The deep cold snap last week scrapped a 3 day camping trip. I can do rugged…but a 40 degree high is not conducive to anything. So I woke Monday morning to an empty to-do list. My current schedule is a pale shadow of what it used to be.

A body rests face down on my treatment table and my hands, butterfly wings, rest upon the flare of ribs. I sense our breath in tandem gently pressing my way south---right, left, right, left.

It’s our first act as we exit the womb. An inhale. New, fresh, born into possibility. Arising. And then there is our departing gesture: the exhale. A dissolve, a let go into mini-death. Passing away. Arising and passing away. So brief, that precious time we have allotted between birth and death. Take a breath in and pause. Feel that sweetness.

The hula hoop craze seared its way into my seven year old memory. Everyone had one and when I wasn’t roller skating that plastic was circling my hips endlessly. I played with this toy on and off through the years and as an adult, cursed/blessed with a more analytical mind, I became intrigued with clockwise vs. counter-clockwise. I found that everyone has a strong preference for directionality when it comes to circling the hips.

Remember spring 2020? We entered this strange chapter at the Equinox, realities of life as we knew temporarily ending at the same time that signs of life renewing itself were blooming all around us. Now it is Equinox again.

Can you feel your precious feet on the floor? The weight falling into heels. Sensitive to the empty space in the dome of the arch. Plump nesting ball of foot. Each teeny earth contact point of ten toe pads. Being grounded in these trying times…so many ways to practice.

Do you know confused? This tizzy of frustrating paralysis? Have you ever watched yourself generate flimsy excuses about why you’re feeling stuck? I know this place and last week, muddled to the max

For seven days, my reality. And now I’m back. There is smoke. There is Covid. There is drought. There is Afghanistan. There are hurricanes. There is loss upon loss upon loss. My first day back felt disastrous, overwhelming.

The view is unchanged. Thirty years, same coastal location. And, though the world is chaotically strange outside our front door, off the back deck things are persistently unchanged. Dusky low tide sand, the jutting land spit holding Santa Cruz, diving pelicans and surfacing seals.

Most Sunday mornings, I head out to dance in the garden. I cruise through mid-town, cross the American river and turn left on Northgate. Right there, beneath the overpass, week after week, I pale at the jumble of broken down tents, piles of rubbish, scattered outhouses littering the landscape of the river’s edge. The people living here are lean and dark, downcast eyes, shoulders to match. I look. I breathe. I let in. My Sunday practice for more than a year now.

I pulled up to the drive in pharmacy window at CVS and already knew the drill.  Insert  Qtip an unreasonable distance into each nostril, twirl then hold 15 seconds.  Put nasal sample in sterile tube.  Disinfect and open receptacle to deposit secretions.  Sigh.  Drive away.  Pray.

I found myself wallowing in doubt a short while the other day. Really, who am I to teach a workshop titled Cultivate Being? What do I know? I should be teaching the alternative, the one called Cultivate Distraction. There’s where my expertise lies. Besides, the last time I held a multiple day retreat was 2014 at Harbin, before it was lost to flames.

There I sat, a grandchild nested both sides, focused ready for a re-read of a favorite Dr. Seuss. It was a golden oldie when my kids loved The Sneetches.

Before I dive in to this uber-dance related narrative let me reach out to you yogis. Are you ready to touch in to LIVE practice? Feel it out? Breath and move and feel indoors with like-hearted practitioners? Please join me this Saturday at Clara for Essential Recharge.

The doumentary Oliver Sachs: His Own Life really got my attention the other night. The compelling story of a brilliant man who came into fullness via a challenging childhood, a troubled young adulthood and a struggling middle age.  Through every difficult passage, across every divide, faced with each seemingly un-scalable wall, he just kept moving with destiny. 

Retreat: 1) an act of withdrawing especially from what is difficult, dangerous, or disagreeable 2) a place of privacy or safety 3) a period of group withdrawal for prayer, meditation, study, or instruction under a director

Retreat: 1) an act of withdrawing especially from what is difficult, dangerous, or disagreeable 2) a place of privacy or safety 3) a period of group withdrawal for prayer, meditation, study, or instruction under a director

Took a few days to read a New York Times Magazine special feature about the past, present and future of the human life span. I had to take it in mini-bouts. Put our current state of affairs into stunning perspective.

That first pair arrived as harbingers of middle age. Cheap readers from the drugstore. Every year or two the numbers rose: 1.0, 2.25, 3.5…you get the picture. Maybe you’re living it. In no time the number could not go high enough, my arms were just not long enough, the lighting was just never strong enough.

Ever had shoulder pain? No??? You are lucky and very unusual. I totally remember my first bout. Scooping really hard ice cream at a school fundraiser, this giant container of vanilla, the table way too high for a short gal like me. Feel that? But I was fine doling it out for a couple hours. It wasn’t until the next day I noticed a dull ache about three inches south of the shoulder joint. Classic. And so began my personal introduction to rotator cuff dysfunction.