Spend more time inhabiting your body. Create your own weekly movement practice. Be more present in your leadership, fitness and everyday life…
Allowing What Is
How often do we find ourselves trying to be something, someone, or somewhere that we’re not? It’s not that we want to. No. If you asked me, of course I’ll tell you I just want to be myself. But the “shoulds” are so ingrained and so automatic that much of the time we are running someone else’s movie script in our lives without the benefit of our own awareness. We’re addicted to should. I should smile, should be professional, should speak up, should slow down, should lose weight, should be more understanding, should...
read moreSteps and Stances
Everyone knows that love requires a little give and take. In practice it’s not easy. Especially if we’re getting to know someone for the first time, it’s tough to strike the perfect balance between advancing toward, making accommodations, and asking for what we need. Even if we have known our partner for years, we may still find it challenging to accurately assess the best way to connect in any given situation. Learning to meet our own needs, while simultaneously giving of ourselves to our intimate partner, is a lifelong dance of steps...
read moreThe Creative Source
There is a place from which all thoughts, feelings, ideas and emotions come. Some may say it’s deep inside the body. Some will call it consciousness or God. Others will say it’s part of a collective energy field to which we are all connected. Regardless of your belief system, you may have had the experience of tapping into that source at one time – either by choice or by accident – and accessing a pool of resources you didn’t know were available to you. For the sake of simplicity, lets call this reservoir The Creative Source...
read moreIM-PRO-VISE
improvise – v. the practice of acting, singing, talking and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one’s immediate environment and inner feelings. Do you like to improvise? Most people I know would put themselves into one of two broad categories: those that love structure, planning and order, and those that enjoy spontaneity. Folks in both categories may enjoy a variety of movement activities like dance or martial arts. But the way they practice, and the specific kind of dance...
read moreThink With Your Belly
This week in Conscious Dancer Magazine, an article that caught my attention by Philip Shepherd, author of New Self New World: Recovering Our Senses in the Twenty-first Century. Educated in a Somatic tradition similar to my own, the author described the benefits of dropping from your head down into to your “Hara,” the Japanese word for the center of gravity located in the belly area of the human body, just below the navel. The principle of centering the body in the belly is one of the foundations of Strozzi Somatics, and a topic I can...
read moreTo Feel ALIVE
What is it to feel alive? It’s such a simple thing that we often take it for granted. To look into a lover’s eyes and feel a rush of warmth. To sense your atoms buzzing after a long soak in a hot tub. To feel the adrenaline pumping though your body as you near the finish line. To feel the base pulsing through your body as you dance to your favorite song. Without naming it, we know these peak experiences are connected to a sense of aliveness. Their hallmark is the glow – something just a little bit more remarkable than the...
read moreA Solid Foundation
Enter, 2012. Welcome to the next chapter of time, and the next year of your life. January has always been one of my favorite times of the year. The holidays are over and we’re back to the daily grind – true. But there is something exciting about the chance to make a new start that January can’t help but offer. Each year in January, according to Western calendars, one book is closed and another is opened. In some countries, the momentum of January is preceded by a lengthy break from work: weeks of downtime, reconnection with...
read moreBe More Generous
How many of us live our lives in fear of being a burden? Have you ever held back a comment for fear of taking up too much airtime in a conversation? Or held back a request for help for fear that others would feel pressure to accommodate your needs? If so, you are not alone. In fact, as far as I can tell, this is a pervasive phenomenon in our society: we just don’t want to become a burden. And we don’t want to be burdened. These fears run under the surface of many interactions and stifle our capacity to experience the abundance we so...
read moreFirst Find Center
No matter one’s age, gender, race, ethnicity or nationality, there exists a universal, biological truth of the human body: when scared, surprised or threatened, the body’s fight-or-flight response kicks in. This response has served each of us as a powerful and important protection from danger throughout our lives. However, the effects of sustained exposure to the chemicals produced by this natural response are undeniably damaging to our physical, mental and emotional wellbeing. How can it be that our greatest source of protection...
read moreTaking up Space
They say that a goldfish will grow to be small or large, depending on the size of its environment. With people then, might it not be the same? On one hand, that sounds like a crazy hypothesis, right? But let me say a bit more… This week I’ve been practicing taking up space. For example, I’ve been filling up the space in my new flat, which is much larger than any space I’ve lived in these past few years. It hasn’t happened automatically. Rather there’s been a genuine adjustment period. It feels like growing. In the first...
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