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.

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.