Invocation for Sensitive Hearts

I wrote this just a couple of years ago for a workshop for highly sensitive humans who are prone to depression, anxiety, and despair due to the state of the world. Some of us do take in more from around us. There are physiological/neurological realities to this. There’s nothing “woo” about it. Some of us have more sensitive nervous systems, to overly simplify it.

But humans are built for empathy and empathy brings pain. We just have to watch for that pain snowballing. We have to take care. We need other humans around us for nurturing and grounding.

This invocation is about all of that. Use it, perhaps, during a meditation or print and sit a copy on your altar.

Moving Together Wherever We Are

When I first started to dance again 12 years ago (what!?), I was working totally on my own. Every day for hours (parsed out in chunks over the day), I met myself in an empty space with music and experimentation and play and struggle and learning.

I got used to this, and then I went for my first training at Kripalu and spent an entire week moving and playing and laughing and experiencing with a very large group of wonderful women. When I got home and had to face that empty space again with this deeper understanding of my aloneness, I crashed.

After every training, it was the same. Big crash, followed by learning to work alone again, followed by training, followed by big crash… I did this for years, as I went to Kripalu often.

I started to teach, though, and those days with students helped. I held onto that when I went into my own private practice day after day, hour after hour.

I started to experiment with teaching online probably about 8 years ago. It wasn’t the same. There were technical difficulties that were very limiting (this has changed).

And then pandemic.

I was ready in more ways than most to take my work online. Thank God I started to experiment so long ago so I wasn’t forced to learn all of that this year, in the moment, sinking in fear.

It felt… okay. Not great. Okay.

I put my choreography group on hold, thinking it was impossible to work on THAT online. And remember when we all just assumed things would get back to normal?

Eventually, I went back to working with that group because who knows how long things will be like this and art must still be made.

And things keep getting better as I learn to take my methods to virtual spaces that aren’t really virtual but just different and how I hate that word. There’s nothing virtual about the life changing experiences people still have. There’s nothing virtual about the more-important-than-ever sense of community.

Our physical bodies may not be in the same space, but we are still in the same SPACE.

We can see one another and respond to one another’s energy and we can still share circle and breath.

I used to think, long ago before dance while I was still “just” doing yoga and still immersed in depression, that classes and togetherness were just to teach us how to do it by ourselves, how to have a one person at home practice.

Oh, how much I have learned that the entire point of everything is our togetherness.

The Joy of Connection

Joy is peaceful. Joy is centering. Joy is the very nature of this existence. It’s the container for all our “feelings” and everything that happens to us … if we take a breath and settle and notice. It’s always there.

It’s a knowing… that “all shall be well, all shall be well, all manner of things shall be well” that can feel impossible in our worst moments but that we also can sense is profoundly and utterly true.

Joy is, above all, connection.

Joy is connection to self.

Joy is connection to other.

Joy is connection to whatever it is that you think of as “divine.”

JoyBody is simply a way to say… here are some things to try that will help you to connect — to self, to others, and to the truth of you.

Moving in Trust

We get so caught up in our IDEAS of things, don’t we?

And those ideas then get caught up with other people’s ideas and pretty soon we are in knots over things that seem like they should be pretty simple.

Movement, for example.

Instead of just trusting ourselves to move in ways that bring us joy and pleasure and growth and change and all the things we really want from movement, we start to explore a particular path.

Then we get caught up in doing it “right.”

Then we self identify with the culture of the path.

Let’s take, for example, yoga — the very thing that is meant to bring us freedom and an understanding of ourselves that is infinite. Over time, over repetitions, it ends up concretizing us in our bodies and our minds. It can take a long time — if ever — to be able to see that this is what has happened.

Maybe then we move to “primal movement,” but again, instead of trusting ourselves, we seek a “program” and even in this concept called “primal,” we find ourselves learning patterns and repeating patterns and wondering when we’ll get to the “advanced” patterns.

When the most “advanced” pattern is the capacity to follow no pattern.

There is nothing wrong with studying different paths and with different teachers as long as we don’t get STUCK.

Find a teacher who is the geekiest student you’ve ever met.

Find a teacher who is there to light your curiosity on fire.

Find a teacher who is never ever finished.

Find a culture of no culture, one that is always expanding.

Find a group of humans who don’t believe in hierarchies of any kind.

Be brave.

Stop following. Stop patterning.

Question. Experiment. Play.

Instead of a Word of the Year: A Practice of the Year

So many words kept coming at me, trying to assert themselves as the front runner for my word of 2021, but it bothered me… this idea of distilling it all down to one word when I knew I needed a broader and simultaneously deeper approach after the dumpster fire of 2020.

I needed something that would help me to refocus on what really matters to me. I needed something that would feed the better parts of me.

I needed something that would get me back on my right path when it came to nurturing my spirit.

But I also needed a challenge for my world weary heart — a challenge that would take me beyond all the unproductive rage I’ve been living with for the past many months and a challenge that could help to lift me out of my post-serious-depression acedia (spiritual apathy).

And then it hit me:

I will be spending 2021 studying the Yamas and Niyamas of Yoga. These are the ethical practices of yoga. There are ten in total and so during the last two months, I will dive into a sort of “review,” focusing on the ones that I found especially challenging.

I will be using this text. At the beginning of each month, I’ll read the corresponding chapter, and then I will spend the month exploring that particular yama or niyama in all areas of my life.

I would love for you to join me so I’ll also be writing about this journey here and in the JoyBody Sanctuary on Facebook. If you’re not in the sanctuary, you can ask to join by going here or you can just send me a message anywhere you have access to me and ask me to add you. It’s a private group and no one can see what’s being written in there except for the members.

JoyBody is NOT...

I use the word JOY in the way mystics have traditionally used it across many traditions.

It doesn't mean happiness or silliness or any sort of BIG expressed, giddy sort of emotional state. It's the ground of your being. It's the ground of all existence.

It's the feeling that we have when we are centered and residing in the space in ourselves that knows it is a good thing to be living this life no matter what is happening. It's actually quite... calm, steady, abiding... it feels a lot like long deep breathing.

There are as many ways to access this state as there are human experiences and that is where tantra comes in for me. Tantra is an understanding of life that says that every single thing you take in via your senses is a gift that we can learn from, that we can grow from.

So tantra never denies bodily needs and desires like so many paths do. There's no "transcending." There's being right here IN THIS.

This does NOT mean that SHIT doesn't happen. It doesn't mean that SHIT isn't SHITTY. It doesn't mean there aren't UBER SHITTY humans on this planet making UBER SHITTY choices.

It means that if we are settled in our joybody we can, after processing and being truthful and expressing what needs to be expressed, we can find even just a small something of value for ourselves. After the fact.

The universe and life aren't here to "teach you lessons." Open minded and inquisitive people turn life INTO lessons.

So when I ask you about joy even in this current context of craposity, I mean, dig a little under that. Are you breathing today? Then there's something for you under the crap.

THIS is LIBERATING your joybody.

The Stories of Your Body

Jane was one of my elder dancers. She was about 80 when I was teaching her and she had more energy than ANYONE I knew. She was so IN LOVE with life, and she just DOVE into anything I asked them to do.

And she had the most expressive FEET.

As we age, things might start to feel differently. Things might start to make sounds, feel achey, not extend or stretch quite as far as they used to.

That only upsets us because of our expectations and because of the negative stories we then spin around what is simply…happening.

What if we flipped that?

What if we decided — as the original practitioners of Butoh did many years ago — that with age, our bodies become MORE — more full of story, MORE able to tell those stories, more honest, more expressive, more beautiful, more joyful?

What if we decided that the true dance didn’t — couldn’t — happen until we were well toward our 80s like Jane?

Slower is the Way

Your personality can’t be seen more clearly (to me as a body reader) than when you are moving freely.

The same is true for me. If you know me, you know I’m a “muscle through-er.” I push. I TRY. I WORK. Everything is to be OVERCOME, DEFEATED, WON.

I’m not saying this is bad or good; it just is.

So I always thought that FAST and BIG and LOUD was best when it came to movement. I always thought that that would get me to physical sorts of goals quicker. (And when I say physical goals, I’m not talking weight. I don’t weigh myself. I’m talking about how I feel and I how I am able to move.)

Then I started studying Butoh (with the world renowned Maureen Fleming), and we moved so slowly, paying so much attention to every freaking detail.

It was agonizing. I never sweat so much. I’ve never been so sore.

And I’ve never been so completely and utterly captivated and engaged.

It challenged me on every level of my being. It made me a better and more interesting mover. It elevated my teaching and my work.

I’m a convert and I’m here to convert you too.

That’s not to say that fast and fun doesn’t have it’s place, but it shouldn’t be a place of primacy.

As I said in a yoga class this morning, too often we’re moving quickly to AVOID FEELING.

And then we get hurt. Because if we’re not feeling, then we’re not noticing, then we’re relying on momentum and shit happens.

The physical practice once again teaches us everything we need to know about living life.