About me... because I feel like I don't let people know this stuff enough...

If you’re new to me, you probably have very little clue as to who I am and what sorts of credentials I bring to this work.

Even if you know me, you might only know bits and pieces of this, and I think it’s important to understand where I came from so you know you’re working with the right (or not) person.

Without going into all the details, by the time I was in my mid 20s, I was suffering from severe (and sometimes life-threatening) depression and anxiety. With that, there was a ton of comorbid chronic pain throughout my body. I had also had severe digestive issues and migraines from around the age of 11. I would say, I actually identified my depression at the age of nine; I actually remember a very specific moment when I said to myself that I was deeply sad and would be so for a long time but that I would eventually get out of it. (But that’s another story.)

In my mid 20s, in a desperate attempt to FIX something… I blew up my life, which is probably what then mired me in that depression for much longer, until I re-found dance at the age of 40. (I had danced since I could walk and then even into college but stopped when the depression hit so very hard.)

By my late 20s, I had found yoga and embarked on a study that’s never stopped. By my early 30s, I found Kundalini yoga specifically. While yoga in no way healed my depression, it made it, here and there, a bit “less,” and I think Kundalini prepared me to be able to dance again… it brought me back to the idea that my body could be a source of joy.

Then at the age of 40, at a friend’s wedding, I danced again for the first time since my mid 20s.

Over the next six to nine months, everything changed for me. Keep in mind that I was dancing/moving about 3 hours a day. Sweating my ass off and having so much freaking fun. Without intending to at all, I dropped four sizes. This was the literal weight of my depression (not that weight and depression are always cause and effect; they are for me). 

I also was no longer in constant pain. And something amazing was happening to my mind. This was the most important thing. I could feel hope and light and joy and curiosity and awe coming back. I started to feel like my little self. I would giggle and hear her.

Knowing I could not stop dancing but that I needed outside structure and support, I signed up for my first training at Kripalu. Over the following six years, I went to Kripalu nine times for intense trainings as well as traveling elsewhere for trainings.

Now, keep in mind, preceding my return to dance, I spent countless thousands of hours trying to “figure out” my depression, trauma, and chronic grief. Along the way, I studied a huge array of leaders in the field of psychotherapy, until I eventually found body-based psychotherapies and studied in person with some of the most forward-thinking humans in that field.

I read everything I could find in the psych section of our local college libraries. I wasn’t stuck in “self help” books. I wanted the real theory and actual results of studies.

I had tried to intellectually “solve” depression (which has given me a bedrock of knowledge that underlies all my movement work), but it wasn’t until I got into my body that anything really shifted.

Depression eats the very thing that is YOU -… the very thing that can help you navigate whatever traumas etc. led to that depression. 

And depression, of course, eats your desire to move. Paradoxically, moving in joy is one of the main things that can heal us, but to get to the place of being able to move can be a long and arduous journey. 

I’m here to help you with that.

My most influential intensive was with the Butoh artist Maureen Fleming. I think of her as my core mentor. She is the most important American woman in Japanese Butoh and had studied many times in Japan with the originator of this movement art. She is my lineage.

My first trainings were in YogaDance and YogaDance for Special Populations with Megha Buttenheim. This is based in chakra energy work and community building. Special-populations studies were targeted toward people with Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, dementia, and post-cancer treatment.

I’ve spent serious time with Bessel van der Kolk. When his book “The Body Keeps the Score” came out, it was like reading his plans for the intensives I’d attended in person.

I’ve also spent time with Peter Levine (one of the originators of body-based psychotherapies), Bo Forbes (a psychotherapist and yoga teacher), and a variety of other somatic psychotherapy leaders.

I’ve studied biomechanics with Katy Bowman, and I was lucky lucky lucky enough to study in person with the amazing yoga teacher, Erich Schiffmann, one of the first Americans to study yoga in India with BKS Iyengar. Erich has developed what he calls “freedom yoga,” and his DVD with Ali MacGraw was my very first introduction to yoga and still remains my favorite.

I’ve been teaching now for 13 years, weekly and sometimes daily, and in a huge array of venues. A tiny sampling of my most significant experiences would include

• Working with different groups focused on processing grief to eventually develop movement art processes to transmute the grief and build communities of support.

• Developing and teaching movement art methods to children living in a residential therapy grade school and high school, focusing on creating tools for emotional regulation and helping them understand, allow, and provide safe intimacy in relationship.

• Developing and creating classes for a Regional Cancer Center, focusing on relationship and healing.

• Developing and teaching elder dance at Mercy Center for Aging.

• Creating and running movement workshops with the Sisters of St. Joseph elders.

• Teaching for a chiropractor where I focused on basic mobility and joint health.

• Being the Keynote Speaker (with interactive movement demonstration) at the Annual Conference for the Pennsylvania State Association of Senior Centers, at PSU, State College in the Fall of 2013.

• Being the Special Speaker at Alzheimer’s Association Conferences, May 2016 and again in 2017.

• Developing, in 2019, Brain Grooves with the NWPA Alzheimer's Association, with the help of Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine (LECOM).

And of course, over all this time, I’ve put ALL THE THINGS into a GIANT compost bin and that is now named The Peony Method.

I don’t think my story is unique. I think, culturally, we’ve gotten so used to not moving and not being expressive with our bodies that we don’t even look to that anymore when we are suffering from myriad body and mind based challenges.

But we must. We are EMBODIED beings, for whom a movement imperative is written into our very cells.

Furthermore, the way we’ve treated our individual bodies has leaked out to how we’ve treated our communities and this planet. Only when we come back into right relationship with our physical selves will we have the vision and the energy necessary to take responsibility for and rebuild everything from communities to ecosystems.

If you can't meditate, there's nothing wrong with YOU but with what you're trying to do

I want to talk about meditation, but first a couple of things:

If you have a classic sitting meditation practice that works for you, great. That's you. #ExperimentofOne And I don't want this to turn into a discussion about how that works.

And to be clear, I have studied with some of the leaders in the field of somatic psychologies. For a long time. They would agree with what I'll say here.

Meditation is (like everything) not for everyone, but it can actually be dangerous if you're still in the worst parts of anxiety, depression, OCD, CPTSD, and many other mental illnesses.

I've said this in person enough times to know that some of you probably just breathed a sigh of relief, thinking there was something inherently wrong with you because meditation feels so impossible. There's nothing wrong with you when it comes to meditation. Meditation is just not necessarily right for you... for right now. (And that might be forever, depending.)

Stay with me here...

Whether or not you've experienced physical or sexual abuse of any kind (and especially then), if you're someone suffering from mental illness, the BODY ITSELF does NOT feel safe.

To SIT in the body and watch the mind CAN BE like throwing gasoline on a fire.

And this is where movement practices come in.

For all of my 20s and 30s, people would tell me to meditate to help with my depression, etc.

And I was one of those who thought there must be something even more wrong with me because it made me feel worse.

THEN I started to dance again. And FINALLY my mind could quiet in that context.

Keeping the body moving, focusing on the breath, and focusing a lot of the brain on a problem solving prompt (a simple example: make as many circles in space with your body as you can)... this quiets the part of the brain that often felt like it was out to get me (my metaphorical experience... insert your own here).

Furthermore, over time and I mean TIME (months to many many years), your brain creates new neural clusters and pathways marked "body is safe to feel."

This happens BECAUSE you are working with someone (like me perhaps) who can create safe ways for you to be in your body feeling all the things, bit by bit... I watch for overwhelm of the system and pull you back when that happens.

Because re-traumatizing is not the damn goal. Which CAN happen if you're sitting in your own nest of awful during meditation with no one there to bring you out of it.

As Gabrielle Roth said, most of our problems were created and exacerbated in the brain/mind; we can't use that same tool for healing. At least and especially not during the initial phases of healing, which again, can go on for many years.

The movement work I teach is not some once in a while thing to be done when you're feeling extra bad or extra good. It's a lifetime practice of tools to be used over and over as we go through new and challenging experiences.

And I have to add ... part of the healing is due to the COMMUNITY aspect of the work. RELATIONSHIP is where true healing happens.

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.

In Person Erie Workshop: Loving Kindness and Movement

WHEN: Saturday, December 4th
TIME: 11:30 AM to 1:30 PM (or a bit after…)

WHERE: Pranayoga: A Little Breathing Room (Next to Virgil’s Pizza)
1001 West 6th Street, Erie, Pennsylvania

WHAT: The (Un)bearable Lightness of Being: MOVING METTA

BRING: Pen, paper, water, anything that comforts you (blanket, crystals…)

NOTE: PLEASE BRING A SMALL CANDLE IN A CONTAINER.

REGISTRATION: $40 (If this is difficult for ANY REASON, please contact me and we’ll work something out.)

There are limited spaces available so please register as soon as you are able.

Also Note: this is a MOVEMENT workshop. It’s neither dance nor yoga. We’ll be using a lot of natural, primal movement, and very simple movement prompts supported by music.

WHAT THE HECK IS METTA?!?!

Very likely, you don’t know that I spent a lot of years studying Buddhism. I even helped bring a western Lama to Erie for the first time so many years ago.

I haven’t been studying it since I found Tantra Yoga but wow… they are related big time.

And after Peony’s death, it was actually Tibetan Buddhism that helped me in those initial dark hours, so perhaps I’ve started up again.

Regardless… metta… ((FOCUS!!))

Metta means loving kindness, goodwill, benevolence… It’s one of those concepts that doesn’t just have a one to one word translation equivalent in English.

Metta meditation is a way to turn our hearts toward loving kindness. We can aim that at ourselves or others. Ideally, both.

It’s a meditation that comes with scripts, like the one in that meme right there. But there are a lot of variations.

HOW WILL WE MOVE METTA??!?!

We will be bringing the ideas of metta to our movement practice. That might be the more correct way to look at it. Though I think it also works to think of moving the metta itself.

This idea came to me at least a year ago.

But I wasn’t sure exactly what it all meant.

Then Peony died and I renamed my movement arts practices after her.

Even before her death, though, the idea of delicacy and gentleness had started entering my teacher vocabulary in new and kinda (to this teacher) startling ways.

I mean, I’ve always been pretty… assertive in my practices.

But then when Peony passed, something really truly surprising happened.

I got softer. I wasn’t expecting that, though many around me would say it had been happening especially since I met Craig and started to live a life in which I felt so very safe.

But what will we DO?!

Sorry… there’s so much to cover!

We’ll be learning a bit more about metta itself and its place in the four Buddhist immeasurables (and what the heck they are).

THEN we’ll start to explore moving in ways that are consistent with those ideas. This movement won’t look like DANCE so don’t be afraid. It will even include simple things like super slow walking.

We’ll then increase the reach of the ideas by working in partnerships and as a group.

As usual with my work, there will be a BIG emphasis on breath, and we’ll be creating ritual together. Duh… that’s what all my stuff comes to. ((ha))

If you still have questions, as always, just ask.

Remembering to use The Peony Method on MYSELF because... it works (duh and oy)

From pre-Craig in my Girl on Fire Movement Studio, Erie, PA

There has been so much change over the last six years that I don’t think I could list it all. It started with meeting Craig and then from there it has been this wild roller coaster ride from moving to Vermont to moving back to Erie to experiencing some really painful things to moving to Columbus and then buying a new house and then losing my sweet Peony most recently.

That doesn’t even really begin to cover it, and in the meantime, I lost my daily dance practice. ME. The teacher of daily dance.

For about 8 years, between teaching and then doing my own practice, I was dancing anywhere from 2 to 6 hours a day. You read that right. It typically was around 3 but it could easily be in that 2 to 6 range depending on the day.

Let’s back up even more…

About 13 years ago ((!!!)), when I first started to dance again, just putting on my favorite music and moving was enough. There was so much joy in my body that was aching to be expressed and I had been away from dance due to that shitty chronic depression for so long that it took very little to get me going again.

Then I started to train and I realized I was really missing moving with other humans so then just being with other humans in a class was enough to get me going.

Over time and through working with so many different populations (from traumatized children to people living with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and everyone in between), through all my studies in somatic psychologies and different movement modalities, I’ve composted and then synthesized and recreated and grown new ways of working with people to process trauma and grief and move into their joybodies.

This has evolved into the newly named, Peony Method.

After Peony died, I knew it was more important than ever to get my personal dance practice back. I’d been trying for a couple of years but it wasn’t clicking.

Then I had a big AH-HA moment… just the other day…

I’ve been just putting on good or interesting music and then expecting myself to, well, move.

And I get bored or distracted or just feel lethargic and apathetic.

But not when I teach. When I teach, I also move. And I never have a hard time getting going or staying moving.

Why?

BECAUSE I’M FOLLOWING MY OWN DAMN PROMPTS.

Which are GOOD and serve a damn purpose! (I’m yelling at myself there and laughing at myself at the same time.)

Telling people to “just dance” isn’t the answer.

People are stuck. They feel numb. They’re tired. They’re sad. They’re disconnected. I include myself there.

They’ve lost any understanding of really being EMBODIED, of being able to find PLAY.

It’s the whole freaking reason I have designed the work I have.

Now my dance practice will move forward because I’ll TEACH MYSELF. I’ll use my prompts.

This will lead, of course, to learning new ways to teach and prompt because I won’t feel stuck, numb, lethargic, or disconnected.

Instead, I’ll feel interested, curious, fascinated, playful.

Duh.

And OY.

October Session Themes: Overall joint health and connection to self and others via the fascia

October classes start next week, of course. Please remember that these are LIVE but also RECORDED. So you get the best of both worlds. The recordings don’t disappear after 48 hours like in so many virtual studios. You have access to them for the whole month.

In quickie yoga, we’ll be focusing especially on the lower three chakras and the joints of the lower body, including lots of FEET action. The goal is more emotional balance with its mirrored physical body balance.

For Tuesday’s Peony Method, we’ll be focusing on exploring all the joints of the body. This will be a freeing investigation of mobility, strength, and internal alignment.

For Thursday’s Peony Method (excuse the 80s chick who wrote the title for the class), we’ll be deep diving into the fascia and what that means for your individual body but also how that awareness affects your body in space and in relation to all other bodies.

Go here to register.

As usual, if payment is, for any reason, difficult, just email me.

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.

The Power of the Gayatri Mantra

I don’t remember when I first came across the Gayatri Mantra, but it was at least over 10 years ago. And there was a time, when I would turn on a version of this and listen to it on looping for a huge chunk of my day. I could feel it repairing some part of my mind/heart without even understanding, at the time, what it was about or how mantra worked in general.

The Gayatri Mantra comes out of the Vedic tradition and is probably from around 1500 BCE (Before the Common Era, for those in the world who are not Christian and therefore would not say BC).

It’s also mentioned in my favorite text, the Bhagavad Gita (link is to my favorite translation/commentary), as the “poem of the divine.”

In Hinduism, it’s said that chanting it or even just listening to it brings happiness and light.

I’m sharing a version from Deva Premal because I love her and find her easy to chant with. This video has it looped a few times to make it longer. But just go on YouTube and start searching for the one that really speaks to you.

The Gayatri Mantra in Sanskrit:

Om bhur bhuvah svah

tat savitur varenyam

bhargo devasya dhimahi

dhiyo yo nah prachodayat.

The Gayatri Mantra Translated:

The eternal, earth, air, heaven
That glory, that resplendence of the sun
May we contemplate the brilliance of that light
May the sun inspire our minds.

*Translation by Douglas Brooks

As is usual with Sanskrit, there are so many translations. Sanskrit is a deeply poetic language and is difficult to translate into English.

Here are some more translations. I believe spending time contemplating these can open new spaces in our mind/heart. Try them out, especially, first thing in the morning, when it’s said to be the most auspicious time to work with this particular chant.

"O thou existence Absolute,
Creator of the three dimensions,
we contemplate upon thy divine light.
May He stimulate our intellect and
bestow upon us true knowledge."

Or

"O Divine mother, our hearts are filled with darkness.
Please make this darkness distant from us and
promote illumination within us."

And one more:

"We contemplate the glory of the light
that illuminates the three worlds:
dense, subtle and causal.
I am that life-giving power, love,
radiant enlightenment, and the divine grace
of universal intelligence.
We pray for that divine light to illuminate our minds."