Empathy isn't just for the hard stuff...

(I wish I could find the study I was reading because it was important but you know how … SQUIRREL!… And I’ve tried to find it again and just can’t. If I do find it some day, I’ll come back to this and update it.)

Onward… I was reading a study recently that came to the conclusion that perhaps — perhaps — almost 50% of the human population lacks the brain connections for true empathy.

Read that and weep. Or not.

If that stat is even close to true, it explains a lot about our world. It explains a lot about the seemingly endless struggle between people who focus on their own concerns and those who wish to better the world for everyone. (To put it all in compact and polite terms.)

That’s the macro look at it, but on the micro level, it can explain struggles we have with family and friends and even strangers when it comes to understanding motivations, the extension (or not) of care, the tangles we get in to over expectations, and on and on.

We are truly playing with different decks.

But with all of that, I bet in your mind, you’ve been focusing on the idea of empathy around difficult challenges.

There’s more to empathy than that and I’ve always sensed it but didn’t have the language for it.

It’s something I have been conscious of doing in my work since the beginning. I intuited that a huge part of what I do is really about making space for people to feel their feelings including BIG JOY.

That picture at the top… I love that moment between the two women on the right (Mara and Julie). They aren’t talking. They are simply finding shared joy in their playful embodiment.

Turns out there is language for this: Empathic Joy.

You can listen to a short podcast about the science of it right here.

Science, schmience… as usual it comes from an ancient philosophical/”religious” system: Buddhism.

And in Buddhism, it’s a practice. Of course, it is.

Mudita: sympathetic or unselfish joy, or joy in the good fortune of others. In Buddhism, mudita is significant as one of the Four Immeasurables.

(The other four immeasurables are: love, compassion, and equanimity. You can read more about them all over here.)

When someone gives us good news, do we start to think about our own lack of good news or are we just totally present to them, reflecting their experience back to them?

When we see a happy person out in the world, does that make us feel grouchy or judgy? Or do we take the opportunity to feel good with and for them?

This is the practice: all day long, watching for those moments of knee-jerk reactions that are grounded in jealousy or malice and checking them and replacing them.

I love this.

FREE 20 Minute Zoom Class to Help with Anxiety and Anger

This Friday, July 1st, I'll be doing a FREE QUICKIE (20 minutes) on Zoom specifically to deal with ANGER and FEAR and all the things we're feeling right now.

This is simple breath and movement work that can be done seated on the floor or in a chair. I always offer tons of modification.

This is also community ritual, which we definitely need more of right now (and forever).

We'll be doing a combo of a bunch of things I regularly use in the Peony Method (whether quickie or longer classes) that focus on the nervous system and creating happy brain chemical cocktails.

You can join without your camera on but I would love to see you!

We'll meet at 11:10 AM (United States, Eastern Time).

Once I see the interest, I'll get everyone the link.

Please let me know if you want to be included. You can give me a shout here or on Facebook messenger or anywhere where you and I interact.

I’ll also share a recording of this in the Sanctuary so if you can’t make it live, you can still access the work. (If you’re not in the Sanctuary, ask me to add you.)

Morning Nutbags Redux (with some changes)

When I started the Morning Nutbags morning zoom group for people to establish routines and rituals to create better starts to their days (and by “people” I mostly mean me… ha…), I really thought I would just do it for a couple of weeks.

That couple of weeks turned into almost 5 months. And then it just started to feel… off… or stale, and I thought maybe it had to do with the time of year we were entering into. Better weather, I thought, would negate the need for the group.

Now it’s been nearly two months without the group, and though at first, I was relieved not to have that responsibility Monday through Friday because you know… sleep, over the weeks it kept getting clearer and clearer to me how much I actually really need it.

And some in the group were meeting up here and there even during those months off. So others need it too.

New Format

We will be starting this group on Tuesday, July 5th.

This group will still be on Zoom. That’s the easiest thing.

We will start at 8:30 AM Eastern U.S. time. We will stay on zoom for about a half hour. At the end of the half hour, I’ll ring a little bell and we can say HAVE A NICE DAY! to each other.

But here’s the biggest changes:

There won’t be a waiting room so you come in between 8:30 and 8:35 AM. (No later so people aren’t distracted.)

You’ll enter muted and in silence because some people will already be doing their thing.

That’s it. No morning chat … not until AFTER if at all.

The point is to be there for each other energetically to help each other with our devotions.

When you enter, I might already be on the floor doing morning movement.

Or I’ll be writing.

Someone else might be meditating or painting.

That’s the point. It’s a quiet, supported room.

If you’re interested give me a shout on Facebook messenger.

I’ll create a group message where I’ll eventually share the link.

These times seem to be for breaking hearts

I shared this meme on my Facebook business page in the hours right before we knew what had happened in Uvalde, Texas.

And that night there was class to teach. Which seemed ridiculous, right?

Until one student said, “I knew this was one of the safest places I could be right now for my mental health.”

Amen and thank you.

Community has always been such a huge part of the classes I teach.

I can remember when I first started teaching in my very own space in Erie, and how many times, new students would come up to me afterward and tell me they’d never felt so instantly welcomed and safe… that when they went to yoga spaces in town sometimes they weren’t talked to. ((WHAT?!)) Or that exercise spaces just felt too competitive and there was none of that in our space.

Amen and thank you, again.

It seems that that has not changed at all on Zoom and that feels like a little miracle to me. That we can meet from across so many many miles, and still, the main thing that happens in class together is that we are present to one another and we move in compassion, witnessing and being witnessed in whatever is happening for us in that moment, whether articulated with words or silence.

Movement is life, for sure. These bodies are built to move (in whatever way currently capable) and it’s all written in our cells and DNA that this movement should be, needs to be joyful and communal.

And yet…

The real reason for these classes and the real reason for movement is that the best way for us to bond deeply is through these bodies, engaged in nonsexual intimacies that are SEVERELY lacking in our current culture.

We are aching to be seen.

We are dying to be heard.

Literally.

Anger, hatred, fear… if you trace it back to its very origins, it always comes to this: these people who walk around every day with hearts of stone (who may or may not act on that in a directly violent way)… these people are screaming inside to be seen and heard.

They don’t have the tools to know how to simply ask for what they need.

They either weren’t taught, or when they were quite small, those tools were used but denied.

These times seem to be for breaking hearts… I mean this in so many ways.

There is a breaking that is good and healthy. It’s the breaking that happens when we’re very young and we’ve learned that we are safe and it’s time to venture out on our own.

It’s the breaking that happens when we lose someone we loved more than we thought possible and yet we continue on and their memory becomes the foundation of our strength and hope.

It’s the breaking that teaches us what we want and need by showing us what we do not want and do not need.

It’s a breaking that too many have hardened themselves against and so they stockpile — whether it be guns or cruelty or hatred or shame or power over others.

We must also stockpile…

But we must stockpile inner strength, compassion, love, empathy, and a soft willpower that gets things done without hurting others.

We will likely not live to see the new world that will evolve from all that’s been happening over the last six years, but we must keep healing ourselves of these broken hearts over and over again so that we can go out beyond ourselves, beyond our smaller and safe communities like the ones in my classes, and do the larger work that is calling for us right now, the work that is begging to be seen and heard and done.

If you need community like this, if you need support, if you need safety, June classes are starting on June 7th, and we would love to welcome you.

Things Suck So We EXTRA Need Each Other and Our Practices

I don’t have the bandwidth to write some things that need to be written, but suffice it to say, that I am beyond angry at the world and that that anger has reignited some important and powerful parts of myself.

One part of me knows absolutely for sure that we need to be MOVING in these bodies MORE THAN EVER.

The next classes of sessions starts the week of May 10 so get over here and find something to do that will ground you in your power and energy because we need all of us at our best to get the shit done in this world that desperately needs to be done.

That said… I often use the words “body liberation” and it’s not some light thing that I say about feeling comfie. It’s much much much more than that and I want us all to be on the same page (or you can always go find another book to read because this book is about radical shit):

This is #bodyliberation: Creating culture and community that embraces every single human as the beautiful, fragile yet strong, inherently dignified beings we are. No exceptions.

We are creating (and we demand) culture and community in which your inner sense of yourself and your outer expression are never expected to clash.

We will no longer settle for anything less.

We stand in circle with all beings reaching for authentic, loving lives. #translivesmatter #womensrights #transrightsarehumanrights

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.

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.