a quietly considered step back…4-27-23

I’m sitting in a Petaluma coffee shop, headed home from three days camping solo on the northern California wild coastline.  Celebrating that I can still pull off something like this as I turn 73 next week.  Bowing in reverence to the powers that be that have granted me this lengthy lifetime.  For someone who is in long term relationship and also thrives on being in service, it is refreshing and illuminating to follow only my own energy.  Since I’m a life long learner, part of the time has been devoted to study.  I’ve been sporadically reading about and reflecting upon Right View, one precept on Buddah’s eightfold path, a virtual layman’s guide to moving out of suffering.

I’ve been a sporadic student of Buddhist practice for many years.  Ages ago I picked up Funny You Don’t Look Buddhist, a Sylvia Boorstein book, since I was curious why so many well-known Buddhist teachers are Jewish.  Sadly, I don’t recall the book content.  But the title stuck and I still sometimes wonder how Buddhism, that speaks so patiently way below my own surface, nestles in with my genetic Judaism, a cultural bias nourished in farm homes at my grandparent’s feet.  Old folk who immigrated from the old country and kept some of the old ways.

I don’t really know enough to explain or understand the intersection of these two ancient teachings.  It’s just that they feel like they’re both in my blood.  That they both harbor a tolerance for living with and mining the momentous questions. And that the mindful and ethical action we take in life is somehow a way of answering those questions.  Right View is just such an inquiry.  Except I would re-name it Wide View.  Because it invites a quietly considered step back.  A broad perspective whenever we suffer from getting tangled up in our messes.  Right View is really just a fundamental description of precisely how things are:

Dukkha calls us out on our constant inclination to fill in these blanks:  If only_____then____.    If only it weren’t raining, we could go on that picnic. If only new neighbors hadn’t moved in, I wouldn’t be listening to a barking dog.  If only I’d known you felt that way, I never would’ve asked.  You get the gist.  We all move in and out of wanting things to be different than they are.

Anicca reminds us over and again that nothing stays the same.  Things change.  Trees fall down.  Babies are born.  Climate shifts.  Wildflowers bloom.  We die.  Impermanence is what we sign up for as soon as we are conceived.

Anatta points to how we affect our world and, in turn, are affected.  Infinite conditions shape the world and the world is shaped by boundless conditions. It’s a continual interdependent cause and effect dance.

So I was laying on the sandstone pictured above, looking out at surf and sky and birds, rock warmth emanating up through my bones.  All at once I felt that wide view.  If only the jagged piece of rock under my right hand were smooth I would be perfectly comfortable.  But things change.  If I laid there for 500 years that rock would smooth out.  And at the same time, I felt how the impact of my body weight and heat was part of that erosion process and simultaneously felt how the unique cut of stone was shaping me as I laid in the sun on it’s surface.  Dukkha, annica, anatta.

When confusion arises or there is lack of clarity or chaos is ensuing…right view, wide view, encourages us to step back, simply stay with and allow whatever is arising.  Because it will change.  It always does.  And the choices we make in that moment will have consequences.  They always do.

So I suppose its time to get my butt in gear and toodle home.  I’ve taken a quiet step back and feel the effect.  If you feel the need to cultivate a wide view, I’ll be out there holding some space for precisely that in the next three days.  I hope you can join me at some point.  After all, we’re all fumbling along in the very same ways on this very human journey.   And it does help to take a quietly considered step back, benefit from a broad perspective.  Especially when we suffer from getting tangled up in our messes.

And that wide view totally happens in those dedicated moments on the mat or the dance floor….

❤️Bella

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practice moves through a sea change…4-4-23

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Sea change: a profound or notable transformation.  Lately I’ve been curiously at watch as our communities of practice move through a sea change.  Something is different in this post-Covid spell.  Or whatever you call this relative break from pandemic-based living.  It feels like a paradigm shift and, for the last couple months, I’ve been trying to place my exacting finger on it.

In my non-practice, real world life, I’m continually seduced into behaving like this virus never happened.  Brazenly unprotected, despite the pile of masks moldering in my glove box, I stop at the store for groceries. I saunter by a hand sanitizer dispenser lingering unused at my sink as I head out to indoor dining.  I lounge in living rooms and chat with friends.

We, every single on of us, just moved through a world-wide plague.  An epidemic that took out so many of us and infiltrated every aspect of our lives.  It used to be the first and sometimes only topic of conversation. And somehow it just evaporated.  Man is inherently a meaning-seeking being, yet it seems that no one wants to talk about what it all meant.  Maybe it’s just too soon to have any perspective.  It feels like there is an unstated agreement, an undercurrent pull, to just move on.

But really, the fact that an entire global population proceeded through all the highs and lows of a shared traumatic experience is extraordinary.  It’s just plain weird that it feels relegated to the unspeakable ordinary.  But like I said, something is different in the communities of practice in which I participate.

Life can be counted on for delivering us to states of radical vulnerability.  Tragedy happens to us one by one or family by family.  In the case of catastrophic weather events and war, disaster happens to many in a geographic region.  But this huge and immediate drop into radical vulnerability affected every living being on the planet at the same time.

All of us stared down the gun barrel of our own mortality and for some of us it was the first time we even considered there was a gun.  I know this is so subjective, owning my own projections here, but there seems to be a deep hunger to get real, to explore and practice effective ways to deal with crisis and be with trauma.  And when we resonate with embodied practices like yoga and dance, we come in touch with the beauty available in this new state of radical vulnerability.  We have experiences in practice that can be passionately expansive, mind-blowing-ly transformative.

We’re emerging from a prolonged and painful isolation, looking for meaningful ways to connect.  There is a longing to belong.  I find the new students (of which there are many) incredibly open and courageous in this seeking.  I find the seasoned students deeply committed.  We are all actively looking for authentic ways to be with others and open to re-imagining skills that create real connection.  I heard the term “relational home” the other day.  The way we can be in community and provide a “relational home” for each other even in the face of trauma.  The practice floor is very much that: a “relational home”.

If you are ready to explore and expand, opportunities are listed here.  This Saturday, for the first time since Covid, I’m offering two hours fusing yoga and dance.  Come-as-you-are to this studio and leave with an embodied imprint, a visceral breathing experience of fluidity, power and surrender.  Rhythm and Release is for you, a perfect introduction, if you’re:

New to rolling and dancing: you’ll love learning the basics of releasing with roller and balls combined with a gentle drop into 5Rhythms dance.

New to rolling but already have dance experience: learn the self-love techniques that heal the kinks that keep you from fully falling into your dance (and life!).

New to dance but know how to roll: feel the joy of moving off the confines of your mat, so free after the releases you know and love.

Instead of going to practice being a thing to check off the to do list, this habitual thing to accomplish each week, it has become urgent.  Critical.  Fundamental for survival and well-being.  Indeed, it has always felt that way to me.  And a few others. But something has changed in the communities of practice in which I participate.  We are down for it.  And that feels good.

❤️Bella

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hanging in the balance …3-16-23

Twenty years ago, in a corner clinic office, I languished yearning to be free.  Literally boxed in, held by a rectangle so rigid it was hard to move and fully breathe.  So much responsibility, liability, adulting.  Up on my wall, next to an endless have-to calendar, hung a ragged piece of poster paper, hastily sketched with a giant triangle.  At each point on the triangle, a circle: dance, yoga, physical therapy.  They were so connected inside of me.  I fantasized manifesting them as a woven entity outside of me.

Fast forward twenty years: a back-to-back contrast experience bears an aha moment.  Fate? Destiny?  Maybe just dumb luck.  Last Saturday I spent all afternoon hunkered down with a posse of yoga teachers in training.  In the course of four spirited hours we explored the juicy world of experiential anatomy.  I absolutely adore when learning is driven by a group’s curiosity, totally hands on.  An education that happens directly through the textbook of the body.  In a way that’s my aim whenever I’m teaching.

Anyway, in the afterglow of our time together I told them I’d be holding space for dance at Sweat Your Prayers in the morning.  What?  What’s that?  We had just spent four intimate hours together, exploring all the held stories in their bodies.  Finding connections between those stories, their practice on the mat and the shape of their teaching careers.  And they had no idea I did this other work.

Next morning: by noon, I’m sitting in a circle of sweaty dancers who often share the illumination of their two practice hours.  I am lost in the beauty of the shares; they are incredible.  It never ceases to astonish me how much is happening out there.  I look around the circle and see a few folks I’ve seen for physical therapy and a couple others that show up for yoga.  And I realize that most of the people present have no idea I do this other work.

So after twenty years, that triangle so inter-woven inside me, is really still not manifesting in the outside world in the way I envision.  I would like these worlds to be coming closer together.  For the yogis to get off the self-contained rectangular mat for a spell and allow the body to engage in non-linear free form movement.  Invite the meditation past the confines of internal experience.  Allow the relational realm of connection to enliven and challenge their practice.

And it would be equally great for dancers to gain the basic skills needed to care for their active bodies.  I would not be dancing at the ripe age of 72 without these skills.  Many of us come to the dance floor with physical challenges that are quite often aggravated by dance.  Or we develop injuries when we get swept up in the dance and stop paying attention to what our bodies really need.  Actually the very same thing happens on the yoga mat.  Which is why the form of yoga I teach is so uniquely self-care oriented.

Workshops give us an opportunity to explore and expand, consider the place movement holds in our lives, maybe even question the proper balance of it all.  These two are on the horizon :

Rhythm and Release: 

Not since Covid have I offered this unique combination originating right out of that hastily sketched triangle.  Come experience the essence of body joy in a moving dialogue between myofascial roller release and 5Rhythms dance. Release feet and legs, then ground right into your fluidity. Free up hips and shoulders and release into your natural power. Unleash spine and head, feel the freedom of surrender. A two hour breathing and moving journey into the dual joys of healing self-care and expressive movement. Varying density rollers provided or you can bring your own.  Saturday April 8 11:00-1:00.

Tune Up: physical therapy best practices:

This is the meeting ground of yoga and physical therapy.  Our human body is a miracle in motion. Until it’s not. Injuries, genetics, habitual ways we sit, stand, work, sleep all create challenges. And these troubles compound as the years accumulate. This is the norm. Neck and shoulder, back and hip, knees and feet share very common and often easily treatable patterns of pain and dysfunction. I’ve been helping patients heal more than 50 years. Come for a dollop of self-empowerment in this three class series or drop in to a single session.  Saturday April 22, 29, May 6  12:00-2:00.

So I’m talking to you out there.  Some of you receive this missive because you show up to dance.  And some of you I’ve connected with on the mat or the treatment table.  And all of us may want to consider the place movement holds in our lives and question the proper balance of it all.  We want bodies fluid and supple, strong and toned, vital, thriving….alive. Sometimes it just makes sense to re-imagine our priorities.  I’m here to help with that re-imagining.

❤️Bella

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taking the reins….2-27-23

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Evaluate and treat:  3 X a week for 6 weeks

So would read any number of prescriptions at the physical therapy clinic I owned.  The patient came in for assessment and then returned on the regular for hands on treatment and exercise progression.  Not unusual for this prescription to be renewed at least once.  Discharge was the ultimate goal, but there was no hurry.

This frequency was good for business, but over the years frustration was brewing underneath.  Increasingly I was present to the subtle way this frequency sabotaged the patient’s ability to take the reins of their own healing.  It felt like, for lack of a more tactful phrase, physical therapy babysitting.  And being a participant in this dynamic began to eat away at my soul.

So I sold that clinic and slowly, organically shifted to an entirely different business model.  In the fertile 3 year interim before I built the studio over my garage, I treated people on the fly, hauling my treatment table here and there.  The dual qualities of efficiency and agency began to intertwine and a more relevant way to provide health care emerged.   Both the patients and my soul thrived with this change.

Mostly I treat patients once or twice or thrice.  Our first consideration is to insure that commitment to healing is strong and, even more important, there is real excitement about taking the reins. What does that mean in practical terms?  To see me one-on-one there’s only one requirement: show up on your home mat twenty minutes most days for two weeks following that first visit and do the movements we phone video record.  That way, as you track shifts in your symptoms, we find out together if you’re on the right track.

Hands on follow-up visits are for progression, adjustment, modification.  And even when we arrive at a satisfying completion, things change over time.  People come back for tune-ups as needed.  A handful come for more frequent support: weekly for a bit or monthly.  Is this a lucrative business model?  Absolutely not.  Do I care?  No. There is such incredible freedom and honor and responsibility to be beyond that point in my life.

So let’s get a little more specific…..because it’s interesting how often our journey begins or eventually comes around to the psoas. Check this picture out:

Did you know they call this muscle the “first responder”?  Because in moments of perceived threat, the psoas comes on line to help you fight or run or maybe just freeze. Known as storage locker for stress and trauma, for me, in my medicine work, it holds the literal center. This Sunday afternoon I’ll be at Summer Moon Yoga for Centered: me & my psoas, a two hour dive into the belly. A golden opportunity to go in there with expert guidance usually available only in one-on-one appointments.  A focused chance to feel, breathe, viscerally touch this place where gut instinct arises.  We have two tender loins (psoas’) and they differ from side to side.  Tending that difference is quite often a pivotal healing touchstone. Come with your curiosity, bring a roller if you have one.  I’ll have additional props and plenty of gentle wisdom to share.

If this is your time to take the reins I would be honored to be your coach and witness and biggest fan.  You inspire me every single day.

❤️Bella

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a bit of a legacy…11-30-22

Summer 2021: I begin to save recordings of Roll, Release, Align on-line.  The sessions seemed to have value for students beyond our together practice.  They report ease in breaking 90 minute sessions into shorter practices.  Or the support of repeating classes in their entirety.  So I begin to build a library.

By the time I stopped teaching in September, 55 classes had gathered themselves, arranged in eight anatomically inspired chapters.  Teaching principles of loose, long and strong has been in evolution in one form or another since 1983.  Imparting this knowledge is starting to feel a bit of a legacy.   This life-long work in progress is a living breathing organism, always growing as I track my own internal experience and observe responses in yours.  Sensation, injuries, reaction and adaptation to new techniques, total curiosity…so much keeps it ever fresh. This particular on-line year is a snapshot of that continual evolution as we travelled through the entire body.

Each class has every element needed for optimal self-care:  release with balls and rollers, core strength, stretching tightness, a bit of yoga asana.  Visuals, music, poetry to spark an embodied imagination.  If you’re intrigued about how to enter this richly resourced world of self-care, there are many easy ways to slide in:

The Triplet:
Whenever the mood strikes, I’m creating three short videos focused on a particular body region.  The current triplet is about the rib cage.  I like the Swedish translation: heart basket.  Because we want this body part to be more like a basket and less like a cage!  Roll out your mat, give it a try.  Let it inspire.  This content is free.  Next up when the mood strikes?  A loose, long and strong psoas.

Intro to the Essentials:
The slow and easy basics—four one hour classes—digest at your own pace for free.  Care for your unique and beautiful body…it’s a pleasure!  Feel confident when you come to your mat, with or without the support of a teacher.  Learn the basic skills utilized in Video Library classes.  I’ll guide you through the essentials: foam rolling, tennis ball releases, core strength, stretching out.  After just one session roll your mat out at home with self-assured expertise.  Props you need at this LINK.

A One-on-One moment:
Many students come for individual physical therapy either before they begin practice or as they run into roadblocks along the way.  In a single session, in person or on-line, we suss out your unique challenges.  This paves the way for you to practice with workable modifications AND clearly focuses you on your unique asymmetries.  Not a one of us is perfectly balanced!  Practice is so much more interesting and productive when there is a felt sense of the particulars.

The Video Library:
Watch the short introductory video, choose a chapter and then take your pick of classes.  Feel the evolution doing them in chronological order.  Classes toward the end give you a feel of practice in its more current form, launch point for the upcoming live offering. By monthly subscription.

LIVE:

Release and Realign:  free preview Friday December 16 10:00 at Clara Auditorium. Enter parking lot from O St. ‘tween 24th & 26th St. Turn left, enter brown double doors.  Drop in fee $20 starting January 6.  Bring mat, 3 foot roller, two soft balls, two pair wrapped tennis balls, two blocks, blanket, strap.  Props available for purchase for preview class and each Friday morning in January.

Tune Up Your Moving Body: committed series at Yoga Shala Saturdays Feb 4, 11, 18 12:00-1:30.  Limited to 16 students.  Registration link coming soon.

The time is ripe.  So many ways to enter into the pleasure of self-care.  And speaking of pleasure….I experienced such a brilliant session as a student at Sunday Sweat Your Prayers.  We dance for so many reasons and transcendence is not at the top of my list.  But there it was, a total dissolve moment. No separation between me and you and us. And of course, then it was gone. The realization of meaning is only an echo of the actual experience.  But the physical memory of this universal truth, this felt sense of non-duality, is anchored in my bones. The reverberations bring me enormous pleasure.  5Rhythms dance 2022 runs through December 18 before we break until January 8, 2023.

This life-long work in progress is a living breathing organism, always growing as I track my own experience and yours. Ever fresh. Knowledge filtered through experience occasionally translates to a bit of wisdom.  Sharing that, offering whatever happens to come through feels a bit of a legacy.

❤️Bella

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Body tales…so many chapters…

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Dear Bella,

Oh those body tales of woe…our stories.  Myriad chapters spread over time.  My current troubles began as many do.  Insidiously.  Which the dictionary defines as “proceeding in a gradual, subtle way, but with harmful effects.”  Right?  A shadowy ache in forearm, there one day, gone the next.  Elusive then lingering.  Lifting a full tea kettle: ouch.  Tenderness in elbow.  Not  debilitating, but unpleasant, worrisome.  And after wishing it away a bit too long, I deeply massage forearm and that definitely helps.  But right hand starts to complain about so much tedious work.

And then magic happens.  A déjà vu moment that’s regularly recurred in this life dedicated to treating body ailments…mine AND yours.  So I’m minding my own business, tennis ball rolling out my shins when the bulb lights up.  Shin.  Forearm.  Same!  Two parallel bones spanning knee and ankle just like the two bones that connect elbow and wrist.  In a posture of utter supplication, I roll the forearms just like the shins, cruise up into elbow and dig into triceps. Which are, of course, part of the drama.  Such a tearful moment: relief, gratitude, awe…all wrapped into one juicy sensory experience. Quick video:

Here’s the rest of the story.  A variation on this synchronicity has occurred countless times in my work.  The very next morning a young cello player comes to my studio with chronic left forearm pain.  We had work to do in her thoracic spine, scapula, rib cage.  It’s all connected.  But we finished the session with this very technique.  I kid you not.

I am not a traditionally religious person. But every so often I feel god working through me.  Bestowing me with ailments to feel into, move through. And then this gentle nudge to pass the healing magic on.  Is this forearm thing behind me yet?  Well, no.  Just like you I do the self-care I need and then get busy or neglectful or fate-tempting or downright stubborn.  Resistant to the obvious: this body needs consistent care and attention and love.  And then I come back.  Just like you.

It’s that coming back that I am here to support.  Read on a bit about these two juicy things if you want a leg up:

  • About Yoga: a triplet of free videos to inspire you. Pull out your mat and jump start your practice. New offerings on this page as the spirit moves me.  This triplet is to help you foster a rib cage loose, long and strong.
  • Release and Realign: we finally named this Friday morning drop in class that officially begins January 6.  But don’t wait…come out for the free class December 16 10:00 Clara and meet the “we”.

Who is this “we” of rotating teachers?  Kim Wagaman and I met in 2007 at Yoga Solution.  Her openness, attention to alignment and breath and balance and asymmetry, her sparky curiosity and sprinklings of poetry utterly moved me.  Ever since those early days we’ve been mining possibilities.  We’ve taught workshops together and went parallel online when Covid came to call.  Jeanne Munoz was in my teacher group at It’s All Yoga 2012.  As soon as we completed training we collaborated on a Friday night Roll & Release class.  Until she had twins and we had to take a pause.  We knew we’d be back together someday.   It was meant to be.  That day has finally come.

If you have a body tale of woe–a current story or multiple chapters spread over a lifetime, maybe something insidious that is proceeding in a gradual, subtle way, with harmful effects—I’m right here for you.  Did you know that back in my clinical era I used to see 12 patients a day?  That was hecka training.  Now?  One a day.  Love it.  Because it is so nourishing relaxed, focused and creative, spontaneous yet individualized.  So utterly uncompromised.  I adore this work.

No matter where we meet—on the dance floor, on the mat, on the treatment table—-please be welcome.  Join me for a tearful moment: relief, gratitude, awe…all wrapped into one juicy sensory experience.

❤️Bella

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betwixt before and after…10-26-22

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Recent travel immersed me in the duality of moving with continual change: joy and exasperation, craziness and wonder.  Planes, trains, automobiles (remember that hysterical film with Steve Martin and John Candy?) only began this journey.  Every time I turned around another moment of transition was at hand.  And really…how is that any different from a same-old, same-old day?

All those daily under the radar transition moments: we wake from sleep, we stand from our chair, we open the door and go outside.  It’s sunny, then overcast. The wind is blowing, then it stops.  The mid-level transitions: we’re in one city then another.  Relationships and jobs begin and then they end.  We move from one home to another.  It’s a new day, the next week, the following month…the year turns over.  And then the Big Passages: a pandemic emerges, wars flare up and die down, elections alter the course of history, regimes come and go.  The climate changes.  Babies are born.  People die.

You know the Buddhist axiom: all things rise and fall.  But every transition, from the micro to the mega, has one thing in common.  The in-between phase.  The mystery betwixt before and after. Building skill at recognizing that moment is the work of a lifetime.  Because in that precise moment we have opportunity.  Sometimes an active choice can be made.  We can go right or we can go left.  We can turn toward or turn away.  We can speak or be still.   And sometimes we can make a choice to be passive.  Simply surrender to the way the wind blows, the direction the water flows.  Yield to the shifting ground, submit to the prevailing momentum.  We can surrender to being with things just as they are and patiently wait for time to pass.

Faster than ever, small and big changes happen all around us.  We can cultivate our responsiveness muscle during that pause between moments.  How?  Feel inside: breath, sensation, instinct, emotion, intuition.  Look out and tune into the big picture, the broad perspective and, at the same time, attend to the devil that lives in the details.  Awareness and attention, our allies in transition, paving the way to action or surrender.

Class practice invites honing that skill.  On Sunday we paused in the ready made transition between songs and I had a total aha moment.  I’ve spent twenty years growing my DJ-ing ability, part of which involves making the transitions as seamless as possible.  What’s that about?  What kind of preparation for life is that?  I was all about abrupt on Sunday.  Challenging the habitual is definitely a means to boost awareness and attention.

Cultivation of awareness and attention is a thread weaving through all Body Joy offerings.  This web page is a vision of change in progress; scroll down to see all three listings:

Tend Your Aging Body:  New people have shown up every Saturday for this 90 minutes of pleasure. They slide right into this slow gentle practice.  Since I have tons of prop options available and a great ability to articulate the practice and lots of knowledge on how to modify so its just right for you and clear visuals and divine music…well, it’s a good thing and this Saturday Oct 29 is the last chance to indulge until January.  Treat yourself.

Wilbur Hot Springs:  Do you know this oasis 90 minutes from Sac? I’ll be on the enclosed deck November 19-20 offering 3 Roll, Release, Align sessions (all props included).  These classes are included with your day pass or overnight stay. Come soak, come hike, come let go. I love this Northern California gem. Please join me! You need to reserve your day pass or overnight stay soon with Wilbur Hot Springs.  They sell out  on weekends.

Roll, Release, Align:  Actively in transition: name is a draft, description is a draft.  But a free class on a Friday in December is in the works.  Stay tuned!  Clara is definitely rented. Us three (from left to right: Kim Wagaman, myself, Jeanne Munoz) are totally excited, committed and ready to rotate Fridays 10:00 beginning in January.

Each way-experienced teacher puts her spin on loose, long and strong.  When I’m not teaching I’ll be on my mat out there with you.  It’s a bring-your-own-props class. I’ll be retailing what you need out of my trunk in the parking lot before each class in January.

And, of course, all things 5Rhythms:
Wednesday Waves tonight Oct 26 6:30pm.
Sweat Your Prayers Sunday Oct 30 10:00am with guest teacher Rachel Jordana from Santa Cruz holding it down for a Halloween celebration. Come dressed up!! Alter Egos are welcome.
Moon Lodge  Dec 5-9 at Esalen with Lucia Horan.  I’ll be assisting at my favorite place on Planet Earth.  Wanna come with?

Closing with this quote from Leon C. Megginson:

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive,
nor the most intelligent,
but the one most responsive to change.”

Let’s build that responsiveness together…❤️Bella

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it’s my karma…10-1-22

 

Karma: a Hindu notion, a slant on fate, a notion that our destiny is not random but is rather the effect arising from cause.  In other words: what we do today has bearing on tomorrow.  Karma is the sum of our actions in this life and maybe even in previous states of existence. This rings with truth as I waltz with memory.  Each recollection jigsaws its way into my puzzle.  Each event had a time and a reason and a perfection.  Cause and effect.

That’s the west view in my studio pictured above.  This wall has become an ever evolving altar, a random call to visual expression during Covid.  Some days it feels like a karmic exploration of all that has moved through me to create what is now and what will be.

From different streams, folks in need make a landing in this physical therapy studio. Most float in through word of mouth.  But in this brave new world, more and more internet searchers seek me out.  The healing work I do is kinda niche and the web site communicates with an accuracy that helps us find each other. Most cyber-searchers are really good matches.  They know what they want, they’re in quest of something unconventional, physical therapy with depth, treatment that reaches beyond the bounds of the physical, cutting edge—not cookie cutter.

That first time phone connect always includes the deal breaker/maker question:  “Do you have the time and willingness to come to your mat for twenty minutes most days for two weeks after our initial session?” Because two weeks of attuned follow through is so informative.  It tells us if we’re moving on the right healing track.  When there’s an excited “yes, please”, well, then I know we are good to go.

Quite frequently they reveal they have already tried EVERYTHING or that I’m the last resort or they’re discouraged but willing to try again.  I’m not sure how I became that practitioner but the story stretches way back.  Dreizler Physical Therapy was absolutely known in this community as the top place for treatment challenges that were chronic and complex. And bits and pieces of my work before that had a similar touch. There is no doubt about this being my karma.

I have a long-honed ability to listen to complicated histories. Fine-tuned ears, an open heart, eyes that miss nothing.  And then I just clearly know/intuit where and how to embark.  And what the outcome possibilities are.  And how to move softly and gently, just the right amount.  And how to support and educate and encourage all in one breath. It is my karma.

And so is teaching classes rooted in this experience.  A group session is a nest for my patients to land for support.  It’s creative space for people to slowly explore and heal on their own.  It’s a welcome mat for folks to meet me, those who may need some individual help.  Yesterday I taught the very last on-line Roll, Release, Align class.  This was a Covid-motivated two and a half year undertaking.  It was an anchor for me and a dedicated posse.  I listened and learned and loved so much.  I will miss it.  A lot.

But it’s time to go LIVE.  Tend Your Aging Body  allows us to put our feet in these new community waters and take a reading.  See above about soft and gentle and just the right amount and support and educate and encourage.  Each 90 minute session is a luxury dive into your interior breathing pulsing vital space.  New and old ways to release what’s stiff or rigid; tone up what’s exhausted weak; stretch out, lengthen what’s tense tight; feel into effortless alignment.

Clara Auditorium is spacious, the music encourages us to let go; masks are totally O.K. Questions I’ve been answering:

  • Do I have to attend all four?  No, drop into any one that works for you.
  • Are sessions recorded? Yes, receive video by email and keep practice link forever.  Pre-enroll for four, miss a class…receive video link.
  • Do I bring my own props?  Bring your mat and 3 foot foam roller if you have one.  Roller not required.  Sometimes we are practicing with the wrong density.  Yikes, so important!  All densities there for trial.  Soft balls and tennis balls provided.
  • Can I purchase equipment on site?  Yes, after class purchase anything you fall in love with.
  • Will sessions be available in Video Library?  Yes, when the series is complete.
  • How do I know if my body can do this? Call me (916) 267-5478 and let’s figure that out together.

Maybe you also know what you want, you’re questing for something unconventional, new ways to deepen into your body, tap in and reach beyond the bounds of the physical, embark on something cutting edge—not cookie cutter.

I’m excited to be out there again.  With  you.  Let’s go for it.  We step into that healing space exactly one week from today.  It’s my karma.

Love, Bella

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things just ain’t what they was…9-8-22

Sitting here in the cool of this morning, knowing full well the temperature is set to go sky high again today.  Like everything else, the weather is just not what it was. Sounds like a refrain from a country song: “things just ain’t what they was”.  Change, continuous on so many planes, keeps us firmly entrenched in long term Zen training.  Some days it’s a big stretch to view all the chaos through a spiritual filter of surrendered presence.  It’s a big ask when it’s 115 degrees, fires burn the forest, division is the entrenched cultural norm, war & poverty are not even front page news, breathing air is unhealthy and Covid just keeps slinking around our edges.  Can we love life in whatever way it is being served up?

I keep answering yes.  Eventually.  Some days harder than others.  But the same priorities keep my yes alive.  Sowing seeds and harvesting fruits of connection to loved ones.  Coming to my mat to breathe and feel and tend. Partnering with astounding patients healing up in the studio.  Preparing nourishing food in a kitchen I love.  Dancing in this community. Watering my plants.  Breaking away for the devotion of living close to ocean and mountains.  And teaching.  How impactful holding space that supports us in movement has become.  And even though “things just ain’t what they was” all this still supports my love of life.

Teaching and practicing live is calling me.  Big time.  We are all gaining skill in personal health risk assessment.  Can you feel that?  I reached a tipping point when my physical health needs had to come in better balance with my emotional/mental health requirements. Who knows what the future holds but right now teaching, practicing and treating patients live is bringing me that balance.  The Clara venue is very spacious.  If you’re in the Sacramento region, we dance there Wednesday night and Sunday morning.  And I will be there four Saturday mornings in October for Tend Your Aging Body.  Feeling it out.  Possibilities for a weekday drop in class are beginning to brew.  If you’re feeling it, let’s be live together.

We’re aging.  Really.  And over the decades, guess what, our needs change.  There is tender self-care your body craves. This offering is so NOT boot camp! Pleasure mat skills with rollers & balls that free up tight fascia.  Core vitality accessed through breath-psoas intimacy.  Length for the tightest muscles.  Tend Your Aging Body is perfect if you want the motivation and confidence to come to your home mat to breathe and feel and tend.  It’s not complicated.  Even 15 minutes can make a world of difference.

If you’re a beginner to this way of being with your body? You’ll absorb the essentials. Experienced? Come to deepen your practice, feel the space.  Together we’ll be creating the support for a fluid body, powerful in motion.  Come breathe, come feel, come change.  Really.  Well maybe a picture is worth a thousand words:

I suppose if things just ain’t what they was, we have a chance to create whatever is next, whatever will someday be the new was, something that may even be better than the old was.

Yours in the Big Whatever….❤️Bella

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below the skin…8-15-22

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Well, I’ve joined the ranks of Covid initiates.  So many of us in this no longer exclusive club.  And that is a good thing, feel like I’ve contributed to the possibility of herd immunity.  No cake walk for me though; it was pretty challenging, even given the ingenious medical boost.  So grateful for that and for the return of breath as each day brings a bit more energy.  The isolation may have been an amazing retreat if I had only felt well.  But in the quiet challenge a bunch of long view reflection kept surfacing.  This writing is only a pie slice of that.

Fifty years ago.  Berkeley. Rented a walk in closet just big enough for twin mattress and suitcase.  A place to lay my head when I wasn’t finishing my physical therapy internship. The last hoop to jump through before being set free in the world.  Back when a bachelor’s was all you needed to practice.  A doctorate required now and I’ve been grand-mothered in.  Most of my expertise never came from books anyway.  In such a hands on profession being thrown in the deep end is the best education.  I certainly had plenty of deep water.

Except for one thing.  The hours invested in anatomy education never cease paying huge dividends.  Those 20 weeks in lab, 8 hours a week…forever imprinted on my soul.  11th floor, UCSF.  Huge windows overlooking Golden Gate Park, bridge in the distance.  10 cadavers stretched long on plinths, breathlessly waiting.  Me, three classmates and one dead body…bonded for the duration.  At first, it took everything I had to hold back the gag, not sure if I was going to make it.  The formaldehyde alone felt like a deal breaker.  But it’s strange what you can get used to.

After week one, my curiosity got the best of me.  I was totally hooked.  All the other lab-learning required X-ray vision to imagine what was happening below the skin.  And what a world it was underneath!  Sectioning out each unique muscle and life-giving blood vessel, teasing out those message-sending nerves, peering directly at origins and insertions on white bone.  Me and Gray’s Anatomy were one.  That fifty year old dog-eared copy is still my every day go to.

In 1992, twenty years later, after touching countless live bodies—hands a bit more enlightened now—I was invited to return to that same lab.  In the company of other intrepid seekers and my original teacher, a now wizened Mrs. Nordschow, I spent all day deep in exploration.  Asking questions about deep rotators and flexors and joint spaces that only a hands-on adventure could answer.  I surprised myself by slipping right back in, like no time at all had passed.

Could be that the intensity of these experiences account for my utter obsession with all things anatomy.  It is so friggin’ geeky.  And I totally indulged that geek-iness this year in a way I absolutely never thought I might.  On September 20, 2021 I taught a Roll, Release, Align class on feet.  Prepped by spending all the time I desired diving into bones and muscles and joints, what it means to weight bear, mechanics of gait, trouble we get into, solutions for the most common owies.  A 90 minute class initiated with screen share so students could actually see what was underneath the skin.  It was a full body class but we just kept bringing our attention back to feet.

Since that day, every Friday morning, I’ve let my geek flag fly.  And I’ve adored this year of systematically working through the entire body.  A few more classes remain to wrap up the shoulder, arm, hand unit.  Then a unit on the head will bring the year plus to a close.  All in all, when complete, a fifty plus class library is available.  Feels like kind of a legacy and I’m really proud of the work.  But more satisfying really is how a whole lifetime, beginning in that cadaver lab 50 years ago, led to this endeavor.  And I am so grateful that the shape of my relatively cushy life has allowed me to indulge this depth of investigation.  And beyond thankful for the students who actually came along for the ride and appreciate this embodied path of learning.

“I’m feeling better, walking better, my posture is improving, my spine is more flexible, my body awareness has increased exponentially, and I can actually sense and activate the psoas muscles for the first time ever!
I am very grateful to you!”   L.N.

It’s interesting that Covid came when it was relatively convenient: cancelled a camping trip, no dance until September, a handful of re-scheduled patients.  Thank you universe.  Also, in case you didn’t hear, Ritual/It’s All Yoga has closed.  So I had some quiet time to re-imagine the venue/date for Tending Your Aging Body.  It will be live at Clara, four consecutive mornings in October.  Whether you are an on line experienced practitioner or a novice curious one…you’ll love this series.  Because it covers all the best self care bases and will inspire you to no end.  Promise.  Trust the geek.

Yours in quiet reflection.
❤️Bella

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