I do not teach movement...

It may seem that I teach movement. I do not. I teach compassion for self and others. I teach the building of healthy communities of care and support. I teach vulnerability married to self empowerment.

Elder dancer, Flo, who understood the prayer aspects of this work better than almost any other student I’ve ever had.

I do this in the context of movement because we need better ways of being together and growing together. AND we need ways that aren't about food or alcohol or even WORDS because all of that can so easily get in the way.

I do this in the context of movement, too, because most of us are desperately disconnected from the primal power and essential wisdom of these bodies.

If we weren't disconnected from our bodies we would not SETTLE for SO LITTLE in these lives.

We would not EVER settle for ANY kind of abusive "love."

We would never ever tolerate "leaders" who do not give a shit about us.

We would never ever feel LACK and so we'd create a culture of giving and taking care of.

If we weren't disconnected from these bodies, we would never drink the poison of toxic masculinity, white supremacy, and patriarchy.

All systems of oppression, whether internal or external, count on us remaining numb to our feelings, numb to our intuitions, numb to our wisdom, numb to our power, and especially numb to our connections to each other and to this world.

When we re/member ourselves through movement, we are practicing re/membering what we are actually here to do — to love one another so that each of us can be fully ourselves. That’s it.

The Magic of Ten Minutes

How many of my students and private clients have expressed the idea that if they’re not doing an hour of this or that or if they aren’t completely exhausted after moving or if they aren’t sweating buckets that they didn’t “try hard enough” or they aren’t “committed enough.”

Too many. And because an hour and exhaustion and that kind of sweat feels like a LOT when we think about it, we have already defeated our healthy impulses before we even begin. If we manage to begin, that is, with those kinds of heavy ass expectations.

I’ve talked a lot in the past about overcoming asshole brain’s desire to stay on the couch in front of the TV (or wherever you are stuck) by telling it “just five minutes” and then once you’re moving, it’s quite easy for those five minutes to turn into 20.

But those five minutes do not have to turn into 20.

Those five minutes count for something all on their own. By doing those five minutes, well, you’ve done the thing and you’re training your brain to get out of the way. You’re, again, doing rewiring work which takes longer than we want it to but that’s that.

Now I’m talking about ten minutes.

Craig got me roller skates for Christmas. I haven’t been on roller skates since my teens. At the time, I was good on them. Solid. Could even do a couple tricksie things.

And for some reason I expected them to be like getting on a bike again after years — pretty much easy peasy.

NOT!! I SUCK!!!! But that will not stop me.

I practice in our basement because it has that super low carpet that slows me down just enough but still allows me to glide.

Here’s the thing: I’m only doing 10 minutes at a time. There’s more going on with this than meets the eye.

I’m working some forgotten muscles, for sure, but my brain is exploring and learning a ton of new material here. It’s been long enough that I am totally back at beginner level, and this is where we get the best benefits in terms of brain health.

Ten minutes at a time. That’s about it. Sometimes closer to 15 but mostly just 10.

Why? Because if I tried too hard for loo long right at the beginning, I would get overly frustrated (and overly sore). I don’t want to be frustrated. I want to be learning from a place of joy.

THAT is the magic RIGH THERE.

When we were small, we didn’t do things for any other reason. If we didn’t like something, we tried something else. And when we liked something, we stuck with it because it was giving us this sense of joy. (This is our natural state. I’m not speaking to shitty parenting that forces…that’s another issue.)

Ten minutes. And let me tell you… even after just FIVE times on my skates, I was already significantly better. And not frustrated. I still look forward to skate days because I didn’t go at it like some downhill freight train. I’m flirting. I’m testing. I’m playing. I’m joyful.

Expanding Our Internal Peace

I have BIG EMOTIONS. (If you know me, you’re laughing and wondering if I could say something more obvious.) I think I’ve been this way since I was very small. My mother tells the story that you could sit me in front of the TV when I was a toddler and I would just basically laugh my little ass off at anything that was remotely funny.

Because of that, for a long time, I resisted the word peace. The very concept shouted BORING to me. Who wants to be all quiet all the time!?

I think a lot of people equate the concept of peacefulness with a certain kind of weakness. I mean, duh, our culture LOVES war in all its forms. It’s our favorite set of metaphors to apply to every aspect of life.

But like the word love, I think we are confused about what peace actually is and how it’s related to feelings and emotions.

Peace is not the opposite of war, just as love is not the opposite of hate. Peace and love do not have opposites. They are the nature of the universe. They are the fabric of everything. War and hate are human manifestations of perceived lack and unresolved pain.

Peace and love (which I see as folded into and the same as “joy”) are our true nature, and they are truly the only states from which we can create justice and goodness and art and beauty.

They do not, though, eradicate the possibility of anger and sadness and grief and rage. Those things exist within the scope of human emotion and feeling.

Peace, love, joy… these are NOT emotions or feelings but rather actions and ways of being.

So we can be angry and then still create justice through the energy of peace. (This is a lot and I’m moving through it fast but just think to the basic teachings of Gandhi, MLK, Christ, Dorothy Day…and too many others to list.)

I now think of and experience peace as clarity of vision and knowing. I like the word “clearness” even better here than clarity. CLEAR. Like clean water and bright light.

I also think that to chase peace can be a frustrating and futile effort like chasing happiness.

I believe this is why meditation to find it often doesn’t work for people. Peace is more like a shy woodland creature for many of us because we’ve known it so little in our lives and it’s not sure it can trust us. (Stay with me, here.)

Our own inner peace is so often very deeply buried under intense pain and fear and just mistrust that we can ever live in this sort of state. We’ve been taught that good things should be difficult, that life is about working hard, that love can be fleeting so watch out, that other people are our competition and should be kept at a certain distance, and that we ourselves are never strong enough, good enough, or worthy enough.

Peace feels like a golden carrot at the end of an infinitely long stick and we’ll never ever do or be enough to finally grab it, and if we did, it would very likely turn out to be an illusion and turn to dust in our grasp.

So what do we do? How do we ever find any kind of expanded internal peace/love/joy if they are all that golden carrot but are resistant to “trying.”

We start by getting more honest about all the inner crap that is clogging our way to our true, basic nature.

We do work that clears that. We resolve. We heal. We spend more time in the body, allowing the body to express itself, breathing, settling, getting more and more comfortable with some inner stillness.

The body is the key here. The body can only live in the now. And when we get deeply enough into body, brain and mind chatter start to either shut down or slow down enough that we can identify the problems, the levels of utter ridiculousness with which we torture ourselves every day. We start to CLEAR our inner sight.

For me, this happens most in dance and vigorous movement. It’s like the more my body is being engaged, the more easily I can enter the eye of my inner storm and view it from that place of quiet.

Now, after about 12 years of serious practice at this, now and only now have I finally been able to cultivate a more traditional looking meditative sort of practice, one in which I am actually seated in stillness but this has only happened because I’ve gotten to the place where that inner forest of creatures is no longer scary to me. I feel strong enough in my physical body to enter into the other layers of this body — the emotional, mental, and spiritual.

And here finally, I am able to coax out that woodland creature and feed it a bit. We’re actually becoming friends.

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.