| I was thumbing through an old copy of Peter Mathieson's The Snow Leopard the other day. It's been a while since I've read it, but I would recommend you go out and get a copy. Very smooth, easy read that still manages to be dense (in a good way—more "rich" than anything). It's about the author's time in the Himalayas searching for the elusive snow leopard. Every chapter is a day from his journal, so there are natural stopping points. Great book to pick up and read a chapter here and there. One of the passages really hit me. Observing his more experienced companion, Mathieson writes: "GS seems casual on ledges, although the telescope strapped across his rucksack, caught upon a rock, could nudge him off the edge; I can scarcely look." But then: "However, I am getting hardened; l walk lighter, stumble less, with more spring in leg and lung, keeping my center of gravity deep in the belly, and letting that center 'see.' At these times, I am free of vertigo, even in dangerous places; my feet move naturally to firm footholds, and I flow. But sometimes for a day or more, I lose this feel of things, my breath is high up in my chest, and then I cling to the cliff edge as to life itself." He's leading with the gut. Gut instinct, gut feeling, gut as center of gravity. The gut as second brain, as perhaps the "primary" brain, the instinctual intuitive part of our whole-body brain. The gut or belly can't "see" in the conventional sense, but it can see. If you stay too much in your head, behind your eyes, your vantage point is skewed. Instead, let the body take over and use incoming data from the eyes as insight and advice. Let it flow. Things go wrong when he stops breathing easily and deeply through the diaphragm—the belly once again—and takes shorter, shallower breaths in the chest. Panic sets in, and panic is what kills you. He goes on: "And of course it is this clinging, the tightness of panic, that gets people killed: 'to clutch,' in ancient Egyptian, 'to clutch the mountain,' in Assyrian, were euphemisms that signified 'to die.'" To cling is to collapse into desperation. It's the last resort you have when your intuition and flow and feeling have failed. You cling, you lose your sense of gut instinct and body feeling and become a pair of hands grasping at whatever you can reach. Think on these passages. Think about how you can move through life with more belly awareness, more gut intuition. Not spurning the eyes, but not letting what you see and what you THINK could go wrong control you. And go read The Snow Leopard. When do you flow most through life? When do you feel like you're clinging? Let me know what you think in the comment section of New and Noteworthy. Take care, everyone. | 
