A Handful of Bones
Jim Freda A handful of bones is just about all that we can hold in our mind as we go through the process of our complex daily full body movements. A handful of bones is enough to coordinate and balance the system in almost any position. Perhaps in our mundane daily movement of the […]
Touch & the Absence of Touch
Jim Freda In a world where everyone is profoundly touch deprived, touch can easily equal trauma, or invoke traumatic memories. It is unexpected and can be manipulative because we are not connected to one another. When I attended the 18th meeting of United States Association for Body Psychotherapy (USABP), I found that they understood […]
Two Ways to Know the Body
Jim Freda Two Ways to Know the Body: Abstract Reason vs. Direct Experience Through my entire life I was never interested in American or Western history. I studied the history of Japan and Korea at Columbia and then for eight more years at UCLA. That was a long time ago, but I have been […]
Interoception & Integration
Jim Freda “The heart of healing lies in our ability to listen, to see, to perceive, more than in our application of technique.” (Myers 2020). “In order to change, people need to become aware of their sensations and the way that their bodies interact with the world around them. Physical self-awareness is the first […]
Oral-Facial Health & Posture (Part 2)
Jim Freda Regarding the issues identified in part one, the goal is to survey the literature for other innovative strategies to test and to implement. Dietary changes and awareness of oral-facial posture are the primary solution but there are a variety of exercises and other orthodontic interventions the authors suggest. A gentle Buddha […]
Oral-Facial Health & Posture (Part 1)
Jim Freda A variety of medical investigators sought to understand how the new urban and industrial nature of modern life was changing our bodies. “As far as we can discover, the changes in jaws with new diets and urbanization were first noticed and recorded in the 1830s”, report Kahn and Ehrlich (2018). Kahn and […]
Three Bones Theory
Jim Freda Three bones theory and the sensory stations of the deep core: An anatomical description of evolutionary mismatch and sitting disease as kinesthetic dystonia. A summary statement. Three bones theory states that there are three major bones, each located at the heart of a major juncture of the body, and these bones […]
Social Somatics
Jim Freda
The Power We Seek
Jim Freda Here, amidst the US Coronavirus crisis, being led by this very particular administration, we are watching the breakdown of civility and our social contract. Our job then is to assume our own role of peaceful leadership, recreating social safety for all. It starts with us. It requires wisdom, and ability to stand both strong […]
Train Like a Bodhisattva
Jim Freda What is a Bodhisattva? In my case it’s a fat I old man with a beard who sits too much… but still hasn’t given up hope he can be free, be strong, and save the world. A Bodhisattva can be any shape, color or size, any gender and any age. It is […]
Fixing a Broken Heart
Jim Freda “New images surround us everywhere. They are invisible only because of sterile routine convention and fear.” –Lisette Model (Installation at SF MOMA) Fixing a broken heart. Does this sound reasonable? I hope it is. If your heart has been deeply broken, doesn’t it help to be able to admit it and directly […]
Examining Healing
Jim Freda QUESTIONS & OBSERVATIONS We are trying to understand pain as “biopsychosocial.” What does this mean for how we define the body and the mind? When we consider social factors of disease, health, and healing, what do we mean by social? Is society something local and unique that we create or is […]
When Did You First ‘Think Movement’?
Jim Freda What makes you “Think Movement”? What was the origin or initial situation that first made you get serious and start thinking about what your body is doing? For me it was the combination of: 1. Watching a little girl cross the road in front of my car who was so impacted by […]
The Opposite of Sitting is Not Standing
Jim Freda We think of the opposite of sitting as standing. Stand desks are indeed obvious alternatives to sit desks. However, this is simply a variation on the same basic idea of the modern work station as a form of immobilization. When we talk about sitting today, we are not talking about sitting as […]
The Law of Flexion and Extension
Jim Freda The law of flexion and extension is a basic principle of human movement. This simple idea has powerful lessons to teach us about posture and the sitting disease epidemic. Flexion is the position of the infant in the womb. It is the fetal position. Flexion is the position we adopt when we […]