Last week I went to see Nelson.  We are celebrating our one-year friendship anniversary.

Working with Nelson, one of the things that has eluded me pretty consistently is leading him.  He does not think that being led is a good idea.  And I don’t feel like trying to convince him of that with any kind of force is a good idea.

But last week, I set an intention to lead him.  As I got out of the car, I started to pick up the rope halter and lead, and then opted instead for a Tellington Balance rein – a piece of rope with a leather strap attached that can be buckled to create a circle.   After I groomed him, I got out the balance rein and looped it around his neck.  He was fine with that,  we have done that many times before.  I fastened it high on his neck so that about 18″ of strap was hanging down.  Then I started to walk, giving him a little tiny bit of pressure on the line as I stepped off.

To my astonishment, he started walking with me, nice as you please.  This was the day after my cat Musia died, so I was pretty tender.  I felt like crying.  We stopped and walked and stopped and walked and changed directions and wandered all over his six acre field.  No problem.

I realized that all the things I had been doing with him before had led to this.  We were practicing.  But there must have been some subtle piece that was missing – some imperfection in the practice and in my movement that didn’t tell him as clearly as I could have, THIS is what I would like us to do.

That day, I had a really clear picture of what I wanted.  I wish I could say I had no doubt.  That would not be true.   I had no expectation.  And I was OK if it didn’t work.  Practice doesn’t necessarily make perfect.  If you are practicing the wrong thing, or rehearsing the wrong state of mind, or forcing, no amount of practice will make that right.

The perfection that I practice with Nelson is this:  Our agreement is that if it is OK with him, we will go for it.  If it isn’t, we will not.  That doesn’t mean that we don’t try hard, and work through some initial resistance.  It does mean that we both have to feel successful and balanced at the end of our time together.  And yes, we do.

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I read three blogs pretty religiously:  Jon Katz, Maria Wulf, and Seth Godin.

Currently, I am reading Seth’s brilliant new eBook on education, Stop Stealing Dreams.  I am reading it in a non-linear, popcorn way – dropping into whatever jumps out at me from the index.  It is free.  Seth wants us to share it.  I am sharing it.

Since I am doing more teaching, his book is perfectly timed.   It is also perfectly aligned with my ideas about teaching, how we learn and improvisation as a crucial building block in education.  I was very excited to see “improv” in his list of courses he would like to see in schools.

Seth is brilliant.  Reading his posts is like riding, except that I am the horse.  Each post is like what we call in dressage “an aid:”  a touch of the leg here, a shift of the seat there, a half-halt that helps me to connect, direct and refresh my energy.   Each day I receive a subtle, insistent correction of direction, balance and perspective. Seth is what I call and uber-thinker, a true radical.  He lives pretty much outside of any box I can think of.  And he is inspirational.  The other day he wrote:

If your happiness is based on always getting a little more than you’ve got… then you’ve handed control over your happiness to the gatekeepers, built a system that doesn’t scale and prevented yourself from the brave work that leads to a quantum leap.

The industrial system (and the marketing regime) adore the mindset of ‘a little bit more, please’, because it furthers their power. A slightly higher paycheck, a slightly more famous college, an incrementally better car–it’s easy to be seduced by this safe, stepwise progress, and if marketers and bosses can make you feel dissatisfied at every step along the way, even better for them.

Their rules, their increments, and you are always on a treadmill, unhappy today, imagining that the answer lies just over the next hill…

All the data shows us that the people on that hill are just as frustrated as the people on your hill. It demonstrates that the people at that college are just as envious as the people at this college. The never ending cycle (no surprise) never ends.

An alternative is to be happy wherever you are, with whatever you’ve got, but always hungry for the thrill of creating art, of being missed if you’re gone and most of all, doing important work.

For several days I drove by these forsythia that had pushed themselves through the fence.  I liked the feeling of their boldness, their refusal to stay inside the lines, and the wild pattern of color and shadow they created.  That, I hope, is what I have taught my daughters.  And that is what I am learning (and teaching) now.

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The theme of the dance workshop I taught in Boston yesterday was movement and stillness. Asking dancers to be still is somehow counter-intuitive.  After all, we are movers.  And yet I find that a stillness practice – consciously alternating between movement and stillness – brings out the color and texture of the moment.  It takes us deeper into what is unfolding right here, right now. It teaches us to listen and to see the wildness in the small, the quiet, the humble as well as in the dramatic and the riotous.  There is a boldness in stillness, and for the performer, a kind of audacity.  We have to trust that our audience will stay tethered to us in the still and the quiet.  Like a conversation in which the rushing river of ideas quiets to a lake of receptivity and depth.

I love translating my practices as a dancer into a language for the poet, the painter, the parent, the worker.  That is the idea behind my ebook, Breaking into Blossom:  Moving into an Improvisational Life.  It is about finding a deeper, more embodied creative engagement regardless of your work, your passion.  You can order it here.

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Engaging the artist within is one-to-one coaching for those who want to jump-start their creative practice.  Sessions include body dharma strategies (how to engage the body and let it inspire your work), improvisation & creative alignment practices.

My background as a movement educator, improvisational movement  and theater artist, writer and somatics practitioner gives me unique ways of helping you to engage your deepest, most embodied creative self.

The other part of my background is that I spent many years having an out-of-body experience.  This year marks 33 years since my last drink, and 25 years in recovery from eating disorders.  I have been on the planet for a while.  So for those of you for whom the body is not necessarily friendly territory, I get it, and I can help there too.

Beginning March 15, I am offering FREE COACHING CALLS.  These are introductory 30-minute sessions to help you optimize your creative goals.

I will only offer 10 of these, so if you are interested, contact me soon.  To make an appointment for a free call, either email me or fill out my form.   

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I want to offer a bit more information about my eBook.

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.  It  is designed to inspire you to become more daring, more visionary, more playful and improvisational in all aspects of your life.

I am now offering the materials that I developed for that class in an eBook that contains ten carefully designed chapters integrating photographs, writing and movement prompts, guest artists and specific strategies to help you find a deeper creative engagement.  Here is what you will find:

• Change:  Developing a vocabulary for making change from subtle to dramatic.
• Underscore:  How to develop an intentional underscore for your day or for a project.
• Segments:  How subtle shifts in activity and attention throughout the day can create greater focus and engagement.
• Play: From meandering to galumphing, how to foster a playful attitude and practice, including specific strategies for play-making.
• Practice:  Discovering your meta-practice and how it can support your work and goals.
• Moving and Listening:  Delicious strategies for engaging the senses and the body.
• Movement and Stillness:  The power of attention and recuperation.  How to develop a movement/stillness score in your work and play.
• Letting Go:  Learning how to drop it (even if you are going to pick it up again).
• Flow:  Observing and harnessing the interplay of improvisation and flow.  How to cultivate a consummate creative state.

The book is available at the end of this month.  You will receive the book as a pdf.

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

For those of you who are interested, I am also offering one-to-one creative jump-start sessions.  To learn more,  form.

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Here is the next part of body dharma.

Randee Fox sent me this link.  Daniel Mollner is 47 years old and is making a film a week about being a dancer, something that he has only recently claimed.  It is a brilliant, generous idea.

I have just started making solos again. My friend Ryder hosts an open mike at Cafe Helsinki in Hudson, NY.    She said, “Why don’t you do something?”  And I thought, “Yeah.  Why not?”

I have not performed a solo for over ten years.  Here is what happened:  Over a period of twenty years, I lost my ability to move, even to walk.  My hips were GONE.  Everyone said, “But you are too young to have the surgery.”  Really I wasn’t, but I liked that they thought so.  By the end, I could not even walk across the street.  I felt a terrible sense of shame.  “I am a dancer.  I cannot move.”

The other thing that happened was 9/11.  Many of my artist friends were creatively derailed.  Mute.  Numb.  It went on for many months, even years.  I went into a creative deep-freeze that lasted about seven years.  I felt ashamed. “I am an artist. I cannot make art .”

It was finally the horses that brought me back, and a persistent, wonderful image of making a dance with horses and an aerial dancer, the beautiful Paola Styron.

The one thing I know about body dharma is that it is not one thing.  It is not a straight line.  It is a meandering river with backwaters and tributaries and terrible, ferocious class 5 rapids that will leave you washed up and rinsed out way downriver.  It is also the only place to be:  in the water, between the banks, flowing.

Sharing my experience and  passion in a way that helps and supports others is what I love.  I am always thinking about new ways to do that.

So here are three of my body dharma offerings:

• one-to-one:  coaching for engaging the artist within
• Breaking into Blossom:  the eBook
• Cookbook for the Bonehouse:  a workshop

I have other offerings.  You can check them out here.

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Deanna Pellecchia        Photo by Jeffrey Anderson

Body dharma is about bringing our practice into physical form.  It is rooting all of our experiences in the body and seeking a fully embodied creativity.

What it means to me is continually engaging the body in a spontaneous, authentic and improvisational way.  Practicing body dharma means that we are listening to and feeling the body all the time, and weaving that awareness into our moment-by-moment experience.  It is about listening at the cellular level.  It also means that we allow the body to be a teacher, a guide, and understand that it is a reflection of the presence or absence of harmony and balance in our lives.

I will be exploring this theme more this week.  In the meantime, I have just finished my new eBook, Breaking into Blossom.  It contains ten chapters on bringing more vitality and improvisation into your life.  You can order it here.

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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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Guinevere and Jules are waiting for us to finish tea and make their breakfast.  They are moderately patient.  They are confident that breakfast will arrive.

I am waiting for inspiration.  I am impatient.  I am not confident that inspiration will come. For the past couple days I have been feeling a lull, like a surfer out on a flat sea, no wave in sight.

But I am keeping in mind something that Stephen Nachmanovitch said:  Attempts to conquer inertia are by definition, futile.  Start instead from the inertia as a focal point, develop it into a meditation, an exaggerated stillness.  Let heat and momentum arise as a natural reverberation from the stillness.

I know that in dance, stillness is the canvas on which the movement appears.  With my writing have lost some sense of stillness being the place to begin.  I am filling the moment with too much effort, too many gestures, too little breath.  There is also this:

To the mind that is still
the whole universe surrenders.
                                       Buddha

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