to the women in my life

Happy International Women's Day!

Sunday Tune

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY!

Saturday Cartoon

No Guts, No Heart, No Glory

I went to see No Guts, No Heart, No Glory by Common Wealth Theater at The South Bank Centre last night (it's on as part of the Women of the World Festival) and I HIGHLY recommend going to see it.

It is a site-specific performance (originally staged in a boxing gym in Bradford) based on interviews with Muslim Female Boxers and collaboration with the five actors in the piece. Although the performance represents a young Muslim female experience, I think it's content will resonate with anyone who has ever been young, has a body, fears, frustrations and dreams (i.e. all of us).
From a movement perspective it was just pure joy to watch, especially the mesmerising steps of boxer Saira Tabasum, and it was beautiful to see the mapping of these young girls thoughts matched with such a riot of movement...body and mind united.


No Guts, No Heart, No Glory from Common Wealth on Vimeo.

Image found via LOVELY goldlionaz

'Brogis need to recognize...'

J.Brown's latest blog post is a smart, kind and much needed reflection on men, women, sex, yoga, teaching and more...read it in full here.

"There is a lot of conversation in the yoga world these day about the “yoga body” and the empowerment of women through yoga. And then there is a backlash of “Broga” classes being marketed where men can be men and do their yoga without having all those empowered women around. We must bridge this gap. Both men and women need to abandon these unhealthy notions of beauty and gender. Both men and women need to learn how to have genuinely mutual relationship to one another.

But lets be clear, men are more to blame. As Holland so eloquently states: “For we are the inheritors of an ancient tradition, going back to the origins of the great civilizations of the past which have so profoundly shaped our consciousness and fashioned the dualism that lies behind our efforts to dehumanize half the human race.”  It’s up to us to either continue carrying the torch for hurt and dysfunction or be courageous enough to forge a better way."

-- J. Brown

Making Space

Making space, friends and peace with how they feel. Love this...

 "I don't know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes- it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, 'Well, if I'd known better I'd have done better,' that's all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, 'I'm sorry,' and then you say to yourself, 'I'm sorry.' If we all hold on to the mistake, we can't see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can't see what we're capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one's own self. I think that young men and women are so caught by the way they see themselves. Now mind you. When a larger society sees them as unattractive, as threats, as too black or too white or too poor or too fat or too thin or too sexual or too asexual, that's rough. But you can overcome that. The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. If we don't have that we never grow, we never learn, and sure as hell we should never teach." 

— Maya Angelou

The Bolivian grandmothers' handball league

“There are days my knees hurt from rheumatism, but when I play it goes away,”

-   Rosa Lima (second picture), 77, during a game.

images from aljazeera

On a Columnar Self

On a Columnar Self—
How ample to rely In Tumult—
or Extremity—
How good the Certainty That Lever cannot pry—
 And Wedge cannot divide Conviction—
That Granitic Base—
Though none be on our side—
Suffice Us—
 for a Crowd—
 Ourself—
and Rectitude—
And that Assembly—
not far off From furthest Spirit—God—

-- Emily Dickinson.

Found via Esther Gokhale musing on the posture of Emily Dickinson and a young mother from Burkina Faso.

Women's Jam

Strong, beautiful women moving through, over, around and under straight lines and curved spaces.
From Brandee of monkeemoves.

Found here