ZACHERY DACUK

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Parachutes, Vitality & the Diaphragm

May 9, 2018 By Zachery Dacuk Leave a Comment

How can we consciously harness the power of the diaphragm for breathing, movement and daily living? What does it feel like to develop our inner sensing ability around the movements of the diaphragm? How will diaphragmatic accessibility change my relationship to movement? It is important to visualize the movement of the diaphragm so that it can inform our breathing. The diaphragm looks like a parachute. When we understand the shape and movements that the diaphragm performs, we can begin the quest to consciously support all of it’s functions.

First, let’s explore the shape. Imagine a parachute, the edges of which are sewn into the lowest ridge of your rib basket. The rib basket wraps around your whole torso, so does the diaphragm. The obvious movement of the diaphragm is that is flattens like a pancake when we inhale and domes up like a parachute when we exhale. The less obvious movement of the diaphragm can be seen when we imagine pouring syrup on a table. When it hits the table, the syrup will ooze out in all directions. Now visualize a video or a meme of this syrup pouring out onto the table, then press pause and rewind to watch the syrup gather and lift back up. Then replay the sequence in your mind a couple of times to visualize the diaphragm behaving like the parachute and the syrup simultaneously.

This imagery shows us that the rib basket needs to expand in all dimensions in order to support the lungs in meeting their full capacity. When visualizing the movements of the diaphragm, we are invited to experience both where we move with ease and where we have blockage, restriction or lack of movement. Understanding and feeling where we move or don’t move the diaphragm helps us to build a conscious relationship with the Breath. It also provides us with a successful tool in life, in movement, in intense emotion or any other moment when our breath is unconsciously changed. Anatomically, there are many organs dependent upon the successful movement of the diaphragm.

  • Lungs
  • Heart
  • Kidneys
  • Liver
  • Stomach/Spleen/Pancreas/Large Intestine
  • Indirectly the Small Intestine

The most obvious are the lungs. The lungs and the diaphragm are connected fascially, mechanically and functionally. With Fascia the lungs are physically anchored to the diaphragm via the pleura. Mechanically, the movement of the diaphragm expands and contracts the lung tissue during inhalation and exhalation. Functionally, the negative pressure of the thoracic cavity combined with the movement of the ribs and diaphragm invites the dimensional expansion of lung tissue. If the diaphragm is contracted or adhered to the walls of the rib basket then the capacity and functionality of the lungs are compromised. The heart is directly attached to the diaphragm via the pericardium. If the average person displaced their diaphragm about 3 inches with every breath, then the heart is similarly moving with each respiration. This is a vital function for the movement of the blood and the health of the heart. In fact, functionality is often tethered to movement.

Our vital organs depend on that movement to operate at its highest frequency. The heart is one of the most vital. The diaphragmatic movement is usually tied to pulmonary function. The heart and the lungs are integral to each other’s survival. Our vitality is dependent upon our breath and the movement of that blood throughout the body. The diaphragm is a key muscle in the movement of the heart and vascular system within the body. The heart and the blood depend on the breath to aid in the strenuous role of pumping fluids in and around our body. The kidneys have ligaments and fascia hammocks that directly connect to the diaphragm. Healthy diaphragmatic movement results in the kidneys traveling about 1/4 mile per day. This movement plays an important role in the kidneys ability to filter and cleanse the blood.

Likewise the liver depends on the movement of the diaphragm. It rolls anterior and posteriorly. This movement helps shift the blood around and through the liver helping it to detoxify the organ and thus the body. The stomach, spleen and pancreas also hang from the diaphragm and the movement likewise aids in their functionality. It helps in digesting food, the secretion of hormones and enzymes, the growth of immune cells and much more.

Movement is the source of life and the diaphragm supports all of these vital organs/functions with a steady flow. It is in our best interest to consciously support the diaphragm with awareness and differentiation. The more consciously capable we are in moving the diaphragm and how free the muscle is from surrounding structures, the more function it can be in transferring its movement to our vital organs. This in turn keeps the body functioning at its highest frequency.

By understanding the shape of our body, the better we are able to sense and feel ourselves. The more we can sense and feel our body, the more we can recognize and know when it is in need of our help. We can help the Body by supporting its natural movements and differentiating stuck structures thus supporting their functionality. Developing a clear relationship with your diaphragm can be life changing and absolutely necessary to supporting your bodies own healing potential as well as accessing our highest frequency.

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Interpreting the Role of Fascia in Our Body

March 27, 2018 By Zachery Dacuk Leave a Comment

 

Limb X Limb

 

Fascia

Much has been discovered about fascia in the last decade and much has been shared.  How do we integrate this information into a useful and functional tool?  How do we interpret the science into an understanding that makes sense for how we live our lives every day? How do we evolve what a body is by including the fabric of fascia?

Fascia exists to hold the body and preserve the eduction that we feed it with our movements, repetitions, behaviors, injuries and explorations. The fascia connects us and helps us to maintain the integrity of our structure. It cements our patterns and ways of being in the world. It is sticky and adjustable so that it can acquiesce to the repetitive postures as we change them. It also becomes dehydrated when we forget to move and remain in those very shapes. When our bodies become stuck in a shape, then our mindset adapts, we think this is who we are and have a difficult time finding our way our. By feeling and introducing the feminine back into our consciousness, we can change our ways. Feeling is the way to discover where movement exists and where it doesn’t. Fascia adds dimension to the body. It also offers us access from the places of movement or places of connection to the places of forgetting, to the places to which we no longer have access.

Fascia is the concrete fabric that helps us feel ourselves. It shows us where in the body we can embody with ease and where we have lost touch with ourselves. Fascia is the way to remembering in the mental sense as well as the physical sense. Reconnecting or re – member – ing the physical form. If we follow the sensation from the places that we can feel with ease toward the areas of our body that seem distant, then we can begin to gain access to first the boundary of the unknown territory and then into the heart of where we have forgotten.

By knowing the shape of the muscles, by having understanding of the maps of the body we retain access to the divine masculine. By feeling how that maps connects throughout the body, we gain access to the feminine. The sacred marriage is the moment, the epiphany that occurs when all the gears align and you can feel what you know to be true. When we translate knowledge and language into a feeling and reclaim access to the physical form we experience the divine marriage. When this occurs, we are hooked and keep coming back for more. We seek to gain access to this moment again and again and again because it is energizing and inspiring. When we experience the diving marriage of knowing and feeling we gain access to our bodies, we embody.

Unconscious Holding

One way to map the body is to divide it into the parts known to us and the parts unknown. There exists at any moment places in the body that we can move whenever we so choose. These parts are known and felt in real time. Then there exists places in the body to which we can not connect. These parts are unknown to us. The known can be mapped with the light of awareness. The unknown can be mapped with darkness of amnesia. There are two key patterns connected to the unknown darkness. The first pattern are the places that we are engaging unconsciously most of our lives. We muscularly grip or hold tissues in a range of ways from subtle, imperceptible contractions to powerful, massive contractions. The second pattern are the spaces in the body where we have no access because we have forgotten or have never learned to feel or use them. Often we have no muscular capabilities here and lean on the skeletal fascia body in the form of ligaments.

Imagine the nervous system in this whole, dimensional body of dark and light. The parts that we are aware of are teaming with light and electricity. The parts that live in darkness have no connections and remain in shadow like a town that lost its light from a storm. The process of embodiment is the process of expanding the light into the dark areas of self so that we can land successfully in the whole form.

Now visualize a place where one is consistently and unconsciously holding or gripping the musculature. The constant contraction squeezed fluid out of the area because of the inward pressure. At the same time, the fascia is pulled toward the engaged muscle like a magnet dimensionally pulls in metal. As the fascia is pulled toward the contraction it stretches as much as it is capable and then it begins to draw surrounding bones, organs or other tissues toward it. In this way, an unconscious contraction reshapes the bodies landscape by drawing attention and structure toward it. Now visualize this as a three dimensional phenomenon.

The Movement

If one of the reasons that fascia exists is to aid us in feeling our bodies, then how can we learn to use this to make functional and structural changes to our body.  The historical practice of stretching has the general population believing that stretching is a practice of changing the shape of muscles.  It also has us thinking that stretch is an activity that works by taking our tissues to their maximum flexibility and then asking them to adjust to a new and expanded normal.  The truth is that by stretching a myofascial unit to its maximum length actually creates a response of maximum resistance.

Imagine stretching a rubber band to its full capacity.  You then feel the maximum resistance that the rubber band has the ability to hold.  The rubber band will not acquiesce to a new shape, it will either maintain its integrity or it will snap.  The body responds in a similar fashion.  In fact, when we meet tissue or fascia at its maximum resistance, we often create a pain response.

So how then shall we facilitate successful change to a myofascial unit?  By learning to listen and feel our body we can awaken to what I like to call ‘First Resistance’ or ‘First Sensation’.  First sensation is the place on a myofascial unit that we feel when we make subtle, quiet movements.  When we move two bones away from each other, we awaken the soft tissue connections between those bones.  The first sensation is the place on the myofascial unit that offers us our first resistance.  This is the first place where change needs to occur.  The goal of first resistance stretching is to constantly meet the place of first resistance so that we can systematically make incremental changes to our fascial body.  By making small incremental changes and working slowly through the full range of a myofascial unit we can make sustainable structural changes to the soft tissues.

The Practice

If you are interested in bringing this life to work and putting it into practice, then join me at the Center for Remembering and Sharing every other Tuesday morning from 9am-11am for my new class Limb X Limb.  This 2 hour long class will be a workshop style that includes meditation, fascia movement, short lecture, partner work as well as holistic anatomy, chanting and dharma.  Limb X Limb is a labor of love and was born out of distilling 20 years of knowledge and movement.  The practice is designed to help your land in your body, to feel yourself clearly and understand what a body is.

Please sign up and pay in advance as space is limited.  Email me at zacherydacuk@gmail.com for more details or questions.

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Looking Back With Gratitude (Thank You Orleans Yoga)

February 20, 2018 By Zachery Dacuk Leave a Comment

In late January of this year, I had the privilege of teaching at Orleans Yoga in Cape Cod. The experience was life changing for me. I was able to distill almost 20 years of study, nearly 40 years of living and processing and a decade of teaching into a stunning 4 day training. I can honestly say that I am a changed person after that training and my work as a healer and a teacher is forever and always changed because of the content and interactions from this experience.

Due to the time, hard work, dedication and her belief in me as a teacher, Petra Ledkovsky (Orleans Yoga owner) wrangled 10 brave souls to journey with me as I took them on a roller coaster ride through the human form. Petra was kind enough to open her home and community up to me, offering me access to a sacred space and the open hearts of eager students. Thank you Petra, I couldn’t have done it without you.

And to the students, I may actually have learned more from you then you from me. In my heart I know that we all benefitted from the experience…I am forever in your debt. Your open hearts and minds provided me with the container to fully blossom and expand to new heights, widths, and depths. Your receptivity led me to discovery, capacity, creativity and the integration of my life’s work. You have my gratitude.

This experience has inspired me so completely that I will be leading this course again in NYC, June 2018. Learn more HERE.

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Permission

February 20, 2018 By Zachery Dacuk Leave a Comment

Recently, I have spent time digging into my past, into my unprocessed stories and wounds. It is only fair as I explore these places with my clients and students that I engage in the process myself. While exploring the unknown territory of the subconscious, it is important for to grant permission. We need to give permission to ourselves so that we know we are ready to explore the story at hand. We need to grant permission to others if they are to guide us safely into these wounds. We all need to grant permission to go into the places that scare us, that have been scarred and that are sacred.

It is so crucial that we ask ourselves if we are ready to explore our wounds, shadows and traumas. How can we really know if we are ready? One valuable practice that I have found for discovering the truth about whether or not I am ready to dive deeper goes like this:

  1. Do I have pretty good awareness of the wound or trauma that I am curious about?
  2. Can I marry the awareness with a clear feeling of safety?
  3. If I am not sure or the answer is no, then the work is about acknowledging the boundary and getting comfortable with that boundary.
  4. If the answer is yes, I can marry the awareness of a wound with a feeling of clarity and safety, then I will ask myself – Do I have an ample support system in my life just in case I delve too deep?
  5. If I feel completely comfortable about my support system, then I proceed past my boundaries and begin to repel into the wound, shadow or trauma.

When I can grant permission to myself and I have clearly identified the piece of my shadow or trauma that I would like to engage, explore and digest AND I feel clear and safe about going there THEN the quest to delve into the darkness is righteous. When we digest and reframe wounds, shadows and trauma, then we begin the healing process as well as gain access to hidden treasures of freedom on the other side of healing. It all begins with permission of respecting our boundaries and the divine marriage between understanding and feeling.

When we apply this practice to our clients or students, it is important to understand that sometimes they are willing but don’t recognize where the boundary needs to be. Sometimes they trust you so much that they are willing to take a leap of faith. And sometimes, they aren’t ready to do so. In these moments, it is vital that we maintain those boundaries for them. As practitioners in healing professions, we must become skilled at recognizing when a student or client may have the understanding of what a wound is but the feelings may be too much for them to cope with in the moment or after they open up to that wound or trauma. If a client is not ready to feel a trauma, this can cause flooding which is approximately the same as reliving the trauma or wound in real time. We need to avoid these situations as much as possible. Sometimes clients and students grant us permission and we, as practitioners, must hold safe boundaries for them, thank them for their trust and safely hold the boundary right where it currently exists. It is a tremendous amount of work to just get clear about where the boundary is and getting comfortable with its existence is powerful healing in itself.

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What is a Body?

December 18, 2017 By Zachery Dacuk Leave a Comment

Mapping the Body

What is a body? How do we navigate its terrain? How do we support it? Those of us who have looked inward, who have explored the possibility of what a body might be, we have created many maps. These maps aid us in understanding what we are, how we are organized, how we work, and what we need to survive or even flourish in this life. Are these maps complete? How do the body maps of different cultures relate to our own? Who sees the body for what it is? Do cross-cultural maps intersect somewhere?

Like many of my colleagues I have spent decades studying and exploring the body maps that western science created. They taught me many valuable lessons and concepts, including how to identify and differentiate parts of the body from the whole. I learned to see through the lens of reductionist thinkers and I found myself wanting more. I have become increasingly curious about how these parts fit into a holistic concept, about how they relate to one another and what those relationships could mean for healing and health. When we view the body as a whole and understand the systems – when we clearly see the relationships – the possibilities are endless.

Rough Guide to the History of Western Medicine

As I continue to navigate the current terrain of western medicine I have found that understanding the history, development, and foundation of the system is vital toward understanding the state of medicine today. How exactly did we arrive where we are now? Where did it all begin?

The study of the body from through the western lens has had a number of stops and starts. For our purposes we will focus on the most recent “beginning,” which took place in Britain’s 16th Century. Law had mostly been controlled and defined by the Church prior to this time. There were major transformations happening across Europe and thus began the rise of the modern world. Medicine followed this trend and a major scientific revolution arose with the renaissance.

What did this mean for the body? While the church deemed the body sacred, something to be honored and not desecrated,  philosophers and medical professionals argued the need to explore and study the body for scientific advancement. They argued that the body was a soft machine and if we, as humans, were to discover anything about medicine we needed to perform dissection for the purpose of mapping the human form. After Europe had been ravaged by plagues the church came to the decision that the scientific community should have the opportunity to understand how the body worked in order to foster and facilitate its natural healing processes. In other words, we needed to understand disease in order to have a chance at stopping it. So the church kept the mind and spirit and medicine was gifted the body.

The division of the body from the mind and spirit was created from a functional argument to legally begin the study of the human form through dissection. So when the current holistic movement says, ‘I believe in a mind, body and spirit connection,’ this statement is unnecessary as there was never any real separation. It was a human construct devised to begin the scientific study of the human form for the purpose of learning what we are. Facts: the mind lives in the whole body; the nervous system cannot be separated from the brain; the nervous system connects all the way through to the skin; the brain cannot be separated from the skin without a knife.  The spirit is even simpler. Without the spirit, there is no life – whatever life is – when it leaves the body, the body no longer lives. Therefore, the spirit is in the body and mind so long as a person is alive. Death, therefore, is the separation of life from the body or the separation of the spirit from the body.

As we delve deeper into the many maps of the body from different cultures, we see that mind, body and spirit are one in “life.” Only the western world has separated the body from the mind and spirit, and it was done out of simple functionality. Given that the western world is younger than most other cultures, is our body map incomplete? Is there more for us to learn? Has our style of medicine answered all of our questions? Have we no disease in our culture? The answer is obvious: we have much to learn, we have numerous unanswered questions, and we have many uncured diseases, and billions of dollars are spent every year because we know that western medicine is incomplete.

So, what maps of the body exist in the world of human? How do I shift my western mind to hold the ideas and concepts of different, ancient, or eastern cultures? How do we merge different medical paradigms? What have different people and cultures realized about humans and how we heal? How do these cultures see the body? Is their perspective valuable or even relevant to the people of today? Have they wasted thousands of years creating styles of medicine that have merit, or have generations of humans been duped into carrying on misunderstandings lifetime after lifetime? I think not. I believe that it is more likely our ability to distill different ideas, along with our desire to have our system be the only system, that gets in the way of our ability to recognize how our collective maps might overlap and fill in the gaps for one another.

It has become obvious that the people of the western world recognize the deficits of western medicine. With billions of dollars being spent every year by those seeking healing, health and support outside of the traditional system, the voting is in. There are gaps in our current system and we have maps to fill those gaps. When we look at the history of the development of western medicine, a few reasons emerge as to how this might have happened. People live in physical bodies inclusive of mind and spirit. They crave being held by professionals who recognize the whole person as well as have skill sets or maps that can make a difference in their malaise. People crave experts, teachers, healers and health professionals who recognize the human for what we are and what our potential might be.

Coming of Age

The time has come, we must delve into the various maps of medicine to see how different lenses view the same diseases and blockages on the road to healing and health. We must consistently ask ourselves, what is a body? We must ask so that we might see ourselves in ways that haven’t yet occurred to us. We must ask so that we are clear about what we know. We must ask so that we can fill the communication and informational gaps that exist between different paradigms of medicine. We must ask so that we admit that we do not currently hold all of the answers, that some of our ideas might be incorrect or incomplete. We must explore what cultures have spent centuries developing. We need to start thinking like global beings who hold curiosity. Why have ideas been developed, explored and sustained through generations of human families? Why have people dedicated their lives to understanding what a body is? What have they discovered that’s missing? And if my paradigm of medicine isn’t helping everyone all the time, then how might other paradigms fill these gaps?

A Key to Reading Maps

How do we begin to read these maps? Here I will introduce 5 Stages of Medicine, a key that has helped me to understand and place the different paradigms that medicine has worked to hold within the human being:

  1. Stabilization
  2. Healing
  3.  Health
  4. Development & Expansion
  5. Death & Dying

1) Stabilization is the process of taking a human being from and unstable place where their survival is threatened or their structure is compromised or their mental state is in disarray and ushering them into a stabilized place. This stabilized place is where the threat has been eliminated and the body can now take care of itself. However in all of these cases, the body/mind/soma is not whole and therefore healing is required. Specific paradigms of medicine are focused mainly on stabilization. This does not mean that they necessarily support or have sway over the other stages of medicine.

2) Healing is the process of taking the human being from a stability into wholeness. Once the human being isn’t at risk of losing his or her life then the body has a series of healing processes to go through in order to get to wholeness again. Different paradigms of medicine are able to support the healing process.

3) Health is the process of maintaining wholeness. Once healing has been completed, there are many different practices that we can adapt and balance in our lives in order to maintain the functioning of a human being. Some of these practices are sleep, meditation, diet, exercise, relationships, touch, recreation, sex, relationship to money and much more.

4) Development & Expansion is the process of taking a now whole human being and continuing to evolve. We have the capacity to become so much more that we currently are. We give our children the space, care, education and attention needed to evolve but for some reason many of us sacrifice this part of our lives. This is absolutely necessary and under developed component to the medicine of the human being in the western world.

5) Lastly, death and dying is the process of concluding a life. We need to prepare ourselves to surrender the body, practice holding our consciousness so that we might carry it with the spirit as it leaves the body. The western world is a menagerie of cultures who have different view as to how to guide a human being toward the end of our life. This is an import part of medicine and one that alternative maps can help us fill the current gaps.

One Key, One Map

If we explore the map of yoga (and there are many kinds so forgive the simplicity here) we can see how it fits into this Key. Yoga is one of the human technologies/medicines that has a tremendous amount of range. It spans many of the Stages of Medicine. Yoga also has a remarkable resiliency within the history of the world. It has traveled around the planet for centuries and has gained more popularity because of its dynamic nature. Let’s filter it:

1) Yoga has many techniques that can help us to stabilize. Restorative practices, meditation, breathing, chanting, strong morals and many other limbs of yoga can help stabilize the mind, body and spirit of human being.

2) Yoga has many techniques to promote healing in the body. Breathing can be used for every stage of medicine but has particularly powerful healing techniques. It can promote cellular processes for healing, anti aging and repair on a macro or micro level in the body. Asana when practiced with alignment and clear intention can be healing as well. It helps us to accumulate conscious connection to the whole body one area at a time.

3) Yoga is amazing at supporting our health and well being. A regular practice can balance the mind, body and spirit. It has the infinite applications for maintaining the whole human being. Movement promotes flexibility, meditation promotes mindfulness, chanting promotes organ health, practicing spiritual truths can help us hold integrity and the list goes on.

4) Yoga can push us to evolve by offering us access to movements, stillnesses or elations that we never knew what possible. We can learn to do a handstand and be up-side-down or learn how to connect with our breath as we move through difficult poses. We can learn how to stay connected to ourselves as we transition through difficult times in our lives. The practice can develop our capacity to stay steady in the face of adversity and thus evolve us.

5) Yoga will prepare us for death and dying with years of understanding and clarity of being. With years of stillness and evolution we begin to understand our role in life. As we come to recognize and embody our roles in life, we can feel more comfortable about letting our body go. In this way, yoga is a beautiful practice as we prepare for death and ultimately face dying.

It is important to note that Yoga can also harm us. If our body needs to be stabilized or healed and we are trying to do practices that develop or expand us, then we can disintegrate the mind, body and spirit. It is important to understand when to use certain techniques and practices in yoga to that we are honoring our bodies current need for a certain stage of medicine. We run into trouble when we follow teachings that aren’t meant for our current state of being.

Conclusion

The body is complicated. The body is our home. The body has been scrutinized by many minds from many different cultures and there is still much to learn. We have learned enough of the body as human beings to begin the conversation of how our maps connect. This will only help us recognize where we are, where the gaps still remain and where we might go from here. Never stop asking what a body is? Keep an open mind and dig in, we’ve got work to do. In this new age of information, we are primed to start folding ideas and maps onto each other so that we can understand how to better hold medicine for ourselves and future generations.

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Gratitude Series: The Classroom

April 25, 2017 By Zachery Dacuk Leave a Comment

Classroom

I spent the better part of 10 years working for and studying with Tom Myers, author of Anatomy Trains and founder of KMI Structural Integration School. He has been and continues to be a pioneer and communication leader on the progressive edge of teaching about fascia.

Tom’s impact on me has been deep and long lasting. I gathered incredible wisdom and potent teachings watching his determination, courage, and drive to put fascia on the map. It was an honor to be part of that process as he expanded his audience to include movement and fitness instructors. Together we expanded the audience of his work in and around New York City. His impact continues to be felt in many communities world wide, and as I continue to deepen my own teaching, I can’t help but be thankful to Tom for the active listening audience awaiting.

Tom taught me many important lessons on my journey to becoming a teacher. I carry with me one of his often shared stories about a physician who describes his relationship to healing patients,“In my profession, I race down to the river only to find a person drowning. I pull them out, pat them on the back, and send them on their way. Then I turn around to do the same for the next victim. I’m so busy saving lives that I never get a chance to go upstream to find out why they are falling into the water in the first place.” This tale made a deep impression on me. It inspired me to translate many of years of studying fascia with Tom into a movement practice designed to prevent injury and promote healing and health.

Being in the classroom with Tom for the better part of a decade was a tremendous opportunity to gather information. As powerful as the foundation of knowledge was the gift of witnessing the essential skills and techniques necessary to becoming a successful teacher. Tom developed and utilized teaching tools designed to weave fabric and connection within the classroom, laying down his own layer of fascia between the students.

I have come to hold a great deal of reverence for the micro community of the classroom. From different walks of life we arrive as strangers with the desire to learn, grow, and become more than who we are. Tom showed me how to hold safe space so that unfamiliar people can become community in a short period of time. Beyond holding safe space, we must also facilitate connections by opening doors and dissolving personal stories so that students can clearly see each other. When this is done intentionally and artfully, the result is pure magic. The deeply personal and professional impact of studying with Tom for the better part of a decade will resonate with me forever. My time with Tom shaped my foundation, and grew my ability to see and approach the body as healer and teacher. For these gifts, I will be forever grateful.

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Gratitude Series: The Gratitude Circle

April 25, 2017 By Zachery Dacuk Leave a Comment

circle

Some of the most powerful life lessons are ones that creep upon us sideways and take us by surprise.  I learned this truth powerfully through my dear friend and colleague Ame Wren, founder of Boston Yoga School. She has had such a profound influence on my life.  Ame will forever have my unending gratitude.

Ame first contacted me in in the Spring of 2013, taking a leap of faith, and inviting me to become a guest teacher in her dynamic yoga teacher training program.  I eagerly accepted and found my way to Boston many moons later.  I was honored by her trust in me,  and was grateful and nourished by that first opportunity to touch the lives of her students.

Since then Ame has invited me back to share teachings with training yoga teachers in Portland, Cape Cod, Syracuse and Boston many times over.  We have always maintained an open dialogue, and with her guidance, I have been able to hone my craft and elevate my teachings to higher, deeper, and more precise levels.

There is an element within Ame’s training that has changed my life forever in the most unexpected and profound way.  As a teacher and a healer, my life is about giving.  To my family and friends, I would give, give, give. I did not know how to receive.  In fact, I’ve avoided it, dismissed it, and downright said no it receiving for much of my life.  I told myself a story that began as a little boy that I don’t need anyone else.  The story says I can do it alone, and there is no reason to let anyone in.  This was a lie that I told myself so many times and for so long that I more than believed it.  I lived it.  A stark counterpoint to my most comfortable mode, at the closing of each training Ame has implemented the practice of a “Gratitude Circle.”  As you might suspect,  everyone in the training sits in a circle and the students share from their heart gratitude toward the teacher.

The first few times that I sat in gratitude circle, I dismissed it.  I quietly repeated in my head that this was simply the students projecting their stories onto me.  It was safer that way.  After a couple of years, I began to listen to what the students were saying and I took their gratitude as confirmation and validation they had learned something from the class.  I did everything in my power not to feel their gratitude, not to receive.

This seismically shifted last month when I took a huge leap and taught some new content I have been working on–all focused on heart opening. The Advanced Teacher Trainees were the first group I shared this with, and I was deeply aware of the risk I was taking.  Something profound happened. The dynamic electricity of the weekend was abundant and apparent.  With clear boundaries, I set out to crack the students’ hearts open just a little, but the surprise was that my own heart had been cracked wide open by the practice I had been teaching.

When it was time for gratitude circle, the strength of my defenses and false ego had been dismissed.  My heart was open and I knew I had taught the greatest weekend I have ever had the privilege to share.  The heartfelt gratitude came like a flood of emotion from each and every student.  With my defenses down, I had no where to turn and no where to run.  I was receiving.  I was vulnerable. My tears fell as an overwhelming rush of love filled my vibrating viscera.   I didn’t burst apart, and I didn’t break down.  It just felt wonderful. An incredible initiation into the flow of receptivity.

So Ame Wren, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.  You forced me to sit in gratitude for so long that I learned to receive.  You are my teacher and my friend.   And I look forward to the next gratitude circle!!

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Change from the Inside Out

January 4, 2017 By Zachery Dacuk Leave a Comment

change

Farming and gardening have been crucial part of human development.  Many gradual changes in our society happened around the practice of sowing seeds and growing food.  How can we apply the practices of growing food to the practice of growing our bodies?  How does working the soil relate to change?

When we plant a seed in the earth, it can take days and even weeks before we see the sprout emerge above the surface.  But this doesn’t mean the growth and change isn’t occurring.  Often we mistake the silence of sprouting seeds beneath the soil as a lack of movement.  In actuality, the seeds of change have sprouted and are taking root.   Quietly, change is stretching its arms legs and waking.  We often throw away our practices before we have a chance to witness the fruits of our labor.  It takes two, sometime three seasons for change to mature and bare fruit.

Envision change as a matryoshka doll, a Russian nesting doll.  It begins deep inside of as an intention, as a spark.  This is the smallest doll in the center.  As we nurture that idea and develop practices around change, the doll grows larger.  Slowly over time change grows from the inside out.  When the roots are strong and the practices are consistent, old habits are shed like a snake skin.  The outer self falls away and we are left standing, embodied with change.  Change occurs from the inside out.

Under our skin and between our bones, muscles, and organs is space.  The capillaries slowly leak water from the bloodstream like a garden hose with tiny holes that has been buried under the soil.  The vessels are porous and water seeps out from the bloodstream, irrigating the Interstitial Space. This water of life is made of  the water we drink, the food we eat, the air we breath, the chemical messengers we release from emotions and hormones and lastly our immune response.  All of these ingredients float in an aquarium under skin down to our bones.

The air we breath, the water we drink and the food we eat is fed by the blood stream into the aquarium.  The emotions we experience are the spices that flavor that soup.  Our cells drink this soup to repair and regrow new cells, to manifest our new self.  The quality and  balance of all that we put in our aquarium represents the foundation of what we become.

Changes happen from within.  Like a Russian Nesting Doll, the smallest inner child expands to the next size until you become the seeds you planted, until you become your practices.  You are what you eat, drink, breath and experience. Set clear intentions.  Garden your self.  Plant new seeds and become the change you practice.

 

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Embodied Philosophy Podcast with Jacob Kyle

May 31, 2016 By Zachery Dacuk Leave a Comment

Recently, Jacob Kyle of Embodied Philosophy & Chitheads Podcast was kind of enough to interview me. We discussed the history of medicine and the development of physical medicine as well as our role supporting that community.

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What is Pain?

April 28, 2016 By Zachery Dacuk Leave a Comment

Pain & the Present

Pain may be one of the most misunderstood feelings that we experience as humans and rightfully so.  In the coming weeks, we will explore the range of importance that pain plays in our lives.

What is Pain?  Though there are many ways to define it, I’d like to ponder a simple idea.  Pain is sensation. Its our body’s way of communicating from the unconscious self to the conscious self.  Once conscious of the sensations and pain, we are thrust into the present moment.

Pain is the conversation your body has with you in the moment to share its limitations or injuries.  It tells of the boundary between movements that are safe and unsafe.  Pain shows us injury and where we are in need of immediate attention.  It tells us if we have gone too far, if we need to slow down, if we need to stop entirely.  Often, we avoid it.  We move to get out of pain,  change our shape or compensate to avoid the loud sensations accompanying it.  I invite you to pause and listen to what your pains are telling you.

Life often presents us with opportunities to stop.  Sometimes we are forced to take pause because of some traumatic incident or an accident.  The traumas are loud and are heard immediately.  Sometimes life whispers warnings, offering us more subtle information and choices that emerge with them.  When transitioning too quickly through life, those warnings go unheeded. They then accumulate and we are forced to refocus, to manage the moments at hand.  Pain works similarly.  Minute warnings in the form of abnormal sensations can occur consistently .  Our consciousness grows tired of their constant nagging and ignores them; forcing them into the back ground of our unconscious.  We become desensitized to the low grade pains.  As we become deaf to the whispers and ignore these clear boundaries in our body, we travel down a path toward repetitive strain injury.  Repetitive strain injuries then graduate from low grade consistent pain to loud pain.

Repetitive strain injury are traumas that develop in the muscles, fascia, joints, bones or nerves as a result of over use of the body in irregular ways.  The ignored whispers from these minor communications that accumulate can emerge as traumas or injuries.  We then say things like, “I slept on my neck wrong” or “I turned around too fast.”  In reality, these are minor repetitive strains were finally accompanied by the straw that broke the camels back.  Thats when the loud acute pain takes over.

When we develop a practice of listening to pains and sensations, no matter what volume they are spoken, we can learn the language of our bodies.  Pain and sensation are the communications of the unconscious self to our conscious self.  They are asking us to pay attention.  They are offering us a clear path to the present moment.  Pain & sensation and the language they speak can become our greatest teacher. They can offer us a clear path toward healing and health as it relates to our physical form.  By paying attention in the moment, we hear the communications of our body.  With understanding and guidance we can interpret those messages in order to facilitate our bodies natural healing processes.

For example, often folks tell me about the pain they carry in their superior angle of the shoulder blade.  It will hurt a little from time to time and then flare up intensely.  They will ignore it and continue on with their life.  Often patterns of pain like this can emerge with too much computer or smart phone use.  But it doesn’t stop us from using our devices in an inefficient way.  Then one day we wake up with a kink in our neck, a severe pain that prevents us from accessing our normal range of motion.  And we attribute this injury to ‘sleeping on it wrong’ or ‘not my usual pillow.’  When in truth, this pattern has been mounting for weeks, months or sometimes longer and that nights sleep was the straw that broke the camels back.  The repetitive strain injury became loud and acute due to an event but the injury itself was growing quietly with minor pains or communications from your nervous system telling you to make a change.  (Learning how to listen and interpret these communications will be a topic for another “Musing” or you can check my teaching schedule.  See you in class.)

Our spiritual practices often invite us to form a relationship to the eternal present moment – “the now”  Our minds are easily distracted.  The language of our bodies can be  lost in similar distractions.  But the whispers and screams that pain delivers can not to be ignored.  The language of our body offers us an opportunity to reorient to the present moment like no other feeling.  It will guide us toward understanding the capabilities of our form and the most functional ways to facilitate healing and health.

Follow me next week as we further explore What is Pain? Coming, Going and Storage

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