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.