Equinox #27

Tosha Silver:

It's just knowing that that part inside that says yes is divine. I think it's that simple.

Jane Burdick:

I think there's always breathing, there's always gravity, there's always just sinking into where you are. Like right now, just being where we are in the moment, just being present and entering the moment.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Excited because today's topic is Equinox, which is very appropriate given that we have the vernal or spring equinox coming up in a couple of days. And across the microphone from me to discuss this topic is my co host Genevieve Morgan.

Genevieve Morgan:

I'm feeling rather balanced as we go into the first day of spring.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Oh, that's a good way to start things out. Well, we have two very special guests and one of them, we thought enough of that. We actually called across the country. It's the miracles of modern technology. We wanted to speak to Tosha Silver, who is the author of Outrageous Openness. And we think this interview will be very interesting to people who are taking the time to tune in.

Genevieve Morgan:

I know it's our first coast to coast interview. It's really exciting.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's very exciting. And then to balance that out we have local Feldenkrais practitioner and meditation teacher

Genevieve Morgan:

Jane Burdick, who has been in Portland now, I think for over two and a half decades teaching balance.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So these individuals will each offer their ideas about balance and openness and how we achieve balance in our lives, which we thought was very appropriate for the equinox because equinox is, as you've reminded

Genevieve Morgan:

me, the equal juxtaposition between day and night. Yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

We have the same number of hours of daylight and nighttime at one point in the year, and that is the vernal or spring equinox. So, Genevieve, how do you yourself stay balanced?

Genevieve Morgan:

It's been a little bit of a challenge this year, as you guys have. Anyone who reads my column and has been listening to the show, which I hope you all have been listening to, know that I've had some health challenges. I'll just say, for this year, I did something very unique for me, which is I went out and got a bunch of seedlings and I planted them all in little boxes and I put them in the window. And just this week they sprouted. So I'm feeling very excited for spring because I feel like that's what the equinox is all about. It's about moving through the dark winter months into light and energy. And I really am feeling that way. So it's sometimes it's, you know, just individual, and it's as little as that as finding something to look forward to.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I agree. And one of the reasons that I wanted to speak with Tosha Silver is that she speaks about just being open to whatever it is that inspires you. So whether it is seedling in your window or whether it is walking down the street and noticing that the trees are beginning to bud, I mean, whatever mindfulness you can bring into your life, whatever openness you can bring into your life ultimately can prove to be very, very healing. Yes.

Genevieve Morgan:

And for me, I've always looked to exercise or diet for that. But since I've been, I've had such back pain. I haven't been able to get out and be mobile. So I went somewhere else. I went to the nursery.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, that's very appropriate because you're nurturing your own self and you're nurturing these little baby seeds, and they're going to start to grow. And I think that brings us right to why are we talking to Jane Burdock? What is Feldenkrais, Genevieve?

Genevieve Morgan:

Well, Feldenkrais is a very gentle movement practice that helps people tune into the subtle, almost imperceptible movements that then link to the larger movements. So particularly if you're struggling with mobility or pain, going to a Feldenkrais workshop or working with a Feldenkrais practitioner can really show you how micro movements are either inhibiting your mobility or causing you pain. And then everything starts to flow easier after you pay attention to how you move in microwaves. It's a wonderful way for people who are kind of rehabilitating to gain traction faster. I don't know if that makes sense, but basically it sort of jump starts the whole rehabilitation process.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I think that anything can make sense. It's very interesting because one of the things that we've done over the past 26 episodes is to explore different ways that people might heal. And whether it's going to Feldenkrais going that route, or whether it's sort of engaging in outrageous openness, or whether it's going to see Dr. Mike Tada who was our back surgeon, or going to see Steve Anderson at the Body Architect

Genevieve Morgan:

and doing Qigong or doing acupuncture with

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

you or doing acupuncture. I mean, what we are all about on this show is providing different points of view, different ways of looking at things and allowing people to be inspired and go out and gain balance in their own lives in whatever way makes sense for them. So I think this will be a great show. The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast features a special segment we call Wellness Innovations, sponsored by the University of New England. This week's Wellness Innovation comes from Eureka Alert. It is about From Mouse to Man Using mice, researchers at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine demonstrated that nitrogen balance, the process of utilizing amino acids and disposing of their toxic byproducts, occurs with a precise 24 hour rhythm, also known as circadian rhythm in mammals. Disruption of this cycle has a direct impact on survival of organisms and may predispose one to life altering diseases including diabetes and cardiovascular cardiovascular disease. These findings dovetail well with recent observations in human subjects. For more information about this Eureka Alert from Mouse to man, visit drlisabelisle.com this

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Our next interview is our first national excursion into the airwaves as we speak with author of Outrageous Openness, Tosha Silver, who also writes for the San Francisco Examiner. We hope you enjoy this special interview. This morning we are on the air with Tosha Silver, who I became acquainted with back I think it was around Christmas time. Is that. That sounds right. Yeah. And it was around the time that we recorded the interview with Dr. Christiane Northrup and she referred me to your book, which is Outrageous Openness Letting the Divine Take the Lead. So I thought it was a very appropriate book to talk about and concept to Talk about as we head into the spring season, the vernal equinox. And that's why we decided to have you on here today. Thank you so much for coming in.

Tosha Silver:

Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And I have Genevieve Morgan, my co host, sitting next to me.

Genevieve Morgan:

Tusha, I'm delighted to meet you.

Tosha Silver:

You too, Genevieve. I'm glad you're here.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So one of the reasons, I mean, this is an interesting thing for us to be doing something, taping this thing the way that we are, and one of the things we've had to be doing for the entire run of the show that began in September is to have a sense of openness, is to be simultaneously moving forward in a way that we know how to do things, but also accept that we don't know how to do things and be willing to experiment. Is this. Your book is really great. Tell me if this is something that became important in your own life.

Tosha Silver:

Yeah, I think. I think it's sort of probably one of those things that's the foundation to what the progression that led into my writing. Outrageous openness. Because I had this past of doing all these astrological readings, which I still do do to some extent. But I was very much living a life as somebody who was giving readings and consulting with people about their problems. And what was starting to happen was that I was feeling more and more that the issue really wasn't about waiting for a particular transit to happen or waiting for Pluto to move here or never tuned to move there in somebody's chart. It was really about cultivating what you're talking about, cultivating this sense of openness and curiosity and adventure to how the universe would want to present the next phase, whatever it was. And that. That actually had a really deep spiritual meaning to it that was outside of any specific religion. It was just a sense of opening to help, and that there were very specific ways to open to that help.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Now, I didn't introduce you as somebody who does astrological readings, but that is an important part of who you are. And you've been doing them for a very long time.

Tosha Silver:

Yeah, they're kind of. They're little by little getting to be less of my life as more happens with the writing and the book. But, yes, I have done them probably since I was 19.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

But what it sounds like you're saying is even if you present, you know, a picture of someone's life with kind of the stars in mind, that doesn't dictate where their life will go necessarily. It is. The importance is to be open to possibilities that may be Influenced by perhaps where the stars fall.

Tosha Silver:

Yeah, I think what was happening is that after doing all these thousands of readings with people, I was struck in a way by how anything can become a box and that many people were even viewing the stars as a box. Like, oh, certain things are happening in my chart. It must mean this or that, and that there was an entire way of navigating in the world that was very much outside of fearing a certain transit or fearing something in your chart and that unfortunately, there was some astrology that was actually out there that I kind of call it fear based astrology that really was cultivating in people a sense of it was actually helping to create worry in their life. They would fear certain things about to happen. And so when I was working on Outrageous Openness, it was really coming from the studies I had done of this one particular woman's book, Florence Scovel Shinn, the Game of Life and How to Play It. She wrote a lot of books in the 40s and the 50s, and they're kind of a good companion piece to Outrageous Openness because there's so much about opening to what she called divine order that you can look at any situation and invoke the highest outcome for that situation. So if you're looking, whether you're open to you need a new home or you're leaving a relationship, or you're making a change in your career and any issue that's happening, rather than being filled with anxiety or even being concerned about what the next transit of the stars might be, that you could move to divine order and you could say the perfect whatever, the perfect home, the perfect relationship, whatever, the perfect work is already selected and I'll be guided to that in the right time, in the right way. That's sort of her work around that became the foundation of a lot of what expanded into the book.

Genevieve Morgan:

Tosha, can you describe the delicate balance between openness and healthy boundaries?

Tosha Silver:

Oh, that's a good one. Well, I think the openness that I'm referring to is. Is really on an internal level to that conversation with the divine. However somebody would want to define that. It's not so much just actually calling from California where it's like, you can go to Hay street and there's just people that have done too many drugs and they're kind of open to everything in a way that isn't necessarily helping their life work. So I'm not meaning it like that, but in the sense of being open to getting the guidance. Like, for example, I was just on the phone with somebody earlier this morning, and we were just talking about, you know, she has a lot of changes to make in her life. And so we were talking about how you can put out a very specific prayer that simply says, I'm about to make this particular move. She was thinking about moving out of her home. And you could put out a prayer that could say, if I'm meant to make this move, send a sign that makes it obvious. And if I'm not meant to make this move, stop me now. Send a sign that makes me stop. And that, to me is like a very fundamental basic inquiry or request that can be made to the universe that will get a response. I've seen it over and over. Now. That, to me, is really different than just sort of saying, I'm open to everything and I'm going to run around and let other people trample me.

Genevieve Morgan:

Right, right. Openness doesn't mean you become a doormat.

Tosha Silver:

Not at all. In fact, sometimes I think the way this really works is that the more open you become on the spiritual level, on the genuine spiritual level, that there is this force that wants to engage with you. Whether you consider it the force that makes trees grow or that lives in nature or whether you see it in a church, I think, to me it doesn't matter. It's just that there's a force of love that wants to engage with each of us. And that openness can be cultivated. And it's really like a dialogue that gets deeper and deeper all the time. The same way that people look for that with another person. And I think part of that definitely can happen with another person, but it's so much vaster than that, that there's really this divine force that wants to have a conversation with us all day long, if you invite that.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Now you speak of a divine force, but having read this book and other books, well, the books that you referenced, I don't sense that you're going to. Towards one particular major religion or another.

Tosha Silver:

Yeah, I think it's inclusive of everything. I really. I think there's more and more people that I know that feel this way. If there is a religion that somebody resonates with, that's great, but that there's a kind of spirituality that encompasses all religions and all paths and all things. And it. For me, I would call it a force of love. It's a force of divine love.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Do you have suggestions for bringing this love into people's lives?

Tosha Silver:

What? You know, there's this book out there. I just. I've actually never read it, but I love the title so much because it's really compatible with, I think, what's an Outrageous Openness. It's called love. Love is what you are. And I think it's a very different way of approaching this as opposed to even, you know, the idea in this culture that, you know, to make this about the human love, that if you want a partner, you go out and you hunt for that person and you look for them and, you know, maybe you're in competition with all these other people who are also looking and all that. And I think that all the ideas about divine order that are in this book and Outrageous Openness are really, really about that. You draw to yourself what you are that you simply embody by embodying the energy that you're supposedly looking for. You realize that that's what you are anyway. And then, of course, it comes to you because it's part of who you are. So the same prayer on the human level about this, the same prayer about that, the perfect person, say, is already picked and they'll be guided to in the right way at the right time. I think it's really. If you use that prayer with, I don't know, hundreds of people. I mean, you can use it for apartments, you can use it for partners, you can use it for anything. But it's really good with human interactions because you can even use it with friendship. You know, you're saying that the people that are right for your vibrations will find you. The people that aren't right will fall away. And so it's not like there's this experience of auditioning or that you have to convince people to love you or that you have to earn their love, that they'll be drawn by your being based in the vibration of your own love. And then I think it's really the same with the divine that so often, you know, we're looking maybe for people on the outside to fill a space that is really. There's a larger force than just one person waiting.

Genevieve Morgan:

When we did our interview with Dr. Northrup, she touched on this as a way to start tuning your instrument to this kind of love that you're talking about, which is that you already know what pleases you. So that if you take steps towards what feels pleasurable in your body, even if it's just looking at a piece of art or going to see, listen to music that you like, or in her case, tango dancing, there are very clear physical steps you can take. And it all has to do with finding what pleases you. Is that something that you subscribe to.

Tosha Silver:

Yeah, you know, I think that's really right. Somebody had this quote once that I really loved, and it was basically just like, you can find that place inside of you that knows God because it's the place that says yes. It's like whatever that internal self is saying yes to is it.

Genevieve Morgan:

That's great.

Tosha Silver:

And that's your specific vibration, whether it's a kind of music or whether it's a kind of, you know, essence. And, you know, you can see it when you watch two different people go through a museum and one of them just gravitates to something and their whole being is like, yes, this is it. And sometimes I think that directly relates to their chart, perhaps, or past lives, who knows? But that there's something within each person's essence that wakes up and says, yes, this is what brings that aliveness in. So I would call that the divine. I would totally agree with her. It's almost like it's the opposite of perhaps some religions that would be about self denial. But that idea of, you know, locking down that, you know, pleasure in itself is a distraction and all of that, it's almost the opposite. It's not hedonism. It's just knowing that that part inside that says yes is divine. I think it's that simple.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

We thought this would be an appropriate interview to have right around the vernal equinox, because that is a time where the life force begins to rise again. According to Chinese medicine, it's the whole yang within yin and its things begin to grow and sprout and the SAP rises. Do people call you with different questions around these times of year, around the equinox, around the solstice? Are there questions different?

Tosha Silver:

You're making me think about something I've never considered before. There's definitely different qualities to the seasons that come through and what people are asking about. And often in say, the winter solstice, it's a very internal time. And I think this is a culture that's uncomfortable with dormancy, you know, with the idea that there's times to rest and there's times to go forward. And so often people are very concerned or agitated in the winter. They think they should be doing things that they don't feel like doing. I think with the spring, it's often there's this instinctive sense in people that they can feel it. Even people that don't really believe in the stars or believe in the cycles, they feel that SAP rising inside of them. And so there's often that kind of focus on moving forward. I wasn't particularly thinking that much about talking about the astrology, but I did want to mention this because this particular year, since you're airing this around, spring solstice is really. It's an important turning point this year, more so than some years because. Because we're in this extended Mars retrograde cycle that started at the end of January and it ends on April 11th. And so even though normally in the spring equinox you get that forward rush of new life, I think it may be a little bit delayed this year until the middle of April because Mars retrograde is a very internal cycle that has a lot to do with inner purification and inner clearing. So if anybody hears this and they're feeling like, wow, it's bring equinox. And I don't quite feel it yet. Hang on two, three weeks.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

One of the reasons, I think, that some people might be listening and be thinking, well, astrology, I'm not sure I believe in this, or they don't really understand it enough because they haven't spent much time with it. You spent a lot of time. Well, you went to Yale and you had a lot of time to think about things in a very rational way. And astrology somehow called to you in a very rational way as well. Was there a challenge for you to bring sort of the Western way of thinking with this pull to do astrological research?

Tosha Silver:

They say this in general about different kinds of art. And I consider astrology in some ways just one more art form that you don't pick it, it picks you. I thought I was going to go to law school or become a journalist. So this wasn't like really a conscious decision. I got out of school and I was just obsessed with it for a couple years and was reading everything that I could. And the next thing I knew, people were constantly asking me for Readings. And I think what happened was I became intrigued by the idea that on the one hand, anybody's birth chart could be like a signature of a piece of music. That there's a certain vibration contained within each person. And one person might have a vibration like Mozart. And the other person might have a vibration like Jethro Tull, you know, and these things could be. It would explain why we have the pulls we have, why we have the sensibilities we have. But that. At the same time, I was really uncomfortable with it being deterministic. That, like, we're trapped by these charts the way it sometimes is put out. As if we're completely the victim of this combination of factors.

Genevieve Morgan:

In light of your own twists and turns that have happened in the arc of your life so far. And I understand that there's lots to come. Is there an overreaching archetypal arc that each human life is meant to undertake?

Tosha Silver:

Again, to go back to the idea of the chart, that we each kind of come with a curriculum. That might be one way to say it, that we come with a curriculum to study. And that each individual chart is completely different and has a different curriculum. Which is why, I mean, one of the things I really love. And the good side of astrology, not when people use it in a deterministic limit, but the good side of it to me is it can make you very accepting of other people's paths and nonjudgmental because you're just going. Everyone has a different curriculum that they're here to study. One person might be here to learn how to be open to relaxing into life. And another person might be here to learn to how. How to overcome fear of aloneness. And, you know, on and on. And so, you know, you never can really be judging whether someone else's path is wrong for them because it's not your path. So in that sense, I would say each person has a route that perhaps the soul contracted to learn before it came to earth. I kind of see it like a contract. And that we're here to be the best form of that that we can be. But it's. Each one is completely unique and individual.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And this brings us back to the idea of outrageous openness again. This embracing of one's life, but also what other people's lives are meant to be for themselves. Is that true?

Tosha Silver:

There's a story in the book that's called what if God for All of Us. It's about that because it's sort of the difference between, say, perhaps a more doctrinaire religion that would say there's one way, there's one way to be spiritual, there's one way to know God. Here's the rules, here's the regulations, these are the things you have to do. And then there's a different kind of spirituality that I think this book embraces that says who you are inside as you is sacred. Kind of going back to what Dr. Northrop might have talked about, that these inclinations of the body, that these inclinations of the soul, that these spontaneous pulls that arise from the inside are themselves sacred. And that the more you can listen inside to them and honor them and honor the feelings and honor things as they arise, the more you are in touch with your essence and your own divinity and your connection to that greater self that's always trying to interact with us.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, that feels like the perfect place to leave this interview with you, Tosha. I know that people will be listening and probably rushing out to buy your book.

Tosha Silver:

Oh, that's good. Great. It's on Amazon as an ebook and also as a regular paper book.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And you also have a website.

Tosha Silver:

I have a website@toshasuller.com and you have

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

MP3s that people can download to hear more of your voice?

Tosha Silver:

I do. I think there's 12 or something MP3s on there. And I'll also be doing in the spring, starting in April or May, there's going to be Divine Order tele classes I'm going to start. So the direction the work is going is going to be fewer readings and more classes so that I can really be working with people about Divine Order.

Genevieve Morgan:

And you can do that over Skype

Tosha Silver:

or you can, you can do it over Skype or you can do it over just a regular old telephone line because I get a conference number and everybody calls in and it's a really great way to do a four week class or sometimes I do a six week class.

Genevieve Morgan:

And can people register on your website for that?

Tosha Silver:

Yeah, if people go to my website and they sign up for the mailing list, then I'll send them the notice as soon as the dates gets it up. And people can also find me on Facebook, which as you know, I seem to spend half my time on. So it's an easy way to also get the news of when I have the classes set up.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I find your Facebook postings very informative. So thank you for, thank you for spending some time on there, at least for my sake. I do appreciate very much your taking the time to talk with us today about outrageous openness and the the sort of relationship between openness and the spring and things starting to rise and trusting ourselves. So thank you for coming on and talking with us today.

Tosha Silver:

Tosha Silver it was my pleasure. Thank you.

[Unidentified voice]:

Here's my goal. Ready? Here's the goal. Everything that I learn out there in a book or at Mama Genus or whatever, just bring back to Yarmouth. If it isn't scientifically accurate, it won't work. It's not enough to think that your source is that person's work, that person's work. Your source is here and you want to bring it home and make it work here in your own backyard. Every single one of us has inner wisdom and has the ability to attract to us the resources, the people, the thoughts, the books that will make us whole. Every one of us has an inner guidance system. And I had to learn. I'm not anyone else's higher power. Yeah, this is a daily. Yeah, it's a daily practice. And this is a very good place to do it. First of all, because it's peaceful here, it's calm, we get all upset, you know, if there's four cars at a light. We call it rush hour. It's. It's a very high quality of life. And when you're going through something like the death of an old self, this is a really good place to heal. You'll notice Maine has more really solid holistic healers than any place I've ever been. Really, I mean, amazing people. And for our population, that shouldn't be happening. What I want everyone in New York City to know is if they get a cheap ticket on JetBlue, they can save money by getting their health care here. And so I see everyone understanding that bringing their own light into their life is the number one way you save the planet. You don't do it through getting exhausted, through getting burned out. How you do it is what you get. You have to find what you truly, truly love. So what is the dream that you had when you were 9, 10, 11, that comes roaring back? That's your life force. The only way you're going to find out what it is, you can ask your mother, but if she isn't around or if she doesn't have the ability to see that part of you, it's like Daniel Giamario, shamanic astrology. He says, what if you're purple, but you grew up in a family where they only recognize green? Then it's going to be very hard for you to know what that thing is. But I can tell you. I'll give you a hint. It's the thing that feels too good to be true. It's like too much fun to be true.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

On today's Maine Magazine Minutes, we have a very special guest, Jane Burdock, who will be introduced by our co host and Maine Magazine Minutes host, Genevieve Morgan.

Genevieve Morgan:

Thanks, Lisa. Good morning, Jane.

Jane Burdick:

Good morning.

Genevieve Morgan:

I'm so happy to have you in the studio today. I know that Lisa is a qigong teacher, but you do something very interesting. You're a Feldenkrais practitioner and you've been doing it for more than 15 years in the Portland area. Can you describe what Feldenkrais is?

Jane Burdick:

Feldenkrais is is a little hard to explain because it's experiential, but basically it's the manual that you've always wanted for your body. And I don't like to say it's Movement 101, but it teaches you the movements that are underneath everything we do. So that reaching and sitting and standing and lying, we all have habits that we don't know we have and they get in our way. And over time we can have illness and accidents and then we organize around those. So Feldenkrais is really uncovering our original patterning.

Genevieve Morgan:

I would say it's a very gentle practice.

Jane Burdick:

Yes, it's a very gentle practice and it has a vocabulary of over a thousand movement patterns. So. And everything that is troubling you can be addressed through Feldenkrais. Everything physical and maybe even mental, too.

Genevieve Morgan:

How did you come to Practice Feldenkrais and then become a teacher of it.

Jane Burdick:

I came by it very honestly through 20 years of back pain. And I was a potter for 20 years when I lived in Rockport. And for all those 20 years I suffered with back pain. Just thinking that was the inevitable thing. And I didn't know really. And I was very athletic and gardened and this and that. So one Feldenkrais lesson at the Camden Y with then the only practicing Feldenkrais person in Maine, Marilyn Hardy. And I got up off the floor and I had no pain. And I thought, what is this? You know, what's going on here? So I studied with her quite a bit here in Portland and then took a training, a four year training.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Tell me, Feldenkrais, what does it look like when somebody is doing Feldenkrais practice? I'm not sure what you would call it or what. Describe this a little bit more for me.

Jane Burdick:

Well, there are two ways of working in Feldenkrais, and one of them is called awareness through movement. And that is verbally directed movement sequences that would take probably a half hour or 45 minutes in which you would dismantle movement so that it's unrecognizable. Let's say you want to work on reaching, but you don't even know that that's what you're doing because you're doing it in these tiny little pieces. And then at the end of the awareness through movement lesson, you put it all back together again and you're reaching and using your ribs and using your spine in a very different way. So it's very slow, verbally directed. But the other aspect is called functional integration. And that is where you would come to me. You would lie on my table fully clothed, and I would move you in those similar ways. So you're completely off the hook. You are just enjoying, hopefully enjoying and giving me the feedback. If anything hurts you, anything, anything, anything, that then we back up so we don't work through pain at all. We work on this side of pain.

Genevieve Morgan:

Jane, I did a workshop with you and one of my favorite exercises had to do with. With finding. It was a partner exercise where you worked on another person, but you found your own comfort first. You put your own comfort first. And people made the analogy of when the oxygen mask comes down in the airplane, that you put your own oxygen mask on. I'm wondering as we move into spring, how people that are listening can use that analogy to find more ease and comfort coming out of winter. How can you speak to that?

Jane Burdick:

Well, I think it's really essential, I mean, especially that in some way we're all caregivers. I mean, whether it's ourselves or aging parents or children or whatever it is, we're all caregivers. And we'll all come to some kind of difficulty with ourselves if we don't nourish ourselves first. So it really is about self, self nourishment. It really is about moving slower in the world. Moshe Feldenkrais said something so interesting once. He said, you can go very fast without hurrying. And so, you know, hurrying is an internal job, you know. So we're just always thinking of the next thing. And we have a lot of encouragement from our culture to go faster, fast, fast. Faster is better. More is better. In the case of Feldenkrais, less is much, much better. Because in a Feldenkrais lesson, at least you can absorb and sense much more. If you're going slowly.

Genevieve Morgan:

You have some personal experience, recent personal experience with this.

Jane Burdick:

I definitely do. I moved three years ago, and I was just getting things done in one place and painting in the other. And then I took off with friends for Nova Scotia and did the driving. And, you know, I was invincible in that moment, you know, just all this energy. And then I crashed and I stopped sleeping was the thing. So that hurry up mode, that do everything mode really got into my sleep even. And then over time, that lack of sleep, really, I got quite sick. So I'm just coming up out of that now as we head into spring. And I'm so delighted, you know, to feel the SAP rising. That's what it feels like, really, and to feel some real energy and to remember the things that I've learned over the years that I've been doing Feldenkrais, to really do them with more application for myself.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You were trained in Feldenkrais, and you learned that it was important not to always have your energy be outgoing. You learned to be more mindful. You learned that you couldn't always be a caregiver. And yet you somehow reverted back to an old pattern in your life, perhaps, and got you back to a place where you needed to remember these lessons very.

Jane Burdick:

I think, remember them at a deeper level. And then I think the teaching can really take place from a deeper level, you know. So I'm not sorry that it happened, you know, this kind of burnout. I'm not sorry, because it had a great gift in it for me. And that is that as we. As I certainly get older and I'll be 70 on my next birthday, that you can improve. Moshe Veldenkrais always said, you can improve until the day you die. And I thought that was so encouraging. And setting forth a new model for aging. As I said in the workshop, it really is a new model for aging. So I had to learn that at a deeper level. I couldn't pretend that I was 30 anymore.

Genevieve Morgan:

Well, you have been a wellness pioneer in the state of Maine for now, I would say, two and a half decades. And inspiration to many other healers and practitioners, particularly with your meditation knowledge and wisdom. And I know you teach a meditation circle.

Jane Burdick:

I do.

Genevieve Morgan:

And how long have you been doing that and how does that play into what you been learning?

Jane Burdick:

I've been meditating for about 15 years, and I lead and have led a group every Thursday from 6 to 7 at 25 Middle street and everybody, everybody is welcome to come. And we teach practices of love and compassion and wisdom. And I think slowing the mind, slowing the body, you know, they really, really are not separate. And so each one feeds into the other. And I feel so grateful that during this time I had both to really rely on and deepen in. And you might even say that what I went through is a spiritual practice, a spiritual crisis, actually. And I think that's what happens, you know, before you sink to another level of being able to just be with yourself.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I do think that it goes back to Genevieve, as she just pointed out, because it was 1988. Is that what I understand the training? And you got so good at being everybody else's role model and to be a healer and everybody else was looking to you. And I've had this experience myself as a physician, as a qigong practitioner, as a qigong teacher, that you almost reach a place where you know that things aren't right for you yourself. But it's almost hard to admit that because then it makes you less of sort of what you do. It makes you less of a teacher. Doctor, did you have that experience?

Jane Burdick:

I think to some degree. Yes. You know, really walking my talk, really saying, okay, this is really important. It's not just something that I'm, you know, saying that you should do. You know, I need to do it. I really need to come from that place of having done it. And that's true in meditation as well. You're really just sharing your own practice.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And did you have to start giving things up that perhaps you've been holding onto?

Jane Burdick:

Oh, there's no question. I think for me, I mean, I've been out one evening in the last four months, and that was to see a great movie. And, you know, other than that, I've just been home. So. Giving up? Yes. Giving up. Saying yes to a lot.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Has that been a problem in your life?

Jane Burdick:

Yes, definitely. Definitely. And I think that can be. I mean, I'm sure that men go through that too, but I think for women, it's a really. It's a cultural thing to say yes. And not to be able to, you know, think of yourself first, but think about. Of everyone else first. So I think learning that has been a lifelong thing.

Genevieve Morgan:

Well, going back to the equinox theme, it's a little easier in the dead of winter when things are dark and hibernating, to nurture that quiet solitude, those moments of rest. How do we sustain that center as we move into. As the SAP is rising, as you put it, and we move into the more active, fiery months. Do you have any.

Jane Burdick:

I think there's always breathing, there's always gravity. There's always just sinking into where you are, like right now, you know, can we feel our bottoms on these stools? Can we just feel that? And, you know, just being where we are in the moment, just being present and entering the moment more

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

this time of year, do you notice restlessness amongst people that you might be treating, especially here in the state of Maine?

Jane Burdick:

I'm noticing a lot of illness this winter, and maybe you have, too. It's more than usual. I have so many clients who come to me who are actually ill this winter, and I think it's, you know, I'm not exactly sure what it is, but I think we expect so much from ourselves and, you know, to not stop even in winter. So I felt very fortunate this winter to be able to sort of go with the season and to really be like a bear and hibernate and. And, you know, feel that coming out now has a different flavor, it has a different quality in, you know, just as you walk, just feeling your feet on the ground as you speak to someone, just be There. So it's not complicated. You know, it's really just being present.

Genevieve Morgan:

How long have you lived in Maine now?

Jane Burdick:

I've lived in Maine for 40. Over 40 years.

Genevieve Morgan:

And how did it draw you here?

Tosha Silver:

I.

Jane Burdick:

My then husband and I were walking down the street in New York City where we lived, and we saw an advertisement for a cabin in Lincolnville for rent. And he had spent summers in Maine. And so. And I had been to, in 1967, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, where I learned to be a potter. So I knew Maine. We both knew Maine. We both love Maine. And we graduated from college, Columbia University, and moved up here to start a family, actually. So we did that, and we moved to Searsmont, Maine. And he worked. We both worked at home. I had a pottery studio, and he had an architecture office. And so that was. It was sort of like back to the land time. People running out of the cities and fleeing and coming up to Maine.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You call him your then husband. So I guess that assumes you're no longer married.

Jane Burdick:

That's right.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Was that a crisis point for you?

Jane Burdick:

It was the very end of the Feldenkrais training. And I think the training produces a lot of changes. And so just things really had changed between us, and our daughter was grown, and it was just time to separate at that point.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So whatever the point was, you used it constructively and you were both able to move forward in your respective directions.

Jane Burdick:

Very much so. He's an architect up in Camden, married to an architect, very happy. And. And I live down here and have a very full and rich life also. And our daughter lives in Falmouth with her baby, and so life is good.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I do love the fact that. I mean, you're clearly very thoughtful, but you also have this physical aspect to what you do with the Feldingkreis, and you have this creative aspect with the pottery. I mean, you really have utilized so many different aspects of. Of yourself and your brain and your personality. That's unusual, don't you think?

Jane Burdick:

You know, I feel tremendously lucky in my life to have pursued exactly what I was interested in. And there was also another avenue in there called proprioceptive writing, which is a psychological form of writing that I did and taught for 15 years. So, yes, there, you know, it's body, mind, spirit. And now putting them all together is really my pleasure and my happiness.

Genevieve Morgan:

And I do know that it's so appropriate to have you on this show Equinox, because the other word for equinox, of course, is balance. And you are one of the Most balanced people that I know.

Jane Burdick:

Oh, my goodness.

Genevieve Morgan:

Well, put it this way. You practice balance mindfully and actively. Yes.

Jane Burdick:

And hopefully can convey that I feel the importance of it in this crazy world. You know, I feel as if really we're getting way out there and just to come back to center and come back to human values and ethics and beauty and what we have here in Maine, I think is very important.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Do you think that what we have here in Maine is a greater sense of values and beauty and ethics?

Jane Burdick:

I think it's certainly possible here. And I think that there are a lot of people who are on that path, you know, a lot of us. There are tremendous number of artists and writers and body workers and psychologists and every. And doctors and writers. Every facet of life is represented here in spades, it seems to me. Not just the restaurants, which are also great.

Genevieve Morgan:

I know we really do talk about balance. We have a little bit of everything in Maine.

Jane Burdick:

It's true.

Genevieve Morgan:

If I want, if I am listening to this and I want to meet you or you said your meditation circle is open on Thursdays. If you're in the Portland area, you can just come and sign in. And it's not something that's progressive. You can come if you've never meditated before.

Jane Burdick:

It's a guided meditation and every time it's guided. So beginners, experienced, anybody is welcome to come. And how about Feldenkrais and Feldenkrais? I have a private practice in my home and I teach workshops as well. And I have a website, Jane burdick.com and I see people, mostly I see private people privately in my home.

Genevieve Morgan:

And how would someone who could benefit from your services know that? Is pain a big indicator?

Jane Burdick:

Pain is a big indicator. Yeah, it definitely is. And that's what people come for generally. But also people you know. Feldenkrais is very, very appropriate for people who would like to. They've reached a kind of plateau in playing a musical instrument instrument or doing a sport for just being interested in being more embodied. I have a lot of people who come just for that as well. So really, for almost anything that you can think of, it would be good to do. Feldenkrais.

Genevieve Morgan:

Thank you so much, Jane, for coming today.

Jane Burdick:

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This episode featured Tosha Silver, author of Outrageous Openness, and Portland Area Feldenkrais practitioner and meditation teacher Jane Burdick. Both of these individuals shared their ways of becoming more balanced, which is what the Equinox is all about. We hope that individuals who have been listening to our show, or maybe you're not just an individual, maybe you're listening with your whole family on the other end of the radio waves, will be inspired to find balance in whatever way makes sense for them. We wish you all a wonderful spring. I wish my brother Matthew, whose birthday it is this week, Happy Birthday and we hope that you will go to drlisabelisle.com for more information about our guests and our radio show. You can also find our Facebook page, Dr. Lisa and like it to get our daily updates. Dr. Lisa Belisle this is Dr. Lisa Belisle. Thank you for being part of our world. May you have a bountiful life.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

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