highlights of Hakim Archuletta

"to go to a different place you have to go to a place that's different" ...
he talked about the importance of counsel, when you want to change. combined with effort: guiding your actions by being aware of them. "we cannot talk if we are not able to hear ourselves talk". he demonstrated how our eyes are important in honing in on where our hand is reaching. he said pleasure is necessary for our bodies to function. "the baseline of the body is not the lack of pain ... the baseline of the body is ecstatic pleasure". enthusiasm - from the root theos, which means God. so enthusiasm is the feeling of God. breathing and feeling : the more we breath, the more we feel. the more we breath, the more sentient we become. he mentioned depression is caused from a lack of feeling. he said we breath with our whole body, not just our lungs. practice breathing up from your toes all the way up to your head. that's inspiration. then release : sigh of relief... we must be aware of our senses. he talked about how beneficial it is to sleep an hour before midnight. & participate in yoga and study in the morning. he mentioned we should eat what we need and nothing more. the body knows what it needs and we need to learn to listen. we participated in standing exercises: bending our knees is the natural way to stand. locking your knees takes away the feeling of your legs. it is important to feel your body he kept stressing. your body is more able to take care of itself if it feels itself. a simple exercise is to rock forward onto your toes, still with your knees bent. that he called an active position. and then rocking backward unto our heels he called passive. the center standing position of it all he called balance. we need to balance between our active and passive stance in life he said. we also with feet 6" apart would bend them low. this caused pain to the group after only a few seconds. he said holding it for a minute or two would be good. he mentioned that if we are not motivated to do what we need to. we need to go out and seek assistance. pick up a martial art! about food he mentioned the "imponderables". "it's not what you eat, but who you eat with". food from your mom is good because she made it for you with care. food from McDonalds is bad because it is made fast by a big corporation and stangers. it isn't about the food pyramid, basically. it is a lot to do with the factors that surround the food. "store-bought teeth comes from store-bought food" - Westin Price. your body knows what it likes to eat. food must look and taste good he says. "poisons are things that we cannot assimilate or eliminate from our being". He advocates the book, "Nourishing Traditions" by Fallie Fallon (sp?). overall good stuff.