Day 7 Photo Op- Valentine for God

Valentines was a little hectic this year, I felt a little stretched. Because of this I missed sending a Valentine to my main man...God.

Nearly 2 weeks late I created this drawing while in the dance. I have been taking it easy, not dancing as hard as I usually do, wanting to take care of this body of mine. I am healing, I am doing great, and I am being mindful not to push myself too hard. So for part of today instead of dancing, I doodled, wrote, created beauty with pens and paper rather than with my body. This creation began to emerged as I scribbling down the words spoken allowed by my teacher, friend and guru Vinn. I know that last one will really irk him, but hey, it is truth. He is the closest one outside myself that I have considered a Guru, an everyday mystic. Eventually I added colour to the drawing, and some more words. I didn’t start out with the intention of creating a Valentine, but this the wondrous thing about journals, magic emerges from the smallest of scribbles. My own personal journal has been sure a source of solace during the creation of the 12 days project, a place to put some things just for me, God, and now and then all of you.

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(“I don’t know no tantra mantra, or ritualistic workshop. I only know you. Hold my Hand.”, “Slowly, Slowly, Slowly, Slowly......”)


The words on the Valentine are not Vinn’s. I was so entranced by the dance, by the voice of this mystical man who creates along with all of us a majestic manifestation of love, that I missed the author. It doesn’t really matter though, trace anything back far enough and it all come from the same source, The Source Eternal of All That is Known...some call it God, some the Goddess, there are many names. Today for brevity’s sake I choose to use God.

God, will you be my Valentine?

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“How do you seek connection with others?” is the question in 12 days journal #317

Day 6 Listen- Listening to the Mystic

I listened today. Not in a new way, I have listened this way before, but today was different. I let go of the embarrassment, the ideas, the worries about what others might think, let go of not trusting that they want me to shine.

“Let your beauty shine, the world needs it“. I was told this by a womyn from Florida, a womyn I have met before but do not remember her name. I love her so, she came to me today completely vulnerable, tears streaming, not because she wanted anything from me, but to tell me that she sees me, encouraged me to keep it up, the being me thing that I have going on. Why not? I am the only one I can be.

So this me, this imperfect, vulnerable, self judging me, danced with a boy named Sage today. The first time I noticed him in the room, I saw a boy with autism, he had curved his hands smooth, with holding and rubbing, hand over hand. His eyes saw what lay above us all but could not muster the connection right here...or so I thought, this was my idea about Sage. His father took him lovingly round the dance floor, so much love. It was palpable how much this man loved his son, I didn’t have to ask to know Sage was his son, it was right there on the surface. Sometime later after an experience in the dance where I tapped into a moment from my past, a moment of fear and reclamation, I found myself kneeling before Sage, my teacher. I imagine him a mystic, and asked him, with my body, with my heart, if he would teach me. I noticed that we were connected in movement, mine was big and measured, his smaller, subtle, yet there, along with mine, we moved in unison. He lowered his eyes, not quite to mine, but enough. He began to let go of the grip of hand holding hand, his arms began to rise up. Then spontaneous laughter, like music! We danced, and I listened, listened to his body with my body, and we connected in a rare way, a sweet rare beautiful way. What a gift, what a glorious gift.

I saw his father later, a ceramic artist with a gentle way. He thanked me, I thanked him. I didn’t see Sage again. I remember his eyes though, and his gentle soft hands, hand holding hand, in such a particular way. I wonder what it might be like to walk amongst this world as a mystic in the way that Sage is, to see the world through those eyes, through those hands.

The less I talk, the more I listen, I see, or perhaps hear the mystics, and I am so overjoyed that they are everywhere. Such beauty in this world, such beauty.

”Where do you see beauty in this world?“ is the question in 12 days journal #196

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(The Soul Motion Crew at this years Madrona MindBody Institute Vinn Marti Workshop, what an amazing group of beings! Picture Taken by David Conklin)

Day 5 Listen- I Am My Teacher

The pain of not being able to drop into the dance, while I know fleeting and easily forgotten, at the time feels like deep lonely isolation. If we were to be dancing the “alone together” dance it would be easier to take, the alone dance is easy to muster when I feel alone. Today though we are doing the “common union” dance, the ephemeral duet. I know that to feel it as tragic may seem self indulgent, a mountain out of a mole hill. I do have perspective. I know that by lunch, maybe even in a moment, after a hug, just the right words, a glance, this feeling of quiet sad desperation will abate and likely give way to a new delicious mood. This is why I write about it, to capture it, know it, bring it to the light so I can recognize it instantly, honour it, its connection to the string of times I have felt it before and will feel it again. A bead in the endless mala of moments. I write about it because it matters, alone times, sad times are not to be tucked away, ignored, gotten over, fixed. They are a part, they connect, they teach, hold wisdom and answers.

I sit before a room of 75, many with eyes closed, moving slowly, repetitively, expressively, God faces, God movements, tapping into the Divine. I sit. I write. I know this, what I am watching, felt it just yesterday, but today tapping it is a mystery. So i tap this instead, what you are reading . Something that just yesterday I couldn’t touch, I couldn’t tap.

Now the floor pounds, feet hit shiny wood, hips gyrate, arms flail, smiles of bliss everywhere. Still I sit and write, watching Vinn, my love, my Teacher as he moves and know him in a way that awkward conversation out side of this room will not allow. Am even resentful that writing this pen in hand means transcribing it to the computer later, as though this was his fault, as though my decision not to bring the computer into the witnessing circle is his decree, rather than simply what is necessary to capture this sacred space. I know this and I put the resentment elsewhere to hide that it is actually still just the pain of not tapping into the divine, my mind plays tricks. The resentment spreads, I want to dance! Feel the euphoric abandon, yet here I sit. Watching Michael now, how i love the way this man moves, hands strong, flexed at the wrist, taunt belly peeking from beneath his shirt, pink drawstring below. I wonder in another moment of magnified desperation if i will ever dance again.

Who? Who has loved with all their heart something, someone, and has not known this fear? This fear of what we love being lost to us? It is almost more than i can bare....

And yet i know that by the time you read this, what I am describing, this feeling of desperation and yearning, will be gone, transformed. This is why I write this, to capture this moment, one I believe so many have experienced, and maybe never shared, maybe out of embarrassment or fear. I want you to know, I have felt it too.

I pull out my “What i want” journal and write;

“I WANT TO DANCE”

Michael moves past me. Jade moves past me.
I watch many others, but still do not shake and quake, there is no impulse to follow.

I know the only way is to get up, start, and so this is what I am going to do.



I was going to leave it there, but it would have been incomplete, here is the rest:

I dance closed, trying to be open, hands over eyes, gaze turned down. Many tried to commune, I tried back. TRYING though is not the best recipe for ecstatic experience, it is paradoxical that the opposite is generally what brings ecstasy.

Up dances a sweaty smiling womyn of such beauty. She pushes up on her cheeks, to create a smile, an invitation. I smile. I hug her and say “thanks for noticing”. She tells me I am absolutely beautiful, open eyed, no walls, she let me in and told me she saw beauty. The ice is broken. Being seen is so powerful a thing. I spy Michael and know I can find connection there, something that has not always been easy for me with male partners here on the dance floor. I endure the slightly awkward beginning, accept the clumsiness of emerging from this shell. Then we click. His body listens to mine, mine to his. I feel safe.

I was not as connected in the dance this morning as I was yesterday. Exceptional experience becomes mundane if it inhabits the everyday. This wanting which I experience today is very much a part of the ecstatic, ecstatic foreplay. I know it will return, today was a reminder of its sweetness.

“Who do you consider to be your greatest Teachers in life?” is the question in 12 days journal #195


P.S. In the afternoon session I had one of the most ecstatic experiences I have had on or off the dance floor yet...so there you go.

Day 12 Walkabout- Set My Soul in Motion

I am on hold with the Esalen reservations office. I am calling to cancel my reservation for the Vinn Marti Soul Motion workshop which begins on September 25th. I have known for a while now that I am no longer going to dance at Esalen with my tribe, I just couldn’t make the phone call before now because I don't want it to be true. I want to go, I also want to go home and celebrate my Lily’s 11th birthday. Recently Lily expressed to me how important it was that I be with her on her birthday. It happens to fall right between the workshop and my monthly classes at Tamalpa. Since returning to Canada, then turning around and flying back to California is not an option due to finances and logistics, I had to make a choice.

For the last two years I have danced with Vinn, each September, on the magical land of the Essalen people. I discovered Soul Motion within weeks of Chris’ accident, and I KNOW it was a gift sent to me from God, to help me dance my way through his injury and into my new life with grace. I am grateful beyond expression for Soul Motion, for all the family it has brought me, for all the lessons and joys.

Rachel and James, who are upstairs talking when the are SUPPOSE to be napping, are part of the tribe. I met James first, he introduced me to Rachel...a womyn who is frequently mistaken as my sister. We have had a bit of a funny relationship, intense at times. We live thousands of miles away from one another and yet here I am, in their living room, being given the honour of being present at the birth of the baby who will make them both parents for the first time.

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(My first time at Esalen, my first time dancing Soul Motion, my first time for so many things)

Rachel and James are not the only friends who I have become very close to through the dance. I met Jeremy, my first ever long term lover since I was married over 12 years ago, on the floor, in the dance dome on the Big Sur Coast line. I remember the first time he danced past me, his fleece neck warmer making him look a little like a turtle emerging from his shell, and emerge he did. This September will be the 1 year anniversary of our meeting, sadly it will not be marked by an anniversary dance in the dome. He has promised to take along the magic mushroom I felted for him and put it on the altar. If any of you reading this see it, please pick me up and dance with me round the room. I would be so very grateful.

There are so many more I have met, Aletia, JJ, Tory, Hollie, Josie, Phillip, Lamara, Shems, Katie, Elizabeth, Zuza, Walter, Mara, Jenz, Kincade, Jovinna, Lance and and AND...so many more I want to name, but I want to go see the beach before this baby is born, so instead I am going to go for a walk. I have a feeling that I will cry a little when I see the Pacific; imagine that just a hundred miles up the coast the tubs, lodge and dance dome are waiting for the dancers to arrive on the 25th. I will imagine you all sitting on the deck, long glass tables filled with abundant food grown by Tareck and Benjamin et el. I will imagine the fascinating conversations, the laughter, the luxury of only having to decide where to sit and when to go tubbing. I will imagine the floor of the big marshmallow dance dome, bodies strewn in warm up positions of 50 different kinds. I will imagine Vinn's voice, a whisper through the mic and over the speaker, repeating words that speak of presence and acceptance and “begin again”. I imagine this scene as I have witnessed it dozens of times, each time the same, each time different. I imagine all of this without me there. It makes me sad, it makes me ecstatic, it makes me all the things that exist between these two.

I will see you all in January. I love you

“Was there a time when you had to choose between two things that you cared deeply about?” is the question in 12 days journal #153