Sprung

Today is our Urban Sesshin, plus it's gorgeous outside, so I'm just here to say I'm still here. 

Grace

You can't see what I'm doing but I'm lifting my pelvic floor. You can't hear me but I'm humming. The hum sounds like a growl then graduates to a stutter as the vocal cords begin to get the message. I practice the vowels in my throat. I read a sentence without the consonants, then I practice the consonants in a whisper, then I add a bit of voice. When I get to conversation I am still stymied because there isn't enough air to get through more than a few words. I stop to breathe but my thoughts keep going, so I have to deal with the collision and make a choice, and then attend to the pelvic floor and make a note to remember to practice breathing, easy to avoid because it is so hard. 

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A Place to Turn Around

Last week I told a handful of people that I'm dying. I let go, stopped trying to conquer what can't be conquered, stopped trying to make progress, decided to respect the disease and my limits. And I wanted to talk about it. I described it to some friends as a kind of Tourettes, spitting death into the patter of polite conversation that irks me. 

Death. I'm dying. No, I'm not getting better but I'm alive and will try to keep it that way for as long as I can. Enjoy your day and I'll do the same. I feel a bit guilty when I rebuff the well-wishing but, hey, this is my protest and my medicine. 

In many of the Zen koans, a teacher is praised with the phrase: He had a place to turn around.

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Death Porn

Yes, I'll be pole dancing with the pillar of death, stripping down to my soul, dangling my scraps of life as they fall away. And you can watch.

So I looked up Pillar of Death, because, what the f*ck am I talking about? and before long I stumbled on a video of a twin meeting his twin for the first time. I cried. yes indeed. I will never have that experience and yet I felt it as if it were mine. It has nothing to do with pillars (even though there is some kind of game that features pillars of death), but emo is emo. 

Recently I saw a wonderful flick called The Forty Year Old Version, about a brilliant and under-appreciated Black playwright.

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Sculpt

I'm excited to finally offer this little 6-minute vignette of the work of the PsychoZen Mixed Messages ensemble. Here we are playing with a format that I designed from the family therapy technique of sculpting. One person begins by arranging two people into a shape that expresses a relationship between mother and daughter. It could be her own relationship or an imagined one. Then the players reveal the sensations, emotions, thoughts and desires that arise. The director modifies the flow and the sculptor continues to shift the tableau according to what is happening, what is needed. It enables us to move and shift trauma, and emerge with freedom and love. 

November 2020

What's in a Name? Francie

Here's another example of working with what presents itself. I happened upon these umbrellas whipping around in the wind at nearly the same moment that my collaborator overheard a conversation. They came together without coming together. One minute, thirty eight seconds.

April 2019

On Feldenkrais

Sure there are the miracles.  Walking along one day you realize the knee twinge is no longer part of your experience.  Or the neck doesn't lock, or the electric toe is at peace. 

But the most profound effect of Feldenkrais method is pleasure. The practice of trying things, sensing what connects with what, what makes what move, and finding ease in All That is really so much fun.  I remember noticing my young daughter's attitude when she was playing: what happens when I do this?  

It is still possible to play, to engage in discovery, like figuring out how to roll like a baby or lift your neck as if it is the first time. It isn't always easy, especially if you are old, or grew up with disabillity, or both. Feldenkrais technique aims to disrupt compulsive action, or habit. In most Awareness Through Movement lessons, the teacher introduces a wierd counterintuitive thing like moving your eyes in the opposite direction of your head. Oddly, after doing such a thing, all of this spaciousness sprouts, and then there is freedom of movement where there wasn't before.  

Of course doing this again and again provides direction and practice for the mind. When I encounter something really hard, I try switching things up, like the antidote to the oft-quoted notion that insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. Just do something different.  See how it goes. If you don't like it, try something else.  

I think this is all tied in to listening, to improvisation, to letting go.  What comes next?

September 2017

Yes, Doctor. May I see your computer?

It started out well enough.  The pain specialist in the spine department--let's call him Dim--was friendly and respectful, and did a quick and gentle exam of my neck.  Then he brought me into his office, offered a seat while he communicated with his computer as he complained that electronic medical records were ruining his practice.  I sympathized; he continued on about how this keeps him up at night, then asked me many questions that had nothing to do with my neck, presumably required by the machine he was facing.

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Helpers

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:

2013 

Hurricane Hits: The Movie

Struck by the juxtapostion of gigantic problems and tiny but important personal problems, I made this offering.   For New York City, October 2012.