Welcome to LifeDancing - Mastering Life's Movement

Wake EVERY Day and Know What You Can Do Today to Create a Life of Joy, Integral Well-Being and Success

LifeDancing teaches you how to live authentically so you can tap into that deep place of wisdom and peace residing within you, any time, any place.

The concept of the LifeDancing process came from my background in dance, design, psychotherapy, and more recently brain science, positive psychology and mindfulness meditation.

When I entered the field of psychotherapy I was convinced that every person held within themselves a seed of self that only needed to be nurtured and supported until it grew into a complete expression of their essence. As I went through the training that was based in the medical model, I discovered that medicine actually viewed people as disconnected parts that became dys-functional and required a therapist to identify and diagnose and then treat.

This model never sat well on my soul, but since I was "in the business of psychotherapy," I worked with insurance companies and followed my professional associations rules to diagnose and treat using their tools, i.e., the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, DSM and treatment protocols, yet always keeping an eye on my clients "self" acknowledging their wisdom and natural seeking for health.

Now, 30 years have passed and my beliefs are being validated by science via new discoveries in brain science and the ways to apply what we are learning. The model of LifeDancing has withstood the trials of time as we now are beginning to understand just what people can do to create "Advanced Well-Being" using simple tools, guidance and support. So, the book I wrote 20 years on the Dance of Life is being updated to include these new findings.

Using the LifeDancing model you will be able to deal with any change, obstacle or problem that life presents you and continue your dance with a genuine smile on your face.

The book, LifeDancing - Mastering Life's Movement has been 30 years in the making. It grew out of of my experiences as a psychotherapist and a professional personal and business coach facilitating and watching clients grow and change. The original book was so big, my editor suggested it be broken down into three books to make it easier to manage. Now we have:

LifeDancing - Mastering Life's Movement - the book.
LifeDance Master Class - exercises and assessments to deepen and master your dance of life.
LifeDancing Journal - the landing point for further exploration, personal growth and management, and daily experience.

The main book, LifeDancing, is a stand alone system that is enhanced by Masterclass and the LifeDancing Journal.

Anyone can read and follow the guidance in these three books. I believe LifeDancing is an excellent Personal Leadership tool that healthcare providers and coaches can use for themselves, as well as teach their patients and clients the LifeDancing well-being process.

I invite you to join the dance and stay tuned to this webpage as I continue to add new insights and information.

To download LifeDancing Master Class and Journal, look to the menu at the top of the page and click it. If you do not have the PDF reader you can download it for free on the Adobe website. Click HERE for the link.

Warmly

Linda

PS - Interested in being a first adopter of the LifeDancing process? We're still dealing with online and paper publishers so e.mail me to be placed on our FIRST NOTICE, mailing list. Click on E.Mail under my picture to the left and put LifeDancing in the subject line.

Every morning I remind myself how important that I go to my meditation space and put my tushie on the pillow. Here's yet another reason why it's a GREAT idea.

The University of Wisconsin issued the following news release: Gene Expression Changes With Meditation

With evidence growing that meditation can have beneficial health effects, scientists have sought to understand how these practices physically affect the body.

A new study by researchers in Wisconsin, Spain, and France reports the first evidence of specific molecular changes in the body following a period of mindfulness meditation.

The study investigated the effects of a day of intensive mindfulness practice in a group of experienced meditators, compared to a group of untrained control subjects who engaged in quiet non-meditative activities.

After eight hours of mindfulness practice, the meditators showed a range of genetic and molecular differences, including altered levels of gene-regulating machinery and reduced levels of pro-inflammatory genes, which in turn correlated with faster physical recovery from a stressful situation.

"To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that shows rapid alterations in gene expression within subjects associated with mindfulness meditation practice," says study author Richard J. Davidson, founder of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds and the William James and Vilas Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

"Most interestingly, the changes were observed in genes that are the current targets of anti-inflammatory and analgesic drugs," says Perla Kaliman, first author of the article and a researcher at the Institute of Biomedical Research of Barcelona, Spain (IIBB-CSIC-IDIBAPS), where the molecular analyses were conducted.

The study was published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology.

Mindfulness-based trainings have shown beneficial effects on inflammatory disorders in prior clinical studies and are endorsed by the American Heart Association as a preventative intervention.

The new results provide a possible biological mechanism for therapeutic effects.

The results show a down-regulation of genes that have been implicated in inflammation.

The affected genes include the pro-inflammatory genes RIPK2 and COX2 as well as several histone deacetylase (HDAC) genes, which regulate the activity of other genes epigenetically by removing a type of chemical tag.

What's more, the extent to which some of those genes were downregulated was associated with faster cortisol recovery to a social stress test involving an impromptu speech and tasks requiring mental calculations performed in front of an audience and video camera.

Perhaps surprisingly, the researchers say, there was no difference in the tested genes between the two groups of people at the start of the study.

The observed effects were seen only in the meditators following mindfulness practice.

In addition, several other DNA-modifying genes showed no differences between groups, suggesting that the mindfulness practice specifically affected certain regulatory pathways.

However, it is important to note that the study was not designed to distinguish any effects of long-term meditation training from those of a single day of practice.

Instead, the key result is that meditators experienced genetic changes following mindfulness practice that were not seen in the non-meditating group after other quiet activities -- an outcome providing proof of principle that mindfulness practice can lead to epigenetic alterations of the genome.

Previous studies in rodents and in people have shown dynamic epigenetic responses to physical stimuli such as stress, diet, or exercise within just a few hours.

"Our genes are quite dynamic in their expression and these results suggest that the calmness of our mind can actually have a potential influence on their expression," Davidson says.

"The regulation of HDACs and inflammatory pathways may represent some of the mechanisms underlying the therapeutic potential of mindfulness-based interventions," Kaliman says.

"Our findings set the foundation for future studies to further assess meditation strategies for the treatment of chronic inflammatory conditions."

Study funding came from National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (grant number P01-AT004952) and grants from the Fetzer Institute, the John Templeton Foundation, and an anonymous donor to Davidson.

The study was conducted at the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the UW-Madison Waisman Center.

This information was gathered by Ken Pope