Date: Tuesday, December 11, 2018
A Moment of Body Gratitude
Written by Debbie Rosas
“Thank you body for dancing with me, for allowing me to experience the rhythmic journey you know as rhythm, melody and harmony. The dance of healing you dance with me in every beat of my heart. I love you body.
Thank you body for the gift and magic of a brain, and for the specialized parts that help me stay on the beat, move my arm when I want to move my arm, when I say “arm move up and down”. I love you body.
Thank you body for always dancing, even when I am unconscious to the rhythm of my life. You, the one who causes me to tap my foot, sway my hips, wobble my head, move me without me even knowing I am dancing. I love you body.
Thank you body for your wisdom that keeps me connected from the inside to the outside, to the dance of your 75 trillion cells. I love you body.
Thank you for the magical subcortical areas in my brain designed to bypass higher auditory areas that make it possible for me to hear you with more than my ears! I love you body.
Thank you body, for the interpersonal experience of moving through space, and for the opportunity to express myself, giving credence and respect to the art and power of self-expression. I love you body.
Thank you body for making me a sensation scientist, curious and aching to explore myself and my body as a vast universe with information to create positive health and well being for me and the world. I love you body.
Thank you body for keeping me in awe as an artist, using my body and live and movement to create art. I love you body.
Thank you body for a region in you, in the brain called the posterior parietal cortex, a magical smart part I know lives toward the back of my brain designed to translate visual information and turn it into instructive motor commands, signals sent forward to the motion-planning areas in the pre-motor cortex and supplementary motor cortex of my brain. I love you body.
Thank you body for creating the neural impulses that stimulate me and allow me to dance. To the magical signals of information that travel to my spinal cord and then to my muscles so they contract and pull on my bones, moving them so I can shimmy, kick, sink and rise, fold and unfold into movement pleasure. I love you body.
Thank you body for the sensory organs that rest in my muscles and provide me with feedback, information sent from my brain telling me the exact orientation of my body in space, and that make it possible for me to know where I am even with my eyes closed. Be here now, and know where you are, this is their Mantra I listen to. I love you body.
Thank you body for the magic of nerves, string-like threads that receive and transmit information, elegantly passing through my spinal cord into the cerebral cortex of my brain, making me Sensory IQ wise and body aware without thinking but by sensing, from listening to The Voices of the Body-my body. I love you body.
Thank you body of woman, for the eight-thousand nerve endings dedicated to pleasure,and for the pulse of life and creative juice you give me, and for the gift of “knowing” what is right when I listen to you, commune with you and honor your voice. Thank you for the opportunity to live in a woman’s body, and as Regena, Mama Gena says, for reminding me that, “When a woman’s turned on, the whole world is blessed”. I love you body.
Thank you body for the constant loving feedback you give me, for helping me to refine and tweak my movement so what I do, I do with greater ease, dynamic ease. Thank you for guiding me to choose pleasure via the subcortical circuits in my brain’s cerebellum. I love how I can imagine resting and dancing with you there, at the back of my brain, in the basal ganglia areas in my brains core, standing one with you because I know who you are, where you are and what you do for me. I love you body.
Thank you for reminding me of the importance of FreeDancing, of moving and navigating my body through space without thinking, activating my precuneus: The Your Way and Body’s Way kinesthetic body-centered map, the parietal lobe region close to where the kinesthetic representation of my legs reside. Knowing you are there I move more confidently, and with greater ease and relaxation. I love you body.
Thank you body for sight, what makes it possible from areas in the premotor cortex of my brain to switch on, making it possible for me to mentally rehearse before, see, before I do, what I do. I love you body.
Thank you body for the dance, for the opportunity to interpret, stylize, imitate, and represent what I see others doing in My Body’s Way. I love you body.
Thank you body for the universal language of movement, body language, spoken in a shape, a shimmy, a pump, a push and pull, a reach, and shake, I love you body.
Thank you body for the silent and powerful impulse you use to move me, my cells, you, triggered by sound, music, and by my emotions.
Thank you body for the opportunity to be in a loving community of atoms, molecules, cells, tissues, organs, organ systems, and organisms-me in my body and with other bodies, part of a nested system and part of the Universe.
Thank you body for the map of The Body’s Way, a woman’s way, and for dancing with me. I love you body.
Thank you body for teaching me, we are connected, one, whole, moving and functioning best when filled with joy and love, respect and curiosity. For reminding me that if I continue to thirst for discovering what it means to live in my body as an empowered woman, alive with with light and passion, kept alive by taking the path of pleasure, and by following my heart and the guidance of those eight thousand nerve endings-all is well in the world.”
Date: Sunday, July 22, 2018
Special Nia Class to the music of Hamilton
Earlier today I had the opportunity to share the Nia routine I created over two years ago to some of the music from the Broadway hit, Hamilton. A huge thanks to my Nia San Diego fellow teachers and dear friends, Janice Steinberg and Kriszti Van Slyke for inviting me to San Diego to teach this body of work. After the class, we sat with Elizabeth Cobbs, who danced with us, to hear more about her historical fiction novel “The Hamilton Affair,” a New York Times bestseller!
To the right is a photo taken after class. That’s me and Elizabeth Cobbs in the matching red Hamilton t-shirts – nope, we didn’t plan it :). There were five people new to Nia and three people traveled all the way from Orange County to attend the class. And, my husband came to class – a rare event. It was truly wonderful! I am excited to share this routine at StudioNia Santa Fe on Saturday, September 8 at 11:30am!
Date: Sunday, July 15, 2018
ArcanaDance™ – Embodying Confidence: A Tarot & Movement Workshop with The Chariot card
This afternoon 18 of us went on an ArcanaDance™ journey with The Chariot – exploring the somatic markers of confidence and self-determination. We never take photos of the highly personal dance we do as a group but we got a couple of snapshots of our center altar of cards, our circle, journaling and conversations to glean wisdom and action from the cards we chose. We shared story, we laughed, we cried, we howled, we danced and left the space embodying a new confidence.
Every participant in this workshop explored the physical qualities of confidence, learned ways to rein in any qualities that impede their forward movement and discover their own unique pathway to self-determination.
ArcanaDance™, created by me – Jennifer Lucero-Earle, is a therapeutic practice designed to facilitate self-discovery, empowerment, transformation & healing through a fusion of tarot, guided movement & music.
Date: Wednesday, July 11, 2018
Move into Inner Peace with Meditation & Nia
with Jennifer Lucero-Earle & Tai Velasquez
We (Tai and me, Jennifer) have known each other for about five years but our friendship and sisterhood often feels like it goes back a lifetime. We are both women of color with similar ancestral stories marked by pain, trauma, struggle and also, great love and solidarity.
A couple of years ago we both found ourselves deeply affected and overwhelmed by the state of the world. Between our shared ancestral trauma and our response to the current state of the world, we realized we needed to take a deep breath. For both of us Nia was a great practice to express a range of emotion, strengthen our bodies, and infuse our lives with joy. Nia introduced us to holistic movement and we sought to ground this experience through stillness.
We learned from our dear sister and fellow Nia colleague, Daveda Russell, the healing power of group meditation. We found that there’s a deep release and spark of hope that happens when people meditate together. Daveda is the loving guide that initiated us on this mindfulness path. Thanks to her, both of us have been meditating daily for 4 years and the practice has enriched our lives both on and off the dance floor. We now have the tools to center ourselves and respond to stressors from a place of calm and love.
We learned that self-care, through meditation and movement, is a radical act of self-love and resistance. We are so grateful to be able to take a deep breath together and to dance together. We know that our ability to choose joy and access inner peace not only heals us, but influences the well-being of our families, communities and world at large.
Join us for an exploration of stillness and movement this upcoming Monday, July 16, 2018 in Seattle, WA:
Move into Inner Peace with Meditation & Nia
with Jennifer Lucero-Earle & Tai Velasquez
Date: Monday, July 16, 2018
Time: 6:30pm – 8:00pm
Location: Move2Center Studio, 3618 SW Alaska St, Seattle, WA 98126, lower level, entrance is on 37th Ave. SW.
Cost: $27
Register: http://www.move2centerstudio.com/events/monday-july-16-move-into-inner-peace-with-tai-jennifer
Date: Sunday, March 26, 2017
Carolyn Cushing of Soul Path Sanctuary and I wrote a multi-part article together to explore how our Tarot approaches fit together and as a prelude to a workshop we are offering together called Soul Path Embodiment: Dare to Get Out of the Chair! after the Tarot and Psychology Conference on April 27, 2017 of the upcoming Readers Studio.
Enjoy Part I about The Magician on Carolyn’s blog and Part 2, about the The Wheel of Fortune, below!
The Wheel
In the RiderWaiteSmith Wheel of Fortune, the Magician’s symbols evolve into beings with wings. They surround a wheel seemingly floating in the sky. Everything moves in the Wheel. We are invited to follow.
The Wheel invites us to take notice of the pace and tempo of our movement towards action. We can tune in to what works for us whether that’s speeding up, slowing down or finding a rhythm of stop and start. As we turn with the Wheel we might ask ourselves, “Do I keep a soft grip or a tight grip? Do I plow ahead or move slowly and mindfully? How does my body respond to an unexpected detour or redirection?”
These questions become even more instructive when we explore them through physical movement and feel the impact of plowing, mindfulness, gripping, steering, stopping, changing direction, or dodging ‘traffic,’ for example.
Having taken the stances of figures on the cards, we can extend that into a next step into the action. And as we move into a flow inspired by the Tarot, we send a message to our inner selves that we are ready for change. As we move, we show a commitment to the Tarot’s lesson of change.
In ArcanaDance, Jennifer invites her students to use the opportunity to move inspired by cards as a dress rehearsal for change. She invites them to “try on” how it feels to move through change embodying the energies of strength, sovereignty, joy, strategy, trust, resolve, etc.
Over her years of leading ArcanaDance, Jennifer has seen that people have a deeper readiness for change when they can safely explore and experiment embodying new beliefs, habits and patterns.
Tarot inspired movement becomes a powerful foundation and first step for change making in our daily lives.
To continue reading – and have an encounter with The World – pop back over to Carolyn’s blog.
Feeling inspired and want to join us? Register for the 1-day Tarot and Psychology Conference and come to our evening session or sign up for the whole weekend of Readers Studio, the annual three-day gathering, in New York City, that includes sharing, teaching, and learning of all things Tarot. Just follow the links to register for either or both of these fabulous gatherings.
Date: Wednesday, March 29, 2017
The following short ArcanaDance video is the final installment of the multi-part blog post about embodying tarot cards through movement co-written by me, Jennifer Lucero-Earle, and Carolyn Cushing of Soul Path Sanctuary.