Cultivating Beginners Mind

  

"Beginners Mind" is talked about a lot in Buddhism and Yoga Traditions. But how can we translate this perspective into our dancing? Most people feel very awkward and even vulnerable when beginning something new and that is normal. But often people want to hurry as fast as they can to get past being a beginner so that they can not look foolish anymore and to therefore feel more comfortable and confident. We want to "Master" something or become an expert. Nothing wrong with that either. But what people fail to realize is the power in the process and that the process should never be pushed past to achieve a self congratulatory label of "Master". To do so leads to ego and a closed mind which is not open to growth and possibilities. A true Masters Mind aims to embody Beginners Mind always and completely because discovery and growth is the goal. Once a person embodies Beginners Mind they discover just how deep the rabbit hole goes and that it indeed goes on forever. This leads to a better quality of experience. The person is no longer rushing and wanting to be somewhere other than where they are. Indeed yogis and people who meditate must start from exactly where they are and so must dancers. Being here now from exactly where you are coming from is a great power which puts you in the position to make use of all of your strengths. It allows you the ability to gently see and accept your weaknesses so that you may encourage and strengthen your weaknesses into strengths 

  

There is much magic in being a Beginner. Even if it's something you have done for years and years you can cultivate Beginners Mind. It cultivates and infuses your practice with fresh energy to motivate you to continue. A curious mind never tires of finding what is around the corner to discover. In this way we study and practice for the sake of it. For our own growth and for the growth of others rather than a self involved form of practice to out do and crush the competition. If we practice in this way Dance becomes Yoga. A supreme experience of union within. Whether a person has spiritual beliefs or not this way of thinking and practicing leads to a solid and committed practice which means that we have achieved success. We often do not continue with anything if it does not serve our deepest interests for the long term. Practicing Yoga, Meditation, Weights or Belly Dance for only competition or only to lose weight will usually cause burn out. To avoid burn out the practice must feed something deep inside and all of us need our curiosities to be fed. We all need that feeling of discovery and magic because when we have that, then all of the world lights up and looks different. The world becomes not so much of a dreary place and that is how the power of the Beginners mind works. Without it a practice will likely be difficult to grow for it to thrive. 

  

When we begin if we have already made our minds up about something we are closed to growth and to discovery. If we need so much to be an expert we push past the foundation of beginning which is where all of the substance of any practice lives. We might never actually know what anything is including ourselves if we do not cultivate Beginners Mind to be open to new ways of thinking, seeing, feeling and perceiving.

  With Beginners Mind we also get to do something that we need very much. We need to have the ability to take an honest look at ourselves to see our imperfections and be ok with it. To be so ok with it that we aren't happy covering it up. The Beginners Mind takes risks and puts it all out there for people to see. It cultivates an almost fearless quality. We know that we may have trouble with something but we know from experience that what we couldn't do before grew into something more. We know that we can do it from experience because even if what we are doing is new in a lot of ways it is no different. It's the same process and all we have to do is invest our time, energy and concentration to see our growth manifest. 

  

  We tend to think that we want certainty, solidity and safety. We are human and of course we want and need these things. But we also need the opposite in order to thrive. We need to not know sometimes and to wonder what's next. It may feel a little terrifying to not know where or what you'll be doing a year from now even if you make a plan but at the same time it's exciting! What will tomorrow bring? Or next year? Who knows what great things, places and practices I could discover! 

  

  Sometimes as we age or as we develop years of experience with something the way we perceive the world and our lives becomes muted and dry of energy. In some ways we embrace a kind of perception that feels depressing though we call it a symptom of ageing and nothing being new anymore. It's true but this only means that we need to remember the kind of sight we had as a child or teen-ager. When we were the ultimate beginner in everything! The kind of sight that endlessly wonders and is curious because they know they have so much to discover. A person can live one hundred years and still be capable of being in awe of something they never discovered before but only if they look. To continue in what we do and to be able to commit ourselves to it we can find may ways to keep it fresh even as our practices become more and more seasoned. We deeply need to have possibilities. When our possibilities run dry often we lose our sense of hope.

  

  A person with Beginners Mind honors the Beginner in everyone and loves to see people learn something new and to "begin" because it's magic! It clears away notions of status, celebrity and one up man ship. All that matters is the dance for the sake of dancing. The art for arts sake. It can be easy to let extra pesky intentions get mixed up in our reasons for doing something. But it's up to us to question them and to filter them out for quality practice, quality community, and quality life. 

  

  The Beginners Mind in me honors the Beginners Mind in you!

Healing From Almost Anorexic

  Yes, Almost Anorexia is a thing. Some people still have trouble believing or understanding it but nevertheless a lot of people find that they have been dancing on the edge with eating disorders of some kind for years and perhaps don't even know it. I found this book through the local library as I was searching for books to support me in what I felt was something that had always been there. The name of the book drew me in and made me curious and as I read it made a lot of sense to me. It made me look at things differently but it also had me questioning some things. Like, are all methods for losing weight basically encouraging people to develop eating disorders? I thought about it and my conclusion is not necessarily but maybe. Because eating disorders of any kind are what can be seen as an addictive behavior it would stand to reason that diets, exercises, eliminating entire food groups and the like would make it easy for an Anorexic or an Almost Anorexic to go deeper. Just as putting alcohol in the same room as an Alcoholic would undoubtedly tempt them and to fall off the wagon.

 But fitness and eating healthfully cannot be ignored so these things cannot be ignored by a person with Eating Disorders. Balance is tricky for everyone especially because there are so many opinions about what diets are healthy and what ones will "make you lose weight". Many times the opinions are put forward as facts when there are other opinions out there which conflict with them. All diet regimens and exercise regimens out there do not trust the person to rely on their innermost instincts to eat or exercises instinctively, naturally and healthfully. Over the years I did not try ever single diet out there but there were diets that I definitely hid behind. Veganism was one diet that I hid behind and within spiritual and yogic communities it was easy to hide behind periods of fasting.

 Many people think that Anorexia or eating disorders which are related are all about vanity or all about how one looks. It isn't as simple as that. It goes deeper. Sometimes when many things in an Anorexics life are out of control and it isn't in their hands the most readily accessible thing to have control over is all of the things that they can do to lose weight. It is very seductive because the greater culture supports people doing "anything" to lose weight. We have some fitness leaders that are similar to cult leaders who use their language to rope susceptible people in and pretty much say that losing weight is " all that they care about". This particular kind of philosophy is very dangerous and fitness leaders of all kinds including dance teachers owe it to their students to consider the words that come out of their mouths. To someone who is teetering at the edge of Almost Anorexia or Anorexia words from the mouths of a teacher can do much to send them over the edge. But teachers and fitness leaders also have great power to send people in the other direction towards health and a holistic quality of life.

 I never became so sick from Almost Anorexia that I had to be hospitalized but yes it does happen. On the outside people cannot see whether someone is Almost Anorexic or Anorexic until the person has lost a huge amount of weight in a short time or if the person wasn't able to disguise their behavior. A person can do a lot of damage to their body taking part in extreme measures to lose weight even if their body weight is 130-140 pounds. People tend to not realize that but it's a truth.

 Over the years I checked myself in the mirror or windows of shops a lot. I constantly felt self conscious but it didn't stop me from Belly Dancing, being an Exotic Dancer or modelling nude for drawing classes. My perception of myself would shift radically and over the years I decided that I could trust no mirror and especially no camera lens. Aside from that many things outside of my control got in the way of my progress and eclipsed my dreams. It was too difficult to hold onto my dreams and to see them come to fruition which felt vulnerable and powerless. I also expected myself to somehow be able to see my dreams through even with all that was going on and had been going on. So a lot of the time the most accessible thing was to work out a lot and to study methods for changing my diet to lose weight. But both of these things while stressed out are very hard on the system. The body and mind doesn't handle changes of diet or athletic exercise while under deep stress. And then when methods don't work or come quickly enough it's easy to think of how easy it would be to skip a meal or skip two, or three. Or to limit your intake to broth.

 Healing is possible for people with eating disorders but it takes concentrated effort and a compassionate understanding and acceptance that at times you might fall off a little or that thoughts related to eating disorders may come up. In my own practice I resist the temptation to fast or to do Intermittent Fasting. I resist becoming completely 100% vegetarian or vegan again because I know how all of these diets affected my body and mind. And I know how eliminating food groups as being sinful affects me. I also remind myself of my priorities and tell myself what matters like the fact that I haven't developed Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia which runs in my family. I am grateful that not only I can still walk but I can dance. I am also grateful that after a bout of having pain in my knees that they are better,that I can do level changes and floor work. I focus on my strengths and my passions. I don't deny myself to have them so that I can spend the majority of my time making myself a size 6. My body is my body with muscle and flesh. The only time I have really lost weight was when I had a cyst on my ovary which blocked my organs. This meant I was throwing up and feeling sick unlike anything I had felt before. I could not eat for weeks. But thinking like an Almost Anorexic I loved that I was losing weight. With everything I was going through at the time that wasn't in my control and was absolutely horrible and even with being as sick as I had been, I loved that I had lost so much weight. And when I was better before I got worse again, I was afraid of gaining it back again. These are the thoughts of someone with Almost Anorexia or Anorexia. The more a person with an eating disorder indulges in the behaviors the more it changes brain chemistry and therefore the way they think. It becomes harder and harder to rationalize or to gain perspective, to create real priorities. That is why it is very important to not eliminate any food group completely unless the person is allergic or intolerant.

 I both trust and don't trust what I see when I look in the mirror or a picture of me. I know that my eye sees better than a camera lens and that many things are going on to distort the image. I also know that not all mirrors are equal, lighting effects everything. And the state of mind and the way a person looks out onto the world at everything and themselves changes the way a reflection or image is seen too. When I look I remind myself it is an illusion that doesn't reflect reality and it doesn't reflect all of who I am either. I hold myself back from body checking as much as I used to. But I also look to see beauty and grace. It's important to be able to stop body checking in a bad way. To refrain from that but then to be able to look for the good and the beauty. It's also important to remember that perception can change day by day or within a day depending on what is going on. And to notice that when your perception changes so quickly within such a quick amount of time to be stubborn about not believing it. That your perception of yourself and your body and wanting to indulge in losing weight and body obsessive behaviors has only changed from some outside event. "Feeling fat" is not an emotion yet to many people with eating disorders it comes to be a prominent feeling that takes the place of other negative feelings. It becomes a way of keeping other difficult feelings from awareness. Or sometimes it corresponds with a strong held belief that this culture actually encourages. Such as
" I will never be successful if I am not "thin." This too has to be questioned and recognized for the illusion it is because it has absolutely no root in reality. Being thin does not accord respect no matter how much people believe it. So called thin or skinny people can be badgered and poked at all the time for their shape or size. They can be called not thin enough, the wrong shape, too thin. Everyone has an opinion about what our bodies should be and obviously there is no way to win except to give it up. All of the effort to win such a thing truly is not worth it. In this game no one ever wins. They only lose. In extreme cases they lose their lives or have to live the rest of their lives with a health issue that has been made permanent by their eating disorder.

 To stop buying what we're being sold, ideas about what being thin means, means the beginning of a quality life. Almost every day I do dance practice or do a weight/cardio workout and I am accountable by how much I do. It's my job to keep it under control so that I have energy and time for other things in my life that matter to me. I do practice a lot but I am able to handle it now that my life is different. Exercise is far easier and healthier when not under extreme stress and the body recuperates and heals quicker and has more endurance. I dance for the sake of the art of it rather than for the sake of losing pounds. Sometimes a voice pipes up and tries to hold onto hope that the amount of practice I put in will make me into a size 6. But I resist it because it changes how practice feels. Instead of practice feeling like it is alive and breathing it feels more like I'm waiting to exhale. I resist because numbers and sizes mean absolutely nothing and the way sizes are defined changes from country to country and decade to decade or year by year. This is why I never encourage anyone to do Belly Dance, Yoga or even lifting weights as a means to lose weight. My philosophy is intuitive health and balance in the body, mind and spirit. I have done a lot of forms of exercise and there is no such thing as the magic exercise for losing weight to the size or shape you think that you should be able to achieve. For some people it takes an unreal amount of extreme work to achieve some kind of culturally accepted standard. It might look healthy on the outside when really they aren't healthy or happy.

 Addiction to exercise is a thing and can be separate from an eating disorder but usually is seen playing right alongside of calorie restriction and obsessive calorie planning. It means being obsessive about planning workouts, endless hours of working out, ignoring injuries and sickness to work out, ignoring other signs from the body to slow down as well as ignoring damage done to career and relationships. However if being a fitness trainer is a persons whole life and their behavior is creating problems for them then it's very easy for their problem to be seen as something to look up to and emulate. It also creates the perfect atmosphere to find others to share in the same philosophies and ways of life to normalize unhealthy behavior. At times my addiction to working out meant that even if I had already done a difficult work out my mind said that I still had to do more because I hadn't done enough cardio or hadn't done enough muscle groups. It meant planning my workouts a lot. And it definitely meant that I was too exhausted to do anything else. All of it left me feeling like I hadn't done enough which is the same thing someone with Almost Anorexia, Anorexia or Anorexia/Bulimia thinks. And to top it all off the main thought is "I can't do or become these things until I have lost this amount of weight, become a certain size or specific shape. Once I have achieved it then I can do or be anything and my success in all of thee things will be certain!"

 It has been found that eating disorders are learned from the culture and media as well as roles of status in the 1800s but also that it can be inherited. Because we inherit genes it is likely that we had grown up with someone carrying those genes and therefore watched their eating disorder behaviors. I grew up with a mother who not only was/is a Paranoid Schizophrenic but who was Anorexic. Even as a little girl who did not know anything abut eating disorders I thought it odd when I found boxes of Ex-Lax in the bathroom. I found it odd that she only had half of a grape-fruit for breakfast or when she ate differently than the rest of us but at the same time all of it was normal. Including that she did workout a lot everyday. I watched her go from her extremely self diligent behavior to letting everything go. She started smoking, drank lots of coffee, stopped exercising and just watched tv or read the same Romance novels over and over again. She never went outside anymore and had other people including me run errands and take on things that should be a parents job all. Of course as a child I didn't do something right or the way it should've been or I did something that should have been done but was seen as useless to her. Eating disorders run deeper obviously than just the media around us. They simply take advantage of a sales a opportunity of people who are already ripe for the picking.

 Being extremely poor it also came naturally to me to know how to fast later in life. I had already been through the experiences of going without food for days or being severely limited in food selection. When I tried Intermittent Fasting in the past year or so I found myself feeling like my old self when I was a teen ager. There would be a long time of having not much food. Then the check would come in at the first of the month and we'd by our groceries that would do us until the next check. I'd be ravenous, scarf food down and basically have to binge. When your starving the body/mind takes over and eats a lot of food quickly. In some cases a person has difficulty eating a normal amount of food again. When I did Intermittent Fasting I found myself eating more than I usually would and not being able to stop. I remember eating a regular sized meal but then eating a whole large bowl of popcorn. I did not like feeling out of control like that again. The feeling of being desperate for food and not getting enough all while feeling guilty about it can't be explained. You feel like you're failing or are short in discipline or something. So I vowed to never do Intermittent Fasting again because not only was it an Eating Disorder behavior which was normalized, it served to encourage more eating disorder behaviors and thoughts. I realized that Intermittent Fasting could easily be the gateway diet to an Anorexic entering into a Binge and Purge cycle. All in all, people who believe in Intermittent Fasting even say that when your done your fast that you can eat as much of whatever you want within a specific time period. I also so them on forums defending their behavior. They would be defensive and complain with each other about how people close to them thought they had an eating disorder which is pretty much what people with eating disorders do. They commiserate on-line or with anorexic friends about how people don't understand and say they have a problem all while they believe they do not. It is no different than the denial of a person addicted to anything.

  People tend to think that an Anorexic hates food or hates eating. On the contrary. They are obsessed with food and will find anyway they can to be part of the cycle of food without actually eating it. Behavior such as cooking a lot of great food and serving it to everyone else and getting a great joy that is almost a high to them to see other people get to eat the food that they both loathe and love. I never got that far and never Binged and Purged thank God/Goddess but I wondered if I saw this behavior in a waitress who was waiting on me and my husband at a restaurant one summer. She was more thin than what I could see was healthy or natural and she had a different gleam in her eye about serving us food and finding out how much we had enjoyed it. Again it's another way that a person could potentially hide behind a job, career or way of life where it would make it harder for people to see. Where it would be easier for people to say "They're just naturally that skinny. They don't have a problem because they love food so much and I've seen them really enjoy eating!" That's true if the person is Bingeing and Purging.

  A lot of people believe that Belly Dance helps people to over come their issues with self image and in cases that is true. But I know from my own experience and from a few others who have spoken out that Belly Dance was not the solution to their patterns of thinking and behavior. In some cases such as mine it put me face to face with these thoughts and triggered them to which I had to try extra hard to silence them. But for many years I was more on it's side than I am now. I had more of the thought that I would do whatever I could and it wouldn't be unhealthy or an eating disorder per se. No, a lot of what I was doing and the way I was thinking is seen as fine, normal, healthy for anyone but I know now it wasn't and isn't. People are encouraged to be confident all while being on board with the "lose five pounds of fat and look lean" train. It's a contradiction that leaves everyone feeling like they are neither here or there, neither this or that and swinging between extremes sometimes very quickly.

  So when people talk about the issues with the Body Positivity Movement that has sprung in the last years I tend to question it. I take what they are saying into consideration but then come back to knowing what I know through experience. That the Body Positivity Movement and more people speaking out had more affect on my mental, emotional, physical and spiritual health than being a Belly Dancer, Weight Lifter, or even a Yogi ever did. Some physical trainers on dvds triggered me with the way they talked more than others and the way Yoga had come to be sold didn't help me but harmed me. I had been doing yoga all my life and suddenly felt like I didn't belong. That I needed to make my body "look" like I did yoga to be a successful Yoga Teacher. Some people in the Yoga world hide behind the spirituality and self discipline when really it is silently more about getting the Yoga Body and the Yoga Butt. And of course it's really easy to hide behind fasting and specific cleanses and diets because it's "Yogic" at the moment. An underlying belief that flesh is undisciplined and toxic which needs to be cleansed from the body I have seen. And I totally picked up on it and it settled down to make itself at home in my life all while I knew what bullshit it was. A lot happened for me to quit teaching and of not putting so much of myself into the yoga path but ultimately it was a good thing for me to have distance from the current form Yoga was in at the time. And it took a long time for me to strengthen my ideals and to feel safe teaching yoga again after so much going wrong including being assaulted. For a long time I could not associate Yoga without all of these things and I longed for the days before I got lost in the Yoga world even though the seeds for Yoga being associated with thinness were sprung from the 80s. My mother did Yoga to be thin because the books she had would specify certain practices as helping women to lose weight and to look young. It was all about beauty and at times in my teen years when I was doing yoga in the hallway of our trailer I was susceptible to those messages from the book about Hatha Yoga we had. Later on in my teen years I simply did the yoga as a form of spirituality and of relieving tight muscles and fatigue. As a kid before school age I had no idea why people would put themselves in odd positions. To me of course they were funny and because I practiced yoga at a young age I still carry my early sense of humor into the practice. I also carry the awareness that the perception of a thing and an experience of a thing can change drastically depending on how you are lead to perceive it and experience it. That much of what we perceive is changeable and an illusion. That it takes a lot of work to distinguish the real from the illusion especially when a whole culture is selling an idea that is an illusion to be real and healthy.

  I had to throw away everything I had been sold about Yoga and get back to the basics of Yoga with true integrity. Not the yoga that had been parading itself is being it, of being the real one with integrity. Like a lot of people I fell in because I needed something larger than myself to put faith and belief in. I wanted an old tradition to feel enfolded by. But I realized that the tradition sold as old was actually quite new and infused with the ideals of modern culture. That healthy is thin, that thin and healthy is the image of a proper and real yogi. That yogis eat like this, sleep and wake up like that. A lot of poor behavior and lack of awareness can hide behind these superficial yogic practices that are sold as the answer to all of our problems. Any practice no matter if it's called yoga or not is superficial if the intent is superficial hiding behind the guise of a meaningful spirituality. If the intent is to say " I am a Master Yogi."  It doesn't really lead to what yoga really is or to what is healthy and hopefully people eventually come to realize that they are wrapping yoga in the disease of the culture acting like it's somehow set apart, above or different than the western culture. If yoga or any practice only serves to create more self doubt and a distrust of ones own inner guidance and instincts it fails to be what it's selling itself as being. Disease and degradation of mental health and the quality of our lives increase as we doubt ourselves more. We can even believe that something like Yoga is helping us when in reality we might be handing our power over more than before depending on the teacher. And depending on the teacher, if they are skilled, experienced and fearless to face these things they will be able to help people to guide themselves and to hear their instincts. That kind of teacher points to their own body wisdom, instincts and inner strength and honors the students strengths and limitations rather than taking it personally if the student says "No."

  Strengthening our own ability to hear our own wisdom in everything we do is the solution to our healing. Whether it is an eating disorder of any kind, an addiction of any kind, mental illness, physical illness, we grow stronger the more we can honor our deep instincts and be 100% involved in our healing process because we are the healers. The healers, the gurus, the teachers, the people, and the structures outside of ourselves should only serve as guides to point us back to what we have forgotten or come to lose touch with n ourselves. We forget how much power that we hold and how much wisdom that we already have to create the life that we dream. We doubt how much we already know and doubt that we already are "pure" enough or "cleansed" enough. We forget that anything we do to nurture and guide ourselves is only adding and strengthening more to all of the great that is already there instead of it creating purity, beauty and grace from nothing. When we look to teachers or books, religions, spiritual practices as making us into something better this intent weakens us rather than strengthens us. It actually cancels out the effects of practice or studying spiritual texts. We already are that which we seek. We need only to do what we need to do to see it manifest in our lives in accordance with our dreams and what we are meant to do.

  In extreme cases where much damage has been done and behaviors set in addictive behaviors such as with eating disorder everything or almost everything I just said would likely fall on deaf ears. Living with a person who is mentally ill all of my life I know from experience that you can't reason with a person who is not in their right mind. That if you are going to get a message across to them that you have to do everything you can to understand their way of thinking even if it is crazy or alien to your own. And then to work from that to communicate with them. Sometimes reason does break through but only when it is delivered in just the right way that does not create a knee jerk reaction for them to send their walls up and believe me it's very easy to do. It will happen but if you know someone who you are concerned about for any of these reasons you must do all that you can to refine what you are saying in a way that they can understand and actually allow to sink in. That being said a person who is in the later stages of Anorexia can't be reasoned with. They need help usually by force to stabilize their physical functions as well as their mind. And they need to be separated from the cultures that support and encourage their behavior and thinking processes devoted to losing weight. All of this needs to be done so that they have the ability to reason and to have the ability for self care again. Guilting won't work, shaming will not work, reason will not work. A person in middle to advanced stages needs help that is often very expensive. Do all you can to educate yourself about Eating Disorders in all of the ways they can manifest and if you think you might have an eating disorder get help. Whether you are a dancer or not , when you're ready the world needs to hear your voice and needs your story about your relationship with yourself and eating disorders. I know that everyone who has spoken up in documentaries and on-line especially if they are a Belly-Dancer that it has helped me.

 I wish for healing to anyone reading this who has suffered in silence for years with an eating disorder. You deserve a quality life! All of us do and that is what I offer to myself everyday no matter what.
 

When Yoga Is More Than A Stretch and Belly Dance Is More Than Tricks To Wow The Audience

   To a lot of people here in the west yoga is seen as a way of "stretching". Dancers do it to improve their range of motion, to warm up or cool down from a dance practice. Others go to yoga for stress relief. But there are times when yoga is more than a stretch and more than stress relief.

   I've been through a lot of phases with yoga over the years. My relationship to yoga and to my body changed since I was a kid. Currently I practice Belly Dance more than I do yoga. And because I am clocking in so many hours of dance time or time with weights my yoga practice is usually for cooling down. Over the years I know from experience that this is not a very deep way to practice yoga. That it is a practice based on "stretching". Don't get me wrong, yoga for the sake of stretching to me is a good thing! I don't believe that yoga should always be about pulling back the layers. I believe that yoga is a process that unfolds to us as we practice and as we practice it is up to us to become present with whatever the process of yoga is presenting to us in that moment.

 Today I did a particularly in depth back bend practice on daturaonline.com with Rachel Brice and Ashley Lopez which was challenging physically and emotionally to me. I am grateful that my lower back and upper thoracic spine can handle back bends way better than I could years ago. But I felt inner resistance. As I do when doing any kind of practice that is tough I press on while being aware of what is going on inside me. I breathe deeper and I watch and I listen. Sometimes when something comes up for me during an in depth yoga practice I absolutely know what it is. Other times it isn't so apparent.

 Having been through a lot of trauma in my past I half expect something to come up for me whenever I do a more concentrated yoga practice. Sometimes it isn't about the past but about the present or the near present. Having also a background in unofficially studying Psychology I tend to approach things in that way sometimes. Sometimes it helps but sometimes you need yoga awareness. Which means to let it be and to unfold while you listen and watch rather than actively analyzing it. I think both approaches compliment each other quite well rather than one over the other.

  I continued practicing but at a certain point I could feel I needed to stop. Not necessarily physically but something mentally and emotionally inside me really wanted to cover up and protect. So for the rest of the practice I laid on my stomach, did Downward Dog, Child Pose and Reclining Twists, hugging my knees in and Fetus Pose. Then I simply sat with what was going on and gently reflected. I felt a conflict of wanting to open up and expand while at the same time wanting to contract, protect and cover up. Aside from my not being used to such an in depth back bend Yoga practice I have been doing a lot to not be as "open" as I used to be with a lot of things. I have felt the need to protect myself from all of the bad going on in the world as I watch helplessly while all of it is going on around me. So, though I care very much about everything that has been going on politically, religiously, culturally and environmentally I have needed to distance myself from it in my mind and emotionally very much in order to cope. I know that if I am more open then I will think of horrible and terrifying things in the middle of the night when I wake up like I used to. I'll have more horrific nightmares like I used to. And I will have trouble getting all of these negative things out of my thinking throughout the day like I used to.

 Yoga is a good thing and it's a good thing when people say that Yoga should not just be about "stretching" but I am perfectly fine with Yoga being just about "stretching" and being in my body. I totally believe in taking down metaphorical walls and opening up but I also do not believe it is healthy for Yoga to be the kind of practice where it is always taking down walls that all of us need in order to be healthy. Speaking from experience this is what is best for me. To create a balanced practice where Yoga is not always about accessing my emotions front and center and uprooting deeply inlaid trauma.

  Looking back I can see how making one kind of practice dominant over another drastically changed my state of mind and ability to function as well as how that dominant practice affected my body. I have found that a strong and in depth practice of Belly Dance creates a strong foundation mentally for me. I believe it is from my current practice of Belly Dance for why I am more solid and more strong physically, mentally and emotionally than when I have made Yoga be my dominant practice. When Yoga has been my dominant practice I am in more pain physically because I am hyper flexible which means that my body is better suited to focusing on toning exercises and practices. And when Yoga has been dominant I have been more vulnerable and upset because an in depth yoga practice will for sure bring up stored emotions and memories at some point.

 Trauma is something that never goes away. You live with it all of your life and with each person it is different how different things will affect them. When you mix Yoga or Belly Dance with a person you are creating a unique chemistry and that chemistry will differ with another person depending on their experiences and where they are coming from. So when everyone says how Yoga healed them and changed their lives I don't understand it very well. Because I did yoga from a young age and it did not "change my life". All of the traumatic things that happened within my family still happened and all of the traumatic things that happened in my early adulthood still happened. In my experience Yoga is not about "changing my life" or about making myself a better person. It's more about continuing something I learned through solitary Hatha practice in the eighties. To be with myself, with an experience or with another person because even if it's just a stretch it's still a listening to the body wisdom. So whenever I see Yoga being sold as a way of making yourself into a better person or that it should be about more than "stretching" in order for it to be real Yoga and to be more spiritual I don't understand. It seems overly "postured" to me. Of just trying too hard to be " the yogi" and fit into a magnificent awesome box that you don't mind being in because you can do all of these awesome yoga poses within it. I only understand Yoga to be a practice to be actual Yoga if it is without judgement. If people scoff at Yoga for being too on the surface if it is practiced just physically then they would scoff at something as wonderful as Yoga Therapy.

 I don't believe that the body can be separated from the emotions at all, ever. So even if a practice is being sold as a practice to get a yoga butt or to lose weight, I may not like that way of selling it, but I know that the body wisdom that is inherent in people will wake up and way "Wait a minute...I want a practice that listens to what I have to say. Not one where one intention for yoga practice is God!" And people will naturally gravitate to what is healthier for them anyway because the body is wise even when it's being led by ignorance. Sooner or later we all wake up and I'm not a fan of yoga teachers who assert their dominance by making their students feel inferior when they talk or write excessively about how the only real yoga has a spiritual component added. And I say this being a fairly spiritual person myself. I don't try to make what I do spiritual. I don't believe that my yoga practice is more real if I add a mantra to a yoga pose or if I do yoga asana every single day. Yoga is not made more real by doing it on front of an image of Ganesh or any other Deity. And I don't consider a person is doing Yoga that is more real after they have read and studied the Bhagavad Gita and Yoga Sutras. Yes, these are part of the history and roots of Yoga but so are other practices that have nothing and everything to do with Yoga Asana. Yoga is Yoga by a persons intent to be present. It isn't more real with a Headstand or amazingly flexible postures and it isn't more real by how often it is uprooting buried emotion. Yoga is something worthy of practice even if it hasn't turned your whole life around for the better. I can't say that practicing Yoga has ever done that for me but I still practice it and I am open to discovery rather than cementing into a tight knit box of rules.

  To put anything into an inflexible set of rules cuts off the life and breath of an idea, an experience and or a practice. And without breath there is no growth and no life. To make strict and inflexible rules is to use the excuse of discipline simply for egoistic notions of mastery. And then when we form these ideas and cut off the air to them we set people up as idols and work ourselves towards being idolized which is anything but yoga. Because of this I see no one, including myself, as a "master" of yoga. It's simply a practice to get in touch with our humanity, to humbly see, hear and feel our own limitations and possibilities as well as others with compassion. So yes Yoga is more than a stretch. But it's also great when that's all it is because even when that's all it looks like on the surface it usually amounts to more anyway. It's all good.

 People can go years practicing Yoga or Belly Dance as a means for performance and gaining respect but again I believe that the wisdom in our bodies is so strong and inherent that eventually a person practicing in this way will realize that they don't have to practice this way anymore. The simple experience of practicing Belly Dance or Yoga will call to a person subtly to reach for something more. So even if a persons original intentions were only to " be awesome" and to wow the crowd it's likely that the process of dancing or doing yoga will actually speak to them. An experience they did not call on with intent will visit them. Intent creates for a stronger practice no doubt about it. But it's absolutely wonderful that we can trust the wisdom in our bodies to reach out for a greater experience than the one we had originally intended.

 In this way I feel that both Yoga and Belly Dance are both very magical whether they alter outside circumstance to perfection or not. I don't expect either practice to do this for me, to change me into someone else to change my life into something perfect. And I would not sell either practice to anyone to create these kind of results. Instead I encourage people to begin or to continue because deep down they need to even if they may not know it yet. I would rather a person discover that they are already awesome, already "The Yogi", already a "Belly Dancer". This rather than desperately trying to manufacture for years the kind of person they think they aren't already, the kind of person who is a "Real Yogi", "Really Spiritual", or a "Real Belly Dancer".

  I trust that Yoga is always more than just a stretch and that Belly Dance is more than tricks deep down for everybody so I don't think anyone really needs to be preached to about how they can become more of a "real " anything. All we need to do is to let go of the idea that real is something that someone else discovered. Guidance is wonderful to receive and is needed but it should be the kind of guidance that truly points us towards our center because when we work from there that is the true integrity. Integrity cannot be manufactured by another person for us to simply piggy back onto to gain enlightenment. In that process of letting go of constant self manufacturing we become more real and let go of the self manufacturing process that has become so popular within all kinds of practices.

  Yoga and Belly Dance are more than props, tricks, glamour or mystery. We may perceive that yoga and belly dance are a mystery if we haven't grown up practicing it or haven't practiced it for very long because it comes from another country than our own. In our culture though we are brought up to see our country and culture as " the best" we also tend to fetishise and objectify someone or something when we want to lay claim or own " it ". In this way we are attracted to what mystifies us but in that process we further distance ourselves from what taking part in practicing any of these things means. Being in touch with something deeper is a mystery to us because our culture fragments our sense of self. Spirituality and people who are in a stronger connection to the Earth are surrounded by mystery with the way we tend to look at people "over there". But when we do actually drop our cultural notions of what these things are and mean we could find that "they" are not so different than " we". We could find that the state of being which is strengthened by a Yoga or Belly Dance practice is not so mysterious because it's right here and just as real as what is over there and over there is just as real as what as here. And we also could find that maybe we don't have to ascribe mystery to something or someone in order to give value to it. Without mystery we could find that we have even more sense of adventure because we are open to discovery. When we plaster something like Yoga or Belly Dance with mystery we close off our ability to discover and grow because we have already decided what we think we know about it and we tend to not want to know anything more because that would ruin the feeling of mystery and adventure. But as a result we are distanced from what the practice actually is and separated from the roots from which it came.

  If there are things that we do not like about our own culture, we should try to understand what we are hoping to discover when we become mystified by another culture and it's customs and it's way of life. We should understand that inherently deep down we were attracted to what a dance form or a yoga practice or to what a way of meditating means because deep down we are wanting to remember something that our own culture has forgotten. Some part of us knows deep down that a particular practice will help us to be in touch with.....something. Something we may not even know we are looking for, something we may have never known but that even so that we remember deep down.

    I think it is very sad that a culture would fragment itself so much that it would steal, colonize and appropriate other cultures as well, hold racist views as well as fetishising a culture and it's practices. To keep seeing a country, a culture and practices such as Belly Dance or Yoga as "other" degrades the people and degrades the quality of our practice. Deep down all of us want more than this and I know that deep down we are wanting to reach beyond the experience of mystery and intrigue. I believe that we all can do better and more than a stretch and a wow. That we can try with our western minds to remember what the practices of Yoga and Belly Dance have the potential to teach us. We can remember this easier I think when we can remind ourselves that we perceive these things differently if we did not grow up with them as being part of our lives and or if we did not grow up with them in the culture where they originated where they have a strong history.

   In the way that other cultures are viewed it reminds me too much of the way a lot, not all men, but the way a lot of men view women. We all know that a lot of men keep a distance between themselves and a woman to keep that mystery there and so it would be easier to objectify and fetishise a woman than to get to know what she is about. If he knew her too well then it would be more difficult for him to assume responsibility for how he sees her and treats her. It is similar to how our culture tends to view and treat other cultures. As long as a woman or an entire culture is held at arms length while we seek to have some kind of relationship at the same time, then we are not valuing a person or a culture. We are in fact dishonoring them. We act like we know all there is to know about a person or a culture and forget they even existed! Surrounding a person or a culture with mystery and then seeking to own it through whatever act and then forgetting it's existence is dishonor. For a culture to take on a style of dance or yoga without getting to know what it's really about and without committing to it for the long term is wrong. It's arrogant for an entire culture to assume it knows what something from another culture is about when it's only been part of one part of the culture for a century and then to forget and not practice it anymore because it's no longer hip. Women are still seen as primitives and cultures that are not western are seen as primitive and therefore lower on the evolutionary ladder than white men. I see racism, and cultural appropriation as not separate from issues of gender identity.

  The idea of how to respect these traditions is very complicated and yet very simple at the same time. Though we have had a taste, we still have a lot to discover on our path to demystifying these traditions and a lot to discover on how to embody what these traditions actually mean to express.

  If you read this entire blog entry good for you! It is certainly long and a lot of what I wrote didn't come to me on the yoga mat but just came to me as I was writing. So I didn't expect or intend for this post to be so long winded!

  But a lot of what we intend rarely happens that way!

How To Feel Confident During Your Moon Cycle and As a Dancer

Confidence is something that everyone wants and a lot of us will do anything to get it even if it's bad for us or not for our highest good. But sometimes we are attracted to a path to take that we haven't before. We may understand our reasons in the beginning and then discover as we progress that there were all kinds of things that we were attracted to but didn't know we were. The process of taking part in it brings us up front and center to what it's all about and the process brings us up front and center to ourselves.

   Being attracted to an art form particularly dance has magic. When we first see it something inside speaks without speaking. Our body wisdom wakes up when we see a dance form that we are attracted to as if there was a deep part of us that remembers something we have never known. And we become drawn in wanting to explore and remember more. It is this deep connection to dance that keeps us coming back again and again.

   But sometimes confidence wanes and we want to pull back and sometimes do. It's about more than image in this case. It sometimes and often is. But besides issues with image many people feel very disconnected to their own bodies and to the earth. We have learned to stop listening as a way to over come the difficulty of being in the human body. And because we have grown a culture around this we forget that our bodies have natural rhythms. Our bodies understand rhythm from in utero inherently through and through. The earth has vibrations that we do not tune into as much. Air and water is the easiest for us to understand or fire. But because earth is seemingly solid like the body we forget that there are vibrations, rhythms, tones and music going on all the time. Our breath and our hearts have rhythms, a tone, and a music, a harmony that changes according to our emotions, age and health. All of our organs have vibrations. Because this is our daily existence of being it easily becomes background noise that we simply don't hear. We are taught to believe that there are better and higher mysteries than the human body to listen to and discover.

   And then when we find ourselves attracted to a dance form the attraction embodies our understanding that we are already one with this dance. Then we take a class and we have hope still but are brought face to face with the disconnection that we commonly feel from our bodies and music. And we forget that all of this is about connection to the the earth. That the wisdom of the earth of therefore of the body is already there. All we need to do is remember, listen and allow.

   When we do this the thinking brain is still operating but it's working in tandem with a part of us that is much older. Dance is one of the few places where people can access this state of being. And when we can allow ourselves to experience this we find that we are surprised by what unfolds and moves through us. We are also amazed at how easily and without force that we were able to manifest a dance. In this state of being we make discoveries and feel as if we are being danced rather than trying to exert a formula. Formulas are great for exploration too. It's simply another way to explore dance. But without discovering this state of being in dance it's common to fall into second guessing, doubt, never feeling like enough or not ready and even feeling like a fraud.

   We use our eyes more in this culture than our ears and we commonly fall back onto our eyes to learn how to dance rather than our ears, the subtle sensations in our feet and our core, throughout our bodies. Over time the messages we hear and feel from our bodies won't be so subtle. The more we can bring ourselves into our own bodies rather than running away, wishing that our bodies were something else the better. The more that we can trust and believe that we ourselves understand something inherently such as dance and that we only need help remembering the more we make gigantic leaps ahead in dancing.

   When we dance we develop a stronger relationship not just with ourselves but with the space around us and the earth under our feet. For a culture that wants people to withdraw from their bodies yet somehow have perfect bodies at the same time it's not easy to be present and aware. To take up full residence in body , mind, spirit, earth and space is radical. To trust yourself enough to do this is radical and rebellious because a person who listens and is connected to themselves, the earth and their space is not easily controlled by institutions or ideas which seek to harm. The body that listens knows what is good and healthy and knows what is toxic. No matter how disconnected a person is that wisdom is still there. The body opens in it's physical gestures and posture when it feels safe and attracted to something and the body speaks when it feels threatened by closing off in either subtle or obtuse cues.

   Even if we have illnesses we need to build a solid relationship with our bodies everyday. It's harder to when we have pain and suffer because we feel that our bodies have turned against us. But even in illness the body is speaking and asking us to listen to it's wisdom and most of the time if we do not listen our body finds ways to speak louder. As women we tend to develop a conflicted relationship with ourselves which fluctuates between nurturing and listening, doing what our bodies needs and being angry at our bodies for getting in the way of life and muscling through anyway. All women I am sure have experienced this during their cycle every month because the culture does not designate this time for women as being special. It should be a time when the woman does what ever she wants. A time for reflection, rest, anything she enjoys and anything that relaxes her and makes her happy, When it's all about her voice and her guiding vision.

   I have found at different times that when I was not able to take time to do what my body demanded during my cycle that after my cycle was finished I was relieved but not as refreshed. Instead I would feel depleted. I even found my immune system was worse after a period where I did not take time to do "whatever I want". However this isn't the case if there are far worse things going on which are causing extra pain during menstruation. Sometimes it is from too much stress and not listening enough to make changes at other times during the month. But sometimes it's just a mystery that everyone likes to tell us they understand.

   We are told that all we have to do is eat more greens, avoid alcohol and caffeine etc. We're told to avoid chocolate and then suddenly we have articles telling us "it's ok" to eat chocolate during our cycle to make us "happy". Why do we need articles to tell us what we need during our monthly? I'm sure if your like me you've tried what they've said and it's either made no difference or made it worse! There is probably countless antidotes of women's bodily wisdom that has not been handed down for centuries and that we are unable to tap into. I'm sure it's there. Every time my cycle comes around I am listening. But it's very hard to keep listening when parts of me are trying to just push ahead and do what I normally do because by the regular standards it's what I should be doing.

   And this is the way it is with dance too in our culture. Even experienced and seasoned dancers who have developed a strong connection to their bodies and how their dance and their bodies connect them to the earth experience hiccups along the way. Repeatedly we need to bring ourselves back to center and allow ourselves to experience being with ourselves without doubt. That inner process is a rhythm and even a dance all on it's own. Like the lotus we grow up towards the light and back into the mud. We open and we close. We explore and we withdraw. It's a natural push and pull motion of the universe that we are one with.

   Ever notice how when our minds are all over the place, hectic, upset and anywhere but here we naturally feel it in our bodies a need to withdraw? We may push ourselves to stay open and to keep doing whatever it is but our bodies are still speaking.  That is the bodies wisdom in action. To re group and center so that you can feel safe and strong enough to open and expand out into the world. Ever notice that when your mind and your body is centered you can more easily explore and move out into space? In this state our senses are alert and awake. We are able to listen. When we feel the need to contract the senses have subtly begone to not be as sharp so that all of the attention of the senses can focus inward to process and reflect. And ever notice that when you feel one with the earth for whatever reason that you feel something more than confident even. That you maybe even feel a deep state of grace. That an open sense of wonderment and optimism flows through you in the same way as it did when you were a child spending a lot of time in nature. Clear headed, strong, empowered, All simply by spending time in nature and by strengthening your awareness of the connection you have with nature through creative movement. Our bodies move like everything in nature and we see this a lot in Yoga, Pilates, Belly Dance, Tai Chi and more! And notice that when we feel a connection to the earth that our awareness becomes more opened up to the sky and all the space of the universe above and all around us? Commonly people feel this when they are standing in an open field. Even standing in a large open field in the middle of a city can create this experience.

   Whatever the time of the month allow yourself to drop into your body and to experience all the ways that your body is in relationship to the earth. Listen to the music more and listen to how the music feels in your body and where. Feel how the vibrations and rhythms travel through your core, your limbs and into your feet, hands, neck and head. Feel your body as an extension of the earth and that the earth is an extension of you. I do have a pagan background so when I dance and when I speak, teach or dance the ideas and experiences within pagan spirituality inform and inspire my experience.

   Women's Day was the other day but to me everyday is Women's Day! We need to treat it as such!

   Remember that deep down your body, your heart, mind and soul knows more and is capable of doing more than you have imagined. Repeat to yourself when your getting in your own way " Allow. I allow."

   You, the earth, the music and the dance are one.

Why You Need to Try Princess Farhanas' Drama Queen Technique and Emotion Cards!

  To begin. when I refer to dancers as "she" in this blog post I am not implying that all dancers should be a "she" It's a base word that I am using in the same way that many people use the word " he". I don't swear a lot in my writing but I do when I feel it's the best word to describe what I am trying to get across. I believe swear words serve their purpose in this way rather than littering an entire piece with cruddy words! Somehow using swear words here and there seems to give a more personal flair rather than tacky if they are used sparingly rather than glaringly. However if you don't like my little sprinkle of swear words in my piece simple move on! If you do then read on!

  I have been looking at this deck of dance cards on-line for awhile now and hadn't bought them yet.
They can be found on her site at http://www.princessfarhana.com/shop.htm

   Recently in an Intermediate 1 Class we played with these cards in class and it was very interesting! We picked a couple of cards that would be the moves that we would work on and we picked a card that would be our emotion. My first card for emotion was nervousness and my movements were upward eight, hip lock up and shimmies. We also layered emotion with veil work which was also an interesting exploration. We first did the movements to the music to discover the flow of the moves that suited us and the music best. Then we layered the movements with the energy of the emotion from the card we picked. At first I was unsure of how I would dance nervousness without it being a mime like activity or a mime dancing in a musical! I totally did not want it to be hammy! But as the music was playing the intention of using the emotion blended with the energy of the music and I could see how my dancing transformed.

   I found that the holding of the intention of nervousness actually made for a powerful dance even in just a few simple movements. The nervous energy created a pulled in effect which felt like it was wanting to over flow the entire time I was dancing all while I was concentrating on containing it. This inward intention changed how my movements looked. Eventually as I danced it transformed into not being nervous because I wanted to let it go. So the story of the dance was containing oneself and limiting oneself but then setting oneself free. The nervous energy I noticed had created a lot of  extra heat. The bodily feeling of this energy was like a rapid flurry of a tight tornado whirling at my center around my face and heart area. I am this descriptive because I have studied and believe in the chakras and the movement of energy. Hippie Dippie and New Age Goo but it does transform how I experience life and how I experience dance.

   The next emotion was jealousy. This one I found my arms changing position. I wanted to create a bigger and more intimidating presence so I found my arms going into 2nd Position in ATS and Tribal Fusion. And my face was stone and angry with my chin coming down a little. This energy also created a lot of heat. Unlike the previous emotion it did not transform or evolve into a resolution. It simply stayed put solidly which I think is what the energy of jealousy usually is about. It does not get resolved easily and the person feeling jealous holds the emotion very strongly. They may feel vulnerable but try to create an ominous presence to intimidate a person into not doing something that has hurt them. Also my hip movements became stronger, bigger, sharper, crisper. I saw my hip shimmy transform into the way I had been trying to get it to go for awhile! So, I was astonished! Which is amazing because most people describe the hip shimmy as being relaxed and taking less effort. But in this case I captured the movement by trying to express determined action with the turbulent emotion of jealousy. I also bent my knees more  rather than standing taller which also makes sense. Someone else might have stood taller to create a larger presence. But in my experience when I am jealous I work to ground and earth myself. More hippie dippie language I know. It's just the best way to describe it!

   The other card I drew for emotion was bewildered. I was like, " How the hell do I dance bewildered? " Again the whole image of doing a sappy dance with mime like facial features and body gestures came into my mind! I tried to dance it, mostly feeling bewildered of how to dance bewildered. This was the emotion done with veil. I think the effect it created in the dance was that I was searching, searching, searching. But like in life, I don't like to be bewildered. I like to come to conclusions as soon as possible and to let go of the feeling of being bewildered. If it's something I absolutely can't understand or figure out or accept I let it go and move on. In my dancing I quickly decided to set myself free from being bewildered which then made my dance free and exploring, present, liberated. Again this was another interesting evolution of plot within the dance. I love stories and plot and am always captivated by seeing a character grow and change by change of environment or outside events.

   As dancers and as humans we need to be "Round Characters" and "Dynamic Characters." I'm talking about a few kinds of characters that writers work into the plot of their stories. Without them the story would not move forward and because the story would fall flat we as the readers would simply stop reading. And just as it's hard to write a well rounded plot with well rounded characters it has gotten to be more and more challenging for dancers to explore other emotions besides power, strength, joy, sensuality and sass.

   Even though our culture has grown to understand emotion more and it's more in the open and accepted that we are not perfect by going to therapy and needing help, all of us tend to feel more in need of putting on a good face than ever. As a result our dancing has changed. We become focused on technique. But something I knew from the beginning when I started dancing was that if you embody the emotion while dancing the dance dances with you. The dance flows through you and speaks to you while you listen and answer back. The movements transform into something alive and juicy, not pasty, cardboard and flat exercises.

   Also what I knew then that I forgot over time was that when you dance emotion you grow 80 times quicker! With the emotion suddenly there is a place and a direction for the dance to go and for you as the dancer to go. And though it is improv the dance becomes crisp, ripe and fresh. The dance might be simple but it becomes amazing in way that hours and sometimes years of obsessing over technique and tricks fall short. Situating practice completely around technique stunts dancers by years and years. With the emotion she flies light years ahead of the rest. Her body is able to incorporate more movements with more detail faster and her reflexes become refined. Why?

   Because the dancer is no longer putting their body under a microscope. The dancer is no longer treating themselves like a thing to fix but instead is being a living, breathing human being who dances. The dancer is being a human being that has a wide variety of emotions that range from the most vulnerable to the most powerful. We try so hard to run as far as we can and distance ourselves from the animal kingdom and embodying the full spectrum of our emotions is the expression of our roots as animals. We don't like to remind ourselves or each other that we are animals rather than that we are people falling short of the "neon god" that we've made. The neon god that is so-called perfect. All technology breaks all the time, it never lasts and becomes obsolete pretty quickly. But everyday we strive more and more to be so called perfect machines. Robots with a few of the best traits that we humans see as being palatable. Our bodies have wisdom yet we tend to always believe that our bodies do not. That our bodies need to be controlled, disciplined and set to right because our bodies are so messy and seem to have no logic or reasoning. But to those who listen closely or have studied any of the healing arts understand just how wise our bodies are to ensure our survival. We look at all our bodies do wrong rather than what our bodies do right.


   What we often fail to realize is that the more we distance ourselves from our roots which are not airbrushed but is instead caked with earth, is that the more we distance from those roots the more fractured our culture will be. It is the root of the breakdown of families, communities, groups, spirituality, educational and hospital institutions. I'm not saying that there is nothing right in the world or that there was a time where everything was the way it could/should be. I'm saying that in our evolution we are dropping our emotions and feel more of a need to put on a show and face because all of us are so public now that we are on-line. My reach to the rest of the world changed after I discovered chat rooms in 1997. And it changed again when Tribe, Facebook and Youtube came along. These things have been very good.

   But at the same time we struggle between accepting our emotion and understanding them in a holistic way and having the basic human need of privacy. As dancers or any kind of artist which is used to putting their souls out there for everyone to see we have an unspoken need that gets translated into our dance. The natural and human need for privacy. At the same time we want to only express to the world through art what the rest of the world says is worth something. It's safe and being out there alllll the time feels very unsafe indeed! Before the net artists of every kind could more easily put up their walls enough to get to work in their studio. Some are still able to do that today. But I think most dancers and artists are more hyper aware than they ever were because of the internet and what it means to be on it everyday.

   In this way a lot of art, music and dance has lost it's magical edge. The edge that cuts through all of the bullshit and reminds people of something within themselves they had forgotten. The part that's human because most of the time they are forever trying to mold themselves into something rather than just be. We still get artists, dancers, musicians and writers that have allowed themselves to be open to the creative void and to allow inspiration to pour forth from it and through them into whatever medium they use to translate that message.

   These pieces are jewels and even though we are all so busy with technique and perfection, being what we "should" be part of us wakes up when an artist taps us on the shoulder. Whether it's the dancer who has claimed and held onto her soul who expresses the spectrum of emotion in her dance or a painter that did every motion with awareness as they laid paint or other objects to the canvas in a kind of yogic dance deep down we know how sacred and valuable it is and how much we need it. Not just from outside but from ourselves.

   So, what's the solution? How do we change our practice? How do we stop obsessing over technique when it has become almost a compulsive addiction? How can teachers get this important message across to their students? That they can really dance right now, not when they have perfected more and more techniques and tricks to be "amazing. That we can stop criticizing and practicing compulsively to silence the self hate and criticism. The more we allow ourselves to dance with emotion the more our confidence will grow.

   Mine did after this experience. For years I had tried to re-capture an ability and a feeling I had earlier on. I have actually felt I was a better dancer then even though since then I have learned so many techniques and styles of dance. I know so much more than I knew then but over time came to trust myself less. I lost my ability to trust in myself to teach myself to dance. In the beginning I had that I think from my first teacher and from not being exposed to the greater culture of belly dance that grew and changed since 2002. And now that I remember this very important part of the dance in a way that's more than intellectual I'm different. I feel and think differently not just about dance but about myself and my body. And that is very powerful.

   This is why you should get these cards and incorporate them into your home practice and or your dance class plan for your students. Without emotion we become lost as artists. Without a structured frame work to hold that emotion we run away. Without  a structure we also push and push to get past our horrible beginner ways rather than exploring the sacred within the simple and the basic. With these cards, it provides all of these things. It can also remind us again and again that being a beginner is a wonderful thing and shouldn't be something to be ashamed of.

   Yet a lot of us are all the time. But the best students and teachers fully embrace being a continuous beginner. Not just a continuous learner but a continuous beginner. We are always beginning new in the next second and moment fresh. Students and Teachers that are continuous beginners are humble, alert, patient, thorough, and responsible which is wonderful for everybody! This means less division and stronger communities and so much more!

   I challenge you to be a continuous beginner in all things, acknowledge your strengths, cradle your weakness, embody the full spectrum of your emotions in your art and in your dance and in your life. I also encourage you to give yourself the proper amount of privacy that you need so that you can feel comfortable being fully present in your art and comfortable with putting it out there.

Children of the Earth
Do What You Need
Blessed Be

My Journey: Evolution in Creative Expression and Sense of Self Part 3

   So, I had this discussion with myself and my husband while I advertised for an ATS workshop. As I set to it I realized how much had changed even since I had last really advertised myself as a teacher. Facebook pages and group worked differently and there were a multitude of ways to advertise yourself on-line and not just by Facebook, Kijiji or Twitter. I worked on making handouts and the music playlists, and posters. I did not have a good camera or the ability to get a new one with a good camera yet. My older pictures of me as a dancer were old. I did not at the time have a photographer in the area and wasn't sure how much I was willing to spend on a session plus travelling. So I had a picture taken by my husband with my crappy old phone camera(not that old but was never good camera tech and phones age fast these days). The only way to make it look more professional was by muting it and zooming into the picture up close to my hips because i also had not had a complete costume for years. This is the pic that you see as my profile pic on my Facebook dance page. I had this as my main profile pic also on my regular Facebook but received a bad reaction from a dancer I had on a previous Facebook who thought I was either a fake account or a creepy male who was stalking her. I had taken the time to message some people who I had added to my new facebook after I had been off for about a year but had not messaged her. I had no idea that my picture and state of my facebook account being new would be received in such away and that when I asked why I was unfriended that I was told I had no right to ask.

   It's something I tried to not let bother me, but it did. I felt alienated and paranoid about how possible future interactions might go because not only is the greater belly dance community small, the dance community in the Maritimes is doubly small. If I go to a workshop that this dancer may be at I don't know if they would even know me or if they would assume I am "stalking" them simply because I "liked" a few of their pictures and go to workshops in the dance community. There is a lot to why I felt it hit below the belt. For starters I was very new to being back in the Maritime Dance scene and felt it was a horrible start. I was busy enough with the workshop coming up within a week that I was too busy to take as much notice of how it hit at my confidence and my already underlying fears that whenever I try to teach I for some reason attract a very odd "wtf??" moment. Something that had happened to only to me and where I saw a side of someone that possibly no one else had.

   The workshop went on with success but within a week I caught the flu that was going around. I had symptoms then on the day or two of that week I felt more normal would practice and do stuff as usual planning on starting classes the following week. Then it kept coming back and going away seemingly and coming back. I tried not to superstitiously equate it with, "When I teach bad things happen to me to make it impossible for me to teach!" It crept in there and I still have this fear and it's PTSD and no I can't just get over it. Unfortunately I am more easily discouraged in this area from fear. I haven't quite cracked the code to have it gone once and for all. I was going to face it every week for teaching but nope it had to be January during the thick of winter while all the worst plagues are going around! After a three or so weeks I had to wonder, "Is it flu or something worse? When will this go away?" So when I contacted the owner of Perpetual Motion dance Studio that I didn't know when I was going to be better she mentioned that the Tap group would like to make use of the time slot on the day I had reserved and rented for. It was more fair to the Tap group and to the owner so that she could make use of the time slot and receive some rent rather than each week for who knows how long my having to cancel and have no rent to give her.

   I felt it was really not fair to the people who had come to the workshop and had wanted to continue as well as to all of the unknowns in Sackville who I would only know were interested when they showed up on the first day. I felt guilty and sorry also to the previous dancer of the space. But did what I thought was right and am keeping the door open to teach in the future somewhere, someday. I had been afraid that the arrhythmia I get which developed over the past year and a half or so would get in the way of my teaching and practicing. But I didn't want to let it. In truth it did get worse the more I was taking on for advertising, organizing and doing all of that with real practice. And when I got the flu it got worse. When I say real practice I mean 2-4 hours almost each day of the week.

   But, not long after I gave the time slot to Tap and broke the news that classes were cancelled indefinitely of course I recovered and made my way towards practicing seriously without knowing when or where I'll teach again.

   So, here I am today. My choice is to teach workshops in the future. I'm hesitant to teach ongoing classes because my immune system has always been bad. Believe it or not, I get sick less than I used to and to not as bad of a degree. I don't get pneumonia or the kind of flu/cold where I am sneezing absolutely constantly. I do everything I can to strengthen my immune system and to avoid lung infections for having asthma. Maybe to some it means I am whining for talking about things that aren't "amazing". I just tell it like it is. This is my process and my truth. That's it. No facade.

   I'm also hesitant to teach ongoing classes right now because the arrhythmia I get makes me nervous. It's not something that you can just control and like a lot of health issues that no one can see it's hard to understand so that you can avoid it from happening. I don't know when or why sometimes it happens. Sometimes I notice a trigger but then notice that it doesn't trigger it at another time. I assume it's my bodies way of telling me that my cup is overflowing. That everything I've been through has done damage not just to my spirit heart but my physical one. So, I have to do my best to strengthen, heal and protect it in many ways. I will only someday start teaching regular classes after enough time has gone by with absolutely no arrhythmia in normal activity.

   My doctor who I saw in Fredericton when it started believed it's just something that I developed which some people are more apt to do. She said it wasn't dangerous to my health and to try and relax when it's happening and to notice when and why it happens. I've thought it was from prolonged abnormal stress or from taking asthma medication including the rescue inhaler. I still don't know anything for sure so I go on rather blindly but doing my best to handle it and my best to know what I can handle. I see it as one of the ways my body talks to me that it has over the years. At this time in my life it's my heart. At other times in my 20s and early 30s it was most definitely my gut. I discovered my pain was from IBS. No doctor told me but I fit all of the symptoms. Now I know how to control it I don't get the symptoms so much anymore which makes me lucky. Some people have more triggers than I. Specific foods or drinks would trigger it or not eating soon enough but it also happened when  someone had hurt me and when it had really cut at my esteem. This was so for me, I don't know about anyone else. But I couldn't help but notice the pattern that was going on. IBS also got in my way and I'm thankful it doesn't anymore!

   I found it odd that someone with arrhythmia could have perfect blood pressure but there it was when I got tested. There have been times where absolutely nothing would trigger it. Or it would be a really strong arrhythmia after only half an hour of simple belly dance practice. But now that I am "controlling" it I can manage to be active most days of the week for hours doing intense practice without arrhythmia. It happens sometimes but again I don't know why. Oddly enough it doesn't mean I am unhealthy or unfit. Just like having asthma doesn't mean I am "weak" simply by having it even if it's medicated. I met someone who was dumbfounded to find out I had asthma because I wasn't a spindly skinny, weak little thing. Was rather insulting but occurrences like that happen to people who have an illness that nobody understands unless they have it themselves. It seems to be a common belief that a person can''t have symptoms of unhealth but also be healthy. Odd? Yes but it's true.

   Health affects creativity, state of mind, ability to take on new ventures and goals. It's hard sometimes when you have symptoms of something that makes you feel unwell and unable to handle what you normally do. People blame and think if the person did better or did some kind of technique it would just go away. That it's simpler than it really is even though millions of people have Asthma or have Migraines or IBS or Chronic Pain. The culture expects people to just get over it eventually and if they have not then they have failed even if they are doing the best they can. All of this really does not help anyone's sense of self. As it is to those who are afflicted work hard to not define themselves by their symptoms while others around them are either pitying them or judging them and even hating them for reminding them of their own vulnerability as a human being.

   It is partially because of the things that afflict me physically and Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia that physical expression dominates so much of my time. For those of you that don't know what HSP is and haven't read my previous post this is a genetic illness that runs in my family. Everyday when I practice and can practice for hours I am grateful that I can walk and more. At the back of my mind I hope that by doing intense practice that I am warding it off. And because of all of the kinds of pain including everything I've mentioned in this post and the kind I experienced that I mentioned in previous ones I'm grateful to do anything. It's amazing to not have the chronic pain in my shoulder stopping me from doing something before I want. At times my only creative expression was trying to find ways to relieve pain and that was it.

   I say all this because human beings have a natural need to tell their story. The internet is a giant talking stick and if you have wondered into my circle welcome. I want to hear your story. I share all of the texture, the nuts and bolts of my story so that people will feel that they can. So that I can try to budge the belief just a little about having a defined set of emotions in a pretty box narrowed down to strength and power. We are more than that. Some people don't want to be reminded of their humanity. Some do and this is for whom I speak. All of what I express is who I am as an artist, a dancer, a teacher, anything I do. If I don't communicate about these things then I would be pretending to you that I am a different kind of artist/dancer. Anything I do should not be about forwarding my name or gaining attention or pity or making myself appear impossibly perfect.

   Because anything that is of real and true worth in this world has the power to cut past the falsity. To cut past the grain to what is real. Lies never did anyone any good. And a life built around lies or trying to get better at lying to others is more than sad. It's an act of war on oneself and anything in this world that refuses to or can't lie. I know what people are up against. I face it everyday. It tugs at the back of my mind even if I'm not thinking about it. But the more people that begin the more that people will begin.

   I challenge you to be your truth in your everyday life including in the arts. I challenge you to look at yourself real closely to know your intentions. To know how much your lying to yourself and others and trying to get better and better at it as a way to success in this world I challenge you to stop and feel how that feels and how much you numb yourself to how much you actually do in fact hate it and want to give it up. In order to give anything up that is horrible for us we have to allow ourselves to feel just how horrible it really is. That it isn't that great to keep telling ourselves " I'll feel better when I'm thin, perfect, rich, a genius and successful. It's ok if I feel like shit now."

   Anything worth anything takes time and work and even some unhappy and imperfect emotions but not to the extent where we have to constantly tell ourselves "I'll be happy when."

   We need artists that express the grand magnitude of being human and therefore of what it is to be alive, the good and the bad, the imperfect, the dark and the light. And we need artists that share their stories, not just their techniques. Artists trying to not be rebellious, not not face people with themselves, not stir energy within is a contradiction in terms. Artists have been seen as many things over the years. Only recently have artists been seen as rebellious and questioning culture and getting others to. How could a Belly Dancer be any of these things or have this affect just by dancing with a variety of emotions instead of just one or two in each dance she dances? Because it's a radical act to feel and to express in our culture.

   I challenge all dancers to find this depth of emotion in any dance form they practice whether it is ATS, Tribal Fusion or Am Cab. Don't get lost in technique or goals of unreachable perfection. You'll find that when you do that you become the amazing dancer that you were always struggling to be.

   I'll talk more about how and why this happens in a future post that will also praise Princess Farhana's deck of dance practice cards!

   Stay tuned!

My Journey: Evolution in Creative Expression and Sense of Self Part 2

   A lot of people dance with creativity everyday and dance the edge of deep innermost expression all the while keeping it at a distance and therefore not really committing to the message that is there to come out. The hardest part of any creative endeavor is not the technique or the time/energy management. It's the daring to be completely and whole heartedly honest with no codes to veil and distort the expression. We want to water it down and make it more palatable to the masses even though the artists job is to challenge people to reflect on their own experiences and relation to themselves, to others and to things. The artist no matter what style of expression has been turned into a robot. Merely an entertainer. Entertainment is all good and well. It is very much needed in a world where people work very hard and suffer everyday. Sometimes entertainment is the only thing that can make us feel like we aren't the only one, or to take us beyond a difficult experience to experience happiness again. But people are very afraid of facing themselves, hearing themselves speak. Because they know deep down what I know by experience. That when you hear yourself and see yourself you see everything around you differently. You feel everything differently. And all of this means that you'll attract trouble in some way or another. It means having who you are on the table and therefore not ultra protected by a massive wall of illusion.

   I have danced for years with how to have a wall that is good for me rather than one that is created in the way that most people in my culture create. The kind that is based off of fear, anger, victim hood. We've all been victims of something and most of us know how hard it is to keep ourselves from losing a part of ourselves deep within that is fresh. The only part of us that has the guts to be so honest that it changes and breaks institutions and blows everyone's minds! To keep that inner child alive and healthy as well as safe and protected is the trick of it. If your like me you did not have a mother in life that was able to provide this for you while you are growing up. I like to believe in things I cannot see and things that I have never known but I know must exist and that I can create for myself. And because I believe that for myself and know this by experience I believe that every one else can too if they could only open their minds to the idea.

   I really believe that all of the trouble in the world no matter what it is is rooted in how people are conditioned to believe that their human nature and therefore animal nature is bad. And that we all must rise above it and to rise above anything from the natural animal kingdom. The more people have continued this line of thought, the more we have seen damage done to the earth and all of it's inhabitants. The massive breakdown of communities, families and therefore the massive breakdown of connection to our natural selves. We see dogmatic beliefs about beauty, success and self worth. Everything has a price tag including our abs, hair or lack thereof!

   All of this thought came about from experiencing not just knowing which I have known some time now that I had lost a connection to dance which I had early on in the early to mind 2000s when I began. Back then I had the heart of Am Cab in my heart and my hands and I danced with it. Over the years I explored other dance forms such as ATS and Tribal Fusion which I am very addicted to and I love them because my body loves expressing what these dance forms express. My body needs it and my mind needs it. But through exploring and focusing on these dance forms in depth I wasn't dancing with the heart of dance like I used to. As a result I had less and less confidence in myself as a dancer and as a person no matter that I was learning new dance forms, refining my techniques and learning more complicated things. All of this lead to feeling dis spirited by the dance form so over the years I danced back to it for missing it and wanting to have what I had before but then dancing away to other forms of expression and arts. I also was not in a good financial place to continue or to be in a community that I could be supported by. I could not explore all of the dance forms I had come to know and need. There were times where I wanted to join daturaonline.com but even then $25 per month was too much to commit to. And it isn't just videos. It's an on-line community that supports each other. So I didn't even have that!

   I also was very dis spirited by all of the politics surrounding Belly Dance which did not exist or not that I knew of when I began. I struggled with it enough that I was overwhelmed, burnt out and it drove away any of the heart I had tried to spirit up into my life again. But my wishes and my dreams never went away. I tried to make them go away to make my life easier. To save money, pay down debt easier and not be put in more debt by dancing. I was burned out in other areas of my life so much I craved simplicity, space, quiet and peace. I gave it to myself and though I needed it and got what I needed from it, I needed richness, color, texture, culture and energy that fluctuated to out and in to my center. I needed community and dreamed of finding a dance community that I could be part of again that allowed my spirit and expression to dance free. So, though I held dance at a distance I held the dream out there for it to be a possibility.

   I was not happy living in Fredericton NB. I was happy to go back there after living in Halifax NS but it did not have what I needed. I felt wrong there as I did in Halifax. I had no idea what I was going to do. All I could see ahead of me was nothing and I hated it. No matter how hard I looked I couldn't see myself having anything there and this went on for almost the entire time I was back. One day last fall at the beginning of October I was having one of those days which were many which felt dead, dis spirited, flat, unhappy, bleak, depressing. I was in the shower and suddenly a thought came to me straight out of nowhere. It was " Have I ever thought of moving to Sackville?" And I thought, that yes I had. Years ago during my first year at NBCCD while I was completing my FVA I applied too Mount Allison University to the Fine Arts program. The idea of moving to a small town at the time was scary. I used to live in a small town and was afraid of it. But I wanted to explore the Fine Arts so I applied. I did get accepted to the school to take any other program however but didn't follow through with it because though I was interested in many things they had to offer, I wanted the Fine Arts. After that I sporadically thought of moving to Sackville NB. I craved a small community that wasn't angry by the population, the horrible transit, etc. After going to see Alice Cooper in Moncton NB of 2016 my husband and I went on a trip with some friends who had also gone to the concert  to explore Sackville. I played with the idea a little then of what it would be like to move to the small town. Finally, I'm here! Last fall when I thought of it I also thought, " I could travel to Moncton nearby to take classes with Barbara Aubie at Studio Sephira! " I also thought, " I could travel to Halifax which would be much closer to take classes at Serpentine Dance Studio."

   Another part of my evolution of coming back into my dance self happened soon after I moved here much to my surprise! I knew it was meant to be because I had held an idea in my mind that I was looking for a healthy dance community. One day I was walking down the street and there was a dance studio. I thought " I wonder if they have any belly dance classes there...." Then thought "Probably not. It looks like it's Ballet and Modern Dance." I saw when I checked Perpetual Motion Dance Studio's site that it was indeed a lot of that. But I spied Tribal Fusion. Tribal Fusion! I was like "Wow! In this small town?!" I have come to find that Sackville NB holds many such hidden extraordinary jewels related to art and culture and it has made me feel more and more like it was the right choice to move there!

   So when I made my discovery I wrote the owner of the studio about more information regarding the classes to which she forwarded me on to the teacher. I wrote to her expressing my interest in taking classes, my experience and how I would like to be part of a dance community again and maybe to someday perform again. She wrote me back and was amazed to find someone approach her who already knew what Tribal Fusion and ATS was! We got together to chat at a local cafe and it was the first heart to heart chat that I had had about Belly Dance in years! We both talked about the difficulties within the greater dance community, the frustrations and our passions. We also talked about how image was a major barrier to women beginning and continuing the dance form. During the conversation she also revealed to me that she was going to be taking time off of teaching soon because she needed maternity leave. She apologized for my timing on coming to the classes just when they were ending but when she found out my experience as a dancer, teacher and yogi she wanted me to teach at the studio. For years I had been afraid of teaching. I believed that if I taught bad things would happen to me because they did! Over and over! But over the years I had also wanted to break that fear and find my voice in teaching again. Because I knew it was one of my inherent strengths. I could always speak on front of people without fear and I could always teach well even before I had teacher training. So that was not what I was afraid of.

   So when this opportunity was laid at my feet I was amazed. I was energized and full of adrenaline. I had hope of teaching again and of finally letting the fear go. I had taught a few years before but in my own space and privately. But the fear never completely went away. Having a class at a studio felt bigger and more "real". Over the years I had learned to doubt myself more but I kept telling myself of how much I had grown and how much I could offer even with my practice having been sporadic and not as involved or as intense as my practice earlier on. I don't know everything and never pretend to. But it had gotten into me over time that I was supposed to know everything somehow. So, I had to ignore that and remember that I did know a few things and that the spirit, not just the technique of my teaching was good and needed. I felt I had to get people to find the spirit within rather than connecting to a technique or an image or a hope of losing weight by dancing. It has always felt like a huge responsibility because it is. It's not an easy task to not just teach technique but to help people to love themselves unflinchingly without shame through dance or yoga. It's a tall order. People want to be amazing at these things so that they can finally like themselves. Rather than dance as a process to learning how to "love" themselves and not just "like". People are very attached to it because being amazing or thin or projecting a powerful and refined image gives off an impression that if we can achieve this then it will automatically promise respect from others. That no one will treat us like complete shit again! A lot of us would rather be intimidating enough to put others in a position of submission. It's one of the ways that we adopt to protect ourselves in life and when it comes to exploring an art form. It becomes about this toxic relationship with ourselves and others rather than a real relationship and a real expression with ourselves and others.

   Stay tuned for Part 3 of My Journey: Evolution in Creative Expression and Sense of Self!