.  Beautiful cool and drizzly days in Vancouver. They both live about 20 miles north of the Columbia River at Portland.  

We had intended to tent camp starting last Friday, but inclement weather kept us in town.  Rainshowers and fog, and mountain driving, all together did not seem safe or likely to allow us to see very much from the road.  

Our next trip will be to a cabin at Cape Blanco, Oregon.  

Our 2003 Ford Explorer drove very nicely for both of us.  $115.00 round trip for gasoline.  It was packed full!

Time, for now, to unpack and reconnect with our Red Bluff home, gardens, and projects.  

Pausing for Pleasures

I'll be back in a few days.  

Enjoy Yourselves!

Good Work

     "And the real name of our connection to this everywhere different and differently named earth is “work.” We are connected by work even to the places where we don’t work, for all places are connected; it is clear by now that we cannot exempt one place from our ruin of another. The name of our proper connection to the earth is “good work,” for good work involves much giving of honor. It honors the source of its materials; it honors the place where it is done; it honors the art by which it is done; it honors the thing that it makes and the user of the made thing. Good work is always modestly scaled, for it cannot ignore either the nature of individual places or the differences between places, and it always involves a sort of religious humility, for not everything is known. Good work can be defined only in particularity, for it must be defined a little differently for every one of the places and every one of the workers on the earth.
     The name of our present society’s connection to the earth is “bad work” – work that is only generally and crudely defined, that enacts a dependence that is ill understood, that enacts no affection and gives no honor. Every one of us is to some extent guilty of this bad work. This guilt does not mean that we must indulge in a lot of breast-beating and confession; it means only that there is much good work to be done by every one of us and that we must begin to do it.” 
-  Wendell Berry 

"Good work is dignified. It develops your faculties and serves your community.  It is a central human activity.  Work, in this view: makes you honest with yourself, requires that you develop your faculties and skills, empowers you to do what you are really good at and love to do, connects you in a compassionate way with the outside world, supports the philosophy of non-destructiveness and sustainability, and integrates work with personal life and community."

-  Roger Pritchard


Work, Effort, Labor: Quotations, Sayings, Wisdom, Cliches

Virtue Ethics

How to Live a Good Life

Healthy Aging

Reverse Your Biological Age By:

"1. Changing your perceptions.
2. Deep rest, restful awareness, and restful sleep.
3. Lovingly nurturing you body through healthy food.
4. Using nutritional complements wisely.
5. Enhancing mind/body integration: breathing exercises, yoga, tai chi, qigong, aikido, etc..
6. Exercise: strength and aerobic conditioning.
7. Eliminating toxins from you life.
8. Cultivating flexibility and creativity in consciousness.
9. Love and loving relationships.
10. Maintaining a youthful mind."

- Deepak Chopra and David Simon, Grow Younger, Live Longer: Ten Steps to Reverse Aging, 2001. 

How to Live a Good Life: Advice From Wise Persons

Aging Well

Catching the Sun

The United States needs to intensify its implementation of solar energy electrical power production as have Germany and China.  The near future is obvious!

I will begin studying renewable energy topics during in the next eight months.  

Solar Energy - Wikipedia


Catching the Sun.  Documentary film, 73 Minutes, 2015.  
Filmmaker: Shalini Kantayya.  Wikipedia article. 

Tai Chi Chuan for Pleasure

My webpage on the Standard 24 Taijiquan Form has been the most popular webpage on the Cloud Hands Website for many years. In the sidebar of this blog, you will find a quick index to this webpage.

Standard Simplified Taijiquan 24 Form. Research by Michael P. Garofalo, M.S. This webpage includes a detailed bibliography of books, media, links, online videos, articles, and resources. It provides a list of the 24 movement names in English, Chinese, French, German and Spanish, with citations for sources of the movement names. It provides detailed descriptions of each movement with black and white line illustrations and photographs. It includes relevant quotations, notes, performance times, section breakdowns, basic Tai Chi principles, and strategies for learning the form. The Peking (Bejing) Chinese National orthodox standard simplified 24 movement T'ai Chi Ch'uan form, created in 1956, is the most popular form practiced all around the world. This form uses the Yang Style of Taijiquan.

This webpage provides many good suggestions for a person learning this short form on their own if there is no Tai Chi class in their area.

There is also a famous short Tai Chi form, created by Professor Cheng Man-ch'ing in the 1940's.  It has 37 movements.  

A 50% Chance for "Happiness"

Happiness Activities

1.  Expressing Gratitude
2.  Cultivating Optimism
3.  Avoiding Over-Thinking and Social Comparisons
4.  Practicing Acts of Kindness
5.  Nurturing Social Relationships
6.  Developing Strategies for Coping
7.  Learning to Forgive
8.  Increasing Flow Expectations
9.  Savoring Life's Joys
10.  Committing to Your Goals
11.  Practicing Spirituality
12.  Taking Care of Your Body (Psychological Methods)
13.  Taking Care of Your Body (Physical Activity)
14.  Taking Care of Your Body (Acting Like a Happy Person)
15.  The Hows Behind Sustainable Happiness: Positive Emotions,
       Optimal Timing and Variety, Social Support, Motivation, Effort,
       Commitment, and Habit.  

The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want  By Sonja Lyubomirsky.  New York, Penguin Books, 2008.  Index, extensive notes, appendix, 366 pages.  ISBN: 978-1594201486.  Ms. Lyubomirsky, Ph.D., is a Professor of Psychology at the University of California at Riverside, and a leader in the field of positive psychology.  

Professor Lyubomirsky analyzes what determines happiness.  Her research indicates that "happiness" is determined approximately 50% by our internal biological "Set Point", 10% by our circumstances in life, and 40% by our intentional activity.  Her explanations and suggestions are clear, reasonable, and grounded in psychological research.  Gaining effective use of our intentional activities is the focus of this book.  "This much happiness - up to 40% - is within your power to change."  

How to Live a Good Life: Advice from Wise Persons

Virtues and a Good Life

An Old Philosopher's Notebooks

Pleasure

Reading

Epicureanism and Hedonism

Enjoy It While It Lasts

"Belief in our mortality, the sense that we are eventually going to crack up and be extinguished like the flame of a candle, I say, is a gloriously fine thing.  It makes us sober; it makes us a little sad; and many of us it makes poetic.  But above all, it makes it possible for us to make up our mind and arrange to live sensibly, truthfully and always with a sense of our own limitations.  It gives us peace also, because true peace of mind comes from accepting the worst.

     Deprived of immortality, the proposition of living becomes a simple proposition.  It is this: that we human beings have a limited span of life to live on this earth, rarely more than seventy years, and that therefore we have to arrange our lives so that we may live as happily as we can under a given set of circumstances. ...  It made us therefore, cling to life─the life of the instinct and the life of senses─on the belief that, as we are all animals, we can be truly happy only when all our normal instincts are satisfied normally.  This applies to the enjoyment of life in all its aspects.

     A sad poetic touch is added to this intense love of life by the realization that this life we have is essentially mortal.  For if this earthly existence is all we have, we must try the harder to enjoy it while it lasts.  A vague hope of immortality detracts from our wholehearted enjoyment of this earthly existence."

 -  Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living, 1937, p.155-160.  



Death: Quotes, Poetry, Sayings, Wisdom 

How to Live the Good Life 

Hedonism and Epicureanism

  

What's Happening?

Karen and I have been working during the cooler morning hours all of the month of August.  We have continued with our home improvement projects.  

Afternoons have been enjoyed indoors with reading, Internet browsing, planning, the Olympics, American football games, and Netflix programs.  

I've recovered from my hip and knee injuries, suffered in bad falls.  I'm now able to walk 3 miles every morning, garden, and work on projects around the house.  Things are looking better for my legs.  I plan to resume weight lifting next week.  

Somewhat unusual not returning to work for the school district on August 13th. Retirement is a new experience.  

Helping People Move and Other Adventures

I am now back home in Red Bluff.  I was in Vancouver, Washington, for the last week.  I helped Mick and April move into their new home in the West Minehaha (Hazel Dell) area of Vancouver.  We moved hundreds of items (boxes, furniture, tools, plants) from northeast Portland near Division Blvd at the 205, and from Troutdale.

I stayed with the Flinn family.  Both girls were in summer day camp all week. We all enjoyed an outing to the beautiful Lewis River Park.  Alicia and I enjoyed eating at Mon Ami for breakfast in downtown Vancouver: delicious crepes and top notch mocha coffee.  Sean was the expert at the BBQ grill.  Fun visit!!

We purchased a very nice old Ford Explorer.  This dark green Ford Explorer will be rigged up as our camping vehicle.