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.

Two Free Invites: Brains and Disco (It will make sense in a minute...)

Recently I’ve started two new habits/groups of sorts and I’ve started them small (and actually VERY small with the disco) so I could see how it would go and then open it up to more of you lovely humans.

First up, BRAINS! If you are a person with any kind of, what we call now, neurodivergence, we would love to have you in our private Facebook group, Beautiful Brains.

I realized I was constantly coming across information and videos and my own schtuff and I didn’t want it to overwhelm the JoyBody Sanctuary, so it definitely needed its own space. We have just under 40 members now, and the conversations are so helpful. It feels good to know we’re not alone in our different way of engaging with the world and the different ways our brains process.

This group would include anyone on any kind of spectrum, Autism, ADHD, OCD, C-PTSD, etc. And often, of course, with different brains, there’s lots of comorbidity.

Send me a note either here or on Facebook and tell me you want in and I’ll get you set up.

Second, DICSO! In order to get myself to move more on days I don’t teach, I knew I needed some body doubling help. I found a perfect companion and we got started and then we quite naturally added about 3 other people. Not everyone shows up each time but it’s enough to keep us going.

We only do this on Wednesdays and Fridays. We meet on zoom at 9 AM (Eastern) and we are each trying to stay on for about 30 minutes. We don’t talk. We just wave to each other and get started. (We all have video on because that’s part of the helpfulness but we’re all muted because we’re each doing our own music and our own movement.)

Again, let me know if you want to be included. This is a no pressure sort of group… both of them actually.

The efficacy of fidgeting (and more free videos)

If you know me, you know I am constantly reading and watching videos about the bodymind and trauma and healing and overall fitness (meaning, for me, the confluence of mind, body, spirit), but then I don’t always remember WHERE I get stuff so I apologize for the lack of sources here but whatevs.

There are some new studies out there that are showing that fidgeting can be super helpful in activating a more effective metabolism.

The one study is about simply doing heel lifts when you’re seated. Crazy stuff. They’re called “soleus pushups.”

But little bits of movement throughout the day — and I mean LITTLE BITS — can help long term with overall health.

Turns out fidgeting is good for you. (Though perhaps annoying for the person sitting next to you on the couch… ((cough)) ha)

Here are some things I’m playing with that aren’t exactly fidgeting but are along those lines because I’m doing them quickly and not for more than 30 or 60 seconds at a time:

1. If you’re having to sit for a long time, do those soleus pushups but also do some joint circles — wrists, for one, and shoulders and ankles are easy to do in a chair and to do in these tiny bits I keep mentioning.

2. When I walk past a certain wall toward the kitchen, I try to stop and do just a few wall pushups.

3. When I’m waiting for tea water to boil or whatever, I do a bunch of rises on the balls of my feet (releves) from different foot positions.

4. Sometimes on the couch, I do a ton of weird leg stretches… like a cat!

5. I’m trying to add in brief wall sits when I pass other walls in the house.

6. I’m also trying to remember to put my fingertips on the edge of the door frame and do a weighted drop (not lifting my feet off the ground to hang totally yet because of the shoulder stuff I’m still healing from).

7. You could have a squeezy ball at your desk to just, well, squeeze, because grip is super important to dynamic aging.

8. I also have some actual fidget toys that keep my fingers moving when I’m watching TV.

If you have other ideas, I’d love to hear!

AND in case you missed it, a recent video I made is about some simple movement to do to work with anger, frustration, stuckness, grief, etc.

Remember, if you like the content, please react to it on YouTube with a thumbs up or comment, and don’t forget to subscribe to my channel.

New, free joint health video

I can’t believe it’s already March. I’m not sure where February went… perhaps under the stove with all the kitten toys.

I think time has also been eaten a lot by my singing practice but this post isn’t about that. (Though if you know me, you know it’s hard for me not to talk about my current and most special interest. HA)

((pushing my brain on topic…)) So! If you have joint pain or stiffness for any reason, this video is for you.

Since I’ve entered menopause and I think, too, since Peony died, I have been living again with pretty much constant and widespread joint pain. I say “again” because this was my state for most of my life until I started to dance again at 40.

Doing this joint circle work almost daily, though, has been the tool I needed. It really does work. It might take a week or two or three for you to notice but keep going. It can be done in mere minutes or longer… whatever time you have.

I’ll be releasing another version in a chair soon. Let me know if you have any questions. You can ask by email, Facebook messenger, or over on YouTube in the comments.