First Session 2021 of QUICKIE Christine-alini Kundalini Yoga!

Starting Tuesday, January 12th OR WHENEVER YOU WANT TO WATCH THE RECORDING!

Kundalini Saved My Life and Prepared Me to Return to Dance

That’s not an exaggeration. I was deep into a severe and life threatening and long term cycle of depression and anxiety. My willingness (and I have no idea where that came from!) to try yoga and then to try Kundalini did something magical to my brain.

The focus on breath work and the quick movements of Kundalini — rather than the stationary poses of more “mainstream” yoga — washed my brain in serious amounts of happy chemicals, and yes, that would go away mere hours after practice but it was enough that it stayed in my memory and made me go back again and again. The longer I practiced — over months and years — the longer the effects lasted after each session.

To read more about what an actual Christine-alini Kundalini yoga class looks like go here.

PLEASE READ ALL THE HOWS AND WHATS BELOW CAREFULLY!

WHAT YOU GET:
ACCESS TO TWO 20 MINUTE PRACTICES A WEEK, WHICH YOU CAN WATCH LIVE OR YOU CAN WATCH THE RECORDING WHEN YOU HAVE TIME. IT’S ALL UP TO YOU.

You can also REPEAT the material as much as you want. Each class will stay up in the group for the entire month and a bit beyond.

You also have access to ME. You can ask for help ANY TIME in the group.

HOW:
YOU HAVE TO BE ON FACEBOOK.

MUSIC will be provided in the group prior to the class via Spotify and YouTube lists.

You’ll be added to a “January Quickie Yoga” PRIVATE group on Facebook. ACCEPT THE INVITE WHEN YOU GET IT.

TIME ZONE: I’m in the Eastern U.S. Time Zone. For those of you for whom that might not mean much, I’m in the same time zone as New York City.

ALSO NOTE: Classes, though online, START ON TIME. You can jump in late, but I won't be waiting.

COST: $60 for Six weeks, twice a week and unlimited access to all recordings during the session
TIME: 10:30 AM (I get on about 10:25 for some chatting!)
Tuesdays: January 12, 19, 26 and February 2, 9, 16
Thursdays: January 14, 21, 28 and February 4, 11, 18

Roller Skates & Batons: Reverse Engineering Your JoyBody

I have a super wise private student right now (well, all of them are wise in different ways).

I’ve always talked about going back to the things we loved as children to tap into our essential/original nature and to rebuild the container that is your joybody.

But she came up with a phrase for this word that I love: Reverse Engineering. (I know this term is already a thing, of course, but I love how she used it for THIS.)

I love this above all because it implies work. (Of course! HA!)

I get a lot of “I don’t remember…” or “I never played…” as instant responses to my questions around childhood joy. I get it. Trauma.

BUT regardless, it’s there. Somewhere. We are all human animals and human animals play.

Bringing in the term reverse engineering tells us that yes, we might not know right away, but if we follow trails backwards, pick up breadcrumbs, look through photos, research our own pasts… even asking siblings, aunts, cousins what we were like, what they remember about us.

Eventually, we can make our way to the core of what brought us joy.

The work doesn’t stop there.

We have to ENGAGE with that joy.

Here’s the catch: WE CANNOT EXPECT IT TO BE THE SAME. We can’t try to 100% replicate it. We can’t expect the exact same feelings, especially not right away.

I loved roller skating and my baton. So I recently ordered myself a baton.

I SUCK.

But just having that baton to look at, firstly, brings me some joy. Triggers POSITIVE feelings in my body/mind.

And now I get to learn again, which is good for my brain and my fingers, wrists, and shoulders, as it turns out.

For Christmas, Craig bought me the most magical pair of roller skates. MAGICAL.

Again… I SUCK.

I fell right away. But I laughed and got up.

The second day I didn’t suck quite so much but still… laughable.

I used to be GOOD on my skates so this could stop me right away if I let it. I won’t.

I created a playlist that triggers me back to my roller skating days.

This will take work and again, it’s also great for my brain and my freaking GLUTES and lateral hip muscles. I already have strong glutes and I work laterally every single day but new movement equals new muscle experiences.

When we take the time to rebuild these sources of and paths to our essential joybody, we’re strengthening our joy muscles in general, and we are increasing our capacity to allow joy into our lives in all sorts of other ways.

When we lost these pathways for whatever reason, that was the start of our joy diminishment, and over time, many of us learned to not even EXPECT joy anymore and to only tolerate it in small doses.

We are made to live in these joybodies 24/7. Regardless of what’s happening around us, and you know full well, I’m not saying we won’t ever feel pain or sadness. I’ve never ever promoted any of that spiritual bypassing bullshit.

But when we do encounter inevitable grief and anger, we’ll be able to more quickly process and integrate, and we’ll have the skill of simultaneous emotional states — we’ll be able to grieve AND see and experience the good things too.

Moving Together Wherever We Are

When I first started to dance again 12 years ago (what!?), I was working totally on my own. Every day for hours (parsed out in chunks over the day), I met myself in an empty space with music and experimentation and play and struggle and learning.

I got used to this, and then I went for my first training at Kripalu and spent an entire week moving and playing and laughing and experiencing with a very large group of wonderful women. When I got home and had to face that empty space again with this deeper understanding of my aloneness, I crashed.

After every training, it was the same. Big crash, followed by learning to work alone again, followed by training, followed by big crash… I did this for years, as I went to Kripalu often.

I started to teach, though, and those days with students helped. I held onto that when I went into my own private practice day after day, hour after hour.

I started to experiment with teaching online probably about 8 years ago. It wasn’t the same. There were technical difficulties that were very limiting (this has changed).

And then pandemic.

I was ready in more ways than most to take my work online. Thank God I started to experiment so long ago so I wasn’t forced to learn all of that this year, in the moment, sinking in fear.

It felt… okay. Not great. Okay.

I put my choreography group on hold, thinking it was impossible to work on THAT online. And remember when we all just assumed things would get back to normal?

Eventually, I went back to working with that group because who knows how long things will be like this and art must still be made.

And things keep getting better as I learn to take my methods to virtual spaces that aren’t really virtual but just different and how I hate that word. There’s nothing virtual about the life changing experiences people still have. There’s nothing virtual about the more-important-than-ever sense of community.

Our physical bodies may not be in the same space, but we are still in the same SPACE.

We can see one another and respond to one another’s energy and we can still share circle and breath.

I used to think, long ago before dance while I was still “just” doing yoga and still immersed in depression, that classes and togetherness were just to teach us how to do it by ourselves, how to have a one person at home practice.

Oh, how much I have learned that the entire point of everything is our togetherness.

The Joy of Connection

Joy is peaceful. Joy is centering. Joy is the very nature of this existence. It’s the container for all our “feelings” and everything that happens to us … if we take a breath and settle and notice. It’s always there.

It’s a knowing… that “all shall be well, all shall be well, all manner of things shall be well” that can feel impossible in our worst moments but that we also can sense is profoundly and utterly true.

Joy is, above all, connection.

Joy is connection to self.

Joy is connection to other.

Joy is connection to whatever it is that you think of as “divine.”

JoyBody is simply a way to say… here are some things to try that will help you to connect — to self, to others, and to the truth of you.

Moving in Trust

We get so caught up in our IDEAS of things, don’t we?

And those ideas then get caught up with other people’s ideas and pretty soon we are in knots over things that seem like they should be pretty simple.

Movement, for example.

Instead of just trusting ourselves to move in ways that bring us joy and pleasure and growth and change and all the things we really want from movement, we start to explore a particular path.

Then we get caught up in doing it “right.”

Then we self identify with the culture of the path.

Let’s take, for example, yoga — the very thing that is meant to bring us freedom and an understanding of ourselves that is infinite. Over time, over repetitions, it ends up concretizing us in our bodies and our minds. It can take a long time — if ever — to be able to see that this is what has happened.

Maybe then we move to “primal movement,” but again, instead of trusting ourselves, we seek a “program” and even in this concept called “primal,” we find ourselves learning patterns and repeating patterns and wondering when we’ll get to the “advanced” patterns.

When the most “advanced” pattern is the capacity to follow no pattern.

There is nothing wrong with studying different paths and with different teachers as long as we don’t get STUCK.

Find a teacher who is the geekiest student you’ve ever met.

Find a teacher who is there to light your curiosity on fire.

Find a teacher who is never ever finished.

Find a culture of no culture, one that is always expanding.

Find a group of humans who don’t believe in hierarchies of any kind.

Be brave.

Stop following. Stop patterning.

Question. Experiment. Play.

JoyBody is NOT...

I use the word JOY in the way mystics have traditionally used it across many traditions.

It doesn't mean happiness or silliness or any sort of BIG expressed, giddy sort of emotional state. It's the ground of your being. It's the ground of all existence.

It's the feeling that we have when we are centered and residing in the space in ourselves that knows it is a good thing to be living this life no matter what is happening. It's actually quite... calm, steady, abiding... it feels a lot like long deep breathing.

There are as many ways to access this state as there are human experiences and that is where tantra comes in for me. Tantra is an understanding of life that says that every single thing you take in via your senses is a gift that we can learn from, that we can grow from.

So tantra never denies bodily needs and desires like so many paths do. There's no "transcending." There's being right here IN THIS.

This does NOT mean that SHIT doesn't happen. It doesn't mean that SHIT isn't SHITTY. It doesn't mean there aren't UBER SHITTY humans on this planet making UBER SHITTY choices.

It means that if we are settled in our joybody we can, after processing and being truthful and expressing what needs to be expressed, we can find even just a small something of value for ourselves. After the fact.

The universe and life aren't here to "teach you lessons." Open minded and inquisitive people turn life INTO lessons.

So when I ask you about joy even in this current context of craposity, I mean, dig a little under that. Are you breathing today? Then there's something for you under the crap.

THIS is LIBERATING your joybody.

JoyBody Morning Quickie: 6 Week Online Kundalini Yoga for an Open Heart

According to yoga tradition and philosophy, we are in a time period when things are very skewed. (And they don’t just mean 2020.)

We’re in a time when the typical spiritual practices are either too difficult for people to comprehend or just not effective because of the depth of despair and disbelief and disconnect that humans are experiencing.

During this time, tantra yoga practices are what humans need. They’re concrete. They’re easy to grasp. They’re grounded in the physical world more than any of the others. They’re effective QUICKLY.

And so we have Kundalini yoga.

And I DO believe that this is the yoga we need right now.

We need a yoga that can quickly affect our mind and heart and spirit via body practices that are accessible to all bodies with barely any modification.

This yoga clarifies immediately. Even a short practice, takes away my brain fog.

This yoga clears the heart immediately. No matter what’s on the news, after a quick Kundalini practice I feel like I can handle life again.

This yoga activates the body powerfully. I feel like a different person after a mere ten minutes and I feel ready to tackle whatever needs to be tackled.

This is the yoga of the heart based warrior.

PLEASE READ ALL THE HOWS AND WHATS BELOW CAREFULLY!

WHAT YOU GET:
ACCESS TO TWO 20 MINUTE PRACTICES A WEEK, WHICH YOU CAN WATCH LIVE OR YOU CAN WATCH THE RECORDING WHEN YOU HAVE TIME. IT’S ALL UP TO YOU.

You can also REPEAT the material as much as you want. Each class will stay up in the group for the entire month and a bit beyond.

You also have access to ME. You can ask for help ANY TIME in the group.

HOW:
YOU HAVE TO BE ON FACEBOOK.

MUSIC will be provided in the group prior to the class via Spotify and YouTube lists.

You’ll be added to a “Morning Quickie Yoga” PRIVATE group.

TIME ZONE: I’m in the Eastern U.S. Time Zone. For those of you for whom that might not mean much, I’m in the same time zone as New York City.

ALSO NOTE: Classes, though online, START ON TIME. You can jump in late, but I won't be waiting.

COST: $70 for 6 weeks of 2 quickie classes
TIME: 10:30 AM
Tuesdays: October 13, 20, 27 and November 3, 10, 17
Thursdays: October 15, 22, 29 and November 5, 12, 19

Morning Quickie: Kundalini Yoga for Your Unique Bones

No two downdogs (or whatever) should ever look the same!

You skeleton is unique to you and your yoga should be too.

This twice a week, four week session, starting Tuesday, September 15th, will be a combination of all the yoga I’ve studied for almost 25 years, with a special emphasis, as usual on Kundalini. Each week, we’ll deep dive into a couple of traditional hatha postures and different ways to approach them depending on YOUR skeleton.

By Monday each week, I will post in the private Facebook group which postures we’ll be deconstructing so you have time to say “HEY! This is how I struggle with ((fill in the blank))!” I can then tailor our classes to specific needs.

PLEASE READ ALL THE HOWS AND WHATS BELOW CAREFULLY!

WHAT YOU GET:
Access to TWO 20 minute practices a week, which you can watch live or you can watch the recording when you have time. It’s all up to you.

You can also REPEAT the material as much as you want. Each class will stay up in the group for the entire month and a bit beyond.

You also have access to ME. You can ask for help ANY TIME in the group.

HOW:
You have to be on Facebook.

MUSIC will be provided in the group prior to the class via Spotify and YouTube lists.

You’ll be added to a “Morning Quickie Yoga” PRIVATE group.

TIME ZONE: I’m in the Eastern U.S. Time Zone. For those of you for whom that might not mean much, I’m in the same time zone as New York City.

ALSO NOTE: Classes, though online, START ON TIME. You can jump in late, but I won't be waiting.

COST: $60 for 4 weeks of 2 quickie classes
TIME: 10:30 AM
Tuesdays: September 15, 22, 29, and October 6
Thursdays: September 17, 24, and October 1, 8