My Process of Getting to Know the Moon, February 2021

At the most recent Winter Solstice I made a commitment to myself to deepen my understanding of and relationship with the Moon.

I don’t really remember when I first met the Moon. She has just always been there. I don’t remember when I learned that the Moon orbits the Earth and that the Moon controls the tides or when someone taught me about the relationship between the Moon’s cycle and the one happening in my younger woman’s body each month. All of these pieces of information have been in me for a long time; however, at Yule I committed to deepen my understanding of Her movement and energies, with a special curiosity about the reason for and the effects of the darkening phase of the Moon in each month.

I realize now - although I wasn’t aware of this consciously in December - that this desire to have a deeper, more aware relationship with Mother Moon is part of a larger process I’m always and will forever be a part of: the process of deepening my knowledge, understanding and experience of embodiment.

I have to admit, I have struggled in this particular cycle of the Moon that started as New on January 14th after a two day period of Darkness and then reached its Full face of light and brightness on January 29th.

My feelings of struggling have increased as the Moon has darkened. The struggle has manifested in multiple ways. Poor quality of sleep. Sheer exhaustion by early evening followed by waking fully in the middle of the night. Intense dreams. Unusual lethargy in the morning. A lack of motivation to explore my regular practices that, usually, I approach with fondness, if not actual glee.

And through all of this struggle I’ve been doing my best to explore the lesson that I believe the Moon offers us in this particular cycle: the experience of Grounded Uplift.

I was quite excited to begin this cycle of exploration. I remember thinking, as we wrapped up the last Dark Moon Sister-Circle, that grounded uplift was gonna be my jam! And for a bit it was. I even created a video for my Youtube channel about Core Awareness and moving from the Core that was inspired by my ponderings of this concept of grounded uplift. And then the Full Moon passed and since then life has felt challenging. At first I thought it was simply the normal winter season blahs that I usually feel in late January/early February; however, I realized that this experience has more of a quality of Pull to it. I feel pulled off my center. I feel as if I’m trying to Pull myself into the future more quickly than is possible. Meditating on this sense of Pull, I connected it with the energies of La Luna.

You may have heard people say “We are all connected.” I myself have been using the tagline “Remember, we are all in this together.” as I end most of my Embodiment videos I create for Youtube. I realized Interconnectedness was what I needed to slow down and give attention to: it seems so simple now that I have realized it

“Of course…I am connected to the Earth and the Moon is connected to the Earth and so…oh yeah, the Moon is connected to me. Interconnectedness. Wow.”

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To help me explain to you a bit more deeply how all this fits together I am going to shift focus and share a bit with you about my studies in movement, somatics and embodiment. If this isn’t of interest to you, I invite you to jump down to the next line of asterisks!

Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) is a observational framework to help me observe, experience, language and explore the body in movement (my own body, other bodies, bodies moving in their environment). I have been studying this framework at a very deep and high level for over a decade.

BodyMind Psychotherapy (BMP) is a “simple, user-friendly approach to working with the body in psychotherapy.” I have been self-studying BMP for more than a decade and am currently in the Level One Certification program. In BMP I am deepening my understanding of the value of and the practices of being fully present in the energetic physical sensory system I recognize as “my body”. I am exploring this work for my own personal deepening as well as to expand my capacity to be more fully present while in relationship with all of my different type of clients.

I realized just this morning that in my commitment to be more present and aware of the Moon, I am calling on facets of both of these frameworks. I use LMA when I am actively observing the ways She moves in Her own rotation as well as how She moves in Her orbit through Space around Earth. Like in both LMA and BMP, I am also being invited to pay attention to the way that Her presence and energy has effects on the environment as well as on Me as a part of this interconnected ecosystem.

In my studies in LMA, I have learned a “whole, part, whole” approach that allows me to have a better understanding of movement in any given context. This involves having a big picture idea of what you are exploring, observing or learning so that as you explore and learn about and from the parts you can then bring this awareness back to the whole so that, ultimately, you are in a dynamic spiral of deepening your understanding of both the whole system and the parts involved!

In BMP, we actively explore the Body Systems from an anatomical, physiological and psychological perspective. We use the “whole, part, whole” approach to bring our attention to what we experience as we attend to our Whole selves from the perspective of each body system as it relates to itself and to the Whole.

Wow, THAT was a lot of words. Never fear! I invite you to take a breath and know it is okay if your cognitive brain feels overfull or on sideways (as one of my dear friends describes it!) I invite you to take another breath and read on when you are ready if you’d like to deepen your understanding of all these words/concepts from an embodiment perspective.

If the idea of deepening your understanding resonates inside of you, I invite you to take twenty to thirty minutes to explore this practice:

First, allow five minutes to Check-in with your eternal resources of support. (the blue video link will take you to a guided experience, if you don’t know what this means.)

Then allow yourself five minutes or so to move in relationship with your Skin, ALL of it, every inch! (If this sort of movement feels challenging to you, I invite you to simply imagine the experience of moving with your Skin as if it is the leader of your dance.)

When you are done moving, take a two to three minutes to journal about anything you noticed as you moved/imagined or as you observe the effects of the experience. Possible things you might notice are a change in your vibe, a shift in the awareness of your sense of the size of your Whole or of your Parts. You might have noticed images, sensations, rhythms, stories, emotions, temperature, color or some other experience uniquely your own. Write it down without (too much) cognitive analysis!

Then Check-in again and clear your somatic palate. Settle. When you feel as if you are ready for another experience, allow yourself five minutes or so to move in relationship with your Bones, all the parts of your skeletal system. (Again, if movement does not feel safe or accessible, then I invite you to imagine letting your bones lead the dance.)

When you are done moving/imagining, again take a two to three minutes to journal about anything you noticed or notice as you write.

What did you notice about moving in relationship with your Skin? your Bones? How did the experiences differ? How were they similar? (‘d love for you to share in the comments!)

I have shared this with you because this type of understanding is interwoven in my story of my struggle this month and I appreciate the opportunity to support you in your own experience with my perspective/approach, if this is/was of interest to you.

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To return more directly to my process with getting to know the Moon and embracing the dark in this cycle:

When I started my focused exploration of this concept of Grounded Uplift some three weeks ago (oh my, it seems like months have passed since then!) I understood this exploration to be simply about the balance of energies between gravity and levity. In other words, I initially approached this as an exploration of the physicality of balancing those two dynamic stresses. To allow myself to experience the unconditional loving force of gravity that is essential for me to be in relationship with Grounded Support (as I mention in the Check-in video mentioned in the practice above) while also tending the experience of the kinetic energies that invite me to lift upward and support me to be an upright, moving being.

What I did not take into account in my oh-so cognitive/physical approach to this exploration is that I am relationship with the Moon just as the Earth is. Her energies PULL on the Earth’s fluids. Yes, she pulls on the oceans and lakes of the Earth and this means that She also pulls on the fluids in my body as well. Not only does she affect the blood pulsing in my veins, moving with each beat of my heart but her energy pulls on all the Parts of my entire Fluid system (yet another Body System!)

And whether we consciously realize it or not, our fluid system is intricately related with our Nervous System and our Emotions.

And although I did not realize it earlier in this moon cycle, the Moon has firmly and insistently reminded me of all of this connection in this last week. Was my nervous system affected? Yep. My emotions? Check. My inner tides? Oh yeah. Sleep? Yep. Mood? Yes yes yes!

Mother Moon has guided me to BE in the struggle. She has pushed and pulled me to shift my perspective, to more actively notice all the Parts of my process, parts that were disparate and disconnected three weeks ago. She has guided and continues to guide me (as the process is in no way completed) to, ultimately, have a deeper, richer understanding of all my Parts (Moon, Body, Movement, Spirit, Counseling Support, Therapy, Education, Meditation, Nature, Somatic Abolition, relationships, living life fully, LMA, BMP and and and…) and their relationship with my Whole.

It has been a struggle and yet in this uncomfortable experience She has helped me see that I have a pattern (that I cannot yet verbalize) that I would like to release: a pattern that can deprive me of my capacity to embody, to FEEL the Grounded Uplift dynamic that is always available to me…and to all of us. A pattern that she is inviting me to release (or at least, the parts that I am able) in this Darkening time, even as I write this blog post.

It is with this energy and understanding that I will be joining with you, my Sisters. Together we will blend all of our ideas, energies and desires about Grounded Uplift during this darkening of the moon cycle.

I look forward to gathering together to move, meditate and share in this month’s Embracing the Dark: A Sister-Circle Darkening Moon Meditation.

(If you are reading this after February 7th and feel called to join me in my Embodiment explorations, please check my website for upcoming events that may be of interest.

About the Size of It

It is me, lying on the floor, my body large enough to almost fill the space of the room I am. It is me, a mere dot of a concept on a planet rotating in its orbit in a universe of movement. I am so full, the breath so large it pushes against every edge of its confines. I am too big for this limited body. I am just one small person with so many ideas. I am almost non-existent as I walk through the woods, a mere human, so minuscule within all this Nature. My presence as Human is so large it invades and affects every inch of this planet Earth. This is about the size of it.

i think it is really important to scrub at our perceptions on a regular basis, give them a good shake up and dust off. Our point of view can so easily become stale, patterned, so much a part of the background of our being that we forget that it is there. We take things for granted - which can be very helpful because consider how overwhelming it would be to have to constantly have to consider every aspect of all the things we take for granted - yet it is also important to take some time to notice, to observe, to ponder the ways our perceptions have become patterned and to seek out ways that they can grow and change.

I think it is important to consciously choose perspective palate cleansers, like the lemon water between courses of a meal, intended to give us space on our tongue and in our experience to truly enjoy each dish for its own merit, The movement form of Express Yourself that I offer is designed to be that sort of thing, an opportunity give some space in your life so that you can access more enjoyment, more flavor of the every day.

The concept we will be exploring in the next Express Yourself is the perspective of size and how we take up space. The journal entry I shared above is one way I’ve explored this concept. I will share other ways to explore when we meet on Tuesday. During this event we will have the opportunity to be creative, to play with taking up space, to move ourselves, to share our stories with other equally curious folks in movement and words. And that, my friends, That’s About the Size of It. Look forward to moving with you soon.

A New Year, a New Dawn

Here we are, folks, at the end and beginning of another cycle of the human-created year. A segment of time based on the real travels of this planet Earth as it moves around the Sun, the greatest star in our universal body (at least from our everyday perspective here on Earth.) A new dawn, a new Year.

Consider this for a moment, if you will: as I write this and (possibly) as you read this, our planetary home returns back to approximately the same place in its orbit of the Sun, the same general place in Space that it was a year ago as we ended 2017 and began 2018.

This cycle by our home planet, around and round the Sun, is a glorious and dependable pattern on which we rely, often without any thought to it. The planet is constantly in motion and, as its residents, so are you and I. The Sun and our relationship to it is a powerful force in our lives and each day - whether with intention or not - we interact with this great being from different perspectives as we dance around its metaphorical throne in the middle of our solar system. As far as most of us are concerned, the Sun does not change course: it is stable and constant. It is the basis on which we measure time. The relationship of the Sun and the Earth determines our seasons. We need its light every day just as we need time to recuperate in the darkness that our spinning in orbit gives us. And it is gravity, the thing that supports us and keeps us grounded, that allows us to maintain this orbit.

As you absorb all of this information, I invite you to add this to your thoughts as well: imagine yourself as a speck of cosmic dust riding on this body of Earth orbiting the Sun, and remember that even as you sit still, even while you read this, you are always moving through Space. Notice the sensory experience of this. (This exercise can be ungrounding, so before you move on please take care to return your attention to yourself as a physical presence resting on this big planet, securely held in place by gravity.)

Now, I invite you to layer in this idea: you, as an individual, started your personal dance around and with the Sun at the moment you emerged from the womb and have been doing it ever since. At that moment in time and in a specific place on the planet, you moved from your watery confines and entered into existence at a unique placement somewhere on this great elliptical pattern that is the Earth traveling around the core of our solar system!

When we each celebrate our individual birthday, we are not only celebrating the date of our birth, but we also have the opportunity to celebrate the unique place where we initially landed on the wheel of the year and started our cosmic rhumba with the Sun. Our birthday can be our individual relationship within this cycle of the Earth’s year dance, if we choose to consider it this way.

Likewise, when we celebrate New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day on Dec 31 and Jan 1, we are acknowledging the beginning and ending points of this annual cycle as determined by some human (a Roman guy, if my memory serves me!) Observant astronomers had determined that the length of this cycle was 365¼ days but it was Caesar who decided the point in the cycle on which the year would end and, as a result, begin.

In movement work we call this type of conceptualization a “phrase.” A phrase always has a From, a Through and a To. In other words, I can describe the movement of this new year as coming From the time and place of 12/31/18 and moving Through the 365¼ days To the time and place of 12/31/19 when we will once again find ourselves approximately in the same place in Space in relation to the Sun that we were previously…or, in this case, are now.

Within this phrase of a year, we have many phrases because all movement has phrasing.

Phrases that are general to all of us as part of this cosmic dance are those like the moon cycle of approximately 28 days, the day cycle of 24 hours, the hour cycle of 60 minutes and on and on.

In addition we are always living and choosing and moving phrases that are specific to us such as the unique phrasings of our daily tasks and events, of experiences we have, or actions we take, of each breath.

Within all this movement we are constantly invited to recognize where, when, what and how we are moving From some experience or place, Through something and Toward yet some other place, experience or thing. We are invited to recognize that we can choose how we conceptualize our movement, whether it is how we relate to the phrasing of the larger cycles of the Earth moving around the Sun, or other similar cosmic scale patterns or how we attend to the smaller, more personal phrases like how we move in our everyday life, in relation to our Self, in relation to Others and in relation to our environment.

Some folks consider the Sun as a metaphor for our Soul’s purpose such as in astrology where we have something called the Sun Sign based on the date and placement of our birth (as I described above). Regardless of whether you believe in astrology or not, I invite you to recognize that we all have patterns that often relate to or orbit around one Core issue or theme throughout our lives, even while we are also dealing with smaller, everyday challenges and joys. As humans, we get to explore, choose, resist, consider and/or engage this metaphorical Sun around which we orbit. Unlike the planets in their orbits, we get to choose about how we move our own bodily universe in relationship to itself and to its world. We get to consider whether and what we orbit as well as how and when.

For example, when I tell my story, when I wake in the morning, when I show up to a meeting, when I become aware of a conflict or any of the other things I do in a day, I have the ability to ask myself, “what is the core issue around which I am dancing or around which this group is dancing?” “what do I bring to this moment From the past or do I have an intention I am trying to get To?” “Is there a larger phrase that I am also moving through?”

I can wonder: Is this the beginning of a new cycle and if it is, then how was I as I moved Through the place or experience that I am coming From? Is this the end of something? If it is, where and when did this cycle begin?

We can, if we choose, attend to such questions as:

Is this where and how I want this body or this body part to be in this moment?
Am I using a pattern of movement, reacting in a familiar, safe way?

Is the quality, mood, or attitude of my movement in tune with my intentions?
Are my movements communicating what I desire to be experiencing or sharing in this moment?

Am I carrying a story or belief with me from the past into the present moment?
Is there something I desire to change in how I am moving in my thoughts, my emotions, my energy and/or in my physical body?

The reality is as living beings we are always in movement. Life is movement. Change is movement. Breath is movement.

The Earth moves through the Solar System. Autumn changes to Winter. December turns to January. Your birthday will come around once again. Yesterday becomes today and today becomes tomorrow. You wake from bed. Your return to bed. You live one day at a time. You breathe one breath at a time. All movement.

Things - such as body parts, bank accounts, traffic, your mind, your belly, your concept of time, trees, tulip bulbs, the electric bill, your anger, your satisfaction - grow. They get larger. They extend or widen, lengthen or bulge. They advance or rise!

Things shrink. They get smaller. They flex or narrow or shorten. They hollow, retreat or sink back to the Earth.

This is movement at its most basic.

Movement is what tells us we are alive. And as humans we can attend to the movement, to the phrases of each breath. We can notice our actions From the moment of a thought Through To where that thought takes us. We can be conscious of our choices as we phrase a moment, a day, a month, a year, a lifetime. We can ask ourselves the questions like the ones I listed above or below at any time:

Where am I in Space in this moment?

Who or What am I interacting with?

What pulls or pushes me to move from Stillness?

What parts of my delightfully complex and physically, spiritually, emotionally, cognitively-able body am I using to support me as I move?

What is the timing that works best for me?

How am I moving?

Why?

These are the kinds of questions we can use at any time to deepen our relationships with our Selves as living beings on a living planet.

We can ask these questions as cosmic specks of dust, sitting in stillness. Even as we attempt to be motionless or even passive, we can, if we choose, let ourselves wonder about our unique place on this big glorious ball of energy and substance as it dances it way around and around its bright-fire ball center.

And we can ask them as we move like we are our own universe, on it less predictable path through its own solar system with other planets, stars and cosmic dust! Dancing, spinning and moving our way around our metaphorical Sun, through our days of Light and of Dark, we can ask at any point as we journey and return, each hour, each moment, each breath, each phrase.

We might be tempted to believe, when we find ourselves in what seems like the same place once again, that nothing has changed and that we are stuck in an endless cycle, but this isn’t really possible. Something has changed because there is movement. When we find ourselves in a familiar place, following a well-known pattern and we recognizing all that is the same, we can also be curious and ask “how is this also different?”

Consider this: the dancer never does the same dance twice. The choreography might be the same, with actions and placement on the stage consistent for each performance. But each time the dancer moves that known series of phrases (s)he brings something unique and different to the experience in that moment - sometimes intentionally and sometimes not - because, simply, the body has no choice but to be only and always in the precious, always changing present moment supported by the planet Earth as it rotates it way around the Sun.

Happy New Year’s Day...on whatever day you might be reading this!

To view the source of the image used, as well as for more information on the motion and cycles of bright objects, please click here!

Harmony and the Hoberman Sphere: Living Life More Fully with Space Harmony!

If you are interested in health, whether it is attaining it or keeping it, whether it is of the mental or physical type, and whether it applies to you as an individual or more widely organizational, I invite you to watch this video with a curious mind and then to read my response below.  I would LOVE for you to comment as well!

Here is the link to the video

What is interesting for me as a Certified Laban Movement Analyst (CMA) about what he says in this brief video about Systems Analysis is made so because I know that the Hoberman's Sphere is the result of the intersection of a Cube and an Octahedron.  This relationship of these geometric forms is important to me on several levels.

In Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) the Cube is the Platonic Solid that we use as our movement template for exploring CONSTANT CHANGE because the movement scales created from this geometric shape are always moving on a 3D Diagonal, which never includes a straight Vertical orientation. This is a challenge for humans, as we are very attached to our Vertical posture!

The Octahedron, on the other hand, is the movement template for exploring Stability because the movement scales created from this geometric form always assume the Vertical as one of the three orientations.

When we explore Space Harmony like we do in my Movement Fundamentals workshop that I call Moving Sacred Geometry we are inviting ourselves to move our bodies, A PHYSICAL STRUCTURE THAT CHANGES SHAPE AND FORM, in accessible ways that also gently nurture escapes from standardized modes of behavior.

Standardized modes of behavior are the movement patterns that we rarely consider or question until something goes awry.  These are also sometimes known as the basic activities of daily living.

When we EXPAND our awareness of our own movement capabilities through a practice like the scales offered in Laban's exploration of Space Harmony, we transform our perspective, expand our consciousness of what it means to be a fully alive human and deepen our resiliency and ability to respond to CHANGE!

This approach to life enrichment is one of the reasons why I resist when people try to call what I do dance because it simply is not just dance. Dance, in its many forms, is one aspect and one way of exploring the deep wisdom and complexity of what I have to offer as a CMA; however, LMA is an overall framework and approach to explore and expand one's abilities related to ALL movement, whether mental, emotional, spiritual, intuitive or physical, not only the act of dancing.

Space Harmon is specifically explored in the Movement Fundamentals workshop Moving Sacred Geometry; however, it is also present in some way as an inspirational and organizing principle in all of my offers, whether it is explicitly stated or not.  This is because living life more fully is not just a tag-line for me.  Supporting others to safely expand their awareness and ability to move themselves with more diversity in a wide-range of experiences IS what my work is all about.   Consciously actively exploring Laban's Space Harmony theory as a personal practice is one way I do this!

I do hope you will join me soon in some way for your own part of the exploration!

Eco-poesis: A Journey to NY and to my Self

Good morning, my community of Embodiment seekers, to all those who invite, strive, welcome and savor being more fully in their bodies and in Life!  This is one of, I hope, several posts about my journey to the 40th Anniversary celebration and conference of the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies (LIMS).  I hope to be writing more in the days, weeks and months that follow, about the people I met, the inspirations I’ve experienced and the ideas that I’ve touched or caught these past few days.   To extend my felt-sense connection to this incredibly empowering experience and to share this valuable wealth of knowledge with you my plans are to write often about what I have observed, learned, felt and explored. My goal, dear reader, is to also share with you as these experiences become more deeply integrated and embodied into the rhythms of my more routine daily personal and professional life.

In celebration of the 40th Anniversary of this educational institution, LIMS invited the Laban dance community to reflect on what role dance and performance art might play in shaping appreciation of cultural differences and creating equality between humans, other species and the natural world.  They adopted the term Ecopoetic as the inspiration.  This term combines “eco” from the Greek “oikos”, meaning family or house, and “poetic” from “poiesis”, meaning to make or to create.  This term was intended as an expression of the legacy LIMS represents, the care for the movement field that we as Certified Movement Analysts (CMA) all share, and the desire to collaborate in nurturing escapes from standardized modes of behavior.  Although this was the umbrella term used for the comprehensive collaborative multi-centered movement art performance in Washington Square during the conference, they also invited us to consider, conceptually, ecopoetic as a practice. Ecopoetic practice being one that relates to “an ecological way of thinking with a multifocused and open-ended perspective”, a practice that invites us to dialogue with our environment, its activities, and the other living beings in it in non-standardized ways without imposing ourselves over the surrounding spaces, or hindering their normal uses.

The material about the performance art piece ECOPOETIC (conceived and directed by CEO of LIMS Regina Miranda) explained that it was evoked by the concept of the early 20th century Movement Choirs created by choreographer/movement theorist Rudolf Laban (1879 – 1958) who believed that this collaborative structure promoted and satisfied core needs of human society: “sharing, relating and creating together.”   Some of you may recognize the influence of Laban on my own endeavor, the Mandala Community Movement Project, which was "birthed" on Earth Day of this year in Columbia, MO's own Peace Park.

Being in Washington Square on Friday evening, observing my professional peers immersed in their individual and collaborative creations of their unique ideas of ecopoesis, was profound.  I hope to be sharing pieces of video from these performances in the coming days so that you, too, can get some chance to witness this experience.

I also am having a resonant and very personal response to this concept of Eco-poesis, this idea of actively acknowledging the value of an activity in which a person brings something into being within their home space that did not exist before.  This resonates so strongly because it describes the drive within me that has always and continues to compel my work with Embodiment, a passion to bring to my community a way of exploring and being with movement in ways that I have not experienced in my time in the space that I call home.  I speak to this a bit in my previous blog post "What Do You Do and What Can I Expect?"  

The two ideas that really stepped off the page and jumped into my body when I read the material from LIMS about Ecopoetics are these: the action of caring for the movement field and the action of desiring to “collaborate in nurturing escapes from standardized modes of behavior”.  These  both speak so clearly to my heart’s desire that fuels my offerings.  Eco-poesis. Creating within my body, my home, my community, my family something which did not exist before  - and support the act of living life more fully.

I look forward to sharing more as it unfolds!