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ORGANIC STRETCHING®: bodymind movements | Inspires Seven Steps to the Body You Used to Live In
SEVEN STEPS TO REGAIN THE FLEXIBLE BODY YOU ONCE ENJOYED.

Ten Things I Do When Facing Fear

Fear often begins as a twitch in your mind saying you need to think about “xxx,” becomes a worry about “xxx,” steps up to anxious, and finally it becomes fear with a full rush of adrenaline that insists that you deal with it. The time it takes for this full run might be weeks or an hour. This is the fear of anticipation of an event that will happen or one you imagine might happen. Internal results are the same. It becomes real in our minds. It can be something external or an internal barrier on the way to a dream.

 

 My management techniques include:

  1. Locate the fear in your body, using a meditation that allows it to have a voice and respond, and with your breath release it and let it go. I like to breathe right through the fear location.
  2. Meditation…I love Metta Phrases for this and suggest the beautiful book Loving-Kindness. Over the years I have modified the author’s phrases to my own around the same idea.
  3. Exercise doing something that takes your complete concentration and releases the tension from your body.
  4. Go out…be in nature, do something with friends to clear your mind for a different perspective.
  5. Analyze possible paths out of the situation…bubble diagrams, lists, a flow diagram, best outcome and worst outcome scenarios. I always include “What is the worst thing that could happen? Will I Still Be Alive?” Helps put perspective on the situation!
  6. Look for valid input from experts. Perhaps your assumptions are incorrect. How real is this fear?
  7. Map out the most desirable path from all of the above to achieve the best outcome and identify money, time, and resources required.
  8. Create a timeline with your reasonable path and develop each tiny step. When the BIG thing is broken down to things we know we can do, it seems more manageable.
  9. Take step 1…are you still alive? Celebrate!
  10. Congratulate yourself for growing your Comfort Zone. It’s worth it…the next encounter will be easier!

 

How do you manage fear? Share your most useful technique below. We will all benefit from more ways to deal with those moments…or longer…in our lives. Thanks!

 

Fear vs Courage: My Most Terrifying Moments Underway

En route from Bali to Singapore through the traffic clogged waters of the South China Sea on a ten-day passage that included seven days with only eight hours of sleep total…at midnight in a pitch-black moonless night the most terrifying moments in my eight-year voyage. On approaching the harbor at Singapore…an excerpt from By the Grace of the Sea: A Woman’s Solo Odyssey Around the World by Pat Henry:

…This one time, I would violate my personal rule prohibiting landfalls after dark in strange harbors. Something moved along the coast far off to port. Now and then tiny red lights darted in the distance ahead—fishing boats, probably.

…The current and engine together swept me ahead at more than six knots as I scouted periodically for traffic but worried most about my location. In the dim light on the cockpit seat it was impossible to plot it, and the Singapore shoreline offered few clues. The only other vessels moved far in the distance.

At Fairy Point, I could just make out a forest of masts to port. I was home safe. My shoulders unwound as I put the engine in neutral to set up the anchor. In the quiet of Serangoon Harbor, away from the press of big ships, I walked out to the bow, untied the cord restraining the anchor on the roller, lifted a few feet of chain through the hawsepipe, and lowered it to dangle just above the surface of the water—ready to drop when I found a good spot.

Turning to go back, I froze. Ice water surged through my knees. High above the stern of SC (SV Southern Cross), stacks of red and white lights glowed menacingly, the vessel below them invisible in the dense black air. Something very large and very close was under tow and being carried by the same current pushing SC.

I jumped into the cockpit, pulled off the autopilot arm, threw the engine into gear, and opened the throttle, turning to port—away from the looming monster. When the danger receded, my heart thudded still as the questions raced through my head. Why didn’t her captain see SC’s navigation lights? Why didn’t he call? Maybe he did, and I couldn’t hear him above the engine. Where did she come from? Was she the vessel I saw earlier by the shore? How could she be that close and not hit me? I found a spot near the other cruising boats, dropped the hook, and sank down on the settee, still shaken.

Over breakfast I watched a steady stream of shipping traffic passing in the channel that had seemed only a backwater the night before. Two oceangoing tugs left for offshore oil fields towing towering cranes that extended over the bows of the tugs and rose twice the height of passing tankers. Perhaps one of them had made the light pattern that crept up on me the night before. If so, even if the tug captain had seen SC, he could never have changed course in time.

My close brush with death?

My close brush with death?

Once again I had been delivered by Divine Protection, this time from fishing traps, ships, reefs, and finally, in the moment of arrival, from a brush with death.

We know our fears far more than we recognize our courage.

In country after country, on my solo sail around the world, I met the astonishment of people who applauded my courage. I really didn’t see it that way at all and was embarrassed by the attention. I certainly had as much fear as the next person and was not especially brave. I would usually brush off the remark with a laugh, saying, “No, just a bit crazy.”

The expression for courage in so many cultures/languages ties courage to the heart. They would say, “you have a big heart,” in one way or another. Or they would touch their chests. It comes from the Latin root cor (heart). Many define it as acting despite having fear, but others say “without having fear.” I believe there must be fear for it to take courage to act. Otherwise it is empty bravado. My story above was not really about courage, but fear driven survival.

I wrote a previous blog about dealing with severe sciatica for half of my 36-day Pacific crossing from Acapulco to the Marquesas Islands. In the end, I discovered that I had a great deal of unacknowledged fear about the voyage I was undertaking. Facing and accepting that fear as a healthy ingredient that would keep me safe for the next eight years became the tool to heal the sciatica!

I have come to a more rounded view of fear and courage today.

What we have met and come to know, in its familiarity, is less scary…i.e.: I’ve seen this before and understand it to some degree. The more we have experienced in life, the less there is to fear.

But, when we do have fear it is only relative to our individual lifetime exposure. What is very courageous for one is just an everyday experience for another. Every time you step across a border at the edge of your comfort zone, the zone expands.

Now, I sit at my computer delving into foreign technologies, unfamiliar vocabulary, unsolicited actions on my screen, attempting to move mountains on a strange landscape. Every day I gather up fragments of courage to accomplish one small task that my grandchildren can do blindfolded. My heart is not racing as when coming down the face of a 28-foot wave or surviving a near collision, but there is enough cortisol at the end of the day to do its damage! It is still fear. I promise the results of all this brave effort within the next two months, if not sooner, in your inbox.

When was the last time you stepped across your comfort zone border? And what were you doing? Leave a message in the comments below…and congratulations!!! It helps everyone when they know that others have been there…and survived!

Pat Henry (54) copy-2

 

 

Pat Henry, founder of Organic Stretching®, became the first American woman to complete a solo circumnavigation (via the canals), in 1997,

Fear vs Courage: My Most Terrifying Moments Underway

En route from Bali to Singapore through the traffic clogged waters of the South China Sea on a ten-day passage that included seven days with only eight hours of sleep total…at midnight in a pitch-black moonless night the most terrifying moments in my eight-year voyage. On approaching the harbor at Singapore…an excerpt from By the Grace of the Sea: A Woman’s Solo Odyssey Around the World by Pat Henry:

…This one time, I would violate my personal rule prohibiting landfalls after dark in strange harbors. Something moved along the coast far off to port. Now and then tiny red lights darted in the distance ahead—fishing boats, probably.

…The current and engine together swept me ahead at more than six knots as I scouted periodically for traffic but worried most about my location. In the dim light on the cockpit seat it was impossible to plot it, and the Singapore shoreline offered few clues. The only other vessels moved far in the distance.

At Fairy Point, I could just make out a forest of masts to port. I was home safe. My shoulders unwound as I put the engine in neutral to set up the anchor. In the quiet of Serangoon Harbor, away from the press of big ships, I walked out to the bow, untied the cord restraining the anchor on the roller, lifted a few feet of chain through the hawsepipe, and lowered it to dangle just above the surface of the water—ready to drop when I found a good spot.

Turning to go back, I froze. Ice water surged through my knees. High above the stern of SC (SV Southern Cross), stacks of red and white lights glowed menacingly, the vessel below them invisible in the dense black air. Something very large and very close was under tow and being carried by the same current pushing SC.

I jumped into the cockpit, pulled off the autopilot arm, threw the engine into gear, and opened the throttle, turning to port—away from the looming monster. When the danger receded, my heart thudded still as the questions raced through my head. Why didn’t her captain see SC’s navigation lights? Why didn’t he call? Maybe he did, and I couldn’t hear him above the engine. Where did she come from? Was she the vessel I saw earlier by the shore? How could she be that close and not hit me? I found a spot near the other cruising boats, dropped the hook, and sank down on the settee, still shaken.

Over breakfast I watched a steady stream of shipping traffic passing in the channel that had seemed only a backwater the night before. Two oceangoing tugs left for offshore oil fields towing towering cranes that extended over the bows of the tugs and rose twice the height of passing tankers. Perhaps one of them had made the light pattern that crept up on me the night before. If so, even if the tug captain had seen SC, he could never have changed course in time.

My close brush with death?

My close brush with death?

Once again I had been delivered by Divine Protection, this time from fishing traps, ships, reefs, and finally, in the moment of arrival, from a brush with death.

We know our fears far more than we recognize our courage.

In country after country, on my solo sail around the world, I met the astonishment of people who applauded my courage. I really didn’t see it that way at all and was embarrassed by the attention. I certainly had as much fear as the next person and was not especially brave. I would usually brush off the remark with a laugh, saying, “No, just a bit crazy.”

The expression for courage in so many cultures/languages ties courage to the heart. They would say, “you have a big heart,” in one way or another. Or they would touch their chests. It comes from the Latin root cor (heart). Many define it as acting despite having fear, but others say “without having fear.” I believe there must be fear for it to take courage to act. Otherwise it is empty bravado. My story above was not really about courage, but fear driven survival.

I wrote a previous blog about dealing with severe sciatica for half of my 36-day Pacific crossing from Acapulco to the Marquesas Islands. In the end, I discovered that I had a great deal of unacknowledged fear about the voyage I was undertaking. Facing and accepting that fear as a healthy ingredient that would keep me safe for the next eight years became the tool to heal the sciatica!

I have come to a more rounded view of fear and courage today.

What we have met and come to know, in its familiarity, is less scary…i.e.: I’ve seen this before and understand it to some degree. The more we have experienced in life, the less there is to fear.

But, when we do have fear it is only relative to our individual lifetime exposure. What is very courageous for one is just an everyday experience for another. Every time you step across a border at the edge of your comfort zone, the zone expands.

Now, I sit at my computer delving into foreign technologies, unfamiliar vocabulary, unsolicited actions on my screen, attempting to move mountains on a strange landscape. Every day I gather up fragments of courage to accomplish one small task that my grandchildren can do blindfolded. My heart is not racing as when coming down the face of a 28-foot wave or surviving a near collision, but there is enough cortisol at the end of the day to do its damage! It is still fear. I promise the results of all this brave effort within the next two months, if not sooner, in your inbox.

When was the last time you stepped across your comfort zone border? And what were you doing? Leave a message in the comments below…and congratulations!!! It helps everyone when they know that others have been there…and survived!

Pat Henry (54) copy-2

 

 

Pat Henry, founder of Organic Stretching®, became the first American woman to complete a solo circumnavigation (via the canals), in 1997,

A FREE Sample Class for You

If you have missed our regular studio classes over the summer, or if you have never experienced Organic Stretching®…try these intuitive bodymind movements from the cutting edge of flexibility training. Discover for yourself the Organic Stretching sensations of vibrant energy as you follow the unique moves to reconnect you to your body, opening a path to more flexibility, fluid pain-free movement, better balance, and more energy. It works with you where you are today. Free class taught by Pat Henry, founder of Organic Stretching. If this is your first time, you might want to watch once and then go back to do the moves with Pat.

Contents:
0:00 What is Organic Stretching?
0:47 Precautions
1:27 Technique Demonstrations
4:41 Join Demonstration–seated
11:47 Discussion movement and flexibility
13:44 Join Demonstration–seated rotation
23:02 Discussion stool, rotational work, and spine
24:44 Join Demonstration–floor work
34:07 Closing comments

Subscribe to the Organic Stretching YouTube channel to keep up with new video releases (about every two weeks).

Fun or Fear? Why do you Exercise? Or do you?

 

Going for the Gain

Going for the Gain

Organic Stretching

Aerial Silks

 

 

Who do you think is having more FUN?

 

 

 

 

 

What is your exercise motivation…health or your appearance?

An in-depth study by the US CDC in 2011 found that just 20.6% of the US population 18 years of age or over met the Physical Activity Guidelines for both aerobic and muscle-strengthening physical activity, and, on the other end, 30% got no exercise at all. Sixty-eight percent were either obese or overweight. Those figures should scare anybody into doing something like exercise, but what if it were also fun?

In the 1980s, when I was a fairly avid runner (3 – 5 miles per day) the drive that pushed me out the door everyday, in part, may have been the addiction to the endorphins running in my blood, but I was also aware that I did not want to start all over again. I could say the same for doing weights and machines. And once the body started lookin’ good, why would I want to go back to undefined and soft? So I stuck to my routine.

Mine was a fairly mild case of “fear” over not keeping to my program, but other than the great views of the ocean along West Cliff Drive and the admiring glances, I’m not sure that I would use the word “fun.” I could say the same for churning out lengths in the pool every time I got on a new swimming program.

But there are many people who are nearly manic about getting in their exercise routine on schedule. It is as if, in one day it would all go away.

  So what about improv dancing, hiking or scuba?

I’ve only done those for pure fun, but they also delivered benefits all over my body. Today, I am seeking more beneficial pleasure from my free time than routine patterns that are not really fun and do not bring me joy.

12 Fun Ways to Stay Fit

 

One of my first classes at the University of Illinois, in 1966, was a PE course in general fitness. They tested us for strength, balance, flexibility, and endurance…the four basic areas of fitness they considered critical.

Here are my 12 top choices to stay fit today, cover the basics, and have a blast doing it…

Strength…

  • Aerial Silks…those Cirque du Solei things!
  • Argentine Tango…great for core
  • Rock climbing
  • Pole dancing

Balance…

  • Organic Stretching®
  • Dance…Improv and Argentine Tango
  • Stand-up Paddle Board
  • Tai Chi

Flexibility/Agility…

  • Organic Stretching®
  • Improv dance
  • Aerial Silks

Endurance…

  • Mountain biking
  • Stand-up Paddle Board
  • Mountain trail hiking
  • Rowing
  • Swimming

Beyond being fun, what do these activities have in common?

Each of these forms offers variation in movement. They are not built with repetitive patterns, but offer improvisational responses to changing conditions, with the exception of Tai Chi. But in Tai Chi the movements draw the body through a wide range of movement and tend to be curvilinear, as in Organic Stretching.

Our lives, today, are reduced to such a limited range of motion, that a high percentage of our muscles are never called on to do anything, and are gradually less able to move. It is not just a loss of tone; some of them are totally bound in flexion from constant stress. The surrounding connective tissue is no longer fluid, but dense in character. The motor nerves even stop sending messages after while!

We have such a beautiful gift of potential in our amazing bodies, and all we need to do to begin enjoying that gift is to move…up, down, around, diagonally, in every direction we can imagine. Can you hear it now from every little cellHalleluiah!! They are waiting for you!

What are your top choices for exercises without repetitive patterns? Leave a comment with your suggestions!

 

 

 

 

Sailing Alone Across the Bay of Bengal, I Discovered My Mission in Life

How did you find your “mission in life?” Was it during a challenging time that forced you to consider why you were here and what you were supposed to be doing in this lifetime? The first time I remember thinking that I should have a mission was in the middle of the Bay of Bengal, sailing alone on my small 31-ft boat from Malaysia to Sri Lanka in February, 1994. I was almost half-way around the world on an eight-year solo circumnavigation and 53 years old.

My departure on this journey came at the end of a messy, painful demise of the import company that I had built and run for seven years. When I left the anchorage in Acapulco in May of 1989, I only wanted to heal from that pain and to find a sense of peace. Time alone and the total focus required by my voyage were my chosen path.

Crossing the Bay of Bengal

Crossing the Bay of Bengal

With nearly five years behind me, at this point in the journey, it was time to look deeply at where I was heading, how I was going to live my life differently. A friend had recently written to tell me about Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and how helpful it had been to him. I was surprised to find a copy in a bookstore in Pinang, Malaysia!

Now, in this slow, not too eventful, crossing I began reading and writing, following Covey’s program. The first and central step was determining your mission in life. That question drew me back to What Color is Your Parachute? by John Bolles and the section in the back about finding your mission in life. When I first met this book, at the end of my business, the idea of a mission in life had a Mother Teresa-like overtone, and I had decided I wasn’t the type to sacrifice everything to selfless service.

I pulled Bolles out again, and this time understood that he wasn’t asking us to wear a hair shirt, but instead to find the thing that would bring us the most joy. On my boat, Southern Cross, I was already doing the thing that brought me the most joy at this time in my life—sailing around the world, stopping in beautiful places to paint, and meeting people from many cultures. I wondered whether this could be my mission in life. It seemed too selfish.

As my voyage ended, in 1997, and news broke out that I had become the first American woman to sail alone around the world, I realized what my true mission was. I was here to inspire others to reach for their dreams, to not accept the words “impossible,” “you can’t do that,” “I can’t do that!” “am I crazy?” I wrote By the Grace of the Sea: A Woman’s Solo Odyssey Around the World (McGraw-Hill/2002) and gave presentations in the Midwest and up and down the West Coast, with many interviews. There were two invitations to appear on Oprah, but the timing did not work out. Letters and emails poured in saying “thank you for giving me courage to follow my dream” and similar messages.

I still hear from readers, who found inspiration in my book, sharing how my story changed their lives. My job today is Chief Inspirer at Organic Stretching® where I inspire people to bring out out the best in their bodies as they learn how to move again. There is no greater thrill than being part of my students’ exciting breakthroughs and the discovery that they can create the changes in their own bodies and in their lives. I love and find great joy in my mission!

Have you found yours yet? If you feel like it, share it below…

Organic StretchingTM Pat Henry, Founder and Chief Inspirer at Organic Stretching®… My last year of high school, I was a teen aged mom, a wife, a National Honor Society member graduating 17th out of a class of 257…It isn’t over until it’s over!