If you're stuck, as I was...

IMPORTANT QUESTION AT THE END (and I would love to hear from MANY OF YOU):

There aren't enough words to describe how much giving into the joy of another kitten has changed my life.

The guilt I was feeling that kept me from moving on with this any faster is just gone. Because joy is never something to feel guilty about and once I entered into it again, I knew this on a cellular level.

Grief makes us forget ourselves; it makes us lose sight; it lies to us about the love that is still possible.

And I'm thinking about how this is related to how SHIT the world is right now...

Yes, the world is shit. But are you contributing to it by resisting the beauty and love and joy and peace that you CAN find/have/make?

I keep going back to my Holocaust studies and I keep going back to that time I presented a paper at a Holocaust conference in New Jersey. I was the youngest person there by far at about 25.

At lunch, it turned out I was sitting next to an older woman with a number tattoo.

What was stunning is that I would have never ever guessed she would have that tattoo because she was so SMILEY. She was so happy to have someone my age there. She was just radiating JOY.

It strikes me... people who go through the WORST are often the most joyful.

And I think that's the lesson we all need right now... that we CANNOT give up these aspects/pursuits in life.

As I've said before, the AWFUL PEOPLE DOING THE AWFUL... they NEVER waiver.

What if WE never waivered in bringing forth JOY and BEAUTY and PEACE?

There is room for grief but I'm afraid that I (and maybe you?) have spent too long in it and are stuck and wallowing. Then I got that kitten...

So what thing could you do to break free of it and move in the other direction? This is not a rhetorical question. COMMIT TO SOMETHING by leaving a comment or writing to me privately.

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.

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.

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.

Devotion to Essence not Form

This is key. To everything.

I’ve been talking to so many people about this in so many different settings.

We start a practice for a good reason, and at first, it seems to be “helping” In whatever way we were looking for help.

Then over time, this feeling of being helped diminishes. We become disillusioned with the practice. We blame the practice. We stop.

Here’s the thing: the practice isn’t entirely the problem; it’s our own misunderstanding of the big picture process that is the problem, and it’s why people jump from one thing to the next, always searching, never diving deep.

Now I said… the practice isn’t “entirely” the problem, because there is a problem when we get too married to a FORM of practice.

This next thing I’m going to say is important:

Form can be helpful... until it's holding us TO IT instead of holding us to the growth we went to it for.

Our devotion, to be effective and to help us evolve, needs to be to essence, not to form.

Look at WHY you are doing WHAT you are doing.

WHY are you doing yoga, for example? Because that WHY is your DEVOTION, not the form of yoga you’ve chosen.

One simple example from my own life:

Sometimes I study Buddhism. Deeply. Then I move to Tantra yoga. Then I even find my way back to the teachings of Christ.

For me, it’s not the form of the spiritual path but the path itself that I am walking and it is created as I walk it.

My devotion is to some sort of understanding of this life we’re all living. The form of that evolves over time as I grow and as my needs change via my experiences.

When it comes to movement practices, this is how the Peony Method was born.

The form of yoga was holding me to a certain shape — on the mat and in my life.

For a time in my life, that restricted shape helped me to feel safe.

But safety is no longer my number one concern because I AM safe.

Now freedom is my concern. Liberation. Thus the Peony Method is alway evolving. From minute to minute, I am breathing and waiting with patience and then allowing movement to arise that is honest to my present moment.

Find something like that, right there. Something that challenges your edges and simultaneously helps you to keep your center.

Happiness Toolbox: My Two Most Important Tools

That toolbox would be better if there were glitter but it’s pretty good…

This post is a rewrite of a post that I wrote on Blisschick many years ago and it popped up in my memories the other day and I thought… oh! that’s good.

AND I think this stuff is needed more than ever. So here we go.

I think I came up with the two most important tools that you need in your happiness toolbox.

First, I’ve been doing a shit ton of thinking about compassion and how we apply it not just to the world but to ourselves.

To ourselves.

I think we miss that part all too often.

This all seems very obvious, but every day we make decisions lacking compassion. We make decision based on some sense of right and wrong which is based on someone’s arbitrary rules about those things.

Rules can be dangerous weapons if they are not changed to fit each and every individual and situation. #ExperimentofOne

But if in every single situation, we apply the tool of compassion, we will see just how fluid our rules have to become.

And here is the first tool: in our lives, compassion should always be our guiding compass.

A compass will point true north.

And isn’t true north where our highest self resides? There is no confusion, no sense of righteousness; there is just love and compassion.

When you think you have been wronged, pull out this compass and see where it guides you. (And really, the most compassionate act might be that it guides you away from whomever wronged you.)

When you think you can know another’s heart, another’s experience of their own life, and thus judge it, pull out this compass and see where it guides you.

But again, do not forget: when you feel you are being at all mean to yourself, pull out this compass.

When you hear those freaking gremlins in your head, check your compass.

Being compassionate to ourselves has a lot to do with balance. When we are balanced — meaning getting the things we need — we treat ourselves with love and kindness and those things are then easier to extend to others.

Remember, though, that “balance” is not a static thing; it must be fluid.

This brings to mind an image from my childhoood:

A level. I can see my small hands carrying it around and just laying it on random things and watching that bubble move and waiting for it to land. There’s that exact center but there is some leeway.

Leeway /li:wei/ noun. Freedom of action within set limits; room allowed for this; a safety margin (Oxford English Dictionary)

Isn’t that a perfect description of how balance should function in our lives? We aren’t building a house here but a life so aiming for this space and not always hitting it exactly is good enough.

There is freedom of action but also set limits.

The level in my toolbox tells me I really need to MOVE every single day.

But… I can miss a day occasionally and get right back to it the next. I can do 40 minutes one day and ten the next and 75 the next, depending on what kind of day I am having and what my body is needing.

To keep my mind healthy there are a whole list of things I “should” do every single day but there is a safety margin to all of it. Little bits count. Not too many misses in a row matter.

A compass and a level. Those are the main tools in my glitter box.

Yours?

Body Bypassing

We often speak of "spiritual bypassing," but there's SO MUCH body bypassing in this culture.

A lot of us (including myself for far too many years) walk around disconnected to the point that, for example, I often said that if you cut off my body, my head wouldn’t notice. At the time, I thought that was pretty funny.

As humans in a traumatizing culture, a large number of us have gotten far too adept at dissociating.

Feeling our feelings can feel overwhelming, but that’s because we aren’t encouraged to feel our feelings … which decreases our capacity to … feel our feelings. (Round and round we go.)

It starts when we’re little and we start hearing any number of the following…

• Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.

• You’re too sensitive.

• You care too much about … everything.

• Do not show anger.

• Your excitement is … too much; bring it down a few notches.

And we’re also told a million things about our bodies:

• Sit still.

• Don’t climb that/hang there/walk so close to…

• Be careful. (This one is telling us that we can’t trust our own judgment or our body’s ability to do hard things.)

• You take up too much space

• Take up more space.

• You’re too fat.

• You should gain weight.

And on and on…

Our culture is designed to push us and our experiences deeper and deeper into our brains, shutting off access to all the intelligence of our senses AND our instincts, our inner voices, our guts, our hearts… our inherent wisdom is blocked.

Our wisdom is blocked but so too is the mechanism by which we can calibrate all the chemicals that keeps us happy and joyful and creative, and that mechanism is moving this body.

Somehow in all of this, there is also a body-based gaslighting. We start to believe that the body isn’t even important.

We look to sitting still as spiritual practice. We look to deprivation of sensory experiences as spiritual practice. Think about fasting and celibacy, just for two examples. We see people who do those sorts of things as somehow “enlightened.” One cannot be “enlightened” when one is not engaged in their own damn humanness.

We start to think that we can just think/pray/journal/talk our way out of all of this pain or lack of fulfillment. Not that those aren’t good things in and of themselves but they do NOT replace the body based experiences we are built for.

Alas…

You ARE this body and this body's very makeup is about movement. We are built to move. The imperative to move is encoded in our structure on every level.

NOT MOVING can be a sign of depression and anxiety but it's also fertile ground for depression and anxiety to grow, and this culture grows those two things at rates we’ve never seen before.

Disclaimer: moving is different for all of us so I'll repeat this forever: AS LONG AS THERE IS BREATH, THERE IS DANCE.