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.

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.

Moving into the something larger; grounding into now

For some of us, traditional meditation only leads to exacerbated symptoms of depression and anxiety. It can feed the loops that support PTSD.

(There are some PTSD specialists who actually say that meditation should be avoided unless it is done with some supervision and with a movement component.)

And for some of us, the way yoga is taught through repeated forms and static holds can do the same thing.

I was/am definitely one of those people. Yoga was okay for me but it was still a space that could be somewhat dangerous for my mind, depending on where I was on my own personal depression/anxiety spectrum at the time.

Kundalini Yoga was the least dangerous of all for me as it is full of more spontaneous type movement. I often tell people that Kundalini yoga did not heal me but it kept me from getting worse and it prepared me for what I actually needed… the stuff I now teach that is more dance based.

When I dance or engage in movement play and experiments, when my bod is busy solving some sort of movement "problem" (and it doesn't matter if you're standing, on the floor, in a chair...)... that is when I will sense my way into the fertile ground of my own individual emptiness and my felt connection to something larger.

That is what The Peony Method is all about.

I can’t ever figure out how to explain what happens internally. Both of these statements are simultaneously true:

1. “It takes me out of myself and into spaciousness.”

2. “It grounds me into my nowness of being.”

Both/and.

I know I am in an internal space of truthfulness when I am practicing these methods, because if I feel at all confused about ANYTHING IN MY LIFE, I hear my authentic voice and get immediate and right answers as soon as I fall into the space that one and two up there are describing.

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.