Battle Fatigue During Lockdown

This lockdown we’re all experiencing is tough. And if you already had some pre-existing mental health challenges, it’s tougher. Period. This shit is deeply triggering, even for the healthier of mind among us, so it can be downright dangerously triggering for those of us already battle fatigued.

I’m one of that group who is battle fatigued and who is really struggling to find the next level of courage and strength that I need right now. So if you’re reading this and nodding, you’re not alone.

From the outside, I look okay. You know what us overachieving, perfectionist, high-functioning depressive types are like. We don’t like anyone to really know what’s happening.

It might even seem that I share a lot. I share a TINY percentage of my actual day to day struggle. A struggle that only my husband and maybe 3 other people really understands.

Each day is uphill and slogging through mud, for the most part. Each day is about getting a sort of personal “minimum” done, no matter what.

Then at night, in bed, I crash — physically and emotionally.

As is always the case, I’m not sharing this for pity. I’m sharing this for people who are even quieter than ME about their struggles, about those days when it really feels like they might not make it, about those times when the darkest parts of their minds start generating ways to get out.

I’m sharing it for those people who are even quieter than ME and so you’ll never ever know that every day is a victory worthy of a medal.

Every day that we are still here and still trying, we are growing courage muscles that I wish no human even needed.

And for those of us who didn’t make it — for the Vincent Van Goghs and the Virginia Woolfs of our world — it’s not that their courage gave out. It’s that the battle fatigue got too strong.

So right now… we need to extra watch out for each other.

Right now, the stronger among us must lend strength to those struggling.

Right now, may our compassion grow a safety net that lets no one pass through.

Virtual is Not Virtual

Maybe it’s because I was an early-ish adopter to this online teaching thing, trying to teach movement via streaming years ago when it truly sucked and then figuring out ways to do it regardless of the technology and then growing my ways as the technology grew and continues to grow.

But I’m seeing a lot of people feeling overwhelmed by suddenly being thrown into this medium and I’m grateful not to be needing to learn all of this at light speed.

I’m also seeing a lot of people who are new to the medium demeaning it. Stop.

The tech is only as good as the user so if you’re not getting much out of it, well, fill in the rest of this sentence.

As one of my long time movement students pointed out, because we are human our use of the technology still retains a sensuality — it’s just a new sort of sensuality that we have to explore and learn about.

Virtual classes... there's really nothing "virtual" about them. They're still powerful; they're still connecting spaces. There is embodiment even in this. There is sensual experience even in this. There is curiosity and growth and beauty.

And just this past week, I even had people working in pairs and you know what? It was just as beautiful and meaningful as ever.

Helpful Beauty or Shit You Can Check Out to Stop Feeling Insane

We need beauty more than ever right now and so I thought I’d share a list of links for you to peruse and you know… ignore for a few moments that the world feels like it’s falling apart.

Cherry blossoms have to be one of my favorite harbingers of later spring and no one, of course, does them like Japan (photo above). Just looking at photos of Japanese gardens and architecture tends to calm me. So much so that I have a Pinterest board dedicated to it.

And if gardens on the dramatic cliffs of the coast of France are your thing ((ha)), here is a great selection of photos that just made me swoon.

If you’re a rock and gem and crystal nerd like me, you should join this public Facebook group because holy cow!

Need a sound bath, even the LIGHTING of this guy’s videos is soothing. (And remember that you can get distance work done by Nancy Bowden. You can do skype, phone, whatever.)

If you need some new music to dance to or to keep you motivated, check out my Spotify and especially look at my “liked songs.” Play it on shuffle.

If you are interested in the Enneagram and want to laugh and learn simultaneously, check out Abby Howe’s channel. (I’m a 4 and wow… SO FUNNY!)

This doesn’t get old. It made me snort yet again when I got the clip for you. AND his voice is just so damn…soothing.

Oh, my! Everything from Frida Kahlo to Pompeii is covered in some amazing online free virtual tours of current exhibits that none of us can get to. This collection is such a gift of options!

Furthermore, some of the biggest and best museums from all over the planet are offering virtual tours of their collections. I could get lost in these.

Here you can find links to opera, theatre, musicals, KABUKI, and more online for free!

The MoMA is offering free online classes.

And here’s a list of FIVE HUNDRED courses being offered for free by Ivy League schools.

On my YouTube channel (which you could subscribe to), I have a Dance Inspiration playlist. I’ve been collecting these for years now and it’s interesting to see what i used to find compelling compared to now.

Okay… that seems like a good start. ((HA)) This could actually keep you focused on good and beautiful things for a long time to come.

Is there anything you’ve found that you would add?

And don’t forget that you can ask me to add you to my Facebook private group, Embodiment Sanctuary, where we support one another in a private and safe space and where I share ways to deal with all the ick via body and breath practices and JOY.

Also I want to add… all of this is free. IF you are able, please support artists and solo-preneurs whom you know. A lot of us are not eligible for business loans or help (not that there’s a lot out there), and though we’re home, there are ways for us to continue to do our work if we continue to have students and supporters.

Social Spacing is Not Social Distancing

Today I went to the edge of our lake to breathe and think for a few moments. There were a couple of other people on the same beach, but they were well far away from me. Then as I was just starting to think about leaving, the man to my left started to move in my direction.

I must have looked like a flushed deer. I skittered and quickened all the while trying not to look like I was running. (I am teasing myself here so feel free to laugh.)

He yelled from behind me (well beyond 6 feet…too many feet for me to estimate), “Have a good day!” in a friendly and slightly amused voice. I waved to him and smiled, trying to convey, “Sorry… I’m not ACTUALLY crazy… just for right now.”

On my way home, I saw kids at the local ice cream eatery that opens on April 1st on the peninsula (locals know who I’m talking about) and they were working, setting things up, but a few were on break, in little huddles, chatting and laughing. HOW COULD THEY? was my immediate thought.

At a corner drugstore, 3 bikers in leather, smoking, stood within inches of each other talking and I had to work very hard not to yell out my window, “SIX FEET, IDIOTS!” (Yep…)

This is where many of us are right now… paranoid and scared and overwhelmed and so very anxious, tempers probably shorter than ever (at least in my case).

Because… we are social animals, regardless of introvert/extrovert distinctions.

…we need human touch to thrive.

…we need to be witnessed by other humans directly on a regular basis (hello, mirror neurons).

…we need to feel SAFE in our environments to create anything of real meaning over the long haul.

…and speaking of safety, so many of us feel truly triggered by the AnxiousAir we are breathing, feeding old anxieties and traumas and bringing many such things back from the dead where we had worked hard to relegate them.

Social distancing to our social animal selves is not easy. Period. We hunger for life to feel more normal, to not feel like there is a TIGER outside our door every time we need to go get food.

In the meantime, I’m trying to think of this more as social spacing.

Distancing feels too hard, too cold.

Spacing… okay… my personal space is definitely bigger than it is usually treated even when we’re not in this kind of situation so I can deal with that language.

Distancing, though, can easily become our reality if we allow it.

So try some of the following:

1. Check in with people who live alone. They are very vulnerable right now. Message, zoom, whatever.

2. Use all the tech we have for GOOD. Create Skype parties. Or SALONS… as in the old use of that word, people coming together to have meaningful discussions. Play games!

3. Get outside. Even if you have to look nuttily protective of your barriers like me.

4. Make sure you’re moving every day. There are so many resources online for this. Including me. ((ha))

5. Try to feed your body like you love it… our immunity is so tied to how we eat.

6. Maybe write letters to loved ones! Actual letters!

7. Spend time every day in a quiet space in your mind and recognize what is GOOD.

8. Light candles and send out prayers. People always mock this as silly and unhelpful (I have strong opinion about why that is NOT true…), but we are all connected AND it can help us to feel not quite so powerless.

Do you have anything you’d add to this list?

Revolution through Body and Movement Subversion

From a remarkable student who understands this work so deeply, Donatella, speaking to me in a note and shared with her permission:

“What you do (movement art for the purpose of returning to the roots of movement as instinctive ritual, emotional catharsis, self exploration, physical improvements to biomechanical issues, and trauma bodily effects) is a complete subversion of the institutions and cultural ideas of “dance.” Especially considering your body and age inclusivity. By your nature, you are not a dancer; you are a movement artist, subverting everything wrong with the current culture around dance and women’s bodies. Your practices don’t damage the body, rather your practices heal the body. You teach the core essence of “dance” forms such as Butoh, Modern, etc., yet you don’t instruct people on rigid techniques and leave them to try to fit inside that. You don’t impose a body standard or an “ideal.” You don’t police the body of your artists. You embrace them and teach them that every single body is built to move and feel joy. You don’t kick people out after an imaginary age where they’re considered no longer palatable. You fight to keep people moving their whole damn lives so they can be in their bodies, experiencing physical life to the very end. You subvert everything about most of the things you were ever taught as a dancer, because fuck that.”

Reading that… it’s everything in my heart about this work and said in ways that I would never have been able to say it.

When I say this work is revolution, I am not speaking in hyperbole.

Daring to love ourselves just as we are? Daring to show ourselves when the culture says only certain types should be seen? Daring to take up all the damn space? Daring to do all of this in a community of women who only hold one another up, never acting toward one another in the ways we are taught from grade school?

When we dare in these ways, we come to know our full power.

And that scares the shit out of “them.”

Anger

The lake was crazy today when we took a walk to see her. LOUD and VIOLENT in her waves and churning. The kind of water action that changes whole coastlines in amazingly short lengths of time.

She was mesmerizing.

And I kept thinking she was reminding me of Kali, the Hindu goddess that brings about death to make room for rebirth.

She’s a goddess that I have spent a lot of time with over the last six years.

I feel her rage inside of me, but unlike our lake or mother nature in general, I don’t feel like I have anywhere to put that sort of rage. I don’t have a coastline that I can recut.

Another title for Kali, though, is liberator of souls.

We can only be liberated once what is keeping us imprisoned is destroyed.

Right now, we’re in this strange, extremely uncomfortable (to put it mildly), frustrating, STUCK place, but it’s in these sorts of liminal spaces where it seems nothing is happening that everything is happening.

More people than ever are, for example, waking up to the fact that the way our current culture is structured is not working. People are dying from lack of healthcare and food. What about that is in any way civilized?

But we have, for too long, walked beside that fact, averting our eyes because it wasn’t touching us. Now it is or the possibility is more present than ever and that is enough to stir more than usual critical thinking.

People are waking up to the fact that a few people owning most of the world’s resources is maybe not only unfair but just, well, not longterm functional.

Raging, churning, screaming…

It’s a right and good rage. It’s a necessary churning. It’s a relief to be screaming and to finally be heard, even just a bit.

I have no answers. I have no idea where we’re headed or how to get there. It’s the nature of this space we’re in. All I have is feeling and observation, and for now, that has to be enough no matter how much I don’t like it.

Quiet...

I’ve always spent a lot of time at our Peninsula here on this Great Lake, and so going there to “blow the stink off,” as my Nana always said, is a natural reflex for me during this time of social isolation.

What’s surprising is the way we walk past each other with our guard up… swerving a bit as if to say, “there you go… there’s your six feet.”

We’re just generally… shyer with each other, aren’t we?

And because so many people are mainly staying at home, the other surprise is the QUIET. It’s that kind of quiet that you normally only hear on these paths during the winter months. Deep and thick with beauty and mystery. You hear your own breath and every sound that the trees and land around you have to offer, from subtle crackling of leaves to the bird calls beckoning from the summer that is still to come.

I don’t like why this gift has presented itself, but I will not turn this gift away.

When I’m walking along the lapping shore, I no longer bother with headphones and podcasts. When I’m walking, I’m no longer aiming to go faster and cover more ground.

When I’m walking, I’m just walking.

New, FREE Circle of Trees Monthly Global Intention Dance

This new project is FREE and open to anyone anywhere on this beautiful planet, and I’m super excited for it to begin TUESDAY, MAY 7th. Please follow instructions below for joining.

When we dance together, there is an instant sacred connection created. We all feel it — whether in a club or a studio or a friend’s living room.

It makes sense since dancing, after all, along with lighting a fire and drumming, was the first way we created ritual.

It’s in our genes; it swims in and around our cells. It travels forth on our breath and soaks earth with out sweat.

From running online projects for many years now, though, I know that you don’t have to even be in the same room — or the same town or even on the same continent for this connection to occur and be palpable, to have full effect.

To have full effect all there needs to be is shared awareness and intention and group directed action.

So once a month, I’ll lead a global intention dance.

HOW: You have to be in the Facebook group, Circle of Trees. Period. This is where the event will be initiated. I won’t be replicating it anywhere else. Just tell me to add you by going to my Facebook page and saying, HEY! ADD ME TO THE TREES! (If you’re not my friend yet, start by friending me there.)

WHEN: I’ll start the process in the Circle of Trees on the first Tuesday of every month.

WHAT: I’ll start by asking an intention based question. Answer. The more people who answer, the more the thread of intention will connect all of us and the more we can each become part of the awareness web that will support those intentions.

I’ll also provide music AND A TIME for us all to try to participate.

PLEASE NOTE: I’ll alter the time month to month, considering we all live in different zones all over the world.

ALSO: If you can’t participate because the time ends up being the middle of the night for you, do it the following day at that time. Just focus your awareness. You’re still with us.

That’s it. It’s that easy.