Risks, Relationships, & Trust
Chandler Stevens Companies scale — and relationships develop — at the speed of communication. This suggests that if you’re frustrated by plateaus in your business or by emotional distance and recurring conflicts in your marriage, you’d do well to look at the patterns in your communication (particularly when stressed). Good communication is a meta-skill. […]
How Smart People Get Fooled By Dummies
Chandler Stevens You may be familiar with the Dunning-Kruger effect. It’s a cognitive bias, in which people with lower ability tend to overestimate themselves, whereas people with higher ability tend to underestimate themselves – at least until true mastery is developed. As people begin to develop their skills or knowledge in a particular domain, […]
Thinking with the Body
Chandler Stevens It only took us 400 years, but we’re finally remembering that the body is the foundation of our cognitive function, meaning that our mental health and performance is developed from the bottom up. Perhaps more significant: the way that you carry yourself (that is, what you do with the body – how […]
Shifting Habits with “Decision Hygiene”
Chandler Stevens Lately I’ve been thinking more and more about habits. When most people hear the word, they conjure up an image of a checklist. They imagine some list of actions they ought to take on any given day in order to be living their #bestlife. And yet a habit, broadly speaking, is simply […]
A Beautiful Practice
Chandler Stevens Each psychology is a confession, and the worth of a psychology for another person lies not in the places where he can identify with it because it satisfies his psychic needs, but where it provokes him to work out his own psychology in response. (Hillman, 1975, p. xviii) James Hillman was […]
How to Do What You Say You’re Going To
Chandler Stevens This year we have another cohort beginning The Ecosomatics Practitioner Training, as well as a group continuing on for a second year, and I’m thrilled to be with them. Over the year they’ll develop the skills and mental models to address a broad range of physical and psychological problems that face people […]
Pso Cool: Psoas Release
Chandler Stevens
The 80/20 Rule of Better Movement
Chandler Stevens Early in my career I was fortunate to work with somebody in her 90s whose primary goal for a movement practice was to be able to get up and down from the toilet unassisted. It was a clear lesson about the dignity that we’re granted through our ability to move well […]
Life & Leverage
Chandler Stevens The body has a harmony of its own. Think for a moment that what you know and live through day after day is the emergent result of the intricate workings on trillions of cells. These cells don’t have a central command. A series of local interactions and vast communication networks allow you […]
Hard Work vs. High Performance
Chandler Stevens What’s the difference between those individuals who wear themselves down with long hours, battling against fatigue and lack of focus, making little headway on their goals… And those who seem to effortlessly perform at a high level, accomplishing far more in a week than most do in a month, with plenty left […]
Moving Beyond Symptoms
Chandler Stevens Symptoms are tricky little things. Knee pain, jaw tension, an achy back…each seems to beg our attention. They alert us to the fact that there is a problem, but the challenge lies in the fact that they don’t tell us much about the nature of the problem. As such they’re a bit of a red herring […]
Reconceptualizing Depression
Chandler Stevens I’m attempting something rather large in this particular piece, knowing full well that I’ll fall short. What I’d like to propose is a reconception of the phenomenon of depression. I make no claims that this is “right.” And it is not a complete picture of depression, which is an incredibly complex phenomenon. […]
The Need for Anxiety
Chandler Stevens Anxiety is: “A sickness which attacks…precisely those who are strongest in spirit and richest in gifts.” – Herman Hesse It’s a feature of our culture – and our species. It’s a necessity for anyone who wishes to do creative work. Anxiety points to a struggle taking place within the personality, a wrestling […]
Making Sense of Jaw Tension
Chandler Stevens
Where is Gravity Winning?
Chandler Stevens There’s a thing we say about aging, that gravity takes its toll. And it’s true. The soft tissues succumb to the downward pull, losing their elasticity. The spring and bounce that characterizes youth dessicates. And yet there’s a way we age long before our time, offering ourselves up as sham sacrifice to […]
Your Body is Trying to Tell You Something
Chandler Stevens Part 1 A client I work with really knows her shit. After a successful film career, she introduced a whole new style of yoga to an entire country (where she was a recent immigrant no less – no prior connections). Intelligent. Articulate. Got it together. Yet even though she leads teacher trainings […]
Connecting Chronic Pain to Depression
Chandler Stevens
Psoas Patterns
Chandler Stevens The poor psoas. It’s so misunderstood. This part of the body is responsible for so much of your day-to-day function that it often gets the blame when things go wrong. It’s no wonder. Functions associated with the psoas include: Upright posture Breathing Walking You know, insignificant things like that. And yet people […]
Becoming Yourself
Chandler Stevens Why does it take us so long to be ourselves? How can a movement practice bring us a deeper understanding of how we engage in the world around us? In this episode I talk with Jozef Frucek, co-founder of Fighting Monkey practice, about the big questions that link movement and life. Along the […]
Connecting to Ourself
Chandler Stevens Do you ever get the feeling that you’ve hit a wall? Or that you’re spinning your wheels? Or that despite your best intentions you end up in the same rut of habits and patterns? What you may not realize is: it’s not some external factor. It’s not some thing holding you back. It’s […]