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.

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.