Summer Holiday

I've gone in search of sunshine and stillness, back in a couple of weeks xx

Everyday

the year of letting go, of understanding loss. grace. of the word ‘no’ and also being able to say ‘you are not kind’. the year of humanity/humility. when the whole world couldn’t get out of bed. everyone i’ve met this year, says the same thing ‘you are so easy to be around, how do you do that?’. the year i broke open and dug out all the rot with own hands. the year i learnt small talk. and how to smile at strangers. the year i understood that i am my best when i reach out and ask ‘do you want to be my friend?’. the year of sugar, everywhere. softness. sweetness. honey honey. the year of being alone, and learning how much i like it. the year of hugging people i don’t know, because i want to know them. the year i made peace and love, right here.

-- Warsan Shire

The You Can Tell Me Goodbye

(image found here)

“Thank God I found the GOOD in goodbye”

― Beyoncé Knowles

nothing but happiness

Pelle had already begun to dread the awful day when they would all have to go back to town. He had an old comb with as many teeth as the summer had days. Every morning he broke off a tooth and noticed anxiously how the comb grew thinner and thinner.

Melker saw the comb one morning and threw it away. To worry about the future was the wrong attitude toward life, he said. One should enjoy each day as it came. On a sunny morning like the present one, life was nothing but happiness. How wonderful it was to go straight out into the garden in pajamas, feeling the dew-wet grass under one’s feet, and then take a dip from the jetty and afterward sit down at the painted garden table to read a book or the paper while drinking delicious coffee, with the children milling around!

Astrid Lindgrin, Seacrow Island via evencleveland

Bye

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.” 

― Terry Pratchett

Some News...

Ladies and Gentlemen // Boys and Girls // Feminists, Macho Men and Mum:

********
**** AU REVOIR ****
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Yep, the rumors are true. I am devastated to inform you that my much beloved teaching practice, this tiny epic of mixed up movement, will soon be no more...for the time being anyway...as I am of to new worlds to seek some slowness, some new ways of moving, some adventures, to gather some stories and to get married.
First stop The United States of ALL-You-Can-Eat. Oh yes. Tips about your State-side trips most welcome!

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to YOU dearest reader, for showing up in your hordes for the last 7 years of toe-tapping yoga musings. Together we’ve crammed the archaic doorways of church halls, stinky basements, grand houses, swanky custom built centers, parks, beaches, living rooms and tea-stained cafeterias in celebration of this ancient art and in search of what it is to simply be. Thank you for listening, thank you for questioning, thank you for putting up with my inability to tell left from right, but most of all THANK YOU for allowing me to guide you.

Without you, nothing. With you, EVERYTHING.

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**** Details ****
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My final class will be Thursday 9th July so, from now until then and in celebration of this momentous scarpering, I shall host a glorious last few sessions, far removed from the ridiculous rain and unseasonal no sun show of daily downtown London. I invite you to step inside my soon to be no-longer homes at Triyoga and SFC where i shall serenade you with my West Midland flat vowels, various movement puzzles, giggles, and some farewell chocolate brownies. It will be somewhat reminiscent of a pub evening during Queen Elizabeth's Silver Jubilee in 1977. I imagine that was a BLAST.

Information about the glorious souls that will be taking my place to follow, I promise, I am just finalising the details for a perfectly smooth transition. You’ll not even notice I’ve gone…

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**** PEN-PALS ****
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However, this is not the end; I will be teaching again, you still MOVE ME and my online presence will be alive and kicking. I shall continue to post scribblings and asides on my blogs here and here, upload movement musings on my facehooked page and twitter feed here and here and the curation of wwww.what-moves-me.com is a forever thing. I’ve been completely overwhelmed with responses to this project so far, MERCI MERCI, but if you haven’t yet had a nosy then please take a look.

Do keep in-touch, I’d love to hear about all your adventures, and if I do return y’all will be the first to know about my new happenings.

Finally, before I schlep these legs across the pond, my eyes wet with salty tears and my ears ringing with the sound of Jacques Brel, I want to say the most heartfelt thank you to all the many staff members, volunteers, part-timers, full-timers, co-workers and by-standers who have dripped sweat into the shores of this infamous lagoon. You’ve been dreamy to work with.

And with that, farewell.
(until the next time I fill your inbox with nonsense)

Rachel x

  

(Found here)

Things to be Desired

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, Even to the dull and ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter, For always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; It is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs, For the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; Many persons strive for high ideals, And everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; For in the face of all aridity and disenchantment It is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, Gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; You have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, No doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labours and aspirations, In the noisy confusion of life, keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, It is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

 --  Max Ehrmann (1926) 
 Desiderata - Things to be Desired

Sunday Tune

Sunday Tune

Saturday Poem

What Kind Of Times Are These?

There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill

and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows

near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted

who disappeared into those shadows.

I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled

this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,

our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,

its own ways of making people disappear.

I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods

meeting the unmarked strip of light—

ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:

I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you

anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these

to have you listen at all, it's necessary

to talk about trees.

 

-- Adrienne Rich

Saturday Cartoon

Happy Weekend!

Have a wonderful weekend!

(gif found here)

Opalized Bones

Opal forms in cavities within rocks. If a cavity has formed because a bone, shell or pinecone was buried in the sand or clay that later became the rock, and conditions are right for opal formation, then the opal forms a fossil replica of the original object that was buried.

-- Australian Opal Center via evencleveland

 1. Lot of four opalized clam shells, found at Bonhams.
2. Opal bone fossils 
3. Opalised jaw of Steropodon galmani

and many more here.

Dem Bones: Skeletal Structure and Movement Function

"We should be very wary about anyone dictating to us what proper form is in regard to a particular activity without considering our individual variations in structure."

- Todd Hargrove

Optimal alignment or posture for a certain function is partly a result of having as many joints in neutral as possible at any one time. And the shape of the bones will determine how many of your joints you can keep in neutral at the same time in a particular functional task so considering your own skeletal shape is very important.
Click HERE to read Todd's great piece about why skeletal shape matters when it comes to movement and function.

Janine Antoni

The first time I did Loving Care, it was not a performance; I did it as a relic and I showed it that way. It didn’t work! I realized that it wasn’t like Gnaw where the history was on the surface of the object and a viewer could re-create how it was made by looking at it. While making Loving Care, I realized that the power was in watching me mop the floor. The audience is the wild card. I am collaborating with them and I’m never sure how they will respond.

-- Janine Antoni via Bomb Magazine

All works from Loving Care

a point of contact

I just believe in the power of art, what it can do for our lives. I think if you stay focused on what art can do and don’t get distracted, you discover it is limitless. Somehow it seems like we don’t talk about the power of art in that way. Sometimes I think about Beuys; he seems so crazy to me, I miss that idealism. He believed that everyone was an artist. He really believed that art could solve all the problems . . . somehow we’ve lost that, or at least nobody is willing to come out and acknowledge it.

 I always think I make art so that I can discuss with strangers things that I would like to discuss but couldn’t otherwise.

-- Janine Antoni via Bomb Magazine

Found here

Gathering is peculiar, because you see nothing but what you're looking for. If you're picking raspberries, you see only what's red, and if you're looking for bones you see only the white. No matter where you go, the only thing you see is bones.

--Tove Jansson

Janine Antoni

“My work has always focused on the body and how it exists in the world; how it makes meaning. It’s an exploration of what it means to be female; it’s important to claim that."

"Our bodies physically store our memories. We are the history of our lives, so to be in touch with one’s body is to have access to those memories.”

“We treat our bodies as a vehicle to transport our thinking minds. I’ve been on a journey to embodiment. I want to enter my body, to trust it. I want to make sculptures that talked about that experience. Making this work has been a way to externalize a bodily understanding. Making has been a form of healing.”

All works and quotes from Janine Antoni

Seiko Tachibana

Seiko Tachibana 
locus of water installation ｜intaglio on japanese paper, 2009