Expanding Our Internal Peace

I have BIG EMOTIONS. (If you know me, you’re laughing and wondering if I could say something more obvious.) I think I’ve been this way since I was very small. My mother tells the story that you could sit me in front of the TV when I was a toddler and I would just basically laugh my little ass off at anything that was remotely funny.

Because of that, for a long time, I resisted the word peace. The very concept shouted BORING to me. Who wants to be all quiet all the time!?

I think a lot of people equate the concept of peacefulness with a certain kind of weakness. I mean, duh, our culture LOVES war in all its forms. It’s our favorite set of metaphors to apply to every aspect of life.

But like the word love, I think we are confused about what peace actually is and how it’s related to feelings and emotions.

Peace is not the opposite of war, just as love is not the opposite of hate. Peace and love do not have opposites. They are the nature of the universe. They are the fabric of everything. War and hate are human manifestations of perceived lack and unresolved pain.

Peace and love (which I see as folded into and the same as “joy”) are our true nature, and they are truly the only states from which we can create justice and goodness and art and beauty.

They do not, though, eradicate the possibility of anger and sadness and grief and rage. Those things exist within the scope of human emotion and feeling.

Peace, love, joy… these are NOT emotions or feelings but rather actions and ways of being.

So we can be angry and then still create justice through the energy of peace. (This is a lot and I’m moving through it fast but just think to the basic teachings of Gandhi, MLK, Christ, Dorothy Day…and too many others to list.)

I now think of and experience peace as clarity of vision and knowing. I like the word “clearness” even better here than clarity. CLEAR. Like clean water and bright light.

I also think that to chase peace can be a frustrating and futile effort like chasing happiness.

I believe this is why meditation to find it often doesn’t work for people. Peace is more like a shy woodland creature for many of us because we’ve known it so little in our lives and it’s not sure it can trust us. (Stay with me, here.)

Our own inner peace is so often very deeply buried under intense pain and fear and just mistrust that we can ever live in this sort of state. We’ve been taught that good things should be difficult, that life is about working hard, that love can be fleeting so watch out, that other people are our competition and should be kept at a certain distance, and that we ourselves are never strong enough, good enough, or worthy enough.

Peace feels like a golden carrot at the end of an infinitely long stick and we’ll never ever do or be enough to finally grab it, and if we did, it would very likely turn out to be an illusion and turn to dust in our grasp.

So what do we do? How do we ever find any kind of expanded internal peace/love/joy if they are all that golden carrot but are resistant to “trying.”

We start by getting more honest about all the inner crap that is clogging our way to our true, basic nature.

We do work that clears that. We resolve. We heal. We spend more time in the body, allowing the body to express itself, breathing, settling, getting more and more comfortable with some inner stillness.

The body is the key here. The body can only live in the now. And when we get deeply enough into body, brain and mind chatter start to either shut down or slow down enough that we can identify the problems, the levels of utter ridiculousness with which we torture ourselves every day. We start to CLEAR our inner sight.

For me, this happens most in dance and vigorous movement. It’s like the more my body is being engaged, the more easily I can enter the eye of my inner storm and view it from that place of quiet.

Now, after about 12 years of serious practice at this, now and only now have I finally been able to cultivate a more traditional looking meditative sort of practice, one in which I am actually seated in stillness but this has only happened because I’ve gotten to the place where that inner forest of creatures is no longer scary to me. I feel strong enough in my physical body to enter into the other layers of this body — the emotional, mental, and spiritual.

And here finally, I am able to coax out that woodland creature and feed it a bit. We’re actually becoming friends.

January Yoga Philosophy Practice: AHIMSA (NonViolence)

(This is part of year long series, in which I’ll be personally diving into each of the yamas and niyamas. One per month. There are 10 so that leaves me with 2 months to review. The main text I’m using is this. I’ll be checking in over the month with thoughts, explorations, practices. I would love for you to play along.)

The first ethical practice of yoga is AHIMSA. It’s the ground of all other practices, and when we pay attention day to day — how much violence/harm/just general MEAN we feel toward ourselves, other humans, and the world — we can see why this is the ground of everything and why it’s so damn difficult.

The flip side of my depression is anger. When I’m out of alignment with my own inner gooeyness, I’m either depressed or angry in nonproductive ways.

And wow… over the last four years, WHO is NOT out of alignment?

So starting with this… it makes me roll my eyes, sigh, swear a little (or a lot), and say…yep, of course.

But I’m ready. (My inner grouch just flinched at that.)

Over the last month or so, I’d already started to add in more of my go to devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe (and other forms of the Feminine Divine that is unconditional love and compassion). I could already feel an enlivening of my inner gooeyness happening.

The other day, for example, I was having a conversation with a dear friend. We were talking politics…sorta… but in that very personal way about how it’s affected us and what can we do and all of that, and I found myself writing this:

”We are definitely a nation that is just on the survival end of things but THAT makes it even more vital for those of us who CAN choose differently to be JOYFUL about it. I've been thinking so much about this since before the new year... Like me living any kind of poverty does not make up for someone else's actual poverty. Like me being mad and sad all the time does nothing for anyone. Me denying the joy I DO have does nothing for anyone. Me trying to play down my own LUCK, as it were, does nothing for anyone. Capitalism is the current form of the enemy of humanity being fully human, but there's ALWAYS something BECAUSE we're human and we build shitty things and then we have issues with greed, war, division, etc., because so many have not been loved well or enough. And THAT is the REAL ISSUE right there: the lack of unconditional love (true community) in most people's lives.”

After I wrote it, I thought WHAT? WHO wrote THAT? ((ha)) It hit me that my practices were already taking root.

Here’s the thing…

If nonviolence is the core of yoga ethics, LOVE is the core of nonviolence, and in particular, self love is the very center because it’s from that space that we then react to the world.

The idea of self love can be difficult for some to really understand…what is it? what does it look like? How do we get there when we’re not feeling it?

And that’s the problem, we equate love with a feeling when it’s actually an ACTION.

So think of it this way: you are self loving WHEN you treat yourself with the same compassion, kindness, and grace with which you treat the people you care about the most on this planet.

If that space is rather empty, well, you get most current politicians — people not well loved, trying to fill some giant void, not understanding compassion for others because they’ve never felt it for self.

If that space is full, you get people like Gandhi and MLK and too many to name, but also quite possibly YOU. Or ME.

When we function from this space, we are trusting the world, trusting other people, trusting LIFE.

There’s so much to this, but I want to leave off for now with a quote about how much courage and love are entwined:

When love became the Lord of my life, I became fearless.

— Swami Rama

Roller Skates & Batons: Reverse Engineering Your JoyBody

I have a super wise private student right now (well, all of them are wise in different ways).

I’ve always talked about going back to the things we loved as children to tap into our essential/original nature and to rebuild the container that is your joybody.

But she came up with a phrase for this word that I love: Reverse Engineering. (I know this term is already a thing, of course, but I love how she used it for THIS.)

I love this above all because it implies work. (Of course! HA!)

I get a lot of “I don’t remember…” or “I never played…” as instant responses to my questions around childhood joy. I get it. Trauma.

BUT regardless, it’s there. Somewhere. We are all human animals and human animals play.

Bringing in the term reverse engineering tells us that yes, we might not know right away, but if we follow trails backwards, pick up breadcrumbs, look through photos, research our own pasts… even asking siblings, aunts, cousins what we were like, what they remember about us.

Eventually, we can make our way to the core of what brought us joy.

The work doesn’t stop there.

We have to ENGAGE with that joy.

Here’s the catch: WE CANNOT EXPECT IT TO BE THE SAME. We can’t try to 100% replicate it. We can’t expect the exact same feelings, especially not right away.

I loved roller skating and my baton. So I recently ordered myself a baton.

I SUCK.

But just having that baton to look at, firstly, brings me some joy. Triggers POSITIVE feelings in my body/mind.

And now I get to learn again, which is good for my brain and my fingers, wrists, and shoulders, as it turns out.

For Christmas, Craig bought me the most magical pair of roller skates. MAGICAL.

Again… I SUCK.

I fell right away. But I laughed and got up.

The second day I didn’t suck quite so much but still… laughable.

I used to be GOOD on my skates so this could stop me right away if I let it. I won’t.

I created a playlist that triggers me back to my roller skating days.

This will take work and again, it’s also great for my brain and my freaking GLUTES and lateral hip muscles. I already have strong glutes and I work laterally every single day but new movement equals new muscle experiences.

When we take the time to rebuild these sources of and paths to our essential joybody, we’re strengthening our joy muscles in general, and we are increasing our capacity to allow joy into our lives in all sorts of other ways.

When we lost these pathways for whatever reason, that was the start of our joy diminishment, and over time, many of us learned to not even EXPECT joy anymore and to only tolerate it in small doses.

We are made to live in these joybodies 24/7. Regardless of what’s happening around us, and you know full well, I’m not saying we won’t ever feel pain or sadness. I’ve never ever promoted any of that spiritual bypassing bullshit.

But when we do encounter inevitable grief and anger, we’ll be able to more quickly process and integrate, and we’ll have the skill of simultaneous emotional states — we’ll be able to grieve AND see and experience the good things too.

Invocation for Sensitive Hearts

I wrote this just a couple of years ago for a workshop for highly sensitive humans who are prone to depression, anxiety, and despair due to the state of the world. Some of us do take in more from around us. There are physiological/neurological realities to this. There’s nothing “woo” about it. Some of us have more sensitive nervous systems, to overly simplify it.

But humans are built for empathy and empathy brings pain. We just have to watch for that pain snowballing. We have to take care. We need other humans around us for nurturing and grounding.

This invocation is about all of that. Use it, perhaps, during a meditation or print and sit a copy on your altar.

Moving Together Wherever We Are

When I first started to dance again 12 years ago (what!?), I was working totally on my own. Every day for hours (parsed out in chunks over the day), I met myself in an empty space with music and experimentation and play and struggle and learning.

I got used to this, and then I went for my first training at Kripalu and spent an entire week moving and playing and laughing and experiencing with a very large group of wonderful women. When I got home and had to face that empty space again with this deeper understanding of my aloneness, I crashed.

After every training, it was the same. Big crash, followed by learning to work alone again, followed by training, followed by big crash… I did this for years, as I went to Kripalu often.

I started to teach, though, and those days with students helped. I held onto that when I went into my own private practice day after day, hour after hour.

I started to experiment with teaching online probably about 8 years ago. It wasn’t the same. There were technical difficulties that were very limiting (this has changed).

And then pandemic.

I was ready in more ways than most to take my work online. Thank God I started to experiment so long ago so I wasn’t forced to learn all of that this year, in the moment, sinking in fear.

It felt… okay. Not great. Okay.

I put my choreography group on hold, thinking it was impossible to work on THAT online. And remember when we all just assumed things would get back to normal?

Eventually, I went back to working with that group because who knows how long things will be like this and art must still be made.

And things keep getting better as I learn to take my methods to virtual spaces that aren’t really virtual but just different and how I hate that word. There’s nothing virtual about the life changing experiences people still have. There’s nothing virtual about the more-important-than-ever sense of community.

Our physical bodies may not be in the same space, but we are still in the same SPACE.

We can see one another and respond to one another’s energy and we can still share circle and breath.

I used to think, long ago before dance while I was still “just” doing yoga and still immersed in depression, that classes and togetherness were just to teach us how to do it by ourselves, how to have a one person at home practice.

Oh, how much I have learned that the entire point of everything is our togetherness.

The Joy of Connection

Joy is peaceful. Joy is centering. Joy is the very nature of this existence. It’s the container for all our “feelings” and everything that happens to us … if we take a breath and settle and notice. It’s always there.

It’s a knowing… that “all shall be well, all shall be well, all manner of things shall be well” that can feel impossible in our worst moments but that we also can sense is profoundly and utterly true.

Joy is, above all, connection.

Joy is connection to self.

Joy is connection to other.

Joy is connection to whatever it is that you think of as “divine.”

JoyBody is simply a way to say… here are some things to try that will help you to connect — to self, to others, and to the truth of you.

Moving in Trust

We get so caught up in our IDEAS of things, don’t we?

And those ideas then get caught up with other people’s ideas and pretty soon we are in knots over things that seem like they should be pretty simple.

Movement, for example.

Instead of just trusting ourselves to move in ways that bring us joy and pleasure and growth and change and all the things we really want from movement, we start to explore a particular path.

Then we get caught up in doing it “right.”

Then we self identify with the culture of the path.

Let’s take, for example, yoga — the very thing that is meant to bring us freedom and an understanding of ourselves that is infinite. Over time, over repetitions, it ends up concretizing us in our bodies and our minds. It can take a long time — if ever — to be able to see that this is what has happened.

Maybe then we move to “primal movement,” but again, instead of trusting ourselves, we seek a “program” and even in this concept called “primal,” we find ourselves learning patterns and repeating patterns and wondering when we’ll get to the “advanced” patterns.

When the most “advanced” pattern is the capacity to follow no pattern.

There is nothing wrong with studying different paths and with different teachers as long as we don’t get STUCK.

Find a teacher who is the geekiest student you’ve ever met.

Find a teacher who is there to light your curiosity on fire.

Find a teacher who is never ever finished.

Find a culture of no culture, one that is always expanding.

Find a group of humans who don’t believe in hierarchies of any kind.

Be brave.

Stop following. Stop patterning.

Question. Experiment. Play.

Instead of a Word of the Year: A Practice of the Year

So many words kept coming at me, trying to assert themselves as the front runner for my word of 2021, but it bothered me… this idea of distilling it all down to one word when I knew I needed a broader and simultaneously deeper approach after the dumpster fire of 2020.

I needed something that would help me to refocus on what really matters to me. I needed something that would feed the better parts of me.

I needed something that would get me back on my right path when it came to nurturing my spirit.

But I also needed a challenge for my world weary heart — a challenge that would take me beyond all the unproductive rage I’ve been living with for the past many months and a challenge that could help to lift me out of my post-serious-depression acedia (spiritual apathy).

And then it hit me:

I will be spending 2021 studying the Yamas and Niyamas of Yoga. These are the ethical practices of yoga. There are ten in total and so during the last two months, I will dive into a sort of “review,” focusing on the ones that I found especially challenging.

I will be using this text. At the beginning of each month, I’ll read the corresponding chapter, and then I will spend the month exploring that particular yama or niyama in all areas of my life.

I would love for you to join me so I’ll also be writing about this journey here and in the JoyBody Sanctuary on Facebook. If you’re not in the sanctuary, you can ask to join by going here or you can just send me a message anywhere you have access to me and ask me to add you. It’s a private group and no one can see what’s being written in there except for the members.