August Movement Art: Thursday Evening (Or Use the Video)

REMINDER: Go here to learn HOW to do these Zoom classes. Classes are live but are recorded so you do not have to be present during the live. You also can be present and not have your camera on if you’re uncomfortable for any reason.

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NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY. CAN BE MODIFIED FOR ANY BODY.

August THURSDAYS
Time: 5:30 to 6:30 PM (Eastern United States time)
Dates: August 12, 19, 26, September 2
Cost: $65

The PATTERN of class (if you’re new to this):

Class always starts on the floor (or in a chair), exploring circular and spiral movements, especially in the spine. This is the most that the class is led in any traditional sense of that word.

For most people, the class is done either with closed eyes or downcast eyes so that they can focus on themselves and not be distracted. This is not a dance class with mirrors where people are staring at you and you’re being judged and corrected. (If I haven’t already made that clear.)

From that beginning, we make our way through explorations of joints, muscles, and segments of the body. No matter how long you take these classes, we’re always looking to learn something new about ourselves and these bodies. We try to approach our movement art practice each week as if we've never done it before.

Finally we start playing with the poetry of the body… FEELING our way into moving, followed by either some partner or group work to reground in community. (Yes, even virtually this can be done.)

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me here, on Facebook, or via email.

August Quickie Kundalini Yoga: A Return to the Spiritual Foundation

Yep. Just like clockwork…

During the summer, I tend to focus more on the physical and then in late summer/start of school year time, I start feeling the shift back toward the deeper spiritual work of Kundalini yoga.

So here we go…

For this four week session (as usual, twice a week for 20 minutes; recorded if you can’t make the “lives”), you’ll still get all the usual types of great, simple, effective primal-like movements along with all the wonderful breath techniques, but we’ll be increasing the focus on the breath stuff even more, and adding in a bunch more of the meditative aspects (which as you know in kundalini does not mean there’s not movement…).

We’ll also be using a moment at the beginning of each class to sit with a tiny reading from a tantric text like the Radiance Sutras.

This all feels really necessary to me so I hope it sounds good to you too!

LOCATION: Online, either live or videos on your own time
DATES: Tuesdays and Thursdays, August 10, 12, 17, 19, 24, 26, 31, and September 2
TIME: 10:30 AM to 10:50 AM (Easter United States time)
*NOTE: I get online at about 10:20 in case anyone needs to talk.
COST: $55 (includes access to me in a private Facebook group and access to the classes for the entire 4 weeks. Links do not expire during that time.)

If you’ve never done yoga with me before, read here.

If you’ve never had a zoom class with me before, read here.

PLEASE NOTE: You must be willing to be in a private Facebook group to access these classes.

Joy Gem in the City & The Function of Memory in a Happy Life

I’ve written about this idea that I use in movement classes called “joy gems,” in which I ask you to remember in great sensory detail a happy moment from any time in your life. This stuff is important for healing trauma on a neurological/biological level. You can read more details about how this works here.

This is a share of a joy gem of my own with some thoughts on memory…

Moving into this house in this part of this city has felt like a string of miracles or coincidences or whatever you want to call it.

So much had to go right, had to be just right.

Now if you weren’t around during this or if you just didn’t hear me talking about it, when we walked into this house, I knew it was for us. Immediately.

But later it struck me that I knew that because it had the energy of one of my favorite houses of my whole life — the house of my GreatAunt Ardelle in Erie.

She was a special human. (Some day, she deserves a book (or two) written about how special and all the things she taught me, whether knowingly or unknowingly.)

One of my favorite things when I was very little was getting to spend the night at Ardelle’s. I would sleep on her davenport right off of her bedroom. The front of the house was visible as the whole thing was quite open and the front big window opened onto what was one of the busier roads in Erie.

I would lie there, not sleeping, watching the lights drift across the ceiling as cars drove by.

When I was little, there was something so very thrilling and also so very soothing about this.

The other night, here, in Columbus, 52 year old me could not sleep, so I made my way to our front room and laid on the couch, facing the big window that looks out toward the street.

Suddenly, the car lights were washing across the ceiling…

I had not noticed this before. I hadn’t thought about it as a possibility.

And there it was… like a beacon from little, 4 year old me…

As I was getting ready to write about this, I decided to look for a quote about memory and one of the first to pop up was this, by one of my favorite authors:

“I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never
realises an emotion at the time.
It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about
the present, only about the past.”
― Virginia Woolf

There is so much truth in what she says.

If you doubt, just think back to a day that was uber special — a wedding, a birth, anything of great significance — and think about how difficult it can feel to be truly present to it. How it’s so very overwhelmingly wonderful that it can almost feel like you are missing it as it is happening.

But later, LATER, looking back… there it is.

It’s this looking back at these sorts of moments that can heal us. And I think it’s a large piece of the puzzle of healing that can be missing, as we take so much time to “unearth” and “understand” and “process” the difficult things that have happened to us, which is important, but not more important than this… the work of constructing a memory edifice of light and love.

Flags, Rainbows, and Jesus: Taking Back that which Hate Wants to Steal

I was talking to Craig recently about the American flag, and that no matter how much I know it’s wrong, when I see you flying one, I assume certain things about you.

This makes my seven year old heart sad. That’s how old I was when I got to go to Betsy Ross’s house in Philly for a school trip. I LOVED that tiny house and her and the idea of her sitting there and sewing that first flag.

Symbols are more powerful than words, and right now, symbols can either send out the message that if you are different in any way, you are safe here or you are not safe.

It happens instantly.

I’ve always really disliked brightly colored rainbow stuff. I have always found it garish. But I understand now that it says “I’m with you,” and so I’ve started to embrace it in our distinctly diverse and beautiful neighborhood in this city that makes so many feel safer than the very small city I came from.

As a woman, I’ve for as long as I can remember struggled with Christianity. Let’s just say that and know that I could write BOOKS about this particular struggle.

But I also have a strongly Catholic heart… the best of it speaks to me in profound ways that nothing else can touch. Our Lady of Guadalupe. Mary’s yes. The work of mystics like Thomas Merton. St. Francis. A pope who SEEMS to understand compassion in a way we’ve not seen before. Smells and bells. Deep contemplation. Ritual. The Catholic Imagination, to use Fr. Greeley’s book title.

And yet… my GOD, the damage done, the lives hurt and lost, and now the twisted, demented, evil version of Christianity that the far right has latched onto and claimed.

It makes my heart hurt and my head feel like it could POP.

To say that the far right’s view of Christianity is antithetical to everything that Christ taught is not even close to the reality of what they have managed to do through their deformed messaging.

So when I’m reading books on this subject matter, let’s just say, if I’m out in public, I might hide their covers, lay them cover down, slide them into my bag upside down…

I don’t want anyone to feel unsafe around me. What a sad sentence that is … that I had to write that.

Gandhi looked to Christ as one of history’s greatest prophets of nonviolence, and here I am, rightfully afraid that someone will perceive violence toward them via my reading materials.

I needed to finally write about all of this because I was sitting on our front stoop today with a book about Clare of Assisi next to me. The sun was shining. I had on my “hex the patriarchy” tshirt (but the print is small…).

A young woman was stopped at my stoop by their dog, who insisted on visiting me. I laughed and told them it was fine. The dog was so pretty!

Then I realized as they walked away that they had been staring at my book and that their demeanor shifted in that moment.

It made me so sad.

That’s what all the hate in the world is doing even on a micro level.

It’s making us suspicious of one another’s very hearts.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t be. That hate is toxic and has proven itself deadly.

But I’m wondering how we can counter it with a love that is so much more powerful if we keep losing important symbols of love.

I want to take them back and recombine them with obvious symbols of love and openheartedness. I’ve seen it happening but we need MORE.

Chronic Pain is Exhausting... Duh...

I’m privileged in that not only do I have access to excellent healthcare, but I have, for large parts of my life, had extra quick access due to family connections to medicine. So this Thursday, I get to see a top rated ortho guy for my shoulder, and I am so grateful.

It has not always been like this for me, especially when I needed it most. From my late 20s until about 40, I was constantly spiraling in and out of serious depressive episodes, and when I wasn’t just trying to survive, I was still not healthy or happy. During this time, I also had constant, ever-changing chronic pain and migraines.

I believe in my case that the depression and chronic pain fed each other, growing from and then into each other, back and forth.

You might be someone who understands this enough to know then that I had little energy for anything but living.

That’s what chronic illness and pain does to you — forces you into a basic level of living, and all the while, the world around us does not allow for that in any way. You’re still expected to be a good little producer of work and maker of money. It’s a wonder that more of us do not fall through the cracks than already do.

Right now, my issue is independent of my most recent cycle of depression… or is it?

Because when we’re depressed, it’s really hard to get ourselves literally moving, and in that context, you’re simply more likely to experience pain or injury.

Then pain and injury makes you less likely to move and thus increases your depression.

It is truly a vicious downward spiral.

Which is why it’s important that we talk about it more, that we ask each other for help, that we do everything we possibly can to move something.

Move something… what the hell do I mean?

Move SOMETHING… ANYTHING.

I’ve had students with such serious knee issues that they couldn’t stand to dance and so they worked from chairs. Those students were of all ages.

I’ve worked with elders post stroke and serious illness, who danced with whatever they could in their body in a wheelchair.

And then there’s me… fighting this fight right now on a lesser level, for sure but still…

Some days, I want to just lie down and GIVE UP. Just lie down and say fuck it.

That’s the old and dangerous depression lurking, seeing its chance to pounce.

But instead, after all these years and all of this learning and all those students who worked so hard at my beckoning, I cannot give into that.

I get up and walk.

I do the movement that I CAN.

And what I can leads to what I thought I couldn’t.

Books to Deepen Your Yoga (Plus some bonus, classic yoga videos that still hold up)

Yoga is more than poses, of course. If you read here or have been around me long, I know you get that already, but I think we can still forget it…or lose track of it.

The practice of postures — hatha yoga — is just one form of yoga intended for people who learn through being physical.

It always blows my mind how wise the early creators of yoga systems were about human personality. They understood early on that there are so many different kinds of learning styles and so they accommodated them.

For example, there’s physical yoga but also the yoga of intellectual study, the yoga of devotional practices, and on and on.

The point being that the path was not and is not the destination. The destination is self knowledge that creates connection to the whole (and of course, there are so many ideas of what that “whole” is — whether it be a form of God/Goddess that is transcendent or immanent or just your best self or or or… no two lineages totally agree on this and thus so many lineages).

I am grounded in Kundalini yoga for the most part which is grounded in/from tantra yoga. Tantra is the system that makes the most sense to me on all levels. When I was about 11, I told my mother that I believe we are energy and that when we die, we return to the larger energy. Period. And that’s pretty much tantra in a nutshell. (Though, of course, it’s way more complicated than that.)

The books I’ll share are NOT just from the tantra tradition but lately I find myself getting more and more specialized in that area.

The books I’m sharing range from much easier to digest to more complicated. And yes, the tantra texts/books would be way complicated if that’s your first real deep yoga reading. They aren’t necessarily a great starting point.

I will link to them on Goodreads (and you can find me at Goodreads right here, though I’m mostly sharing fiction).

BOOKS

Anything by Stephen Cope is a great place to start, particularly the first three books on this list. He’s easy to read. His style is conversational and he’s just so… real.

Written in 1996, this is a classic. My first yoga TAPE was with Erich Schiffmann and it too holds. (HERE IT IS on YouTube. This video DEFINED yoga video aesthetics.) He’s a wonderful human (and I’ve been lucky enough to meet him and study a wee bit with him).

Most interpretations of Pantanjali’s Yoga Sutras are by men and wow… you can tell. So this translation with commentary especially for women is a breath of fresh air. It was so needed. Before this book, I was pretty much NO THANKS when it came to these particular sutras.

Sadhguru is a teacher of tantra based yoga. He’s the real deal and his first book has so much to offer. Even if you just skip his personal story stuff at the beginning, there’s so much depth.

Every yogi needs to read the Bhagavad Gita and there is no translation/commentary out there that comes close to this. (I had to link to amazon on that one to find it, but I would read ANYTHING by this man.)

My first Kundalini Yoga TAPE (yep… tape, yet again) was with Gurmukh. She’s a wonderfual wacky wise human and this little book about the chakras is always a good first place to explore these concepts. I still go back to this book now and then. (And again, here she is on YouTube.)

My first actual tantra book on the list is by the great scholar Georg Feuerstein. Seriously, you cannot go wrong when you read him. Except sometimes he can be a bit…dry. But this particular book is a great intro to tantra. Again, ready anything by him, for sure, but have coffee at hand.

There are SO MANY MORE texts but that’s enough for now.

AND please feel free to ask me for books that relate to specific areas you’d like to explore — whether those be physical, emotional, or spiritual, I’m guessing I have some idea where to point you!

I see you

I remember the very first time I saw into someone so deeply that I realized I was seeing a very young version of them. It happened during my first training at Kripalu, before I started teaching, as I witnessed a woman dancing.

That’s when I realized that this work I was about to embark upon was/is profoundly sacred.

The act of seeing another human — actually and fully seeing them — is profoundly sacred.

And when you are vulnerable enough to allow for that seeing, we are in communion together, bringing forth your truth.

I don’t think I can describe the work I do — the work we do together — any better than that last sentence.

I make the space for that bringing forth to happen by giving you the opportunity and the tools to be that vulnerable. I give you a method and a process through which you can explore yourself and all your parts and experiences… wordlessly, with no need to explain or make excuses or even to “try to understand.”

I also make space for you to process and transmute all of this, to make space for it inside yourself, to create wholeness, and to really know your strength.

If that’s not “church” or “temple” or “ritual,” I don’t know what is.

Joy List

One of my greatest current joys is READING NOVELS. One after another. At the speed I used to read when I was much younger or in college and graduate school. A speed that leaves my husband pretty mystified actually. If you want to see WHAT I’ve been reading, the easiest thing is to check out my goodreads.

I can’t say enough about the writing and the acting in this show, but my niece kept telling me to watch it and I kept being like, Whatever, and then I did and she was right. It’s really weird to say this but Killing Eve is actually, in a long and roundabout way, about the love, obsession, and the possibility of redemption. It’s also fucking HILARIOUS.

This local candle, soap, scent shop is really rockin’ it. You can order online, of course.

Here’s the best coffee I’ve had in Ohio, and they’re doing every freaking thing RIGHT, from how they treat farmers to the diverse staff in their stores… just everything. So if you’re looking for new beans, give them a try.

Our new bikes.

The possibility of our backyard.

The people in Columbus (why are they so DAMN FRIENDLY!?).

The fact that dance is starting to feel fresh again.

Fruit. I am a fruit bat in human form so this time of year is my favorite eating time.

Our wee neighborhood park. (And by getting you that link, I just learned that it’s the oldest part in Columbus and one of the oldest parks in the COUNTRY.)

Our amazingly openhearted neighborhood that is so full of art. Have you seen all the public art I’ve been sharing on my instagram?

My greatest music joy right now is him.

My greatest movement joy at the moment is this. Seriously, don’t you want to do that in a workshop?

Where are you finding joy?