About me... because I feel like I don't let people know this stuff enough...

If you’re new to me, you probably have very little clue as to who I am and what sorts of credentials I bring to this work.

Even if you know me, you might only know bits and pieces of this, and I think it’s important to understand where I came from so you know you’re working with the right (or not) person.

Without going into all the details, by the time I was in my mid 20s, I was suffering from severe (and sometimes life-threatening) depression and anxiety. With that, there was a ton of comorbid chronic pain throughout my body. I had also had severe digestive issues and migraines from around the age of 11. I would say, I actually identified my depression at the age of nine; I actually remember a very specific moment when I said to myself that I was deeply sad and would be so for a long time but that I would eventually get out of it. (But that’s another story.)

In my mid 20s, in a desperate attempt to FIX something… I blew up my life, which is probably what then mired me in that depression for much longer, until I re-found dance at the age of 40. (I had danced since I could walk and then even into college but stopped when the depression hit so very hard.)

By my late 20s, I had found yoga and embarked on a study that’s never stopped. By my early 30s, I found Kundalini yoga specifically. While yoga in no way healed my depression, it made it, here and there, a bit “less,” and I think Kundalini prepared me to be able to dance again… it brought me back to the idea that my body could be a source of joy.

Then at the age of 40, at a friend’s wedding, I danced again for the first time since my mid 20s.

Over the next six to nine months, everything changed for me. Keep in mind that I was dancing/moving about 3 hours a day. Sweating my ass off and having so much freaking fun. Without intending to at all, I dropped four sizes. This was the literal weight of my depression (not that weight and depression are always cause and effect; they are for me). 

I also was no longer in constant pain. And something amazing was happening to my mind. This was the most important thing. I could feel hope and light and joy and curiosity and awe coming back. I started to feel like my little self. I would giggle and hear her.

Knowing I could not stop dancing but that I needed outside structure and support, I signed up for my first training at Kripalu. Over the following six years, I went to Kripalu nine times for intense trainings as well as traveling elsewhere for trainings.

Now, keep in mind, preceding my return to dance, I spent countless thousands of hours trying to “figure out” my depression, trauma, and chronic grief. Along the way, I studied a huge array of leaders in the field of psychotherapy, until I eventually found body-based psychotherapies and studied in person with some of the most forward-thinking humans in that field.

I read everything I could find in the psych section of our local college libraries. I wasn’t stuck in “self help” books. I wanted the real theory and actual results of studies.

I had tried to intellectually “solve” depression (which has given me a bedrock of knowledge that underlies all my movement work), but it wasn’t until I got into my body that anything really shifted.

Depression eats the very thing that is YOU -… the very thing that can help you navigate whatever traumas etc. led to that depression. 

And depression, of course, eats your desire to move. Paradoxically, moving in joy is one of the main things that can heal us, but to get to the place of being able to move can be a long and arduous journey. 

I’m here to help you with that.

My most influential intensive was with the Butoh artist Maureen Fleming. I think of her as my core mentor. She is the most important American woman in Japanese Butoh and had studied many times in Japan with the originator of this movement art. She is my lineage.

My first trainings were in YogaDance and YogaDance for Special Populations with Megha Buttenheim. This is based in chakra energy work and community building. Special-populations studies were targeted toward people with Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, dementia, and post-cancer treatment.

I’ve spent serious time with Bessel van der Kolk. When his book “The Body Keeps the Score” came out, it was like reading his plans for the intensives I’d attended in person.

I’ve also spent time with Peter Levine (one of the originators of body-based psychotherapies), Bo Forbes (a psychotherapist and yoga teacher), and a variety of other somatic psychotherapy leaders.

I’ve studied biomechanics with Katy Bowman, and I was lucky lucky lucky enough to study in person with the amazing yoga teacher, Erich Schiffmann, one of the first Americans to study yoga in India with BKS Iyengar. Erich has developed what he calls “freedom yoga,” and his DVD with Ali MacGraw was my very first introduction to yoga and still remains my favorite.

I’ve been teaching now for 13 years, weekly and sometimes daily, and in a huge array of venues. A tiny sampling of my most significant experiences would include

• Working with different groups focused on processing grief to eventually develop movement art processes to transmute the grief and build communities of support.

• Developing and teaching movement art methods to children living in a residential therapy grade school and high school, focusing on creating tools for emotional regulation and helping them understand, allow, and provide safe intimacy in relationship.

• Developing and creating classes for a Regional Cancer Center, focusing on relationship and healing.

• Developing and teaching elder dance at Mercy Center for Aging.

• Creating and running movement workshops with the Sisters of St. Joseph elders.

• Teaching for a chiropractor where I focused on basic mobility and joint health.

• Being the Keynote Speaker (with interactive movement demonstration) at the Annual Conference for the Pennsylvania State Association of Senior Centers, at PSU, State College in the Fall of 2013.

• Being the Special Speaker at Alzheimer’s Association Conferences, May 2016 and again in 2017.

• Developing, in 2019, Brain Grooves with the NWPA Alzheimer's Association, with the help of Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine (LECOM).

And of course, over all this time, I’ve put ALL THE THINGS into a GIANT compost bin and that is now named The Peony Method.

I don’t think my story is unique. I think, culturally, we’ve gotten so used to not moving and not being expressive with our bodies that we don’t even look to that anymore when we are suffering from myriad body and mind based challenges.

But we must. We are EMBODIED beings, for whom a movement imperative is written into our very cells.

Furthermore, the way we’ve treated our individual bodies has leaked out to how we’ve treated our communities and this planet. Only when we come back into right relationship with our physical selves will we have the vision and the energy necessary to take responsibility for and rebuild everything from communities to ecosystems.

If you can't meditate, there's nothing wrong with YOU but with what you're trying to do

I want to talk about meditation, but first a couple of things:

If you have a classic sitting meditation practice that works for you, great. That's you. #ExperimentofOne And I don't want this to turn into a discussion about how that works.

And to be clear, I have studied with some of the leaders in the field of somatic psychologies. For a long time. They would agree with what I'll say here.

Meditation is (like everything) not for everyone, but it can actually be dangerous if you're still in the worst parts of anxiety, depression, OCD, CPTSD, and many other mental illnesses.

I've said this in person enough times to know that some of you probably just breathed a sigh of relief, thinking there was something inherently wrong with you because meditation feels so impossible. There's nothing wrong with you when it comes to meditation. Meditation is just not necessarily right for you... for right now. (And that might be forever, depending.)

Stay with me here...

Whether or not you've experienced physical or sexual abuse of any kind (and especially then), if you're someone suffering from mental illness, the BODY ITSELF does NOT feel safe.

To SIT in the body and watch the mind CAN BE like throwing gasoline on a fire.

And this is where movement practices come in.

For all of my 20s and 30s, people would tell me to meditate to help with my depression, etc.

And I was one of those who thought there must be something even more wrong with me because it made me feel worse.

THEN I started to dance again. And FINALLY my mind could quiet in that context.

Keeping the body moving, focusing on the breath, and focusing a lot of the brain on a problem solving prompt (a simple example: make as many circles in space with your body as you can)... this quiets the part of the brain that often felt like it was out to get me (my metaphorical experience... insert your own here).

Furthermore, over time and I mean TIME (months to many many years), your brain creates new neural clusters and pathways marked "body is safe to feel."

This happens BECAUSE you are working with someone (like me perhaps) who can create safe ways for you to be in your body feeling all the things, bit by bit... I watch for overwhelm of the system and pull you back when that happens.

Because re-traumatizing is not the damn goal. Which CAN happen if you're sitting in your own nest of awful during meditation with no one there to bring you out of it.

As Gabrielle Roth said, most of our problems were created and exacerbated in the brain/mind; we can't use that same tool for healing. At least and especially not during the initial phases of healing, which again, can go on for many years.

The movement work I teach is not some once in a while thing to be done when you're feeling extra bad or extra good. It's a lifetime practice of tools to be used over and over as we go through new and challenging experiences.

And I have to add ... part of the healing is due to the COMMUNITY aspect of the work. RELATIONSHIP is where true healing happens.

Morgenmuffels UNITE! Or the Meeting of the Morning Nutbags, a Free Group

To say that photo represents me in the morning would not be inaccurate. Me and morning have never been best friends. I got kinda better about mornings in the year or so before I met Craig and then when I first met him. But I was only kinda more friendly with morning because it was a time in my life when I was feeling so happy and energetic that I didn’t need as much sleep as I always have.

And by always, I mean always. Ask my mother. She’ll tell you that I slept over eight hours the first night home from the hospital. I slept so well and so regularly when I was a newborn that they, very young parents, were worried and took me to the doctor, who basically said, “CONGRATULATIONS!”

But then Craig came along and worked crazy hours and even now gets up at about 4:30 (AM!) to have time for coffee and the gym before starting work at 6:15 AM. He is a freaking morning person, for sure. Though he’ll weirdly deny that.

With his crazy hours, my own schedule got so thrown off that I no longer know what the heck I am. I know I do not like falling asleep before 11, that’s for sure.

Add in the pandemic and then Peony’s death and me and sleep have resorted back to kinda frenemies, not to mention how much worse morning has gotten.

Something had to change. I kept putting it off but I knew the answer. I just didn’t want to face and DO the answer. Let’s back up.

Neurodivergence and routines and change

I’ve wanted a new morning routine because I knew it affected the rest of my day.

Pre-Craig, I would get up and immediately take a shower and then sit and read and write and meditate/pray a bit. This worked beautifully and led to the rest of my day flowing naturally and easily from that start. I had kinda… monasticized my life.

Here’s another part of the equation: my weird brain has a hard time getting started. Whether it be the day or a project or whatever… getting started is hard.

YET routine is super important to my weird brain.

OY! I was caught in this kind of loop of not getting started and needing new routines to get started but not being able to start new routines.

TikTok to the Rescue

One of my favorite areas of TikTok is the neurodivergent creators. SO HELPFUL.

And I kept hearing about this concept of “body doubling.”

I also came upon the concept of “catalyst.” It’s how a different sort of brain needs something to get it started and that’s unique for everyone and figuring that out is key.

AH-HA Moment

I awoke with a start: OTHER PEOPLE ARE MY CATALYST!

Yep… duh.

Feeling responsible to other people (in the good way) is what makes me Do the Things.

This also incorporates body doubling. Just sitting with someone else while they write, for example, gets me writing.

A Free Zoom Group is Born and You Can Join

I put out a call. Was there anyone else who was struggling with a new morning routine, whether that mean starting your day with writing, art, meditation, movement, reading, whatever.

A few people said YES, PLEASE, and so we started.

I cannot overemphasize how profoundly this has impacted my life from moment one.

It works. Period.

I get up because I have to shower before I get on zoom and then I get everything ready and start the meeting at 8 AM. I wait until 8:05 and then we all go mute (you can also not have your camera on).

And we work. Together. But silently.

Until about 8:30 when I call time. (This is Eastern time.)

And from there, my day just GOES. I have gotten more done in the couple of days we’ve been doing this than probably the last MONTH.

I move more. I write more. My brain feels way more cooperative. I am getting downloads of ideas again. I’m reading more.

If you want in, just give me a yell.

OH! And during my reading the first day, I came upon this quote. We’re not a “buddhist community” but you get it:

“This involvement in a Buddhist community is invaluable to anyone wishing to take his or her practice seriously, and life as a Buddhist can be very difficult without regular contact with such a Sangha.”

Amen. Life as a human can be very difficult without regular contact with such a devoted and compassionate community.

December, 3 One Hour "Kundalini" Yoga for Restoration Classes that you can use into January

Peony…

Though we will have live one hour Kundalini yoga for 3 Sundays (and you don’t have to be live; you can just use video), starting this Sunday, December 5th, the videos will remain available to you for the remaining 2 weeks of December and into January to use as much as you want/need.

Please note: The next session of one hour yoga will not start until mid to late January.

This session will be focused on my mix of ALL THE THINGS yoga to restore you after this hellish year. (Or was this year actually 20 years? I can’t tell…)

You’ll still recognize the basics of a good kundalini yoga class but we’ll be doing other things to help reset your nervous system. For example, we’ll practice a special sensory-deprivation breath with savasana.

There will be lots of goodies to help you feel more grounded and stable and READY for a new and DIFFERENT year (oh, please, make it a different sort of year!!!).

DETAILS:

DATES: Sundays, December 5, 12, 19
TIME for LIVE: 5:30 PM (Eastern United States) to 6:30 PM (and I get online at about 5:20 if you wanna chat)
COST: $50 (for 3 classes that you can use over and over into January)
*As always, if the cost is a stretch, just message me and we’ll figure it out. Please don’t miss out for that reason.

The Lie of Effort Bringing Reward

I’m pretty used to chronic pain. Or I should say that I’ve had a lot of time in my life where it was the norm. Then I started to dance at 40 and I got rid of most of it for the majority of that decade.

Something might come up here and there but I made a little effort around it and it was gone in no time.

Because that’s how things work, right? You put in effort and you get rewarded.

No.

SOMETIMES that is how things work. Sometimes rewards simply are not on their way no matter what you do.

My strong and very healthy shoulders six years ago.

There can be a million reasons for this, unique to each human, but when we assume that effort brings reward, this leads to the moralizing of effort which then leads to judgement of humans we think are not “efforting” enough.

It’s the basis of all ableism (and of toxic capitalism that says enough effort can bring wealth to anyone no matter what but I’m focusing on body issues here and that is a whole book in and of itself).

This year, I’ve been dealing with a shoulder tear. Not bad enough to warrant surgery (which I want to avoid and my doctor agrees) but bad enough that I lost a ton of mobility and was in constant pain and had a hard time sleeping etc. I got a shot and that helped enough to let me start doing serious P.T. on myself.

Which has increased my mobility but I’m still only at a B grade.

Now, I’ve always been extremely mobile and very strong, so my idea of an A grade is different than a majority of humans, but I’m not willing at this age to give up on that. Because that’s a slippery slope right there.

All of that brings me to a few nights ago when I was crying to Craig about the progress I was making not being enough and not being fast enough and what if this is IT!?!?

That’s when it really hit me that I’ve always bought into the ableist crap of effort = reward.

Any doctor I’ve ever had for issues like this can’t get over the effort I put in. They say “no one does that. People want pills and surgery.”

I work hard and I’m consistent. And I stay consistent over long periods of time. I am stubborn in those good ways (and some bad ones but alas…).

And still… with all my stubborn consistency, hard work, and the knowledge I have about what to do and how, I am still not healed.

There are two things here that I want to emphasize.

First, sometimes we think we’re not getting the reward for our effort because it’s happening too slowly and in too small increments to notice. So we give up or we dilute our efforts and this then proves to us that we are not succeeding and “SEE!?!? This is why it’s not worth it!!! NOTHING is happening!” Self fulfilling prophecy type stuff.

I myself — Ms. Stubborn — have been tempted to give up in this very way.

Second, sometimes we’re simply not going to succeed. Sometimes things are worse than people can know. Sometimes there are circumstances that simply cannot be overcome.

This is hard. As a culture, we want to believe that there’s always the possibility of success.

But sometimes the success we need is the redefinition of what that looks like for us, the altering of expectations, the release of a strict goal so that we can move forward and start in a new way.

I believe that there’s ALMOST always room for improvement and space to create new mobility and strength, but sometimes this will look different than we want it to, and that’s got to be okay.

Landing in Your Body and Not Separating Your Self into Parts

I love this quote not because of its accuracy but because it makes us think about how much we separate all of our parts -- physical, spiritual, emotional, psychological, and intellectual.

And when we separate, we create instant cultural based hierarchies of those parts with bodies and emotions usually thought of as less than and intellect and spirit/soul as "higher."

Nope.

NOPE.

It's all one. We're all one. There's no transcending any of our parts or any of our experiences. There's just being brave enough to be IN. IT. ALL.

When we dance or practice physical methods, we might for an instant think we've gone "above" or "out of," but what's really happened is we've finally landed.

If you want to explore all of this more directly, registration is open for December Quickie Yoga and Peony Method classes.

I’m extra excited about the Tuesday class (or whenever you want to use the recording):

Fundamentals of Narrative Based Movement Art to Rewire the Brain for Joy

We’ll be exploring how to strengthen the positive connections in your brain via happy memories. We’ll use guided meditations, sensory awareness, and focused breath to bring the memory fully into the body and then practice different movement prompts to solidify the positive sensory information and corresponding memory stories.

If you’ve never taken a class with me before, THIS will be a great place to start.

To register for this or yoga or the Thursday FASCIA FOCUSED class, go here.

The Betrayal of Self and The Rebuilding of Trust

There are a lot of reasons we can't "hear" our body's wisdom anymore. One of the most common? Learning from an early age that our desires/needs weren't to be our primary concern/responsibility but instead that we were supposed to focus on being a certain way to fulfill others' needs.

This happens to almost everyone in one way or another, but for some, it’s more directly intense and much more destructive of the sense of self that’s crucial to individuation and a sense of fulfillment.

Learning to listen again can feel scary, for sure. It can feel totally overwhelming. We can feel like the emotions that come with it are too much. Or perhaps we have simply decided we aren't worth the effort.

The Peony Method is gentle and it takes time but eventually? All of this can and will change.

We must start with simply allowing the body to be what it is in this moment. We spend a lot of our lives in this culture trying to manipulate the body into a certain form or action, only to then get angry at the body for not doing so or not doing so quickly enough.

We are betraying ourselves in those moments and so trusting starts right there.

Trusting starts with acknowledging, noticing, allowing, and eventually? Being fascinated. I’ve seen it thousands of time — women thinking they’d never be able to feel fascination within their own bodies “UNLESS…” (fill in the blank… they were thinner, stronger, had this or that…). But they’re always wrong. And delighted to be so.

It won’t happen over night, but over time… with patience and commitment to practice.

In Person Erie Workshop: Loving Kindness and Movement

WHEN: Saturday, December 4th
TIME: 11:30 AM to 1:30 PM (or a bit after…)

WHERE: Pranayoga: A Little Breathing Room (Next to Virgil’s Pizza)
1001 West 6th Street, Erie, Pennsylvania

WHAT: The (Un)bearable Lightness of Being: MOVING METTA

BRING: Pen, paper, water, anything that comforts you (blanket, crystals…)

NOTE: PLEASE BRING A SMALL CANDLE IN A CONTAINER.

REGISTRATION: $40 (If this is difficult for ANY REASON, please contact me and we’ll work something out.)

There are limited spaces available so please register as soon as you are able.

Also Note: this is a MOVEMENT workshop. It’s neither dance nor yoga. We’ll be using a lot of natural, primal movement, and very simple movement prompts supported by music.

WHAT THE HECK IS METTA?!?!

Very likely, you don’t know that I spent a lot of years studying Buddhism. I even helped bring a western Lama to Erie for the first time so many years ago.

I haven’t been studying it since I found Tantra Yoga but wow… they are related big time.

And after Peony’s death, it was actually Tibetan Buddhism that helped me in those initial dark hours, so perhaps I’ve started up again.

Regardless… metta… ((FOCUS!!))

Metta means loving kindness, goodwill, benevolence… It’s one of those concepts that doesn’t just have a one to one word translation equivalent in English.

Metta meditation is a way to turn our hearts toward loving kindness. We can aim that at ourselves or others. Ideally, both.

It’s a meditation that comes with scripts, like the one in that meme right there. But there are a lot of variations.

HOW WILL WE MOVE METTA??!?!

We will be bringing the ideas of metta to our movement practice. That might be the more correct way to look at it. Though I think it also works to think of moving the metta itself.

This idea came to me at least a year ago.

But I wasn’t sure exactly what it all meant.

Then Peony died and I renamed my movement arts practices after her.

Even before her death, though, the idea of delicacy and gentleness had started entering my teacher vocabulary in new and kinda (to this teacher) startling ways.

I mean, I’ve always been pretty… assertive in my practices.

But then when Peony passed, something really truly surprising happened.

I got softer. I wasn’t expecting that, though many around me would say it had been happening especially since I met Craig and started to live a life in which I felt so very safe.

But what will we DO?!

Sorry… there’s so much to cover!

We’ll be learning a bit more about metta itself and its place in the four Buddhist immeasurables (and what the heck they are).

THEN we’ll start to explore moving in ways that are consistent with those ideas. This movement won’t look like DANCE so don’t be afraid. It will even include simple things like super slow walking.

We’ll then increase the reach of the ideas by working in partnerships and as a group.

As usual with my work, there will be a BIG emphasis on breath, and we’ll be creating ritual together. Duh… that’s what all my stuff comes to. ((ha))

If you still have questions, as always, just ask.