When bad things keep happening...

It’s Tuesday, March 28th as I sit to write this. Today I had myself scheduled to make some new reels and videos. My books are full of work to be done. My planner has lists.

But I just couldn’t. Instead I’m writing here and then I’m going to take some time to do some reading… Buddhism. It seems to be my go to when I feel lost, angry, sad, grieving, and powerless in this world that more and more is being created in some sick image of an authoritarian God who judges and punishes, a world where the faithful are really the fearful, a world that values one particular “freedom” over all others.

On average, we are seeing one school shooting a week. A WEEK.

But this last shooting in Nashville has an added layer that is dangerous for an already marginalized group of people. This added layer is what those fearful “Christians” immediately grabbed on to, and within moments of the news, they started churning out hateful rhetoric that is inflammatory, dangerous, and actually, as usual, full of lies.

They are claiming that trans people are the new dangerous group. I won’t quote them, but I will quote some actual REAL and TRUE stats, which are easy enough to corroborate just by going through all the news stories yourself and counting but here:

"4 shooters out of over 300 mass shooters since 2009 are transgender or non binary. That's just 1.3 percent of all shooters," Anthony Zenkus, a lecturer in social work at Columbia University, wrote on Twitter. "You just proved our point: 99 percent of mass shooters in the United States are cis gendered.”

* Cis gendered male, to be more precise. For more of those stats and the rest of that article, go here.

As usual, our politicians, most of whom are the whores of the NRA and other violent groups, are trying to distract us from the reality that this country is sick, and specifically, that our love of guns in this country is a mental illness.

As a cis gendered woman who has had plenty of opportunity in my life to feel frightened and actually threatened by the men around her, I have never once thought, “I should carry a gun…”

As a person in a group of humans who is actually targeted with rape and murder, I have never thought that I should arm myself and prepare myself to kill another.

So what are all these cis gendered men who carry their AR15s into GROCERY stores so fucking frightened of?

They have bought into a story told to them from on high… that someone, some mysterious someone is out to get them. Though they themselves hold most of the power, they have bought into a story that their power is being threatened and can be directly protected with violence.

Again, we are sick.

And guns only make our sickness more obvious. Every other developed country that has instituted strict gun control (not even just the wimpy ass variety we’ve been begging for for decades) sees an immediate decrease in violence and death.

“But the criminals still have guns.” That falls flat when you take a real look at the stats for those countries just mentioned. I’m guessing they still have crime and criminals, but guess what they don’t have? Mass shootings. School shootings. Ever growing graveyards of children.

Statistically this country has more people who claim to be on the left than on the right. But the right has somehow highjacked our political system and is imposing their fear-based, ugly, violent, restrictive, and yes, fascist vision on this country. (You immediately become a fascist, FYI, when you ban books. Period.)

When I say they have somehow highjacked our political system what I really mean is that they have very intentionally squashed voter rights, instituted gerrymandering, and made their gun ownership as visible as possible so that the rest of us stay in place, too frightened to fight…

I don’t have any answers. And I don’t think it’s people like me stockpiling weapons themselves.

Because unlike most “Christians,” I actually believe in the nonviolent Christ who was very clear about weapons.

My mind is all over the place right now so I’ll end with a couple of suggestions:

First, if you’re not already, follow, support, whatever a gun reform group. This one is good.

Second, if you’re a trans ally, start being louder about it, and if for whatever reason, you feel like you can’t be louder, then be more supportive in other ways.

Here’s a national one you could support but every state and city has smaller groups that always need help.

Empathy isn't just for the hard stuff...

(I wish I could find the study I was reading because it was important but you know how … SQUIRREL!… And I’ve tried to find it again and just can’t. If I do find it some day, I’ll come back to this and update it.)

Onward… I was reading a study recently that came to the conclusion that perhaps — perhaps — almost 50% of the human population lacks the brain connections for true empathy.

Read that and weep. Or not.

If that stat is even close to true, it explains a lot about our world. It explains a lot about the seemingly endless struggle between people who focus on their own concerns and those who wish to better the world for everyone. (To put it all in compact and polite terms.)

That’s the macro look at it, but on the micro level, it can explain struggles we have with family and friends and even strangers when it comes to understanding motivations, the extension (or not) of care, the tangles we get in to over expectations, and on and on.

We are truly playing with different decks.

But with all of that, I bet in your mind, you’ve been focusing on the idea of empathy around difficult challenges.

There’s more to empathy than that and I’ve always sensed it but didn’t have the language for it.

It’s something I have been conscious of doing in my work since the beginning. I intuited that a huge part of what I do is really about making space for people to feel their feelings including BIG JOY.

That picture at the top… I love that moment between the two women on the right (Mara and Julie). They aren’t talking. They are simply finding shared joy in their playful embodiment.

Turns out there is language for this: Empathic Joy.

You can listen to a short podcast about the science of it right here.

Science, schmience… as usual it comes from an ancient philosophical/”religious” system: Buddhism.

And in Buddhism, it’s a practice. Of course, it is.

Mudita: sympathetic or unselfish joy, or joy in the good fortune of others. In Buddhism, mudita is significant as one of the Four Immeasurables.

(The other four immeasurables are: love, compassion, and equanimity. You can read more about them all over here.)

When someone gives us good news, do we start to think about our own lack of good news or are we just totally present to them, reflecting their experience back to them?

When we see a happy person out in the world, does that make us feel grouchy or judgy? Or do we take the opportunity to feel good with and for them?

This is the practice: all day long, watching for those moments of knee-jerk reactions that are grounded in jealousy or malice and checking them and replacing them.

I love this.

Practices Matter More than Ever

Christine’s movement guidance, for me, is a sacred form of mindfulness where I am gently forced into listening to the fiberoptic highway of my body.

It is a practice as beautifully healing and helpful as prayer and meditation with the chemical and musculoskeletal benefits movement brings.

It is body language, but not in the sense of sitting across from someone else trying to figure out what they're thinking. And it is also allowing the body to talk, but not in the Olivia Newton John's, Let's Get Physical sense. (Linda)

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So often it’s my students who describe this work so much better than I ever can. I’m always grateful when they have the bandwidth to write a few words…

Because right now, we’re all really limited on bandwidth. More so, it seems, every week, as one thing after another just follows one thing after another and it seems there is no end.

Because there is no end.

Life is suffering, said the Buddha, and though that used to just piss me off, lately I find comfort in those words. I am not alone. We all suffer. Life is what it is but we can, as the Buddha goes on to say, work with that suffering to come to a place of peace.

I like to think that the work I offer this world, most especially The Peony Method, is one part of a path to that inner peace that we’re all, ultimately, seeking.

We just want to feel … okay and… steady… and like we have some say in what our own lives look like.

I think it’s crucial, now more than ever, that we take the time for practices that align us with those better, more sane, more loving parts of ourselves.

If you need that, March classes start next week. If classes feel too vulnerable, remember that I work one on one also.

Buddhism 101: A Reading List by Request (Copy)

Wat Rong Seur Ten in Chiang Rai Thailand by Alex Azabache

I shared a reading list to help you get a bit deeper into your yoga right here. And now a morning nutbag and some others have requested a reading list for those new/ish to Buddhism.

So here we go (and I will be linking to Amazon not to encourage you to buy from there but simply because it is easy. I actually encourage you to use your library or a local bookstore, both of which I am lucky enough to have access to but never assume the same about anyone else… sometimes Amazon is actually necessary for more rural areas):

Anything Lama Surya Das is highly recommended, especially Awakening the Buddha Within, but here’s his whole Amazon page.

And anything by Uma Thurman’s dad (yep), Robert Thurman should be on your list too. Infinite Bliss was a fave or mine but again here’s his whole Amazon page.

Currently I’m rereading The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying and it has helped me so much with my grief.

This book is about Tantra in both yoga and Buddhism by one of the most respected yoga scholars ever (who has passed away but his wife has taken over his teachings and she is wonderful).

Here’s one of my favorites by Thich Nhat Hanh that is a bit deeper in the teachings than some of his more popular stuff.

This book of “prayers” to the Bodhisattva is so beautiful. It is a practice in and of itself just to randomly select something every day.

Tara Brach writes some stuff that veers into psychology meets Buddhism, which some days works for me and some days doesn’t but she’s well respected and one of the rare women’s voices out there that has a large platform.

Most of what I’ve shared here comes from Tibetan buddhism lineages. There’s a whole other world out there if you want to explore Zen Buddhism, which would include things like the philosophy of tea ceremony and haiku, which I also have on my shelf, but I think the basics are well covered with all I’ve shared above.

I would love to hear from you as you explore!