2009 was my 40th year, and though I was not completely happy about that number, it turned out to be one of the most auspicious years of my life.
At our friends' wedding in June, I innocently walked onto the dance floor and twirled my way back to myself.
I had stopped dancing in my mid-20's for so many reasons and for no reason that is good enough. I had known since I was quite small that "Dancer" was my central path in life, but severe depression does not like Joy hanging around.
Soon after that wedding and against the recommendation of all my Fears, I signed up for a two part YogaDance teacher training at Kripalu, and I start 2010 as a certified YogaDance instructor who dances every day.
I have even signed up for ballroom dance and am looking forward to so much more study of different forms.
I thought I was too old.
I thought my time for dance had passed. I wrote about that here.
There is no way to overstate the change that this has brought about for me.
I am a different person. I am the person I was born to be.
I am passionate and excited and happy and invigorated and challenged, and I wake every day with a sense of purpose and love for life that I have never known.
To read my Dance story, you can check out some of these posts:
This year, my main intent is to open a healing movement studio.
Healing movement, I believe, allows us to circumvent that part of our brain that constructs story. It allows us to change ourselves on a cellular and synaptic level. It alters our chemistry.
Talk or word-based therapies have their place, but I think they are best in deconstructing the past and understanding how we've gotten to where we are.
Healing movement allows us to construct the present and see our way to the future.
Besides, when you dance, you sweat and you cleanse and I guarantee you will, at some point, smile.
Here are some of my favorite resources for working on my Dance path alone, at home:
I Heart Yoga
I have been studying yoga for about 15 years.
I have always been of the spiritual seeking nature, but I came to yoga for its emotional and physical benefits. First, I thought it would be "safe" physically for the rest of my life, as opposed to dance (and as you know, I have changed my mind about this).
Second, and even more so, I started doing yoga for its stress relief benefits and the possibility that it might help me with depression, anxiety, and body image issues.
Yep, I had a few expectations.
Funny thing, though, is that those expectations were met.
Funnier still is that yoga not only became an integral piece in my mental health puzzle, but it also brought me incredible spiritual health and insights. Eventually.
My first yoga was attempted with Marcy reading instructions out of one of Deepak Chopra's earliest books. I worked it out in front of her, saying "Is this right? Do I look like the picture?"
I moved from that to a videocassette by Erich Schiffmann and Ali MacGraw. I think this video is a classic. The music and setting are still perfect (and keep showing up; new work by Shiva Rea reminds me of this video). Erich Schiffmann's teaching style is as relevant and efficacious today as it was then.
Schiffmann is from the Iyengar school so pose perfection became very important to me. (Always battling that inner dancer in front of a mirror.)
I have also dabbled in Vinyasa (a generic term if ever there was one), Ashtanga (brought out my competitive self a little too much), Kripalu (which I still do), and finally, Kundalini.
Kundalini Yoga was a revelation to me the first time I did it.
It is a unique system, and the most sophisticated of all yogas according to the great mythologist Joseph Campbell.
The first video I did of Kundali Yoga was with Gurmukh about 7 years ago. For two weeks afterward, I walked around flushed with glazed eyes. People thought something was wrong with me. I sweat constantly. It worked that fast to start cleansing my system.
I stopped.
I went back to it, and for years, I did nothing but. More specifically, for a few years I've done nothing but Kundalini Yoga as taught by Ravi Singh and Ana Brett.
Their Kundalini Yoga is not what the more Sikh leaning types would call "pure," but I think that's why I like it. It's a synthesis of KY and dance and other movement systems. With lots of chanting and breath work.
The chanting and breath work is like magic.
Joseph Campbell thought KY was so sophisticated because of it's reliance on the psychology of the chakras.
If you've never tried KY before, here are some of my favorite resources.
I have always been of the spiritual seeking nature, but I came to yoga for its emotional and physical benefits. First, I thought it would be "safe" physically for the rest of my life, as opposed to dance (and as you know, I have changed my mind about this).
Second, and even more so, I started doing yoga for its stress relief benefits and the possibility that it might help me with depression, anxiety, and body image issues.
Yep, I had a few expectations.
Funny thing, though, is that those expectations were met.
Funnier still is that yoga not only became an integral piece in my mental health puzzle, but it also brought me incredible spiritual health and insights. Eventually.
My first yoga was attempted with Marcy reading instructions out of one of Deepak Chopra's earliest books. I worked it out in front of her, saying "Is this right? Do I look like the picture?"
I moved from that to a videocassette by Erich Schiffmann and Ali MacGraw. I think this video is a classic. The music and setting are still perfect (and keep showing up; new work by Shiva Rea reminds me of this video). Erich Schiffmann's teaching style is as relevant and efficacious today as it was then.
Schiffmann is from the Iyengar school so pose perfection became very important to me. (Always battling that inner dancer in front of a mirror.)
I have also dabbled in Vinyasa (a generic term if ever there was one), Ashtanga (brought out my competitive self a little too much), Kripalu (which I still do), and finally, Kundalini.
Kundalini Yoga was a revelation to me the first time I did it.
It is a unique system, and the most sophisticated of all yogas according to the great mythologist Joseph Campbell.
The first video I did of Kundali Yoga was with Gurmukh about 7 years ago. For two weeks afterward, I walked around flushed with glazed eyes. People thought something was wrong with me. I sweat constantly. It worked that fast to start cleansing my system.
I stopped.
I went back to it, and for years, I did nothing but. More specifically, for a few years I've done nothing but Kundalini Yoga as taught by Ravi Singh and Ana Brett.
Their Kundalini Yoga is not what the more Sikh leaning types would call "pure," but I think that's why I like it. It's a synthesis of KY and dance and other movement systems. With lots of chanting and breath work.
The chanting and breath work is like magic.
Joseph Campbell thought KY was so sophisticated because of it's reliance on the psychology of the chakras.
If you've never tried KY before, here are some of my favorite resources.
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