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Breath for Ease:

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  at Resonance Yoga Studio in Amherst Breathe for Ease: Learning and Practicing Helpful Breathing Patterns A one hour workshop with Michael Silverstone Date: Saturday February 22nd Time: 5:30 - 6:30 Price: $25 “We’re beginning to understand that improved breathing means improved sleep, digestion, cognitive function, longevity, and athletic performance.”--James Nestor, author of Breath Would you like to deepen (or establish) a consistent mindfulness and self-care practice in 2025? Are you interested in improving your concentration, sleeping more consistently, and lowering your stress levels, in the often-stressful conditions of modern life? Are you interested in high performance and developing concentration to achieve your goals and overcome obstacles? In recent years, breath techniques and practices are increasingly being utilized to increase high performance, to alleviate chronic stress, and enhance general well being. A growing number of people are finding these benefits by adopt...
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December 23, 2023

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The Monthly Blogs for 2023 A year ago, I made a New Year's resolution that each month in 2023 I would post an essay and a song until I had 12 of each. I meant this as pocket-sized adventure. It comes from the "act as if" playbook. What I always wanted was to be "signed" to make an album, and asked to write and publish a book of essays on any subjects I felt like writing about, so I gave myself the assignment to do both things on a monthly basis for a year. Here is a link to all the posts in this series: January   February   March April May June July August September October November December   The Year in Essays Living for a whole year with the knowledge that my Dad's life is done, and I'm the age he used to be, helped make this a year I started to see things differently, and more clearly. I stopped needing as much approval to take the heat off myself. And I began to care less ...
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November 1, 2023

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         I make a point of never talking about depressing stuff in "the world"  because it's simply overwhelming to cope with the reality of it, having so little control over things that are so threatening and beyond anyone's influence, let alone control.        But it seems to be happening at the very same time, that I'm starting to get intimations of my own ineveiable and standard age-related mortality. There are actuarial charts for this. I am starting to see people of my age dying and no one laments how someone so young could die, they say, well, that's what happens, a little early, maybe, but nothing outrageous. A person can possibly hold it off with good habits, and I hate to be a downer, but everyone I know who reaches a certain age starts to wind down, loses physical capability, and spirals towards a  death--which, if lucky, is gentle and painless and not too much of a burden on loved ones--but not in any way ultimatel...
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October 1, 2023

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    Dear Notes to Self Readers, To write these posts, I consider the question of: What is interesting me lately? Breathing exercises (4:6 inhale exhale diaphagmatic breathing for 15 minutes); Christopher Hitchens audio essays on figures in Anglo-European intellectual history from Isaac Newton to George Orwell, along with some more contemporary figures--instead of Sports Radio or NPR on my car commutes; trying to do things I used to procrastinate about in order to feel prepared, using pressure, stress, resistance and difficulty constructively; being a teacher in order to get right what it is I didn't learn as a child, not taking the bait and getting hung up on a story that has me hooked and reactive; the sense that we're all on the verge of some chaotic global transformation. Was listening to a talk by ethnobotanical historian and storyteller/thinker Terrence McKenna from a 1995 talk in which he says that we (humanity) will either have a future of suffering and extinction...
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September 1, 2023

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    Hi reader(s), In this "back to school" edition of Notes to Self 2023, I reflect at the end of Summer Vacation on the State of the Self. Just underwent a necessary and probably more useful than I even know week of training in how to handle first aid and CPR emergencies, doing a live drill of lock-down, countering and evacuating in an imaginary (yet frightening) live shooter drill, review the legal responsibilities of the mandated reporting of child abuse as well as scenarios of bullying and harassment, writing injury reports to families, and learning how to take pictures and communicate in weekly reports, solving problems and puzzles with teams of new co-workers, singing karaoke and having that singing recorded and played back on a big screen, taking part in an all school promotional video where teams of us followed he school mascot, in costume, down the street onto the front steps and cheered as the theme from "Rocky" played in the background, taking part in a ...
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August 1, 2023

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    "Our personalities are made up of what we learned how to do well early to get us out of trouble and we’re now afraid to give up. "—Michael Silverstone 7/22/23 This month (July 2023) I have had two very large chunks of experience that did a number on my personality--I think in a good way. Because they showed me new alternatives to what I learned to do to get out of overwhelming trouble as a child.  For two weeks, and after 5 years of apprenticeship, I found myself Helping Facilitate Adult Learners in Becoming Montessori Teachers -- a role that required me to be be much more grown-up, responsible, resourceful, reliable and stable than I've probably ever been previously been able to manage in anything else until now.  Sandwiched in between those two weeks was a trip to Cleveland to help my mom get knee replacement surgery, and be the person to help her in the hospital and be go between between her and her doctor, the various nurses, case manager, her friends and al...
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July 1, 2023

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      When I was a boy reading speculative fiction and predictions in newspapers and seeing depictions of World's Fairs and Disneyland exhibits, I used to think about a time called The Future--a time that wasn't here but would be. . .maybe. I always lived with both a pleasant and a fearful anticipation of it--an attitude which continues to this day as we watch the race between the fulfillment of the human potential to intensify its capacity for cosmic intelligence/Love, and contemporaneous habit of being led by the dominance of the heartless, but impressively adept Lizard-mind. Until very recently, it was easy to think The Future was coming way later, or never. The relative stability of life in the 20th Century (to someone born in it) was too convincing. As was true 100 years earlier, Ford continues to make cars with rubber tires and windshields; the New York Daily News continues to publish paper editions that are read and disposed of daily in trash bins; a postal deliver...
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