Today I went into Aurora's classroom and explained Thanksgiving, showed a slide show we made, and handed out pumpkin pie. I even gave each kid kernel of corn and passed around a basket so they could say what they were thankful for. And you know, it left me feeling so happy that we have a day dedicated to gratitude! I realize that it is mostly celebrated with gluttony nowadays, but the gratitude inherent in little craft activities, in families getting together, and in cooking for each other, it is beautiful. Happy Thanksgiving!
Number 8 of what I love about England: twilight. The evening twilight is spectacular, especially in the winter. The blue is the deepest blue, so bright, and the stars like shiny magical diamonds sparkling and chattering away. Because it gets dark early, we see the twilight everyday. It hangs out with us for several hours and this year, I really take the time to notice it. I pass into the evening with thankfulness that the light will come again. Getting out blankets, lighting candles, cooking scrummy meals, this helps to make a rhythm for the winter that can be delightful. Aurora and Mathias sit here with me on this lazy Sunday, the first in a long while, and they insist I type all the colours of the twilight. Earlier this month we watched the moonrise through our kitchen window, each night for about a week. The moon is truly bright! And we love it :) This is the moon. Blessings dearest friends~
Here is what our superman does with his spare time. With a hand axe too!
Immersed, in ritual theory, liminal spaces, stretchy ideas about how we experience our bodies and ourselves as humans. Immersed, in politics and egos and endless details. Immersed, in children and laughter and love. And spinning. Spinning to scrub myself clean and start life anew in each breath and moment. As rich and yummy as immersion is, new life is gorgeous too. Contrast. Yin Yang. Four out of five chapters ready for the knife (as I have come to call the editing process). Deadline for submission to the great and holy knife is Friday. I remind myself that as branches are pruned away, space for new life is made, in every moment. In muddy wonderful immersion....In glorious blinding new life....I come and go. Peace~
This weekend was the UKPTA AGM. That is the annual general meeting of the United Kingdom Polarity Therapy Association. It was beautiful! Qi Gung, Bodywork, Yoga, Art and Painting, Dance, a coal fire, the Scottish Highland, and vegan wheat-free food. All those beautiful people, all that lovely land, all those wicked faeries....hard to be home. But home I am, and with the role of secretary attached to me! Ha! How the heck did that happen? It's just that. I felt moved in the moment, and understood that moment as a symbolic act of committing to polarity for another year of my life. Because, I'll be writing books this year. I'll be training to be a whirling dervish. My kids will keep growing. And, my soul insists that polarity remain a part of that. So, I'll be going to UKPTA meetings and writing down what everybody says. The way I see it, more time to marinate in the love of beautiful people who also flutter their wings. Delight~
Dr. Randolph Stone was the founder of Polarity Therapy, a system which I practice and share with others from time to time. He was an osteopath at the turn of the century in America, and he had much interest in natural medicine as well. He was a member of the religious path Sant Mat, and he studied Ayurveda extensively in India. The culmination of his life's interests and work was development of Polarity Therapy.
Polarity is life, it is the breath of life moving through all things. In the case of dis-ease it is the breath of life not flowing. The system requires that one treat the patient, and oneself, holistically, in the original sense of the word. Nutrition and diet, exercise and meditation, counseling and practicality, safety and attentiveness, bodywork and touch. This is all Polarity. A massive system.
Dr. Stone intended it for doctors, to aid them in their practice and alleviate the need for drugs and surgery wherever possible. He wrote it for graduate level study and advertised it for years. He got only a handful of students. Teaching from his front room in Chicago to 4 or 5 doctors at a time, he wondered, why is this spectacular approach not taking off?
Then in the great opening of the early 1960s it did take off. And not with doctors. With seekers and a whole generation of new light healers. Someone arranged a workshop at Esalen and there were over 100 people in attendance. Before he knew it he was teaching the whole system, in depth, in Hawaii and across California. And a generation of light healers went to work.
I am second generation. I live Polarity in my life. I treat clients. I treat myself.
Now that I am living this phase where I am working deep and making and seeing connections everywhere, I integrate. Dance, creative process, the science of movement, whirling, writing, energy tracing, love, light, it is all the same. And deep. And it makes me cry to glimpse the divine so often. And to share it is my joy. And not easy. Not in a commodified world that wants movie stars and chocolate bars. Well, I like chocolate bars too, but you get the point...
Tonight no one showed up for my deep stretch and choreography classes, and well, it is freezing and raining and dark at 4pm now, so maybe the movies or the bathtub is just more necessary. But Dr. Stone, I feel ya.
(Chocolate bars still gladly accepted) :-)
This body of clay and water and earth is my home. My temple. My indian mosque and my celtic shrubbery. I miss it. I am writing, and learning exactly what I came to graduate school to learn, which is that the realm of spirit and imagination is simply not for articulating.
My advisor is really working with me, as I try to explain the feeling of an embodied six pointed star while whirling, as I speak of love and suffering, and she gets angry and she laughs. Now we have a strategy, which consists of me recognizing that the ineffable just doesn't hang out with language, and that I am the barrier or bridge between these two things.
Sometimes, I have to be a body. Then I don't get any writing done. Sometimes, I write, and then I am bridge not between myself and all that experience, but between myself and others who would like to know about it. I can only hope to inspire others, not to give them experience.
I am a mirror then, and nothing more. Kind of scary, because I thought I was the Taj Mahal or something :) That is not me, but I live in it. A thousand beautiful fractals of light taking up residence.
In love~
