These times seem to be for breaking hearts

I shared this meme on my Facebook business page in the hours right before we knew what had happened in Uvalde, Texas.

And that night there was class to teach. Which seemed ridiculous, right?

Until one student said, “I knew this was one of the safest places I could be right now for my mental health.”

Amen and thank you.

Community has always been such a huge part of the classes I teach.

I can remember when I first started teaching in my very own space in Erie, and how many times, new students would come up to me afterward and tell me they’d never felt so instantly welcomed and safe… that when they went to yoga spaces in town sometimes they weren’t talked to. ((WHAT?!)) Or that exercise spaces just felt too competitive and there was none of that in our space.

Amen and thank you, again.

It seems that that has not changed at all on Zoom and that feels like a little miracle to me. That we can meet from across so many many miles, and still, the main thing that happens in class together is that we are present to one another and we move in compassion, witnessing and being witnessed in whatever is happening for us in that moment, whether articulated with words or silence.

Movement is life, for sure. These bodies are built to move (in whatever way currently capable) and it’s all written in our cells and DNA that this movement should be, needs to be joyful and communal.

And yet…

The real reason for these classes and the real reason for movement is that the best way for us to bond deeply is through these bodies, engaged in nonsexual intimacies that are SEVERELY lacking in our current culture.

We are aching to be seen.

We are dying to be heard.

Literally.

Anger, hatred, fear… if you trace it back to its very origins, it always comes to this: these people who walk around every day with hearts of stone (who may or may not act on that in a directly violent way)… these people are screaming inside to be seen and heard.

They don’t have the tools to know how to simply ask for what they need.

They either weren’t taught, or when they were quite small, those tools were used but denied.

These times seem to be for breaking hearts… I mean this in so many ways.

There is a breaking that is good and healthy. It’s the breaking that happens when we’re very young and we’ve learned that we are safe and it’s time to venture out on our own.

It’s the breaking that happens when we lose someone we loved more than we thought possible and yet we continue on and their memory becomes the foundation of our strength and hope.

It’s the breaking that teaches us what we want and need by showing us what we do not want and do not need.

It’s a breaking that too many have hardened themselves against and so they stockpile — whether it be guns or cruelty or hatred or shame or power over others.

We must also stockpile…

But we must stockpile inner strength, compassion, love, empathy, and a soft willpower that gets things done without hurting others.

We will likely not live to see the new world that will evolve from all that’s been happening over the last six years, but we must keep healing ourselves of these broken hearts over and over again so that we can go out beyond ourselves, beyond our smaller and safe communities like the ones in my classes, and do the larger work that is calling for us right now, the work that is begging to be seen and heard and done.

If you need community like this, if you need support, if you need safety, June classes are starting on June 7th, and we would love to welcome you.

Why I'm not calling it yoga anymore

If you’ve been with me on this journey and/or taken my classes over the last few years to the last 13 years, you know that when I say I’m teaching a yoga class that you just never know what you’ll get. You know that I have a hard time staying still when it comes to what and how I teach.

You know I’m a seeker and a learner and a deep diver and that eventually everything goes into the big compost heap that is my brain and eventually comes out this body via something new in class that makes us all groan or laugh or, most often, both.

You don’t take classes with me because you’re someone who needs things to always be the same or who needs to know what the heck is going to happen from minute to minute.

You take classes with me because you know I’ll keep you safe and I’ll provide a familiar context but that there will always be something different happening to take you deeper into your own experience of your body/mind/heart.

You also probably know that even though I’ve been studying different lineages of and the philosophy of yoga now for about 25 years, I’ve also always had a love/hate relationship with how it’s used and how it’s taught in the West.

There’s so much missing from what most people call “yoga.”

I've thought long and hard about all of this and have been contemplating the idea of appropriation when it comes to yoga for years now.

On top of that, I simply don’t want to be constrained by someone’s ideas of what I’m teaching just because i use the word “yoga” because it’s simpler than other words or trying to explain myself.

Like I said, you know I’ve never taught a straight up yoga class in my life. Even though my classes most likely have had more prana focus and chant than most classes out there, more emphasis on the underlying philosophy than most.

I will not be calling anything I do "yoga," though I will always source my material and much of what I teach is derived from, again, over 25 years of studying many lineages of yoga.

But I respect the spiritual foundation of yoga too much and I also do not want to associate myself with others teaching yoga in a westernized, watered down way.

So from now on, if you’re looking for my wacky take on yoga, look for Peony Method ON THE MAT or Mindful Mobility. Those will be the “non-dance” versions of my work with lots of emphasis on breath, alignment/biomechanics, nervous system regulation, glandular system stimulation, and energy body schtuff.

Things Suck So We EXTRA Need Each Other and Our Practices

I don’t have the bandwidth to write some things that need to be written, but suffice it to say, that I am beyond angry at the world and that that anger has reignited some important and powerful parts of myself.

One part of me knows absolutely for sure that we need to be MOVING in these bodies MORE THAN EVER.

The next classes of sessions starts the week of May 10 so get over here and find something to do that will ground you in your power and energy because we need all of us at our best to get the shit done in this world that desperately needs to be done.

That said… I often use the words “body liberation” and it’s not some light thing that I say about feeling comfie. It’s much much much more than that and I want us all to be on the same page (or you can always go find another book to read because this book is about radical shit):

This is #bodyliberation: Creating culture and community that embraces every single human as the beautiful, fragile yet strong, inherently dignified beings we are. No exceptions.

We are creating (and we demand) culture and community in which your inner sense of yourself and your outer expression are never expected to clash.

We will no longer settle for anything less.

We stand in circle with all beings reaching for authentic, loving lives. #translivesmatter #womensrights #transrightsarehumanrights

Being seen for exactly who you are

I just came across a very old blog post from when I first started teaching… or maybe about two years in… and the main thing people seemed to be telling me about my classes was this very thing: that they felt utterly safe to be themselves and they felt completely seen as they actually are.

I like to think I am even better at doing that today after so many years.

I like to think this is one of the main gifts of this work.

AND I like to think that it still happens even via Zoom.

Though I don’t have to “like to think it” since students have confirmed that, for them, much of the same magic happens regardless of the form through which we have these experiences.

So if you’ve been on the fence about (re)joining us via the Zoom classes, April’s session might be the ideal time to try: it’s only 3 weeks, starting the week of April 11th, so it’s less time and resource commitment.

(Please remember that if for ANY REASON the cost is too much to simply let me know. You don’t have to tell me why. I will make adjustments for you.)

For now, registration is open for two versions of the hour long Peony Method and the twice a week, 20 minute quickies.

Another reminder: You can take them live, by video, or both.

Information and registration is here.

Body Based Therapies and Important Works by Women in the Field

I do get frustrated. I know that Bessel van der Kolk is the dude of the moment, as is Gabor Mate, and I appreciate their work in my own life. Finding them via academic research before they were in the popular limelight was part of what saved me.

I’ve studied with van der Kolk in an intensive that was, well, intense. For a lot of reasons. He is brilliant, but like anyone, he has his limits, and like anyone, his work rides on the work of others not seen.

A particularly frustrating moment reminded me that we’re all humans with blind spots. At one point he and his assistant laughed at me (yes, laughed) when I suggested that perhaps in a class where manual, hands on body manipulation is used, when working with sexual assault victims, maybe — just maybe ((sarcasm)) — they should be asked if they would be more comfortable with a teacher who was a woman or at the very least, a teacher who is not going to touch them. (I do NOT believe in exposure therapy, and van der Kolk has been very vocal in his hatred of it for veterans — but not apparently for women who have been raped, assaulted, or abused by men.)

I would like more women to be aware of this attitude and perhaps start to look for other voices.

Here’s a short list of books that are important in this field, some of which predate the popularity of van der Kolk and his contemporaries.

(A note: I also had the privilege of meeting and listening to Peter Levine. He is a gentle and loving spirit and I am glad that more and more people are getting to know his work. He seems to walk his talk in a more compassionate way, not depending so much on aspects of toxic masculinity to get his point across.)

First and foremost, THIS BOOK by Judith Herman was originally published in 1992. She was on the edge of this work, saying things out loud that others hadn’t dared to yet. She doesn’t get enough credit. Her work is important.

The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller was published in 1979, and Alice Miller was ostracized for putting in writing much of what we now take as common wisdom.

The Body Remembers by Babette Rothschild was published in 2000 and there’s a second volume in 2017. This work gets more into the somatic aspect of trauma and trauma treatment.

Bone, Breath, and Gesture is from 1995 and is a compilation of various writings from the field of somatics over time. The one I am linking to is volume one. This book demonstrates how so much of the original thinking in somatics based therapies was, of course, developed by women. (See my surprise face)

Women and Madness by Phyllis Chesler was first published in 1972. It’s frustrating when we lose sight of the history of these thoughts and the originators are left behind. This book revolutionized how we looked at and talked about mainstream medicine. This started our understanding of how SHIT mainstream medicine is when it comes to the care of women. (And we’re STILL fighting this damn fight…)

This book, first published while I was in college in 1988, isn’t about medicine or somatics but it kinda is?… Writing a Woman’s Life by Carolyn G. Heilbrun is a book I go back to again and again. It’s IMPORTANT. It’s short and it’s powerful. It’s about the effects of cultural expectations on every aspect of a woman’s intentional expression and creativity.

Like I said, this is a short list so as not to be overwhelming. Do you have any you would add?

No pain... no pain

I’ve always been what I call a “muscle through-er” in dance and that speaks directly to how I have approached life.

But deep grief will do one thing for sure: Burn away anything that resembles bullshit in your life.

This whole world is doing its best to make us all angry, terrified, pushy, mean, cruel, hateful, judgy… you name the ick and the world is doing its best to bring that out of you.

It’s not what we’re built for.

Nope.

As hard as it can be sometimes to believe, we are built for love.

Love is the only path worth walking.

And that has to start with you. It has to start with this body you’ve been given.

How you treat that body is how you treat the rest of the world.

Look around at the “wellness” and “fitness” worlds and see how they are being revealed for the human hating, perfectionism pushers they actually are. Those worlds (not everyone in them) have space for only certain types of humans. Those worlds are a reflection of toxic capitalism and they are colonizing from every direction — whether they are actively stealing practices from indigenous communities and cultures or trying to colonize your mind and body for their own ends.

Pull back.

Say no.

Dive into delicate and curious and hopeful and compassionate and playful.

That is where your humanity can flourish and expand.

Practices Matter More than Ever

Christine’s movement guidance, for me, is a sacred form of mindfulness where I am gently forced into listening to the fiberoptic highway of my body.

It is a practice as beautifully healing and helpful as prayer and meditation with the chemical and musculoskeletal benefits movement brings.

It is body language, but not in the sense of sitting across from someone else trying to figure out what they're thinking. And it is also allowing the body to talk, but not in the Olivia Newton John's, Let's Get Physical sense. (Linda)

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So often it’s my students who describe this work so much better than I ever can. I’m always grateful when they have the bandwidth to write a few words…

Because right now, we’re all really limited on bandwidth. More so, it seems, every week, as one thing after another just follows one thing after another and it seems there is no end.

Because there is no end.

Life is suffering, said the Buddha, and though that used to just piss me off, lately I find comfort in those words. I am not alone. We all suffer. Life is what it is but we can, as the Buddha goes on to say, work with that suffering to come to a place of peace.

I like to think that the work I offer this world, most especially The Peony Method, is one part of a path to that inner peace that we’re all, ultimately, seeking.

We just want to feel … okay and… steady… and like we have some say in what our own lives look like.

I think it’s crucial, now more than ever, that we take the time for practices that align us with those better, more sane, more loving parts of ourselves.

If you need that, March classes start next week. If classes feel too vulnerable, remember that I work one on one also.

The Joy of Lent (that's what I said...): An introduction to the idea behind The Re/Joy Project

A yoga sadhana is a practice meant to transform you.

TRANS. FORM.

Make you into a new form.

Often a dedicated sadhana will last 40 days, and so we come to lent.

Like any religious practice, lent is only as effective and meaningful as the energy we’re willing to put into it.

First we have to decide that this time is more than just an excuse to diet (don’t do that regardless…). And second, we have to decide to reclaim it from the toxic Christianity that has overtaken the truth and beauty of what Christ actually intended.

It’s no accident that lent takes place during this time when we’re all feeling the weight of winter and a deep desire to awaken to more light and warmth. (And my god… as I re-read that sentence… all we’ve been through and all that is currently happening… it surely takes on even more meaning than I even first intended.)

In the Northern Hemisphere, the body of Earth herself is awakening over the next 40 days. By the time we get to the end of lent, most of us will be seeing a profusion of (or the start of a profusion of) tulips, daffodils, green buds, returning birds, pea shoots, thawed bodies of water, warmth in the air, sun that penetrates to bone.

Are we not meant to go through the same process?

Alas, lent ends in a death, you protest, so how can it be included in this more pagan view of rebirthing/awakening things? Regardless of resurrection (or instantaneous reincarnation, as I like to think of it), that death was meant to remove the final veil of fear so that we might live in these bodies “free of all anxiety.”

This time of year is meant for us to shed all the darkness of winter, but more than that, it’s meant to take us through processes that help us to shed the idea of body as burden.

Perhaps we can take on a different sort of lenten journey in which we awaken the body to the light and warmth of our own love for ourselves and thus deepen our capacity to love “other.”

I challenge you — during this very serious time of the year and this very serious time of all of our lives — to be less serious and more joyful.

For lent, I am consciously working on “giving up” my existential despair as a default coping and protection mechanism.

I am consciously working on “giving up” disbelief in the wonder and beauty and magic of life.

I am consciously working on embodying the joy of Peony the Cat.

Would you like to join me?

To start, I will be spending more time cataloging things that bring me joy.

Cataloging can look like written lists but also photos. #DailyJoy

I’ll be paying extra attention to noticing every bit of earth awakening right around me.

I’ll also be spending more time moving in ways that bring me a deep sense of connection to the joy well that already exists within me but that I tend to disregard when things are going badly in the outside world.

What might you add to this list? #therejoyproject