The Lie of Effort Bringing Reward

I’m pretty used to chronic pain. Or I should say that I’ve had a lot of time in my life where it was the norm. Then I started to dance at 40 and I got rid of most of it for the majority of that decade.

Something might come up here and there but I made a little effort around it and it was gone in no time.

Because that’s how things work, right? You put in effort and you get rewarded.

No.

SOMETIMES that is how things work. Sometimes rewards simply are not on their way no matter what you do.

My strong and very healthy shoulders six years ago.

There can be a million reasons for this, unique to each human, but when we assume that effort brings reward, this leads to the moralizing of effort which then leads to judgement of humans we think are not “efforting” enough.

It’s the basis of all ableism (and of toxic capitalism that says enough effort can bring wealth to anyone no matter what but I’m focusing on body issues here and that is a whole book in and of itself).

This year, I’ve been dealing with a shoulder tear. Not bad enough to warrant surgery (which I want to avoid and my doctor agrees) but bad enough that I lost a ton of mobility and was in constant pain and had a hard time sleeping etc. I got a shot and that helped enough to let me start doing serious P.T. on myself.

Which has increased my mobility but I’m still only at a B grade.

Now, I’ve always been extremely mobile and very strong, so my idea of an A grade is different than a majority of humans, but I’m not willing at this age to give up on that. Because that’s a slippery slope right there.

All of that brings me to a few nights ago when I was crying to Craig about the progress I was making not being enough and not being fast enough and what if this is IT!?!?

That’s when it really hit me that I’ve always bought into the ableist crap of effort = reward.

Any doctor I’ve ever had for issues like this can’t get over the effort I put in. They say “no one does that. People want pills and surgery.”

I work hard and I’m consistent. And I stay consistent over long periods of time. I am stubborn in those good ways (and some bad ones but alas…).

And still… with all my stubborn consistency, hard work, and the knowledge I have about what to do and how, I am still not healed.

There are two things here that I want to emphasize.

First, sometimes we think we’re not getting the reward for our effort because it’s happening too slowly and in too small increments to notice. So we give up or we dilute our efforts and this then proves to us that we are not succeeding and “SEE!?!? This is why it’s not worth it!!! NOTHING is happening!” Self fulfilling prophecy type stuff.

I myself — Ms. Stubborn — have been tempted to give up in this very way.

Second, sometimes we’re simply not going to succeed. Sometimes things are worse than people can know. Sometimes there are circumstances that simply cannot be overcome.

This is hard. As a culture, we want to believe that there’s always the possibility of success.

But sometimes the success we need is the redefinition of what that looks like for us, the altering of expectations, the release of a strict goal so that we can move forward and start in a new way.

I believe that there’s ALMOST always room for improvement and space to create new mobility and strength, but sometimes this will look different than we want it to, and that’s got to be okay.

The Betrayal of Self and The Rebuilding of Trust

There are a lot of reasons we can't "hear" our body's wisdom anymore. One of the most common? Learning from an early age that our desires/needs weren't to be our primary concern/responsibility but instead that we were supposed to focus on being a certain way to fulfill others' needs.

This happens to almost everyone in one way or another, but for some, it’s more directly intense and much more destructive of the sense of self that’s crucial to individuation and a sense of fulfillment.

Learning to listen again can feel scary, for sure. It can feel totally overwhelming. We can feel like the emotions that come with it are too much. Or perhaps we have simply decided we aren't worth the effort.

The Peony Method is gentle and it takes time but eventually? All of this can and will change.

We must start with simply allowing the body to be what it is in this moment. We spend a lot of our lives in this culture trying to manipulate the body into a certain form or action, only to then get angry at the body for not doing so or not doing so quickly enough.

We are betraying ourselves in those moments and so trusting starts right there.

Trusting starts with acknowledging, noticing, allowing, and eventually? Being fascinated. I’ve seen it thousands of time — women thinking they’d never be able to feel fascination within their own bodies “UNLESS…” (fill in the blank… they were thinner, stronger, had this or that…). But they’re always wrong. And delighted to be so.

It won’t happen over night, but over time… with patience and commitment to practice.

Things Pretty Much Suck and Yet We Still Must...

I’m writing this the day after the Texas fuckery. I don’t have the capacity to really write about that yet. I’m seething.

It feels like the world is just falling apart… or imploding… Like I said, I don’t have the words yet.

Which makes me feel like, oh, right, duh… movement.

Isadora Duncan was once asked what one of her dances MEANT, and she said, “If I could tell you then I wouldn’t need to dance.”

Exactly.

At times like this, it can be easy — for me anyway — to succumb to an externally created depression. To just give up. Lay down. Do nothing.

Which is what evil shits want, right?

Getting into these bodies and feeling the anger and the grief and the overwhelm is the only way. Once we do that, we can start transforming that energy into something to counter what’s happening — even just in tiny bits at a time.

Like in that image to the right… I was working some serious stuff out there. Without the need for words.

Anyway… like I said… I’m feeling pretty quiet.

But if you need space to move and be with others, the next session starts on Tuesday, September 7th.

All the yoga and movement art are right here.

AND remember that you can participate live or use the video whenever you want.

AND FEEL FREE TO WRITE TO ME TO ASK ABOUT A DROP IN IF YOU’RE CURIOUS ABOUT WHAT WE DO.

You Only Need One Yoga Pose

This photo is from about ten years ago, and yes, there’s my actual, original hair color. And this is me with Erich Schiffmann, still my favorite of all the “big” yoga teachers. He’s the real deal to the core. A gentle bear of a man who is brilliant and funny.

This yoga retreat with him took place in Yellow Springs, OH, now under an hour from where Craig and I live (and I can’t wait to take him there because that town is adorbs).

Okay… enough background stuff…

The whole retreat with him, we listened to dharma talks, meditated, and did downdog and child’s pose.

That was it… downdog and child’s pose over and over and over… it was WONDERFUL.

To focus on those postures alone was enough.

Because with a good teacher, one posture contains the entirety of yoga.

And to really get to know yourself inside one posture? That’s the entirety of yoga.

How much we distract ourselves with newness… even in yoga.

It reminds me of Butoh, actually… taking our time to notice the most micro of details. Going SO SLOWLY that we can’t help but run into our own crap.

And lately, as I listen to Sadhguru on my walks, he is constantly saying the same thing. He mocks American yoga with its obsession with SO MANY POSES.

KNOW ONE POSE, he says, that’s all you need.

As a teacher, I feel the pull to constantly be changing things up, but that comes from how we’re taught that everything is supposed to be endlessly entertaining.

In the meantime, we are turning our spiritual physical practices into yet another mode of consumption. More, more, more.

As we feel like less, less, less.

Nothing will fill an emptiness of that kind.

Slowing down. Paying attention. Limiting our intake.

We can finally truly come into contact with our wounded parts, and then we just might have the patience to sit with them.

A Question to Tap into the Wisdom of Your Original Self/Body

When I do one on one work with people, it can look about a million ways, but one thing stays consistent: Homework.

Mostly, I listen to you. I’m listening for experiments that you can run to get more into your body, to become more aware of what you really need, to take better care of yourself.

This can be something simple like taking the typical two weeks between our sessions to really notice what tastes good. Or to set up some mini altar to pay attention to a particular aspect of yourself every day for a few minutes.

Recently during a one on one, it was a question that came to me that I then told my client to ask herself every time she was starting to feel uncomfortable in a situation or with a person.

Or you can even use this question as you enter any new situation or encounter any person any time. It could become a really great habit, actually.

This question won’t necessarily create word based answers, and that’s the point of it.

This question will most likely create instant body based reactions like sick tummy, butterflies, a feeling of wanting to run, or maybe warmth and peace.

HERE:

Is my little self feeling safe and taken care of here/with this person?

It helps if you have a specific “little self” in mind. I use the one in this photo. Look at that silly/happy/open face. She’s my perfect go-to wise woman.

Now I know that a lot of my students experienced awful trauma, even at a very young and tender age, but that actually doesn’t matter with this question.

This question will STILL help you tap into your wise and knowing self. It will tap into the part of you that even at that young age knew what and who was wrong and bad and unsafe. It will tap into that part of you that even at that young age was developing coping mechanisms to protect themselves.

Ask the question and slow your breathing and keep asking it until your answer becomes clear.

The second part here is important…

THEN ask your ADULT self, what do I need to do to take care of this little self in this context, relative to their answer to that first question.

Because it’s your adult self that that little self was waiting for all along. You can do this.

Flags, Rainbows, and Jesus: Taking Back that which Hate Wants to Steal

I was talking to Craig recently about the American flag, and that no matter how much I know it’s wrong, when I see you flying one, I assume certain things about you.

This makes my seven year old heart sad. That’s how old I was when I got to go to Betsy Ross’s house in Philly for a school trip. I LOVED that tiny house and her and the idea of her sitting there and sewing that first flag.

Symbols are more powerful than words, and right now, symbols can either send out the message that if you are different in any way, you are safe here or you are not safe.

It happens instantly.

I’ve always really disliked brightly colored rainbow stuff. I have always found it garish. But I understand now that it says “I’m with you,” and so I’ve started to embrace it in our distinctly diverse and beautiful neighborhood in this city that makes so many feel safer than the very small city I came from.

As a woman, I’ve for as long as I can remember struggled with Christianity. Let’s just say that and know that I could write BOOKS about this particular struggle.

But I also have a strongly Catholic heart… the best of it speaks to me in profound ways that nothing else can touch. Our Lady of Guadalupe. Mary’s yes. The work of mystics like Thomas Merton. St. Francis. A pope who SEEMS to understand compassion in a way we’ve not seen before. Smells and bells. Deep contemplation. Ritual. The Catholic Imagination, to use Fr. Greeley’s book title.

And yet… my GOD, the damage done, the lives hurt and lost, and now the twisted, demented, evil version of Christianity that the far right has latched onto and claimed.

It makes my heart hurt and my head feel like it could POP.

To say that the far right’s view of Christianity is antithetical to everything that Christ taught is not even close to the reality of what they have managed to do through their deformed messaging.

So when I’m reading books on this subject matter, let’s just say, if I’m out in public, I might hide their covers, lay them cover down, slide them into my bag upside down…

I don’t want anyone to feel unsafe around me. What a sad sentence that is … that I had to write that.

Gandhi looked to Christ as one of history’s greatest prophets of nonviolence, and here I am, rightfully afraid that someone will perceive violence toward them via my reading materials.

I needed to finally write about all of this because I was sitting on our front stoop today with a book about Clare of Assisi next to me. The sun was shining. I had on my “hex the patriarchy” tshirt (but the print is small…).

A young woman was stopped at my stoop by their dog, who insisted on visiting me. I laughed and told them it was fine. The dog was so pretty!

Then I realized as they walked away that they had been staring at my book and that their demeanor shifted in that moment.

It made me so sad.

That’s what all the hate in the world is doing even on a micro level.

It’s making us suspicious of one another’s very hearts.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t be. That hate is toxic and has proven itself deadly.

But I’m wondering how we can counter it with a love that is so much more powerful if we keep losing important symbols of love.

I want to take them back and recombine them with obvious symbols of love and openheartedness. I’ve seen it happening but we need MORE.

Chronic Pain is Exhausting... Duh...

I’m privileged in that not only do I have access to excellent healthcare, but I have, for large parts of my life, had extra quick access due to family connections to medicine. So this Thursday, I get to see a top rated ortho guy for my shoulder, and I am so grateful.

It has not always been like this for me, especially when I needed it most. From my late 20s until about 40, I was constantly spiraling in and out of serious depressive episodes, and when I wasn’t just trying to survive, I was still not healthy or happy. During this time, I also had constant, ever-changing chronic pain and migraines.

I believe in my case that the depression and chronic pain fed each other, growing from and then into each other, back and forth.

You might be someone who understands this enough to know then that I had little energy for anything but living.

That’s what chronic illness and pain does to you — forces you into a basic level of living, and all the while, the world around us does not allow for that in any way. You’re still expected to be a good little producer of work and maker of money. It’s a wonder that more of us do not fall through the cracks than already do.

Right now, my issue is independent of my most recent cycle of depression… or is it?

Because when we’re depressed, it’s really hard to get ourselves literally moving, and in that context, you’re simply more likely to experience pain or injury.

Then pain and injury makes you less likely to move and thus increases your depression.

It is truly a vicious downward spiral.

Which is why it’s important that we talk about it more, that we ask each other for help, that we do everything we possibly can to move something.

Move something… what the hell do I mean?

Move SOMETHING… ANYTHING.

I’ve had students with such serious knee issues that they couldn’t stand to dance and so they worked from chairs. Those students were of all ages.

I’ve worked with elders post stroke and serious illness, who danced with whatever they could in their body in a wheelchair.

And then there’s me… fighting this fight right now on a lesser level, for sure but still…

Some days, I want to just lie down and GIVE UP. Just lie down and say fuck it.

That’s the old and dangerous depression lurking, seeing its chance to pounce.

But instead, after all these years and all of this learning and all those students who worked so hard at my beckoning, I cannot give into that.

I get up and walk.

I do the movement that I CAN.

And what I can leads to what I thought I couldn’t.

Books to Deepen Your Yoga (Plus some bonus, classic yoga videos that still hold up)

Yoga is more than poses, of course. If you read here or have been around me long, I know you get that already, but I think we can still forget it…or lose track of it.

The practice of postures — hatha yoga — is just one form of yoga intended for people who learn through being physical.

It always blows my mind how wise the early creators of yoga systems were about human personality. They understood early on that there are so many different kinds of learning styles and so they accommodated them.

For example, there’s physical yoga but also the yoga of intellectual study, the yoga of devotional practices, and on and on.

The point being that the path was not and is not the destination. The destination is self knowledge that creates connection to the whole (and of course, there are so many ideas of what that “whole” is — whether it be a form of God/Goddess that is transcendent or immanent or just your best self or or or… no two lineages totally agree on this and thus so many lineages).

I am grounded in Kundalini yoga for the most part which is grounded in/from tantra yoga. Tantra is the system that makes the most sense to me on all levels. When I was about 11, I told my mother that I believe we are energy and that when we die, we return to the larger energy. Period. And that’s pretty much tantra in a nutshell. (Though, of course, it’s way more complicated than that.)

The books I’ll share are NOT just from the tantra tradition but lately I find myself getting more and more specialized in that area.

The books I’m sharing range from much easier to digest to more complicated. And yes, the tantra texts/books would be way complicated if that’s your first real deep yoga reading. They aren’t necessarily a great starting point.

I will link to them on Goodreads (and you can find me at Goodreads right here, though I’m mostly sharing fiction).

BOOKS

Anything by Stephen Cope is a great place to start, particularly the first three books on this list. He’s easy to read. His style is conversational and he’s just so… real.

Written in 1996, this is a classic. My first yoga TAPE was with Erich Schiffmann and it too holds. (HERE IT IS on YouTube. This video DEFINED yoga video aesthetics.) He’s a wonderful human (and I’ve been lucky enough to meet him and study a wee bit with him).

Most interpretations of Pantanjali’s Yoga Sutras are by men and wow… you can tell. So this translation with commentary especially for women is a breath of fresh air. It was so needed. Before this book, I was pretty much NO THANKS when it came to these particular sutras.

Sadhguru is a teacher of tantra based yoga. He’s the real deal and his first book has so much to offer. Even if you just skip his personal story stuff at the beginning, there’s so much depth.

Every yogi needs to read the Bhagavad Gita and there is no translation/commentary out there that comes close to this. (I had to link to amazon on that one to find it, but I would read ANYTHING by this man.)

My first Kundalini Yoga TAPE (yep… tape, yet again) was with Gurmukh. She’s a wonderfual wacky wise human and this little book about the chakras is always a good first place to explore these concepts. I still go back to this book now and then. (And again, here she is on YouTube.)

My first actual tantra book on the list is by the great scholar Georg Feuerstein. Seriously, you cannot go wrong when you read him. Except sometimes he can be a bit…dry. But this particular book is a great intro to tantra. Again, ready anything by him, for sure, but have coffee at hand.

There are SO MANY MORE texts but that’s enough for now.

AND please feel free to ask me for books that relate to specific areas you’d like to explore — whether those be physical, emotional, or spiritual, I’m guessing I have some idea where to point you!