Stuckness and Grand Gestures

I was having a delightful as usual discussion with Deb Globus (you may know of her work with Storybeads), and we were discussing stuckness, and she said, “you need a grand gesture!”

What? Because that phrase instantly rang a bell for me. And over the coming days, it took me right back to the true start of my healing, when I started to dance again about 14 years ago. (And this is relevant to today but I’ll get there…)

Once I knew that dance was that important, I ordered my first pair of capezio ballet slippers in forever. They came and I didn’t like the feel, but I used them as a talisman (and still have them).

But I knew I needed to do something significant that would keep me on track, so I signed up for a training at Kripalu. I found something called YogaDance that seemed like a good fit.

This was about more than dance. I would have to TRAVEL. I would have to leave the cats and the almost agoraphobic love of my house and my very own spaces. It was a very, very, very big deal.

And to keep myself committed, I announced it on my then blog, BlissChick, which had a significant readership, full of humans who were more than willing to make sure my ass got in that seat on that bus and traveled to Massachusetts.

I followed through, as most of you know, and over the next few years actually went to Kripalu about ten times, gathering and synthesizing everything I could get my brain and hands and feet on until we’re in present day and all of that has become The Peony Method.

But back to now… and this feeling of stuck. I didn’t put it all together but within DAYS of talking to Deb, I signed up for that first private singing lesson.

And it took a couple more weeks to remember that discussion and see how it had worked its freaking magicks.

I’ve never doubted my ability to move/dance. I always feel confident and I don’t care who is in the room or space with me. I feel the same way about acting.

But singing is something so fragile to me…this is even bigger than that trip to Kripalu. Truly.

And it’s changing my life, because that’s what grand gestures do. I feel more focused. I feel more energetic.

I might still feel a wee bit stuck but I can feel the momentum coming back. I can feel my capacity for dreaming returning. I can feel words again. I am interested and curious in ways I was just… not. (That was the scariest thing to me… no curiosity.)

So I’m here to tell you that there’s nothing like this idea of grand gestures to get you out of even a very serious rut. When I started to dance again, I had been chronically depressed for a decade and at times it was life threatening. But something in me was still just ever so slightly open enough to allow for the tidal waves of changes that dance brought.

I’m certainly no less open to that idea now and I’m already feeling the rising, living waters that singing is bringing.

What grand gesture do YOU need?

Free BalletOM Quickie Video as a Thank You

BalletOM is a combo of yogic breathing, simple fundamental human movements (like circles), and biomechanically aware basic ballet moves.

I find it’s super helpful as an investigative tool, in that it quickly reveals where your body’s weaknesses are.

It’s great for balance, grace, overall mobility, and strengthening and lengthening (yes, that’s a thing because what we call tightness in the body is actually a shortening).

It’s also really helpful for people who might have not been allowed to take ballet when they were little or they were rejected by teachers of ballet or they have had any kind of trauma around dance/ballet.

It reawakens your inner ballerina in a safe and kind way.

So I’m offering this free video but there’s a catch — a simple one. You have to be in the JoyBody Sanctuary on Facebook to have access. If you’re not in there, just let me know you want to be added.

This particular class is all on the floor so you don’t have to focus quite so hard on alignment.

You can do a lot of this from a chair, if you’re not yet ready to be on the floor.

If you do the class and have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask!

Singing class update!

I meant to write about this much closer to when it happened (Monday the 14th), but the week got away from me really fast. (Side note: Is anyone else feeling just extra time smooshed lately?)

Singing class…

I had Craig drive me because it was starting to get dark AND I was so damn nervous that I didn’t want to even think about how to get there or parking or anything.

I walked in and there were a LOT of kids there, coming and going for their various lessons. The thing that made me giggle right away was the “welcome our new students” sign that had my name on it.

I figure everyone else on that was likely under the age of 12. HA

My teacher arrived right on time. Molly. She’s 27 so I could be her mom. (Another HA)

But here’s the thing. Before I went I told Craig, “I am just focusing on thinking that this Molly person is basically me but with singing instead of dance… She just wants me to LOVE singing and she just wants me to HAVE singing in my life…and she just believes in me automatically because I am showing up.”

Well… somehow I manifested a mini me. We had so much in common from music to being sci-fi/fantasy nerds to thinking a lot about neurodivergence and yes… her thoughts about teaching singing are exactly mine about getting people to dance: that we’re meant to do this.

She also kept reminding me that my fears around singing won’t just magically disappear and that this will take time. That helped because I would have expected myself to be clear of fear at our next lesson. Which is redonk.

We talked a LOT but we finally did some warm up stuff. She offered me two options that my body immediately rejected and then during a third she was using the sound “me” and I said…yeah… but could you make up some words instead of just that syllable?

Which she did and then I was fine! Well, I was okay to warm up with her.

Then she asked me to sing something I like with it playing on my phone. I chose this.

I WAS SO DAMN NERVOUS, but when I closed my eyes at one point, I felt like she got to kinda hear what I actually sound like.

And LIKE ME as a teacher, she was often saying things like, “OH! THAT WAS GOOD!” Just what I need. (Just what we all need.)

I learned that I’m an Alto TWO; thus my love of singing with tenors.

I have another lesson Monday the 21st and I am making a singing playlist on Spotify and practicing a bit each day.

I’m obsessed. Which is when I’m at my healthiest.

What will you regret?

I’ve told these two stories before but they’re important to me. They’re what I call “joy gems.” They’re touchstones and talismans.

One of the my favorite memories: I am about 4 and I am staying with my GrandAunt Ardelle and she’s in the kitchen making us dinner. I’m singing about that fact. When I stop, she yells, “MORE!” and I hear her laughing her laughter that was so full of love.

Another with her: I was about 13/14 (she would die when I was just 15) and we are visiting. I am sitting on the small settee with my mother, and Ardelle asks me what I think I want to be when I grow up. I know. My heart is full of it and has been full of it since I was so small, but I say, “I don’t know” and shrug in that teenager way, and she says, “OH! I always just thought you’d be a singer!” So offhanded, so SURE sounding.

I took those words and those memories and I stored them. Over the years, I learned to hide this part of me… this part of me that was pure and raw desire.

But I got too good at hiding it and the thing I loved most in this world — even more than dance (but thank God for dance) — this thing I loved most became this thing that I feared most.

I sing but only by myself in very limited and hidden ways.

And I lay awake at night some nights and I KNOW this is what I will regret.

I will regret this hiding of my voice… a hiding of a singing voice that results, of course, in a hiding of my larger truer voice in this world.

I think, even my writing voice is not yet my truest voice because I hide my song.

No more.

Monday the 14th at 5 PM I have a voice lesson — a half hour assessment to meet a teacher and see if we can work together and then I’ll start weekly classes.

Thinking of this MAKES. ME. WANT. TO. PUKE.

I want to cancel. I won’t cancel.

I think I might die. I probably won’t.

My heart races and my skin gets clamy even at the thought of this half hour on this coming Monday.

But I will go and I will report back.

And I want to know from you: what will be your regret? What small movement can you take toward eradicating it?

End of the Year Session and A New Drop In Option

The last session of the year for classes is a November/December, six week session with weeks off at the end of December.

I’ve replaced the usual Tuesday/Thursday Quickie with Quickie BalletOm, which some of you may remember taking with me at various places. It’s a 30 minute version.

There’s a Tuesday and/or Thursday Peony Method.

Go here for registration and more information.

But there’s something new that I’ve not done in FOREVER:

Drop in opportunity...

I don't usually do drop ins, but after last session when I let a new student into the Thursday version of the Peony Method, it struck me that a) the Thursday session is NOT for newbies. (You can take ANY class with me and then you'd be fine in Thursday.)

And b) I COULD let people do drop ins during the Tuesday class because that tends to be more of a fundamental/foundational approach to the Peony Method (which is appropriate no matter what level you're at).

SO...

For the end of the year session, which is six weeks during November and December, with time off at the end of the year, I'm opening Tuesdays up to drop ins.

HOW IT WORKS

You need to contact me directly either on Facebook or via email or in response to this newsletter and let me know what Tuesday you’d be interested in.

A drop in is $20 so I'll give you my email to either PayPal or Venmo that.

Once I get that, I'll give you the instructions about how to be in and do the class.

Despair and joy and exhaustion and curiosity

Dancer: Rachel VanDyne

I’m feeling a lot right now, but it’s all rather paradoxical. As I teach in the Peony Method, we can and must hold these paradoxes.

There’s no either/or in our existence or in our emotional lives. When we want to either/or ourselves like that, I guarantee it’s a sort of emotional bypassing — a desire to feel just “good” and push away more difficult things.

Because it’s always both. Always. We can feel good but we also feel like the world is falling apart. We can feel sad but the kitten is making us laugh.

Right now, I’m feeling both joy and curiosity about a bunch of things, including, of course, tennis and slow jogging. Both of which are definitely at the obsession and special interest level which makes not only my body happy but also my brain.

Right now, I’m also feeling despair and exhaustion. For more reasons than I care to articulate but for one tiny example…

I just watched a (“whyte spiritual”) woman on TikTok try to say that Kanye West’s blatant and violent antisemitism is really his Christ enlightenment shining through and he’s trying to elevate all of us. (WHAT the actual FUCK?)

That makes me, first, want to vomit (for real… it made me sick) and second, to start lecturing everyone about the pre-Holocaust days in Germany but it also makes me want to just shut down.

Despair and exhaustion are dangerously enticing for us, aren’t they?

As a GenXer in particular, it’s easy for me to roll my eyes and say whatever to almost anything. I think that’s true for a lot of us.

We learned to survive via a certain kind of apathy. (Which wasn’t really real. We care almost TOO deeply and have felt so powerless that we decided to pretend not to care.)

As I write this, I am thinking through this. I don’t have answers. I don’t have any sense of a pathway out of this.

I have only some… inklings.

First, I trust Mr. Merton there in that quote. His conclusions didn’t come from some idealistic monastic life. He lived through very difficult times historically. He was someone who was constantly questioning all ideas and even more so himself. He dug deep and he traveled wide, always open to wisdom coming from anywhere. He was a student of many Eastern philosophies, and though he remained Catholic, all of that informed his utterly mystical views of life.

All that’s to say, I think he was onto something with this hope thing.

But second, notice his language.

This is not some esoteric or ethereal hope.

This is active hope. Aggressive hope.

And it’s not just abstract hope. It’s concrete hope as acted through our very concrete human bodies.

Which brings me to this thing that’s been floating around on my front page and in my hashtags for quite some time and in my brain for even longer — what I call the Re/Joy Project.

I have notes upon notes upon notes about this concept but the other day I said something somewhere that gave me the piece that I think we need right now.

What would happen if you were simply, day to day, moving through life with a curiosity about joy?

I think that phrase — curiosity about joy — takes away pressure and replaces it with some sense of breathing space and freedom.

But I think it matches Merton’s “trampling down with hope.”

They’re both active.

Curiosity about joy says that joy is not some magical thinking way of living waiting for you to just stumble upon it or suddenly feel it or that joy is perhaps just for the “lucky.”

It says you need to go out and purposefully investigate. Search for clues. Pay attention. Always have your notebook and tools at the ready.

I’ll be writing about more ways to do this but for now I’m planting the seed.

Acknowledge and make space for all the sad and the despair and the fear and the anxiety and the anger but don’t forget this other stuff too.

I hate running so why am I doing it?

I’m not. I’m not technically running. I’m slow jogging, which is a very different thing.

But first… WHY? I’ve been uber clear about how much I hate running. It just doesn’t feel good in my body. But a couple of years ago, I think it was that long, I heard about this concept of slow jogging and I watched a video and thought it made sense. Still… wasn’t interested.

Then along comes tennis and one of my biggest issues is my legs aren’t fast enough. (My cardio also sucked the first couple of times but that improved quickly.)

I knew I needed something to support not just my tennis but the things I envision for my dance work in the coming years.

So the other day, I was on my desk treadmill and some good music was playing and I wanted to go faster but I was barefoot. I turned up my speed and found myself very naturally… slow jogging.

I looked up more videos, and yep, my body, in bare feet at just the right speed, had naturally done the technique correctly.

You keep everything low like walking, back straight up, land on the balls of your feet, and don’t try to kick the ground away.

You should be able to talk or sing quite easily or you’re going too fast.

There are a ton of benefits but just a few to start:

1. This is super kind to your joints. Unlike with full out jogging/running, you’re very unlikely to injure yourself.

2. It still gives you all the aerobic advantages while also…

3. Preparing you to go faster (if that’s a goal).

4. And for women in peri/menopause, this is great for our freaking hormones and metabolism.

Right now I’m starting small and easy, only going for about ten minutes at a time on my treadmill in bare feet.

Over time, I’ll add longer bits, but this is perfection. I FEEL FANTASTIC after but don’t feel gross or out of breath. It’s the perfect balance of ease and challenge!

Here’s a video about all of this, but even just watching the beginning (wait until the woman in pink joins him), you’ll see the technique pretty clearly.

Another way to get going is to do one minute of this, then one minute of walking, and so on. (Slow jogging intervals.)

Tennis came to teach me all the things I have been forgetting

My favorite tennis partner

Where to begin… I haven’t played tennis since my late 20s and now I’m 53.

When Craig and I were first dating, he used to say to me that he thought it would be fun if we could be a runner couple. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

No.

If you know me well enough, you are laughing along with me. I hate running. I did a running experiment for a while and I accomplished my goal — to run a straight mile without stopping or feeling like I was going to die — and then I stopped. Just like that. Because like I said, I hate running.

But that said, I understood what he wanted: something we could do together. Beyond going to the gym or practicing pilates at home. Something more… engaging.

So he started asking me to play tennis, knowing I had played when I was younger. I had been thinking about it for quite some time before I even met him, but I always decided no because dance was(is) my life and I thought, why do something during which I could get injured and be limited in my dancing?

But then I had two frozen shoulders over the course of the last year or so. Due to no sudden injury. They just… happened (which they can). I got shots but not surgery and I worked my ass off by myself with not PT besides my own PT to get my shoulders back in working order.

Every. Single. Day.

One is 100% better and the other lingers around 95% (but I know that will also get to 100).

And then suddenly, one morning not too long ago, I announced to him out of the blue that we would be buying rackets that day. (This is often how I function. Seemingly suddenly but there’s been a lot going on in the background.)

I have loved the sport of tennis since I was a tiny girl, sitting just outside the fence, watching her father play. (He was truly gifted. For real.) I would sit with the big red thermos (you probably had one like it), and just watch … for hours.

When I got to be about 8, I think, he would then let me hit a few balls when he was done, and so it started.

I got on the boys’ tennis team in high school because there was no girls’ team and so they had to let me try out and I succeeded. But I never got as good as I could have because I didn’t work hard. I half assed. (That’s another and longer story.)

Around the age of 23, I was playing tennis at a court at Penn State Behrend and the tennis coach got all excited, thinking I was a student, and telling me he could probably get me some scholarship money. He had seen me rush the net and play hard, something that was rare for him to see in those days from a female player.

Alas, I was no longer a student but the memory is a loved one, for sure.

Fast forward to about a month ago, we got our rackets, and got home late, so we waited until the next day to go play.

I was so freaking nervous. I have serious public performance anxiety with everything BUT dance. I hate people seeing me struggle. (Another long story right there.)

I told him, “If there are a lot of people already playing, I’m not playing. You can just practice serving.” He was okay with that.

There were a lot of people playing. But I got on the court and the second I bounced the ball, I was in it.

And I kinda sucked. OF COURSE I DID. It’s been about 25 years. But I also kinda… didn’t.

We play about three times a week and here’s the point of this long blog… I am relearning all the things that dance taught me at the age of 40.

First, play is the most important thing we can do for our mental health. Do something you love but here’s the kicker… do something that makes you LAUGH. I LAUGH a lot on the court.

But also? Do something that you love that brings out your inner “warrior.” I growl and yell on the court just as much as I laugh. Guess what? I am having just as much fun whichever I am doing.

Second, when I am moving on the tennis court, there is NOTHING ELSE IN MY WORLD. And in those moments, I am ABSOLUTELY FREE.

Dance taught me that at 40 and I was a bit shocked when I realized that tennis was teaching me the same lesson. Again, do the things you love… the physical things… because it is this level of embodiment that brings us into a state of total alignment with ourselves and this life.

Third, I am built to move. So are you. So are all of us. But I am really really built to move. I mean, there is no depression, no anxiety, no anything but the true me when I am moving. (Again, same for you. You just need to find right things.)

Fourth, I love life when and after I move. Because we are bags of chemicals and movement stirs up all the good ones.

I’m sure there’s more but that’s enough for now.

Go play! Now!