As I stepped back into the dark dance space, with its booming base and swirling energy, my head was swirling with the pieces of earlier conversation about the community “drama” I had been having – and with some new seedlings of ideas that were being sprouted in me.
As I planted my feet back on this beloved dance floor, I felt this stirring from within of a new found awareness that ignited my dance with depth and fire, not unusual for me. Yet, what was unusual was this since of penetrating clearness and a direct path being opened up before me. I felt a depth, a solidness inside of me that was something new – yet so familiar at the same time.
What I felt was a resolve to do something different with my life, in two different steps.
Step 1: Stop waiting
Stop waiting for others:
* to end their drama
* to show up for me how I want them to show up for the me, the community, the world.
* to realize I have answer for how I feel the issues in our community/world need to be addressed.
* to ask me for my help, my insight, my skills
Step 2 – Take Action:
Take charge of my experience.
Take control of my voice.
Create what I want them to create myself and thus demonstrate a different way.
Since this dance Sunday night, so many questions have been coming to me:
- Why did or do I need others to see the world the way I do, and thus come to the same conclusions I have about how to move forward – just so I can move forward?
- Why do I feel I need their approval of me or permission in order to bring my voice, talents, skills, energy and to bring it in the way I want to bring it? What is in me that feels I need this to move forward?
- Why am I giving them so much power over my life to dominate the Dance World with only their flavor of how it is done?
- What is in me that wants to control this whole thing so much?
- In that desire to control, was I trying to manipulate others into doing what I wanted to do in passive aggressive means? And what were those means?
- And when they didn’t, couldn’t or wouldn’t move towards me, did I then make up stories and put labels on them when they won’t bend, simply because they happen to be following their own behaviors, leading, ideas and beliefs?
- Did they even ask me to wait for them?
These are just a FEW (haha) of the questions that are sitting in me this week as I sit with the ACTION that is coming from this new realization.
None of these questions can be answered too quickly – without deep introspection and brutal, brutal honesty with myself.
If one does, answer these type of questions too quickly, they will miss the treasures that light the way towards growth, evolution and deep healing. For this is the process of uncovering those hidden aspects of one’s Self – what we call the Shadow, or the beliefs/thoughts and resulting actions driven by those parts of our psyche we have blind spots to seeing.
This is the type of work I am committed to doing on myself so that I can also bring this type of growth and evolution into the world through Dance.
With that, I will share that I am sitting with an investigation of what I am being asked to do for the Dance Community, how I can be of service – starting in Santa Cruz where I have been involved in for the better part of 4 years. I will not quite yet share what this news is – as I need to let it unfold in me first slowly, pacing it just as the new seeds in spring pace their push up to the free air and sunlight above.
Yet I just had to share this important 2 part lesson I am having with y’all. For I feel there is bigger societal lesson for us all. Around the hot topics of today: sexism and racism.
I tread carefully because I understand that I am going to talk as if I have my feet in two separate worlds when I say this – and that is the way I hold space for this conversation. To sit in both places AT the same time.
A) I want to say that I hear and see there are real societal issues and blocks that we run against in regards to these topics. I am sensitive to those and understand that work needs to be done in order to assure people’s rights’ as a human being are not stepped on simply because they have black skin, brown hair or a vagina.
B) At the exact same time, I feel this is the work we need to do: We need to take the 2 step action plan I discovered on Sunday:
- STOP WAITING: Those of us that have been classified into a group of some kind (which BTW is ALL of us), we need to stop waiting for those classified into another group to be able to see life through our lens. We need to stop waiting for them justify us, approve of us, ask us to join them, etc. We need to stop yelling at them with our intellectual arguments and scholarly words and definitions. We need to stop hoping that they will be able to meet us where we want to be met, all the while ignoring that perhaps they just don’t have the tools, skills or internal Umph they need to move towards us. We just need to give ourselves permission to stop waiting. As long as we are “in a fight” for our rights, our justification, our anything – we are waiting.
- TAKE ACTION: Matthew Hussey says this best when he talks about how to write a dating profile, or what a woman is looking for in a man (or vice versa): SHOW not tell who you are.
We need to get out of the verbal debates that will be never ending, and get back into our bodies and our actions.
Don’t tell me that you aren’t racist or sexist, show me by your actions. Don’t tell me you want to live in a world where color and vaginas aren’t an issue – live it. Don’t tell me you want change, live the change you want to see. Live your truth every day, every moment – in your own world – and don’t let any one sway you from it. Put that energy out, and it will be returned to you. And if it is not, dear sister, dear brother – let the be the golden light into your treasure to see where else you need to
1) stop waiting
2) take action
in your own life.
I saw the movie “Hidden Figures” recently on a flight to the Dominican Republic, just about a week before Charlottesville. What struck me so deeply – besides the deep injustice I have never understood, even growing up with racists family members – was how these women did exactly these 2 steps I am talking about. In the face of REAL opposition and threats to them being BOTH black and women in a field that was not popular for women then – they carried themselves in such a way as to say:
“I know who I am. I will not let your opinion or belief of who I am sway me from my own knowing of who I am. I will not ask for your opinion, validation or anything else from you – because I give that to myself. I am going to live my internal world externally, and that is that.”
Those women inspired me beyond all measure. They knew that they couldn’t argue with the white men, they knew that could end them up in jail or worse. Instead, they simply lived who they were inside with such integrity, dignity and depth that they made change in the minds and hearts around them.
That is it. Don’t you see? We are never going to argue anyone into giving us our rights on a personal level. Sure, we might get it at the national and state level through some pieces of paper. But we all know that does nothing for us a lot of the time. We have to be the ones that will change our story by changing our story.
These women, they gave me a concrete example of what it meant to be a pioneer, a rebel, a change maker without ever raising a fist, a gun or a threat. And so did the fictional story “The Help”. All these women demonstrate the depth of change these 2 steps can bring in communities.
If you haven’t seen these two movies – I highly highly encourage them for your library.
This 2-step action plan, when it is is sparked inside of you, is the Archetypical energy to take you right into the heart of the Archetype of the Rebel/Revolutionary. So be warned…this isn’t just a post you are about to read. It is a fire of energy, a ball of transcending truth that will ignite you to the next level. It will get you MOOOOOVING fa sure!
ACCESSING THE REBEL/REVOLUTIONARY ENERGY WITHIN
As part of my personal Rebel Plan – I am opening up my energy in one of two ways to share with you.
- I can assist, mentor, coach you around the shedding of identifying yourself in a limited patriarchal structure and reclaim a truly holistic identification as an energetic being. We will start with the deconstructing the hierarchal structure we talk to ourselves in on the inside, rebuilding a new language that will open up new pathways into being. This also includes combing the physical (charting for women, journaling, symptoms, etc) with the metaphysical (dreams, active imagination, learning the energetic body)~ and then using this information to fine tune your intuition skill, practice magick/spell casting, and reclaiming the power that has always been yours so you can become a Modern Day Rebel/Revolutionary Witch/Wizard. This work can be done internationally.
- Energy Balancing Sessions that will be a combination of whatever is needed from:
* Light hands on and/or hands off energy work
* Mindfulness Coaching
* Movement Meditation Guidance, including the use of music
These sessions are as powerful and healing as you need them to be. Perhaps you just need to balance your energy of to avoid that oncoming cold – or you need to fire up your system to throat fatigue. They can help address anything from aches & pains to chronic issues, from emotional upheavals to stubborn behaviors you aren’t able to remove…and more. PMS? Stress and it’s Affects? These sessions are meant for any of those daily or occasional things you need support for in your life.
These sessions can be either at my really peaceful home in Menlo Park/Redwood City border…or I can travel to you. I am also open to Skype sessions.
The energy exchange (ie. investment in you…$$$) for trying out your first session is just $40/hour.
Contact me for more information or to schedule your activation or energy session today.
650.485.1595
