Sacred and Naked Yoga, Why Naked You Ask?

For years I have been offering Sacred and Naked Yoga.  And yes, many of you have noticed that my performances often share the same transparency, honoring of my parents' sacred costuming if you will.  My mom recently asked me on my way to the Clear Creek Festival if I would be performing with clothes on this time.  She said to be honest she'd be more inclined to invite our relatives if I had clothes on.  "Mom, I'll be more naked than I've ever been but with clothes on!"  We laughed.  She knew I was speaking of the vulnerability, the rawness of the content of my one woman show, Trust, Earth, Ancestors...

Photo by Monique Torok
Unphotoshopped :)

Last week I taught at a conference for socially conscious entrepreneurs.  We were focusing on the third chakra and I invited folks if they felt comfortable to lift their shirt and work directly with their bellies.  I heard a sound next to me.  "Ok, ok, we're courageous enough to change the world, but lifting our shirts might be too much.  Well we're taking baby steps, let's start with where we are."

Naked.  So for some folks this seems like a big ordeal, noted.  I want to share something.  I know that I'm petite.  I know that my body is proportionate and that society endorses a beauty that I am lucky enough to fit into.  I am not oblivious to this privilege.  And I'd like to share this...

Being naked sensitizes the body and makes it easier for us to really feel.  It creates a dynamic of trust in the room.  It is only because most of our daily social interactions create a norm of clothing the body that coming together in the nude becomes an opportunity to live beyond social norms.  This is particularly true when we honor our body and our sexuality as sacred.  The context for how we come together to celebrate our wholeness is what gives our nakedness power.  Deep breathing, remembering how similar we are.  These are the smells of our human forms.  These are the scars, this is how our inhales move our ribs.  This is how tension has sculped our necks and feet.  This is the exquisite living design.  For these 90 minutes we join the baby animals and freshly born humans in comfort inside our bodies.  There's an innocence under all those layers.

The Return of Innocence: Performing at the American Dance Guild

On Sept 6, 2012, I had the honor dancing Swing Us Sky Rain(bow) at the American Dance Guild Performance Festival.  The piece was choreographed by Shani Collins-Achille and focused on breaking the generational cycle of domestic abuse.

Shani facilitates women's circles for empowerment and this was the perfect intersection of the healing and performing we are here to create.  When the lights come up I am the only one laying on the ground, representing those women who have fallen.  My 5 sisters are walking softly around me dropping rose petals with compassion and starting the first moves of a dance that will ignite all of us into our fierceness.

During tech week I had the honor of facilitating our cast to get more connected to the work and to each other.  The piece centered on Ursula Rucker's poem, The Return of Innocence Lost (see below.)  The dancers were so strong, so embodied, so passionate during this sound scape.

As we sat in circle preparing to share this work at the Alvin Ailey Theatre I shared this dedication:

For the women who have only known this

For the women who used to know this

For those of us healing our ancestries through the revolution of self love,

the sacred ending of relationships too small for our souls to fit in,

whether from addiction

from fear

from the medicine of sex turned toxic.

Our strength is part of you.

Our sweaty muscles, quickened breaths,

clear visioned eyes are yours too.

Our orgasms, our joy our peaceful nights of sleep

are sweetening the air for you to inhale,

to breathe deep within your lungs,

soft bellies, blessed wombs.

Be here with us now.

Remember the members of your being,

your life giving breasts,

your steady feet,

your truth speaking lips.

Be here full bodied with us now.

And let yourselves, perhaps for the first time,

receive.

Trembling Before Transformation

Orgasm. Deep grieving. Belly laughter. Muscle spasm.

The moment after each of these, we often feel a deep release and peace.  They are all forms of vibration...holding on, letting go, holding on, letting go until we really let go.  They are all bridges into the involuntary nervous system. 

In Orgasm the physical body literally has a spasm through the musculature of the pelvic floor and the womb flutters.  In deep grieving and belly laughter the diaphragm contracts and releases with rapid energy and breath.  In muscle spasm the muscle contracts and releases and contracts until it surrenders and lengthens.  We surrender to the trembling and our voluntary nervous system stops controling the process.

We can have a consciousnessgasm too!  Just before our awareness expands we can feel disorientation.  My whole life I thought it was hard to make money, wait I can make money? no it's hard, no wait there are lots of successful passionate people....and then our reality surrenders and the beliefs expand.

What I've noticed in the last decade of supporting people through physical and spiritual transformation is that before the transformation there is a vibration.  It may not feel good, transformation as much as we seek it does not always "feel" good while it's happening.  But then afterwards there is an expansion!

In the last six months I went to study with Peter Levine, international trauma healing expert and creator of "somatic experiencing."  I also trained with a group of dance therapists on healthy embodiment for trauma survivors.  In both of these professional development settings the theme of vibration, trembling, shaking emerged. 

Animals do not retain trauma in their systems.  Ok, imagine we're field mice and we gather for dinner.  I'm not going to be sitting there petrified telling you, "wow, I almost died 3 times today there was a huge hawk overhead and he came swooping down and I think I'm never going out to the field again!"  No, animals tremble and shake until the fear moves through their nervous system and they continue living.  Somewhere in our great human evolution we interrupted this process. 

So while I was at these trainings with trauma specialists I kept asking why don't we shake each day and rinse out our nervous system?!  Do we have to wait for a trauma?  And they were intrigued.  Now, this is not new in other cultures where drumming and shaking is a daily practice. 

As a yoga teacher and dancer I've noticed that a lot of folks try stretching but they are still tight.  Sometimes deep stretches actually make them more tight.  Recently I saw a rolfer and she was surprised to hear that I've been dancing intensely for 30 years and have no injuries.  I mean dancing 2-8, sometimes 12 hours a day, and no injuries.  She let me know that most dancers and yogis she works on have a lot of chronic injuries and I started to wonder what my body learned and how I can share it with others.

Shaking!  Every day I put on music and I shake and let it rattle my breath and recreate my body on a cellular level.  Really deep shaking so that sounds come from my throat, the world around me becomes blurry, every part of my body is in motion.  Then I localize the vibration and literally shimmey down my legs inside of the hamstring stretchs, IT stretches, inner thigh stretches...I tremble.  I remember when I worked with Anodea Judith, a pioneer in chakra health, that energy can move more deeply through a vibrating leg than one with contracted muscles.  Later when dancing with Egyptian Priestess, Leslie Zehr, the same theme came up.

So I have started to teach vibration inside of yoga poses.  I'm reframing the goal, it's not so focused on physical flexibility as much as charging the energy through a muscle and oxygenating the tissue.  The muscle contracts, releases, contracts....and then transforms.  In fact sometimes a really limber body has the hardest time finding this shaking.  But the shaking actually repairs, heals, and strengthens our embodiment.  It prepares us for what Peter Levine describes as trauma proofing.  I would say it integrates the soul body into the physical body so we can live at ease and playfully in a present body.

I'm thrilled to be sharing this approach in my classes and private sessions.  I'd love to hear about your experiences with this process too!  What are you noticing in your bodies, with your clients, and students?

Generous

At New Years I lost a dear inspiring friend, Kibibi Dillion.  Her spirit told me to stop fucking around and do what I'm here to do: perform, teach, coach.  MAKE A ONE WOMAN SHOW.

I've fantasized about doing this for years.  Every time I saw a performer create a one person show it felt like a coming of age ritual and I sensed it was a matter of time before it would be my turn.

What stories will I tell?  What dances....songs? Ok.  I wasn't expecting that. This piece is growing me.  

I decided at New Years that I wanted to perform my show in Kentucky and New York, the two birth places of my parents.  I took out a calendar and highlighted labor day weekend, this is when I want to perform I told myself.  A few months later I was at a party and a man asked me, "aren't you Zahava from Appalachia?"  He recognized me from a performance I had attended a year prior in the Bronx.  Yes.  

Now Appalachia for me has been a deep secret.  My roots there seem to be the core of my sense of not belonging to the world I see and feel around me.  He turned out to be the director of the Clear Creek Festival, an incredible annual festival for healing, performance, and cultural transformation.  After a beautiful conversation that brought me to tears he invited me to come perform.  He said he would email me the dates.

When I returned home I opened the email to discover that the festival was on...Labor Day weekend!  Oh, universe I think I asked for this.  But I was so terrified that I didn't respond for months.  In the past few weeks I have met 3 people who had been to the festival or were from Appalachia.  Suddenly the reality of Appalachia was showing up in my NYC life.  As much as I feared going back HOME it seemed the greatest fear would be to say no to this invitation I had requested.  

I sat in the park with my soul sister, Chelsea, who is also Appalachian and Jewish and had performed at Clear Creek in 2010.  She said to me, "you're going to feel at home."  At which point I lost it.  I cried so deeply -- What if I don't like it?  She looked at me, "you and I are the kinds of people who go everywhere, we have such an expansive experience visiting other people's cultures and realities.  Sometimes the scariest thing is to go home."  

I called the director this week.  I want to come, is it too late?  I borrowed a tent, I cleared my schedule...it's official universe, I accept.

Making a one woman show has been a journey.  At first I was just trying to find language for my memories and what I felt was important.  Then I started doing showings for my dear friends, lovers, tribe.  Yes, they sometimes gave feedback but I really was at the stage of needing to be witnessed and seen in my story.  Reading your life story aloud every Sunday is an interesting ritual.  Some weeks it's really emotional, and some weeks it feels less so.  Just this past week I felt a shift. I am really ready to hear how its occurring for others.

What I'm learning is that a one woman show cannot be made by one woman.  I need my community and friends to tell me what it looks like from out there.  There is an intimacy in asking for feedback and really receiving it.  There are parts of this show that I edited out this week because I realize they were for me.  There's something generous about knowing what not to share.  And generous about this stage of the process, because this show is for you.  Just like living is for ourselves, AND for each other.  Performance is the HOW we live for each other.

And! I don't have a venue for NYC yet. Universe?  If you want to produce my show, sponsor it, have recommendations for festivals, venues, performance opportunities to apply to, please email: Zahava@LoveMakingDances.com.

Sex, Earth, Ancestors

A multimedia solo performance ritual created and performed by Zahava Griss.

My roots bridge religious, cultural, and class lines gifting me with the ability to be and to communicate Love across socially defined realities. I am the child of a New York Jewish sociologist and the Appalachian mountain woman he was assigned to “study.” I was raised by the ballet community and the African diasporic dance community. I learned how differently cultures define dance, the body, sex, the soul, and our relationship with the Earth. This performance ritual is about their evolution and how 
our personal life story plays a part in it.

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Divine Costumes

Divine Costumes.  That was the name of my first naked solo dancing onstage.  I was in college.  My parents, grandparents, cousins, aunt and uncle were in the audience.  I had credited Mom and Dad as the costume designers.  

Photo by Jennifer Maeve

I remember the stage manager asking if I wanted to put clothes on for the bow.  I remember thinking he missed my intention... to honor the body.  I remember how moved I was that night to hear people's responses.  My female housemate came up after the show and said my dance made her feel like a Goddess that night.  I remember my male housemate saying he wanted to sexualize it, but he couldn't, it was so much more.  I remember grandma's cousin sat behind some young children and she thought they would laugh.  But when I started dancing they were silent and mesmerized.  


I remember the email grandma's cousin sent me 10 years later, "Beautiful Cousin, twice removed, you are out of this world!  You have created a field of exploration that is all of you.   I am sorry to be such an old lady, about to be 80, or I would be participating in all your events."  


I remember the dancer who was going to perform the duet with me before she developed a back injury.  I remember her surprise that I encouraged her to rest and take care of her body.  Our professional training had taught us to be martyrs more than sacred bodies.  I remember the moment I chose to do the show anyway and to improvise a solo based on the duet we had started to create.  


I remember rehearsing in the dance studio naked and covering the windows with pink foam boards.  I remember my friend who sat filming me, baring her breasts in solidarity.  I remember the security guard who walked in and asked us what we were doing.  I remember thinking he felt more like an insecurity guard.  I remember the badge I made the next day as I experimented with being a soul security guard.  

Painted by Rainbow for the Sacred Sex Round Up

I remember the awkward moment of disrobing in the "dressing room" while everyone else put clothes on.  I remember feeling the most comfortable on stage.  I could get away with things in the spotlight that caused discomfort off stage.  Maybe it was because the performance gave people permission to look... there's some magic about performance that gives us permission to show and to see more intimately.  Or maybe people like to look out from the dark.


I remember performing naked again years later at the Sacred Sex Round Up with my friends, a djembe player and an opera singer.  I remember a couple came up to me after the solo crying.  They said it was the first time they could share the experience of being turned on while watching a naked woman perform.  They said they felt I let them see all of me.  I remember the woman of the couple chosing to transform that night.  She began to study with my sexual shaman teacher.

Earth held, the sky has never explained infinity so clearly.

I remember hiking naked in the red rocks of Sedona with my soul sister and best friend from kindergarden.  I remember laying with our legs open, sunning our yonis.  I remember how delicious the fire of the sun felt on my clit.  I remember thinking, "how have I never spread my legs to the sun before?" And then thinking, where else could I?  I remember the couple who came along the trail and the split second of wondering if we should move.  I remember the man tripped as he came upon us.  I remember inviting him into our comfort rather than joining him in his awkwardness.  I remember as he passed the blessing I called out to him, and really to myself, "enjoy your life!"

Yoga for the Sexual Priestess

A dear friend of mine and phenomenal musician pointed out that yoga was originally created by man for men.  He and I shared a powerful connection through our dancing and music and he wanted to know what a Tantrika like me was doing teaching a yoga class for women.  Appreciating the profound exchange of Shakti and Shiva energy between us, and his extensive spiritual background I was grateful for his question.  Months later as I offer Yoga for the Sexual Priestess I am realizing how this yoga is unique and distinctly different from many yoga practices.  

I notice that many yoga classes today are consciously or unconsciously creating a “masculine” version of the body mind spirit connection.   Some of this can be observed through a focus on fitness, the athletic aesthetic of yoga clothing, the linear forms of many poses, repetition of linear asana sequences, language emphasizing the muscular skeletal system, under-engaging the students creativity, the grid-like spatial structure of class on individual mats.  In addition to this I have also observed that many women yoga teachers are hungry to access their second chakras when they come to my workshops and often have some unlearning to move through to find pleasure.  Coming from a rigorous professional dance background I can appreciate the balance of discipline and pleasure in a consciously attended to body, mind, soul.

The archetype of the Sexual Priestess embodies a Oneness with sex and spirit that brings us into a co-creation with the Great Everything.  Her presence is reemerging because our collective life force is ready to become fertile and whole.  Through the Sexual Priestess we are maturing from a mother child relationship with the Earth to a lover relationship with the Earth where we have a greater responsibility as we co-create life.

Photo of me in Sedona hanging from my sky toes, nestling my heart into the Earth.

Photography by my dearest childhood friend, Marisa Alonso, as we hiked naked upon completion of our Sexual Shaman training. 

What is YOGA FOR THE SEXUAL PRIESTESS?

• Sexual energy is a creative energy. Yoga for the Sexual Priestess engages the following of our body’s instincts as a Creator.  This deepens our awareness of how we are feeling.
• Cultivating life energy is an erotic and spiritual experience, the full expression of the sacred body and sensual spirit is welcomed through breath and sound as One with the Great Everything.
•  The language guiding this practice spans systems in our body including the skeletal, soul, organ, sexual, chakra, muscular, collective and ancestral anatomies expanding our personal practice into a whole context.  We enter different states of mind by focusing on specific systems, the language of Yoga for the Sexual Priestess intentionally weaves sex and spirit in the ancestral web for the evolution of trust, love, and passion.  
• Anchoring awareness in the Love and Sex centers, the two hearts that heal, create & nourish life, creates awe & ecstasy.
•  Rocking, undulating, and vibration are qualities of movement not usually found in a yoga class.  They deeply access our life force energy and naturally occur during embodied transformations including orgasm, deep grieving, and soul shaking laughter.  We use them to invoke transformation.
• We visit the animal spirit of the poses to remember our resilient and sensual animal instincts. 

Midwives: the Art of Being Here When a New Soul Arrives

"Hello.  Just say hello to the new being,"  Roy Capellaro reminds us of the the simplicity of greeting a new soul in his workshop on Neonatal Craniosacral Intervention for Midwives.

The room was usually still.  I don't mean the bodies standing in a circle with their hands on the heads of their sisters.  I mean the quality of listening we were bringing to the circle had a rare caliber.  This was a circle of women who were living their calling.  Their souls were more at peace in their bodies than many circles of women I have had the honor of teaching.  Passionate, funny, oh so loving, and really grounded... I LOVE teaching birthing dances to the midwives at the New York State Association of Licensed Midwives annual conference.

This is my second year coming to guide the circle at the sacred Powell House, a Quaker Retreat Center with a labyrinth, a neighboring farm for rescued animals, Dreaming Tree Farm and Full Belly Farm.  We gather in a circle on the Earth to join in the lineage of women dancing the loving sensual and communal artistry of belly dance.  

We sing through our mouths and the mouths of our hip sockets.  In one moment our bodies come to stillness together with one hand on the heart and one on the womb, the two energy centers of womanly love.  "Imagine that you are in your heart looking down into the basin of your pelvis," I say.  In this exact moment we hear, "Wow, it's huge in here.  It's like a mansion!" I realize that the two women making their way to join our circle have become the voice of our hearts.

Dancing is the art of embodying our soul, listening to our deepest instincts while feeling the space, time, and presence of those around us and embodying the relationship between the inner and outer worlds.  I found a profound similarity between how Roy instructed us to listen to the new soul and the state of receptivity we enter when we dance.

Artwork from the NYSLAM Conference

To my delight one of the midwives hosted me at her home, the Quaker Intentional Village in Canaan. Here I met 4 day old lambs and had a 5 year old lead me to the "magical mystical waterfall!" I had the satisfying opportunity to discover some mutual visions for the future of humanity with Eric Harris-Braun, co-founder of the Meta Currency Project creating the next economy to facilitate healthy flows of resources and information that support people, society and the Earth.  I trust those of us who are deeply devoted to the new paradigm will continue to find each other.  The Art of Being Here When a New Soul Arrives took on a new context as we are arriving at a new consciousness for humanity.  The Here we are co-creating is becoming more and more regenerative as we midwife our own birthing of consciousness.  Hello. Welcome, this is our new life together.

Wombs are Source in Human Form

Returning from Ceremony with my sisters, I am overflowing with Gratitude.  On the snow dusted grass, at the edge of Lake Joseph, we gathered for 24 hours, a full moon and sun cycle to share our gifts.  The Shift has started.  Looking into each others eyes, harmonizing, shimmeying, storytelling, meditating, mmmm....and the kitchen, Goddess!  The kitchen overflowing with more delicious roots, berries, lentils, salads, chocolates, berries... than we could eat.  We have such gifts, our intution is ripe, our voices clear,  we are ready.  Our histories are blessing us more and more as we bring understanding and love to the same stories that used to torment us.  Thank you Queen GodIs for helping me hear this tonight.

I return home to my sex meditation under the orange waning moon.  Today I have heard stories from wombs ready to release traumas and energies no longer serving.  As I spread my legs, freshly bathed, I focus my mind on a pleasure prayer.

God, Goddess, may this pleasure spill up my spine and runneth over from my heart and breasts.  May the universe experience its deepest pleasures through my human form.  May this joy set the frequency for my life.  May this laughter and ecstasy cleanse me.  May this sex purify me and my Sisters.  May this fullness fill our holes.  Love, love is being made.  May we see love, hear love, be love.  I am making love out of the form that is my body.  Thank you Spirit, oh thank you for making us life creating.  Thank you for making us Life, creating.  This life force swelling in my yoni, in my third eye, may it widen the straw of our love.  May it awaken any parts of us that are not turned on, so we may be trully grateful for life.

I bow to the sex in me, it is Spirit, it is Creator of life, love, healing.  I am trembling.  Sex appeal is Life Appeal.  May my capacity to feel this full, this happy, this nourished expand in my life as it is now in my body.  Each inhale is opening me.  Sisters, our wombs are the Source of our Healing, our wombs are Source in human form.  These are the portals through which ancestry is brought onto the Earth, when we touch them with devotion we are touching Spirit.

Ashe

The Tantra of Contact Improv

The past four days I have been nourished by the rituals and compassionate conversations of those occupying the new paradigm.  Many of the Occupy Wall Street folks have joined Starhawk in trainings for co-empowerment and leaderless groups this past weekend.  What is becoming clear to me is that the culture of the new paradigm is liberating us.  It's different than the old paradigm of activism where we have a lot of work that may or may not be effective and if the revolution happens then we will be liberated post revolution.  No, it's the relationships and CONNECTIONS that are forming in this soil of Occupy that are liberating us.  It's who we are being, who we are occupying that is liberating us... occupy to me is an invocation to be here now in our Earth bodies fully present and connected.  In light of that I have retitled my blog, Occupy Passion.


Our relationships and connections are the ecosystem of our Love and Life Force Energy.  When we nourish them with the rich soil of boundaries and accountability, water them with our sacred love fluids, and heat them with the fire of our passion, we have the energy to contribute to the world we envision.  This is the tantra of politics my loves.


Grace Lee Boggs, a legendary activist for the past 60 years, has just published her new book The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty First Century. She calls our attention to the paradigm shift happening now, it is as transformative as our paradigm shift from hunter/gatherer to agriculture.  She reminds us that as this new MOVEMENT is beginning to emerge it is less about critical mass than it is about critical CONNECTIONS.  


MOVEMENT and CONNECTIONS is exactly what we'll be exploring tonight at the Tantra of Contact Improv. Connections includes the oneness between people and it also includes connecting the parts of us that have learned not to know each other, like sex and spirit.  


And where does the revolution occur? It's right here baby, in our bodies and our relationships.  When I pay attention to where a MOVEMENT initiates from in my body, I feel that deep life impulse that comes from the channel of energy running Earth to Sky through each of our bodies.  To align with it does not always bring peace, to be in nature is not always comfortable, but it is pure.  


In the new paradigm security is rooted in our nervous system and our reverence for our bodies, including our Earth body.  In the new paradigm our resources are:

• social responsibility
• creativity
• trust
• conscious communication

These resources are inexhaustable and create value for us in ways that replace the values class, race, and gender have constructed.

In the new paradigm Contact Improv is a tool to build connection, to build shared new realities, to consciously initiate leadership and willingness.  It is the art of sharing energy and intimacy with gravity and space, Mother Earth and possibility.  It is the template for our capacity to trust, love, and co-create.  In the new paradigm every physical practice is a doorway to cultivating emotional, erotic, and soul intelligence.  

Tonight I'm so thrilled to offer the Tantra of Contact Improv, to share the magic of Contact Improv with you to deepen a relationship in your life.  Bring someone who is in a relationship with you.  Relationships are delicacies and boot camps for our souls.  Bring em in to the studio, let's play.

Dance for God, because that's what you do on a Thursday night

Tonight I joined an amazing circle of dancers with my teacher, Banafsheh, "an embodied mystic of the divine feminine."

We started the class bowing to the Beloved, the Divine.  As we opened our hips and our hearts we were asked to focus on who we are dancing for.  We partnered up dancing while connecting deeply into the eyes of another.  Dancing is like the condensed essence of the soul for me.  Some of it brought wet eyes, some moments brought protective politeness, some moments I glimpsed a deep sadness meeting my openess.  The intensity of this connection is far more compact than conversation, it is our whole being in communication.  Dance like sex asks us to be fully in our bodies while giving and receiving energy and I feel is the most intimate request of our human forms.

Tonight we were invited to channel spirit through the crown of our heads and into our sex.  We were reminded that dance is the core practice of igniting our life force energy.  I know this deeply and I often find myself teaching this, but to hear it from teachers around me, and especially those older than myself feels unbelievably nourishing.  Most of my students are older than me and explicitly comment on their desire to connect to their youthful sexual energy through my age.  But I know that this wisdom is ageless and the transmission of it across generations is becoming restored.

What I'm so moved by is that the healing is happening everywhere.  In our dancing tonight we sat in a circle where a young woman gifted us with her trust and her story of rape and depletion.  The room felt more relaxed and present than I have ever felt when hearing this story.  We gently spoke our questions our experiences and moved into prayer for her wholeness.  I intend to share this here and now without revealing her identity holding the intention that more dance classes penetrate us so deeply and so collectively.  Banafsheh reminded us that we are not whole if one of us is not whole.  This sisterhood feels incredible, it trembles me with love.  It feels so different than the unconscious competition or comparison that can so easily slide between gorgeous women.

We all rose from the Earth to Dance for God, because that's what you do on a Thursday night in the city.  It's becoming simpler. Being whole, being sisters...is becoming simpler.  Thank you for reminding me tonight.

Honoring the Sexual Priestess

On Wednesday, Nov 16, we gathered for a beautiful ritual Sister's Honoring the Sexual Priestess.  The conversations in preparation, post class and the mornings after have been tremendous.  I was excited to hear men wanting to create a men's circle to honor the Sexual Priestess and inquiring of the template of our ritual as a point of reference.  A dear psychic friend has been downloading intuitive information very similar to myself and what I keep learning through this process is the communal nature of how the Sexual Priestess is sharing her love and wisdom through so many of us today.  When we gather the clarity of this healing amplifies!

Many of you have asked for details and recordings.  While I did not choose to film our ritual I'd love to share some pieces of it here and look forward to sharing the next one with you.

We entered a saged and cedared room to cast a circle with our intentions.  I lead a womb and breast centered dance meditation drawing us deep into our physical bodies and the Earth body.  This allows us to connect with the spirit realm and intuitive downloads heightened by the group matrix in a way that grounds our wisdom and integrates it into the physical plane.  Together we created a beautiful altar over a plush velvet shall.  Each woman made a creative offering to the Sexual Priestess through songs, sacred plants, drawings, texts from contemporary Priestesses and a gorgeous painting.

One of my favorite parts of the night was a beauty adorning ritual.  Each woman became encircled, honored, caressed with our hands and devotion through our gaze as we expressed the love and reverence we feel for the Sexual Priestess through the woman's body.  I experienced it as a decorating of her body, through energy and intention, just as intricate as laying rose petals and jewels.


From this fully present and love filled space we entered an inquiry, sharing a question we are living in right now as we connect to this archetype.

The question present for me, "How do I connect people to the consciousness of the Sexual Priestess and not just my embodiment of her, not just my body?"

Thank you for being in this inquiry with me and for all your loving support and curiosity.  I am creating a performance piece to communicate how much the Sexual Priestess archetype enhances the spiritual pleasure we can give and receive with each other.  I look forward to sharing more rituals with you as I develop this artistic offering.

Celebrating the Dark Artistry of the Goddess

We are approaching Samhain, more commonly known as Halloween, when the veil between the living and the dead is the thinest.  The wisdom that evolves us across generations is more readily available to us during this season and so is our resistance to this wisdom.

The costumes, the glucose spikes, the masks, the characters we let ourselves become at Halloween may deepen our journey or they may become an entertaining distraction from it.  Perhaps we'll have the best of both worlds, we'll entertain ourselves with the truth while looking out from the costumes of the familiar!  That's exactly the intention behind the ritual I am offering tomorrow on the New Moon, Celebrating the Artistry of the Dark Goddess, Wednesday, 6:30 to 8 pm, at Red Bean Studios.  Register here!

I am often asked to lead Kali inspired rituals during this season.  This year I'm recognizing that the ritual of the Dark Goddess is intimately connected to my studies of healing trauma with Peter Levine, author of "Waking the Tiger."  The tiger in the nervous system is the one who pounces when someone attacks me.  She is the one who pumps my heart fast and steady when I speak loudly.  She is the one looking through my eyes when I trust that who I am is valuable.  When she sleeps, people can smell it on me.  The boundaries get fuzzy and protection feels like a draining task that fear has asked me to perform.

I recently joined a room of mental health professionals and therapists for a training with internationally recognized trauma expert, Peter Levine.  He works with the children in Japan who survived the tsunami.  He works with veterans returning from war and adults who grew up in concentration camps.  I dare say he works courageously close to the Dark Goddess.  Kali Ma, the hindu form of the Dark Goddess, destroys that which is untrue.  For thousands of years people have invoked Her energy to destroy the energetic imprints of the events which did not honor our true value. 

I'll be integrating the somatic technology that Levine uses to Wake the Tiger.  He defines trauma, not as a result of a situation, but it is the result of the tiger sleeping during the situation.  Kali, like rage, is often misunderstood and feared.  Her limitless unapologetic freedom can be presented out of context, falsely legitimizing our unconscious lust and unexamined envy.  We invoke her in this ritual with great respect and purpose.  She is the Mother Nature energy at its most powerful-civilization-rumblin-core, she is the Goddess of death.  She kills illusion.  She expects us to be courageous and we have the opportunity to make her right.

Dark and Shadow are Not the Same

There is no Shadow inside a Mother's womb or in the Earth, there is only fertile Darkness, possibility, and transformation.  The Shadow exists where light is actively obstructed.  The energy we expend to prevent this area from seeing the light of day is energy that is no longer available for trust, love, and passion.  Dark Goddess, we ask you to awaken the tiger inside us, to unfreeze the memories our body has accumlated as we grow our emotional and spiritual resources.  We ask for psychological rejuventation that allows us to break cycles that have replaced trust, love, and passion.

Come adorned in black, ready to dance, come ready to release a part of you that is no longer you!

Chocolate and fruit will be served.

Submission

I've been creating "Submission," a solo dance performance for the Halloween Masquerade Puja Party on Saturday, Oct 29, at the annual Sacred Sexuality Round Up.  I recently started offering classes after a 10 month break.  I'm discovering that during the sabatical from creating classes, I was creating something less visible, a new way of experiencing myself.  Now that I'm returning to teaching and choreographing dances the experience has changed.  Tonight the solo came to visit me.


This solo cannot see.  She can listen.  She is willing, supple, and She does not scatter me as She moves me.  She is Submission.  She has come to speak to me this time not as a lover, not as an obstacle, not as the all mighty... in the familiar forms.  She teaches me to surrender without collapsing.

She rotates my thighs slowly in the caves of my hip sockets.  Her timing is just a touch more graceful than the timing of tentativeness.  Then She whips me with movement in a way that is similar to ecstatic bowing, wrestling, chanting, whirling, flying on merry-go-rounds, vomitting violently, and head banging. She makes me feel the delicacy of my physicality.

There is some part of me that is not delicate and not physical, that I live from in these moments.

She touches me as air surrounding my warm skin.  She tosses my spine at times just to assure Herself that I am not bracing or defending my posture.  Ninety minutes into rehearsal She pops me out of the studio to sit and recognize Her with these words.  I hope to receive Her again.  I want Her to take me.  I plan to go home and turn on the music and wait for Her to join me again.  She is mentoring me to serve.

Walking Back In

My body felt warm and relaxed after two hours dancing in the studio.  Each week for the past 4 weeks I had come to open my body with new movement and to untangle the memories and definitions that constricted who I am when I dance.  As I left the studio I touched the elevator down button and turned to my phone.  A young blonde woman leaned against the wall smiling at me.  "This may be strange but..." I looked up to see who was speaking.  "Did you dance at Arlington Center for Dance?" she asked.

"Yes."  I answered simply, summing up ages 6 to 18 of professional ballet training 3 to 8 hours a day, 6 days a week in a small school 5 hours away in Virginia.  "I know who you are," she was beaming.  I didn't recognize her face but I started to open as if I had, knowing that she was aware of such a huge part of my life before I moved to NYC for dance.

Just 3 weeks prior I had called a Healing Circle for Dancers in this very studio after many burning converesations with dancers who had left the dance world and in some way left a part of themselves still in it.  "You probably know my father more than you know me," she gave me his name and then hers.  Her father used to fly the scrims in and out during our tech rehearsals and performances.  Yes, I believe I had heard the director calling his name for years.  Here his daughter stood before me at the doorway to the dance studio.

"Are you dancing now?" I asked.  She explained that she had left when she was 12.  She "walked out," her hands gestured a sweeping "X" across her body.  "I mean I walked out completely."  She went on to say that she recently started social dance, swing, but it wasn't "real dance." Her eyes and tone suggested that I would agree, having shared the same strict definition of dance from our backgrounds.  But I didn't. I was so happy that she was opening a new relationship with dance 15 years later.  "And now these crazy people," she swung a hand toward the studio already filling with the next group of dancers, "actually convinced me to perform."  She looked undeniably happy.

She started to repeat again that she "walked out, I mean walked out" on dance.  "Yes," I nodded, "that's very common.  I'm so happy you are reconnecting to the part of you that loved dance before our studio defined it."  She had no idea the syncronicity of her seeing me in this studio at this time of the week where I come regularly to "walk back in" to dance, whole.  "I'm so glad you said something to me," I said as she turned to enter the studio.

I have always loved dance more than anything, even when someone else was describing what it was and what it wasn't.  But these days there is a phenomenal choreography of dancers dispursing for 10, 15 years, and then slowly turning to face back to the center.  "Steve, can you fly the scrim in for the next scene? Raise the lights on stage right, we want to see their glowing faces."

Irene, Thank You

Irene has passed through this morning.  The birds came back to the trees around 11 am.  I watched a squirrel carry her tiny baby in her mouth as she ran up a tree to her nest.  The baby's tail was no bigger than a green bean.  The mother perched at the edge of the nest watching me with quick breaths and swollen pink breasts.  I had witnessed her intimate act.  As we looked at each other, I sensed how similar we were protecting our Loved ones from the storm.

Irene, comes from Greek origin, meaning "Peace."  The calmness of Sunday afternoon has been escalated in our attention.  We've stopped bracing ourselves, we can unpack our emergency bags.  She surrounds us, this incredible presence reminding us we are alive and safe.  The water in the glass jar on my kitchen cabinet looks precious today...our gratitude has been reset, and everything is registering as a gift.

Today I journey in my body.  I celebrate Irene's gifts by clearing my midline and surging her magnificent power through my yoni, into the cave of my pelvis.  My belly is swelling with laughter and a sense of purpose: to Love.  In this moment I ask to experience all the deepest pleasures we as humans have shared with each other in orgasmic bliss, through out time.  This energy is here asking to be called upon!  She is as eager as I am to meet.  The trembling begins.  It is the physicality of awe.  But what strikes me most is the softness in here, the sweet embrace that lovers exchange after climaxing.  It is as if all these happy souls are embracing me through my own arms. It is the same LOVE energy and instinct of the mother squirrel carrying her loved one to safety.

Irene, I believe you have shaken some guards from our hearts today.  Our simple needs for food, water, light, shelter have brought a tenderness to our being.  You could have made heroes and mourners of us today.  But instead you have graced us with this curious calm afternoon.  Thank you.

Choreographing Orgasms?

In the desert of Tucson, Arizona I walked with Kenneth Ray Stubbs and a small group of amazingly perceptive folks.  We had all gathered for a training course in the Sexual Shaman Path.  Ray started this morning by reminding us that extraorinary things are always occuring, are actually quite ordinary, it's just that we don't often hear people sharing them.  I knew this to be true as soon as I heard him say it.

My intention in this blog is to share some of the less shared "extraordinary" experiences of being human.  I trust many of us are on similar journies.  I've been so grateful for the stories and responses to my new blog, and the conversations it has opened.  I look forward to sharing more and to hearing the magic that is living in your bodies too!

Often I will journey into orgasmic meditation.  The orgasm will root into the basin of my pelvis and spin life energy up through my body.  It's not really through the spine, but in a spineward direction.  I have learned when I move from my bones it's distinctly different than moving through the water of my organs.  I have discovered that listening to life energy during orgasm is more of a water listening: a rounder, fuller, reverberatory listening to life energy.  The water listening fills the insides of my skin rather than traversing the directionality of my bone-snake-red-blood-cell-hatching spine.  This water listening hears the orgasm as it expands to the inner surface of my body and then shifts into a lighter form, one beyond the unit of the individual.  The orgasm is simply radiating from a point in space that happens to be the same point where my human form exists, but no longer contains it.

I feel the orgasm reach Her fingers (it's not always a Her, but this one was) into my gut and only then do I remember how much I can trust.  My belly opens.  It almost tickles to loosen this constant reflex of holding, harnessing my identity to my snake spine with the deepest layers of my transverse abdominals.

I guide my attention to the Wisdom rather than to the pleasure.  The Wisdom speaks through the language of pleasure, rather than on the topic of pleasure.  When I ride the Wisdom the pleasure continues.  Sometimes my attention shifts to chasing the pleasure, like listening faster than a friend is speaking, waiting for what I want to hear.  I squeeze my feeling and my wanting until I remember to ride the Wisdom and my attention starts to expand like my belly.

Then the heart flying begins.

This opening is a wider octive.  It is like the first inhale I take when I come to a clearing in the woods and find myself at a moonlit field.  This new space inside myself for love feels as endless as the corners of the night sky.  The laughter reaches my heart and explodes in slow-silent-motion.  My mouth opens and my body does not just feel, but becomes ForGiveness.

This is not my orgasm, this is Love.  My 88 pounds of body is barely noticed by the Ocean as she rolls her waves into the shore, picking up my toes and planting them again.  Yet, it is no less thrilling of a flight for me.  This is how I experience waves of Love.

"I trust, I trust," the voice trembles--somewhere between a cry of relief and a celebration.  I recognize the voice is coming from the lungs inside my body.  We are Wisdom Riding.  Once the life energy moves into my Ajna I can trace what is occuring with words that allow me to bring you with me now.

For years I would Wisdom Ride but did not know how to express what was occuring to the world outside my body.  I could kiss these digital letters, the gaps they are now bridging!

ON 3? CHOREOGRAPHING ORGASMS?

Yesterday my body gifted me with an amazing surprise.  I stood in my temple studio rolling my heels off the Earth, coming onto my toes.  I focused my attention into my heart.  My arms clapped in front of my heart and opened in a rhythmic 3 beats.  In this moment I experienced the deep heart opening I had only before felt during expanded orgasms, tribal weddings, and deep grieving after death.

The immensity of love popped in on the third beat, my mouth opened and I fell to my bed laughing like a young girl who just discovered the doorway to the magical garden I thought was a 4 hour hike from here.  Running my hands over my head turning side to side in disbelief, I laughed with waves of joy.  This is the joy I felt seeing Grandma's face at her 90th surprise birthday party.

I used to clear the screen of my awareness when joy flooded me.  It felt like what I imagine my desktop experiences when I click the "Spaces" icon on my mac and slide into a new space knowing the clutter of my projects is hiden in a virtual pocket one click away.  But now, there is a trust that does not need the messes and challenges to disappear for me to feel it.  It is all here, the alarm clock for work that will go off in 13 hours, the death of my parents years into the future... it is all here with me as I feel this joy.

Wet, Open, Release

Often during a series of powerful orgasms I will feel a powerful heart opening.  The vibrations will continue to rock my body, and the sounds will continue to ride my breath.  But the wailing will shift into crying.  I find it profound the somatic similarity of orgasm and grief. 

The beauty was that my body and my partner remained equally present and open during this transition.  It was remarkably easier during sex not to constrict the grieving with questions or figuring because the energy had been releasing through my system for several hours by this point.

                                      

I touched it.  I touched the depth of my fear that I could not have the life I wanted.  I had known it was in here somewhere.  I could even explain the moment it got planted.  I had talked about it with healers and in my Landmark Forum.  But here it was, my body was touching it.  I stayed in contact and let the release continue, trusting that it had found the perfect moment to tap this source of possibility-defining fear.

Some of the sounds moving through me became hints of laughter, some closer to wailing.  My eyes were wet, his chest was wet, we were sweaty and sticky with love juices.  There could not have been a more lubricated exit for this fear.

“Will you hold me?”  He wrapped his muscular arms around me.  I could feel the father in him, the guard.  In that moment a larger wave of grieve released.  My body was being bound to her core by his embrace.  In here is the lush privacy of cocoons and wombs and bondage that gives way to a new expansion.