Journaling, Peony Bodyparts, and When We Feel Too Much

These are two stories that are connected in ways that I could not have imagined as they were both happening, which was in about a two week time span.

Journaling

When I met Craig, I was in the middle of the biggest clearing of my life. My house was utterly empty except for things I used day to day and found enjoyment in. There was so much space and it was a beautiful thing.

But in the garage there were a few boxes that were like energy black holes. They contained about 45 full journals from over 20 years of writing. I knew they had to go. They were repetitive and I found them, frankly, embarrassing as I was moving past the need to so closely examine, over and over, the same wounds. (That work was important as I was doing it.)

I threw them out. It was too much to burn in a small city with rules about such things. When they were gone, I could feel another clear space in my life and it was good.

Fast forward and I’ve been trying to get back into journaling. I’m a writer. It’s good to brain dump.

But over the last couple of years I just can’t. No matter how I tried to approach it, it wasn’t working.

Every time I sat down to journal, thinking about how full my brain felt and how much I had to say — how much I wanted to say — I would put pen on to paper and within a few sentences feel this overwhelming bodily exhaustion. I was lucky if I filled a page.

Knowing how I do that it’s important to be writing by hand to get the full somatic/trauma-informed expressive arts therapy benefits of journaling, I kept refusing to try it a different way. (I am so freaking stubborn.)

But I finally gave in. I was desperate to start journaling once I got back into talk therapy. It is so important to have a space to track things.

So I got an app (Day One). I can use it on any of my computers or devices and it syncs across them.

And lo and behold, I have been writing like mad. I’m on day 31 of no days missed and some days I write twice.

Peony Bodyparts

My students in Columbus are, of course, very new to me and my methods, and it has been a joy to go on this journey with them. It’s like learning and understanding and really seeing my processes with new eyes.

One of my students, who is a therapist herself so she’s trauma informed, said to me one day out of the blue: Bodyparts are my favorite.

Now I love Bodyparts. I love it for the concrete way it gets you into your body and ready for more. I’ve always seen it as a logical and needed sort of “warm up.”

I don’t think anyone has ever told me it’s their favorite part of class. There’s so much to a Peony Somatic Dance class that is … well, freaking fancier or even plain old weirder.

The somatics of it all

I was talking to Deb Globus about the journaling issue because she’s the Queen of Journaling, and she said something that was such a huge wake up call.

I will paraphrase but she said, “So writing by hand was putting you into nervous system overload… thus the exhaustion, and by typing, you got rid of that aspect but you can still benefit from getting all the words out.”

MY. GOD. THAT.

THEN…

I asked my student why she loved Bodyparts so much and again paraphrasing:

“Because I can explore my physical body but not get too deeply into the emotional stuff right off the bat…”

Again… Bodyparts (like typing a journal) removes some of the somatic intensity of the work, and that allows us to get some of the best parts of these tools without dysregulating our nervous systems.

What this might mean for you

Sometimes we really can go at things too directly and too hard.

It’s truly a lot of what the Peony methods are about… I mean them to be gentle and I mean them to be modified in ways that make them appropriately gentle to each person’s needs.

But still… we think, THIS IS THE HEALING WORK! GET AT IT!

Then our bodies send us messages that it’s too much, which we often read as STOP.

But instead of stopping, we really need to just reevaluate and see how we can take things down a couple of notches.

The work is good and it deserves our best effort. But we also deserve self-compassion and patience.

(If you’re having an issue like this and need some help creating the “notches down” approach, don’t hesitate to write to me.)

No mirrors

When I was getting ready to start to teach here in Columbus, the studio owner I work for asked which of his studios I wanted to teach out of. He has three and two of the spaces would have worked. But one space has mirrors so it was an absolute no-brainer. The yoga space it was/is.

Not working with mirrors and often having our eyes closed helps with entering into a nonjudgmental playful space in our bodies. It also adds to the meditative aspects of Peony Somatic Dance... a sort of meditation for those of us who don't tolerate seated meditation well.

(Seated meditation is not great for depression, anxiety, and a variety of mental illnesses. If it makes you feel worse, don't do it. I’ve written about how it’s okay if you can’t meditate and why that might be the case here.)

For so many of us, the mind feels like a constant tornado of activity and words and images and ideas and stories. It’s constant and it can seem like there’s never any relief.

Sitting in meditation can exacerbate all of that. (Again, see what I already wrote about this.)

But when we work with somatic dance, we become so focused on the prompt and the body and the music that it is like being in the eye of the tornado.

Suddenly we have peace and calm and quiet.

The body is truly the gateway to this.

The body and the mind are one, and when we try to … tame the mind via the body, we are working against our very nature.

When we enter into fully embodied and moving joy, then we are using ourselves as we are built to be used.

Movement is life. And movement is the tool the mind will respond to most easily, most naturally, and most joyfully.

No exertion, frustration, or extreme effort needed. Just be in play.

Not having mirrors in our space removes the temptation to turn toward ideas of perfection and “prettiness” that get in the way of this bodymind-ness that we are seeking.

(Side note: sometimes I work with mirrors very intentionally to work on issues around invisibility. I consider this advanced work that the student enters into when they are ready.)

Here’s some movement to be inspired by.

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.

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 and the values that underlie your embodiment intentions

Whether we’re wanting to create a deeper sense of embodiment or we want to move more and in different ways to experience the expression of this body, it can be a huge help to understand the values underneath your intended actions.

When we understand WHY, we’re less likely to give up on the what and how. When we understand and put the WHY first, we’re more willing to experiment and to see the what and how through a lens of curiosity and playfulness.

When we understand our WHY, we’re also less likely to get caught up in blame and shame or other people’s ideas about what we “should” be doing.

This is important stuff, to say the least, and I think most people don’t spend much, if any, time thinking about it or articulating it for themselves.

I’m going to talk about mine as an example:

Value one: physical strength and flexibility = mental health. The stronger I am physically, the stronger I am mentally. Period. They are inextricably linked.

Value two: creative expression. When I’m moving more, I get more creative with movement, sure, but I get more creative in every area of my life.

Value three: connection. When I’m moving more, I’m more deeply connected to myself and therefore have better connections to others, including healthier boundaries.

When I focus on those values instead of things like “I should exercise more,” then my movement time is more meaningful and I’m better at making the best choices for myself around movement and embodiment.

For example, if I focus on my values, I don’t give up but I also don’t punish myself or forget to nurture myself with appropriate rest, nutrition, and hydration.

Those values are in the driver’s seat.

You might notice, too, that these values are not things that are exclusive to movement but can be applied in every area of my life. That’s when we know we’re at the true core of things.

If you’ve never thought of it this way, just start to take a stab at it for yourself and I’ll help where I can. (Feel free to email, FB message, or write in the Sanctuary about this.)

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.

Re/Joy in this shitty time

Name one era when you think things were better, and I’ll be 100% correct that it wasn’t, no matter what time you name. History repeats itself, for sure. If one group isn’t marginalized, a whole host of others are.

When I was in college in the late 80’s/early 90s, things did feel like they were somehow shifting. Yet even that was an illusion: the economy was tanking, poverty was rising, homelessness was worse than ever (thanks, Reagan), incarcerations were on the rise and wouldn’t stop (and won’t stop), the war on drugs was targeting the wrong thing and the wrong people (for the most part), people were banning music (remember that?), the excess of the few was the leap off of the cliff that would start the real climate spiral, and I could go on.

Today things feel worse because they’re so much more on the surface and in our face pretty much 24/7. We had a toxic idiot of a President that made all hate acceptable in a very public way. (Some would argue we needed to see that … that too many of us were still living in denial… I kinda agree.)

So all times have, technically, been shitty times. For someone. For groups of someones.

And yet humanity keeps trying to move forward. Honorable or stupid? Some days I go back and forth depending on how exhausted and angry I’m feeling.

Most days… most days, I feel like we’re to be admired for a seemingly bottomless well of hope and effort and optimism.

Most days, I understand that those of us with access to hope and effort and optimism have to hold on to those things, if not for ourselves then for those who just can’t anymore.

To do this requires a certain kind of mental, emotional, and spiritual musculature. It’s easy, in this world, to allow that to atrophy, and then when we need it, to act surprised by its weakness.

In other words, we have to use some of our effort muscle to keep our hope, effort, and optimism muscles in shape. The world needs them.

How do we do this? What is the “gym” of this sort of workout?

It’s the very world that we can find so utterly reprehensible.

But we need to take that world in our hands and turn it every so slightly so we’re looking at it from a different angle: we need to look at it in better lighting so that we can see the beauty and love there. There are days that no matter how much we adjust the angle or the lighting that the beauty and love we find feels just about… microscopic. But that doesn’t matter.

It’s in this noticing and then in the naming that we work out. This is our gym. These are the weights we lift over and over for strength. The treadmills we walk and run for stamina. The stretches we use to maintain mobility.

And these sorts of workouts for emotional, mental, and spiritual musculature need to be as consistent as any we do for our bodies. You know full well that you can’t run a marathon if you’ve been sitting on the couch for the entire year leading up to it. You’re not surprised that you can’t deadlift some crazy amount if you’ve never picked up anything heavier than a soup can.

But we act surprised by our own exhaustion over the work of the world when we’ve done very little to maintain our healthy connection to that same world. We wonder at our anger and our rage that is paralyzing when we’ve done nothing to feed our joy that is mobilizing.

Start small, just like you would with any exercise program. Small steps, small amounts, build slowly but be mindful and intentional and persistent to the point of stubborn.

Start today: go outside with a small notebook and just make lists of everything you see that you love. Do this for… five minutes. Then do it tomorrow and the day after and the day after…