The reality of commitment and consistency and why most people give up

This photo is from about ten years ago (and my hair is dyed so no, I didn’t go silver that fast).

A lot has happened since I took that photo (I mean… I’m taking it from a mirror which tells you a lot has happened even just with phones… ha).

A lot has happened since I took that photo. That, my beautiful nutbags, is a huge understatement.

Even if we only look at the “pandemic years,” so much has happened.

Above it all, the thing that has stunned me the most and has had the biggest impact on this body and mind:

Deep depression like I thought I would never see again came back, and yet again, ate all of the things that are my healing.

Sure, I continued to teach movement but I wasn’t wholeheartedly engaged. I was mostly going through the motions, which you may or may not have noticed. My depression was obvious in general, but I think when I was teaching, you could almost believe I was okay.

But I wasn’t creating any new methods. I wasn’t reading about movement or watching videos or seeking new movement. Big red flag.

I wasn’t listening to my favorite music when I wasn’t teaching. Big red flag.

And biggest red flag ever: I was only dancing when I was teaching and that wasn’t a lot.

Re-enter commitment

I am not sure exactly when it happened, but at some point in the last year or so, that depression started to lift. I think it had a lot to do with returning to playing tennis.

Which makes sense. The first time I seriously kicked depression out the door was when I started to dance again at the age of 40.

It seems I need some sort of return — specifically (and totally unsurprisingly) — to something physical that I have loved in the past.

I got obsessed with tennis. OBSESSED.

And it broke something open inside of me: my body was relearning commitment.

And finally consistency

But tennis is only during the good weather. (Alas, it’s too expensive around here to belong to a club.)

So I waited for the season to start again and started pretty much from scratch at rebuilding my skills.

But my obsession with tennis eventually led to consistency.

I realized I needed to be doing something more tennis-like (as in INTENSE CARDIO and lots of fast twitch muscle stuff) during the bad weather months, which made me do something I did not want to do: join some sort of gym.

I did this thinking that I would quit once tennis season started because I was only doing it to stay ready for tennis, right?

But surprise! I found the thing that created the consistency on top of the commitment. I found the thing that I am willing to get up early for, that I am willing to push myself into discomfort for, that I will not stop now that it’s summer.

Finding Orange Theory was a literal life saver (if you understand how life threatening serious depression can be).

And not because of the Orange Theory workouts. Not at all.

Finding it was a lifesaver because it supports me to do the things that are my life saving medicines.

Not only am I already, I think, showing signs of being a better tennis player this summer than last (and we’ve only played a handful of times so far), but it’s impacting my dance. It’s given me my strong legs back and my balance and of course my stamina.

And it’s only going to get better.

But here’s what I really want to say to you:

Commitment and Consistency for the Win

It takes time.

I don’t think I’ll really start to see the depths of change I want to see for another few months, and I don’t think I’ll be back to the strength and agility I had in that photo for probably a year.

And this is where most humans fail: once they don’t see the change they want within a short period, they quit. And then they blame whatever they were doing but it’s really the lack of commitment and consistency.

This is a long game, folks. As in, for the rest of your life.

Settle into it. Give into it. It’s the only way.

Intro to Kundalini Workshop

This workshop will take place in 3D in Columbus, OH on Sunday, April 21, from 5 to 7 PM. But I’ll then be taking the material online so keep your eyes open for that. (And this workshop is great whether you’re just starting with Kundalini or want a refresher/deep dive into it.)

If you’re able to be in Columbus, go here to register.

I thought now would be a great time to re-tell the story of me and Kundalini and give you an idea of what a class with me can look like:

The Story of a Magpie Mind

My mind is a magpie, always collecting shiny bits wherever it comes across them, never settling, adding forever to its already full nest. My magpie mind never thinks, “Oh! that’s the perfect amount of shiny! I am done!” Nope. My magpie mind is always in flight, searching.

I used to think that was a bad thing and maybe some of you thought the same or were taught the same about your own magpie minds.

I used to think that was a bad thing, until I realized it’s simply… NOT.

My magpie mind is fucking delightful and my students are better off for it.

I never tire of learning. I never tire of experimenting. I never tire of pushing myself just that little bit more.

Because of this, I’ve always had a hard time describing the yoga I teach. It’s steeped in so many lineages and I pull in from so many teachers and sources that it would be impossible to list them all in one place.

But underneath it all, there is Kundalini yoga — just with a whole bunch of Christine sprinkles, which change from month to month and year to year.

Kundalini Saved My Life and Prepared Me to Return to Dance AND LIFE

That’s not an exaggeration. I was deep into a severe and life threatening and long term cycle of depression and anxiety. My willingness (and I have no idea where that came from!) to try yoga and then to try Kundalini did something magical to my brain.

The focus on breath work and the quick movements of Kundalini — rather than the stationary poses of more “mainstream” yoga — washed my brain in serious amounts of happy chemicals, and yes, that would go away mere hours after practice but it was enough that it stayed in my memory and made me go back again and again. The longer I practiced — over months and years — the longer the effects lasted after each session.

Eventually this all led to my healing experience on the dance floor at a friend’s wedding when I was 40. I would never ever have stepped onto that dance floor again if I hadn’t been prepared by my Kundalini practice.

So what the HECK is Kundalini with Christine?!

In my late 20s, I started where most people start with yoga or thereabouts: Iyengar yoga. From there, though, I quickly dove into many other lineages: Integral, Vinyasa, Kripalu, Ashtanga, Yin, Restorative…and more.

I’ve also taken time to really study breath (pranayama); I have resisted but finally gotten a handle on meditation practices; I am obsessed with mudras; I am equally as obsessed with chanting. (I’m really a natural Bhakti Yogi, if that means anything to you. If not, it means I’m naturally devotional.)

I’ve studied yoga philosophy with one of the most renowned teachers in the West.

And more recently, within the last few years, I’ve dived deeply into Tantra studies, the foundation of Kundalini Yoga.

I’m also certified from Kripalu in YogaDance and YogaDance for Special populations (people with Parkinson’s, etc., and those recovering from cancer). This form is very influential to all of my movement work.

To get a rounder sense of me: everything I have ever studied relative to movement informs my approach to Kundalini.

This includes but is not limited to: Japanese Butoh, modern dance, somatic therapies, trauma and body based psychotherapies, biomechanics, and I’m probably forgetting lots.

So WHAT Does a Class LOOK LIKE?!

That’s a great question because it’s always evolving, but you can bet on a few things happening every time:

First, there’s always a TON of circular movements because that’s what the body loves.

Second, there will be repetitive and very natural feeling movements blended into and with things you more easily recognize as “yoga,” BUT there will always be a way to find all of it in YOUR OWN BODY. I’m extra good at that. ((grin))

Third, there’s a major connection to the breath and a variety of breaths in a way that most of my students say they never experienced before. The breath is actually more important than the movements.

Fourth, you won’t feel like you’ve “exercised” like some yoga classes (though that’s not always bad); instead you’ll feel like you’ve participated in a ritual of healing and joy.

Three basic somatic techniques for nervous system regulation

In a Peony Somatic Dance class, as many of you know from direct experience, the “somatic” aspects are deeply embedded. They’re in the very foundations of the practice. You could say that somatic principles and theories are the very DNA of the work.

You could break down a Peony class into dozens upon dozens of somatic specific techniques, all meant to increase our capacity to hold the reality of our life internally and express that through the body externally.

But there are definitely some basic somatic “exercises” (for lack of a better word) that I include in a variety of ways in almost every class.

And really? We should be doing all three of these every day for even just a minute or so.

Spinning

First up, spinning. Which children are constantly doing. For the pure joy of it. When was the last time you twirled?

If your first response to me is to say that it makes you too dizzy, then you really need it.

You can start by simply walking around ever-tightening circles. You can then progress to super slow spinning and over time increase your speed.

Jumping

This one is always a favorite. And it has so many benefits that the two slides listing the benefits don’t even cover it all.

Again, you don’t have to be able to jump high, and at first, you don’t even have to totally leave the floor.

Shaking

We often combine the shaking with the jumping and together they are exponentially more beneficial in terms of their efficacy to release pent up anger, frustration, fear, and sadness. Add in some yelling and you’e got a potent prescription for freedom

I’ll be covering more and more of these “basics,” and please, feel free to snag the images and share and use them.

(And be sure to follow my Instagram. It’s where I put this stuff first.)

Bodies change...

These two photos are about 9 years apart. The black and white photo is the older photo and the newer photo was taken in the studio where I teach here in Columbus, OH.

I’m 46 in the first one and 55 in the second. Though this has nothing to do with age.

It has to do with time passing, yes, but it has to do with life experiences over that time passing.

During that first photo, I was in the best fitness of my life, and I was on fire with ideas and passion and energy. I hadn’t met Craig; the pandemic hadn’t happened; so much hadn’t happened. And I was in a “flying high” sort of phase of my life. I felt completely healed of any and all mental health challenges. (Yes, I was a bit naive.)

Come to the second photo and those nine years between the two feel more like a few decades. And I’m betting that most of you reading this don’t just understand that but feel much the same about this chunk of time.

My point here is that our physical bodies end up reflecting the life we’ve lived through and our internal landscape. (Stick with me.)

It’s basic cause and effect.

There were dozens of reasons, but over those nine years, I slowly stopped moving as much. I slowly stopped engaging with life in the same joyful way.

It was so very slow… like a titration of making me and my life smaller and smaller. Again, there were a lot of external reasons for this, but those reasons then fed into old internal crap, and eventually the existential depression monster took hold and would not let go.

Until maybe a year ago. And I think it was almost harder this time through than previous times because I felt such a profound sense of loss this time. Before my depression had developed in micro-bits over decades and it felt like that was simply the water I swam in.

When I got healthy, I didn’t realize what healthy could be like. It was so new to me. To have that suddenly snatched away again felt like a cruel joke.

And so with that existential depression, my already diminishing movement practices got pretty much gobbled up. I got to the point where the only time I was moving was when I was teaching. And it was easy when I was teaching to not move in new ways because I was paying attention to others.

You can see the spiral here.

And it’s really the same for most humans. Except that we don’t look to see the connections.

We blame our bad back on our age and not on the fact that we stopped moving very much decades before.

We blame our bad relationship on the other person and not on the fact that we also disengaged and stopped trying.

We hate seeing cause and effect because it leads to responsibility.

Eventually, our bodies will change, and that change will reflect so many little choices along so many years and so many unexpressed and unprocessed griefs and traumas and so many experiences that are uncountable.

The point is to notice and to understand that bodies change is not just a negative statement.

Bodies change. When I took that new photo of myself, it kinda startled me that to make that shape was kinda... difficult. It took a bunch of tries. It was frustrating. I expected to just replicate it the first try and with ease because it’s my damn body.

But bodies change. And I had not really noticed. Even though that’s my work in this world.

Bodies change. And it's often because we've changed how we are in these bodies.

Bodies can change again.

So I'll be adding a LOT more floor play into my movement work. It was a huge part of my practice back then but it hasn't been as much lately so I can't be surprised that my body has changed in this particular way.

When I started to dance again at the age of 40, my body and mind both changed COMPLETELY in nine months. I’m gonna do that again. Starting right now.

Watch me.

I started just in time...

From a recent class here in Columbus, OH.

I've added two classes at OrangeTheory to my week. This is on top of the six I teach and then the other stuff I do... like Pilates, walking, some weights, yoga, more dance, and soon tennis (as I write this here, I think we’ll be playing tennis this afternoon!!!).

These two classes though are teaching me something really important that I need people to hear but first a little context…

All through my 40s, I just kept getting physically fitter. AND mentally fitter because you CANNOT take those two things apart. Period.

Pay attention to this sentence: I was more fit in the decade of my 40s than in my entire life.

I got back all my youthful mobility and then some and got stronger than ever and more creative in my body than ever.

Then the pandemic hit, and like so many of us, I've come out the other side in a different body. One that's not quite so active. One that just feels different. (I’m not talking aesthetics here.)

After two frozen shoulders, that got even worse. I lost a lot of strength during those two years that I was trying to deal with that and then recovering.

I'm 55.

So... I start to go to Orange Theory and it hit me yesterday after class as I was walking home:

I STARTED JUST IN TIME.

I was a little startled by this thought, to say the least, but I knew in my bones that it was not an exaggeration.

Because I have lost more than I had even noticed. There are weird little things with my balance (which I will VERY QUICKLY get back). Little things in my ankles and my lateral hips (even though I do work on those things but apparently not enough).

I could EASILY blame this stuff on aging. That's what most people do.

But I KNOW that it's about UNDERUSE — because of all I just said about the pandemic and frozen shoulders.

The longer we wait, the harder it will be, peeps.

At any point, you can start to challenge that body and it WILL CHANGE.

I know this from watching elder dancers in their 70s and 80s suddenly being able to squat and come back up without touching anything. (With just my dance processes added to their lives.)

But at some point, you MUST start.

And start right where you are with no judgment.

What kind of aging do you want to have?

I'm not talking about things we can't control like illness and seriosus injury.

BUT there is SO MUCH we CAN control and when we don't take responsibility for that, it's a shame.

Again, what kind of aging do you want?

One of constant pain body and ever diminishing mobility and playfulness?

That's what our culture currently tells us is waiting for us all, but that's bullshit.

We CAN have vibrant elder years.

BUT NOW IS THE TIME TO DECIDE.

Do a wide range of things. Make sure you're including things that are uber challenging. Make sure you include PLAY.

New Free Video & Last Classes of the Year

We’re going to be making a total of six of these videos (we being me and Linda Soto and Jillian Hynes) to show the fundamentals of a Peony Methods class on 3 different humans.

Here’s part two, showing some examples of possible floor (or chair) warmups. If you’ve been with me long, you know there are a bajillion things that we might possibly do for that segment of the class, but these are pretty standard.

And for the last class session of the year, I’ll be running the usual classes for four weeks. One week on, one week off for Thanksgiving week, three weeks on, and then a three week break over the remaining holidays.

GO HERE to looksie and register.

I would love to see you! Please always know that if these classes are out of reach financially that I will work with you to get you in. Just write to me and we’ll figure out what would be doable. I don’t need to know anything more.

Update on slow jogging experiment

I came here to write an update on my slow jogging experiment and I’ve come to realize that I’ve not written about this here. I think I only really shared about it in the JoyBody Sanctuary on Facebook.*

(Side note: Are you in that group? because it’s seriously full of goodness and humans being so beautifully loving and supportive of one another through some very difficult stuff. If you’re not in there, just ask me to add you.)

*EDIT: I did write about it. I just couldn’t find it. Here.

So now I’ll back up…

Slow jogging is a very specific sort of jogging that has come out of Japan, and there’s a ton of research that shows how much better it is for you than other forms of jogging and running because biomechanically speaking it’s more like walking.

You can learn about the form by watching this video. And here’s a post about the benefits with links to studies.

So I started to slow jog on my treadmill last fall at some point. I’ve always hated running. HATE IT WITH A PASSION actually.

Some of you might remember that I spent a summer running until I could run a full mile non stop and then I stopped the experiment because I still hated it. Also remember, I can go to a workshop and dance for 8 hours a day no problem. This isn’t about fitness of the body but just a hatred for the form.

When I started to slow jog last fall, I had also just started to play tennis again, and the main thing I noticed that I was lacking in tennis was “light feet” and quickness on the court.

Slow jogging changed that within a couple of weeks. ((SNAP!))

At first I would just slow jog for five minutes. And it was hard, for sure. Because I’m just not a natural.

But here’s why I came to update:

I’ve not been really consistent with this practice. I can go a week without doing even one minute, but lately I’ve been doing it a bit more because of my Apple Watch. I aimed for ten minutes (and I would watch a dance documentary to keep my mind occupied).

Quite suddenly… I found myself EASILY doing 15 minutes. And now? I just had a 26 minute slow jog and my heart and lungs were great for the entire time. I sweat a lot but I’m not out of breath. (PERFECT zone.)

And? Though I’m still doing the form, my pace has also gotten a lot faster.

Again, without a lot of serious commitment to the practice.

My point? As I turn 55 in November, my message remains the same: your body is miraculous and is capable of much more than you can even imagine. No matter where you’re starting from.

The Unique Movement of Different Bodies

So that you can see the work of the Peony Method on DIFFERENT BODIES, I'm starting a series with long time students, Jillian Hynes and Linda L Soto where we'll demo the fundamental parts of a Peony Method class, starting, of course with the always present seated circles. (For a breakdown of the basics of this movement, see this previous video.)

The first person who watched this new video had a lot of things to say:

1. She thought she would hate hearing the breath and she LOVED it. So volume up. She said she was so used to hearing MY breath that she didn't realize how different it could be and now she feels like "oh! I could do this!"

2. She was so used to seeing ME do the movements that she wasn't sure they were for her, but after watching how different they look in different bodies, again, she feels like "oh! I could do this!"

Which is the whole point of this type of demo... to underscore what I am constantly saying: THIS IS DIFFERENT FOR EVERY SINGLE BODY and DIFFERENT IS BEAUTIFUL.

I am demoing in a chair to remind people that that too is possible.

Go here to see what else is on my YouTube channel, and don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe to help get this work to more people who need it.