On Vulnerability

Recently I watched this documentary (that’s available right now on Netflix) and I think about it every day. I’ll probably have to watch it again.

At first, I couldn’t understand this dancer’s appeal to anyone. Ohad Naharin adored her… took her to Israel out of university so that she could learn from him and be a central dancer in his company. OHAD! The dude I adore.

And then… then… she does her first solo piece. It’s in the nude. I’ve never seen a reason for the nude thing until this moment. It had to be in the nude. There was no other way for the piece to make sense, and within moments of watching her, you’re so captivated by her body’s ability to be truthful, that you stop noticing the nude aspect.

She is freaking amazing.

But one quote caught me:

“I wanna get to that place where I have no strength to hide anything.”

— Bobbi Jene Smith, Choreographer

The level of vulnerability… what a warrior she is.

What a warrior we are all called to be.

Have you ever gotten near to this idea in your own life?

Are you willing to get near to this idea in your own life?

I’m sharing this and hoping it brings about a conversation because my mind is still spinning from it.

Yoga is not of the body and how the body can take us into yoga

Yoga is not postures. And the postures you think are yoga are very young, especially compared to yoga. Was that confusing?

We keep figuring out that yoga is so much older than we think we know it is. Let’s just assume it’s 3 or 4 thousand years old at this point. Those asanas you do? Some of them are under a hundred years old.

So what the hell is yoga, then?

It’s the underlying philosophy (which is meant to be experimented with and LIVED), and some of it did include postures but that was for the sake of people who need a physical entry point.

I need a physical entry point and I think right now, in this day and age, most people do, because most people now think the body is just a vehicle for the mind and that’s about as un-yogic as it gets.

But the physical entry point is not meant to be solidified. Yoga — the real yoga — is way too smart for that. Yoga is all and all is yoga, and each human is a unique expression of that so why would we think that downdog was somehow necessary to a yogic experience? And who would think that headstands were “advanced?”

People mistaking the material for the all, that’s who. People STILL living in a world of dualism where we are separate from the flow of the divine.

But we ARE the flow of the divine and so we come to what I really want to write about…

I’ve been studying yoga for 25 years. I’ve been teaching for 10 years.

And only just a couple of weeks ago did I feel like, as a teacher and as a student, that I had finally come to START to know “my” yoga.

“My” yoga being the yoga that is natural to this body and that allows this mind and spirit to engage on the same level as body. “My” yoga being a way of moving that integrates awareness and allows me to BE ME. (Language is so constraining right here… I’m struggling to express this.)

I am a student of Tantric Yoga, and in that system of nondualism, the ultimate reality is Awareness.

Awareness has two parts: noticing and then action based on clear sighted noticing and that is unencumbered, that is free and only in the moment and of itself.

For me, to even get close to that sort of awareness, I have to dive deeply into body.

For me, to dive deeply into body, I have to enter into the most easeful flowing state of movement possible.

And so my study of yoga, my experience of yoga, is much about breath creating fluid and strong movement.

This is too big for standing in down-dog or pushing my students into triangles. We are not triangular.

We are water.

And the key to our water state is in the mobility of the spine.

And so, I bring to you what I will henceforth refer to as Water Spine Yoga. You can read more about it here.

No Sanskrit… I do not want to use language that might push people away who need this work.

(I could go into a long rant, too, about how current yoga is very heavily masculine energy yoga and how that’s not what we really need right now and how the yoga I teach is meant to strengthen our feminine energy so that we can go out into the world and be the warriors of love and compassion that we are meant to be, but I don’t really want to go into that right now. HA)

This, too, is a dancer's body

From a demonstration years ago in our city arboretum. Betty was almost 80 in this photo.

This, too, is a dancer’s body, because all bodies that dance are dancer’s bodies, and all bodies are meant to dance; it’s in your genetic coding. Dancing is an expression of being human, no more and no less.

I got to teach Betty for a couple of years before she passed away. That’s the very happy part of our story together.

The sad part is that it was only during these couple of years with me that Betty felt like she was truly embodied, that she felt her feelings deeply, that she got to know her body. This is not my story of Betty; this is what she said over and over again.

She was a nun for a lot of her life, left that, and became a nurse practitioner. When she came to this work, it was not something she ever thought she'd be doing, but she'd tell you that it's never too late and then she'd add with great passion and seriousness that IT'S NEVER TOO SOON!

So much of Betty’s life, like a lot of women her age, like too many women to this day, was in her head. She walked through most of her life as if just a head or as if the body were just a vehicle for the head.

I spent a great deal of my life there, thanks to chronic depression. I know how easy it is to stay there, how “comfortable” it can be — it you think it’s comfortable to only be partly human, to only know a tiny bit of yourself and this great experiment of life.

For the first time in her life, she FELT HER BODY. And she learned that she loved The White Stripes. 

I Thought I Knew the Difference: Thriving versus Surviving

I THOUGHT I knew what thriving was when I really was just at another, perhaps a bit “higher,” level of surviving. (I wrote about this a little bit in a post about managing depression, right here.)

At that time, now that I can look back with a clearer mind, I was mistaking not being suicidal with thriving. I thought because I wasn’t 24/7 thinking about death or passive relief that I was doing as good as I could. I thought the health I had gotten to was the best I could expect after so long of such darkness.

Here’s an important point that I want all people suffering to read a few times:

Because I was still actively depressed, I also thought it was the best I deserved.

I didn’t think I was worthy of true, deep, abiding, peaceful happiness. I thought I was broken, that something was wrong with me, that I had made such bad choices in life that I could only expect so much goodness to come my way. I was constantly expecting something bad to happen to prove that I deserved to be punished. I saw my depression as part of that punishment and so thought a mild form, at the very least, was always going to be with me.

This is a core lie of depression and I want you to know that you can stop believing it. I want you to know that you can stop hearing it.

That’s the part that I still can’t get over: I no longer hear this shit in my head. It’s just gone. POOF.

I keep saying to my doctor, to loved ones… to anyone … HOW was this CHEMICALS? However it was, it was. And that’s that.

But I digress…

Here’s a paradox for you…

Now that I have my brain chemistry issue on the mend, I’m downright confused what to do with it…. how the heck to live with this level of health that I’ve not known since I was very small?!

The vast majority of my life has been about surviving, so it’s been about hyper vigilance, awareness of symptoms, care-taking, watching everything I do, eat, watch, see, read… This kept me very busy with lists and tasks and efforts and plans and research and and and…

My life has revolved around this illness. How could it not? This illness threatened my life. I’m lucky to be here.

Without this project, what now?

Furthermore, a lot of the things that I love in this world — dance, chanting, yoga, writing, art of all kinds — those things were drafted into the service of this project. They became “medicine” to the nth degree. They were no longer for creativity or expression but simply for my survival.

What were those things now? WHY were those things now?

I sat in front of my yoga class recently talking a bit about this. We do that at the beginning of class; we have a true sangha — awareness circle — and I am not above it or outside of it but in it and so I talk about my own challenges as much as anyone else.

I asked them about this what now.

A few of them answered all at once and said just about the same thing:

“You do things for FUN, for joy, for fulfillment, for peace…”

WHAT?!? For FUN? For JOY? For…fulfillment and peace…?

I squinted and then I laughed at myself for this was truly confusing to me. I could cry and be sad about this but my new brain chemistry is like, “what’s the point of that!?”

So I giggle instead and answer, “How delightful! A new sort of project!”

That’s where I’m at: watching for opportunities to redefine experiences, reframing, and simply allowing things to be what they are. I’m doing the reps, if you will… strengthening muscles that had been atrophied.

Brain Chemistry & Meditation

People who love meditation love to tell people how meditation is the answer to pretty much everything.

What these people don’t realize or don’t know or simply ignore is that different brains are, well, different and that difference counts with something like meditation.

As an embodiment artist and teacher, I’ve met and talked to far too many people who feel shamed by their “inability” to meditate.

Of course, the usual definition of meditation by which most people judge themselves is often too narrow and often simply wrong.

Meditation is not, for example, the attempt to eradicate all thinking. Good luck with that. Not possible. (Though you might get moments when it feels this way.)

Meditation is the nonjudgemental observation of the thought process whereby we train ourselves to not get attached to stories. This develops witness mind.

Witness mind can be developed in other ways than simply sitting and counting your breath or whatever of the millions of techniques you’re exploring. And here is where the definition usually gets far too narrow.

You needn’t sit on some specific cushion in some specific posture for some specific number of minutes.

For a long time, for example, the only way I could approach this sort of mind space was through vigorous and joyful movement. I would tell people that it was then that I could sit inside the “eye of the storm,” the storm being the normal overly chaotic state of my (depressed and anxious) mind.

And here’s where a limited understanding of and a shrinking of the idea of meditation actually gets dangerous, and yes, I said dangerous.

Jon Kabat Zinn, MD, and author of the very famous mindfulness book, Wherever you go, there you are, says that to teach meditation to people with PTSD with no body/somatic component is akin to malpractice, because sitting in the filthy nest of our not-well minds can actually make it all so much worse.

Do I ever know this from personal experience! When he said this, I felt so damn relieved. I was not alone.

When I attempted meditation, it simply allowed me to sit and observe all the depressed and anxious thoughts and in that sitting and observing, those thoughts GREW.

I felt like meditation allowed my mind to basically start eating itself with hatred and worry and fear.

But dance and play? That part of my mind, thanks to in-the-moment swimming-in-happy-chemicals, was shut down or at least quieted. I could see above those thoughts for those moments.

I moved enough and taught enough that those chemicals got a bit steadier and my mind got a bit healthier.

But… my mind was still not healthy enough to allow for the absolute stillness and quiet of seated meditation. That was still the danger zone for me, which was a big clue that my depression and anxiety were not just circumstantial but something much more.

Now that I’m well into the wellness created by (FINALLY!) the right anti-depressant (in my case one that not only blocks re-uptake of serotonin but also of dopamine and norepinephrine), I can see that all along my problem was not one of “not doing enough wellness; not taking the right herb; not eating the right diet; etc., ad nauseam.”

Nope. My base issue was a brain that had bad chemistry. Like a diabetic, I had an actual biological issue and it took medical intervention for me to finally see and feel and believe that.

I’ll try in more posts to write more about how different this is, but…

I can now sit in meditation. NO PROBLEM. Hello, healthy brain!

I now CRAVE moments of stillness and quiet.

My movement work is reflecting that in ways I could have never imagined.

See? That’s what I’m talking about. Different brains… meditation only is efficacious if the brain is already in some shape or form “healthy.” Healthy brain chemistry is needed, and sure, eventually, meditation can be a pathway to even MORE healthy brain chemistry. But you need a base to start.

A Bit of a Movement Manifesto

The only thing we know for sure is that we have a body. That's it. We have a body. For whatever reason (or for no reason), we are here having an experience through these bodies.

And we know these bodies are meant to move, not just carry around our brains. This truth is contained in our very cells and demonstrated by the action of those cells.

These bodies are meant to move a LOT and in the widest variety of ways possible.

Movement is LIFE. That is not a metaphor and it IS a metaphor.

We must, first and foremost, bring CURIOSITY to these bodies. Then we must bring AWE and GRATITUDE.

When we carry those three things within us, we'll move more from those places.

I constantly talk about how we canNOT move from a sense of punishment or negative consequence -- as in, I ate cake, therefore I must exercise.

EAT THE CAKE.

Then go and PLAY.

Balance is not about evenness... it's about containing opposites.

We can't "balance" 8 hours in a chair with 30 to 60 minutes of "fitness."

Imagine being angry and violent for 8 hours and thinking your nervous system will be completely okay with that as long as you are calm for 30 minutes.

Movement is NOT exercise.

Movement is being in your body and USING IT.

Movement ART is being conscious of your body's ability to express something truthful and then doing that.

When will you start giving this body its due? Will it take a catastrophe or a loss of some sort to convince you that this body is worth your time?

Let's all dig a little deeper, shall we?

COMMIT. DEVOTE. LOVE.

Here's what my digging deeper will look like: I am 50. I'm not "supposed" to take myself seriously as a dancer. It's time.

And you?

Dance, core fluid strength, a #circleoftrees, and the world: how it’s all connected

As women age, more and more, we become the keepers of the heart’s wisdom and it’s our duty to this chaotic world to be our most powerful, to stand planted and deeply rooted in our truth, and to be able to clearly express that truth in whatever form our calling demands (this will, of course, look different for each and every one of us which is where the beauty of it lives).

But we cannot be the keepers of the heart’s wisdom and we cannot be powerful agents of change if we are not in our own bodies, if we don’t know the strength and capacity for action that resides in our own bodies, if we are constantly at war with our own bodies.

Enter the work of dance and breath and attention and the support of a community of women (for we are not meant to heal and become whole on our own; we are built to do this work with the support of others).

In order for the wisdom of the heart (that is compassion and love and courage above all else) to rise up and out the throat/expression energy center and enter the larger world, we have to constantly re-activate and stoke our inner fire that resides in our core -- the whole of it from the pelvis upward and all around and including the spine.

We don’t want hard, rigid muscle-only strength in this area or we become hardened and rigid in the world. We want soft, fluid, changeable, responsive strength which comes with breath and acts more like water in the world.

This space in the body then must be connected to our grounding so that our active energies are not scattered, weakened, and wasted or sent out in the wrong direction, misunderstood in their intent.

That grounding allows us to connect, rooted, to the women in our #circleoftress so when one is feeling weak, the others hold them up; when one is feeling extra strong, they might simultaneously hold others and fly.

THIS...this is how it’s all connected and THIS is the core of the work I do. If you need a #circleoftrees, if you need to stop the war with your body, if you want to explore your powerful self and then take her out into the world, you might be interested in the work we do with Bodypoetics. 

Embattled No More: The Invisible Exhaustion of Depression

And now quotes like this no longer feel like these unattainable wishes but instead feel like a call that I can answer.

Since starting on this new anti-depressant, I feel… capable.

For the first time, I think maybe ever, I feel what people have told me about myself for my whole life: that I am someone who creates stuff out of thin air, that I get an idea and then I act on it, that I walk into visions.

I never believed those words, or more accurately, I felt like a fraud who was pulling wool over the eyes of the speakers. Like, if they only knew all the things I was NOT doing, all the hours wasted in self-doubt and self-hatred, all the time spent thinking but not doing, all the days paralyzed in my bed or on the couch or staring off into space.

Even at my most productive, I never ever felt productive.

I felt embattled.

How could people not see that I was suffocating and drowning and that I was barely surviving, much less thriving? I would think this not in judgment of them but in judgment of myself. How could I pull off FOOLING so many?

Because you see, no matter how much I might have managed to do, there was one thing that I was doing 24/7, and because my brain has been like this for so long, I no longer saw this thing as unusual or “extra.”

I was fighting for my life. Fighting for every square inch of it. Fighting every second of every day.

I was fighting, as I’ve mentioned before, the Asshole in My Brain, and that Asshole was a NINJA.

I was convinced simultaneously that I was ill AND that my brain was normal, therefore this internal fight was normal and why couldn’t I get my shit together!? (Try untying THAT knot. It has everything to do with shaming my own spirit rather than acknowledging my biology.)

I was so used to living like this that I didn’t notice the energy it took. I would judge myself for not getting enough done from day to day, not noticing this huge thing I was accomplishing every single day — not defeating the Asshole outright, but winning each day’s battles so that I could live to fight again.

Back to this idea then that I wasn’t ever accomplishing what I knew I COULD deep down: perhaps, um, it was because I was using most of my fuel, most of my energy, for this war.

I was exhausted before I got out of bed.

I was done before I started on the lists of things that mattered to me.

This is the part of depression that those who don’t suffer can’t understand or see. It’s the part that is invisible to everyone around us because we might appear somewhat functional, but it’s also dangerously invisible to the person suffering, so no matter what we do or don’t do, we’re damned… by ourselves as ineffective, weak, soft-willed, disappointing.

This is the underbelly of an extreme cultural belief in self-sufficiency added to a multi-billion dollar industry called self-help.

Why can’t I fix myself? becomes part of the Asshole’s arsenal, really a nuclear-level weapon, which leads to a cycle of shame that leaves us attempting to hide our illness even more vigorously. Asshole wins.

And each day looks like this: I’m exhausted and so very close to the edge but somehow I function at a bare minimum level. It’s enough for people to remind me of “all the good work I do” when I say I am suffering from a crisis of meaning and purpose. Their cheering only adds to Assholes bullets of “see? they believe in you…but you’re nothing… you can’t even finish your basic to-do list… you can’t even ((insert the thing you want the most here))…” Shame. More shame. More hiding. Not getting the help you need because this is obviously not a “real illness” but something wrong with your character so I dive deeper into spiritual practices and exercise and wonder why the things I do help others but not me…

Rinse and repeat ad nauseam for the next couple of decades.

Somehow… SOMEHOW… I listened to my husband and got the help I’ve needed all along.

It’s taken until today for me to notice my increased energy.

Huh… isn’t that funny? No longer fighting an Asshole 24/7 means I have energy for other stuff.

It’s taken until today for me to notice that those spiritual practices weren’t a waste except for the fact that my brain was TOO TIRED to take it all in and that’s why I couldn’t seem to remember, couldn’t seem to keep doing it all, couldn’t seem to “ever freaking learn.”

Because now? My brain chemistry is being altered for the better and I can feel the power of that.

I can feel what “normal” really is and it’s NOT a daily battle for one’s life. It’s a sort of battling for a better life, for more art, for more love and friendship… but that’s not a battling of an asshole… that’s a battling for all that’s good and right and wonderful and beautiful in this world and that sort of battle feeds energy right back into us, invigorates us with meaning and purpose, and has us ready to get out of bed each day, grateful to be doing just that.