Morning Quickie: Online 20 Minute Christine-a-Lini Yoga for Peace & Energy, 2X a Week for June, Live or Recorded

One of my students dubbed the Kundalini Yoga I teach Christine-a-lini because it’s not my nature to stay in any one box. I like to mix things up. So this practice is based in Kundalini but I bring in all kinds of other movement and philosophies. You never know what you’ll get but you know it will be grounding AND energizing.

NOTE: this yoga can be done by ANY BODY. PERIOD. Because you can do it in a chair if that’s what works for you.

You’ll leave the class feeling like you can conquer anything but you’ll also feel a profound sense of settledness.

Who doesn’t need more of both of those things right now?!

WHAT YOU GET:
Access to TWO 20 minute practices a week, which you can watch live or you can watch the recording when you have time. It’s all up to you.

You can also REPEAT the material as much as you want. Each class will stay up in the group for the entire month and a bit beyond.

You also have access to ME. You can ask for help ANY TIME in the group.

HOW:
You have to be on Facebook.

You’ll be added to a “Morning Quickie Yoga” PRIVATE group.

TIME ZONE: I’m in the Eastern U.S. Time Zone. For those of you for whom that might not mean much, I’m in the same time zone as New York City.

ALSO NOTE: Classes, though online, START ON TIME. You can jump in late, but I won't be waiting.

COST: $55 for the entire month of June Tuesday and Thursdays:
Tuesdays: June 2, 9, 16, 23
Thursdays: June 4, 11, 18, 25

TIME for LIVE CLASS is 10:30AM

GO HERE TO REGISTER!

Disposability

When I say revolution begins in the body, I'm not using a metaphor.

Bodies in our predominately Judeo-Christian traditions are hated, seen as sin machines, but in our colonial capitalistic culture, they're also and further seen as disposable.

And there's, of course, a hierarchy of bodies in this disposable body world.

When we take back the body of self and the body of community, THAT is when real revolution has occurred.

But first we have to face a lot of hard truths and I thank Abi K Veld for making this piece of writing visible to me this morning. I don't even know what to share from it because it's WORTH YOUR TIME TO READ and then come back here and let me know what called you out most, what you need to dive into more, etc.

"the hardest part about processing this epidemic and how the social dialogue unfolds, and the thing i most hope people take with them if they just take one thing from this writing, is that if you carry a lot of unearned privilege and are therefore relatively free from oppression sickness (also called asthma, diabetes, addiction, heart disease, autoimmune disorders, hiv, etc, etc, etc) you will probably be fine if you get this thing...

...the “plandemic” bullshit comes in like this and convinces you of your righteousness, and of course it does: you want a way to have it not be your fault. you want to shirk privilege. you want to have your “spiritual but not religious” cake and eat it too. you want your mishmash of borrowed (oft stolen) traditions that you can practice on the weekend but in such a way that it never disrupts your social life or your participation in the economy. you want other oppressors to be at fault. you don’t want to be to blame for this."

READ the whole thing HERE. DO IT.

Some Help is Needed When It's Needed Until It's Not

Beach one, May 11th

(Note: this is about me. It’s not about you. It’s about ME unless you also need it to be about you. If you don’t need it, then it’s not about you. Got it? We are each an experiment of one. PERIOD.)

Yesterday when I visited the lake, she was so changeable. From minute to minute, her color and the light across her surface was different. It was hard to stop taking photos, trying to capture each iteration.

We’re so much more like that lake than we like to admit.

We want things to be steady and constant. It feels good to imagine that we’ve arrived somewhere and that’s that.

But, of course, life is change. We are change. Our very identity is not a consistent thing but ever-evolving.

So, for example, when I found an anti-depressant that helped me, I assumed that was it… forever. But…

I’ve spent a long time in this life trying to heal myself with no help. It’s part stubborn and part stupid and just wholly unnecessary. We’re not meant to be 100% individuated. We’re part of a large ecosystem that includes all other humans and all other life.

There’s got to be a reason for that. Pure and simple. And that reason is that we aren’t as strong as we could be until we tap into the larger, vaster, deeper wisdom, until we partake of the infinite tools that are at our disposal.

We can only know so much. The larger ecosystem knows it all and we can plug in any time. We should plug in all the time, actually.

So when my depression got extra bad about a year and a half ago, I finally listened to the people who love me and I got help. I went on medication and I got into therapy.

That medication felt like a fucking miracle…. no. It WAS a fucking miracle.

The dark and often veering toward suicidal thinking was just GONE. POOF! Like that!

It was CHEMICAL all ALONG, I kept yelling at people. I walked around in amazement at this new found fact.

I needed that medicine like we all need oxygen. I was in trouble and that medicine saved me.

I walked around for months feeling brand new and then I started to notice, well, that it didn’t feel as miraculous any more. I didn’t feel the dark brain coming back to life but the light that had entered was definitely dimming.

I got put on a helper med. It didn’t really. I started to think that the helper med was all I needed, and the first med was something I didn’t want to be on long term, so I stopped. That worked out fine.

Until I noticed that nothing good was really coming of the second med either. I can’t tell you HOW I knew this. I just did. I knew I didn’t need anything any more.

I accidentally missed an evening dose and nothing horrible happened so I continued missing evening doses and then every other day morning doses and then I was off.

And dark brain was still nowhere to be felt. (Of course, I am still prone to despairing but LOOK AT THE WORLD. This is normal right now and it doesn’t come with suicidal thinking.)

Dark brain was nowhere to be felt and other stuff started to happen…

I heard the laughter that comes out of me when I’m actually happy and relaxed. I know it because it reminds instantly of my toddler laugh. I just KNOW this laugh. It’s my core laugh.

I noticed that I was getting REALLY SILLY with my husband again. Like silly enough that he would give me these funny little looks that said, “who is this?” It’s been a while since this me has been around and I know it felt foreign (yet delightful) to him.

THEN…

We watched this movie (WATCH IT!!!!!!!), and a few minutes in, there is a scene at a local TV station with Chris O’Dowd in a very brief cameo. I started laughing and then I was LAUGHING and then I was just LOSING MY SHIT.

Every time I looked at Craig, I just laughed even harder. I couldn’t believe I wasn’t peeing our couch! My face felt like it might crack!

I thought Craig was laughing so hard because the movie was funny — and he was — but he was laughing THAT hard because he couldn’t get over my utter JOY.

Which stopped me in my tracks, right? I was feeling the deepest joy… I can’t remember when I last felt like that and I KNOW I haven’t laughed like that in probably 3 years. THREE. YEARS.

Which could make me sad but I don’t have time for that shit.

Along with my happy and silly brain, being off those meds means my creative and ACTIVE brain are on OVERDRIVE.

My point… sometimes you need meds… and then sometimes you stop needing them.

If you don’t stop needing them, so what? You need them and we are grateful you have them. As I was grateful when I thought nothing could possibly help.

If You People Please, You're Likely Expecting Others to Do the Same for YOU

I’m thinking a ton lately about issues of race and gender/sex/identity and how it’s all intertwined and how it affects my work and how I should/can change my work as I know and understand more. And I understand so very little, when it comes right down to it.

The more you know, the more you know you don’t know shit, right?

As I’m thinking about these things especially intensely over the last few weeks, I try to very gently enter into conversations that are about these topics and ask questions. For a while, it just seemed I couldn’t ask anything right or in the right way. I kept getting, well, yelled at in a variety of ways. No one was super mean but I was definitely getting my hand slapped, and I was getting more and more frustrated.

How can I learn if I can’t ask?

Then I had a private discussion with someone who lives these questions and who cares for me and was willing to kinda hand hold and be patient though very direct (which I respond well to). Thank GOD for this person.

But you might be surprised to find out what I learned or maybe you won’t be surprised at all because you’re further ahead on this curve than me and you’ve already been muttering to yourself as you read this.

I learned that, really, I WAS the problem. Or my approach was anyway. Even though I approached with love and good intentions and care, I was still expecting too much.

I was still expecting the person who is suffering to do the work for me. I was still expecting them to do heavy emotional lifting for me.

Here’s what I was extra surprised by: this was happening because I do this FAR TOO MUCH FOR OTHER PEOPLE in my own work and world.

People who have brains and can do research come to me with basic questions about trauma. I use my precious time and brain energy giving them all of the information on a platter. When they could just as easily go get that information for themselves, do the basic thinking for themselves, and come back later when they’re ready to have a genuine discussion with me as two equal humans struggling.

I hand hold people like crazy on the regular, thinking I “should” or maybe people won’t “like me.”

See that people pleaser woman shit right there?

So then when *I* am the asker, of course, I enter into the scenario with the same messed up expectations for the person I perceive as the “expert.”

Whoa…

What a crap ton of codependent shit right there. Can you see it?

I’m off to order a bunch of books about racism, white fragility, and the intersection of racism and sexism (because hello, constitution, written FOR AND BY white men).

I’m gonna go do my homework and I’m asking that you do yours too, okay?

Because I’m also gonna be recovering from all that people pleasing.

Embodied Revolution

I shared a study recently on Facebook that showed TOO MANY young people would rather get infected with Covid19 than GAIN WEIGHT. (A study done by the Missouri University Center for Body Image Research and Policy.)

We KNOW that this culture HATES BODIES. Period. Notice I didn't say "bigger bodies."

It extra hates bigger bodies. The stories it constructs about productivity and worthiness around larger bodies are some of the worst and most destructive.

But it hates bodies, period. American culture is born of a Protestant disdain for the human form and a belief that only in death can we attain any “holiness.”

Every body is TOO -- too fat, too skinny, too curvy, too straight, too hairy, too bald, too sexy, too fem, too masculine, too sexual, too androgynous, too muscled, too flabby, too soft, too hard, too brown, too pale, too too too too too too too...

We are, one way or another, taught to HATE OUR BODIES. PERIOD.

Why?

Yes... you probably guessed part of it... because people who hate their bodies will buy products.

But deeper than that -- people who hate their bodies will bow to the will of anything outside of themselves that promises they might eventually, some day, maybe sorta feel okay about themselves.

In the meantime, people who hate their bodies enact violence on themselves and then that extends beyond their individual body to the larger bodies of family, community, earth.

One way or another, each of us projects our body hate onto someone/something else, and it's how this whole system in which we live works.

So when I say the work we do to EMBODY is SUBVERSIVE and REVOLUTIONARY, I MEAN IT.

When we embody in a loving way, we then act from love and we project LOVE into the world.

Love is already complete. It needs nothing. And it shares all things.

See how that could destroy power structures?

I'm not here, I'm not doing this work, so you can dance a little and feel some dopamine...

I'm here and I'm doing this work SO WE CAN CHANGE THIS FUCKING WORLD. 

Battle Fatigue During Lockdown

This lockdown we’re all experiencing is tough. And if you already had some pre-existing mental health challenges, it’s tougher. Period. This shit is deeply triggering, even for the healthier of mind among us, so it can be downright dangerously triggering for those of us already battle fatigued.

I’m one of that group who is battle fatigued and who is really struggling to find the next level of courage and strength that I need right now. So if you’re reading this and nodding, you’re not alone.

From the outside, I look okay. You know what us overachieving, perfectionist, high-functioning depressive types are like. We don’t like anyone to really know what’s happening.

It might even seem that I share a lot. I share a TINY percentage of my actual day to day struggle. A struggle that only my husband and maybe 3 other people really understands.

Each day is uphill and slogging through mud, for the most part. Each day is about getting a sort of personal “minimum” done, no matter what.

Then at night, in bed, I crash — physically and emotionally.

As is always the case, I’m not sharing this for pity. I’m sharing this for people who are even quieter than ME about their struggles, about those days when it really feels like they might not make it, about those times when the darkest parts of their minds start generating ways to get out.

I’m sharing it for those people who are even quieter than ME and so you’ll never ever know that every day is a victory worthy of a medal.

Every day that we are still here and still trying, we are growing courage muscles that I wish no human even needed.

And for those of us who didn’t make it — for the Vincent Van Goghs and the Virginia Woolfs of our world — it’s not that their courage gave out. It’s that the battle fatigue got too strong.

So right now… we need to extra watch out for each other.

Right now, the stronger among us must lend strength to those struggling.

Right now, may our compassion grow a safety net that lets no one pass through.

Virtual is Not Virtual

Maybe it’s because I was an early-ish adopter to this online teaching thing, trying to teach movement via streaming years ago when it truly sucked and then figuring out ways to do it regardless of the technology and then growing my ways as the technology grew and continues to grow.

But I’m seeing a lot of people feeling overwhelmed by suddenly being thrown into this medium and I’m grateful not to be needing to learn all of this at light speed.

I’m also seeing a lot of people who are new to the medium demeaning it. Stop.

The tech is only as good as the user so if you’re not getting much out of it, well, fill in the rest of this sentence.

As one of my long time movement students pointed out, because we are human our use of the technology still retains a sensuality — it’s just a new sort of sensuality that we have to explore and learn about.

Virtual classes... there's really nothing "virtual" about them. They're still powerful; they're still connecting spaces. There is embodiment even in this. There is sensual experience even in this. There is curiosity and growth and beauty.

And just this past week, I even had people working in pairs and you know what? It was just as beautiful and meaningful as ever.

My YouTube Channel is Expanding

I share a lot of videos in the Embodiment Sanctuary, my private Facebook group (which you can ask me to add you to), and sometimes it can feel overwhelming, right? I mean, even a GOOD video takes TIME to watch.

One of the #Treesters in that group pointed this out to me and I realized I already had a way to make this easier on all of us. I’ll still post those things in the sanctuary, of course, because it creates amazing conversations, but I’ll also be using my YouTube channel to keep them all in one place for your ease.

Subscribe to my channel but also go over there and check out the playlists.

Besides curating playlists of interesting/enlightening/helpful/amazing stuff, I also create original content, and I’ll be doing way more of that over this coming year. If you have topics you’d like me to cover, let me know here or over on Facebook or by sending me an email.