Psychology + Zen = Philosophy and methods to relieve suffering and reveal happiness.
Psychology: We project onto others what we reject in ourselves. Some call it a Shadow. Healing comes from making the unconscious conscious, taking responsibility for our projections, integrating what is split off as our own thing.
Zen: There is no separate self. When we can be at one with every aspect, then we belong everywhere and we reject no one.
We heal the world by becoming intimate with our whole selves.
When something troubles me, I work with it, sit with it, and play with it. This video is a play on the question of help--taking help and giving it. Beautiful dancers, Justina and CJ, improvised on questions and phrases, and this is what emerged:
My todo list tells me that I need to finish Pedestrian Plea today. I couldn't finish it last week because my teen was creating catastrophe and my mother was in town and my sleep molecules disintegrated completely under the onslaught of psychological collisions. Now today, Hurricane Sandy is fast approaching, and I am compulsively cooking, checking weather updates, comparing Facebook posts with my daughter, wondering when the power is going to shut down. 
Pedestrian Plea is all about the accidental absence of life from well-meaning conceptual Art with a capital A. So, wouldn't it be lovely if I can work in something about how the hurricane is life itself, more art than Art? A wake-up call of the highest order.
A montage to honor the courage it took to face death for a year. The workshop "A Year to Live," based on Stephen Levine's book, was held at the NYC Village Zendo, guided by Roshi Enkyo O'Hara and Robert Chodo Campbell.
Inspired by Cho's gestures, energy, and mission, a group of dancers celebrate human diversity in all its splendid manifestations.
Conceived and Choreographed by Irene Ruiz-Riveros
Video Directed and Edited by Elena TaJo
Music by Steve Elson
I am I: A Tribute to Margaret Cho screened in June of 2010 at Anthology Film Archives as part of an excellent series curated by New York Women in Film and Television. Running time 5:37 minutes
Updated on Friday, June 8, 2012 at 4:44PM by
Elena TaJo
Maybe it was on the millenium or maybe it was 9/11, but on some momentous mark, I resolved to Stop Rushing. Years passed, charged by, actually, as I watched, bewildered, my resolution crushed by the stampede of moments. Resolution wasn't enough. I had to ask:
What's the Rush? No, Really. What is it?
First of all, I don't have time to stop rushing--too many other things to do. The Tyranny of ToDos, I call it. Except who put the damn things on the list?
Don't start with me! I've tried dropping the list. If I don't have a list, the world runs me down. My daughter's needs and the bits and pieces of life fill the entire container and I'm still rushing to keep up.
Ripe1: Mommy Doll Gets Old, an amalgam of documentary and performance art, skewers ideas about aging. What do you think of when you think of Old? Does it mean it’s time to give up? Does it mean we lose our minds? Does it mean it’s time for plastic surgery? Or does it mean wisdom? Mommy Doll Gets Old evoked tears and fascinating conversation at the Garnerville Arts Festival, the Trail Dance Film Festival, the Rivertown Shorts Festival, GIAA (3rd prize), and Digifestival.net 2007.
Total running time: 11:14 minutes
My favorite jam, utterly unavailable--making me utterly dependent. 
With all my might, I tried to open it. Impossible! So of course I had to drop everything I was doing and make make a video.
A gang of dancers encounter the people of New York City. Who is watching whom?
Conceived and choreographed by Deb Silver of Silco Dance. Running time 4:19 minutes
Martyred Mom Cracks Her Shackles! arose out of deep frustration over the seeming impossibility of reconciling motherhood and self-fulfillment. Made in 2005, the video tells the story of a devoted mother’s tortured journey from martyrdom and guilt to freedom and possibility. It is an amalgam of interview, performance art, and odd experimental technique (because the mother didn't know what she was doing). The music, by Marty Beller of They Might be Giants, makes it an energizing experience.
When my friend Marta asked me to do a little (no pressure!) dance at a little (really, no biggie) Festival, I panicked. Riddled with Doubt is what I was. During the same week my mother sent a poem that she had written On Doubt.
Duet with Doubt screened at the Sans Souci Festival of Dance, including their Texas State University tour, the Austin Woman's Film Festival, and the Baltimore Women's Film Festival.
A woman confronts her shadow. Reading her mothers poem, On Doubt, the woman engages with the unsavory presence and discovers how to start working. (2:10 min)