Practices Matter More than Ever

Christine’s movement guidance, for me, is a sacred form of mindfulness where I am gently forced into listening to the fiberoptic highway of my body.

It is a practice as beautifully healing and helpful as prayer and meditation with the chemical and musculoskeletal benefits movement brings.

It is body language, but not in the sense of sitting across from someone else trying to figure out what they're thinking. And it is also allowing the body to talk, but not in the Olivia Newton John's, Let's Get Physical sense. (Linda)

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So often it’s my students who describe this work so much better than I ever can. I’m always grateful when they have the bandwidth to write a few words…

Because right now, we’re all really limited on bandwidth. More so, it seems, every week, as one thing after another just follows one thing after another and it seems there is no end.

Because there is no end.

Life is suffering, said the Buddha, and though that used to just piss me off, lately I find comfort in those words. I am not alone. We all suffer. Life is what it is but we can, as the Buddha goes on to say, work with that suffering to come to a place of peace.

I like to think that the work I offer this world, most especially The Peony Method, is one part of a path to that inner peace that we’re all, ultimately, seeking.

We just want to feel … okay and… steady… and like we have some say in what our own lives look like.

I think it’s crucial, now more than ever, that we take the time for practices that align us with those better, more sane, more loving parts of ourselves.

If you need that, March classes start next week. If classes feel too vulnerable, remember that I work one on one also.

The Joy of Lent (that's what I said...): An introduction to the idea behind The Re/Joy Project

A yoga sadhana is a practice meant to transform you.

TRANS. FORM.

Make you into a new form.

Often a dedicated sadhana will last 40 days, and so we come to lent.

Like any religious practice, lent is only as effective and meaningful as the energy we’re willing to put into it.

First we have to decide that this time is more than just an excuse to diet (don’t do that regardless…). And second, we have to decide to reclaim it from the toxic Christianity that has overtaken the truth and beauty of what Christ actually intended.

It’s no accident that lent takes place during this time when we’re all feeling the weight of winter and a deep desire to awaken to more light and warmth. (And my god… as I re-read that sentence… all we’ve been through and all that is currently happening… it surely takes on even more meaning than I even first intended.)

In the Northern Hemisphere, the body of Earth herself is awakening over the next 40 days. By the time we get to the end of lent, most of us will be seeing a profusion of (or the start of a profusion of) tulips, daffodils, green buds, returning birds, pea shoots, thawed bodies of water, warmth in the air, sun that penetrates to bone.

Are we not meant to go through the same process?

Alas, lent ends in a death, you protest, so how can it be included in this more pagan view of rebirthing/awakening things? Regardless of resurrection (or instantaneous reincarnation, as I like to think of it), that death was meant to remove the final veil of fear so that we might live in these bodies “free of all anxiety.”

This time of year is meant for us to shed all the darkness of winter, but more than that, it’s meant to take us through processes that help us to shed the idea of body as burden.

Perhaps we can take on a different sort of lenten journey in which we awaken the body to the light and warmth of our own love for ourselves and thus deepen our capacity to love “other.”

I challenge you — during this very serious time of the year and this very serious time of all of our lives — to be less serious and more joyful.

For lent, I am consciously working on “giving up” my existential despair as a default coping and protection mechanism.

I am consciously working on “giving up” disbelief in the wonder and beauty and magic of life.

I am consciously working on embodying the joy of Peony the Cat.

Would you like to join me?

To start, I will be spending more time cataloging things that bring me joy.

Cataloging can look like written lists but also photos. #DailyJoy

I’ll be paying extra attention to noticing every bit of earth awakening right around me.

I’ll also be spending more time moving in ways that bring me a deep sense of connection to the joy well that already exists within me but that I tend to disregard when things are going badly in the outside world.

What might you add to this list? #therejoyproject

From the Sanctuary: the problem with helping others

I think this will be a part of a new series that I will write here where I take from some of the extremely interesting conversations we have in the JoyBody Sanctuary (the free space that is private on Facebook that you can ask to be added to here).

Rule number one of the sanctuary is that whatever is said in the Sanctuary stays in the Sanctuary so I will only be sharing bits of my OWN WORDS.

Someone was talking about the toxic idea that we can get out of depression by helping others and here’s what I wrote in response:

This is, as always, more complicated than all the memes etc. make it out to be.

Because first, there is a LOT of truth to this.

Our interconnection is key to our health on every level.

But our culture is heavy on codependence and does not generally understand the different that is interdependence.

So we go at things like this with bitterness and should-ness and martyr energy.

And we could write BOOKS, of course, on the complications of this for WOMEN specifically because we are taught to BE martyrs.

But the doing for others needs to come from a... clearer place than that.

And yes, when it can come from a clearer place of compassion and WANTING TO, then it very much can take us out of ourselves in a healthy way.

So first, we must know what WE NEED and work on that.

Second, we have to have healthy boundaries.

Third, we need to work for a compassion that includes ourselves and does not turn compassion for others into a weapon against our own needs.

Fourth, we need to be able to distinguish feeling compassion for a human and the totally legit feeling of NO for some of their actions.

I think they biggest key though is our own needs... are they being met because I don't think we can truly work from a place of compassion without that.

But again, girls are raised to do exactly that... to ignore themselves in favor of everyone else.

Moving into the something larger; grounding into now

For some of us, traditional meditation only leads to exacerbated symptoms of depression and anxiety. It can feed the loops that support PTSD.

(There are some PTSD specialists who actually say that meditation should be avoided unless it is done with some supervision and with a movement component.)

And for some of us, the way yoga is taught through repeated forms and static holds can do the same thing.

I was/am definitely one of those people. Yoga was okay for me but it was still a space that could be somewhat dangerous for my mind, depending on where I was on my own personal depression/anxiety spectrum at the time.

Kundalini Yoga was the least dangerous of all for me as it is full of more spontaneous type movement. I often tell people that Kundalini yoga did not heal me but it kept me from getting worse and it prepared me for what I actually needed… the stuff I now teach that is more dance based.

When I dance or engage in movement play and experiments, when my bod is busy solving some sort of movement "problem" (and it doesn't matter if you're standing, on the floor, in a chair...)... that is when I will sense my way into the fertile ground of my own individual emptiness and my felt connection to something larger.

That is what The Peony Method is all about.

I can’t ever figure out how to explain what happens internally. Both of these statements are simultaneously true:

1. “It takes me out of myself and into spaciousness.”

2. “It grounds me into my nowness of being.”

Both/and.

I know I am in an internal space of truthfulness when I am practicing these methods, because if I feel at all confused about ANYTHING IN MY LIFE, I hear my authentic voice and get immediate and right answers as soon as I fall into the space that one and two up there are describing.

Buddhism 101: A Reading List by Request (Copy)

Wat Rong Seur Ten in Chiang Rai Thailand by Alex Azabache

I shared a reading list to help you get a bit deeper into your yoga right here. And now a morning nutbag and some others have requested a reading list for those new/ish to Buddhism.

So here we go (and I will be linking to Amazon not to encourage you to buy from there but simply because it is easy. I actually encourage you to use your library or a local bookstore, both of which I am lucky enough to have access to but never assume the same about anyone else… sometimes Amazon is actually necessary for more rural areas):

Anything Lama Surya Das is highly recommended, especially Awakening the Buddha Within, but here’s his whole Amazon page.

And anything by Uma Thurman’s dad (yep), Robert Thurman should be on your list too. Infinite Bliss was a fave or mine but again here’s his whole Amazon page.

Currently I’m rereading The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying and it has helped me so much with my grief.

This book is about Tantra in both yoga and Buddhism by one of the most respected yoga scholars ever (who has passed away but his wife has taken over his teachings and she is wonderful).

Here’s one of my favorites by Thich Nhat Hanh that is a bit deeper in the teachings than some of his more popular stuff.

This book of “prayers” to the Bodhisattva is so beautiful. It is a practice in and of itself just to randomly select something every day.

Tara Brach writes some stuff that veers into psychology meets Buddhism, which some days works for me and some days doesn’t but she’s well respected and one of the rare women’s voices out there that has a large platform.

Most of what I’ve shared here comes from Tibetan buddhism lineages. There’s a whole other world out there if you want to explore Zen Buddhism, which would include things like the philosophy of tea ceremony and haiku, which I also have on my shelf, but I think the basics are well covered with all I’ve shared above.

I would love to hear from you as you explore!

Devotion to Essence not Form

This is key. To everything.

I’ve been talking to so many people about this in so many different settings.

We start a practice for a good reason, and at first, it seems to be “helping” In whatever way we were looking for help.

Then over time, this feeling of being helped diminishes. We become disillusioned with the practice. We blame the practice. We stop.

Here’s the thing: the practice isn’t entirely the problem; it’s our own misunderstanding of the big picture process that is the problem, and it’s why people jump from one thing to the next, always searching, never diving deep.

Now I said… the practice isn’t “entirely” the problem, because there is a problem when we get too married to a FORM of practice.

This next thing I’m going to say is important:

Form can be helpful... until it's holding us TO IT instead of holding us to the growth we went to it for.

Our devotion, to be effective and to help us evolve, needs to be to essence, not to form.

Look at WHY you are doing WHAT you are doing.

WHY are you doing yoga, for example? Because that WHY is your DEVOTION, not the form of yoga you’ve chosen.

One simple example from my own life:

Sometimes I study Buddhism. Deeply. Then I move to Tantra yoga. Then I even find my way back to the teachings of Christ.

For me, it’s not the form of the spiritual path but the path itself that I am walking and it is created as I walk it.

My devotion is to some sort of understanding of this life we’re all living. The form of that evolves over time as I grow and as my needs change via my experiences.

When it comes to movement practices, this is how the Peony Method was born.

The form of yoga was holding me to a certain shape — on the mat and in my life.

For a time in my life, that restricted shape helped me to feel safe.

But safety is no longer my number one concern because I AM safe.

Now freedom is my concern. Liberation. Thus the Peony Method is alway evolving. From minute to minute, I am breathing and waiting with patience and then allowing movement to arise that is honest to my present moment.

Find something like that, right there. Something that challenges your edges and simultaneously helps you to keep your center.

February Classes are Open for Registration

(If you’ve not read Katy Bowman’s Move Your DNA, I HIGHLY recommend it. I’m reading it for the third time right now.)

REMEMBER that you can attend my streaming classes live or use the videos whenever you want. AND the links for the videos stay available for the entire month. They don’t expire after 48 hours (which is how a lot of streaming classes do this).

FEBRUARY classes start, of course, on Tuesday February 1st, including:

Quickie Yoga: Two 20 minute classes a week that cover all your body’s basic needs in terms of movement nutrients. These are great also for breaking into smaller snack bites for use every day.

Peony Method, two versions: Slow Anatomy — a concrete approach — and Energy Body — a more woo approach. HA. Each are an hour once a week and you can save a bit of cash by taking both.

All the information and registration is here.

Happiness Toolbox: My Two Most Important Tools

That toolbox would be better if there were glitter but it’s pretty good…

This post is a rewrite of a post that I wrote on Blisschick many years ago and it popped up in my memories the other day and I thought… oh! that’s good.

AND I think this stuff is needed more than ever. So here we go.

I think I came up with the two most important tools that you need in your happiness toolbox.

First, I’ve been doing a shit ton of thinking about compassion and how we apply it not just to the world but to ourselves.

To ourselves.

I think we miss that part all too often.

This all seems very obvious, but every day we make decisions lacking compassion. We make decision based on some sense of right and wrong which is based on someone’s arbitrary rules about those things.

Rules can be dangerous weapons if they are not changed to fit each and every individual and situation. #ExperimentofOne

But if in every single situation, we apply the tool of compassion, we will see just how fluid our rules have to become.

And here is the first tool: in our lives, compassion should always be our guiding compass.

A compass will point true north.

And isn’t true north where our highest self resides? There is no confusion, no sense of righteousness; there is just love and compassion.

When you think you have been wronged, pull out this compass and see where it guides you. (And really, the most compassionate act might be that it guides you away from whomever wronged you.)

When you think you can know another’s heart, another’s experience of their own life, and thus judge it, pull out this compass and see where it guides you.

But again, do not forget: when you feel you are being at all mean to yourself, pull out this compass.

When you hear those freaking gremlins in your head, check your compass.

Being compassionate to ourselves has a lot to do with balance. When we are balanced — meaning getting the things we need — we treat ourselves with love and kindness and those things are then easier to extend to others.

Remember, though, that “balance” is not a static thing; it must be fluid.

This brings to mind an image from my childhoood:

A level. I can see my small hands carrying it around and just laying it on random things and watching that bubble move and waiting for it to land. There’s that exact center but there is some leeway.

Leeway /li:wei/ noun. Freedom of action within set limits; room allowed for this; a safety margin (Oxford English Dictionary)

Isn’t that a perfect description of how balance should function in our lives? We aren’t building a house here but a life so aiming for this space and not always hitting it exactly is good enough.

There is freedom of action but also set limits.

The level in my toolbox tells me I really need to MOVE every single day.

But… I can miss a day occasionally and get right back to it the next. I can do 40 minutes one day and ten the next and 75 the next, depending on what kind of day I am having and what my body is needing.

To keep my mind healthy there are a whole list of things I “should” do every single day but there is a safety margin to all of it. Little bits count. Not too many misses in a row matter.

A compass and a level. Those are the main tools in my glitter box.

Yours?