Category Archives: improvisation life

Jun18

summer movement class

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Authentic Movement is a contemplative movement practice that nourishes creativity and imagination through a practice of intuitive and spontaneous movement. Movers allow themselves “to be moved” following whatever impulses (for both movement and stillness) arise from the body. The teacher acts as a compassionate witness, affirming and giving meaning to the experience of the mover.

The class also include SourceWork – guided somatic meditations for deepening awareness and discovering new movement possibilities – as well as embodied writing and drawing practice.

This class is perfect for those who are seeking to deepen their creativity and connect to the body in a way that encourages both profound listening and improvisational ways of living more fully in the body. It is also appropriate for therapists and coaches who wish to bring a more embodied consciousness to their practice.

Series of four classes Wednesday evenings at my studio in Sharon, CT, 

July 11, 18, 25, August 1, from 6:30-8 pm

Class size limited to 6, so register NOW.

To register, please email HERE.

or sign up here. (Directions provided upon sign up)

Movement Class

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Jun11

the help

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My friend Polly sent me this poem after reading my post on grieving.  Our friends Jon Katz and Maria Wulf suggested that we visit the wonderful Patti Newton for a Tarot card reading when we visited Brattleboro for the Putney School graduation.  We did and her insights were powerful and clarified some deeper sense of direction for both of us.  A way to vision into both what is here and what is coming with fresh eyes, insight and  inspiration.  Thank you my friends!

Prospects

We have set out from here for the sublime
Pastures of summer shade and mountain stream;
I have no doubt we shall arrive on time.

Is all the green of that enameled prime
A snapshot recollection or a dream?
We have set out from here for the sublime

Without provisions, without one thin dime,
And yet, for all our clumsiness, I deem
It certain that we shall arrive on time.

No guidebook tells you if you’ll have to climb
Or swim. However foolish we may seem,
We have set out from here for the sublime

And must get past the scene of an old crime
Before we falter and run out of steam,
Riddled by doubt that we’ll arrive on time.

Yet even in winter a pale paradigm
Of birdsong utters its obsessive theme.
We have set out from here for the sublime;
I have no doubt we shall arrive on time.

Jun9

grieving

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Friday was a day of tears.  On Thursday we had a realtor preview the house for a client.  he told out realtor that the house was too “specific,” whatever that means.  I think actually, it means that the house was not generic enough for his toney Mannhatten clients.

When our house was redone by the couple that owned it before us, they infused it with themselves.  There are little traces of them nestled all over the house.  We  saw them as blessings, and loved their imprints.

After the preview, our realtors sat me down and said that we had to de-clutter the upstairs – specifically my daughters rooms which are filled with their momentos and treasures collected over their lives.  The things they love.  The things that I am used to seeing around them, that give them (and me) a sense of history with us.  My youngest daughter went first and put all of her treasures in a box in the attic.

When I saw her de-nuded room, I lost it.  Great waves and spasms of grief.  It felt as if she had packed her essence away, that she had removed something precious and incalculable from her space.  I could not stop crying.  What I realized was that I was letting myself grieve the loss, the change, the leaving that will come when it comes.  I suddenly felt all the emptying that is here and coming.  I have been so boldly going forward that I had left out that part – the grieving part, the sorrowing.  It was like I had been surfing along on the surface, and suddenly the abyss reached up and pulled me under.

I went to my usual wise places and read Jon Katz and Maria Wulf.  I leafed back through Maria’s posts and found the one about riding the shit train, which made me smile.  I don’t think I had ever read her so bold, so THERE.  I loved it.  I looked for Abraham.  It all helped, but the tears were there all day, leaking, pooling, dripping.

I am allowing myself the sadness.  I am not parked in it, but feel it as weather passing through.  Today was like that too – passing storms – big weather, then little sprinkles.  Tomorrow, different weather.

Jun8

castles, buttons

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Last week I found out that the links to my websites in my email signatures were not working.  Two days ago I discovered that the links to my offerings on my blog (over on the right) – One-to-One Creativity Coaching, my eBook, Breaking into Blossom and  Little Fictions and Ragged Memoirs, also were not working.  They took you to the “Whoops, what you are looking for is not here” page.

This is not good.  My offerings are one of the ways that I support myself and that I reach out with my heart to those of you who are reading. So now all of those things are working.

Today I got this from Abraham:  “It is as easy to create a castle as a button. It’s just a matter of whether you’re focused on a castle or a button.”

This feels connected to the theme of stringing and un-stringing that I wrote about here.  Fixing digital glitches feels like making buttons.  I want to be building castles.  However, there is much to be said for the humble button and the act of buttoning as good protection against the cold.

I have been reading Anna Halprin’s book about her seventy+ years of making performance.  What I find inspiring is the through line of her devotion to her work.  I am sure that amidst all the building of castles there were a lot of buttons.  (She had children too which always makes for many, many buttons.)

Today was a button day.  Tomorrow, castles.