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.

Instead of a Word of the Year: A Practice of the Year

So many words kept coming at me, trying to assert themselves as the front runner for my word of 2021, but it bothered me… this idea of distilling it all down to one word when I knew I needed a broader and simultaneously deeper approach after the dumpster fire of 2020.

I needed something that would help me to refocus on what really matters to me. I needed something that would feed the better parts of me.

I needed something that would get me back on my right path when it came to nurturing my spirit.

But I also needed a challenge for my world weary heart — a challenge that would take me beyond all the unproductive rage I’ve been living with for the past many months and a challenge that could help to lift me out of my post-serious-depression acedia (spiritual apathy).

And then it hit me:

I will be spending 2021 studying the Yamas and Niyamas of Yoga. These are the ethical practices of yoga. There are ten in total and so during the last two months, I will dive into a sort of “review,” focusing on the ones that I found especially challenging.

I will be using this text. At the beginning of each month, I’ll read the corresponding chapter, and then I will spend the month exploring that particular yama or niyama in all areas of my life.

I would love for you to join me so I’ll also be writing about this journey here and in the JoyBody Sanctuary on Facebook. If you’re not in the sanctuary, you can ask to join by going here or you can just send me a message anywhere you have access to me and ask me to add you. It’s a private group and no one can see what’s being written in there except for the members.

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.

The Stories of Your Body

Jane was one of my elder dancers. She was about 80 when I was teaching her and she had more energy than ANYONE I knew. She was so IN LOVE with life, and she just DOVE into anything I asked them to do.

And she had the most expressive FEET.

As we age, things might start to feel differently. Things might start to make sounds, feel achey, not extend or stretch quite as far as they used to.

That only upsets us because of our expectations and because of the negative stories we then spin around what is simply…happening.

What if we flipped that?

What if we decided — as the original practitioners of Butoh did many years ago — that with age, our bodies become MORE — more full of story, MORE able to tell those stories, more honest, more expressive, more beautiful, more joyful?

What if we decided that the true dance didn’t — couldn’t — happen until we were well toward our 80s like Jane?

One Minute Self Care: 50+ Micro Rituals for Peace & Health

You might remember me saying many times in the past, “Tell Asshole Brain, JUST FIVE MINUTES.” Well, lately — I’m sure many of you are feeling this — five minutes seems like a really big chunk of time and effort.

FIVE minutes!? What do I look like? A freaking ultra marathoner?

So here we are, one minute.

JUST. ONE. MINUTE.

Can you ask yourself many times throughout the day: What can I do for ONE MINUTE for MYSELF?

I asked members of our Facebook private group JoyBody Sanctuary what kinds of things they could imagine doing and we came up with quite the list. So here you are, in no particular order:

1. Breathe deeply with your eyes closed

2. Meditate/pray/chant

3. SCREAM — right where you are or in a closed room or in the shower or into a pillow

4. Jump up and down — HARD

5. Rub your own head and neck and feet

6. Place your hands on your heart center

7. Walk outside and stand on ground (bare feet, please)

8. Wash your face

9. Lay on the floor and cry

10. Lay on the floor and THROW A TANTRUM

11. Warm up your cold coffee/tea

12. Eat some dark chocolate

13. Pet a cat or dog

14. Punch a pillow as hard as you can for the full minute

15. Release a lot of loud sighs. Be super dramatic about it

16. Smack yourself — firmly all over your legs, around your hips, into your low back

17. Brush your hair

18. Go outside and just gaze at the sky — night or day

19. Wash a few dishes; make your bed; do something to your house that makes you feel good

20. Email or text a friend a positive message

21. Go online and look at art (have some tabs already saved for this)

22. Read a poem. Out loud

23. SING

24. Sniff your favorite essential oil. Dab some on your wrists

25. Hug yourself in a cuddly blanket or hug someone who is with you

26. Lie on the floor or your bed and stretch like a cat

27. Tap all over your scalp

28. Make a quick piece of art — take a photo, create a TikTok video, color, doodle

29. Pull a tarot/oracle card and sit with it

30. Bounce on a mini trampoline or ride your stationary bike

31. Drink a big glass of water

32. Take your vitamins

33. Stand up if you’re seated and walk around; put your leg up on a chair or table

34. Sit on the floor/squat

35. If you have wooden floors, put on socks and skate around

36. Go check the mail

37. Go to youtube and watch a video of the ocean or your favorite city (have some ready in a folder so you don’t fall down a rabbit hole)

38. Rearrange/clean an altar space in your house (or make a new one)

39. Go to your books, randomly pick one, randomly open it, read. Let it speak to you

40. Light some incense and walk around your space

41. Light candles

42. Write a haiku, a list of favorite things, a note to yourself to read later, a note to someone you love

43. Leave a random note of kindness on someone’s Facebook page

44. Dance. For one minute. To the sound of your own breath

45. Put on some mascara, eyeliner, lipstick, whatever you like to embellish yourself

46. Remember one of your favorite moments in your life. Recall as much sensory detail as you can

47. Twirl. Use a big scarf

48. Do you have a baton in your house? (Making this list and suddenly I want a baton again…)

49. Juggle

50. Play a round of Jax

Your turn… what could you add to this list?

Grief Workshop Date Changes

Election week was even harder than I anticipated, and as I write this, we’re still waiting to see if anyone from the GOP starts to do the right thing and acknowledge the Biden/Harris win.

And because election week had me totally unable to focus on anything but the state of the free world, I’ve changed the start date of the Grief workshop.

We will now start a week later, Sunday, November 22nd.

Go here to register.

Transform the Grief of 2020 into Fuel for Action via the JoyBody: A Workshop to Start the Process

In this workshop, we’ll use a wide variety of tools to first face the many types and levels of grief we’ve been living with and then (begin to) transmute that energy into a fuel that can be used to power action. This work can happen because we are joybody… because our essential nature is meant for something other than all the anger and anxiety we’ve been living with this year.

And though that joybody nature can feel very exhausted, very covered up, almost to the point of being gone, it’s still there. It just needs to be tended to — in a variety of ways.

We’ll be using: therapeutic joybody movement art (very guided and not at all what you think of as dance), visual arts (whichever is your favorite — drawing, painting, taking photos), writing, and ritual.

We’ll be doing all of this, of course, in community, a vital ingredient to the work.

WHEN (for full map of our time together, keep reading):

Starting Sunday, November 22nd.

And ending the week of Sunday, December 13th, which concludes with the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, or the great compassionate mother.

I’m offering this workshop with two tiers of pricing. You get full access to everything no matter which price you pay. First is $108 and second is $77. I’m hoping this helps.

Full Price of $108

Alternative Price of $77

Some Important Bits on Your End to PREPARE:

• You will need either a large scarf or about 2 yards of dark fabric.

• You’ll also want to gather writing and art materials (again, whichever medium you like so it might just be the camera on your phone!), candles, and anything that might be included on an altar (stones, pictures, flowers, symbols, whatever calls to you).

• You must be connected to me on Facebook as we’ll use a closed and private group on there for a primary “classroom.”

• You must be able to use Skype and you need to connect to me on there (you can find me and wave to me via my email — christineserfozo@gmail.com).

• You need access to shared music lists. I’ll do these via both Spotify AND YouTube.

• PLEASE PRACTICE YOUR TECHNOLOGY before the first Sunday evening get together: BE ABLE TO RUN BOTH SKYPE AND YOUR MUSIC AT THE SAME TIME. This is vital.

WHAT I HOPE FOR YOU:

This workshop is meant as a STARTING POINT for work that we all need to be doing into the new year. So you’ll have breakthroughs, surely, during our time together, but you’re meant to take the bits and pieces and techniques that really speak to you and continue using them for perhaps even the whole of 2021 if not a good month after we finish.

I want you to feel more hopeful than you’ve felt in a long time by the end of our time.

I want you to feel like you have energy for action.

I want you to have more clarity for next steps.

And again, I want you to have an arsenal of tools that you can continue to explore.

HOW OUR TIME WILL BE STRUCTURED:

Each Sunday evening (or on your own time) we’ll meet on Skype for 60 to 75 minutes starting at 5:30 PM (EASTERN TIME).

THESE SKYPE SESSIONS WILL BE RECORDED BUT…. BUT!!!!! THE RECORDING ONLY STAYS AVAILABLE FOR THAT WEEK. So you can be with us live or you can catch up and watch when you can but WITHIN THE FOLLOWING WEEK.

Then throughout the week, I’ll be posting content regarding visual arts, writing prompts, and ritual building exercises. (This content will remain up for one month following the conclusion of the workshop.)

Again, I’m offering this workshop with two tiers of pricing. You get full access to everything no matter which price you pay. First is $108 and second is $77. I’m hoping this helps.

Full Price of $108

Alternative Price of $77