Being seen for exactly who you are

I just came across a very old blog post from when I first started teaching… or maybe about two years in… and the main thing people seemed to be telling me about my classes was this very thing: that they felt utterly safe to be themselves and they felt completely seen as they actually are.

I like to think I am even better at doing that today after so many years.

I like to think this is one of the main gifts of this work.

AND I like to think that it still happens even via Zoom.

Though I don’t have to “like to think it” since students have confirmed that, for them, much of the same magic happens regardless of the form through which we have these experiences.

So if you’ve been on the fence about (re)joining us via the Zoom classes, April’s session might be the ideal time to try: it’s only 3 weeks, starting the week of April 11th, so it’s less time and resource commitment.

(Please remember that if for ANY REASON the cost is too much to simply let me know. You don’t have to tell me why. I will make adjustments for you.)

For now, registration is open for two versions of the hour long Peony Method and the twice a week, 20 minute quickies.

Another reminder: You can take them live, by video, or both.

Information and registration is here.

Body Based Therapies and Important Works by Women in the Field

I do get frustrated. I know that Bessel van der Kolk is the dude of the moment, as is Gabor Mate, and I appreciate their work in my own life. Finding them via academic research before they were in the popular limelight was part of what saved me.

I’ve studied with van der Kolk in an intensive that was, well, intense. For a lot of reasons. He is brilliant, but like anyone, he has his limits, and like anyone, his work rides on the work of others not seen.

A particularly frustrating moment reminded me that we’re all humans with blind spots. At one point he and his assistant laughed at me (yes, laughed) when I suggested that perhaps in a class where manual, hands on body manipulation is used, when working with sexual assault victims, maybe — just maybe ((sarcasm)) — they should be asked if they would be more comfortable with a teacher who was a woman or at the very least, a teacher who is not going to touch them. (I do NOT believe in exposure therapy, and van der Kolk has been very vocal in his hatred of it for veterans — but not apparently for women who have been raped, assaulted, or abused by men.)

I would like more women to be aware of this attitude and perhaps start to look for other voices.

Here’s a short list of books that are important in this field, some of which predate the popularity of van der Kolk and his contemporaries.

(A note: I also had the privilege of meeting and listening to Peter Levine. He is a gentle and loving spirit and I am glad that more and more people are getting to know his work. He seems to walk his talk in a more compassionate way, not depending so much on aspects of toxic masculinity to get his point across.)

First and foremost, THIS BOOK by Judith Herman was originally published in 1992. She was on the edge of this work, saying things out loud that others hadn’t dared to yet. She doesn’t get enough credit. Her work is important.

The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller was published in 1979, and Alice Miller was ostracized for putting in writing much of what we now take as common wisdom.

The Body Remembers by Babette Rothschild was published in 2000 and there’s a second volume in 2017. This work gets more into the somatic aspect of trauma and trauma treatment.

Bone, Breath, and Gesture is from 1995 and is a compilation of various writings from the field of somatics over time. The one I am linking to is volume one. This book demonstrates how so much of the original thinking in somatics based therapies was, of course, developed by women. (See my surprise face)

Women and Madness by Phyllis Chesler was first published in 1972. It’s frustrating when we lose sight of the history of these thoughts and the originators are left behind. This book revolutionized how we looked at and talked about mainstream medicine. This started our understanding of how SHIT mainstream medicine is when it comes to the care of women. (And we’re STILL fighting this damn fight…)

This book, first published while I was in college in 1988, isn’t about medicine or somatics but it kinda is?… Writing a Woman’s Life by Carolyn G. Heilbrun is a book I go back to again and again. It’s IMPORTANT. It’s short and it’s powerful. It’s about the effects of cultural expectations on every aspect of a woman’s intentional expression and creativity.

Like I said, this is a short list so as not to be overwhelming. Do you have any you would add?

No pain... no pain

I’ve always been what I call a “muscle through-er” in dance and that speaks directly to how I have approached life.

But deep grief will do one thing for sure: Burn away anything that resembles bullshit in your life.

This whole world is doing its best to make us all angry, terrified, pushy, mean, cruel, hateful, judgy… you name the ick and the world is doing its best to bring that out of you.

It’s not what we’re built for.

Nope.

As hard as it can be sometimes to believe, we are built for love.

Love is the only path worth walking.

And that has to start with you. It has to start with this body you’ve been given.

How you treat that body is how you treat the rest of the world.

Look around at the “wellness” and “fitness” worlds and see how they are being revealed for the human hating, perfectionism pushers they actually are. Those worlds (not everyone in them) have space for only certain types of humans. Those worlds are a reflection of toxic capitalism and they are colonizing from every direction — whether they are actively stealing practices from indigenous communities and cultures or trying to colonize your mind and body for their own ends.

Pull back.

Say no.

Dive into delicate and curious and hopeful and compassionate and playful.

That is where your humanity can flourish and expand.

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!