Spring Movement Arts Classes: You Deserve to Feel Good and to Be Fascinated

PLEASE NOTE: if you’ve not yet taken a Zoom class with me, please read all of this page over here carefully and pay extra attention to the music aspects.

What will these classes look like?

If you’ve never taken a class like this with me, start by reading over here.

SIX WEEK SESSION, STARTING the week of April 18th

For this six week session, you’ll have two evenings (or recordings) to choose from or you can do both at a discount!

On Tuesdays, we’ll get hyper focused on the anatomy of movement that makes you feel good. Think about this like a moving massage class, where we dive into muscle and fascia and work in a detailed way with each of our joints.

On Thursdays, we’ll work to let our bodies talk. We’ll use methods to explore the narrative that our lives have left imprinted within our cells. “The body never lies,” as Martha Graham said.

MORE DESCRIPTION OF EACH BELOW.

TUESDAYS: REJUVENATIVE BODY PARTS
April 20, 27 and May 4, 11, 18, 25
5:25 to 6:30 PM Easter U.S. Time (OR WHENEVER YOU WANT TO WATCH THE VIDEO)
COST: $85 (OR at a discount for both; see below)

THURSDAY: BODY NARRATIVE IMMERSION
April 22, 29 and May 6, 13, 20, 27
5:25 to 6:30 PM Eastern U.S. Time (OR WHENEVER YOU WANT TO WATCH THE VIDEO)
COST: $85 (OR at a discount for both; see below)

BOTH TUESDAY AND THURSDAY
COST: $155

FURTHER DESCRIPTIONS

TUESDAYS: REJUVENATIVE BODY PARTS

Movement should feel good. And after you move, you should feel even better. The goal of this class is to help you feel amazing in this body so that you can feel even more amazing in your life.

We’ll use the breath and fine tuned attention to get deeply into our muscles and fascia in a way that systems based on postures cannot. We’ll use water as our primary motivating metaphor and the circle/spiral as our basic template. We’ll work through the parts of the body from the ground up, from every angle, and THROUGH every plane.

THURSDAYS: BODY NARRATIVE IMMERSION

Your life’s stories do not simply get stored in the memory of your mind. Everything that has ever happened to you is left in some way in some space in your body. We talk about this often in relation to the after effects of trauma, but the joyful and happy moments are there also. We’ll work with all of it or whatever of it wants to come up.

Body will be the boss. And like a language immersion, we’ll spend time listening and then allowing our understanding of our own unique vocabulary to grow over the six weeks.

Though we won’t be spending a ton of time with words, I would recommend having pen and paper nearby in case you need to capture an insight or two.

What I'm Giving Up for Lent... and it's not what you think...

This photo… it’s full of stories that you can’t see when you first look but it’s layered so that when I look at it, I get flooded.

This was from right before I met Craig. This was when I was living in such a way that I woke up each day excited. I was living in such a way that I startled myself with the sound of my own laughter that came from so deep in my belly and that erupted from me so very easily.

This was from when I was doing All the Things. And I wasn’t doing All the Things out of some sense of “MUST” but rather out of “could” and “happily so.”

After so many years of serious depression, I had finally gotten back to what I call my “gooey center.”

Then a lot of shit happened that I don’t want to review.

I’m sharing this photo to say… here she is… Here is me.

Here is the me who spent time in spiritual practices every single day without the need to schedule them.

Here is the me who danced every single day BESIDES all the movement teaching she did almost daily.

Here is the me who went to the lake, who walked in the park, who spent time outside every day.

Here is the me who ate so healthily because she finally felt the difference and it stuck.

Here is the me who put herself first because only by doing that are we the best version of us for those around us.

Here is the me who felt like a fucking superstar just by living her own life.

So here’s what I’m giving up for lent this year:

I’m giving up NOT doing what I know makes me feel great.

I’m giving up HIDING.

I’m giving up this mousey, playing small that I seem to have fallen into.

I’m giving up too much damn quiet.

I’m giving up the lethargy and the apathy and the what-if-ism and the only-if-ism and the regret and the doubt and the self judgment.

Oh… and gluten. ((ha))

You?

#BeautyGazing: A Catalog

Every now and then I’ll share a post of a collection of things I’ve been sharing across a bunch of platforms for #BeautyGazing. These are meant to act as Micro Meditations through the senses. Take a moment and breathe and just be. I’ve described this idea over here.

Ballerina Anna Pavlova by Ira L. Hill Studio, 1914

First, if you’ve not done so, check out my TikTok. I know, it might seem redonk to some of you… TIKTOK!? But I find a lot of joy and peace over there and I’m curating my own page to be nothing but these micro meditations.

If you love tarot and fashion, oh, my, are you in luck! This mini film by Dior is breathtakingly beautiful.

This one is under two minutes: Colorized film of 1920's Paris. We can’t travel and this felt like a moment of bliss.

Did you see that a teen intern at NASA discovered a new planet!?!? And it looks like freaking CANDY!

If you’ve never seen skies filled like RIVERS with monarch butterflies… I could watch this over and over and over. It’s only a couple of minutes.

This shaman video on Facebook about our interconnectedness with nature… it says everything.

And some of my recent photos from my beauty seeking in this new and interesting home city…

February Yoga Philosophy Practice: Satya (Truthfulness)

(This is part of a year long series, in which I’ll be personally diving into each of the yamas and niyamas. One per month. There are 10 so that leaves me with 2 months to review. The main text I’m using is this. I’ll be checking in over the month with thoughts, explorations, practices. I would love for you to play along.)

I’m just starting the chapter on Satya. This is not easy stuff, is it? I’m only a few pages in and already… ouch. Challenging, to say the least.

We all like to think of ourselves as basically honest and then we read something like this:

“When we are real rather than nice, when we choose self expression over self indulgence, when we choose growth over the need to belong, and when we choose fluidity over rigidity, we begin to understand the deeper dynamics of truthfulness and we begin to taste the freedom and goodness of this jewel.” (Adele, p. 44)

You can begin to see, too, how this grows from and builds back into the first jewel of ahimsa, nonviolence.

You can begin to detect the way that we then convolute all of these things and become trapped by those twists and turns.

How, for example, do we not hurt someone’s feelings and remain truthful? Sometimes it seems those things are not possible together.

But is it hurting someone’s feelings to tell them something that is necessary to their own growth? Nope. Not as long as we watch how we are doing it and why.

I’ve definitely been choosing nice over real when it comes to a personal situation that has created boatloads of shame and stress for me. Someone has stolen a significant amount of money from me and I remain quiet about their treachery. Is this right of me? I’m certainly not helping anyone who might be taken in by their lies and deceptions in the future.

Am I valuing my own sense of pride and privacy over truthfulness? (I don’t have the answer to this one yet but I’m sharing here as a first step.)

I’ll leave you with a quote from the very next page of the text:

“What is driving you to distort yourself or silence yourself?…Or as Carl Jung would ask us, what is so dangerous in the moment about the truth that you are choosing to lie?”

Like I said, ouch.

#BeautyGazing and the surprise of tiktok as a spiritual practice

Yep. I said that. Tiktok as part of my spiritual practice? Have I lost my mind? Nope. Hear me out…

My niece kept telling me that I needed to be on tiktok and I was like, whatev. When I see what’s going on there with dance, it’s fun but it’s not something I felt the need to contribute to. So I started by just observing. For over a month now. I’ve just been watching and getting some much needed humor and inspiration and peace from it. Imagine that! From a social platform! We’ve all grown so accustomed to being agitated and made angry when we’re online.

Once I realized it was making me… dare I say, happy!?… I started paying even more attention.

Then quite suddenly I realized HOW I wanted to use it.

TikTok + #beautygazing = my little way of bringing some goodness to the world via another channel.

I was excited to get started. But something unexpected has happened:

This has totally refueled me. I needed this.

It gives me some focus. It pushes me to create in a new way. It makes me see the world differently. Now I’m just so excited to find the beauty and joy and to somehow create an artifact from it.

If you’re not over there, you don’t need an account to just look around. I’m sharing the micro video I made for Imbolc.

And here’s my profile.

@joybodystudio

My mixed path #beautygazing #joybody #tarot #starmantarot #bowie #imbolc #tantricyoga #devotion #oracle

♬ Sparkles - Raccoon With a Groovebox

Dance is an Act of Rebellion

Dancing has always been an area of control for the dominant culture. Patriarchy, for example, has always equated the female body dancing with prostitution, and dancers, to this day, are statistically the most in poverty of all professionals in all arts.

Dancing is freedom. Dancing is expression of truth. Truth cannot be hidden in a dancing body.

And dancing is joy. Joy is power. Joy fuels us. Joy reminds us of who we are and that we are worthy. That is too much for the patriarchy... they want us seated and still.

@notoriouscree

Crow hop styles ##dance ##native ##nativeamerican

♬ Crow Hop - Northern Wind

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.