Monday, 23 December 2013
Merry Christmas!
"The whole nation of you in the house will go from one thing to another. The secret of the best Christmases is everybody doing the same things all at the same time. You will all fall to and string cranberries and popcorn for the tree, and the bright lines each of you has a hold on will radiate from the tree like ribbons on a maypole. Everybody will have needles and thread in the mouth, you will all get in each other's way, but that is the art of doing Christmas right."
-- Robert P. Tristam Coffin
(image: Christmas Janet Leigh)
I’m in love with people’s hands and the way they clench their fists and the way their fingertips lightly press down onto piano keys or thighs. Calloused fingers or dainty fingers. Hands writing poems or memos or parking tickets. Hands writing futures. To me, every crease on the palm is a love line.
-- Mesogeios
(images found here)
I'm spending Christmas with my family and plan to eat well, take baths and let my body settle into winter. Oh and listen to songs about snow, naturally.
Excitement! I can't wait.
Blog posts will resume in the New Year.
x
Image by Gary Simmons
I Wish, I Wish…Forever (2003)
Charcoal on vellum
Sunday, 22 December 2013
Friday, 20 December 2013
Family and Friends.
"In your light I learn how to love.
In your beauty, how to make poems.
You dance inside my chest,
where no one sees you."
Rumi
image from castiana via rebecca ketchum's lovely blog.
Leaderful
"Imagine a peoples’ movement based on this kind of intelligence. Leaderful, not leadership"
-- Dream Hampton
-- Dream Hampton
Yoncé’ on Her Knees
by dream hampton
The politics of pleasure as a public performance, delivered in the middle of the night, by a complete boss. Beyoncé’s presentation of the erotic is evidence of her lived experience of a sexual trust and intimate safety that is the true fantasy. The freedom to be filthy, to be submissive, to be in control, to be contemplative, to leave or to stay.
Romantic and sexual relationships are as complicated as there are possible configurations: of gender, of gender and sexual expression, of sexual identity, of levels of commitment. But being in a monogamous, heterosexual marriage doesn’t make sex and romance and love straightforward.
We have focused on the pleasure of seeing Beyoncé's entire ass on a table. But she also sings about distrust and insecurity. She sings about power dynamics that skew towards men, even when you're rich, beautiful and can relax into a back bend. In long term relationships there are the ecstatic moments of synchronicity and trust, and those moments when you consider packing your partners' luggage and leaving it on the other side of a closed door. There are moments of betrayal and seething and deep sighs into complete comfort and bliss.Romantic and sexual relationships are as complicated as there are possible configurations: of gender, of gender and sexual expression, of sexual identity, of levels of commitment. But being in a monogamous, heterosexual marriage doesn’t make sex and romance and love straightforward.
Beyoncé’s other long time relationship is with the public. The mindless adoration, the baseless evisceration, the love, the hate, speculation, the projection, the pedestal. They are the rent she pays for her place in the constellation. That Beyoncé chose to set on fire that lease, that contractual agreement about what is respectable or feminist or pop enough, is radical. That it has become the year’s biggest success was never a sure thing. What we do know is that she is a grown, changed woman, and it is deeply satisfying to witness. Dirty 30’s indeed.
YES.
Read this too.
Libra
This week, the world is going to be so rich, so wild, so full, that it’s maybe going to feel a little tangled all around you; it’s maybe going to feel a little bit messy, a little weird. It’s okay. It’s a week for figuring things out, for living in the messiness, in the uncertainty, in your own soft body. If you let them, like this can work magic. They can change the way you see, they can change the way you move, they it can light up your entire world. Listen to Beyoncé, obviously.
-- Madame Clairevoyant
-- Madame Clairevoyant
Sequence
Introducing basic movement patterns into everyday life.
1. SQUAT! Anywhere and everywhere. Work towards making this a position to rest in. Practice makes perfect!
2. Take the stairs...but don't just walk up them find as many different ways to ascend and desend as you can. Two steps at a time, on your hands and knees, sideways, hoping...
3. See how long you can hold your breath underwater in the bath.
4. Hang! From anything. This is a current favorite of mine...
5. Run for the bus, even if you know you will probably miss it.
6. Get of the tube/bus/horse a stop or two early and enjoy the walk. Infact walk as much as you can. This is another favorite of mine, I've discovered all sorts of hidden treasures on my walks round London and it actually doesn't rain that much...
7. Pay attention to the movements you repeat most in your day and work on ways to make them more efficient in your yoga practice.
8. And then use your yoga practice to include the movements that your daily life lacks.
9. Massage your feet.
10. PLAY!!!!
Image by Barnaby Kent
The Diving Fool
he can move!
Watch the kids.
"Watch
the kids. Do like they do. Act like they act. Yell like they
yell. Dance the ways you see them dance. Sing like they sing.
Work and rest the way the kids do.
You'll
be healthier. You'll feel wealthier. You'll talk wiser. You'll
go higher, do better, and live longer here amongst us if you'll
just only jump in here and swim around in these songs and do
like the kids do.
-- Woody Guthrie
Wednesday, 18 December 2013
Making
Along side teaching yoga I am an artist, print making and photography being my primary means of expression...although i'll try my hand at most things, ceramics is my current obsession!
The disciplines I have trained in and favor always involve lengthy processes (I think I like the process of making more then the final product!) and it is the repetitive functional movements involved in the making that keeps me present in what i'm doing. The print making and ceramics particularly require strength, an intelligent use of the body and ease-full breath to get the job done. When it dawned on me that the physicality of the body was such a large component of what I do I became really interested in the different ways we train the body for tasks like this. I love watching musicians and artists of all kinds work. I find the movement patterns fascinating.
Print of my Grandma and polaroid's taken in Iceland and Norway.
See more work here and my inspirations here.
Tuesday, 17 December 2013
I Believe I can Fly
I Believe I can Fly ( flight of the frenchies). Trailer from sebastien montaz-rosset on Vimeo.
Again, because it's INSANE and they adrenaline funkiness of it appeals to me...
‘Fear,
to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose
to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided
I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me...
Fear begets power. I willed myself to beget power. And it wasn’t long
before I actually wasn’t afraid.’
--Cheryl Strayed, Wild
Tom Frost, Royal Robbins and Yvon Chouinard in bivy sacks in the black cave during the first ascent of El Capitan, Yosemite, 1964.
Click here for more El Capitan history.
Rock Climbing
These are the main benefits for me...
1. Upper body 'pulling' strength. This is completely lacking in yoga but I get my fix here. Helps my hand balancing skills and shoulder health tremendously.
2. Being present. You have no choice but to be in the moment with this stuff, especially when up high. When i'm focused on exactly what i'm doing as i'm doing it i know i'll be safe. This being present stuff is also a mighy fine trick for beating fear with a stick!
3. Climbing is a movement puzzle. It requires great body awareness and movement intelligence, again in a very different way to the yoga, besides the obvious physical stuff involved.
I highly recommend giving it ago!!!
The downside (for me anyhow) is it always ruins my manicure. You can't have it all huh...
(image of Natures rock climbers...they certainly don't look like they have the fear! from erinconsidine via keelsterkeel)
Anthem
The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.
Ah the wars they will
be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
bought and sold
and bought again
the dove is never free.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
We asked for signs
the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed
the marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
of every government --
signs for all to see.
I can't run no more
with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they've summoned, they've summoned up
a thundercloud
and they're going to hear from me.
Ring the bells that still can ring ...
You can add up the parts
but you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.
-- Leonard Cohen
at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.
Ah the wars they will
be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
bought and sold
and bought again
the dove is never free.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
We asked for signs
the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed
the marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
of every government --
signs for all to see.
I can't run no more
with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they've summoned, they've summoned up
a thundercloud
and they're going to hear from me.
Ring the bells that still can ring ...
You can add up the parts
but you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.
-- Leonard Cohen
Old becoming New
I love that things we originally think are bonkers sometimes come back round
Found at The Paris Review blog Selected from AbeBooks’ Weird Book Room: The Joyce Lee Method of Scientific Facial Exercises.
Nothing is original
“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to.”
― Jim Jarmusch
Monday, 16 December 2013
"In many shamanic societies, if you came to a medicine person
complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would
ask one of four questions: When did you stop dancing? When did you stop
singing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories? When did you stop
finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence?"
-- Gabrielle Roth (from coketalk via rebeccaketchum)
Pina
'The Complaint of an Empress was produced between October 1987 and April 1989. The general framework is set by the changing seasons - autumn, winter and spring. The film's inner structure reflects Pina Bausch's method of working as developed with the Wuppertal Theatre of Dance. The film consequently does not tell a story, but is made up of various scenes put together as a collage reflecting certain moods and invoking different associations. The film's' scenes, some of which are thoroughly absurd, are set in different locations, such as the woods and fields around Wuppertal, the city centre, the suspension railway, a carpet shop, a greenhouse and the rehearsal room in a former cinema (Wuppertal's "Lichtburg").'
See here, here, here and here for past Pina posts.
