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The Distracted Centipede... a Yoga Experience

by Mina Semyon

168 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #04-0754; ISBN 1-4120-2926-0; US$21.31, C$26.64, EUR17.32, £10.95

A profound and often very funny account of over thirty years' experience teaching and integrating the self-healing practices of Yoga and Mindfulness into everyday living. Essential reading for those who wish to take responsibility for their own health and well-being.

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About the Book      About the Author      Excerpts      Catalogue Information

About the Book

The Distracted Centipede is about awakening to the unified sense of your whole being — body, mind, spirit — through the practice of Yoga and Mindfulness. It is about listening and tuning in to your body, gradually realising that wholeness can only be retrieved by identifying and letting go of unnecessary holding on. If you can stop straining you might discover that inside that tense, unbalanced body there is a 'sensible body' which can be effortlessly at ease, with the energy flowing freely and the mind becoming calm. In the midst of the mental storm there is stillness where we can experience our presence.

Who is this book for?
It is for everybody, regardless of age, physical condition, sex, or religious beliefs. It is based on the common sense that our mental, physical and spiritual health depends on our being able to take on the management of our inner world . . . by entering the journey of becoming aware, letting go of our restrictive conditioning and opening our heart to love. It is never too early and never too late to start and continue!

Dr Leon Redler MD writes: "There are many books on Yoga available today which address our desire for health and fitness, lower síress levels, feeling well and looking good. This book delivers all that . . . and more. Moreover, it does so in a way that is fresh and timely, while faithful to the source roots of ancient practice.

It is profoundly relevant to how we live our ordinary, everyday lives, and opens the possibility of transforming and uplifting the ordinary to the extraordinary without special techniques and without jumping on the bandwagon of yet another and latest healing fad, regimen or guru.

There's an implicit assertion here, namely, that the ordinary is truly extraordinary and would be realised as such if only we, in the form of our habitual, distracted selves, could keep out of the way of that realisation. 'The Distracted Centipede' shows a way to find all that is needed just as we are, acknowledging our relationship to the forces at play through and around us . . . and, in the course of that, being on course for relationships of greater ease, authenticity and responsibility with others."

Igor Charkowsky - Russian water birth pioneer - writes:
"This book will have a very important influence." "It is different from other books on the subject where Yoga postures are practised with a physical emphasis and without creating space for feeling the deep, subtle mechanisms that lie behind the postures and movements."

Andrew Feldmár, R. Psych., writes: When Mina sent me the manuscript of her book 'The Distracted Centipede' I was reminded that I've known the authorless ditty, from which she borrowed, for many years, but until now I didn't realise its essential message:

The centipede was happy quite
Until a toad in fun
Said, 'Pray, which leg comes after which?'
This raised her mind to such a pitch
She lay distracted in a ditch
Considering how to run.

Every midwife, obstetrician, birth coach, all the experts who want to help women to give birth might do well to meditate upon these few lines of wise poetry. The martial arts, yoga, meditation, music, dance, and singing - all teach, transmit the same wisdom: GET OUT OF THE WAY!

Life knows how to bring new life into this world. Life knows how to protect itself. Life lives us. We are not surviving because of our cleverness and heroic efforts; we survive in spite of them. Faith is surrender to that which lives us. Life knows how to walk the centipede; the self-conscious centipede doesn't. Toad's question became a debilitating distraction.

Andrew Feldmár, R. Psych., is a psychologist practising psychotherapy in Vancouver, Canada, for the past 35 years now. He studied and worked with R. D. Laing from 1974 until Laing's death in 1989. He writes and teaches internationally.

Mina Semyon writes:
This book is about how I got to 'here' from 'there'. 'Here' is where I got smart — figured out that the present moment is the only place where guilt and blame, pride and shame, fear and hate have no breeding ground. 'There' is where I lay, 'Distracted in a ditch, considering how to live', in the grip of early painful memories - from which there seemed to be no escape.

A word of warning: Practice of Yoga and mindfulness might open your heart to spontaneous joy and compassion and put a smile on your face.

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About the Author

Mina Semyon was born in 1938 in the Soviet Union. She has been teaching Yoga for over 30 years. She was a student and friend of R.D.Laing, psychiatrist, poet, musician and spiritual teacher who initiated her on the path of awareness through the practice of Yoga and mindfulness. This, combined with an insistence of finding her authentic voice through the study of singing and sound with Anthea Parashchak, has led to her unique way of teaching.

In the process of transcending her harsh Russian childhood, what has evolved is a way of practising and teaching which incorporates our whole being - emotional, mental, physical and spiritual, in daily life and relationships. Her aim is to liberate the mind and body of everything that obscures the spirit of joy, love, compassion, spontaneity and playfulness.

Mina appeared in the BBC television series and book Every Body Knows and the Yoga book Body Life written by her ex-husband Arthur Balaskas. She is currently working on her life story You Don't Have to Die of Disappointment and has recently been appointed to the faculty of the International R D Laing Institute based in Switzerland.

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Excerpts

From: Chapter One: "Distracted in a Ditch - How I came across Yoga"

We begin to glimpse the heart of the matter,
our childlike nature, kind, loving, and sensitive,
curious, trusting and playful.
We become true spiritual companions for each other.

I was introduced to Yoga by R.D. Laing, the Scottish existentialist psychiatrist, poet, musician, and spiritual teacher while on holiday in Italy with our families in 1970. We stayed in a beautiful Palazzo by the sea with a private beach, ripe figs in the garden, a cook and a maid and I was feeling tired all the time.
I asked Ronnie, 'Why am I tired all the time?'
He replied, 'Have you heard of Yoga?'
I said, 'I heard about Yoga from a friend of Arthur's, (my husband at the time) who said that after practising Yoga for a year she started talking to trees and it made her grow taller.'
Ronnie suggested that we gather in the garden the following morning and he'd show us some Yoga postures. Early the next morning I went for a swim and a run on the beach to be in good shape for my first Yoga lesson. When I came back Ronnie was standing in the kitchen eating yesterday's ratatouille from the fridge and talking to Arthur about the Buddha's Four Noble Truths:

The truth of suffering
The origin of suffering: constant craving
The cessation of suffering: stopping the mind spinning
The path leading to the cessation of suffering: The Noble Eightfold Path

. . . . That day in the garden of the Palazzo is a very memorable day for me and one of the luckiest of my life. It was the first time I heard of the Buddha's teachings and yet Ronnie's words resonated with something deep within. I took to Yoga like a duck to water. I felt Yoga was going to save me in the nick of time. I found some postures easy and was inordinately proud of myself. Other postures I couldn't do and felt dejected. The only swinging I did in the 'swinging sixties' was from pride to dejection and back again. Like the guy on death row who was proud that his cell was bigger than the other guy's.

From Chapter 11 "Yoga and Sex" (Page 49 )

I think the essence of good sex is a capacity for genuine deep stillness and free energy flow, with a clear mind, an open trusting heart and harmonious breathing together, to allow for the sexual energy dance to happen.
I, personally, don't want to be less transformed by lovemaking than by standing on my head, otherwise I'll prefer to stand on my head for a half an hour, feeling connected and in one piece. I want lovemaking to enhance my connectedness not disturb it.
It is worth reminding ourselves that in lovemaking we may open to the earliest feelings of intimacy and the earliest hurt. Can I trust you with my heart? Can you trust me with your heart? It is a constant process of letting go of what stands in the way of being open and loving. If both partners are open to explore this journey then there is hope for true intimacy, for God's sake.

From Chapter 15 - "Awareness in Everyday Life" (Page 72)

I believe that our task on this earth is to become loving, open and joyful human beings capable of celebrating life. For that we need to clear our physical and emotional channels of accumulated dross, outmoded beliefs and cliché expectations.
'But we know that the leopard doesn't change its spots.' This statement is an illustration of the clichés we carry inside us, without realising how trapped we are by them. People don't change because it takes courage and humility to accept ourselves as we are, which is the starting point.

When we acknowledge and accept our conditioned emotional
patterns,
even accept the resistance to accept them,
we come into the spaciousness of the present moment.
We become tougher and not so precious and touchy about our
fragile egos that can't take a drop of truth without falling
apart or becoming aggressively defensive.

'The hardest person to wake up is the one who thinks he's already
awake.'
Mahatma Ghandi

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Catalogue Information

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