Here are two offerings, one to watch and one to read. You will have to copy and paste. They are not coming up in blue.
http://www.natureofsuccessmovie.com/
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2007/04/23/findrelig.DTL
It is quite a way to start the day. I am sitting up straight in a wave of understanding and compassion.
I open a book which I am told helps with body mapping, knowing where your body really is in space rather than how you imagine it to be.
The book is How To Learn the Alexander Technique by Barbara and William Conable. I open to these words:
Speaking is movement. All the rules that apply to other movement apply as well to speaking. If it is obvious to you that speaking is movement then you probably already speak very well. Most people, however, do not think of speaking as movement.
It seems that just thinking of speaking as movement stimulates change.
Another useful perspective on speaking is the knowledge that speaking evolved, remarkably. Homo Habilis apparently still had an ape's vocal structure. Home Erectus showed the beginnings of the arching of the palate but none of the other changes that were necessary to go beyond protospeech. Homo Neanderthalensis had probably advanced sufficiently to speak, but not clearly and not rapidly. Only about one hundred thousand years ago when thoroughly modern Homo Sapiens began to walk the earth was speech as we know it possible. The arching of the roof was complete and the voice box had descended to give the throat the requisite shape and length for speaking. The tongue had become more mobile, and an area of the neocortex called Broca's area, not found in nonhuman primates, developed to coordinate speech.
It is amazing to realize that speech as we know it as only been around for a hundred thousand years. Of course, maybe most speech as we know it is not such a good thing, but my intention is to honor my speech today with integrity and zeal.
I am also gaining more appreciation for each book I own and read. I have always loved books and cared for them well, but now that I am realizing how much goes into a book as to writing, editing and publishing, I have a whole new appreciation of these labors and creations of love. Of course what we speak and what we write does need to be filtered through a brain of intelligence. Sometimes we get stuck in the lower levels. May today be one of breath circulating through all the areas of your brain, a day to spring-clean the brain.
Happy Day!