What I have become aware of is that for many of us there is a big commute between our creative work and the rest of our lives. As It is hard to maintain a sense of living wide-awake in a body when we are so tethered to the digital world and disconnected from vibrant, physical experiencing.

I developed Breaking into Blossom:  Moving into an Improvisational Life as an online class because I wanted to offer some fresh ideas on how to close that gap from my perspective as an improvisational movement artist, a teacher and a coach.  It  is designed to inspire you to become more daring, more visionary, and more playful and improvisational in your daily life, relationships and work.

I am now offering the materials that I developed for that class in a beautifully designed eBook that contains ten chapters integrating writing, movement, guest artists and specific strategies to help you find a deeper creative engagement.

The book will be available at the end of March.  You will receive it as a downloadable pdf.

The cost is $15.  You can order it here.

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I took this picture of Capprichio last September.  I lay in the grass and let him move around me.  I loved seeing him from this angle, down where he grazes, one eye on the farm, one eye on me.

Last night I spoke with the animal communicator Kate Reilly, and when she spoke to Capprichio, the first thing he said to her was, “It’s been a long time.”  He was talking about his long working life.  She said he sounded solemn – not depressed – but like an elder statesman.  She also confirmed that he is not comfortable.  Nothing catastrophic, just a number of things that add up to not feeling great.  I had been feeling that.

Capprichio will be twenty this year.  That is not OLD for a horse, but it is often when a horse who has worked for many years competing or performing will retire.  He has been “retired” for several years, but I still ride him lightly.  My antenna are always out – feeling for his legs, his back, how is he stepping? And mostly for his heart and mind – is this still fun?

Two weeks ago, after he recovered from his abscess, I felt something different.  Almost as if he did not want to put his feet down.  it was a new kind of tenderness.  I was listening.

Kate suggested letting him take February off and doing body work with him – energy work and TTouches.  She said, “Don’t do what you know.  Play.  See what happens.”  I have been writing about play in the blog and also in Breaking into Blossom.  And here is that theme again!  Kate telling me to play in an intuitive, improvisational way.  No map.  Just feeling and listening.  Letting myself be led – by my hands, by my heart, by him.  By love.

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I have been paying attention to attention for a while – say thirty years.  It is a big part of how I approach performance work, movement, writing, my horses and dogs, my kids and myself.  I am interested in the fluctuations of attention, and a big part of Breaking into Blossom is about that practice – how and when and why we attend.

Something wonderful that I discovered on Linda Stone’s web is a list of books that she likes.  The one I am reading and loving right how is Exuberant Animal: The Power of Health, Play and Joyful Movement by Frank Forencich.  He talks about how we have become a hyper-visual and hypo-tactile culture. And even beyond that, how we have narrowed our visual fields to exclude the peripheral.

This morning when I was shooting outside in the snow (yes, I had my pajamas on), I noticed that I have trained myself to scan peripherally within the frame before I shoot.  I am a complete novice photographer, so this was radical and exciting.  I also noticed that as I was walking, consciously widening my visual field seemed to deepen breathing and expand joy.

• PICNIC ’09: Start Breathing with Linda Stone from PICNIC on Vimeo.

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Photo:  Jeffrey Anderson, from Flight, with Dillon Paul and Sanne

A horse appeared to me.  It was a horse I had known from some long ago time. Who knows what that long ago was, but the horse was very present, and I could smell the horse, and the horse was very familiar.  It seemed to be someone I know from long ago, and so I felt I knew the horse well.  I was very happy to see it, so happy that tears ran down my cheeks.  Joy Harjo

This week in The Journal I am writing about callings.  I am interested in the difference between a calling and a yearning, between lust and desire.  I have some stories about my own callings, and how they shape what is here now.  I got to thinking about this a number of yeas ago when I read Gregg Levoy’s Callings:  Finding and Following an Authentic Life. 

My post yesterday about the herd also reminded me that callings are usually embodied.  That is what Joy Harjo is talking about.  And a few of you mentioned that not everyone is that clear about how to communicate in an embodied way. 

Actually, that is a major theme of my online class beginning next week:  Breaking into Blossom.  The subtitle of the class is “moving into an improvisational life,” and so much of that, in my experience, is about being fully present in an embodied way – deep listening with the body.  My intention is that by learning to live more intentionally and improvisationally, and be more consciously embodied, you will find new and delicious ways of experiencing/approaching work and play.  

I hope you will join us.  You can register here.

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Ngonda Badila is Lady Moon.  Her song, Speak to the Light, is one of the most lovely pieces of music that I have ever heard.  She sings it during the performance of Xmalia, the show created by C. Ryder Cooley.

The first time I heard it, I did not think that the sound was coming out of a human body, it was so etheric, so wildly beautiful.  When I watched her performance last weekend with Ryder on trapeze, it moved me to tears.

You can listen to it online, but better still, you can see and hear Lady Moon in person at the upcoming MCLA performance of Xmalia on January 25 at 7:30 in North Adams, MA.

 postscript:  This week The Journal is about callings.  How we feel them, and a few ragged ones of my own.  Breaking into Blossom starts next week.  This is an online class about moving into an improvisational life, about lessening the commute between what you think of as creative and everything else.  I hope you will join us.  You can register here.

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I was drawn to this image because its intimacy, the quiet focus of the artist who is also the art.  One of the themes that I will be exploring in January is the way that art and life intersect.  It will also be a big part of the focus of Breaking into Blossom, the online course on moving into an improvisational life that begins on January 23.

Many years ago, I took a workshop with the brilliant Eiko & Koma.  I remember Eiko saying that she and Koma do not commute between their art and life.  For them it is a seamless whole.

I am a householder.  I have animals, a lot of them.  They are a beautiful, essential part of every day. But their presence means that there are a million little moments in every day that are not art.  Scooping poops, feeding dogs, cats, cleaning up vomit and pee.  Brushing, walking, touching.  As I said, not art.  Or what can feel like a lot of little, niggly commutes.

Having said that, there is a way to be with those necessities that is a rhythm, a practice, a yoga even. And there is a direct path from all of that ritual to my work, my writing, and definitely my choreography, which is full of beasts – hooved, pawed, winged.

Are you commuting?

postscript:  This week, The Journal (the little ragged memoir) is about the ways that I have taken art art into and onto my body.  The how and the why of that, including the elaborate mapping of tattoos.

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Mary Muncil wrote a lovely post today that spoke about the holidays and the “big day phenomenon,” or the ways that the holidays can trigger high hopes and disappointment. She urges us to have a welcoming heart, no matter how things show up.

For years I would weep at Christmas.  I had a bad case of the Big Day thing.  I missed my father, who passed in 1993.  I missed my childhood. I missed Minnesota, which in fact I had left as soon as I could (no ocean).  In the process of all that weeping, I also missed what was there.

I still have twinges, but they are milder, and there is more joy, more appreciation.  I still miss my father, but I can feel him here in a deeper way now.  I can feel myself more deeply as well.

One thing that has helped me is letting go of some of the rigidity around the Christmas rituals:  The Formulaic Christmas.  How things should look and feel.  Where they go.  When they happen.  Not that there aren’t rituals, they just don’t have the big urgent charge around them that they used to.  My Christmases now have a more improvisatory swing to them, which helps me to connect to the heart of the matter.

ps.  the price for Breaking into Blossom goes up on Friday. $75 until then.

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Yesterday I launched a new offering.  A number of you have expressed interest and confusion.  Obviously that is my lack of clarity.

So here it is:  For some time, I have wanted to offer a class that has a wider reach than my local demographic.  Something that you can do with me if you live in L.A. or Juneau or Paris.  (I will come to Paris to teach, of course).  So this is an online class.

I also wanted to share more of the work that I have been doing privately and in classes and workshops.

For  five weeks you will receive two lessons a week.  This is some but not all of what they will contain:

• writings and teachings from people that have inspired me in the world of improvisational living
• specific strategies for opening more doors to creative, full throttle living.
• suggestions for new ways of discovering “ordinary magic” by using improvisation in your work and your daily life.  This is about learning to be non-habitual; stepping out of the rote.
• writing prompts to help you open new creative doors.
• assignments to help you dig into the details of your own goals and practice. These are more of a cafeteria of choices rather than a fixed menu.

You can use what appeals to you.  I won’t be checking your work.  The intention is that this an alive offering, as opposed to archival.  That is why we will engage on Google+ in a private forum.  For those of you not familiar with Google+, I will help you get started there.

My goal for you is that by learning to see and live your life more improvisationally, and by becoming more intentionally embodied, you will find new and delicious ways of experiencing/approaching work and play.  

Finally, yes, some of the exercises are movement-based.  However, they can be done by anyone, regardless of background or fitness.

Let me know if you have any more questions.  The full course description is here.

The link to sign up is here.

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