THE Question You Need

Years ago, when I was going through a massive transformation that was painful, I did one really smart thing. I don’t remember why and I can’t remember where this came from but…

I created a question that I lived from:

What does my heart need/want right now to open/remain open/open more?

That’s it.

And that question was utter magic.

I asked it every day in the morning and before bed as I did my rituals.

And I asked it throughout the day.

Recently I shared this question with a student who took the work of it seriously and she reported back that it shifted everything for her.

Here’s a warning about this question: it is tender and easily eaten by any kind of depression, grief, rage, despair.

This question is a sort of tending to your life but the question itself also needs to be tended to.

The second you start ignoring it in favor of feeding the heart-closing aspects of your current situation, this question starts to… slowly fade away.

You won’t notice because it will be such a soft leaving. And years later, something will happen and you’ll wonder whatever happened to that question practice that was changing you so much on a spiritually cellular level.

I know of what I speak. I lost sight of this question… I can’t really pinpoint when.

Did it happen when I got really busy being super happy? It can happen then.

Or did it happen when I hit a wall of despair after a bunch of difficult events? It most certainly can happen then.

It doesn’t matter, though. It happened.

And here I am, remembering because I knew someone else needed this.

Which is a huge reason for my teaching. You all help me to re-member so much of myself every day.

I’m going to rebuild practices around this question and I would love to know if and how you would be joining me.

Introducing BEGONIA YUKI

And just like that, life changes and is more joyful again.

This past Saturday, Craig and I drove a half hour south of Columbus to a really wonderful animal rescue to pick up our newest family member.

Craig had been looking for a while. I’d given him some parameters and told him not to include me in the search. It felt too sad to me and I still had mixed feelings about getting another white cat — or even another cat. I had been contemplating a dog because I thought then I wouldn’t put Peony expectations on them.

When he saw that she had two different colored eyes, he knew she was the one. Like Peony AND David Bowie were sending her to me.

To remind me of myself.

And I would have to write millions of words to try to describe how much this has changed everything.

I tried to write about it in the Sanctuary:

There are so many layers to what's happening for me since Craig brought Begonia Yuki into my life. I'm sure I will be writing about this here and there for some time.

But at some point this weekend, I wrote a note to a friend, saying that I realized I did not have an OUNCE of care or energy to point toward the negative, the "news," the crap of the world. I wasn't even thinking about it.

And she wrote back that Begonia is the light, because of course.

Here's the thing...

I can still hold -- with utter tenderness, vulnerability, and depth -- my grief over losing Peony Yuki. She will forever be with me.

BUT at the same time, I can see now more clearly the gifts she gave me because I am not drowning in my grief. Day to day, I was struggling to just keep my head above water...

And the biggest gift Peony gave me was JOY. My capacity for joy.

She opened my heart and there were nights years ago when she literally saved my life and then opened my heart ever wider.

To say I was lost when I lost her... I was in the labyrinth and I had no string or breadcrumbs to guide me out...

Or so I thought.

Grief can be so overwhelming, so overriding that the gifts we're left with are of no help.

Until another being comes along and reignites that.

I love the other animals in my life, but I (here's some woo...) seem to have some sort of soul connection to these little white/pink cats. (End of bit from the Sanctuary.)

Right now, as I sit here writing this, Begonia is in my lap, purring, content to just be with me. If I got up and walked into another room, she would follow. If I close a door and she’s on the other side, she cries. She is chattering to me regularly. She engages when I’m teaching or doing movement work.

She needs attention from me. And I needed that more than I even knew.

I can’t explain this even to myself and I don’t need to… I can just be grateful that a small white cat with big pink ears is the key to my wellbeing and my sense of centeredness and joy, because what a wonderfully simple and beautiful key she is.

A Tiny Experiment for You

I shared this in the Sanctuary on Facebook and realized I should share it wider:

TASK at the end...

One time when I was at a training at Kripalu, a woman walked up to me during an open dance/movement class and said that watching me was like watching moving sculpture, and I think back to that often...

I think about how much that could change how a lot of humans think about dance and their own bodies and moving if they thought of it like that.

Too much what passes for dance now looks more like gymnastics and it ends up hurting the core of what dance is... ART... EXPRESSION... PRIMAL IMPERATIVE... RITUAL...

This tiny clip works here. The choreographer is sitting against the wall in the first frame... with all that lovely white hair...

TASK: over the coming days, even as you're just walking about... thinking about yourself like moving sculpture, like art, and ask what you are expressing even in that mundane movement.

EVERYTHING can be dance... or should be...

Forget, Remember, Forget, Remember... sigh

I’ve started Morning Nutbags up again, as I’ve written about over here, but there’s much more going on with my morning routine than that.

It’s really a three parter: first there is reading and journaling for about 20 minutes. Then I get on the Morning Nutbags zoom and do about 30 minutes of functional movement targeted to the specific issues and needs of my own body (I could make that for you, by the way… just sign up for a one on one and we can figure it out… I digress because SQUIRRELS!).

And finally after the nutbags, I go out for a walk.

I always hit this wall with walking where I suddenly just CANNOT anymore. It’s BORINGGGGGG! I whine and I just stop.

It doesn’t mean I’m not ever walking, ha, but it does mean I give up the daily of it.

Then I start again and remember all the things that I have forgotten approximately ONE MILLION (pinky to mouth) times in my life:

First, I like it. It feels good to get outside and be around people and the energy of our neighborhood.

Second, I really like listening to podcasts and stimulating my brain with other people’s insights.

Third, I also really like turning on some Go Gos or something high energy and walking really fast. It starts to almost feel like dancing. It makes me smile at people. (Scary.)

Fourth, and this one is really what I’m writing about…

My hips are so damn tight when I don’t walk like this every day.

We sit. We all SIT WAY TOO MUCH.

We know this. But we don’t REALLY know it until we FEEL it.

And for too many humans, we don’t really feel it until it becomes a screaming sort of pain and then a serious chronic issue.

Often we say things like… well, I am aging… or well, that’s what happened to my grandmother…

But really? It’s quite simply that we just sit TOO. DAMN. MIUCH.

Because guess what? In about a week or so, my hips will no longer ache at the beginning of my walks because body adjusts so freaking fast when we give it even a tiny bit of what it needs.

FREE 20 Minute Zoom Class to Help with Anxiety and Anger

This Friday, July 1st, I'll be doing a FREE QUICKIE (20 minutes) on Zoom specifically to deal with ANGER and FEAR and all the things we're feeling right now.

This is simple breath and movement work that can be done seated on the floor or in a chair. I always offer tons of modification.

This is also community ritual, which we definitely need more of right now (and forever).

We'll be doing a combo of a bunch of things I regularly use in the Peony Method (whether quickie or longer classes) that focus on the nervous system and creating happy brain chemical cocktails.

You can join without your camera on but I would love to see you!

We'll meet at 11:10 AM (United States, Eastern Time).

Once I see the interest, I'll get everyone the link.

Please let me know if you want to be included. You can give me a shout here or on Facebook messenger or anywhere where you and I interact.

I’ll also share a recording of this in the Sanctuary so if you can’t make it live, you can still access the work. (If you’re not in the Sanctuary, ask me to add you.)

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