Is this a cautionary tale? Family saga? Exploration of skin as metaphor? Without really knowing I’ll just begin as I sit here recouping from yet another Moh’s procedure. If you know what this means, I’m sorry. Having been the recipient four times in twenty years, I’m way too familiar. Twice a year Mr. Dermatologist inspects for dry scaly areas, which he painfully freezes so new healthy tissue has a chance to emerge.

I guess you might say I’m a medicine woman, deeply connected with the wide array of sacred ways we nurture our health and alleviate our suffering…all things healing. The dictionary defines medicine as a practice, as if with enough repetition you might get it right some day.

I was blessed by a pair of cinema angels this past week. She Said and Women Talking on consecutive evenings, films that courageously dive into sexual harassment/abuse. Minimal time is devoted to the actual perpetrators or the acts of violence. Because the focus is on the women: directed by women and giving voice to women, just as the titles indicate. Powerful. Highly recommended.

River waters nudge the levee. Wind borderline terrifying. Windows pelted, elder trees topple. Grateful for bodily safety but my heart aches and my spirit feels damp as the yard. Pervasive grey outside matches my inside. Winter is not my happy-joy season. I’ve learned to appreciate the gifts darkness bestows. Just not today, thank you.

Intention Resolution Pledge Commitment

A weighty tradition, a call to action, tethered to year’s end…. Reflection Contemplation Musing Meditation Days damp chill, balanced by marathon nights…I dream

The altar space pictured above organically emerged in my studio in 2020 right along with Covid. Just know that visual creativity is not my artistic go-to expression.

Summer 2021: I begin to save recordings of Roll, Release, Align on-line. The sessions seemed to have value for students beyond our together practice. They report ease in breaking 90 minute sessions into shorter practices. Or the support of repeating classes in their entirety. So I begin to build a library.

Love Letters to a Raven, an online event, began October 22 on the 10 year anniversary of Gabrielle Roth’s death. It was a global invitation to post pictures and reflections, installations and musings, a 10 day wave with two days dedicated to each rhythm.

Dear Bella,

Oh those body tales of woe…our stories. Myriad chapters spread over time. My current troubles began as many do. Insidiously. Which the dictionary defines as “proceeding in a gradual, subtle way, but with harmful effects.”

Recent travel immersed me in the duality of moving with continual change: joy and exasperation, craziness and wonder. Planes, trains, automobiles (remember that hysterical film with Steve Martin and John Candy?) only began this journey.

Gabrielle Roth….I have some crazy stories to tell about the ten years I was her student. And just as many tales generated by her practice of the ten years since her passing. Because the rhythms are alive in every part of me. That’s why knowing her in the flesh was just icing on a way big cake.

Back-to-back dance workshop weekends, live community moving in and through, déjà vu from a previous lifetime. But I just hopped on that dusty dance bike and, a bit shaky at first, felt my trusty body pedal down that well-worn path. Surreal, challenging, tender, revelatory…all packed into ten days. As often happens when we steep in intensity, a dormant sensibility, an insight that had been scrambling toward daylight, slowly begins to tease itself out.

Karma: a Hindu notion, a slant on fate, a notion that our destiny is not random but is rather the effect arising from cause. In other words: what we do today has bearing on tomorrow.

Sitting on an edge, far north Monterey Bay, Capitola tucked behind an echoing bluff. Her old wooden pier an offering to the sea, Pleasure Point capping the farthest reach of land. Here I’m gently held by the horizon, that asks nothing in return, just bestows silent comfort as it surrenders, softly circular, to the duet of earth and sky. I find myself yearning for this, quintessential wide open space, whenever I’m hemmed in by urbanity.

Sitting here in the cool of this morning, knowing full well the temperature is set to go sky high again today. Like everything else, the weather is just not what it was. Sounds like a refrain from a country song: “things just ain’t what they was”. Change, continuous on so many planes, keeps us firmly entrenched in long term Zen training.

Me and Leonard Cohen go way back. He and my mom were born in Montreal around the same time so I’ve always felt this strong connect. And it was a thing of beauty to finally get out of the Covid-house and see this film gem in a theater. Plus it was with my friend who is just as gaga about this incredible songwriter. I never knew the whole story behind his most famous song, which took him seven years to write and longer than that to become known for the masterpiece it is.

Well, I’ve joined the ranks of Covid initiates. So many of us in this no longer exclusive club. And that is a good thing, feel like I’ve contributed to the possibility of herd immunity. No cake walk for me though; it was pretty challenging, even given the ingenious medical boost. So grateful for that and for the return of breath as each day brings a bit more energy.

I love historical novels. Just finished The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams chronicling the decades long effort that created The Oxford English Dictionary. In addition to the mix of fact and fantasy, it was a language exploration, how words are derivative of experience but also shape our experience.

My grandson wants to hike the 16 mile round trip to the top of Half Dome in Yosemite. And he asked if I would come with him. An immediate “yes” emerged from my lips, totally surprised me, flushed me with surging memories of the 90’s. The decade I climbed to the top of Half Dome not once or twice, but three times. My possible claim to fame.

Now I’ve been all about letting go lately…more about that later. So it was fitting for my teaching to focus on our organs of elimination: kidneys and bladder. In case you don’t know, we systematically roam all around the body in Roll, Release, Align.