A bit of radiance

Today I started teaching a fresh online session of morning quickie kundalini, and as I was preparing, it hit me that I wanted to share a tiny reading at the beginning of class.

Then I realized… whoa, I haven’t even wanted to pick a reading for so long, much less read it aloud in class, thanks to the darkness of utter disbelief in anything but the material world that has been plaguing me for the last few years. (I wrote about my sudden release from depression related atheism in the previous post.)

This felt like a big deal… yet another layer of change or another layer of becoming myself again.

And when I was explaining this at the beginning of class, the glee with which long term students reacted to my little announcement confirmed my feeling that we’d all been missing this.

If you’ve been in classes with me, you know I select these randomly by letting the book fall open or having someone yell out a page number.

So here’s the one I read this morning. It’s from this book, which is one of my favorites ever.

Radiance Sutra #61

Adorable one,

Sit or lie down, completely immobile,
Beholding the cloudless sky —
Or if there are clouds, the sky beyond.

As vastness envelops you,
The body vanishes,
Thoughts forget to come.
In this moment,
You are the nature of the great sky.

How YTT is awakening parts of me that I thought were just gone

Have I written about doing a Yoga Teacher Training here? I got an opportunity to do a sort of trade because the training is at the studio where I now teach Peony Somatic Dance and the owner very much believes in staff development.

And I knew when the opportunity came that it was the right thing for me, not even necessarily as a teacher but as a human. I needed something to help with the rut I was in.

I have, over my life, gone through many cycles of depression and a good number of those come along with a friend named atheism and a side buddy called cynicism. Not even just skepticism, which is okay in my book and healthy, but the toxic cousin cynicism which shuts down our capacities for awe and curiosity and wonder.

This last cycle, someone wise pointed out, really started with the death of Peony. At that point, something in me just froze.

And then the atheism just stuck around. I’ve never had it last over a year. This time, it was probably about 3 years.

So I started to think, Okay, this is it. This is me now and forward.

I dove into it like I do anything. I studied and read and thought and wrote.

Atheist eventually became an identity that I was even somewhat comfortable with.

Then I started this YTT. Months before, I had started with a really excellent therapist, and I was also finally back to journaling thanks to this app.

I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but I left a weekend of YTT (and I’m just over halfway through now) and I knew I had to start chanting again. Specifically to Ganesh. This chant.

Within days of starting that, I don’t know… a big old iceberg in the center of my being started to melt.

And out popped belief. ((ha))

It was that sudden. But not sudden at all, right? Since I had been carrying that iceberg around for almost 3 years.

And it’s melting faster by the day. Every few days, I get this butterfly feeling in the pit of me and I can tell there’s been another layer released, and with that, more emerging of the parts of me that I thought were just gone..

I thought that Ganesh and some tantric philosophy would be it. I assumed that would be enough.

But we are born into certain cultures and those cultures run in our very blood.

I found myself ordering some Thomas Merton. Then another. I just did it… didn’t stop to question it… followed the impulse that was definitely coming from a body level.

So I’m reading Merton outside in our wee backyard every morning with the birds.

I’m as stunned as maybe you are (or aren’t).

(I’m thinking a lot of us are in need of that Camus quote on my photo right there…)

Peony Somatic Dance: the basic parts of a class

I’ve put together all the shorts that Linda Soto, Jillian Hynes, and I made to demonstrate the first half of a Peony Somatic Dance class. They’re all in one 5 minute video now on my YouTube channel.

You will also see that I’m building new playlists of free material. Soon there will be an entire playlist of shorts demonstrating basic somatic movements. It would be awesome if you would subscribe. (Thank you!)

And here’s the new complete video:

A story about overcomplicating and underestimating...

On Wednesday I went to an Orange Theory class that they were calling "Everest."

Spoiler Alert: I did not take any kind of clue from that title.

This was the day that I said on Facebook that I had I hit some sort of wall at about the 50/55 minute mark of my morning class.

Now keep in mind: I had been to the previous two days’ classes at Orange Theory, had taken a hard yoga class, and had just come out of my first yoga teacher training weekend.

But I still thought... WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME!?!?!? (You can chuckle.)

The Overcomplicating Part

I spent a good chunk of that early evening talking to Craig about it. We looked at my water intake (great! perfect!) and what I had been eating. We both got on our phones to try to figure this out. ((FFS))

Now two important things DID come up that I will be working on: Making sure I'm getting enough calories (without counting ... tricksy but doable) and watching my iron intake (I tend to be slightly anemic and can deal with it with food and B12 but I have to be AWARE).

Fastforward...

The underestimating part

CRAIG (who is definitely currently in better shape than me... I mean, he does the Beast on the Bay -- an obstacle 10 mile run -- with barely any training)... CRAIG took that same class that night while I was teaching locally.

And the next day after work, he said he was utterly exhausted and?

THAT IT WAS FROM THAT CLASS.

LIGHTBULB.

IT WAS A HARD FUCKING CLASS, CHRISTINE.

So yeah... I immediately had overcomplicated things -- instead of just understanding the class was freaking difficult -- and then I underestimated MYSELF by thinking there must be something "wrong" rather than just seeing it was a hard class and ANYONE would be tired.

So... you know... where are you doing crap like this to yourself?

The reality of commitment and consistency and why most people give up

This photo is from about ten years ago (and my hair is dyed so no, I didn’t go silver that fast).

A lot has happened since I took that photo (I mean… I’m taking it from a mirror which tells you a lot has happened even just with phones… ha).

A lot has happened since I took that photo. That, my beautiful nutbags, is a huge understatement.

Even if we only look at the “pandemic years,” so much has happened.

Above it all, the thing that has stunned me the most and has had the biggest impact on this body and mind:

Deep depression like I thought I would never see again came back, and yet again, ate all of the things that are my healing.

Sure, I continued to teach movement but I wasn’t wholeheartedly engaged. I was mostly going through the motions, which you may or may not have noticed. My depression was obvious in general, but I think when I was teaching, you could almost believe I was okay.

But I wasn’t creating any new methods. I wasn’t reading about movement or watching videos or seeking new movement. Big red flag.

I wasn’t listening to my favorite music when I wasn’t teaching. Big red flag.

And biggest red flag ever: I was only dancing when I was teaching and that wasn’t a lot.

Re-enter commitment

I am not sure exactly when it happened, but at some point in the last year or so, that depression started to lift. I think it had a lot to do with returning to playing tennis.

Which makes sense. The first time I seriously kicked depression out the door was when I started to dance again at the age of 40.

It seems I need some sort of return — specifically (and totally unsurprisingly) — to something physical that I have loved in the past.

I got obsessed with tennis. OBSESSED.

And it broke something open inside of me: my body was relearning commitment.

And finally consistency

But tennis is only during the good weather. (Alas, it’s too expensive around here to belong to a club.)

So I waited for the season to start again and started pretty much from scratch at rebuilding my skills.

But my obsession with tennis eventually led to consistency.

I realized I needed to be doing something more tennis-like (as in INTENSE CARDIO and lots of fast twitch muscle stuff) during the bad weather months, which made me do something I did not want to do: join some sort of gym.

I did this thinking that I would quit once tennis season started because I was only doing it to stay ready for tennis, right?

But surprise! I found the thing that created the consistency on top of the commitment. I found the thing that I am willing to get up early for, that I am willing to push myself into discomfort for, that I will not stop now that it’s summer.

Finding Orange Theory was a literal life saver (if you understand how life threatening serious depression can be).

And not because of the Orange Theory workouts. Not at all.

Finding it was a lifesaver because it supports me to do the things that are my life saving medicines.

Not only am I already, I think, showing signs of being a better tennis player this summer than last (and we’ve only played a handful of times so far), but it’s impacting my dance. It’s given me my strong legs back and my balance and of course my stamina.

And it’s only going to get better.

But here’s what I really want to say to you:

Commitment and Consistency for the Win

It takes time.

I don’t think I’ll really start to see the depths of change I want to see for another few months, and I don’t think I’ll be back to the strength and agility I had in that photo for probably a year.

And this is where most humans fail: once they don’t see the change they want within a short period, they quit. And then they blame whatever they were doing but it’s really the lack of commitment and consistency.

This is a long game, folks. As in, for the rest of your life.

Settle into it. Give into it. It’s the only way.

Three more somatic techniques for nervous system regulation

(You can review the first three somatic techniques of spinning, jumping, and shaking.)

As I wrote about before, somatic healing techniques are embedded in a Peony Somatic Dance class from the first breath to the last bit of movement. We aren’t always doing them in a strict “here is this somatic move” way.

So for this series, I’m breaking them down and talking about the effectiveness of each.

Slow Walking

Slow walking comes directly out of my Butoh studies and practices, and I think it is one of the most important fundamentals in all of the methods of Peony Somatic Dance. There are so many variables that we can play with here. It’s really never-ending.

Out of the all of the practices, the widest range of humans declare this to be their favorite — from the kids I taught in residential schools to elder dancers and everyone in between.

Pushing

If you’re feeling frustrated in particular, there’s nothing quite like pushing. Approach the wall in all its metaphorical glory and imagine you truly can push it down or push through it.

Wrapping

If you are feeling overstimulated or having some issues with dissociation, wrapping is so freaking helpful. Like I say here, it’s more than just a weighted blanket or a good firm hug. And one of the best things about it, of course, is that you’re totally in control of pressure and tightness.

When you make a mistake during an important project

I was in Erie this past weekend to film a project with my choreography peeps. One of them is moving quite far away and the scheduling of this was challenging, to say the least. For a bunch of reasons, including just finding a damn space.

Anyway, this could be the last time this particular mix of people works in the same room together for a long time… or even ever. Life can be strange and who knows where it will take us.

And this group of women… I adore them.

We got everything done that we needed to get done under the two hours we had. It went perfectly. And there were cupcakes so what more could we ask for?

Or so I thought. Until I got to my hotel room later that night and realized I had not captured the first video. (Later someone helped me to find a short version I had deleted.)

You can imagine the vitriol that I aimed at myself. I could barely sleep.

How could I mess this up? I kept thinking, over and over. It felt unreal to me.

How? This brain, that’s how. This brain that can be so creative and interesting and then so… bad at the tiny details.

There was a ton of shame around this, and I wasn’t sure I would share it beyond a small group of humans.

After a few days, I got over myself. I reminded myself that I had caught most of what we needed and I can work with that. And I got some great photos as you see here.

My point? We all fuck up but let’s try to be nicer to ourselves when we do, ‘k? (Unlike how I was this time…)

Joy List May 2024

I haven’t done a list since February of this year so here we go…

This is not for everyone but it’s an interesting take (to me) on procrastination and what to do about it. I realized while watching it that I was already kinda doing what he suggests and that I just needed it articulated to help me do it more consciously and with more direct intent.

I would not consider myself a Swiftie though I totally admire her and her songwriting (not so much her billionaire status about which she needs to learn from Dolly Parton but I digress…)… anyway, I can’t even name a song actually but I know her when I hear her. And this video is freaking stunning and there are surprise guests for those of us who cried in the theatre at Dead Poets’ Society.

Thanks to our beloved cellist-muse Zoe Keating, I found a writer on Instagram writing about ageism in some profoundly important ways. Go here just to see a few quotes and make sure to follow her.

Young men like this give me hope for our future; he talks about how men claiming to be “more logical” is false and that the reality is they lack compassion and empathy.

My favorite dancer in a while. She’s only in 7th grade. Make sure your sound is up and be amazed at her utter and complete embodiment.

Prime is Scotland’s first semi-professional dance company for people over 60. I’m taking a LOT of inspiration from this.

If you’ve still not watched the Netflix documentary about Jon Batiste and his wife Suleika Jaouad, go do that. Right now. And then read her book.

And this is a reminder that if you’re ever in Columbus, OH, you can drop into a Peony Somatic Dance class with me at Heartfelt Yoga.