CHOICE!

How much does Fear affect your daily decision making?

Stalk your decision-making process tomorrow!

Which decisions or choices do you make out of Fear and which choices do you make out of Love?

Fear-Choice-"If"

What is Fear?

Bing: "1. feeling of anxiety; an unpleasant feeling of anxiety or apprehencion caused by the presence or anticipation of danger. "

Merriam-Webster.com: "transitive verb. 1. archaic; frighten 2. archaic; to feel fear in (oneself) 4.(I skipped 3) to be afraid of

Wikipedia: "Fear is a distressing emotion aroused by a perceived threat. It is a basic survival mechanism occuring in response to a specific stimulus, such as pain or the threat of danger."

These are some of the common words I found amongst the many definitions I perused:

anticipation

apprehension

impending

perceived

threatening

idea

thought

anxiety

Interesting that these words are "what could" words, and "if" words. They are not "action" words. The pain of fear may be more in the mental realm; more in the thinking about the possibilities than in dealing with the actual event.

Do you ever find that the anticipation of an unpleasant event is generally far worse than the experience of the event itself?

What are you afraid of?

Spiders? Clowns? Tornadoes? Giant Killer Hamsters? Making a wrong decision? Choosing the wrong restaurant? Choosing the wrong mate? Choosing the wrong job? Living someone's else's life? Failure?

For me, "what are you afraid of" can be one of the most paralyzing and useful questions - when answered honestly.

Me? I'm so afraid of failing at what I believe I was put here for and winding up destitute that I have spent the greater part of my life not living the gift that is my life. When I think of it - stepping in, to create this form through which to share what I have to share and stand on my own two feet, I can hardly breath.

It has always been important to me to live a meaningful life. Maybe I'm a late bloomer! Maybe I'm a slow learner! More likely it is the legacy of fear that has been passed down along the female line in my family. To quote Melissa Etheridge, "the legacy stops here".

Are there paths you would like to take, new experiences you might like to have, new people you would like to connect with? But you don't? Out of fear? Yes, is my answer, what about you?

As I develop Tools for Transformation and I talk about it to friends, students, other teachers and family I feel the familiar sensation of the boa constrictor wrapping around my chest. Every time I exhale, I can hardly inhale again. But I do.There IS an inhale - sometimes it is really small and it's not enough but it keeps me going. As bogged down as I can get in the "what coulds" and the "ifs", nothing much is actually happening. In stepping forward, there's no abyss that I've tumbled into. The boa whom I have named Isis (I love ancient Egyptian history), is going to learn to lighten up and go with the flow because the further I walk on this path, the less Fear walks with me.

Fear Choice "If"

What are you afraid of?

Time Away

No posts for a few days.

Taking my own advice: bringing balance to my life by tending to emotional housekeeping - visiting the parents for the holidays.

Peace, Love, Joy, Health and Happiness to you all.

Turn Yourself On - the juiciness of Self-Activation

Turn Yourself On

"Activate, verb, to make active."

Again, thank you Random House College Dictionary

How do you activate the lighting in your living space?

Me, I flip a switch or push a button - I turn it on. I act on the switch.

How do you activate your television?

Maybe the same way I do, buy either pushing a button on the tv itself or pushing a button on its remote. I turn it on. I act on the tv or remote.

How do you activate yourself? (There will be a quiz at the end!)

What if we step back and I ask differently: when you need to accomplish something in your life, how are you turned on?

Are you acted upon by an outside force?

Details

Last night I printed all the posts relative to T4T out so that I can carry them around and draw, color and scribble on them! I like to have something to touch, hold and take in the car. I'm a bit tactile... aren't we all - a little? Am I the only one still using pen and paper?!

As a work in progress, I expected to find stuff that needed work. What I found were tons of type-os (to hyphen or not to hyphen? I'll have to research that!!!) - drives me nuts! I punctuate my texts! That in addition to the tweaks in the work itself...

Wow, how conscious was I when I proofed before I published?!?! Maybe not as conscious; not as awareness as I thought I was. Has that happened to you? Ok, now I'm wondering where else in my life am I not as conscious as I believe myself to be. Ooooo, this could truly be humbling, as most life lessons tend to be.

Alright - back to the laptop and those embarrassing type-os.

Love Your Body, Love Your Life!

That is Nia's tagline. I appreciated it when I first saw, but I also got this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Then I realized that it reminded me, in that nagging I-think-I-forgot-to-turn-the-stove-off way that while I truly have come to love my body, my life is not in order. This I believe I established in an earlier post - no need to revisit.

What we are going to visit is what this "Love Your Body" thing is all about for me, which is how I can share it with you. A Nia Black belt and Professional Coach asked me recently, "Why is it important to love your body?"

If she had asked me that 5 years ago, I would have struggled for an answer then made up a version of all the canned, fitness professional responses that I'd heard. The answer I gave her was not the one that she gave me. After we'd talked and I did some of my own work, I pieced together some thoughts that flowed and felt true for me.

My body is my life.

It is always with me. It has been built and coded to love and be loved, by others and by me (thank you, Lisa). My body loves in many ways; it expresses love through touch and response, through facial expression and body language. My body expresses love through verbal language, and it expresses love through non-verbal outpouring of energy.

My body is a receptacle for all of my experiential responses. When I am hurt and don't work through it, my body holds that pain. When I am angry and I don't confront and deal with the why, my body also holds that anger. My body holds a little of every emotional experience I've had that did not get resolved.

My body is also subject to the I-have-got-to-be-in-control-of-something-in-my-life pattern. I may not be able to control the world around me but I can damn sure control my body - by eating to get the comfort I am not getting from someone else. By not eating. By only eating certain foods at certain times. By exercising until I have the "best" body in my office. By exercising through my body's warnings and even through injury. By working hideous hours and silencing the voice of my body asking for rest. I believe I can control my life through my body by having sex with random partners for that brief moment of false connection. By having sex with a partner I don't really love and respect just so that I am not alone. I think I can control my life through my body by shutting those around me out. I put up the emotional armor, I put up the physical armor and I create the tower, my invulnerable fortress. I cannot be touched or touch.

Does any of this sound familiar? Maybe these are places you have been in, maybe you're there now? In my heart the most meaningful question was, do I want to leave those places? Do you?

Yin & Yang, the Men of Nia and the Symmetry of Life

Ok, this is a serious work in progress. It might get a bit long - it needs to - I need it to. Then it will clean up, tidy up, tighten up. Please try to be patient with this one. It may come in multiple, multiple parts!

Here we go...

I've never liked to hear a woman say she needs a guy because he "completes" her.

The equalist in me starts jumping up and down, shrieking,

"That's trash!!! I am a complete human being!!! I do not need anyone to breath for me, to turn on my brain for me, to lower my energy levels so that I will sleep, to beat my heart for me. I am complete!!!!"

The shrieking equalist is right on a very pure level. (But she's not even considering what happens when the hormones kick in!) Now that's not to say that I don't want a man in my life. Whole different jar of jellybeans.

I am complete. While I produce all the eggs I need, to reproduce, I will need a male. Many things may bring joy into my life, few things do it the way "being in love" does it. I am an interesting balance of yin and yang, but few experiences make me feel my yin-ness the way being at a dinner table with a guy I'm nuts about will.

I am complete. I will not cease to live without a mate. Will I be happy? Probably not - that's the jellybean jar to which I referred previously.

When I dance for myself I am satisfied up to a point. My mechanics and movement habits lean toward fluid, smooth moves that feel beautiful and elegant as I execute them. Buuuut, that does not give me movement and muscle balance. When I dance someone else's choreography, especially if the choreographer is a man, at first I feel awkward and "frou frou". If the choreography is yang, I approach it quietly and superficially to begin. My natural dance is yin (unless I'm dancing pissed, then it's unbalanced in yang!) and I can go there easily. Even someone else's yin. I feel like I can slip right in. But yang. Male energy. I have to practice. I have to dig from another place inside of me and for a while it doesn't feel "right". If I keep doing it, though, it creates strength and endurance, stability and mobility in a very different way than the yin work.

I know that working with both yin and yang in my dance creates balance in my body. I know this through the experience of overuse injuries. If I dance the same choreography in the same way every time, I will feel stress and eventually pain in the areas producing and re-producing the choreography. This translates to my Nia classes as well. If I teach the same routine for more than 3 weeks I will begin to hear complaints from the management (my joints, tendons and ligaments). However, if I balance my movement through mixing up the foci in the routines and also changing up routines, I remain without new injuries. Mmmm, balance.

Ready for the segue?

The world of Nia is predominantly female, the balance in the work itself, though, has always been present. Honestly I'd never given much thought to all of this until Carlos AyaRosas, co-creator of Nia, announced his retirement. All of a sudden every routine was highly sensitized in my body. I feel this balance, I would say to myself, I wonder how it will feel as Nia transitions.

As aware as I was at this point, I was to become more keenly aware (yes, I DID say "keenly" - it fits) as I experienced my Brown Belt intensive. Granted, I was primed, but we had 5 Nia men in our 50-person intensive. Dancing with them and hearing them express their perspectives on the process gave me much to think about. None of these men came from a dance background. For me, it was a vastly different experience to take Nia classes in the presence of this strong, grounded male energy. These 5 men did not need to stand in the front, take control, be the best, the strongest or otherwise throw their yang-ness around. They simply did what they did with quiet confidence.

They did what they did without losing their masculinity. They did it without becoming feminine. They did it, perhaps, the way they do everything else, simply the way they do it. And the room felt different. I will say again that listening to these men express their experience with the work reminded me that their comfort levels are different and their challenges are, indeed, different from mine. I also found myself considering that I may not be teaching men-friendly classes.

Is this important? Is it important to balance the work in the studio? Is it essential to insure that all aspects of our lives, from home life to studio life to professional life, flow?

How does this idea of balance and flow affect how we work, how we play (do we play?), how we love and how we rest (do we get enough, if not, why not?)?

For answers to this and other heart-stopping questions, stay tuned for the next episode...

Yin & Yang, the Men of Nia and the Symmetry of Life

Yin and Yang.

Opposites not in opposition to one another. Two sides of the same coin. Opposite forces constantly flowing into each other to maintain balance, harmony and health. Each has its own characteristics, together they express the interdependence of opposites.

If we look at nature we see the yin and the yang. We see the earth and the moon, the light and the dark, the mountains and the valleys, the water and the fire. There are other aspects of yin and yang that may be less evident in looking at the landscape such as slow and fast, hard and soft, yielding and solid, hot and cold, active and passive. These aspects, however, are not that difficult to identify as colors and shades of our natures.

Culturally, we would probably list the following aspects as good: fast, hard, solid, hot and active.

We might also be tempted to list the remaining aspects as less than desirable. In fact, if we met someone with these traits, we might be tempted to judge this person as weak or lazy, unsuccessful and unmotivated. What I have just said is that yang traits are good and yin traits are undesirable - ok, let's just say it - yin is baaaaaad!

How about this: work hard, drive fast, go-go-go-go-go, we need it hot, fresh and before anyone else and we need it NOW!

Rest? What do you need rest for? You can rest when you're dead! Come on, push it through, you can always catch up later. Your family will respect you for all the hours you put in, they'll love you for providing all the stuff - we all want more stuff, right? Your son will take his first steps again, right? Your daughter will speak her first words when you have time to take off to hear them - so don't worry. If you can't make this deadline, we'll find someone who can.

What do you think?

Yin & Yang, the Men of Nia and the Symmetry of Life

See what happens when I go a couple of days without writing?? It builds up!! And I know you've been waiting, breathlessly for me to post again... and since I realize what fun anticipation can be, I'm going to make you wait a little longer... not too long, though. After all I'm as impatient to write this as you are to read it!!

Sooooon... very sooooooooon................

I want to get you into your body...

Whos Life AM I Living? Incongruency

Ready for part two?

I'm reading a wonderful book called The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene' Brown. It's an easy read but the material is a little uncomfortable and processing this material is an invitation for me to take a much deeper look and do some gritty work with why I do some of the things I do and why I react the way I do.

Incongruent. Incongruency. Inconsistency. Not congruent. Funny I pick a math word...

I have spent my entire life hiding. In the past, the very whisper of being vulnerable was intolerable - physically, mentally, in spirit and emotions. Until very recently.

When I was 12 a teacher told my parents that I was stupid and wouldn't learn. That was the end and the beginning of the world for me.

POINT: I was really afraid the teacher was right, no - I was certain the teacher was right.

I didn't know that I was ADHD until I was re-diagnosed in college. I did know that there was something "wrong" with me and since it was not ever a family discussion topic I figured it was something to be ashamed of and to hide.

Instead of owning who I am, I pretended to be something else. I made important life choices based on who I "should" be that didn't suit me at all and swallowed anger and resentment.

I'm a teacher and I always have been. Even as a child, I loved sharing information I'd learned and people listened. When I got into fitness I felt like I could breath for the first time. It was my chance to combine the benefits of being a deeply somatic human being with sharing what I knew and loved. Fun for awhile. Ok, so now I'd found my niche and I wanted more than the conventional fitness world offered me. Enter Nia.

The life choices for who I was "supposed to be" have come back to bite me in the ass (as they always do) and something has to change.

I've decided to no longer live in incongruency.

It's time to create a life for myself that is, indeed, MY life.

I'm weird - yep! I'm different - definitely!!

I'm also extremely curious (particularly about people and what makes them tick, body and mind). I love to read and reasearch (so many books, so little time!). I can get a little obsessive from time to time and have to know as much about a subject as is humanly possible. I live my life in my body. (I consider this a wonderful gift I have had all my life.) Many, many of my day to day experiences are processed on a somatic level before my head gets hold of them. I also have a sharp, quirky, twisted, richly warped sense of humor that gets me in trouble on a pretty regular basis! I'm musical, athletic, impatient, patient, compassionate, finely wired and intensely emotional.

I am now able to see being vulnerable as a positive attribute though I admit, living in vulnerability makes me a little nervous sometimes. It also tends to make some others around me uncomfortable.

In an effort to be "what I was supposed to be", I created long term damage to my body that I may be healing for the rest of my life. When I stepped into Nia, I found what my body needs and what it loves.

In an effort to be "what I was supposed to be", I created long term damage to my mind and emotions. Slowly, but surely, I am healing the wounds of incongruent living.

Like I said yesterday, my spirit is very happy with the changes. I still get stuck, have blocks and struggle to figure out how to turn theory into movement, but with the windows and doors unbarred and obstacles beginning to clear away, I like to think that anything is possible.

As a matter of fact, I DO believe that anything is possible!

Dear Nia students, friends and co-teachers, what can I do to support you?