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.

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.

If you want to change your body...

First, let me say, I’ve been quiet. September is rough… it’s both the month of Peony’s birth and death, the 5th and the 21st. So I hit that first one and feel melancholy but then I know the other is coming. It’s been 2 years.

That said… onto the title…

If you want to change your body, I will not be someone to tell you that you “shouldn’t want that” or that you should “just accept what is.”

I want you to love you and sometimes loving includes change.

That said, the other day, someone brought up the idea that they want and need to lose weight for health and aging reasons (again, why is none of anyone’s business). They said they’re frustrated and don’t know where to even begin, so I wrote this in response and I feel like it’s a handy little list (that is also full and layered and nuanced and you have to find your own way through each of these):

The key to this is where you put your focus. It has to come from a place of joy and love. I've been here and I've done this and I've watched this approach work for a lot of people around me:

1. Eat what gives you energy. So really start to notice the AFTEREFFECTS of your food. Take your time with this. It's a lifelong sort of practice. Maybe even start a journal about it to track it.

2. MOVE FROM JOY ONLY. There is NO room for "exercise." You must find ways to move that make you feel one or more of the following: joyful, happy, laughy, curious, engaged, flowing, concentrated. (So for me? Tennis and dance. Though over the last 15 years I've learned how to transfer this approach to all sorts of movement but that takes time.)

3. KEEP IT SIMPLE AND SMALL. So with movement, think about little bursts throughout your day. Five to fifteen minutes of whatever, multiple times a day.

4. Figure out your motivators. For me? MENTAL HEALTH and DATA. So I love tracking and comparing and all of that (EXCEPT for calories or weight... I do NOT do those numbers ever), and I’m acutely aware that if I don’t move over an hour a day, my mental health will deteriorate. (That amount of time varies for each user. Ha)

5. Focus above all on feeling GOOD.

(And because this is my work... you know I do one on one sessions and this is the exact sort of stuff that I work with women on.)

JoyBody: The Efficacy of Tummy Circles

I’ve had this post in mind for months, but every time I go to write it, I get totally overwhelmed because I think that this topic is rather huge. Like, I could write a short book about tummy circles. They’re that important and that effective.

So today as you read this, imagine I’m just getting started, that this is the tip of the iceberg. Part of the iceberg that’s underwater is all the stories I could tell you about how students’ bodies (and minds and spirits) have changed over time doing tummy circles fairly consistently.

Fairly consistently means many times a week, but it doesn’t necessarily mean a LOT of time. I tell people that even just one minute in each direction will create changes. And that’s the truth.

(Side note: I’m having a bit of anxiety about this even now… I KNOW after I release this out into the world, that I’ll think of tons of things that I missed. AND if you, as a practitioner, think of anything I missed, please let me know!)

I’ll be looking at this from the perspective of three of your main bodies or sheaths: physical, emotional/mental, and spiritual/woo.

The Physical Stuff

To start, tummy circles do all kinds of magic to your physical body.

• Because we do the circles in sync with the breath, they make us immediately aware of how we’ve been breathing and what we need to do to improve our breathing.

• In a more abstract way but still powerfully physical, tummy circles immediately drop us into our bodies. There are days when they actually remind us that we freaking have bodies.

• They’re great for warming up as they create some heat in the torso and get the muscles ready.

• If you have tight hips, over time tummy circles will start to naturally relax and elongate all the muscles creating the tightness. This includes and also goes for your psoas muscles.

• If you’ve never met any of the muscles in your torso (i.e., your “abs”), tummy circles plus focused breath will eventually introduce you.

• They also rock when it comes to helping with healthy digesting. If you’re feeling like you’re in a phase of hyper-digestion (to put it nicely), then simply do them much slower with much more shallow breath.

• And of course, these are great for your spinal health and mobility. In Chinese medicine, they say your true age is equal to your spinal flexibility and strength.

The Emotional/Mental Stuff

How the heck do tummy circles affect our mind and feelings? Well…

• Doing this repetitive movement with the breath quickly clears the mind. Or helps us to notice how messy it actually is up there.

• They always put us in touch with what we’re feeling. This part is extra powerful when we are first starting to do them and when we’re going through something extra challenging and have to do a bit of compartmentalizing to get through our days.

• Tummy circles are a great and gentle emotional release valve.

• They bring us right into the now. This is a big part of their magicks.

The Spiritual/Woo Stuff

Tummy circles are simultaneously working on three energy centers/chakras. Well, more like four or… all of them. ((ha))

• First chakra: of course, tummy circles ground us. Connecting us to the energy of earth and self (and when done with others, kinda plugging us into the circle, if you will).

• Second charka: the motion of the tummy circles and the breath are like water, connecting us to our inherent creativity and stirring it up. (I often get ideas during tummy circles.)

• Third chakra: when done correctly, they stoke our inner fire… the fire of will and the fire into which we can throw whatever we no longer need. (You can even imagine throwing crap into that fire as you do these.)

• Fourth chakra: they start to generate energy upward into the heart center.

• Fiftth chakra: audible breath and the motion continue to pull the energy up and into our throats.

• Sixth charka: doing tummy circles with the eyes closed, then allows the energy to be pulled up into our third eye area, stimulating the pituitary and pineal glads because…

• Seventh chakra: finally the energy reaches our crown, driving upward and connecting us to all that is before finally dipping back down into the ground and starting all over again.

The energy of the tummy circles, then, creates a multitude of differently planed spirals. You can visualize yourself sitting in the center of all of that as it emanates out from you in every direction and then gets fed back into you.

Like I said, powerful stuff.

And they are no less powerful if you do them in a chair. Over time, I would encourage you to slowly work your way toward the floor but in the meantime, the chair version is just as good.

The idea, as always, is to do old things in new ways… finding little bits of change to experiment with and to observe.

If you’re not seeing the videos in your email, here is the first and the second.

JoyList: Interesting research and other schtuff

I have a bunch of tabs open with research so here we go…

FIRST I will start with a request: any time you come across any kind of research or anything interesting about the body and movement, can you please email me a link? THANK YOU!

They’ve created vibrating haptic suits for deaf people to experience music on a new level, but I also want to try these! How amazing.

You know how I feel about the word exercise, but this article is certainly worth a read. Replace “exercise” with movement or play, and I think it makes the findings even more DUH. And I sure love the name they’ve given myokines — “hope molecules.” Perfect.

This study shows even more clearly that muscle weakness as we age is associated with all cause mortality. And they observed 1200 individuals over an 8 to 10 year period.

Remember that to get really strong you don’t need weights. You just need to use your own body weight really well, considering alignment, mobility, and chageability of task. (Which is a lot of what floor work is about in Peony Method classes.)

And this study looked at 80,000 people (yep… 80,000) and it shows that strength training is more effective than cardio in terms of cancer prevention.

If you’re not yet clear on this, the new Barbie film is not just some fluff piece but rather a strong feminist film. So maybe, if you’re thinking NAH…, consider going. In the meantime, the music lists are super fun. Here’s one.

An 11 minute butoh video that is recent. I think if you just jump around in this randomly, you’ll come upon some idea to work with in your own body.

This article about the neuroscience of dance is filled with links to other studies. This is a field that is not new to me and my students, but it’s finally getting the serious research it deserves.

Not Joy: a brief time at the hospital

Sunday morning I woke up feeling perfectly normal. I was lying in bed with Begonia and my phone and just lazing, when suddenly I was in more pain than I’ve ever experienced in my life. Eventually, we ended up at the ER. Eventually, I got serious pain meds, and eventually, we learned it was a kidney stone. They kept me over night for pain management (because it was that bad). By that evening, though, it was subsiding, and by the next morning’s 2nd CT, they could see it had shrunk a bit, so now I’m at home with some meds and basically waiting for this to be done.

Spending 30 hours in the hospital was not something I saw coming. And I’m still reeling a bit from how FAST something like that can happen. You know it intellectually and maybe you’ve experienced it via a loved one, but until it happens in your own body, it’s still very… abstract.

I’m thinking a lot about people who have to spend longer in the hospital; I’m thinking about people who are constantly battling a day to day chronic disease or illness that includes severe pain, which means exhaustion; I’m thinking about these bodies and how very fragile we all really are.

I wanted to share some things I observed at the hospital about medical care and myself:

Firstly, we often only hear about how horrible medical care is now. How there are too few good nurses and docs. But the hospital I went to was amazing, and I had a string of nurses and doctors that were compassionate, listened well, and just made me feel really well taken care of.

Secondly, something I noticed about myself… even in the midst of having extreme pain, I was worried about what was happening with other people around me. What?! People pleasing is deeply engrained and it kept taking me by surprise throughout this whole experience.

And finally, as we were leaving, I said to Craig, “No food tastes better than staying out of the hospital…”

I had been reading about kidney stones, and how once you have one, you’re more likely to have more. But the reason? Because only about 40% of people follow doctor’s orders or change their diets after that first one.

It reminds me of another stat: that after a heart attack, only ONE IN SEVEN people make changes that would help.

Surprises can happen. Shit happens. But there’s a space in all of this where we can make a difference for ourselves. It might be that what we do can only bring a bit of energy and comfort because whatever’s wrong isn’t going anywhere, but if we’re lucky, things we do can actually decrease our chances of these shitty surprises and even increase our health.

By “health” I mean our vitality… our ability to fully engage in our lives.

So yeah… there’s no food I wouldn’t get rid of or add in order to avoid a kidney stone again. And there’s no way I’m skipping out on movement because movement always matters; it keeps things flowing… literally.

I’m exhausted from the pain and the big time narcotics they (thankfully) pushed into my system, but I’m resting and then GAME ON. Again.

JoyMoves: the importance of weight training after injury

It seems antithetical, right? You’re recovering from an injury and then you should put weight on that injury!?

At a certain point, yes.

You know I suffered from two consecutive frozen shoulders over a year and a half. I ended up needing steroid shots in each a few months apart. I needed those shots so I could even do the physical therapy I was creating for myself.

Those shots let me gain range of motion back. I needed time when that was all I was focused on, but I got to a point where I felt stuck in my recovery. Nothing new was happening. Nothing was changing.

Then I got the helpful book below, and I only needed to read a few pages to understand that I was missing weight lifting… strength building

I’ve always talked about (if you’ve been around me enough) that mobility is flexibility plus strength (control).

When I was younger, I was super flexible and my joints were lax. I had no real idea of strength (control), so I was constantly suffering from free floating pain and minor injuries. I was young, so it would all heal really fast and I would continue with my circus freak tricks.

When I tell you that the very day I started doing (super light) weight training targeted at my shoulders that I felt an instant difference, I am not exaggerating. I’ve been doing it ever since and slowly building the amount of weight and the variety of movements.

My right shoulder is at 100% and I’d say my left is around 95% or higher. My idea of mobility in my shoulders is a bit extreme… again, I have lax joints… but now those joints are supported. I can still do things most people can’t do but I can feel the muscle activity more clearly. I also have an ever deepening ability to feel the precise moments when I am about to go too far. (That ability has been growing since I started to dance again at 40 but now it’s finding new levels.)

If you want to explore this but have some fears/concerns about it, remember that you can always ask me.