Unpacking the word "embodiment"

New studio means new logo and wow… this one is PACKED. It feels just right to me… on the deepest levels.

Each and every single word and bit of this logo has meaning that is like a little Russian doll... it can be opened and there's more and then opened and there's more...

Let's look at the word "embodiment," which is getting kinda popular lately but which has always been a word I use to describe what I do.

I mean it way beyond "the body in which you experience this life."

There's the physical body, for sure, and then the emotional, mental, spiritual, and energy. All of those things are Russian dolls in and of themselves.

But I still mean MORE...

I mean the body of the community.

The communal body is really the whole entire point of the work on the individual body.

We work on the micro to affect the macro.

We are all truly one and each part being most fulfilled, functioning most effectively, and experiencing its true self is important to the integrity of the whole.

FINALLY... but not really...

I also mean the body of your life.

What you do and make in this world. How you walk in and take up space. The voice that comes from your heart.

If you're not embodied in the first way, you'll never be embodied this way.

So join us for far more than postures and mechanics. We've got that part nailed down, for sure, with our combined experiences of well over 40 years.

But the ritual and the sacred and the transformative aspects of this work? That's where we ROCK.

The Morrigan Project: Communal Movement Rituals for Grief

(Though this particular demo is happening in Erie in a couple of weeks, it’s something that I really really really want to take on the road, so if you’re interested after looking into this, contact me, via email or on Facebook.)

This is what I've been up to for the past many months: Experimenting with and developing embodiment ritual processes for grief, working in community to express and transform.

These processes have been created so I can take them to any group, anywhere, and go through steps that will result in a unique-to-that-group representation of their own inner journey as well as the journey shared with community.

Whether the daily small things that happen to all of us or those momentous losses that change everything, everyone is walking around with grief in their hearts, and very few of us have effective ways to express and transform that grief over time.

We've especially lost connection to rituals that are body based, and so we have the Morrigan Project.

This is a demonstration of PROCESSES rather than a performance of a product.

I'll be giving a short talk; my movement artists will share what they've been working on together for the past months; and we'll all share in some very simple grief expressions (not mandatory).

Please arrive early.

DEMO AT UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST CHURCH on Perry Highway in Erie, Sunday, June 23rd, 10:30 AM

AND PLEASE: Bring either a photo of someone you've lost and would like to remember or an object that symbolizes a grief for you.

What the HECK is "Movement Art?"

When I say "movement art" rather than dance or yoga or any other specific system, I mean to open your mind to possibility...

To the possibility that you can be a curious explorer of your own body's potential for creativity and expression rather than being a body that mimics and attempts to perfect.

To the possibility that your body is your main medium of expression in this life... no matter what you are doing... sitting, standing, choosing what to wear, moving through space in any way...

To the possibility that because your body is your main medium of expression that without taking time every day to be with that and explore that that you are missing out on a huge part of your life... that your life is smaller because you don't have this ability to listen to the way your body tells the story of your life... to the way your body is actually narrating your life and designing your life experience...

Without this level of consciousness, you are at the mercy of outside forces and general brain assholery and you'll never know your true potential whether in work or relationship with self or others.

What Dance REALLY Is...

Dance is a creative and expressive force that lives within your genes and was never meant to be the thing we think it is... the over-extensions, the dieting to death, the specific bodies only, the specific ages only...

We have become so disconnected from our individual bodies that we no longer know how to listen to them or care for them, and now that we're adept at destroying ourselves, we are destroying this world.

Dancing in community, dancing for joy, dancing for grief, dancing to be with those whom we love, dancing to mark important events, dancing to cross thresholds...

THAT is what dancing is.

It is the willingness to be vulnerable and truthful and to dig in deep and it is a pathway to healing that will heal us and our environment, but we must be willing to take it back.

Spiritual constipation... Yep, you read that right

For some people, a crisis like my father’s stroke last October expands and deepens and affirms their faith. For some people, it has the opposite effect, and I am in that second group… much to my surprise.

You see, I have always and forever been a seeker.

From the day I saw… something… when I was jumped on in a pool at the age of six and immediately started to drown, the air pushed out of my body so fast by the weight of the other body.

From the day I walked into the kitchen soon after and asked my mother, “how do I know I am me?”

There are too many instances to recount here, but by the time I was maybe 10 or 11, I was sitting on a stool in our city library pulling books off the shelf in the Eastern religion section and trying to freaking figure all of this out.

I knew there was more than this and I knew there were too many simple explanations out there, keeping people from exploring and discovering. I knew that wouldn’t be me. I knew I wanted to experience what I had experienced in that pool, that’s for sure, and I wasn’t finding it in any church, though I’d get the occasional glimpse there.

Over my life, I have studied and studied so many religions and philosophical systems that resemble religion. I like this about myself. I like synthesizing and integrating.

If there is something bigger, something God(dess)-like, then a few things I do know are that one container is way too small, containers are metaphors and yet simultaneously real, and language (a construct of this limited human mind) can never touch reality.

And so, I like having Our Lady of Guadalupe on my altar next to Kali next to Kwan Yin next to…

Over my life, it’s been my relationship with Guady (as I call her) that has, for whatever reason, been the most powerful, the most consistent. When I am lost in a dark place of doubt, which happens not rarely thanks to this deeply curious mind, it is Guady who seems to somehow find me.

It sounds… fluffy, doesn’t it? but it’s the only way I can explain it.

My father’s stroke was remarkably transformative in ways I could not have foreseen and have not liked one bit.

Nothing that I used to do was breaking through.

Chant. Prayer. Meditation. Reading. Visualizing. The rosary. Going to mass.

What is the point of life if all we do is die?

I could not get past that question.

I could not get past the idea that there’s quite simply NOTHING MORE than this.

I’m writing about all of this as if it were in the past and it’s not.

It’s my right now.

I have some good helpers in this arena. They are all saying the same thing to me… do the things regardless. Do the chanting and the prayer and the altar creation even if you don’t feel it.

Plant the seeds. Cultivate. Keep working it. Wait.

In the meantime, a good friend giggled and pointed out that I am spiritually constipated, and I just need the right enema.

I’m thinking I’m not alone.

I know I’m not alone in this.

And speaking of Guady finding me…

A few weeks ago we were in Asheville and I knew they had a rather famous Basilica but I wasn’t going to seek it out. Instead, we walked and walked one day downtown and suddenly, we were at it. It loomed in front of us.

And she was in there, in so many of her guises.

I lit a candle and said a prayer that for the first time in a long time felt like a true prayer.

I say prayer like things when I am teaching all the time, but they are more inner directed.

In that quiet, cool, dark basilica, lighting that candle in front of a Marian shrine, for the first time in a long time, it felt outer directed.

I don’t believe in a God that sits above us, watching over us, judging or helping, but I do believe that I am woven into something bigger that I can access.

I believe that when I am not NOT believing it.

I believe that when I am not spiritually constipated.

In the meantime, my enemas include chanting and reading some tantra texts but also a new work by Mirabai Starr about women mystics. A few pages in and I can feel a slight stirring deep in my belly.

I have built a water and stone altar to Guady and I plan to create an altar to some of my significant ancestors.

That’s all I’ve got right now… some hope that these things might take root and grow, that I might find my way back to that little girl on that stool in the library who was so open and wondering and in awe of life.

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…