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Soma and Soul

Soma and Soul

Jan 30, 2024

Soma and Soul

Why those words and what is this work that I’m doing?

The words…

I could have called it Body and Psyche, Body and Soul, Body and Heart, Movement and Depth Work, Tangible and Intangible, Seen and Unseen, Body and Creativity.

You get the idea. It’s a testament to and representation of all these aspects of being human and how they relate to each other.

When I use the word soma, I am also holding the words/ideas of: the body, sensation, embodiment, movement, the body of the earth, the ocean, the light, the weather, nature itself, how I move through the world, how my body experiences the world around me and inside of me, what it is like to make contact with my body, impulses from my body (what it wants to do and what it needs).

When I use the word soul, I am also holding the idea of: the deep, the unconscious, the unconscious speaking to the conscious, dreams, the essence of me within me, the interconnected, the rich tapestry of feeling, emotion, knowing, sensing within me, the flow, the unexplained.

The work…

It’s an ongoing quest to find and create ways to bring together these aspects of myself and to be able to offer that experience to others.

It’s a place/space/way of weaving together my deep interests, my training, and my experiences into workshops and offerings for others.

Soma and the soul provide the priming for the ideas that are inside of me as I create themes, practices and opportunities to come into connection with ourselves and our creative energy. They may show up in different ways during a workshop – listening to poetry, dancing to music, exploring what our body perceives and knows, writing from our deepest longings and wonderings, writing into inviting questions and more genuine answers. What is offered will continue to change and evolve over time and I welcome you most warmly to join in the exploration and give yourself the time and space of deep care and acknowledgment.  

I have been lucky enough to participate in many practices and workshops and events that have included the exploration of and communing with body, heart, soul, and creativity. Not only have I been left changed and imprinted upon by the experiences I’ve had and witnessed, but I have also been left with an immense gratitude for the teachers and lineages over the years that have created places and opportunities where these experiences can happen. My offerings are also a way that I can give back to and continue what I have learned from so many wonderful bodies and souls.

To name a few…

From the early years on. (this list is not exhaustive)

My original dance teachers – Miss Irene and Miss Wanda, two sisters who lived and breathed dance. For over ten years, my feet found a home on their floor.

The theatre directors and choreographers in my high school years, who took seriously the artistry of our young souls – Colleen Durkin-Lapowsky, Joey DiMarco, Leslie Madison, Ken Williams.

My college acting teacher and mentor, John Jamiel, who demanded a depth of craft that opened my world and my heart and taught me what it means to be embodied and present.

My college theatre director, Alan Souza, who inspired me (in words and in living it himself) to be fearless in doing the deep inner exploration and in bringing to the surface what I found.

My social work grad school teacher and mentor, Jim Kreider, who brought a level of integrity and integration to my understanding of what it means to be a spiritual and embodied human, and the courage to not shy away from the bigness of who we are.

The woman who reintroduced me to the dance in my soul, to the dance that is mine, to the dance that is not about performing but about being, my first 5Rhythms teacher and mentor, Laura Martin-Eagle.

 

The many somatic practitioners who gave me new language for what was happening in my body and in my experiences and helped me to befriend the wisdom of my own system – Joshua Sylvae, Cindy Perkiss, Cheryl Sanders, Kathy Kain. And the somatic practitioners who brought the integral piece of race, social location, connection to non-human life into my somatic awareness – Resmaa Menakem, Prentis Hemphill, Karine Bell.

The woman who reconnected me to my creative self, my writing self, the voice of my soul, Marlene Schiwy and her Body Soul Writing program. She also reintroduced me to the work of Marion Woodman, who had wandered through my years of study, but until I experienced the practices inspired by Body Soul Rhythm with Marlene had not imprinted themselves so emphatically on my body soul. They are forever there from Marlene and Marion, whispering to me from the depths, to not be afraid of the dark or the light.

And finally to the therapists I have had over the last 25 years, who have accompanied me through descents and transformations that continue to reverberate every day in my body and my psyche, and infuse all of my work and offerings.

Whenever I sit in myself to create and offer these explorations, all these people and lineages are present. I would not be here without them, and their generosity, love and wisdom continue to hold me and move through me.

Up with the dog at the dawn of New Year’s Eve

Up with the dog at the dawn of New Year’s Eve

Dec 31, 2023

Up with the dog at the dawn of New Year’s Eve

The turning of the calendar – the man-made calendar, the calendar that was superimposed on the earth.

The new year in the celtic world, from which my ancestors come, would be Samhain, the end of October. The year begins with the last harvest and the descent into darkness.

It’s only a couple of months difference, but ideologically much farther away from our modern calendar which seems to indicate an end in the darkness.

It says something, to me anyway, about the relationship my ancestors had with the natural world and the acknowledgment or maybe reverence of the wisdom and potency of the darkness.

The darkness is the beginning, it is that from which everything comes.

Seeds in the dark ground.
Babies in the darkness of the womb.
Revelations arriving out of difficulty and tumultuous times.
Creation out of the primordial darkness soup.
Something emerging from a seeming nothing.
But we know, the dark is not nothing
Alchemy is happening in the dark.
Sparks of creative elements exist in readiness in the dark.

And this isn’t to glorify or paint a pretty picture of the dark.

There’s darkness that people don’t return from. We know that all too well.
There’s darkness that doesn’t reveal light in the way that transforms it.

There’s dark shit that no amount of creativity and light can undo or make not have happened.
There’s darkness that doesn’t need to be filtered or burdened by an expectation of a healing to come.

Darkness happens. It exists.
And sometimes it is part of a cycle of emergence. And sometimes it’s unbearable.
And sometimes we find ways to bear the unbearable anyway.
And sometimes in the bearing, something else comes forth.

Whenever we sense our beginning, our personal turn of the year, may we be held by something or someone or somewhere that helps us bear the unbearable. And may we be mirrored and uplifted in our joy and radiance.

Turning Towards the Dark

Turning Towards the Dark

Oct 31, 2023

Turning Towards the Dark

I am a self-proclaimed lover of fall and winter.

I enjoy the move into darkness and colder weather. Part of me longs for the hibernation of winter, a deep sigh of relief even at the thought of it. At this time of year, on the threshold between fall and winter, the talk of ancestors being close and the veil “between the worlds” being thin, offers even more to explore within ourselves and in our ancestral lineages about the growing darkness.

In my own ancestral lineages, mainly the gaelic and celtic world, it appears (as far as we can know from archeological and historical information gathered) this was a time of year to prepare for the dark and cold months and to honor the ancestors. Would there be enough harvest to keep everyone fed, enough wood for fires and warmth, enough shelter that everyone including the animals could make it until spring?

The honoring of ancestors and gods often involved offerings of some kind, gathering as a community, fires and food, perhaps in the hopes that if it pleased those on the other side, there would be more guarantee of survival.

It was a time of threshold between the harvest and the long barren winter, and between those inhabiting the land and those who had gone beyond. Death was close during the dark cold winter.

When I consider myself, I wonder what I feel closer to at this time of year? What am I longing for in the cold dark winter for myself? The line between life and death is not as imminent for me as my ancestors given the comforts of home and food, electricity and running water.

I don’t live on the edge in the same way. And yet, if I were to honor whatever edge might be present for me in this modern age, it might be one between light and dark, between activity and stillness, and a turning from outward orientation to inward orientation. Can I follow the guidance of the land and its cycles, lean into the fallow ground, the quiet and the dark to listen for a different kind of connection?

We’ve only been living in our current home for a year now, but I distinctly remember how quiet it was walking on one particular street last winter. When the snow was on the ground, early morning, cocooned by trees, evergreens and bare branches both, it was the silence that I noticed and enjoyed. I felt alive in a different way than when the spring birds are singing. It felt like the environment, the air, the land was right up close to my skin, and that I was right up against it, willingly intimate, no place to hide.

I am getting ahead of myself a bit here; we are still another month or two away from that kind of winter, but it’s coming. And likely if we pay attention enough to ourselves, we will notice some kind of response to the shift, whether we are longing for it, anticipating it, resisting it or even ignoring it.

Can we make a conscious noticing, even honoring, of whatever our experience is of this time of year? Even though the answer may not always be comfortable or pleasant, can we ask ourselves what the darkness makes us feel closer to in our lives? And what nourishes us as we head into the dark still cold night?

Three poems in the elevenie form:

Inward
Always turns
Ripe with longing
Welcomed in ready arms
Communion

Stillness
Whispers promise
From someplace within
Truth revealed in waiting
Listen

Dark
Deepens knowing
In places ancestral
No need to fear
Transformation

Fall Morning

Fall Morning

Sep 26, 2023

Fall Morning

This is an excerpt of some morning pages/journal writing from a year ago on this morning – still living in the city, a snapshot of an early fall morning on the back patio of our rowhome. 

What do you see happening on this early fall morning where you are?

Squirrels

I see you more now than I have for a while. Is it the turn of season that has you scampering across the phone and electrical wires, heading for the one rest-worthy tree in our alley? What are you bringing back with you?

Finds from the scraps in the side yards and the trash heaps, left over from someone’s discarded debris or dropped dinner, wrappers blown from down the block?

There are so few trees here; not none, which is helpful and hopeful, but few. I imagine you know each of them.  The ones that have nuts and berries, and the ones that have a pocket for storage, where multiple branches come together to form a holding place, like a baseball glove. 

I hear you sending messages to each other from one back garden to another.

“Hey friend in the tree, I’ve seen a pile of old rice down this way. I’m going to gather as much as I can, but if you see the others, send them to help.”

“Great! I will prepare our nest, our treasure chest, and clear some room for the feast.”

A fall breeze blows this morning and I wonder if its coolness has prompted a more urgent exploration. Is there anything for you here, on my patio? Some seeds, maybe. 

Occasionally, I find an old piece of bread tucked behind the Japanese maple, and I wonder if you’re coming back for it.

The Sun

The Sun

Aug 1, 2023

The Sun

Being that we are in the height of summer here in the northern hemisphere, I thought I would share a poem that I have worked with recently that expresses “wild love” for the sun. I was born just after the summer solstice, and I love swimming in the summer ocean, but my body and temperament struggle with the hot humid heat of deep summer. It feels a bit more tolerable living outside of a city right now, but I still find myself counting down the days until I can enjoy a cool fall breeze. In light of that, I am working on expanding my capacity to appreciate the summer, and I share this poem by Mary Oliver with that inspiration in mind.

What would your poem to the Sun say?

The Sun

By Mary Oliver

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone–
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance –
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love –
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed–
or have you too
turned from this world–

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?

First Sharing

First Sharing

May 1, 2023

First Sharing

I’ve decided to share a glimpse of what I imagine will be the kinds of creations we are exploring together in this space and in upcoming workshops.

The first is a free-write poem that came from a collage workshop I participated in last year. I have included an image of the impromptu collage and the poem itself.

The second is a free-writing piece that came out of a guided visualization I participated in using the imagery of a lily pad.  The experience happened just after Imbolc, so my psyche was already in the space of seeds rooting down and beginning to make their turn up towards the surface come spring.

Embrace the Bardo
The in-between
Not here, not there
The crack
The fissure
The formless, yet to be formed 

At times quiet
At other times chaotic and wild
Untethered
Unanchored
Unmoored

The space of potential
of unknown
of yet to be and always has been

Let your wildness roam free
Unencumbered
Limitless
Without bounds

The roar of aliveness rippling out through the layers of Earth and the dimensionless Sky

Announcing
I am Here
I Matter

I can’t tell
If you grow up from the bottom
Or you reach down from the top.

It seems in some way you’ve always been both, suspended between the worlds of dark soil and sunlit blossom.

Holding the tension, while softly flowing with the water’s gentle current, like seaweed but rooted. The freedom to go wherever you want doesn’t exist as it does for seaweed, washing up on shore, drying out on sandy landings. For you, the freedom is held in the tension, the movement and unfolding can only happen between the earth and the sky, cradled in the nourishing water, forever growing both down and up.

Some might think it’s a shame that you don’t get to travel to other pockets of place, go on adventures or explorations; some may see your life as limitation, even in its beautiful blossom. You may not ever know the salt of the ocean or the heat of the baking sun on the earth. But what you do know is how living both rooted and sprouting allows for a different emergence, one of surprise, one of cycles, of birth and death, of dark and light.

It isn’t as limited or boring as the roaming seaweed might imagine. Instead, the world is continuously opening to new worlds, deeper worlds; the soil gets richer, darker, more alive, and the reach upward to blossom again in a different way each time brings renewal. The petals never take in the sun the same way twice.

And so, it is also, tethered to the places and the history of family, while also face-turned up to the sky, growing towards a new warmth, ready to unfurl uniquely and singularly.