2022
February
The warm season is coming in a couple months. I would dearly love to practice awareness, expression, and self-regulation in spacious, gracious community, in the great wide open. I want to create a space given to sustained dedication to breath, body, sensitivity, and engaging with our non-human and human company on Earth (starting with our own internal presence). On good ground and in good time, I wish to freely focus on ways to be, and on ways to be in integrity, together: on relating.

Mukw’ stem ‘I’ utunu
tumuhw‘o’ slhiilhukw’tul
Everything on this earth
is interconnected
Thanks and honour to  Jared Qwustenuxun Williams for sharing this Hul'q'umi'num' statement from Quw'utsun Hwulmuwh.

I would love to welcome you to 5Rhythms free-form movement practice, 10 - 11:45 am, select Sundays in May, June, August & September.
Each dance will include the possibility of relating to wisdoms offered by one of our earthly relations: elemental relations, plant relations, or swimming, flying, crawling, 4-legged or 2-legged animal relations.  These classes are for all humans irrespective of culture, colour, creed, gender, sexuality, size,(dis)ability situation, life stage, health status, or financial circumstance. Providence Farm, Quw'utsun Territory, Duncan BC, in St. Ann's Garden, 1843 Tzouhalem Road.

April
These days I take my good news wherever I can, where it comes in grounded and runs clear.  So I was something close to overjoyed recently, when out the window I saw the first swallows of spring darting over the brightening land. Swallow Return is a high holy day in my calendar. The fact that they choose to come back to grace the air as they feed and make families bodes well, in my book. They fill me with praise and a willingness to praise more.

May
On the 8th, I will get myself back to the garden, and I would love to welcome you to this outdoor time and space for your own movement to unfurl.
This is my third year offering outdoor 5Rhythms at Providence Farm. We've built layers of presence there as a morphing, responsive community. This spring, going back feels like a fitting seasonal migration. A meaningful return that I look forward to with a full and curious heart. I'm ready to return together to body absorption, expression, and rest in movement of all sorts.  And to inventive, enriching, generous relating to space, place, each other, and our fellow beings.

For new folks: no experience or technique is needed. These classes are for all humans 13+. Humans of all cultures, colours, creeds. All genders, sexualities, sizes. All (dis)ability situations, life stages, health status, financial circumstances. No one turned away because of money. Chairs available for seated dance.

July
When's the last time you got an invitation to dance into depths, and it felt right to do it?
In Courtenay on June 25, I met people who chose to do it: to dance right through the cracks where the light gets in. Some of us felt our way slowly until immersion was upon us. Some skipped in light-footed. Some dove. I myself tripped into some walloping belly flops. When you move toward and through a surface, you never really know what you'll find beyond it. It takes heart to do it. To do it again and again takes a spirit that I admire greatly–– a spirit I witnessed in this group. Sincerity, curiosity, and integrity came through. These qualities of human sweetness navigate me back to Courtenay, to swim through more surfaces into movement connection.

August
Spirits open to the thrust of grace, never a breath you can afford to waste.
~ Bruce Cockburn

It's time to dive back into teaching. Practicing in movement with others is a way I say with my whole self: Please give me sweetness that's plain and real, that bubbles and pops and bubbles again. Let me be one who brings it, who breathes it. I’m on a pilgrimage for it. I'm practicing remembering that the whole point is all the roadside places where I can stop and smell the roses, hear the life in a voice, taste a mouthful of safe-to-drink water, feel something real, or see one of ten thousand goodnesses I’ve temporarily forgotten to acknowledge. I can stop and take one alive, self-tracking breath that makes a space where sweetness could get in. With this intent, on Saturday the13th in Courtenay, I’ll hold a day of movement immersion, exploration, reflection, and… how shall I say? Inventive, embodied rest. 

2021
January
The calendar says 2021. It's time to greet you and bring you an update. Time has been playing uncanny tricks this year. How, precisely, did it get to be January 2021?
The bendy voice of time has been calling me, singing strange songs to me all year.  It has me convinced that January 2020 happened yesterday,  and also that 2020 happened entirely in a previous age of Earth, or only in a wobbly dreamtime.

I'm feeling that this is a time to follow the strangeness and work faithfully within it. For me, this is not a time to force anything into a previously-planned pace or shape.
When I read the signs, they all say: WORK IN PROGRESS. What I have to offer is very simple for now, and subject to growth soon.

In this time that's so hard to describe, 
above the roar of 7,836,859,451
of us talking amongst ourselves
(and more newborn souls every single second),
what do you notice is calling you, asking for your presence and your participation?
What activity? What halts? 
What connections? What dissolving of ties?
What inner constancy? What inner flux?
What wide-open wondering, and what solid discernment?
What grappling with challenges or complications?
What fortification via regrouping or simplification?

What do the senses say?
What says the awareness?
What parts of you or your life are properly engaged in listening?
What parts are speaking or ready to speak?
Acting or ready to act?
Stilling or ready to still?
Dancing or ready to dance?


April
Dearly missed community,
On Sunday May 2nd, I'll open a spring and summer season of outdoor movement practices in the quiet and protected back garden at Providence Farm. We'll dance on the Sunday mornings and Tuesday evenings of May, June, and August. I nurture the hope that our free-range movement will benefit you, the earthly place and creatures where we dance, and the human web that fans out in the relationships and influences of each dancer. I'll support each group's process with a new format, in response to changing pandemic conditions. We'll use silent-dance headphones to envelop you in rich music and clear guidance. We'll add nothing but our attentive presence and natural movements to the natural world.


June 
Thank you for the dances you've brought outdoors this spring. Thank you for exploring a new way to practice. It has filled my cup to re-orient, settle in, and deepen with you. I haven't been able to include all of you who've wanted to join, and I'm sorry about that. Now we're on the cusp of small-group limitations lifting. On the verge of this change, it's time to touch base with you.

It's been a pleasure to inhabit St. Ann's garden in a dancing way, and at the same time we are sorely aware of meeting on the grounds of the former St. Ann's school,  which was a day school in our country's  genocidal Residential School system. We glimpse the school building from the space that embraces a new layer of activity. We dance in the shadow of profoundly destructive settler occupation of unceded Quw'uts'un territory and  the wrong relationships it maintains. We've put our feet on the earth in acknowledgment of the primary need for truth and justice, and in inquiry about how to come to be here in a learning way, a respectful way, a repairing way. Our practice is also a way of acclaiming and saying  huy ch q'u for Quw'uts'un Mustiimuhw's continuous guardianship and care of the land.

The barely believable shocks and shifts of our 2021 world have gentle, instructional analogues in the garden. Different flowers arrive and disappear fast, giving an intensive in impermanence. Growing gangs of weeds prove the pointlessness of being a fussy-pants because there's always going to be a mix of the preferred and non-preferred. Swallows teach spontaneity and moment-seizing. Slugs teach slow intentionality and storm-appreciation. Hummingbirds and bees model listening to one's hungers and turning naturally to passionate pursuit. The quail family models staying in touch and sticking together. Eagles, herons, vultures and hawks pass overhead, modelling backing off to take perspective again and again. Weather systems bake us one week, soak and blast us the next: back to the learning ground of humility, vulnerability, and adaptability. 
And then there are the humans.  ;-)

It's a land of lessons out there. I'm aiming to remain teachable and basically flexible. Since January 2020, I keep returning to a vivid desire for a Bending Grass Dance.

OLD WOMAN: Always be a gentleman, my boy.
ME: You mean polite, gracious, humble?
OLD WOMAN: No, I mean always be a gentle man. Act kindly and be soft and gentle to others and to yourself.
ME: In everything?
OLD WOMAN: In everything. You don't need to be hard, like others may say. Hard things break. Soft things never do. Be like grass. It gets stepped on and flattened but regains its shape again once the pressure passes. It is humble, accepting and soft. That's what makes it strong.
~ from Embers: One Ojibway's Meditations, a magnificent book from Richard Wagamese, b. 1955 d. 2017

​
July
May I invite you to 5 weeks of 5Rhythms in direct contact with Earth and with the unvarnished truth of here and now?  From August 1 to 31, I'll give 10 fundraising classes intended to uplift truth and our potential for doing good, running Sunday mornings & Tuesday evenings. Now that groups of 50 are permitted, ​I'll be pulling out my big speakers to welcome dancers into the space of "St. Ann's Garden" at Providence Farm. The garden's name refers to the Catholic order of nuns who ran some of the Indian Residential "Schools" in Canada's campaign of cultural and literal genocide of Indigenous peoples.  St. Ann's School is the name of the day school run on this site for exactly a century, and finally closed in 1964. We dance at this site in sharp recognition of its history. Current confirmations of the cross-country mass-murder and anonymous burial of thousands of Indigenous children by this system is a reality that we cannot depart, and that I choose to face. I invite groups to step onto this land in human awareness of the stolen children across the nation, and in attentive respect for the Indigenous nations and communities who lost their beloved little ones forever.
I will donate 50% of my proceeds from August classes, and will pass on any further donations you may choose to give, to these projects:
Tsow-Tun Le Lum Society
Orange Shirt Society


August
​In summer 2021,  I used 5Rhythms classes to raise funds to support organizations working to heal the living legacy of the genocidal Indian Residential School System of Canada. $900 (50% of my proceeds) went to Tsow-Tun Le Lum Society & Orange Shirt Society.

We danced in St. Ann's Garden at Providence Farm. The farm has been worked in community service since 1979 by an independent secular organization offering therapeutic programming to adults and seniors with mental health challenges, developmental and intellectual disabilities, and age-related illnesses. 

It was occupied for a full century, 1864-1964, by a day school run by the Catholic order of St. Ann, with children from Indigenous and settler communities at different times. 
I've made sporadic efforts in the last 10 years to research the school's role in our region, coming up with little, because in Canada we've suppressed both the full truth of our colonial behaviours and Indigenous people's accounts of history.

This school was not part of the group of five Residential Schools found at Penelakut  (colonially called "Kuper Island") and 4 other places around Vancouver Island.
However,  it was the site of systematic oppression and direct harm to Indigenous children, as revealed by survivors of this school. I witnessed the spontaneous testimony of a Quw'utsun woman who suffered violent abuse at the school, at a Duncan screening of Harold Joe and Leslie D. Bland's film Tzouhalem.

These distinctions are important if we want to reach for our potential to make our gradual way to hard fact and disillusionment about our past and present.  My intention is to communally open, in real time and honesty, to the power and reality of this land where we dance and live.

As we've met at this site since 2015, I've noticed that when people step onto these grounds to dance and reconnect, they become stirred by the layered histories and feelings of this place that has enduring significance here.  The lived realities of this spot on Earth hold great meaning, as do our personal relationships with what this place represent to us, and how we interact with communities and individuals who occupy it. Our relation with sites like this will be fruitful  and will change us, if we self-reflect, engage, and allow learning to come.

Summer 2021's initial wave of confirmations of obviously criminal and genocidal mass-murder of thousands of children, and horrific anonymous burial, of thousands of Indigenous children by the Residential system should properly continue to stir and shake us. This reality is one we can't depart, and it's a medicinal invitation for for us to learn, grow, and shift, within community.

These threads coming together provide the impulse for me to invite practice that includes real recognition of our history and its continued fallout, with attention to significant local stories and locations, alongside great and active appreciation for Quw'utsun' mustimuwh (people) and their homelands. I invite dancers to step into practice here, in Quw'utsun' land,  in human awareness of each impacted child, and in respect for the Indigenous nations and communities who lost their beloved little ones forever.

​
September
Dear people,
You are cordially invited to dance yourself inside out and outside in.
You are cordially invited to stir sensation, movement, awareness, and purpose.
You are cordially invited to embody what moves you, what freezes you, what confounds you, and what breathes you.
What I mean to say is: you are cordially invited to practice with intent.

In this season from fall equinox to winter solstice, 
I give classes to acknowledge our human condition in intense times.
We can be simultaneously wounded and capable of restoring, inundated and insightful, ​
in need and generative, in conflict and peace-building.
Carrying potential for positive change.

I give classes to support growth in our individual capacities to know ourselves,
to be basically well, and to deliberately direct our time and attention
to mending our shared state in this precious life.
​
I give classes to invest in deepening responsiveness and balance
in our collective actions and community life,
in the context of a crisis-addled human family and planet.

I give classes knowing that broadened care and engagement is preceded 
by care directed inward, and rooted. We can show up, decompress, refresh.

Our new venue, Cobble Hill Community Pavilion, is a dream come true for the needs we have now. It's a timber structure with open sides and a  smooth concrete floor. We'll have weather-shelter, open air, and lights. I'm grateful to access a place that can provide generous personal space and allow us to continue with care, integrity, and the ingenuity to dance in winds of change.


October 
I'm grateful for the changing constellation of you who have turned a school playground into a dance floor and meditation hall this autumn. It's refreshing and fascinating to watch people put down new layers of energy, appreciation, and lived experience in one earthly spot. It feels really good. Thank you sincerely. Tonight, a few days before Hallowe'en/Samhain, I'll offer a bit of a party practice. You might like to decorate or dress yourself in a colour, symbol, costume, makeup –– any sign, visible or invisible to others –– that stands for part of you that might be ready to edge out into the twinkly October dark-light and help you let yourself go.

That part of you could be a vague or precise feeling, block, question, or pattern, or a persona, alter-ego, dream, role, or past or future identity. It's only an invitation, but if you feel like invoking a nugget of energy that's in play in your life –– or that you would like to be in play in your life –– you could. Maybe more than one will show up to the party. Goodness knows we've all got more than one iron in the fire.

As Walt Whitman said, 
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

We all see ourselves, others, and life in many different lights.
Let's be honestly multitudinous.

If you're interested in dressing up to invoke an encounter with self, before you plunge into creativity, take a moment to breathe, listen inwards, feel the ground and your personal compass, and then approach choosing with humility as well as kindness. As we stand on the doorstep of the darker half of the year, I wish you well. Please take good care of yourself and those around you.

​
December
... the wise
shape without cutting,
square without sawing,
true without forcing.
They are the light that does not shine.
~ from Ursula K. Le Guin's translation
of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching ~

Living through the final shortening days before the longest night of 2021, I sit and wonder: how to true, without forcing?

As I sit, I find I'm able to sense a light that's not the shining kind. As long as I don't look too directly or with intent to hold it, it's there, and it's inviting. I guess that's what winter's nature will do, when I go with it.

In our last practice of the year in the Quw'utsun Valley, we moved in cold, pervasive dimness and left behind us a broadened path of retrieved, freed space –– as best we could. I'm so glad we did. Perhaps we were even practicing being the light that does not shine.

Having no idea what qualities and experiences might be right for you and yours through the winter break and into the new year, I wish you the free space to find out, and then to appreciate what emerges. With gratitude for every connection, shift, learning, and grace 
that we shared and weathered in 2021, I wish you well.

​2020
February
Making peace with not knowing, step by step, seems to be a big part of my assignment in this life. I'm grateful for this. When I think I already know, there is almost no possibility that I will be curious, or wonder, or be open to anything at all coming into my awareness. There is almost no possibility that I will be deepened, be momentarily illuminated, or be moved. Knowing I don't know is a mighty liberator for me.  It's the ground I dance on most often.  So here on the new-revealed shore of 2020, I launch my little boat toward the horizon I can't see. I recommit to giving myself to breath, movement, and attention. 5Rhythms and the movement schools it has birthed are incredible teachers of this discipline that yields freedom. As I continue risking, I'll stay with the art of resting in not knowing. I'll practice remembering to read my own compass. I'll forget but then I'll remember to own my freedom to choose, engage and change. Thanks to many dear teachers, I trust I will keep recalling my training to connect to my centre - the authority that comes from inside. I'll draw on the well of courage to keep voyaging. I'm freshly returned from a workshop in Lima, Perú. The 5Rhythms community met this stranger to their land with humbling grace and warmth, and sent me home with wonder falling out of my pockets. This I intend to bring directly to classes and to some workshops that are coming up fast.

March
​​Every morning there are more birds. The neighbourhood ravens must be courting, judging by the extra-fancy croaking. The busy quails and gathering songbirds are full of announcements. In the background, overlooking it all from high in a tree across the field, and eagle's cries pierce through everything. I hear you, eagle, and I have to agree. The edge of spring does seem like a good time to oversee the big picture and cut through layers of stimulation, with focus.

April
During Covid-19 pandemic measures, when some of us are without income, I offer online classes in community spirit.
​​I will offer weekly online classes until we're able to meet on a dance floor, again. In the name of our re-connection and self-regulation. To be part of an ongoing re-weaving of our own community and the whole human web - like the giant mycelial mats sustaining the natural world.
I've settled on a form aiming for: simplicity   ~    restfulness    ~   space    ~    time     ~     breath   ~    attention    ~    truth    ~    realignment

:::
Mind connecting with body
Senses  connecting with heart
Awareness connecting with changing reality
Rawness of life connecting with breath and transforming in  movement
Dancers connecting with dancers
Selves connecting with whole
:::

We  have been suddenly reigned in and stopped cold, and it's disorienting, to frustrating, to truly difficult, to heartbreaking.  May  you, and every person you're connected to, recover beautifully from any illness and hardship encountered in the Covid-19 outbreak and aftermath. There are simple ways I've gradually prepared to offer support for however you choose to move through these Covid-19 Pandemic Days, and support  for your general aliveness and resilience.

There is a lot of loss, now. But not for everyone. So there's acute unevenness and disconnection. There's a lot of disruption - frustration of habitual assumptions, of desires, and of real needs. Many dead stops, re-starts, and re-stops that just go on into emptiness. And various human reactions to all of this. There is discontinuity. On the other hand, I see continuity. Continuity in people's dedication to others and to responsibilities. Continuity in love, abiding. Continuity in pursuing our interests. A fascinating and basically unaffected continuity in expectations of our societies, our leadership, our future. Continuity, as many have noticed and relied on, in nature. There's also so much that is continuing but is also wildly morphing. Some things are changing shape with no outer limit that we can perceive, and some are obviously transforming, but we can't tell if change will be complete, or permanent, or beneficial.In the middle of the muddle, here we are. Here we'll be until we're not anymore. I know everyone is doing their best to discern how to proceed, and I'm there too. Stopping, morphing, re-starting, repeat.

If you're a Spotify user, you'll find a growing set of 5Rhythms practice Waves and gentle interludes here. They're there to serve as ground to dance on and relax into.
 I am gradually sharing mixed Waves and quiet meditative soundscapes to support practice on Mixcloud. 
If you are interested in a one-on-one online session, let me know. We could connect to explore what's moving for you, and to allow you to move with it, with my support.
News, changes, and goodies will also be available in my Facebook group.  Above all: please take good care, have patience, go easy on yourself and others. May we emerge from this cocoon, eventually, with strong wings and readiness for new perspective.

Remembering or learning some easy tools from body-based self-knowledge and self-care methods could really come in handy for us, right now.
We are each a body with consciousness. We can use this fact, without being fancy, to help ourselves when life seems like business as usual, and also when we’re off the map of what we thought we knew.

I’d like to remind us of some super-simple body-resourcing tools. (By which I mean both resourcing our body’s wellbeing, and using our body as a resource to support our outlook and action.)  I’ll include links to pieces of music that could support your use of each of these tools, should you wish.

All the many schools of movement, and awareness and healing practices that include the body, have both shared and unique tools that can help us through this precious, precarious life. So much is offered by yoga, walking meditation, “conscious dance” forms, martial arts, qigong, traditions of sitting meditation that use breath and sensation, BMC, Feldenkrais, bodywork that includes mindful tracking, EMDR, IBP, etc. I'm grateful for the teachers in many disciplines who are opening up their practices to others at this time, including in online sessions. That is a gift, and as days go by, I'll share some of these online classes on my website and in my Facebook group.

As for me, at this point I would like to provide support for your in-body, non-virtual self-connection, by sharing easy embodiment practices that you can take with you wherever you are, and do alone or with others who are actually there with you, in the flesh. 

As a 5Rhythms and community-outreach yoga teacher, I miss the palpable, physical and energetic encouragement of being in shared spaces with others, in touch with our bodies and taking responsibility for our presence. Pre-pandemic, every week in these spaces I was empowered to feel myself for myself - while also feeling others being freed to feel themselves for themselves. I miss the human-animal assurance and the perspective-renewal of being among embodied intelligences who are exploring themselves and reality, as-is. Challenging and relaxing themselves. Waking and soothing. Letting go and re-regulating.

I miss…
Turning towards and tending ourselves, together. 
(In 5Rhythms, this is Flowing)
Expressing ourselves for ourselves, together. 
(Rhythm of Staccato)
Surrendering ourselves for ourselves, together. 
(Rhythm of Chaos)
Opening our horizons wider, easier, together. 
(Rhythm of Lyrical)
Resting in emptied completion, in our own ways, together.
(Rhythm of Stillness)

5Rhythms teaches that each Rhythm is a unique way of being, and a distinct apprenticeship. Experimenting with each is meant to yield a medicine - an antidote to life’s troubles and puzzles. Each is meant to offer a helpful approach to life as lived, moment by moment. Each is also seen as a birthright; a capacity each of us is meant to have. An everyday superpower waiting to be felt, developed, and used to mutual benefit, in dynamic balance with the other 4. In 5Rhythms, we use intentionally breathing into our bodies, feeling our bodies on purpose, and allowing movement to arise from our body awareness and persistent presence of mind to help us grow our capacity to live well, and to create art and magic on a dance floor.

So, coming from the perspective of 5Rhythms, here are some basic thoughts about how we could fill personal needs that may or may not come up more intensely in these pandemic days. For those who’ve been going through terrifying, unjust, heartbreaking wringers of life pre-Covid-19, we’ve got some backfilling to do. We could try these tools at will, to fortify, cleanse, refuel and heal, bit by bit, in the ongoing way that’s called for.

Each of these embodiment tools serves to re-regulate a disregulated human in different ways. To calm us from sympathetic fight-flight-freeze-fawn reactions to a parasympathetic state of rest. When we’re off-balance in any way, each of them can help. 

All of them can be done standing, sitting in a chair or on the floor, kneeling, on all 4s in table-top, or lying on your side, back or front, on a floor or in bed or bath. All of them can be done for the span of one breath or for minutes and minutes. Each of them can be done stand-alone, or in sequence, or in spontaneous combinations. It’s up to you. 

If you’re exhausted, ill, injured, emotionally overwhelmed, or unable to move your body freely for any other reason, it’s just as good to move any part of your body, and just as good to move very gently and very small. A hand, a foot, your head and face, YOUR BREATH are capable of moving everything you need to move.  Engaging in the simple intention, and in any physical sensation and movement, is powerful, healing.

1. ENTER THE FLOW
INHALE, SENSE & SOFTEN to FILL & GROUND yourself. Actively feel your feet (or whatever part of you is touching ground) and let your whole bodyweight follow that contact, melting inward. Attune to what you hear, see, smell, taste, feel, within and without. Let it feed you and reconnect you. Notice what is present and bend with it, like grass in the wind. Breathe in, soften all your tissues around your sturdy bones, feel the ground already supporting your weight and your moving feet, as you gently root. Flowing medicine nurtures our capacity to attune, take in and become aware, notice and embrace what truly is, and ground in reality (engage in right perception). It encourages us to go with reality more than we fight it, to go with the flow of life - lessening self-sabotaging resistance and turning our attention to maximal care, nurturance and realism.

2. ENGAGE WITH STACCATO
EXHALE, SHAPE & EXPRESS to FOCUS, UNBLOCK & DEPRESSURIZE yourself. Direct unforced, clear body movements, in pulses, right from your core - belly, hips, heart and shoulders - out through your legs, arms, neck and head. Stay close to your core or reach all the way through your crown, hands and feet, or anywhere in between, and breathe out, and repeat or change your movements-statements as often as you like. Take the lid off, get it off your chest. If there happen to be words on your tongue that want to be said, let your mouth say them to yourself. Staccato medicine builds our capacity to express instead of repress, to articulate, to let out what we feel and bleed over-stimulation and pressure. It supports us to reach out from the heart and maintain self-chosen boundaries, to engage in right speech, to focus in the moment and over time, to take right action, and to follow through.

3. RELEASE INTO CHAOS
BREATHE FREELY, SHAKE & LET GO to RELEASE & EMPTY yourself. Shake~shimmy~sway your whole body. Wobble and spill over, bouncing up-down, front-back, back and forth, any speed and amplitude without violence, freeing your head, face and neck first, all the way to beneath your feet. Be a waterfall descending from cliff to pool, with softness and power. Let your breath be affected, unpredictably, by your movement. Step, tap or shift your weight left-right-left-right, in your feet.
Chaos medicine deepens our capacity to let go instead of hurting ourselves clenching, clinging, hanging on, or freaking or acting out, and helps us to realize what is not in our control and to yield to that gracefully, with far more chance of survival and wellbeing. This is a tool for peacefully, wisely clearing, cleansing, unburdening, and laying down what feels stuck in us and what does not serve us. It can teach us to move through uncertainty with more chance of coming through the other side - bending instead of breaking, and emptying so that we liberate space to learn, shift, and re-form according to changing conditions. It can prepare us to let go of outdated or false beliefs and rules in order to create on new ground, in new scope.

4. DISSOLVE IN LYRICAL
BREATHE EASY, SPREAD OPEN YOUR CHEST, UPPER BACK, ARMS, HANDS, & ENTER THE SPELL OF REPETITION to EASE, EXPAND, and maybe even DELIGHT your whole self. Play with movements that relate to the light touch of endless air around you. Find movements that want to repeat over and over. Experiment until you find effortless, pleasing, entrancing movements, from small and inward to large and extended, and let your attention dilate like the pupil of your eye dilates in low light. Hang out. Ride it. Follow. Chill. Lyrical medicine opens and fertilizes our mysterious, invisible, intangible parts of being a human - in realms of imagination, inspiration, and vision. It soothes and sweetens our nervous systems through repetition of pleasurable movements that “fit” or “click”. It seeds our creativity, adventurousness, and facility for enchantment by engaging all parts of our consciousness in the nectar of waking, moving dream.

5. RE-INEGRATE THROUGH STILLNESS
BREATHE FULL & COMPLETE, GO SLOW & SENSITIVE, & USE PAUSES TO SETTLE, REST, AND RE-WEAVE yourself. Try letting each breath result in a new variation of movement, gesture, or a paused shape. Move enough to feel yourself - to stay awake - yet spaciously and unhurriedly enough that you can track every movement and sensation without any trace of strain or rush. Pair moments of acutely-aware, restful movement with complete stillness of body… like a lake without a ripple. Let the circle be unbroken. Stillness medicine regenerates our capacity to integrate - to fully internalize and own our experience - and to heal. To integrate, we need spaces and stretches of time to truly rest, do nothing, be empty, and simply dwell without stimulus or demands. Without integration, our life experiences can’t synthesize, unify, become whole, come home to us, or become part of who we are.

July
This year has bumped us out of our familiar life ways. We’ve been cut loose from familiar rhythms, meaningful activities, and basic contact with others. For many, livelihoods have vanished, and the wellbeing of our loved ones and society is precarious. We may feel closer to our vulnerability, immersed in the unknown.
 
Meanwhile, wider cultural conversations are calling us to grow beyond habitual biases and perceptions. The communities that orient us and help us navigate change are gathering online, if at all. We may be feeling stretched in many directions, adjusting daily to new information, possibilities, and perspectives. We may be feeling disoriented or alienated.
We may be feeling a lot.
 
So, we do what we must do to make it through. Sometimes we have time and means to feel and respond to events as they come. Sometimes, especially when change is fast, intensity is high, or we don’t have access to our ways to express and integrate, we may accumulate a backlog of experience.
Where does it go? It goes into the flesh.
 
It's time to practice homecoming our body and senses.
Supported by 5Rhythms practice, let us:
​nourish what’s hungry,
loosen what’s dammed,
cleanse what’s dulled,
and self-liberate with gentleness.
We will breathe, feel, and move in the flesh.

September
Recently I was sitting with one of my brothers in law, a person I've known for 33 years. I was having one of the instantly deep talks one cannot (and wouldn't want to) avoid, with him. There were a lot of questions and pauses.

I expressed a concern, and he said with urgency, "Well what you've gotta do is [audible exhale] I don't know what you gotta do." His turnaround in awareness and his unintentionally comic timing were exquisite to me. In this tenderness and laughter, my Mid Year Resolution arrived. So far, it's coming in very handy.

We've been stuck in a very difficult web for months now. Each of us in a different position, all in the same sticky web. It's a web that's been spun for many hundreds of years, and that's gaining stunning dimensions and extremity in this incredible year. To which I say:

"What we've gotta do is [BREATHE] I don't know what we gotta do."

There are a few things that seem clear. We'll be on wildly shifting ground for a time that is going to seem very long. We're just getting our feet wet. We're going to need to keep letting go and adjusting. A fluid, good-willed, graceful, and learning response is being unequivocally required of us all. Leaning into our supporting practices and communities feels like pretty much the only way we're going to have a chance to find the human response-ability that's desperately needed, and the stamina to stay with it all.

 I will offer what I can, borrowing spirit and courage from wise ones who have so much to teach about this time of trouble. From the great Alice Walker:

“The world has changed: it did not change without your prayers without your faith without your determination to believe in liberation and kindness; without your dancing through the years that had no beat.... Though we have encountered our share of grief and troubles on this earth, we can still hold the line of beauty, form, and beat. No small accomplishment in a world as challenging as this one."
~ from Hard Times Require Furious Dancing: New Poems

So. Let's do what we can. Let's ease, fuel, cleanse, stretch and really check ourselves on the way, so we can move on down the road in good ways.
~~~
I've had to cancel this week's outdoor classes, which I was so looking forward to. The smoke of burning forests and communities to our south is powerful, plentiful, and unsafe for breathing deep. All is altered, once again.

Last week we reconvened on Providence Farm's huge lawn, and it was heart-helping, mind-clearing, and backbone-building for me to be with others in embodied, mindful practice.

For me, this assertive arrival of wildfire smoke is another reminder that I have no option besides adjusting, fluidly, to conditions as they manifest. No-one knows what exactly will come next (no matter what they may say) - layered onto the multiple stressors and potentials we're already dealing with. 

November
In-person classes are suspended across B.C. 

I am sad
I am breathing
I am sending love
I am grounding
and giving myself permission to feel, respond, and let it all flush through.

No amount of wishing will change this,
so let's find a way to flow with this,
with wisdom, kindness, centre, clarity, humility, and curiosity.

Perhaps, tonight,  a non-harming, embodied, moving
flake-out
or act-up
or  freak-on
or mellow-out
or drop-down
might sustain you.

For musical ground, you could visit here or here.

I will be in touch with alternative offerings and possibilities,
as I take time to feel into what I perceive as good roads to follow.

December
What to say, in the stormy cross-wash of pandemic surges and shifts? In the jumble of judgement calls and unknowns of this layered crisis we're in?  

What I'm feeling now is small and solid and fits in my two hands.

In my left I feel the many who are losing their lives, their loved ones, friends and colleagues, their health, and their security of income, shelter, and nourishment of physical and non-physical kinds.

In my right I feel the direction that is available to us: onward. Adjusting and readjusting. In action and equally in non-action. Onward, between wise, compassionate rests for our basic wellbeing.

Feeling what's in each hand, I propose we continue online with our established Thursday night rhythm as long as gatherings are on pause.

2019
January
This practice helps me face the music, whatever tune happens to be playing. Whether I'm relating to a matter of individual awareness, or something that's way bigger than me and my life, this dancing path supports me to continue with my head up, my heart released, my body connected, and my intentions and reflections clearer and more powerful.
For me, dancing with Joanne Winstanley's and Anne Marie Hogya's Victoria communities, joining Shauna Devlin's Salt Spring community, and beginning to dance with the folks in Nanaimo has been a strengthening delight that keeps me going. One song that sometimes helps me with a good dose of soul reminds me simply that "we don't stop, we don't quit". That's one way to say what a practice is, I guess, and that's what I've been experiencing in our community of people who are willing to come together to move in expression, learning, and creation. Let's keep it up.

February
Hi there. How are you? I'm really asking.
I've been having some pretty educational, soul-balm, and soul-challenge conversations this winter with people who've been willing to "go there" when we see each other and ask that ritual question. Of course, it's not the right time to dive into the question every time we are kindly asked how we are. But I'm very grateful when someone decides to slip into a less-filtered exchange of some of their true experiences of life. Dancing together in a stream of spontaneous movement seems to help us connect more authentically and directly, in "regular life" when the music's not playing. At least that is my perception, as I dance with some people every week, and in workshop gatherings with others, and then meet those same beings "off the floor"... out in the wild. I'm grateful for that growing capacity in and around me. I keep find myself saying, "People are amazing." That really is my feeling, as I spend 2 5Rhythms classes and 4 yoga classes a week with community members. You are amazing. I can't imagine a better daily, balancing antidote to the all the other in-our-face facts about how off-course we also are, as a planetary human presence. Thank you so much.

June
Do you ever write newsletters? Do you do something like it, such as conversationally reflect on things, or mirror someone's experience back to them, or summarize and represent a situation at work or in your family or community life? I bet you do. No, I know you do. So I also know that you have at least a glimpse of how it feels to do this newsletter thing. It is truly odd and fraught, in a way that is so "of our time". But, at the same moment, a newsletter is a real opportunity - one not to be held in contempt - for true connection and mutual encouragement. Go figure. Such is our lifetime. Multiple, shifty, and confusing, to say the least. I feel ever so alive this week in May. Not to say all at peace, or correct, or "on it". However, alive is more important than those other things, to me. 

September
I sure hope you have been well, and that some of the natural charms of this season are settling in you, sating you, and supporting you, to be carried forward into autumn and beyond. I am better at spirit-harvesting than I am at garden-harvesting. I'm tucking cricket song and dragonfly wing-whirr into my inner ear. Taking the dry meadow grass wind-dance and the flashing of sun on jade river into my inner eye. Breathing heated fir-needle resin, fermenting blackberry musk, and rain-on-hot-dirt into my... inner nose.
I have had the privilege of coming to full rest and dreaming in moments since the end of June, and also of stretching well beyond my limits in edgy exploits - some that I chose, and some that I had no choice but to move through (both with and without grace). I hope this will be good preparation for me, to be able to offer space for you to rest and adventure in movement and embodiment, this year.  Stepping out of the ring of my daily activities and attitudes and exposing myself to atypical situations has been humbling and instructive.
In July I exited the digital environment we live in and let go of the news cycle. On returning, it feels, as they say, "same same but different". Some details shift, very important events and relationships unfold, and yet the outlines of the story are as I left them. The urgency, the critical nature, and the sheer volume of our human tasks and impasses continue to mount and I feel the strain build again, in me as well as in the world everywhere I look. And so, as I turn to classes in September, I come with the intention to offer meditation space as a place of rest and nervous-system recalibration, of re-dreaming, expressing truth, letting go, witnessing patterns, embracing different parts of our souls and lives, and making true space for ourselves.
Last Friday I was in Alert Bay. I witnessed an outreach session, in the Big House of the 'Namgis, by the T'sasala Cultural Group, teachers and children of traditional Kwakwaka'wakw arts and practices. They generously share sacred Potlach dance ceremony (that was outlawed, stolen, and punished by our country for decades). They made it clear that their purpose is not only to persist and to heal into the future, but to heal broader relationships and provide their own medicine in support of our continued vitality on a viable Planet Earth. In fact, the Weather Dance, brought into movement by three young girls, was specifically dedicated to the survival and health of the burning Amazon forest and its peoples. We were told point blank that in the whole Big House encounter, we were witnessing something real - an active engagement with the world and Spirit - not a performance. We were asked to see the dance and hear the stories as world medicine, as direct action. We were told that the qualities taught in the Big House are meant to be carried outside it into our shared world. Coming back into teaching soon, I feel taught and tugged by the connections between our evolving community practice and the 'Namgis' continuous, upheld ways of practicing and forging ahead. I believe that our gatherings are world-action as well as self-tending, and that they can help us strengthen, deepen, and re-balance for the paths we walk in the world.  I leave you with a teaching from an Alert Bay village neighbourhood piece of public art. If there's nothing else I practice, I would like to practice this.

October
I sit here in quiet morning. I hear a raven passing by on bird business. Such loud wingbeats! I hear the low fire in the wood stove speaking in pops. I hear the drumming of my fingers on this keyboard. I hear my breath, very small. A fat fly buzzing in the window. I seem to actually hear the voice of my thoughts as I try to connect with you in a good way through words. When you were little and started to notice the "sound" of your thoughts - your consciousness recording, pondering, strategizing - did you ever wonder exactly who was speaking to whom? I sure did.  Just what are we connecting with, when we dance and it happens that we relax into a slipstream of frictionless movement and just go with it? What are we connecting with when it's not frictionless? When we are rubbing against this and that in our dance, and staying with it anyway? I suspect it's many presences, needs and forces at different times. Imprints of our life stages so far? Injuries and insults to our bodies and hearts? Dreams? Human and non-human friends and teachers? Ancestors and the yet-to-be-born? Pure Spirit? Raw life force? Love? Soul callings? Responsibility? Pools and surges of emotion? Hidden parts of ourselves? Untapped parts of ourselves? Masks and roles that tend to stay in place unless consciously released?  Despite the multitude of connections and influences, everything also seems to be simply right there in our bones and sinews, our breath and nervous system, our hearts and muscle memories, and how it all moves - in each body, in each moment. This process of embodied, moving presence certainly remains a mystery to me. For which I give thanks, because from this perspective there is always an open, undefined space, there to be experienced by each of us, our own way and to our own ends, in our own timing, values, and genius. The classes and workshops I hold are places reserved for authentic reconnection with whatever is present for you. For emptying and filling the cup of your body and awareness, over and over, through attentive, adventurous, depressurizing dance in community. You can show up as weird, wonderful, or woeful as you happen to be. (I certainly will.). On this hushed morning I sit here aware that the hearth-fire of 5Rhythms in Cowichan is glowing and growing. Gabrielle Roth, the creator of this movement for transformation and creation, died 7 years ago today. Off she went on her raven wings. In her slipstream, she left a vast web of dancing, self-liberating communities all over the world. Because Gabrielle and her co-conspirators stepped forward, I can come in from the cold and dance by the steady light and warmth of this practice.
I am so grateful.  This Hallowe'en, I'll be ready to hold a soul-supporting practice. I'll be in simple, symbolic costume(s) and I'll be consciously stepping into the risk of embodying authentic facets that may not have been seen before. In all our dances, I surrender as best I can to a free-flow of engaged, self-balancing soul, sparked curiosity, and more and more courageous incarnation. On the 31st I will stand with all souls and offer acceptance, activation, and the balming of our generations here, gone, and yet to come. The last time we danced on this night, a few years ago, we were a tiny group, and spirit-work sure got done. I dressed as my twisted-scared-innocent-hungry 13-year-old self, and man, was she ready to cut loose. She had a way better sense of humour and appetite for life than I remembered. (I mean just look at the poor girl.) She willingly visited and we worked some things out. The experience changed me, gently but in a real way, in one little night. I wonder what will happen this time for the group that's called? We might even be welcoming back the rumble of drum and didjeridu. Who knows? Not me... not yet

2018
January
I've been curious about whether a new year's intention would choose to visit me for 2018. Last year, I had my first positive experience with any kind of new year's resolution in... well, ahem, my whole life. I don't want to leave that 2017 medicine behind, but I also feel that something else wants to come in - to layer on top of that work.
As I wandered the waterfront in Victoria last week (after city errands and before dancing an evening 5Rhythms class there, what a treat), I met my "something else".  It wasn't a resolution exactly. In fact it wasn't even a word. It was animals. In a cold, hard wind that made all us humans far less graceful and comfortable, the gulls were flying and piping with abandon and casual aptitude. I thought about how simply gulls float on the worst storm gusts, and how wiling they are to cry out the truth, moment to moment. That is a quality I could enjoy more of in my own soul: a light touch and a free voice, in the hardest blow. And then my old love the harbour seal popped up through the iron-grey waves, to remind me that balance is needed. That if I reach for all that sky-ease, I'd be well advised to equally seek the gift of all that is low, soft, humble, silent, and wide-eyed.

March
I hope you're well, truly thriving, and being met by kindness in life as we tilt toward spring. I feel like I can hear the ground and woods whispering, "Almost there... almost there... actually, nope, not there yet." I'm curious, are you feeling ready for an outburst of sprouting, leafing, and pollinating? Maybe you're overdue. And maybe you're not quite done hibernating... or never got the chance to start. I will not pretend this winter on Planet Earth has been a particularly peaceful, dormant, integrative interlude. I know that a lot of us humans feel like we've been on the run for many seasons (or centuries) trying to find a resting place, a healing place, an expression of truth place, a connection place, a place to simply be what we are. I want to remind you, and myself, that this exact kind of place is what I work to offer.

June
As I've travelled lately, to teach workshops and support other teachers and large groups, and as I stay with holding classes every week here at home, I notice just how often I am directly inspired and helped by Gabrielle Roth. My memory of working with her, and the ways her teachings reach me through others, move me every single time I meet with people in this practice. I notice her name coming out of my mouth almost each time we gather. So, in parting for the summer, I offer this tiny clip, below, of her way of sharing with us. Her spirit, alignment, and purpose shine through.  At one point, she says, "There's a billion miles of wilderness between the head and the feet of any given person. So that's the place that we depart. We like - we want to go into - that wilderness and find out what's happening, and it's different for each and every one of us."

August
I've dropped off the edge of my usual map this summer. I've been lucky to be out on my learning edge, out under the sky a lot, and spending a lot of time just gazing into open space. And because they come from the ways of nature in the first place, the 5Rhythms seem to be everywhere I gaze and wander. Every day this summer has brought an inspiration or a catalyst my way. The weedy Queen Anne's Lace I met this week looked to be engaged in a flower's version of 5Rhythms dance. On one plant, at one time, there were Flowing spiral birth canals, Staccato radiating growth trajectories, Chaotic layers of rich release, Lyrical lacy resolving patterns, and the Still bones of tiny spent blossoms, holding delicate shapes until ready to recede into emptiness. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone again (or for the first time) in this practice that meets me everywhere and helps me be willing to tune in, connect, let go, re-form, and make peace. Maybe I'm crazy... but it seems pretty clear that we can all use all the help we can get in this life, in these days. 5Rhythms as a practice and a way of being rises up like ground under my feet, every day.

October
I've got a lot of questions. The more years I survive, the more questions I have. Brand new ones I've never even heard of before nudge into my awareness. Ones that have been dressed up as answers for a long time take off their clothes and streak around. They were questions all along.  Right now, my unanswered questions don't feel like dead ends. The fact that I don't have answers doesn't feel like something that needs to stop me. The questions aren't walls. They feel more like trails in the woods. Sometimes as I'm following, one looks like it might break out into a huge view, but mostly the question-paths offer modest windows, glimpses and perspectives as they twist and turn, onward. And somehow, the end just doesn't come. I'm enjoying this sense that not knowing is not a show-stopper, or a deal-breaker. It's just not knowing.  Refraining from pressuring myself to know what to think, what to feel, and what to do is making it easier to simply sense, consider, feel, and do with more honesty and natural alignment with whatever's going on. With less anxiousness, defensiveness, and less sense of impending overwhelm.  Like a bell ringing, I keep hearing this question within: If life on planet Earth feels this complex, urgent, intense and often heart-breaking for me (privileged in almost every possible way a human can be), how is it for all the other beings here?  Why am I writing about this? Good question. I can't answer it. All I can say is that every time people come out and dance, I feel that our wonderings get little bit aired, a little bit shared, and slightly shifted. When people come to move in meditation - with their own purpose, tasks, and mojo - my awareness expands. Whatever we are carrying gets fed into the beautiful process of a community of dancers getting in there and physically, energetically moving their lives through their bodies, intelligence and hearts. I feel it when we gather: that we're dancing into the openness of unanswered questions, and that somehow this helps us to continue, and to engage with life with more intention, freedom, power, and good.
We're growing as a movement community that's capable of supporting this kind of process. This autumn, I feel the gentle development, and I am grateful.

November
There something I've been noticing and want to invite into the spotlight of our awareness and our time together: Life on Earth can be so draining. Even those of us who are privileged to have safety, comfort, and the freedom to explore and express ourselves can get very exhausted, stressed, contorted, and depleted: emotionally, physically, psychologically, every way. This is a condition that, as far as I can tell, sometimes visits all of us who are alive in this time. It shows up on the dance floor. It shows up in our expectations of ourselves. It show up in how we relate to the choice to dance or not in the first place. I want you to know that Stress and Exhaustion are definitely - especially - invited to come to class. You NEVER have to feel "up to it". You can join the dance when you're down and out. The welcoming floor and the walls and the music and the company is there to support you to express this, and all qualities of human experience, in authentic movement. So, if it's right for you to actually make it out your door on any evening or morning, know that once you get to class, you are totally supported to... breathe~move~rest~stretch~dance~rest~breathe...
just exactly how you feel. There is nothing to change. You will not further drain yourself. You will do the opposite.

December
There's a hard frost on the land outside my door this morning. I'm aware that hard times have visited so many in this wild year. I know you will have heard this elsewhere, but repetition is a good teacher for us humans, so I'll repeat: hard times call for hard dancing. (And soft dancing.) And they definitely call for coming together and giving over to whatever is (including perhaps unexpected ease), instead of giving up.​

2017
January
I've heard it said that the most awakened human beings among us slow things right down and commit even more deeply to focussed meditation just when the pressure and demands on their time are highest. I've also heard it said that "hard times require furious dancing" - which amounts to the same thing.  
When times are wild, we may lose the spaciousness that helps us tune into what's going on inside of us and in our relations. We may be hard-pressed to find ways and times to express what's really happening to us and around us. We might be challenged to create opportunities to release and surrender our tension. Moments of soulful uplift and enlightening connection sometimes feel scarce. And the possibility of simply integrating and resting with what is real can be elusive. For me, relaxing into meditation though movement - touching down on the ground, taking stock, and letting everything circulate - is critical.  
It continues to amaze me, but it's unfailingly true: whenever I commit to co-meditate with others who bravely show up to spend time with what is, recalibrate and regenerate, human magic happens. We all walk away with more resources in our bones and more intimacy with our souls. Every time.

May
May is coming for us. I don't know about you, but after the deep winter dive we've had, I feel my bones practically tantruming for more heat, light, and circulation. Scented spring winds are welcome to clear me out, mild spring rains are welcome to wash me down, and assertive spring sun is most definitely encouraged to shine into all my corners, even the dusty, grotty ones. In this moment, I feel ready to move with shifts and unexpected twists that may get catalyzed on the way.

June
As much as I continue to try to embody clarity and simplicity in life, there's no shortage of complexity, unpredictability and uncertainty every day. Sometimes it seems that things (including me) become contradictory and changeable in direct proportion to my reaching for consistency.

Someone said "How's it going?" to me the other day. My mouth opened and out popped, "It's ALL u-turns. Nothing but u-turns, getting lost and finding a new way, and repeat."
In this intense year, month, week, day, and moment here on Earth, it feels like just about anything that could happen is happening, or is about to. This everything-goes wildness seems to be unfolding in our individual stories - our health, work, and awareness - and in the experiences of our families, communities and countries. In our whole world. I guess we could say: this is it. If there was any part of us that was waiting for life to begin and "the moment" to arrive, well, the wait is over. This is it. "No dress rehearsals", I hear Gord Downie sing. "This is our life."  It's been a rewarding, nurturing, and sometimes anything-goes adventure to hold a second year of weekly 5Rhythms classes in Duncan. Thank you for your presence, to each of you who have joined the circle of practice, even once.  I've been supported, stretched and grown by our time together, and every Wave with you brings me a little nearer to pure attention to the unlikely gift and power of each moment, each breath.

September
I greet you on an equinox, which I've come to think of as Balance Day. Dark and light meeting as symmetrically as they can, moon and sun taking just about equal air-time to shine in the sky. To be honest, sometimes - especially when confused or frustrated - I relate to balance as a total myth, a magical beast I will never meet, let alone ride. Other times I know it to be real, because I can feel it happening, from the ground up, in my own body. Especially in the dance. It is something that I find, and lose, and find.
Often when I begin to practice, an obvious need to rebalance is the first thing that's right up in my face. My weight shifts very tentatively left and right, front and back, as if finding stability and orientation is a new discovery each dance. I suppose it truly is. When I allow myself to move through wobbliness and uncertainty, and keep adjusting to what's really happening instead of what I might prefer, balance does arise quite faithfully. Not every time I move, of course. But most times, I can reconfirm that yes, there is earth under my feet, and if I take some time and use some honesty and compassion, I can allow myself to be supported, and so take responsibility for my own way forward. Delight in it, even. With patience and breath, I can trust balance and possibility to arise from within, and allow me to move into new adventures.
​

2016
January
​Rebooting means giving it time. When things seize up, it's time to shut down, walk away. Let it rest. Later, start it up again. I'm hardly ever drawn to compare us to machines. But this solstice-new year passage has got me yearning for all things sparse and useful. Suddenly the mechanical metaphor of rebooting feels as simple and correct as a drink of cold, clean water. I repeatedly forget that we all need frequent integration pauses. And I easily forget that integration requires falling into true rest. We can't integrate when we're multi-tasking or learning something new, or involved in a self-improvement project, or planning our next move to be of service. Integrative rest has to be empty and "out of service", or it's not... rest. In 2016, I aim to use the wisdom of regular maintenance reboots: letting things shut down, and starting up again when it's time to re-start.

March
Tree frogs don't lie. (From my human point of view.) They've been making the sweetest racket possible in the flooded field behind my house, night after night, helping me turn my attention to ways I can step into regeneration and reawakening. Through the winter, Thursday-night classes and Sunday morning practices with you Cowichan dancers have been just as honest and encouraging as the recent frog-concerts.  I am moved, inspired, and challenged in the best ways by your presence, your explorations, your movement together.  New individuals and small groups of dancers keep showing up and joining the current of our practice.  Whether it's a busy night and the dance floor is full to the brim, or it's a quiet night and the floor is more like a sky with a few stars shining, I've noticed that the willingness of newcomers to dive right into the river of movement delights and refreshes those dancers who've been showing up week after week.  Your courage and curiosity are humbling.
Equally, I've noticed the depth and warmth that you committed dancers bring to newcomers.  You've been opening the doors of permission and encouragement, welcoming new participants to simply let go and enter this embodied meditation with very little resistance.  What a foundation of awareness and connection you offer!
As you can perhaps imagine, this is a gift for me to witness and be with.  The slow, natural build of our community of practice is immensely satisfying to me and I thank each of you who have set foot on the dance floor. Embodied awareness, danced together, offers us great strength with great simplicity.

June
When I was introduced to 5Rhythms practice almost 10 years ago, and it started its work on me, my body began to be seized by cravings to move in response to whatever was going on (inside and out), wherever I happened to be. So I found myself doing things like sneaking out of a tent after my young children were asleep to have my dance-fit under a black sky, moving sleepily around on the porch before the day began, and taking regular hikes up Pi'paam (Mount Tzouhalem) just to get to the dance floor with a view.
These days, I want to reinvest in my old expansive, non-perfectionist, seize-the-day practice

2015
January
I am being challenged to stand on my own two feet, to keep moving with fortitude - and, equally, to round things out with a mindful measure of surrender, softness, silence, and sympathy for myself and others. This whole business is a never-ending process, according to wise ones throughout our history.  But my attention to this challenge sure gets sharpened when I'm trying something new, walking an edge, and moving out of my comfort zone.
When I hear phrases like "edge walking" and "expanding beyond comfort zones" coming from someone else, a rather glamorous picture arrives in the dark theatre behind my eyes.
​I see empowerment, courage, daring, creativity, capability.  I don't visualize the shakiness, tenderness, storms of doubt, and need for rest that tend to come with my vulnerability when I move beyond my usual borderlands, or move deeper into my questions and feelings about life. So it goes. Looking on, from outside an experience, is wildly different from living right through that experience on the inside.  For me, 5Rhythms® practice is a beautiful place I can go to let these things sort themselves out, step by step, again and again.  This moving meditation - this art form-in-action - is a sanctum where I can let life play out in my body, and my personal dance of question marks.

February
When we step into meditation, usually our discomforts, self-asesssments, hold-backs, freak-outs and everything else just RUN out to play.  It's game on!  What a rich place it becomes, on the dance floor, when we simply gather to move and begin to track our awareness, explore possibilities with our bodies, and connect.

March
All month I’ve been wondering to myself about my blind spots and unexplored territories, which can yawn as wide as a canyon, as wide as the sea.  It’s funny that these great gaps in awareness are often the result of me putting a real squeeze on things: I can leave so little space for others, for myself, and even for the world to unroll in its way. From my unwillingness to freely give space comes... open spaces of unknowing. As usual, I find that Gabrielle Roth, 5Rhythms creator, had a perfect and motivating way of expressing this:  “What will I find on the other side of all I know?”  The other side of all I know - the empty space - is where I’d like to point my ship. Once I’ve raised the sails, I’ll let go of the wheel and see what course emerges, naturally, in the conditions that prevail.

April
Some of my friends are truly Lyrical incarnate.  While I, on the other hand, have been moaning to anyone who will listen, "I really ought to lighten up and get out of my own way".   Through 5Rhythms eyes, we see Chaos in the moment when a barrelling ocean wave breaks and rumbles itself into oblivion - because it absolutely cannot “keep it together” for one more moment. To what end? Or is that the end, all there is? Oh, no. The miracle of Lyrical arises from this falling apart, quite as naturally and with exactly equal energy and potential. When Chaos is spent and fallen, Lyrical literally bubbles up: air bubbles rise through water and break through the surface, spray and mist dissolve and rainbow up into the space of the sky. This is our Lyrical study: the rebound. The rebirth. The hope of enlightening, by simply lightening up.

May
Where is the pause button? I'm having trouble finding it just now. I know a rewind button for life doesn't exist. And a fast-forward function is also just a fantasy.  (Along with the elusive ejection seat.) But without the pause, where are we?  Constantly doing, never being.  Perpetually pushing, never integrating.  Always running, never... learning.  That's not fantasy.  It's more like nightmare, if I really take a step back and look.  And yet that's what our culture calls for in so many ways: the great, impressive, successful push without pause.
I beg to believe that we're wiser, once we scratch our surfaces.  I believe that the pause is a total requirement for our growth and basic balance.  And anyway, how many times do we (do I) need to learn that if I do not pause in life, life will pause me?  In the last of the 5Rhythms, Stillness, we move through completion. Sometimes this dance of endings and fading away reaches a fullness so complete that it empties itself and resonates, reverberates, and sustains spaciousness within us.  In the end, that’s what 5Rhythms practice is for: sustaining and affecting us beyond the end of any one dance.

June
CHANTELL SAYS RELAX. In 5Rhythms moving meditation, we find all kinds of ways into a special zone between push-push-push and resist-resist-resist: the sweet liberation of presence, of just following what is. Between "fine-then-let's-get-this-over-with" and "no-way-forget-it-I-pass", we can dance in the space of RELAX.
What am I willing to be aware of? I love the way 5Rhythms practice encourages us to dance courageously toward our polarities and our edge. The first time I stepped into a class, there it was, right in my face: my edge.  But no matter how much I partake of this moving meditation form, the edges always come with a sweet invitation and permission to simply dance on them and allow myself to acclimate, through movement, to a little bit more personal capacity and awareness. Think of all the qualities and moments that are just weird and challenging to us in our lives (or frighteningly wild or dead boring to us, or inviting or repellent to us, or hidden or paraded about).  5Rhythms says “yes” to all of this: the supposedly known and the totally undiscovered, alike.  In 5Rhythms we meditate in a realm of edges and sweet spots: in paradox and its coexisting, polarized parts.  It’s a wondrous dance floor.

September
How to begin? Put one foot forward. Repeat. At least that's what Lao Tzu recommended in the Tao Te Ching, about 2,500 years ago. You've all heard it: "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." Imagine a dance of a thousand miles worth of steps, paced out in presence, by a group of people gathering again and again over time. I do hope for that for our Cowichan community, and I intend to stick around to see it. 5Rhythms is an accessible, embodied, moving meditation. If you have a body, and it is breathing, and you are willing to move it with music playing in the company of some other human beings, there is a home waiting for you in this practice. Gradually, step by step, by moving, breathing and following in any way that feels right, we unwind our human condition and learn as we go.  When we commit to moving and breathing - just keep doing our thing - the transformations of mindfulness cannot help but unfold: we dance suffering into art, art into awareness, and awareness into action.

November
I feel change. Sometimes the momentum of life's wheel turning feels so clear and present. So visceral. Like the moment on a Ferris wheel when you pivot right over the top and start the descent. I'm looking out my window at the last of the gold leaves still clinging to a tall cottonwood tree.  They're all shaking together with a wind of change, a cold wake-up call.  As I watch, leaf after leaf makes the leap into the chill blue air, shining and dancing all the way down.  On this island in a northern sea, nature is darkening and simmering down for winter's approach.  Yet on the inside I feel so much movement; I am a trembling leaf. I'm grateful that I am able to move with change, in the generous, honest meditative form we call 5Rhythms.