Freeing Your Body

10/10/2025

The more things change, the more they are the same. History continues to mirror itself in 2025.

The Lilac People
by Milo Todd
© 2025
This story takes place in Germany from 1932 until the end of WWII. It is fictional within the context of the historical facts of the time. Doktor Magnus Hirschfeld, gay advocate in Germany for what became the LGBTQ+ population, was the Director of the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin from the 1920s until the Institute was destroyed in 1933 by the N***s.
The author says this about the terminology used:
“Please note that all terms used in this novel reflect the story’s era. Terms such as transvestite are outdated and should be avoided when referring to transgender people of today.”

In The Lilac People as in life, Doktor Hirschfeld had been attacked by N**i “brownshirts”:

The worst was so bad that Herr Doktor had read his own obituary in the paper the next morning. But he had slowly recovered. And then he just kept on trying to make the world a better place for the third s*x.
“Why do you do it?” Bertie asked. “I know you’d look after your own kind, that makes sense. But why do you do so much for transvestites, too?”
“If I’m being honest, Bertie, my reasons are quite selfish. Do you know about the canaries? For twenty years now, miners in Britain and America have taken cages of them down into the mines while they work, to detect carbon monoxide.”
Bertie did not know why he was telling him this, “Why canaries? Why not some other animal?”
“They were the most vulnerable. A country is only as strong as its most vulnerable people. You’re a canary, Bertie. Transvestites are the canaries of the world. Bad people always go after transvestites first, no matter the country or culture. They are the first ones removed when an environment turns poisonous. What makes it more worrisome is you represent everything. You represent housing and job security and access to healthcare. You represent workers’ rights and voting rights and full stomachs and freedom. And perhaps most importantly of all, you represent the right to body and personhood. You represent a country not owning you; not using you benefits a select few at the top. You represent a country of a people, not a country of the dominant. If transvestites are under attack, then the whole of the country is on the brink of destruction. If transvestites are cared for, the rest of us are cared for. You touch everything a strong society has to offer. We could work, we could eat, we could be healthy, we could live in safe homes, we could decline to fight in unnecessary wars. Our country would be honest. We would no longer be tricked. Our country would take care of us and we, in turn, would take care of our country. So as long as transvestites are okay, we know society is, too.
Don’t regard me too heroically. I care about you because I care about everyone. Nothing I’m doing here is noble or generous. It’s simply common sense. It’s simply humanity. No person should encourage the suffering of another. There’s already too much given by nature. And when a person encourages the suffering of another, you can bet they won’t stop there. They want to see it because they hope it will fill the emptiness inside themselves, but it won’t, because it never does, and so they’ll look for the next one, and the next one, and the one after that.
Any invert [gay] who thinks Hi**er will stop at transvestites is a fool. And any person who thinks Hi**er will stop at inverts thereafter is just as foolish. They try to convince people that you’re the only group they’re after when really you’re just the first one. They look for the first domino to knock down, the one people will give the least resistance to, the one they care about the least. And once they’ve done it, it might be too late for everyone else.”

The author also notes that at the time of this novel, “transvestite was defined as someone wearing the clothes of the gender ‘opposite’ of them. The terminology of the time overall wasn’t intended to misgender, but [was] rather an attempt to understand and explain to the public in ways they might comprehend.”

At one point in the story Bertie, who has had a mastectomy, says to Gert, who is excited but worried about his upcoming surgery, “They’ve been doing surgeries for us for almost thirty years now. You’ll be just fine.”

It was disappointingly interesting to learn that when the war ended and prisoners of the concentration camps were released, murderers and thieves were allowed to go free by the American “liberators,” who felt they had served their sentences. But LGBTQ+ prisoners were sent to German jails to serve the sentences for their crime of simply being who they were.

“I thought it would be nice if I could invent a new language.
I was certain about this: In the best new language, there would be no words for me or you.
Those words have caused all the trouble started by the old languages.
In any new language, there should only be we.
We do everything, and everything we do, we do to us.
That would have to be the first rule.”
Ariel, in The Alex Crow
by Andrew Smith

07/13/2023

Here is the first of a series of short Explorations I'm offering which support the classes I'm giving. They explore aspects of the movements in more detail.

This is for Free Your Head and Neck 101.

Download it to add to your library of Resources.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bbw9mq9bazdxsyh/Free%20Your%20Head%20and%20Neck%20101%20Exploration%201.mp3?dl=0

www.FreeingYourBody.com

Freeing Your Body Learn to live fully in your body! Photo by Neal E. Johnson Imagine knowing you’ll be moving better next year than you are now,and even better every year after that! Imagine not worrying aboutstiffness, pain or limited movement stopping youbecause you’ve learned how to take care...

10/12/2022

Celebrating October 12

History has always been written by the conquerors or the would-be conquerors. Those who have been conquered do their best to preserve their culture and their version of history, but it's an uphill battle.

For example:
For centuries China has exported the idea that the Han Chinese people are the only ethnic group who are truly Chinese. There are more than 50 other ethnic groups who have been living within the territorial boundaries of China for centuries, including Tibetan, Hmong, Uyghur, Mongol, and Salar. All the various Han Chinese empires and governments have worked to eradicate not only the existence, but the memory of these cultures.

In the past decade Russia has reinvigorated its centuries-old effort to eradicate the existence and memory of Ukraine, a country that existed before the Russian empire. Russia's propagandized version of Ukraine's history, culture, and place in the modern world is being disseminated nationally as well as internationally as it tries to destroy Ukraine yet again.

Then there's the United States.
October 12, 1492 was definitely a turning point in world history, triumphant for Europeans and devastating for the conquered indigenous peoples.
Can the date be recognized appropriately for all concerned?
In the US Columbus Day is still a Federal holiday.
To counter this, thirty years ago the date became known as Native Americans' Day in South Dakota and is now celebrated as Indigenous Peoples' Day in almost 20 other states (not South Carolina ...). President Biden issued the first Federal proclamation to recognize Indigenous Peoples' Day in 2021.

Canada does not celebrate Columbus Day, instead marking June 21 as Aboriginal Day to celebrate and learn about indigenous peoples including Inuit, Métis and First Nations.
October 12 is Dia de la Raza (Day of the People) in Mexico and many Caribbean, Central and South American countries. While the Spanish word "raza" can be translated as "people" in English, it includes the concept of "lineage" or "ancestry," those from whom a people is descended.
It is celebrated as Day of Respect for Cultural Diversity in Argentina, Day of Indigenous Resistance in Venezuela, and encompasses as many citizens as possible in Nicaragua, where it is Día de la Resistencia Indígena, Negra y Popular, the Day celebrating the Resistance against colonialism by indigenous people, blacks, and all downtrodden citizens.

Should we celebrate October 12?
Or would it be more appropriate to mark the anniversary of the start of the invasion of the Americas as an opportunity to reflect on and reevaluate our present day vestiges of the European colonial and xenophobic mindset?

Freeing Your Mind helps to Free Your Body.

Photo by ia huh

09/05/2022

Labor Day and Independence Day

The connection between these two very important American holidays tends to go unnoticed.
Every individual freedom provided by our nation's independence is dependent on the possibility for each of us to earn a living wage.
Poverty level wages give no freedom of opportunity for
housing, health care, food, clothing, or security.
What is Labor Day about?
If you were a white factory worker in the 1880's you were probably dependent on a job with no contract, and you worked upwards of 60 hours a week for a paltry daily wage. Plus you were completely at the mercy of management, who could deny work to anyone and everyone at any time for any reason.
If you were a person of color, you were dependent on conditions
that were even more insecure.
To bring attention to these unfair working conditions, labor organizers began coordinating public events in 1882. As a result of continuing efforts working conditions slowly made improvements, Labor Day became a holiday in some 30 states, and it was finally made a Federal holiday in 1894.
Labor Day is a symbol of the fight for freedom by American workers.
It is a fight which continues to this day, 140 years later.
This country's fight for Independence was not simply to be independent of another country. It was a page in the fight for the universal freedom which comes from equality of human rights. When we celebrate the achievements represented by Independence Day and Labor Day we must remain aware that our freedoms are fragile. Ultimately our individual freedom is dependent on the freedom of all. To have any hope of maintaining the freedoms we have we must fight everywhere for freedom for everyone.

Photo from the Austrian National Library.

08/14/2022

Moshe Feldenkrais on Body and Mind

Try not to think in words.
Formulation in words inhibits the brain
from thinking for itself.

When thinking in words we think in familiar patterns,
in ways we have thought, read, heard, or said sometime before.
Instead, learn to think in patterns of relationships,
in sensations divorced from the fixity of words.
This will allow you to find the ability to make new patterns
and to carry those patterns of relationship
from one discipline to another.
In short, you think personally, originally.

Learning that allows the growth of patterns
and their functioning in relationships
is learning that leads to new and different ways of doing things.
This kind of learning increases your ability to choose more freely.

This is the kind of learning produced by Awareness Through Movement lessons, where the accent is put not on which movement you deal with
but on how you direct yourself doing it.

Every emotion is in one way or another linked in the brain's cortex
with some muscular configuration and attitude.

An emotional state always appears together with
the attitude of the body with which it was conditioned.
Therefore, when a body habit has been resolved,
an emotional complex is resolved simultaneously.

The body and mind are never independent;
such subdivision is entirely arbitrary and unfounded.
They are not just parts somehow related to each other,
but an inseparable whole.

The feeling of being alive
relates to the awareness of growing to be oneself.


Quotations by Moshe Feldenkrais
Photo by Casey Horner

07/21/2022

Neurodiversity vs Neurodivergence

One of the brain's functions is processing information.
Folks considered neurodivergent process information differently than folks considered neurotypical. Often a neurodivergent processes some information in a way which makes them challenged by society and processes other information in a remarkable way which make them uniquely valuable to society.

Steve Silberman, author of NeuroTribes, feels the diversity of human cognition hidden behind diagnostic labels like Autism, ADHD, Sensory Processing Disorder, Dyslexia, and others has played an important role in the functioning and flourishing of human society for millennia.

Jenara Nerenberg, author of Divergent Mind, celebrates the burgeoning neurodiversity movement as recognizing and celebrating the diversity of brain makeups instead of pathologizing some as "normal" and others as "abnormal."

Research suggests that 40% of the world population falls into one of the categories identified as "neurodivergent".
Which suggests to me that the 60% called "neurotypical"
is merely the portion of the neurological spectrum whose particular diverse characteristics haven't been categorized yet. Once categorized, they'll be identified as neurodivergent, too.
And "neurodiversity" will be obsolete.

No one should have to struggle to "fit into" a "typical" world.
We can simply acknowledge the natural diversity of each of us.
Which lets everyone automatically fit into our diverse world.

Photo by Hal Gatewood

03/08/2022

Here's a link to a very interesting look at how neurological advances are reshaping our understanding of chronic pain:

By Anita Schnee, GCFP CM   Imagine body, mind, and soul in a healthy, vibrant biome, each element at home in its fitting habitat. Then imagine a biome desiccated by salts of old anguish, every green thing devoured by battalions of locusts. This is the chronic-pain biome at its worst. An injury is n...

03/07/2022

Dr. Feldenkrais and Ukraine

Moshe Feldenkrais was born in 1904 in Slavuta, a town in western Ukraine controlled by the Russian Empire. He fled the Russian pogroms as a teenager and was never able to return to an independent Ukraine.

Russia and Ukraine share roots dating back millennia, but their cultures, religious foundations, and languages separated centuries ago. Imperial Russia only began expanding into Ukraine around 1790, and until the Russian Revolution it exercised a policy of extermination of Ukrainian identity.

The USSR continued the Russian Empire's policy of extermination of Ukrainian identity. In 1991 Ukraine's independence was recognized by the international community, but the Russian government has disputed its sovereignty.

Putin wants Ukrainian land but not Ukrainian people. It's an Imperialist approach to occupation. Since the US was created with a similar approach, it's not surprising the government can't find an effective way to address Russia's attack on Ukraine.

It seems to me we have to address our own continuing history of identity extermination before we'll be able understand how to address another country's.

Which will require transformation into quantum thinking, suggested by Feldenkrais' experience that his Method "leads to knowledge of oneself and to previous undiscovered resources in oneself," by Ramana Maharishi's inquiry, "Who am I?," and by Krishnamurti's assertion that we must move into a new perceptual dimension.

Are we up for it?

More next time.

Copyright© 2022 by David Rowland, all rights reserved.

Photo used with permission of the International Feldenkrais® Federation

02/22/2022

Identity Check

I've been thinking about the simplicity of Ramana Maharishi's teaching lately:

If you inquire ‘Who am I?’ the mind will return to its source.
As you practice this more and more, the power of the mind to remain at its source increases.

So I've been looking into my self identity, and I'm finding it's difficult to pin down.
Which seems to be the point.

I seem to be convinced there's an entity identified as David to whom the term "I" applies. But on exploration there only seems to be a prefabricated construct somewhere in my mind which espouses that conviction without evidence.
Like someone built a conceptual robot named David and gave it a home in my mind. Then it drew boundaries around the limits of its robot perceptions and made itself the ruler of that tiny, arbitrary kingdom.

But in "my" explorations "I" haven't found any geographic or conceptual limit to what "my" bodymind can experience. Which would make it a mistake to attach identity to that robot with its limited and therefore inaccurate perception of "me". ("Me," "my," and "I" seem to be meaningless in this context.)

What Ramana Maharishi seems to say is by having the robot David look for this elusive sense of identity, the robot will unravel and deconstruct its own artificial inner workings until identity disappears and only awareness remains. Not awareness of "me". Just awareness.

Like I said, it's difficult to pin down.

Photo by Noah Buscher

Copyright© 2022 David Rowland