Another free playlist: To send out intentions/energy/prayers

Remember that I share these lists on both YouTube and Spotify so whichever one works best for you! AND remember that you can subscribe to my channels on either of those. (YouTube is a good idea because eventually I’ll be uploading teaching videos there.)

This new list is again under 30 minutes.

And it can be used in a variety of ways:

The first piece of music is a chant to Ganesha to clear obstacles. You might perceive obstacles to your intentions externally, but we also want to be sure we are clear internally.

The playlist can be approached with a very specific intention. It could be "aimed" at a specific person or group of people or part of the environment. Or you could be very general. Just be clear.

And take a moment after to sit in silence and imagine refilling your own energy well.

The Problem of Man-Made Yoga Postures

I’ve written about this a bit before — the idea that yoga is not of the body but the body can take us more deeply into yoga. Go here.

But another aspect of that same issue is much on my mind and these thoughts are just the beginning. (And please…don’t nitpick… there are FANTASTIC teachers of what we call “traditional” hatha yoga out there. It has benefits, blah blah blah… why do you think I’ve been studying it for 25 years? But “traditional” is problematic in terms of who is defining that and based on what. And good things are good because they can tolerate internal evolution.)

The yoga postures we do were made by men, and they contain a whole hell of a lot of masculine energy (as we typically define these things). I’m not saying they are of the toxic masculinity category, but they can go there when they get too strict, too defined, too prescribed, too demanding with no room for individuality, and too centered around the ego of the creator. (I’m looking at you, Mr. Bikram.)

The yoga postures we do were made by men, catalogued by men, systematized by men. And they look like it.

Everything is on static planes. Everything is… pointed. Everything is about standing in place, getting the POSE right, doing certain poses, and of course, always looking to do the pose better and always looking for the harder pose to learn and perfect next.

Even in a “flow yoga” class, you’re still just, basically, transitioning quicker (faster, better, stronger) from one such pose to the next.

I’m pretty much done with that.

“Straight lines don’t do much for the body except turn it into a cast, eventually limiting mobility and creating issues based in repetitive stress.”

Let go of the forms once you know the forms. All of our best and most innovative movement artists and teachers have come to this same conclusion eventually.

Be like water, as Bruce Lee said. Exactly.

The body craves wave like motion, circular motion, NATURAL free flowing motion that is explorative in nature, that is experimental, that is constantly changing and challenging.

The best strength is soft, pliable, responsive strength.

If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice that I’m describing an approach to our physical yoga that is very much based in feminine energy.

And so I rarely teach what most people would call yoga anymore.

My yoga (WaterSpine Yoga) is deep in meaning and intention and it’s steeped in the larger yoga, the philosophy of yoga and the breath.

The yoga of the body that I’m exploring and playing with now will take you to a place of peace and strength and awareness and it will teach you to trust YOU and not some form or structure or any person behind that form or structure.

True yoga is meant to free you, not lock you up.

You are a Solid Gold Dancer. Or Buddha. Whichever.

Thailand is home to the largest, solid gold Buddha in the world. It’s about 13 feet tall and would be worth around 300 million today, depending on the price of gold.

It was created sometime between 1200 and 1400 common era.

Did you know a lot of Buddha statues in the world are missing heads because it was the easiest thing for thieves to remove and melt down to sell?

This Buddha kept his head.

But he did so because his true identity was kept secret until 1954, hundreds of years after being disguised to protect him from becoming a spoil of war and after many moves from one insignificant temple to another.

Because who wanted a cheap concrete Buddha embedded with fake, kitschy glass in their temple?

No one could see this Buddha for what he actually was after so many years of neglect and wear and tear and intentional hiding, concealing, masking.

A lot like each one of us.

Except the concrete and cheap gems are layered on by difficult life experiences and then by the crap stories our asshole brain tells us about those experiences and about ourselves. Most of the concrete, we mixed and applied ourselves.

I’ve always told my students this, from the very beginning:

“You are covered in a layer of ick, hardened crap, solidified fear and anger icing of mostly your own making. Dance is the pick axe that will bust through those layers. But it will take effort and commitment, compassion and devotion to the true self that lies waiting underneath. It’s simple but it’s never easy.”

Only days ago did I hear this story of the Golden Buddha, and yes, I thought… no matter what has happened to us, this core, this center, this original self is always there, waiting in radiance to be uncovered.

This is our work in this life: to allow this aspect of ourselves to shine through.

Once we reveal this self and devote ourselves to its maintenance, crap will still cling. Dance goes from pick axe to teflon coating at this point.

You keep doing the work so that the crap finally, after it hits you, just…slides…off…

Food, Alcohol, Pleasure, and Meds

The warmth during our trip to Asheville was my favorite thing…

I’ve written a lot (and still have so much more to write) about the changes to my brain since going on the right anti-depressant. (Here, here, here, and here.)

And before you read: Please remember that I am the mother of #ExperimentofOne. This is about what works for me. That doesn’t mean I think it would work for you. What I DO believe would work for you is questioning your own assumptions frequently and playing with variables.

To paraphrase Thomas Merton, we are built not for pleasure but for joy. The distinction is important. Pleasure is momentary and of the world; joy is deep and abiding and can be tapped into at any moment because it’s embedded in our operating systems, so to speak. It’s always there, waiting for us to notice. It’s not dependent on anything else.

Pleasure is good. I’m not a puritan. But it’s not the point and it can’t be our primary motivation. Or you can easily end up with a nation of high-functioning addicts. (Oh, wait…)

Pleasure is important but it’s secondary to the depth of joy.

Pleasure is easy. Go eat a cupcake. (Now I want a cupcake.) Joy takes devotion and awareness.

And eventually I’ll relate this preamble to food and my depression…

Though the anti-depressants have removed the Chemical Asshole from my brain, there is still work to be done.

I am still responsible for my own health, wellbeing, and happiness.

A pill can take care of the biochemical issue — and thank god for that — but there remains first, old habits developed out of coping with chronic depression, and second, a desire not just for “good” but for AWESOME.

The pill allows me to spend my energy where it belongs — on joy and love and writing and dance and relationships and learning and growing and all the good things that used to get eaten up by the energy it took just to live with my depression from hour to hour and not succumb to a deep desire to give up.

But the pill does not do All the Things. It does not suddenly make me a different or new person. It does not change who I am on a basic level. It simply gives me access to myself again.

I could decide this is good enough, but that’s not my nature.

I know there’s more to life even than this. I have Big Dreams and goals and desires. I have dance to teach, worlds to explore, books to write.

Because I’m not fighting Chemical Asshole, I have the power to dream again (I had recently totally and truly lost that capacity and that’s when I knew I had to seek help because I’ve ALWAYS been able to IMAGINE), and I have the power to go after those dreams. (None of this can be overstated. I’ll try to write about how this FEELS on a basic level at some point but the words aren’t available to me yet. I’m still adjusting.)

One of the most fundamental ways that I know to make my brain even happier and healthier is through my diet.

For example, in the past, when I’ve been pretty darn strict about being paleo (with occasional treats), I have had less brain fog and less systemic inflammation issues in general. I had more energy. I slept better. I felt more rested.

I also do better with VERY little alcohol in my life.

But I’ve noticed something: when I tell people that I am going back to eating like this and only drinking a beer once in a while, I get met with a lot of objections along the lines of…

But you like beer and wine…

But food is yummy…

What about fun and pleasure…

Life is too short…

First, thanks for the sabotage.

Second, life is too short, indeed, and that is my whole reason for doing this.

I’m much more interested in joy than pleasure.

I will eat the occasional cupcake, but I want the energy and focus it takes to do great and good and big things in this life.

I want adventure and learning and curiosity and excitement and experiences of awe.

Wine with dinner that gives me a headache the next day or somehow numbs me to the now? No, thanks. Depression numbed me for 20 years. I want to be HERE in the NOW; I want to FEEL this life.

Food that makes me feel sick and throws off my system and leaves me creaky and exhausted? Nope. A side effect of my depression were chronic pain issues that left me pretty darn immobile and thinking I needed a cane by the time I was 35. (For real.)

Why the hell would I choose yum over being completely in my life?

And why is it not enough to enjoy a simply perfect peach? What about a square of dark chocolate?

Why are we slaves to foods and beverages that do not uplift us and sustain vibrant life? These questions are important and our resistance to answering them can be telling.

I want more joy and if that means eliminating a bit of momentary pleasure here and there… well, that is devotion to myself, to my purpose, to ultimate love.

To paraphrase that rather awful Kate Moss quote and turn it into something meaningful: Nothing tastes as good as joy/happiness/mental health feels.

New, FREE Circle of Trees Monthly Global Intention Dance

This new project is FREE and open to anyone anywhere on this beautiful planet, and I’m super excited for it to begin TUESDAY, MAY 7th. Please follow instructions below for joining.

When we dance together, there is an instant sacred connection created. We all feel it — whether in a club or a studio or a friend’s living room.

It makes sense since dancing, after all, along with lighting a fire and drumming, was the first way we created ritual.

It’s in our genes; it swims in and around our cells. It travels forth on our breath and soaks earth with out sweat.

From running online projects for many years now, though, I know that you don’t have to even be in the same room — or the same town or even on the same continent for this connection to occur and be palpable, to have full effect.

To have full effect all there needs to be is shared awareness and intention and group directed action.

So once a month, I’ll lead a global intention dance.

HOW: You have to be in the Facebook group, Circle of Trees. Period. This is where the event will be initiated. I won’t be replicating it anywhere else. Just tell me to add you by going to my Facebook page and saying, HEY! ADD ME TO THE TREES! (If you’re not my friend yet, start by friending me there.)

WHEN: I’ll start the process in the Circle of Trees on the first Tuesday of every month.

WHAT: I’ll start by asking an intention based question. Answer. The more people who answer, the more the thread of intention will connect all of us and the more we can each become part of the awareness web that will support those intentions.

I’ll also provide music AND A TIME for us all to try to participate.

PLEASE NOTE: I’ll alter the time month to month, considering we all live in different zones all over the world.

ALSO: If you can’t participate because the time ends up being the middle of the night for you, do it the following day at that time. Just focus your awareness. You’re still with us.

That’s it. It’s that easy.

Free Stuff: Playlists to Help You with Your Personal Practice

One of the difficulties that can arise when we’re trying to develop or deepen an at home personal movement art practice is music. Not everyone has the time or the inclination to find music. Not everyone knows what kind of music would work best for different kinds of movement work.

So to help with that, I’m starting to share some freebies, including some playlists over on YouTube.

Go to my channel, click on “playlists” under the banner, and you’ll find three to start: one for working with anger and frustration, another to ground and center, and another for growing more joy and play.

Each list is under 30 minutes but can, of course, be used in even smaller bits of time by just doing a random shuffle and using the first song or the first couple to come up.

ALSO please be sure to SUBSCRIBE to my channel so that you get updates when I start to share more.

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)