The Power of Trembling

The Power of Trembling

For years I have taught the need to shake and rock. The power of tremor to move the body back from a place of contraction to a place of ease. But the movement has always been consciously created not activated. Recently I discovered TRE and the power of the unconscious tremble.Dr. David Berceli has figured out a simple system of movements to trigger the bodies natural (NATURAL) autonomic ability to tremor and release stress. It is simple. It is powerful. It is effective. Do it. Organization:TRE and Dr. BerceliFurther Reading:Shake it Out by David Berceli and Dr. Robert ScaerVideos:TRE, Trauma Releasing ExercisesKalinda and Bonnie do a wonderful job breaking down and demoing the power of...
The great Reframe

The great Reframe

Reframing is an art. One that requires a lot of presence to make happen. Everything really goes back to a willingness to be here, now. Without that willingness you can’t discern what is right for you. I have never liked cleaning.  It has always been the chore I hate the most and I mean all cleaning.  For years I hired it out and then the pandemic and now all the cleaning all the time. With a toddler it is impossible to ever have the whole house to rights.  No matter what. No matter if I clean every day there will be more to clean. Give her a minute. The tricky thing is that when my house is dirty it brings me down. Like woe is me, down. Down below the ground down. So keeping my house moderate is a necessity and with toddler that means cleaning everyday. Every single one. This thought cycle was not helping me live my best life.  I felt aligned with drudgery every time I had to clean. So I did a deep reframe and redefined cleaning for myself. For me cleaning of itself was not a win enough – but what I noticed by wearing a tracker is that I burned a ton of calories when I cleaned. Far more calories than by doing yoga or walking – even purposeful exercise was no match for cleaning’s calorie burn. Turns out cleaning is exercise. I love exercise. Ergo I love cleaning. Now whenever I clean I set my tracker to workout and I get it done. I exercise and feel all the good endorphins and...
40 Day Practice

40 Day Practice

I love a good 40 day practice. I find that the challenge of maintaining pushes me to stay focused and affords a depth of understanding that I can’t achieve without repetitive commitment.  40 days allows me to really experience the impact of the “work” and investigate how it makes me feel in a myriad of moods and states. Here are a few examples that I have committed to over the years:   Kriya Yoga Set (Current 40 Day practice – read more below) Journaling Chanting a specific mantra Seated meditation Abhyanga (Dry Brushing and Oil Massage) Sun Salutations (2, 4, 6 – what number is right for you?) 5 Minutes of Breath work   Currently I am 7 days into a 40 day practice of a Kundalini Yoga Kriya called: Kriya to Make You Enchantingly Beautiful(KTMYEB). The name irks me. So dumb. The Kriya however is a favorite.  One thing I always liked about KTMYE is that it is a perfect 20 minutes – the first 14 minutes are real intense – I am modifying three of the five postures –  then you rest. Over the next 40 days I will get stronger. Modify less. Meditate More. There will be days I hate it. Days I love it. Days I don’t want to do it. Days I do it twice. There will be insight and boredom, excitement and drudgery. Times it will feel like three seconds and others that I swear were hours. What I find is that there is a lot of power in the experience of simply showing up and doing the practice. What type of 40...
Smudge Your Cute Self

Smudge Your Cute Self

Geez-Louise what a week. I have had personal things go wrong. I have had personal things go real right. I have had professional things go wrong. Then right. Then wrong. All in a week – up and down, down and up. You spin me right round, baby Right round like a record, baby Right round round round ~ Dead or Alive I have been having a difficult time not blaming this roller coaster on Mercury in Retrograde – Ryan (my super cute husband) teases me about this – but between you and me, I am pretty sure that this week’s turbulence is its fault. What to do? What to do? First, I practice (yoga, chanting, Reiki, breathwork, meditation – every damn day) and then I smudge a lot, often multiple times a day. I started the practice as a way to clear my living space, than it moved into my office. I have even been known to do it outside under the watchful gaze of the sun and the moon. I believe that by bringing the smoke of sacred herbs, resins and woods around me I am able to clear my energy field. And so I do. It is a simple ritual that anyone can employ. Many cultures have used the burning of sacred herbs or wood in some form for millennia. Anthropologists believe that the practice of using sacred smoke for medicinal and spiritual practices dates back to prehistoric times. The Native Peoples are known for their use of white sage in medicinal and spiritual practices. At Catholic Church the priest enter the sacristy with Pontifical Incense (a...
15 Years Have Passed

15 Years Have Passed

I think that we can all agree that on September 11th, that heart breaking beautiful day, we awoke to one reality and went to sleep in another. In the fifteen years since, on each anniversary, I always take time to say a prayer and honor those that passed in my own simple ways.  The emotion of that trauma hovers below the surfaces and each year there are tears. I did have a number of friends in NYC that day and many of them worked in the towers – luckily, all of them survived.  Like many, I spent the majority of that day in absolute shock. Calling anyone I could think of to give me information about my loves.  I had just moved to Pittsburgh for graduate school in Library Science of all things – I mean seriously what was my younger self thinking with that? As the Towers fell I thought that I couldn’t have chosen a worse thing to study.  Although it is an of service degree it became immediately apparent to me that it wouldn’t be of service enough. I almost dropped out. The week after 9/11 as I moved through the reality of living near no one I actually knew, I remembered thinking that this is why people go to church.  Church provides instantaneous community and I decided to seek out a yoga studio to help me deal with the trauma of my changed reality. Although I had been practicing for years already, my practice wasn’t deep, and I decided to make it so. I decided to practice daily and to use Yoga as way to...
The practice of Restorative Yoga and its power to restore you

The practice of Restorative Yoga and its power to restore you

I found my way to Restorative Yoga several months into my battle with chronic fatigue. Up till then, I loved power yoga and had a type-A grip on my daily practice.  As my illness progressed, I began to recognize that my practice was depleting me rather than supporting me. At the time I held the notion that Yoga had to be taxing to truly constitute a practice.  Rest at the end, work-it the rest of the time. In order to shift to a truly Restorative Practice the first thing I had to do was broaden my definition of Yoga.  Not the easiest of shifts for me. But one that as I transitioned through it began to inform my current beliefs around Yoga, its practice, and its teaching. Interweaving a Restorative Pose into your daily life is a powerful form of self-care. Although the object is always a supported rest the poses can require as little as a blanket to as many as twenty props per student. Like other forms of Yoga there is a vast array of postures that may be practiced.  The trick is having enough props and enough help to ensure each student’s comfort.  The more elaborate the pose the more time required by the teacher to assist the student. This is a labor intensive style of teaching and one where the devil rests squarely in the details. Recently I was honored to teach a segment on Restorative Yoga for the University of Maryland Medical Center’s 500-hr Teacher Training (TTY). I focused my portion of the TTY on postures that required a minimum of six props to...