Body Bypassing

We often speak of "spiritual bypassing," but there's SO MUCH body bypassing in this culture.

A lot of us (including myself for far too many years) walk around disconnected to the point that, for example, I often said that if you cut off my body, my head wouldn’t notice. At the time, I thought that was pretty funny.

As humans in a traumatizing culture, a large number of us have gotten far too adept at dissociating.

Feeling our feelings can feel overwhelming, but that’s because we aren’t encouraged to feel our feelings … which decreases our capacity to … feel our feelings. (Round and round we go.)

It starts when we’re little and we start hearing any number of the following…

• Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.

• You’re too sensitive.

• You care too much about … everything.

• Do not show anger.

• Your excitement is … too much; bring it down a few notches.

And we’re also told a million things about our bodies:

• Sit still.

• Don’t climb that/hang there/walk so close to…

• Be careful. (This one is telling us that we can’t trust our own judgment or our body’s ability to do hard things.)

• You take up too much space

• Take up more space.

• You’re too fat.

• You should gain weight.

And on and on…

Our culture is designed to push us and our experiences deeper and deeper into our brains, shutting off access to all the intelligence of our senses AND our instincts, our inner voices, our guts, our hearts… our inherent wisdom is blocked.

Our wisdom is blocked but so too is the mechanism by which we can calibrate all the chemicals that keeps us happy and joyful and creative, and that mechanism is moving this body.

Somehow in all of this, there is also a body-based gaslighting. We start to believe that the body isn’t even important.

We look to sitting still as spiritual practice. We look to deprivation of sensory experiences as spiritual practice. Think about fasting and celibacy, just for two examples. We see people who do those sorts of things as somehow “enlightened.” One cannot be “enlightened” when one is not engaged in their own damn humanness.

We start to think that we can just think/pray/journal/talk our way out of all of this pain or lack of fulfillment. Not that those aren’t good things in and of themselves but they do NOT replace the body based experiences we are built for.

Alas…

You ARE this body and this body's very makeup is about movement. We are built to move. The imperative to move is encoded in our structure on every level.

NOT MOVING can be a sign of depression and anxiety but it's also fertile ground for depression and anxiety to grow, and this culture grows those two things at rates we’ve never seen before.

Disclaimer: moving is different for all of us so I'll repeat this forever: AS LONG AS THERE IS BREATH, THERE IS DANCE.

If you can't cry...

We had a good discussion around crying in the Sanctuary this past week.

The ability to cry and to release is absolutely crucial to our overall health.

It took me a long time to learn this so I understand when people say they have a hard time crying or they tend to stop themselves from crying or they fear that once they start they won’t be able to stop.

I’ve said all those same things.

And when I did cry, I was one of those people who would apologize for it.

Then my entire life changed about 8 years ago. More than anything, I was overcome with fear. I knew that I had been not living my right life. I had known that for a long time but the fear of change and the fear of the unknown kept me from stepping out of it.

Once I did… oh my GOD did the crying start.

Soon I realized that I was crying every day whether I wanted to or not, and at first, this was hard AF.

But over time, I stopped fearing the crying itself. And I started to notice how after a bit of crying, I could get into my breath and feel better.

Once I learned that, I started to bring intentionality to my crying.

Every night I would get into bed and sit in meditation and ask my body if it needed to cry some more. It usually did so I allowed that. It started lasting shorter and shorter amounts of time and I started to see the connection between all of that release and really good sleep.

I don’t remember when the daily crying stopped. It lasted about a full year.

At the same time that this crying was happening, my heart was opening to more and more joy in my life.

Eventually that led to meeting Craig and just feeling like I was finally living my truth in every area — relationships, work, spirituality.

Crying watered the seeds of all of that joy.

Locking ourselves down doesn’t just stop the crying. It stops all the other big emotions — including the good ones that we say we want more of.

Creating internal space for this emotional work starts with allowing the body to express. The Peony Method is for that work.

We are gently and with playfulness exploring being completely present to our physical forms SO THAT we can affect the chemistry of our brains SO THAT we can expand/evolve our spirits.

It just so happens that TUESDAYS during the January session are great for newbies.

If your brain needs a more concrete approach to this work, this is for you. We’ll be spending a lot of time exploring joints, body parts, and muscle and tendon connections via focused, breath based, slow movement. I want this class to leave you feeling relaxed and stretched but also like you’ve found new and fascinating things about how your body works.

REMINDER: You do not have to attend these live. You can use the videos on your own time. You can also TURN OFF YOUR CAMERA during the live sessions if you're feeling too shy or too vulnerable.

But THURSDAYS are also great if you want a more WOO approach ((giggling)).

On Thursdays, we’ll be using the physical body to move into and with the energetic body with special focus on the chakras, meridians, and the energy of shared space.

Hit that link for “January Session” to get more information and to register.

What the HECK Is "Transmuting" Through Dance?!

After talking about how to start using dance through difficult times and experiences, someone then asked a follow up question.

WHAT DO I MEAN WHEN I SAY TRANSMUTING THROUGH MOVEMENT!?!!?

In the Peony Method, we use dance/movement to FEEL ALL THE THINGS and then to transmute them and eventually to reestablish ourselves more and more in our original joybodies.

(See this post.)

Feel all the things... how much we lock down parts of ourselves from this past year much less from the time we are little!

So there are, to say the least, LOTS of "all the things" that must first BE FELT.

This first step is massive. And it happens over and over and over again... again, this is a life's work sort of tool.

The transmuting part is less under our conscious control.

That's part of it... be courageous enough to feel the things and then to keep moving (metaphor alert) and feel some more and keep moving.

We move WITH the feelings. Giving them the space they need.

On a cellular level, this already changes us.

Over time, as we move with the things that we thought were maybe impossible to even begin to feel, we notice something...

That those things don't feel quite so impossible any more.

AH! The transmuting has begun.

See? In the background, it's the result of the work, not the work itself.

Whatever that "stuff" becomes eventually is not totally up to us.

What IS up to us is that we give the stuff the SPACE and the TIME it needs to DO whatever it is meant to do.

It's a mystery. In the real sense of that word. As in, sacred and beyond us and within our biggest selves and of this universe.

And this is the point of not ignoring the body. We cannot ignore the body.

The body is the mechanism through which this happens.

You can't THINK your way to this level of change. You can't force it or to-do list it.

All you can do is allow it.

December Joy List in the Context of Grief

For many of us, this month is filled with twinkle lights and good food and special movies and anticipation that reminds us of being children — or the anticipation of actual children if you have some around you — and there’s so much beauty to be found in all the different stories of all the different holy days that fall at this time of year.

And then there’s sadness. Deep sadness. Most of us have lost someone at some point in our lives — whether recently or in the far past — for whom we especially mourn this time of year.

Lately I am thinking about how much, especially as we age, that we are in a permanent state of always evolving grief, and if that is the case — if grief is able to be constantly present even as we go about our daily lives, even as we laugh — then isn’t the converse true? That JOY can be constantly present regardless of our life circumstances?

Yin and Yang. Dark and light. Grief and joy, living conjoined in our hearts. Perhaps that is what eventually moves us to deeper levels of compassion and patience and love. It does. Or it doesn’t. And that is where choice comes in, right?

We can decide that this grief/joy existence is an untenable and unbearable position. We decide that we just can’t. This path that is littered with self pity and anger, eventually, leads to something worse than grief… despair. And despair, left to grow and rot, leads inevitably to violence, whether toward ourselves (internally or otherwise) or toward others (the whole range of violence from judging people for who they are to physical harm).

The other choice is to allow all of this to soften our hearts and make more space for more of the good stuff.

I’m trying, since Peony’s death, to choose the softening, of course. And it’s not easy. I would never say it was. But it’s the better choice and it’s more honoring of the love I have had and have in my life.

Having said all of this, I’ll share some things that have been helping me lately and that I count as definite sources of joy.

• This Reiki practitioner is just WHOA! I found her accidentally on a live TikTok and I thought, NO WAY! REIKI CAN’T BE GOOD LIKE THIS! HA! As if. She is freaking amazing. I’ve used her work, in particular, to help with my sleep. Here’s her YouTube.

• My Morning Nutbags. Do you not know what I’m talking about!?!? GO HERE. But seriously, this morning group of women and the space we share has changed my freaking life. (You can still join. It’s free. And there’s no pressure to be there every single day.)

• Speaking of the Morning Nutbags, one of the things I’m doing during that time is reading this book of Buddhist Prayer to the Bodhisattva of Compassion. I’m changing the references to specific Buddhist deities to Our Lady of Guadalupe, which any Buddhist would tell me is totally cool… all forms are legit. Anyway, I am loving the simplicity and beauty of how Buddhism approaches this. You could say all of these “prayers” quite simply to your inner self.

• During this time of grief, I’ve found my way back to studying Buddhism in general. I studied it pretty seriously for many years long ago, but I was still struggling with deep depression and resisting anything that helped. So now I’m back and it’s really the thing that has helped me the most when it comes to trying to make sense out of this whole shitty death thing. Here’s my current favorite text.

• Simultaneously, of course, I’m studying Mother Mary. And this book about the origins of the rosary and how it can be used so differently from what most people think is a favorite.

• Crystals. Just looking at them. Discovering new ones. Reading about them. Craig loves to tease me about my rocks, my precious… but anything that brings us an ounce of joy is worth its weight in gold. Here’s a small start if you’ve never really looked into their uses.

It’s a smaller list than usual, but again, I’m just glad that anything at all can give me some joy right now as I make my way through this life without Peony. I’m still trying to just get my bearings.

And a big joy right now that I forgot about is just having some time off from teaching to settle into this new reality.

OH! And of course, all of YOU bring me so much joy. You ground me and I am so grateful for you.

What Dance Looks Like When Things are Difficult: Or Authentic Dance is Not What You Think It Is

In the JoyBody Sanctuary, a member wrote this:

"...so Christine, will you talk about how to dance through hard things? When the pandemic hit my whole body went into freeze and I can do other things but not dance."

At first, I answered with some suggestions about music and tapping into parts of ourselves that at one point were already able to dance and took joy in it. That's important, but it's really only the first layer of this work, and I think going deeper into why and how I teach is demonstrative of what separates The Peony Method that I've developed from most things out there.

In the Peony Method, we're not using dance to FEEL JOY. There's no "fake it til you make it." (There are some prompts that I use that we play with that idea but we take it much further and I don't want to focus on that right now.)

In the Peony Method, we're using dance in its most fundamental and spiritual way -- and the way it anthropologically evolved.

We're not dancing to feel joyful.

We're using dance/movement art as a TOOL to first, FEEL EVERYTHING.

Second, to TRANSMUTE everything.

And third, over time, to get back in touch with our essential joybody.

BUT THIS TAKES TIME and it's a process/practice that is meant to last for your life. The material is that deep. It's also material that is constantly spiraling in and out of itself as you go through layer after layer of the calcified crap that life has plastered over your soft heart.

This is one of those cases that really demonstrates how we've degraded dance over time AND how we have dismissed the body as our main tool to enlightenment/evolution.

We put all other arts above dance not only artistically (don't get me started on the association of prostitution with dance to this day) but also therapeutically.

Expressive arts, for example, almost always focus on writing and visual arts as their main tools.

That's all just a bit of background... now to Leela's actual question.

The answer lies in how we think about dance and the processes.

So first, as laid out above, we let go of dance as "feel good" or "fun" or whatever is blocking us from getting to the music and our bodies.

We start at the beginning.

Which means removing the crap.

Which means doing something as simple as putting on loud music and PUNCHING KICKING JUMPING SCREAMING STOMPING .

That is dance as ritual process.

And right now when life pretty much sucks all around us, this might be your only practice for some time.

Then suddenly, after doing this for weeks or months or whatever, you might notice that the music on the radio in the car is making you bop about a bit.

After doing this for some time, you might hear yourself giggle.

After doing this for some time, you might even be able to listen to music that used to make you sad.

But we have to start at the beginning.

Release.

Then comes acts of noticing.

So a second practice could be as simple as putting on music, standing up, and focusing solely on your feet... moving them, stretching them, smooshing them, etc. Getting INSIDE your feet.

These noticing practices are what is keeping me going during all of this grief.

There’s so much more to all of this but this is a good starting point.

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.