20 Tension Relieving tips. Alexander Technique by Mark Josefsberg

20 Tension Relieving Tips

1. Pause…Breathe fully…

2. Become aware, and then let go of the muscles in the back of your neck.

3. This will move your head up.

4. Free your neck again, and slightly, slowly, lower your nose.

5. Repeat from the beginning.  (1, 2, 3, 4.)  Let your sit bones release down in your chair but, in opposition, your torso and head moves up.

6. Let your jaw dangle open, even when your lips are closed. Teeth open, lips gently touching.

7. Let your throat open as if you’re about to whisper ‘ah’.

8. Re-visit  1,2,3, and 4.

9. Let your shoulders rest on your ribcage. See if you’re lifting them up. Smile, and then let them ease down.

10. While sitting, let go of excess tension in your legs, without collapsing your torso.

11. Think of your knees going away from your torso, and away from each other.

12. Notice if you’re squeezing your legs together. Release your thigh muscles. Free your neck of excess tension again.

13. Notice any gripping, anywhere.

14. Go back to 1, 2, 3, 4  anytime. Breathe fully.

15. See if you could do less with your fingers, hands, biceps, and shoulders.

16. Think of something funny or pleasant and smile. Include the muscles in the corners of your eyes.

17. Breathe out through your mouth as you whisper ah. Let the air come back through your nose, silently. Repeat.

18. Bring awareness to your forehead and facial muscles.

19. Notice if you’re looking at these words too intensely, and see if your gaze can be softer.

20. Whisper ah on a long exhale. Breathe in through your nose, silently.

Mark@MarkJosefsberg.com

Pequeños gestos para aliviar la tensión física y mental en el día a día. 

Respirar, observar la tensión de los músculos desde el cuello, la mandíbula, la boca, la garganta, los hombros, las piernas, las rodillas...Pensar en algo que nos sea agradable o divertido y sonreír, incluyendo la musculatura de los ojos... Ser consciente de nuestra frente y los músculos faciales, fijarse en si podemos suavizar la mirada. Suspirar con una larga exhalación y respirar por la nariz, silenciosamente....

, 

Saúl Steinberg

Famoso en todo el mundo por definir gráficamente la posguerra, Steinberg creó un lenguaje rico y en constante evolución que encontró plena expresión a través de trayectorias paralelas pero integradas. Sin embargo, este arte de múltiples niveles desafía las categorías críticas convencionales. Fue un modernista sin porfolio, cruzando constantemente fronteras hacia territorios visuales inexplorados. En cuanto a temas y estilos, no hacía distinción entre el arte alto y bajo, que fusionaba libremente en una obra diversa en estilo pero coherente en profundidad e imaginación visual.

«Por la atracción que siente por la pluma, la tinta y los lápices y por la compleja naturaleza intelectual de sus creaciones, se podría pensar que Steinberg es una especie de escritor, aunque es el único de su género», señaló en 1978 el crítico Harold Rosenberg con ocasión de su primera exposición monográfica en el Whitney Museum de Nueva York. «Ha ideado diálogos entre lo verbal y lo visual que incluyen juegos de palabras con múltiples planos de significado verbal y visual, y que han llevado a compararle con James Joyce».

https://www.hoyesarte.com/evento/saul-steinberg-artista-sin-fronteras-visuales/?utm_source=Boletin_20241021_1603&utm_medium=boletin&utm_campaign=boletin

George Saunders, la amabilidad

https://www.themarginalian.org/2026/01/20/george-saunders-kindness-story/?mc_cid=7d3d144065&mc_eid=0f37cf1548

Saunders offer the simple, intensely difficult remedy:

Don’t be afraid to be confused. Try to remain permanently confused. Anything is possible. Stay open, forever, so open it hurts, and then open up some more, until the day you die.

The great writer’s gift to the reader are not better answers but better questions, a greater tolerance for uncertainty, a mechanism of transmuting confusion into kindness, and at the same time a way of seeing the world more clearly in order to love it more deeply. I find Saunders’s generous words about Grace Paley to apply perfectly to his own writing:

Reading Paley will, I predict, make you better understand the idea that love is attention and vice versa.

[…]

What does a writer leave behind? Scale models of a way of seeing and thinking.

[…] 

Paley’s model advises us to suffer less by loving more — love the world more, and each other more—and then she gives us a specific way to love more: see better. If you only really see this world, you will think better of it, she seems to say. And then she gives us a way to see better: let language sing, sing precisely, and let it off the tether of the mundane, and watch the wonderful truth it knows how to make.

 

Hope Rising with Chan Hellman. Los efectos de la esperanza en nuestras vidas

Chan Hellman es un psicólogo y profesor de universidad de  Oklahoma  que investiga sobre la esperanza, sus efectos "contagiosos" en otras personas y que asesora sobre como facilitarla en las comunidades, individuos o empresas. 

Uno de los efectos de la esperanza es la energía para llevar a cabo los proyectos vitales o laborales, la creatividad, que se puede "enseñar", que es un "regalo social"

El optimismo es la creencia en que el futuro será mejor y la esperanza es la creencia en que somos capaces de hacer que sea así. 

La esperanza nos da bienestar, es activa, es una elección y es participativa, nos estabiliza, nos nutre y nos da presencia. 

Les ballet spagnols de "La Argentina" en la Fundación March

 En 1929 París se rindió ante el genio de Antonia Mercé, La Argentina.  A través de sus Ballets Spagnols, la bailarina impulso un repertorio escénico que unía tradición y vanguardia, colaborando con compositores como Isaac Albeniz y Julián Bautista.

Ahora se recuperan dos títulos emblemáticos como Juerga y Triana y otras piezas pertenecientes al repertorio de la bailarina,  gracias a la colaboración de varias entidades ya que después de Madrid, este proyecto musical pasará por el auditorio de Tenerife, el teatro de la Maestranza de Sevilla y otros...

Antonia Mercé, fotografiada en 1926 por Frieda G. Riess, vestida para bailar la Danza 

Españla número 5 de Enrique Granados

Burning questions, Margaret Atwood. Cuestiones candentes. Book Review by Liz Dexter

Margaret Atwood – “Burning Questions”

(13 March 2022)

I write books about possibly unpleasant futures in the hope that we will not allow these futures into reality. Under the circumstances, we’re doing moderately well […] Under what circumstances do we wish to live? Perhaps this is the real question we should be asking ourselves. It’s dark inside the wolf, yes; but it’s light outside the wolf. So, how do we get there?

I think I have Atwood’s first book of essays and pieces somewhere, and didn’t read her second: this is her third collection and gives us pieces, speeches, reviews and introductions from the last twenty years or so. Of course not every piece in a fifty-item book is going to be equally appealing to everyone; the horror theme she enjoys left me passing over articles on zombies, in particular, but also there’s something for everyone, and I learned about some new writers to me. 

Somewhat naturally, the pieces that appealed most to me were those about her writing and the adaptations of it and about her life; the nature pieces were also good. There was little repetition apart from a general appreciation for her free and unconstrained childhood and the urgent need to address issues of climate change. I particularly liked “Polonia” which looked at her growing need to help people, unasked, as she ages, very funny and wry; her piece on Marilla as the character who experiences true growth in “Anne of Green Gables”; her obituary of Doris Lessing and her piece on how scared she was of Simone de Beauvoir; and “Buttons and Bows” about clothes in her life and in writing. As mentioned above she covers nature and its protection, birds, climate change and the wrongs done to Canadian First Nations writers [as she styles them]. It comes bang up to date with the pandemic and the devastating loss of her partner, Graeme Gibson. 

I think my favourite piece was “A Writing Life”, in which she details a week of trying to write (this reminded me a bit of Dorothy Whipple’s “Random Commentary“) with a twist in the tale about one item that was easy to write. Funny and realistic, clear and practical: Atwood at her non-fiction best. I liked her mention of not wanting to look at the writer’s life when reading Kafka et al. as that linked with my reception theory interest, however much it might be rooted in not wanting to read a lot as a student … 

An excellent collection I felt privileged to read, and especially good if you’re a fan of “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “The Testaments”, although she treats others of her modern books, too.

Thank you to Vintage Books for selecting me to read this book in return for an honest review. “Burning Questions” was published on 1 March 2022.

Grace Paley writes about how his father tried to teach her how to grow old

Paley writes:

My father had decided to teach me how to grow old. I said O.K. My children didn’t think it was such a great idea. If I knew how, they thought, I might do so too easily. No, no, I said, it’s for later, years from now. And besides, if I get it right it might be helpful to you kids in time to come.

They said, Really?

My father wanted to begin as soon as possible.

[…]

Please sit down, he said. Be patient. The main thing is this — when you get up in the morning you must take your heart in your two hands. You must do this every morning.

That’s a metaphor, right?

Metaphor? No, no, you can do this. In the morning, do a few little exercises for the joints, not too much. Then put your hands like a cup over and under the heart. Under the breast. He said tactfully. It’s probably easier for a man. Then talk softly, don’t yell. Under your ribs, push a little. When you wake up, you must do this massage. I mean pat, stroke a little, don’t be ashamed. Very likely no one will be watching. Then you must talk to your heart.

Talk? What?

Say anything, but be respectful. Say — maybe say, Heart, little heart, beat softly but never forget your job, the blood. You can whisper also, Remember, remember.