Holding space for 5Rhythms practice, a unique calling. In the days preceding a session, I root through the mud of my life, digging for what’s most alive and juicy. Then I massage this little tender fragment into the shape of embodied inquiry. All this, before I find the right music and step through the door, in all vulnerability, to offer a group investigation. It has been the perfect prescription for my own growth.

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 the umpteenth time I listened to a physical therapy tale of woe. Just last week I heard the story again. With variations on body part, it pretty much goes something like this:

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.

I up and quit my fresh from interning professional job after just 2 ½ years. It was an absorbing chapter, sprawled on a floor mat, delivering therapy for youngsters shaped by cerebral palsy. Wet behind the ears and guiding families in crisis. Improvising solutions for the severely disabled in an under-staffed residential home. Coordinating care with special ed teachers and advocating for kids in medical clinics.

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.

Meditation: maybe this is on your shoulda coulda woulda list, lumped in there with proper nutrition and daily exercise. It was on my list also for a long time. But some time in the late 80’s, minding my own business, doing my daily exercise walk thing on M Street, Jack Kornfield entered my life. A tape cassette series— Meditation for Beginners—summoned me from it’s perch atop a neighbor’s trash pile.

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.

Is this a cautionary tale? Family saga? Exploration of skin as metaphor? Without really knowing I’ll just begin as I sit here recouping from yet another Moh’s procedure. If you know what this means, I’m sorry. Having been the recipient four times in twenty years, I’m way too familiar. Twice a year Mr. Dermatologist inspects for dry scaly areas, which he painfully freezes so new healthy tissue has a chance to emerge.

I guess you might say I’m a medicine woman, deeply connected with the wide array of sacred ways we nurture our health and alleviate our suffering…all things healing. The dictionary defines medicine as a practice, as if with enough repetition you might get it right some day.

I was blessed by a pair of cinema angels this past week. She Said and Women Talking on consecutive evenings, films that courageously dive into sexual harassment/abuse. Minimal time is devoted to the actual perpetrators or the acts of violence. Because the focus is on the women: directed by women and giving voice to women, just as the titles indicate. Powerful. Highly recommended.

River waters nudge the levee. Wind borderline terrifying. Windows pelted, elder trees topple. Grateful for bodily safety but my heart aches and my spirit feels damp as the yard. Pervasive grey outside matches my inside. Winter is not my happy-joy season. I’ve learned to appreciate the gifts darkness bestows. Just not today, thank you.

Intention Resolution Pledge Commitment

A weighty tradition, a call to action, tethered to year’s end…. Reflection Contemplation Musing Meditation Days damp chill, balanced by marathon nights…I dream

The altar space pictured above organically emerged in my studio in 2020 right along with Covid. Just know that visual creativity is not my artistic go-to expression.

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.

Love Letters to a Raven, an online event, began October 22 on the 10 year anniversary of Gabrielle Roth’s death. It was a global invitation to post pictures and reflections, installations and musings, a 10 day wave with two days dedicated to each rhythm.

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.”

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.

Gabrielle Roth….I have some crazy stories to tell about the ten years I was her student. And just as many tales generated by her practice of the ten years since her passing. Because the rhythms are alive in every part of me. That’s why knowing her in the flesh was just icing on a way big cake.

Back-to-back dance workshop weekends, live community moving in and through, déjà vu from a previous lifetime. But I just hopped on that dusty dance bike and, a bit shaky at first, felt my trusty body pedal down that well-worn path. Surreal, challenging, tender, revelatory…all packed into ten days. As often happens when we steep in intensity, a dormant sensibility, an insight that had been scrambling toward daylight, slowly begins to tease itself out.