"Calm down" as a weapon and new Kundalini Yoga location

First, I’ll be teaching a four week session of Kundalini Yoga at ABC’s of Building Better Lives located at 5934 Old French Road on Tuesdays at 5:30, starting November 3rd. I am hoping the cost is inclusive, but if you need any help with that, please just contact me.

Details to the right obviously.

Second, a piece I wrote lately is one of my favorites. You can read the whole thing over on my stack but here’s a bit of it:

The other night I had a serious meltdown. If you want to call it that.

Let’s be more honest: I had a moment (and I have many of these) where my defenses melted down. The wall of calm could not hold and the truth of my anger and grief came spilling out. It’s powerful. Sometimes it does harm because holding all of that back creates so much pressure.

I had witnessed another woman’s pressure valve not working earlier in the day, and through her symptoms, I could see her truth and the truth of so many women who have lived before us:

We hold the pain of the people who cannot face it themselves.

We hold the fear of our younger selves.

And sometimes it’s too much. It should always be too much.

It made me think of one of my ancestors who was told to never have a baby again because her depression after a stillbirth almost took her. Instead of helping her, they told her to just stop and be calm.

They couldn’t tolerate her pain so they asked her to numb it.

I think of another ancestor who lived with so many layers of grief, starting when she was only two, that it would erupt like a volcano and it eventually landed in one of her daughters who landed in a hospital because of the pain of the holding.

And that is just a couple of examples from my own line.

I think of all of the women, one after another, back and back through time.

All the genius lost to just holding and staying calm.

All the genius lost to treatment and drugs — electro shock and laudanum and white rooms and eventual walks into water with rocks in our pockets or heads laid in gas ovens in pretty little kitchens.

Local/hybrid evening Peony Somatic Dance and local evening kundalini!

As I said previously, I’ll be adding more and more classes and workshops and opportunities to move in community over the coming weeks and months.

For October

Peony Somatic Dance will be offered locally (and you’ll get the address once you register; it’s near Liberty Plaza) but you can also take it online — live or via recording as usual.

This class will run on Thursdays from 5:45 to 6:45 PM starting on October 8th for four weeks.

More details (about arrival times whether on zoom or in person and everything else) and registration here.

And starting Monday, October 5th (4:30 to 5:30 PM) and Wednesday, October 7th (5:30 to 6:45 PM) you can now take Kundalini Yoga at Studio Surrender in downtown Erie!

The studio is BEAUTIFUL and large and just perfect. It will be my usual method of synthesizing other movement and yoga work into the Kundalini along with all the usual and wonderful breath work and great playlists of course.

Back to Erie and here come local classes!

There is no way to articulate the relief I feel being back in Erie. And through a bunch of wildly wonderful serendipities, Craig and the cats and I are in a house close to the neighborhood of my old house. It feels just right in the most Goldilocks way possible.

We got back on Monday, August 31st and moving has been exhausting, but what’s been even more exhausting has been my body releasing all the stress I’ve been carrying for a couple of years now. Though I think, really, the stress started to snowball when Peony left her fur suit five years ago this September 21st. Nothing felt right after that and that loss on top of not having my inner circles of nutbags and the lake … it was all too much. My mental health suffered more and more.

I worked ahead on projects so I could have two weeks clear of writing and teaching and I’ve been sleeping deeply and long and slowly unpacking but not too much. Craig is just now finishing his job in Columbus and will be here 100% as of this weekend. (He’s been back and forth a couple of times.)

Class updates

First, I am starting a September session of my morning shorter classes the week of September 14 (this coming week) and though that’s “online,” anyone in Erie can ask to join me in my space.

Second, I will be starting to teach two in person Kundalini yoga classes at a local studio in October. I’ll be sharing more information as that gets closer.

And third, I will be offering at least one in person Peony Somatic Dance class in October also. Just to get started. More information later this month.

Over the next few months, things will continue to build so keep an eye out here and on Facebook as usual.

And don’t forget that I have a FREE Substack, Gladiola. You don’t need an app; you can see it all via your browser. If you click on that and scroll down my main page, you’ll see more about this move and my reconnection to this place. You’ll also see a note about how much this move brought up layers of unhealed C-PTSD that I was shocked by, to say the least.

I’d love to see you or hear from you!

A wee story about kundalini's relationship to my somatic dance and some new videos

I’m going to say something that is not said enough: all of this stuff is made up. All of it. Someone moved around a bit and “found” these movements. These are not handed down to us from some god or found in some ancient manuscript. (And why are older things equated with “better” anyway?) So when we find out some random man (always a man) was actually a total dork (to put it kindly) that doesn’t mean the movements aren’t still effective. (I’m speaking here to some annoying crap that came out about the people who brought kundalini to the west.)

So here we are: my love of kundalini goes way back and I think it was the door that led to me returning to dance. (And a side note for those who might know what this means: I have never been a student of “kundalini yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan.” I am not someone who likes prescribed sets that are treated as if they are magical or medical. I like to play. And I was lucky enough to find some teachers who were the same.)

My yoga journey told super fast

I started studying yoga for the same reason a lot of people did in the late 1990s: I was stressed and anxious and depressed and thought it might help. I saw it as a physical practice as most did at that time. (Eventually I dove into the spiritual and philosophical aspects and those have been more influential to my current work than any of the physical stuff.)

My very first yoga VHS (yes, I said that… VHS TAPE) was with Erich Schiffman. The one with Ali McGraw that I believe set the aesthetic for yoga videos for a long time to come. You can actually see it here.

I was in my late 20s when I started and ended up studying a wide variety of lineages, starting with Iyengar and then Integral, Kripalu, and Vinyasa, until I somehow, in my early 30s, found Kundalini yoga.

And that changed everything.

I would finish up a practice and actually feel like my mind was not the enemy. I would feel… elated. It didn’t last more than a few hours but that taste was enough to keep me going back for more.

The breathwork is so important in this practice that I tell new students, you can always stop the movement if you envision it and continue the breath practice. (Again, this is foundational to Peony Somatic Dance and shows up in every single class to this day.)

Kundalini has a dancerly feel to it and it gave me a sense of the possible joy of my body after decades of living detached from my body. It was enough that I was open to dancing when the moment finally presented itself.

These moments that save us? They can easily be missed if the ground has not been prepared.

Kundalini is a gateway or so I hope

I love kundalini for itself, but I have also always held this hope that people would do kundalini and then want more… more freedom, more self expression, more movement unique to their unique bodies.

It doesn’t always work that way and that’s okay. It’s okay to just love your kundalini practice (even though, if you take classes with me, I’ll sneak in a bunch of other stuff).

And for that reason, I’ve finally decided to offer more of this practice I love to the wider world and not just the students in my classes.

I’m starting a section on my YouTube channel that will be focused on this.

To begin, I’m sharing shorts that demonstrate the most essential kundalini movements — the ones that I think you could do every day for just a few minutes and you’d get a lot out of them.

Keep in mind, that an “advanced” kundalini practice is more about length spent practicing than some contortionist or gymnastics level postures. Though there aren’t really “postures” in this practice because it’s almost always moving.

I’m sharing one video right here but you can go to my YouTube channel and get more (and maybe subscribe so you get an alert when I post new things).

In the coming months, I’ll share breath practices and a series for each chakra. I’ll also be adding videos of chair based versions.

Volume up to hear the breath. This movement has made my core and back so strong. Just a minute of this a day will create changes.

Some recent writing

A few recent articles you might be interested in:

Playing tennis with my husband: how other men assume he humiliates me & how they... love that

This seems like it's about tennis but it's not really about tennis. Of course.

Body trauma showing up decades later in unexpected ways

My left eye vision loss and playing tennis

Why and how to ritualize your movement practice

Using meaning and devotion instead of willpower and discipline

And this recent Movement Mantra:

I mean this no matter what. I've worked with people in their 80s, post stroke patients, young people who have been through things you can't possibly imagine, and on and on... And often they are the people who understand this sentiment the most.

Stargazing and other apathy antidotes: How toddler me is teaching me about delight, curiosity, and mental health

NOTE: This was originally posted on my Substack and I will only occasionally repeat those pieces over here. PLEASE be reminded that my Substack is free and you can access it via your browser, no need to download an app. If you have a moment and could go over there and engage with some of my material, I would appreciate it.

I have this memory of myself around the age of three and a half, and I think residing inside this memory is the blueprint for my happiness. I might even assert that it’s the blueprint for any human’s happiness.

I am outside, by myself, standing under the night sky. (It was the early 1970s… kids were free range… perhaps to the extreme but it was what it was.) The full moon is sitting high over a field across the street. It sits nestled in a blanket of stars. And I am just, well, star struck. I am in awe. I can feel this feeling in my body to this day.

I am still that little girl every single time I see the moon. Maybe you feel the same. It’s like the moon is new to us every night. (Side note: If you do feel the same, you might be shocked to find out that not everyone feels like this. There are people who barely notice the moon. I know! It’s really quite terrible.)

Fast forward and I am 11 years old and I’ve saved up all of my birthday money and allowances to buy my very own telescope. Seeing the moon’s surface, I am speechless.

Fast forward again and I am in my 30s and I own the house outside of which I sit on a stoop in snow pants in the middle of winter so I can gaze up at the moon and Orion (my fave).

Now I live in a city with too much light pollution and I am sad. These things are not unrelated.

We are going to be changing our circumstances soon, but it has taken me about six years of living here to understand all of the ways I have cut myself off from my toddler self and her connection to the moon and the natural world and what that cutting off has meant for my mental health.

My mental health (and probably yours) is complicated, of course, by our current political situation, but really… I know I would be handling even that much better if this toddler self were being taken care of.

She lives off of awe and fascination and curiosity and intense noticing.

And that… that right there is the blueprint.

The disease of apathy

I’ve written about the part that despair was playing in my depression, and I am relieved that I am no longer that stuck, but I am still somewhat stuck. Like before I was in quicksand (and hello!? Where is all the quicksand Gen X was warned about!?), and now I am in some regular old mud… maybe to just below the knees.

That mud is my apathy.

I am doing things but I’m not feeling great about those things.

I am doing things but I’m doing the bare minimum.

I am doing things but I’m no longer dreaming.

And that right there is awful. My dreaming muscles used to be so strong, and they were strong enough that they led to actions and to the building of those dreams.

I used to believe in the beauty of life and in my capacity to create beautiful things.

But the last decade has been so hard. There is the political reality we’ve all been living within, but on a micro/personal level, I’ve gone into full menopause (anyone else?); I’ve lost my soul cat at the age of 9 (far too young and it was sudden and traumatic); I went through two years of living with, treating, and healing two frozen shoulders (yep, one after the other) so my overall movement got smaller and smaller, and there was more, but you get the idea.

The depression cycle was bad.

There are remnants and bad habits left behind.

The biggest remnant and bad habit is the apathy.

How I noticed it

I hadn’t really… noticed it, that is. It had/has become such a regular feeling and state in my life.

I have started to wonder, is this it? Is this how life gets as we age?

I recoil from those questions. I refuse those questions even as I find myself constructing them.

None of my old tricks were helping. None of the old routines were kicking in. Nothing I was doing was working, until I started to pay attention to someone whom I’ve known of since I was writing my Blisschick blog about 20 years ago ((what!??!)): Andrea Schroeder of Creative Dream Incubator.

As a teacher, I often find myself lacking mentors because I’m so focused on self directed learning and the creation of my classes and methods for my students.

But as they say, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

I finally signed up for one of her smaller courses, Project Miracle. I ran through the material faster than the 30 days it’s intended for but I couldn’t help it. I could feel the energy building and I was… what is that feeling???… excited!

The miracle I was working on was simply wanting more positive energy in all its forms — physical, emotional, and spiritual. That’s how deep my apathy had become — that positive energy would feel like a miracle.

How the energy showed up

It’s always in some unexpected way, right? We ask for one thing but get something that seems to be not it and then it turns out to be exactly what we needed.

For quite a while now, I’ve been trying to get movement in first thing in the morning. I got to the point where I gave up because nothing I tried was sticking. I just couldn’t. It started to feel like I was bullying myself. The resistance was that bad. Staying in bed later than I wanted to, cuddling with Begonia cat, happened every day no matter the systems I set up.

Then a little over a week ago, Andrea asked this question in one of the Project Miracle units: what are you willing to change to get what you want?

I kept reading/hearing it as: what are you willing to give up?

Finally, from deep inside me, I got a very clear and loud answer: APATHY.

I called myself out.

I don’t know what was different about this time… not exactly. I know that I had done a lot of introspective work with Project Miracle but the miracle of it all was the way it just suddenly! Poof! Change!

I got up easily the first Monday after that and walked almost four miles right off the bat.

Crazily, I immediately could feel how cemented in the change was.

The results of this “small” thing keep accumulating: my brain is clearer; I’m giggling more; I want to move more (which is more normal for me); life feels… good.

More anti-apathy work to be done

But I also know this is just the beginning and I’m working another course with Andrea to keep my mind focused in the right direction.

And I’m looking for other anti-apathy tools. So let’s start a list, shall we? I would love for you to add to it, but here’s the beginning:

• Notice a time in your life when you were young and you were so full of yourself, meaning you were who you were born to be. Notice what she loved. Notice what sparked her joy. Is there a blueprint in all of that for you?

• Start doing the things little you loved to do, no matter how ridiculous you may feel. Like me getting roller skates a few years back. I sucked but I did it anyway. (Then the frozen shoulders happened.)

• Add in little things like checking the moon every night. Put reminders on your phone if you need them. It can be hard to remember on our own when we’ve not been doing these things.

• Make lists of things you love. Do this every day. For example, I’ve restarted the practice of a joy/sanity list on my socials every morning. I used to do bliss lists long ago and people would comment how much they meant to them. This has started to happen again. (Ripples!)

• Go outside more.

• Go look at art wherever and whenever you can.

• Listen to more music. Listen to favorites from times in your life when you felt good but also find new things. (Each of those approaches does amazing and different things for your brain.)

• Ride a bike. Really. Find a hill and go down as fast as you can. (Or find another equivalent of this type of activity.)

• Sit by water as much as you can. (There’s too much research on the efficacy of this to ignore it.)

• Look around at the people in your life and do not be afraid to notice who is bringing nothing but negativity to your spaces. Clean house. (I don’t mean to sound cruel there but life is short and we know it’s important who we allow in to our inner circles.)

• Be cautious of what you’re watching and reading. Feed your brain and heart with things that grow the states of being you want to experience. I’ve written about Japanese healing fiction and now I’m into my third novel of that nature and I am more in love than I thought I would be.

• Pick something small to focus on learning. I was just reminded the other day of a summer that I spent in my backyard in Erie learning all the different sparrows. There are so many and there are often very small differences. But this seemingly tedious differentiation task made me feel connected at a new level.

For now, that’s enough from me. Like I said, I’d love to hear from you. And I’m sure I’ll be writing more about this soon.

I've been frozen since news of the rape academy broke

And of course, that news was on top of other news that was on top of other news and on and on. And I’m just talking about news about violence against women right there; my god, if we add all of the other news that is constantly hitting us, it’s no wonder we can even still breathe and move about some days.

But the rape academy news was what broke me. Last week, I could barely write even small posts, much less the longer writing I’ve been loving doing over at Substack.

After a bunch of conversations with smart and loving friends and a bunch more in my own head, I finally came to some conclusions about what was happening to me, the larger picture in terms of shared trauma, and a way out of freeze and into a more functional state.

My way out included a novel, which makes 100% sense when you know what a reader I was when I was younger and how much I hid away in books when things were scary and how much book after book saved me.

Books didn’t just give me a safe place but taught me that there were other ways of being and living in this world. They gave me a template that was worth surviving for.

And they are doing it again for me, at the age of 57.

Go here to read the piece shown in that photo. And hey! If you have a minute to spare, could you go to my page over there and maybe respond/react to some of those smaller bits of posts? I would be super grateful!

Dancing through the crazy

In case your only view of the stuff I’m up to is right here, I thought I would share a couple of things from elsewhere.

First, my Monday Movement Mantras are all over the place, like Facebook and Substack, but here was one of my favorite recent ones and the text that went with it:

This is complicated, right? It's true that trauma and grief don't "get stuck" in your body like some bit of freaking taffy in your teeth, but trauma and grief can make us (not) move in ways that shape our alignment and thus our experience of these bodies. Trauma and grief can make it extra difficult to move at all and create tightness and pain and decrease mobility and functionality.

And above all, trauma and grief, when they keep us from moving, grow into longer term mental health issues as we aren't getting the multitude of brain chemical benefits that come with joyful movement, like somatic dance, done in joyful community to music that moves us.

And second, speaking of Substack, I LOVE writing over there and would really really really love if you’d subscribe to Gladiola.

Reminder: it’s FREE and you can control how and how much you hear from me via email, etc.

If you’re looking for a non toxic space, this one is as close as it gets. I share more than articles and would love to see you there.

My most recent article is about knowing of the orange clown since my college days and an internship in Atlantic City and it dives into some recent decisions I’ve made about boundaries and abusers like him.

Here’s that specific article.

And an article I’m really proud of from a few weeks ago is about the time Bessel von der Kolk laughed at me and the Shepstein Files and how it’s all related.

Finally, I hope you’re doing everything possible to stay sane and soft in this world right now. Sending you love.