Easter Sunday Long Run: Cosmic Transformations

 

Before I knew it,  Sunday morning blew in on spring winds,  temps moderating, skies full of wondrous clouds like these- photo taken a day or so before....Mother Nature putting out Her best colors, smells and sounds, as the migrating birds come through, and the sound of traffic is silenced in the early morning holiday hours.   The lush spring comes here too,  with flowering trees and deep green landscaping bringing the sub-tropics awake.  As I rounded up Angler's Ave and onto the Ravenswood stretch,  I could feel my lungs expand on the smell of pine as I found a nice little rhythm to stretch my legs and enjoy the tunes in my ear.

Overall I may be running less miles.  As my further adventure in aging/running continues,  I have long since given up the tally, training logs or expectations for this or that race or event.  Now, it seems every day I 'take the measure' of what my body is up for:  more yoga (thanks Rodney Yee!), more walk breaks....taking it easy on the weekday runs and still putting out a bigger effort for the long run on Sundays.  Always fighting through the achy bits, finding the balance that brings movement and relief as the blood begins to flow and muscles ease.  So it was a boon to be cruising on down 35th with enough 'umph' to take me back along the end of my big Griffin loop, and FEEL like a runner,  confident in the strength of my legs and feeling the steady footfalls as I made it back for the walk/cool-down home.

As the cosmic bombardment continues,  rays are pulsing through the atmosphere stirring up the plates and volcanoes, twirling around the highs and lows, amping up the magnetic fields and  kicking up the solar winds...while our DNA and cellular structures stretch and resonate within our bodies...and the mind becomes a multi-channel antenna, picking up a little bit of everything it seems,  whether from our dream state,  stirred emotions and memories or the 'news of the world' and the changes afoot all around us. 

One day it seems everyone is stuck in the mud, like me.   And another, as if wings are attached,  the ideas and dreams of our future take off into quiet manifestation,  under wraps at times,  selecting their own day and time to enter the world stage.  Life will not be dictated by our petty wants, and yet it is our very desires which somehow shape our world.  In the Right Brain World all paradox is a puzzle which leads us to embrace an ever bigger point of view.  I am the least likely athlete:  at yet,  running, for me, is my magic carpet.  And when I am 'on the road'  I am given 'eyes to see'  the beautiful around me- and in me.  When I write,  I place myself back into that space- and I let the words describe just how it feels.

In your Cosmic Transformation,  are you focusing too narrowly on the bombardment of pressures, problems and perceived issues??  Or can you let go,  and take a leap forward as the path opens up for you?  If we lay aside our expectations,  the miraculous is ready to reveal:  Who are you today,  in your resurrected state?  With Love we find anything is possible.  With hope,  we live on in our shared splendor. 

Holding the Vision: Right Brain Workout, Spring Equinox 3-23-13

Amidst the homeless sleeping on picnic tables, the families running about, and the fantastic huge fig tree by the pavilion, loyal Lisa and I hunkered down with my basket of supplies, seeds and dreams and yes,  we did our Right Brain Workout.   It goes to show that regardless of my expectations and planning,  LIFE will dictate its own agenda.   Lisa and I have a lovely shorthand,  so it was a beautiful exchange to share our dreams and visions for the coming year.   (Her piece is top, mine bottom).

I feel strangely shy to go any deeper than this (for now).   In fact,  the entire weekend,  whether out on the roads running or attending to the chore list,  I felt as if 'something' is working its magic on us all,  preparing for changes we can't yet begin to see....making all best-laid plans simple incubation of seeds and intentions. 

Our timelines are all different.   The Big Teachers out there moving and shaking it found their audiences, students, clients.  Who knows,  maybe mine is STILL developing....and meanwhile the therapeutic encounter always comes with its own wholly sanctified and sacred energy.  Whether you are one on one,  or a part of any group,  it all comes back to encounter with Self;  we are all finding our way in a big, changing world.

Thank-you,  dear Lisa.  I felt lots of love in that alcove amidst the vast trunk of that amazing tree.  Whatever comes,   we all encourage each other to keep our feet on the path,  believe in the highest we've got, no matter how it may look....there is always much at work,  on the unseen.   

Mysterious Times

As a Spring baby,  something always stirs in me this time of year,   I can feel it right through my feet, in my pores,  that delicious, fresh feeling of New Things patiently waiting to punch through the surface and grow, blossom, provide us with all the magical sustenance of Life.
As I geared up for Sunday's long run,  I felt dogged by the fatigue, aches and pains and stress of the week;  mysterious times indeed, even at work,  the morphing of challenges and changes means staying light on my feet, adjusting and staying focused on moving it all forward in some productive way.....

But the morning light was calling,  the temps were very mild, and the overcast skies gave more depth to the feeling of stepping out into another world.   I couldn't care less anymore about how long, how fast, how well it goes....just running has becomes its own joy.  So I pointed myself east and headed for the beach.

There is nothing ordinary about Florida on her worse day.   All the atmospherics here come in big packages...the skies,  the ever-changing ocean waters,  the big air full of beach scents often blustery and blowing through the flat salt marshes....and the Light!   Brassy,  bright or muted down into the spectrum of grey and cool blues....Florida gives every day, every run.

It was a struggle getting there.   I hung out long enough to take pix and breathe in that fantastic briny air, and absorb the healing that comes with a pause in the miles,  the week, the life of a busy counselor.   It was the way back that gave me a few of those magical stretches when finally enough blood flow and comfort came to my achy legs and I could stretch myself along the open back roads flying free -if only for minutes at a time.

There is such a buzz about this Equinox.  I am seeing many posts tap us to the enormous new window of change upon us,  3 months down the road from 12-21 Solstice.  The potential for positive change seems in direct proportion to how willing we are to give up all our preconceived ideas about how it should all look or be.   On the run,  the tired humdrum feeling of 'oh no another long run' was quickly replaced with "WOW! that was GREAT!" even as I walked a good bit of the last bits home.

Fly free this week with the energies now upon us all....catch where you carry the old beliefs that make you shun the new risk, venture, creative project,  the act of connection,  forgiveness or fortitude....the art within you,  of manifesting just by being alive!  By breathing,  you participate anyway.  Why not make it a conscious effort and see just how far down the road you've gone? 

There is a 'runner' in us all....we all came out of the gate and are making our way on the Course of our Lives.....looking for the markers,  the cheerleaders,  the help when we get tired, or lost.   Look around you,  see those other runners?  They might look to YOU for their inspiration,  if you only keep on your feet....let the momentum of the Spring Push bring you along.....closer than ever to your dreams.

REMINDER!

Join me THIS SATURDAY MARCH 23rd  2:00PM

Hugh Birch State Park

off Sunrise Ave.  Ft. Lauderdale

for another RIGHT BRAIN WORKOUT

PLANTING THE SEEDS OF OUR DREAMS

bring real seeds which represent your dreams, park fee, donations appreciated

and GET INTO YOUR RIGHT MIND!

954-665-9536 for more info or email riccirob13@yahoo.com

Musings on Training

A runner is in perpetual preparation.  The runners I admire are like that,  training and prepping for their next race, event,  project....tweaking out their food, sleep, physical therapy,  writing their mileage plans....
I look back and realize I first learned this as a wood carver.  All the time it took to work into the wood,  to get the shape, to refine, to sand, to finish....such a long process.   Training is a long process too.  So as a runner,  I am in perpetual preparation.
This boon is so out of my character, I know it is 'a gift.'   A known impatient person, I have the capacity now to wait out 26 miles to gratification.  Try it,  it's not easy!!  And translated elsewhere in my life,  I have a long-distance view of things.   I can percolate.  I can stay with my base, as I have been lately,  glad that once a week I can up the effort and pull out a decent long run,  when I am validated for that equation, that hard work = success.
Whatever your right brain practice,  if you have longevity with it you know what I'm talking about.  The angst I see in clients (and people in general)  has everything to do with their lack of established healthy routines with their lives...as so much is constant turmoil and reactivity.  The longer they sustain their effort, the greater the benefit for them and those around them....we reverberate way further than we know.

Amongst the angst of my own reactions,  I know a far greater part of me is swimming in a crystalline sea of splendid color,  tapping the moment when it all comes clear, and free.  I find that in running,  in a more visceral way even than art, which has always been my path.   Throwing my body forward makes the connection more immediate;  I have no where to go but forward.   Entrainment was a word that came into fashion with Mickey Hart;  the tap tap of a runner's footsteps is similar to a repetitive dance which just keeps on going....it is hypnotic and I see now that I put myself in trance regularly.  Is it any wonder that I chose rightbrainrunner  and not rightbrainartist to write from?  Who knows maybe I need to look at that.   The bottom line is the Greatest Artist of Them All,  The Great Mother, is so worthy of my honor and respect,  for She led me to the right brain to begin with, where She can be met.  She is waiting there for everyone;  this is Her home.   She who moves the 'heaves and earth',  the Spirit and Breath of Life itself...the creative principle.  And so my mission was born.

Get into YOUR right mind today.   Check your inner list of most favorite things,  those activities or practices which put you in your right brain,  where your relationship with Life is not theoretical, stifled, but expanded into the 'rightness' of the Big Picture,  and your place in it.   Let you be you.  Relax, and keep moving.

Expect the Unexpected- from Full Moon February to March

If duality is the swing of the pendulum from side to side,  then wholeness is the expanded embrace of the entire thing:  the Process of movement itself.   Clarity is the momentary pause at one extreme before sliding over the other way...while the rush of experience presses on its merry way.

From the mid-winter stretch of record-breaking highs and lack of rain,  a cold front is making its way over the south Florida area,  bringing the morning temps down to the high 50's today,  ready to get even lower this weekend.  Taking my time out the door,  hoping the temps would moderate enough with the sun,  although hidden behind a blanket of gray clouds....the winds carrying the chill as I start up Park at a fast walk, determined just to move, and breathe, and move....

My body is ultra-sensitive to environmental factors of all kinds:  smells, noises, temps,  humidity, winds or lack thereof,  or industrials,  and chemicals,  the pressure of other people's energies, etc etc.  In childhood this was a constant source of friction with my father, who thought I was making it all up just to piss him off.  In adulthood,  I am also often misunderstood and called "too sensitive" by those whose constitution is tougher than mine (and believe this type of experience is some sort of whiny cop-out).   Running gave me a way of addressing and stretching this every time I go and place myself out in Nature to take whatever She's dishing out.  It's a way of 'training' myself I suppose to make my peace with the physical world beyond my joy of perception...and ground myself into/with Mother Gaia.

I watch myself walking up Park bracing against the cold as it penetrates even through my new windbreaker,  contracting inward,  stiff and pissed, wanting sun, wanting relief NOW even as the runner in me knows,  there's a loop to do,  we're doing it.  This mental process of relaxing and easing into the run goes the same way every time...the initial inner protest eventually dissolving into the run itself...until up on Ravenswood I caught a nice rhythm and ran it slow and easy up to my Publix pit-stop.

Nothing stays the same forever, except Love and Spirit.   And even They must shape themselves around the same imperatives, the pendulum swings which serve to benchmark our rhythm in life,  from light to dark,  grief to joy,  distance from Self to intimacy,  the exquisite wonder of our own pace, our own time through the loop of the day,  the week, the months rolling into the years which bring us Here,  Now,  ready to do it all again in some new and unexpected way.

Running frees my right brain to dive deep into all the questions which could crowd the enthusiasm out of my daily routines,  giving me the outlet to 'exhaust' them until all I have left is the feeling of lightness, of lift,  of living on the razor edge of earth and sky which is where the runner lives....half-way off the ground. 

You may think you know what's coming:  as we pay our taxes,  activate our political/social agendas,  care for ourselves, our families, friends,  walk the Planet, drive our cars,  consume what we think we need or want or wish for what we are told is impossible, unrealistic....take a minute to review.   How much did you anticipate where you are now??  Could you imagine the magnitude of it all?  For LIFE is so much bigger than we ever grasp.  There is no meditation,  no guru,  no master man or woman who has it ALL....therefore,  expect what you cannot predict or imagine in the best of all possible worlds...it is MORE than that!  Expect the unexpected and pay attention- the miracle will appear:  any day, any moment now....