Ephemeral Movement

Blog

  • Moving the blog

    After much deliberation, I’m officially moving my blog to Substack where I believe there is more opportunity for community and interactivity.

    Please subscribe and follow me there: https://substack.com/@ephemeralmovement

    I’ll be keeping my Ephemeral Movement website, but it will be undergoing changes with this shift. Slow changes. Eventual changes. Changes none-the-less.

    To stay in the loop, click the link above and keep in touch.

    Thank you for your continued community and support!

    I love what I do and it’s way more fun when it’s shared.

  • Fantasy

    Fantasy

    Today, I climb a small step ladder to gather chokecherry, pulling branches towards myself, pulling myself up onto the fence to get even higher to the fruit nearly out of reach. I finger the stems to release the ripe berries into the stainless steel bowl my toddler was wearing as a hat not an hour before. I repeat beneath the elder bush, looking skyward in the hot sunlight of the early afternoon.

    I duck beneath the black walnut tree and pick from the ground, green orbs, checking for rot, walking in circles as more allow me to see them in the verdant grass. A game of I Spy. I sit on the front stoop, said toddler with a home-made popsicle, and breaking the outer husk against the concrete I’m staining my hands with the floral and resinous flesh of its insides. “It smells so good”, and the little one leans in with his nose, “smell good”, pine, citrus, and floral notes spinning around our faces.

    I’ve been reading these delicious and hooking fantasy books and it leaves me, not craving for a fairy lover (though hello and thank you mirror neurons) or to live in a different world, but to live more fully in my body in this world. I stretch my body out on a quilt in the backyard and when I can no longer move because my toddler has deemed the stretching “done”, I sit quietly with my eyes closed.

    How do I let myself hold me? How do I carry myself through the day?

    I slowly shift my body until it feels right, alert and relaxed, a natural curve to the spine, a golden thread gently pulling my crown towards the sun. The breeze touches me across my head and shoulders. The sun kisses me just the same. A sweet ache, to just be.

    I dance a lived fantasy this afternoon during toddler nap-time. I spin, step, slide, and soothe an ache through movement. The fantasy books I’ve been reading fuel my lust to fill full. I move with supple limbs that drag through the air around me. I crave my own body in motion.

    A sense of freedom is here in my dancing. I am free to move however I wish and to love every moment. I won’t waste any energy judging this body or the shape that it makes as I glide. I just move to the next incarnation. And the next. And so on until I am down on the floor rolling back and forth feeling my body against the floor, dropping into the earth, letting it hold me.

    I dance love and lust, temptation and desire, though it’s so subtle I don’t think it could be seen. Maybe it could be felt. It’s a glimmering, a glow and flow, until I feel complete.

    Today, I live and dance a fantasy, transforming what fantasy can mean through the alchemy of embodiment.

  • Respite: Little Doorways of Awareness

    Summer heat waves.

    Wildfire smoke.

    Late nights, early mornings.

    The never-ending to-do’s.

    I am tired. I can barely drag myself out of bed in the morning and conjure up a snack for the toddler. It takes all of me to pour a cup of coffee that I can barely even sip.

    I slowly gain speed through the morning, hitting dips of lethargy and then wondrous moments of energy that are notable due to their rarity. Like how I rally to make breakfast or get out the door for an errand or adventure. I feel like a heavy, water-logged and sunken canoe.

    So far, it seems like some of the most nourishing moments are those spent at the river. We pack snacks and gear up in the cart and find a nice spot with a sandy beach and plenty of rocks to toss. I dunk myself into the cold waters and the little one wades and keeps testing how close he can throw the biggest rocks.

    When I dunk myself in the water, it wakes me up and clears away the stagnant energy. It makes me feel supple and young again. I feel connected to source, a timeless giving energy. When I dunk myself, I ask the river to take away my worries, my illness, my fatigue. I feel embraced by the river banks, the grasses and willows and sand and wind.

    Being in nature, the more untouched and wild bits, is rejuvenating. It resets something in my brain and soul. Even though I’m still tired, I don’t feel as heavy. I feel purified.

    And of course, the river is great because it’s a perfect playmate. It tuckers the little one out for nap time. And then I can escape to the basement and find my way to embodied play and exploration. I often only dance for 10-20 minutes, the latter being more rare and exceptional.

    Lately, my body pulls me downward and I’m trying to dance the dance of air, of levity, of wakefulness. Grace feels far from me as I lumber and heave myself through space seeking respite from gravity. This postpartum mom bod is heavy. I love her, me, that is. I do by best to take care of myself through remembering to eat or trying to do vigorous dance videos or yoga flows on youtube in the living room.

    But, the play and practice in the basement brings me somewhere the youtube exercise videos cannot. It brings me into the wild nature of my own animal body and allows me the spaciousness to practice letting it be how it pleases. Like a cat that stretches and plays when the time feels right, I expand and contract exploring movement that fills the corners and crevices of my being.

    How often do we leave whole zones of our body out-of-touch? How tender it is to notice and fill the space with presence. I lend these places my compassion, my witnessing. “I see you, let me hold you close”.

    Sometimes, this dance feels like taking myself by the hand and unconditionally loving all the little bits of myself. The invisible, the uncomfortable, the ashamed, the tender places of fresh growth.

    These little moments, at the river, in the basement, on walks to the park, sitting out front eating homemade popsicles: life-giving. I aim for them, seek them out, magnetize my awareness to the fleeting glimmers. Each one an opportunity to arrive anew.

  • Pivot

    Doing new things is hard.

    It’s grand. It can be spectacular when you hit a stride, when you feel like you’re manifesting into reality a vision that is bursting to be realized. And of course, that kind of magic takes work to achieve. It takes resources, connection, community, vision, endurance.

    False starts. Bumps and turns in the road. These are inevitable. If you pack anything into your survival kit, pack TRUST.

    Trust the process to reveal the result. Trust that the outcome should be as it is. Trust that all the pieces make the whole complete. Trust the lessons to teach you ways to improve. Trust the players and the stage in which your sweet theatre of life unfolds. And trust that you can pivot when the occasion calls for it.

    Which means, ultimately, to listen.

    I’m in a listening pivot. I’ve envisioned and offered up a 10 week course of Ephemeral Movement and it’s unlikely going to play out like I originally planned. The 10 week model was going to allow a depth of practice, a more detailed epistemology, a structured container, and the power of group support that the drop-in style couldn’t quite provide.

    We are just a week out from the first class and it’s going to be cancelled unless more people sign up. (If you have been planning to sign-up, the time is now to keep the course alive).

    If it doesn’t fly, I won’t let it injure my pride. Not in Leo season.

    And so, I listen.

    And I hear, it’s too big of a commitment. For something that’s unconventional and difficult to pin into understanding without trying on, I get it. For 10 weeks in this current cultural landscape? I get it. For something outdoors, rain or shine, and in public? I get it. It’s a lot for a new thing. I completely understand!

    And so, I am planning on offering a weekly, drop-in style class. However, I am considering making it an indoor class to offer a conventional space for exploration.

    I’m curious, what would you be more comfortable with: class outdoors in a park OR indoors in a movement space.

    Details for the time and location are in the works as I get more of a gage on where comfort and interest overlap, so keep this in your peripheral to pick-up again when the time is nigh.

    I trust that this practice I offer is going to be meaningful for other bodies, just as it has been for me. I trust that the people who need it, will find it.

    Together, we can play, recover, and discover in the upcoming weeks.

    And so, we pivot.

  • Dream Retrieval

    Today’s movement spun last nights dream into memory.

    I used to keep a dream journal and court my dreams into lucidity. I’d have long, magical dreams that would linger into the day and make me feel connected to the liminal spaces of manifestation and medicine.

    I’d also have stressful dreams that taught me of my fears and past traumas. All in all, I’ve had an impactful relationship with my nighttime consciousness.

    I don’t remember my dreams much anymore, what with having a baby and all the scattered sleep and before-I’d-like risings. I wake and am in mom mode. I wake and drop sleep for hugging my little one close.

    What once was a delightful partnership with dreams is now a required recharge. I’m not complaining. I still have a love affair with sleep, it just looks different for now.

    More recently, I’ve been able to grasp a glimpse or two of what transpired the night before. As soon as I go vertical it tends to all drop away like vapor flowing out from dry ice onto the ground.

    Last night particularly, I had some clear images that hung over my pillow while a slow-rousing was possible. I woke with at least three moments of embodied images and then was only able to remember one, the last.

    That is until I did my movement practice this afternoon.

    Spinning.

    I was spinning in my dream like a whirling dervish.

    One hand extended up towards the heavens, the other towards the ground, like the magician in tarot. My feet stepping, arch outwards, matching heel-to-toe forming a tight square beneath me.

    I was becoming weightless and lifting off the ground until I had to use my hand as the pivot point on the ceiling above me and it started to feel like gravity had disappeared.

    I remember a sense of power in self and spiritual connectivity and also a bit of fear and loss of control.

    Today, when my movements had me turning, I suddenly remembered those feelings and embodied a confident spin until I felt firmly grounded, graceful, and elevated. I didn’t whirl like a Sufi today, but I found my own turning.

    I took that sense of lack of control on the ceiling in my dream and alchemized it into lightweight and embodied twirls. It felt right to consciously turn with that collected sense of connectivity.

    And something shifted in me, a picture coming into focus, an embodied wisdom, a generosity of acknowledgement to the abundance around me.

    I’ve been thankful for the many blessings, the literal dream I am living. But, maybe you can relate, it can feel disembodied a lot of the times. Probably because of exhaustion or endless task lists or feeling “on” all the time.

    So, I wrote a goals list for the rest of 2024. Then I walked away. I revisited it later in the day and realized that more than half of the list was already happening. In process, in progress. That’s a success!

    Plenty of work to do ahead, yes. It never ceases.

    To take a breath and break in the moment to acknowledge I’m on track, if even in the smallest ways is a win.

    And, to connect beyond, through play… it’s necessary. This dance, it’s play for me as much as it’s also a contemplative embodiment practice.

    It’s all a practice until it becomes effortless. Then, the meaning behind the word “practice” shifts. There will be moments of ease, of connection, of frustration, of all things. And we keep coming back to what ever it is that makes us feel alive, grounded, and authentic. Maybe even playful.

    Wishing you patience, compassion, and resilience for the work that makes you glimmer.

  • Ear Ache

    Have you ever had an injury that makes you question what you did to deserve the pain?

    I have an ear ache that even though there’s a pretty clear reason for why I have it, there’s something that feels more “spiritual” about it. Like, it can’t just be an ear ache. There must be a message.

    Maybe I’m not listening to my spirit guides.

    What am I missing? I’m curious about how I can listen better.

    Somehow, it brings me to one of my core hurts: feeling ignored, not being heard or seen.

    This is actually a big piece of the work I’ve been doing emotionally the last few years, particularly because becoming pregnant and being a mother can be invisibilizing. People will say some insensitive things to you while you’re pregnant (rarely, if ever, out of malice in my experience) and they’ll surely be so gaga over the baby that you can fade into the background at tender times.

    Every child is deserving of all the unconditional love! I’m not suggesting otherwise. Let’s always be gaga over the children AND let’s get gooey for the mamas, too.

    Postpartum healing is a physical, emotional, and metaphysical transformation that will effect birthing bodies for the rest of their lives. And, in a society and culture where biologically women are diagnosed at an alarming rate above men for mental health disorders, cancers, and more this should be a concern for everyone.

    The caregivers of the world need some extra thoughts, love, and supportive action. Particularly in the chrysalis of pregnancy where the liminal space of life and death converge and on through the postpartum years of emergent motherhood. Postpartum care is a formative time where a village is truly needed.

    While the transformation is beautiful and at times very hard, you can imagine how everything around a mother changes. Even relationships. Sometimes in ways we don’t like.

    What I try to remember is that we are all always changing and so is everything around us. Things continue to shift and nothing is static, which gives me hope when things are hard. It’s the both/and.

    My work around core wounds has included understanding and embodying my needs and boundaries, and learning how to communicate them, in the moment.

    Circumstances will change. And in the process, I will work on how I live and respond authentically.

    Let me tell you, I still have SO much growth in the land of communicating authentically “on time”. Hi, it’s me, still working on being good at conflict, even when it’s small conflict. My child helps me practice because that’s mama bear and how she functions. It can be easier to hold ground when you do so to protect someone else.

    I want to be more gently assertive for myself. I want to say in the moment that I feel left out or not considered or disrespected or need some extra help or a witness or an ear or a shoulder to cry on. That I would accept the help but like this, or not today, but ask again tomorrow. I want to and I often don’t. The moment passes. And sometimes it feels like thoughtful reflection is enough.

    Unfortunately, if the moment passes too many times on something tender it can start to feel like a bruise getting poked and then small things get overinflated. I think I’ll be over something and then POW right back to the reactivity.

    Or when I do have the courage to speak up in the moment and state a boundary, I can receive reactive, emotional responses from the person I’ve communicated the boundary to. It can often be subtle, quiet, energetic reactions that are felt all the same. The simmer, the seethe, the smoke.

    A boundary request stated can begin to feel like an impassable wall.

    And that’s the nature of boundaries. Typically, they aren’t what the other party wants, otherwise you wouldn’t have to ask for them. Sometimes, if we are good at discomfort and conflict, we can compromise well. This is what you can hope and work for–building bridges of understanding.

    Also, what does a boundary look like intra-personally? From myself, for myself. With bad habits like scratching an itch or mindlessly nail-biting or consuming sweets. It’s not that it’s never okay, but when do I take it too far? Where’s that edge?

    For a pain-adverse culture, we sure aren’t that good at preventing or avoiding it, which is a losing game, anyhow. What you don’t deal with catches up with you one way or the other.

    Any moment that pain pokes its head in to our lives, whether physical or emotional, is an opportunity to connect.

    Even a short, somatic-based movement session can help me find insight through embodiment. Often, the simple, slow, connective, and forgiving space of being with and in the body for a few moments offers a reprieve from the conceptualized stressors of day-to-day life.

    Embodiment practices can work as preventative medicine.

    Sit quietly. Breathe. Notice what you notice.

    That can be enough. To have no answer, to just be curious. Some times, it’s just what is. An ear ache. A difficult exchange. A tender moment. A huge transition. It’ll pass and something new will arrive.

  • Nothing Profound in Theory

    There is nothing profound in theory without practice. (Ruffle any feathers?)

    It’s not that thinking alone doesn’t have power. Theory has its own magic. However, there’s a clear difference in thought and embodiment. And I want to explore what happens in effort.

    Theory is fun, sure. It helps hypothesize and name. Yet, in the end, it will not be the name. The name is in the doing, the action.

    It’s an interesting paradox. In my attempts to communicate what Ephemeral Movement is to me, or does for me, or could be for you, I often feel a large swath of space between what it is and what my words can emulate.

    I’d like to believe that through the repetition of expression, something titrates into embodiment for the reader.

    And, I do believe this is true to an extent. That’s a special kind of reading though. I wonder how often you feel you can absorb all the text you’re required or choose to consume a day? I find that I fall into a peripheral style scanning often.

    I gave Ephemeral Movement it’s name out of my experience of the process of doing.

    It’s fleeting moments, following without pursuit to any end except experience of the self through embodiment, to the world through experiential moving. The trail to the mountaintop, the trail of the movement, the trail of sensation. They all lead to some shape of relationship.

    The embodiment process is where the profound can unfold. Through ligament and sinew the body is woven with the consciousness, detangled through each unfolding movement of intuitive impetus. When I dance the experience of Ephemeral Movement, it’s curious, free of judgement, following the sensations and forms that come with nearly no effort, like becoming seaweed or tree limbs blown in the breeze. I let all of me participate.

    Or at least, this is the practice.

    When I am practicing, I can have lots of epiphanies, realizations, phrases and mantras fold in to my movements. I realize my shoulders and neck are so tight because I’m carrying more than I need to. I find a tightness in my pelvis and I open towards it and through it. I stick out my tongue and roar. I find the simplest answers to the concerns I’ve been worrying over needlessly for days.

    I often liken it to a trance, though the definition of trance doesn’t actually sum it up quite right. It’s conscious, it’s responsive to stimuli. I allow sounds to be a part of the process, my own and those in the environment. The light, the textures, the internal feelings and thoughts. It’s all information in the conversation.

    We walk our destinies in a series of movements that often become habituated. How much of our lives do we miss in this habituation? I saw this quote recently about how time travel often captivates our concerns in how we might change the past/future for the better or worse, but why aren’t we talking about how we could change the future through choices in the now?

    It always comes back to now, this moment, and how we can be in it fully.

    Nothing is profound about anything until it is lived. What could you do in this next moment to feel more alive?

    I can’t tell you what Ephemeral Movement is without expressing it through my own process of experience and the language that I have. I can’t know what it is for you or name it in your words. We can try to share our experiences, and there is power in sincere witnessing, significant value in being perceived which is a huge piece to this practice.

    With anything, we have to just try and try again.

    Which is why I am offering an in-person class for those interested in discovering their own experience of Ephemeral Movement as a practice. Check out my offerings page for more information if you’re curious. And keep following along as I bring more of it into my writing, and possibly, more material for you to try it at home, on your own time.

    Of course, there will be some theory in class as I share about Ephemeral Movement’s epistemology. However, be ready for plenty of experiential exercises to explore embodiment, place, and creativity.

  • The Perceived Slog of Growing

    With the practice of vulnerability in mind…

    I’m moving through a creative block (I hope). Gathering momentum, triangulating and clarifying my authentic voice. And it’s hard. I’ve been showing up with nearly weekly posts to help gather speed. I write with every nap time and I don’t do much else in the ways of free time except for reinvigorating my personal movement practice (which is huge, for me).

    Isn’t repetition and working on something supposed to garner results?

    Are these my capabilities as a writer?

    Here I am again. Is anything changing? Maybe it’s imperceivable for now. And that’s the banger with working at something; growth can be difficult to see in the moment.

    I’m working on being satisfied with effort alone, because it’s at least something.

    Maybe the real question I should be asking myself is “why” and for “who”. Why do I feel the need to write? Who am I writing for?

    It feels like a lot of the time I’m just adding noise to the already over-tracked cacophony of talking in the world. Am I adding anything new? Unlikely. It’s not like any of these ideas haven’t been thought before, expounded upon, and said with more eloquence.

    I guess my hope is that these efforts align with someone else’s need. If a spark flies and makes a moment glow, then that would be something. If nothing else, it’s for me.

    I’m trying for tryings sake, showing up moment to moment.

    While I feel successful as a person being, I can’t tell if it’s my own drive or the internalized cultural narrative of accomplishing that makes me judge my capabilities as an artist, entrepreneur, and facilitator more harshly. It’s certainly a bit of the economics, most definitely.

    To be a sensitive, creative in this society is rough; it’s not designed for us and we have to learn how to be authentic within a structure that’s unnatural to our natural state.

    All I know is that this perceived failure might eventually transform into fleeting success and that can be a foundation for feeling not only accomplished, but in alignment. They say we learn more from our failures than our successes and for how much I feel like I’m failing maybe it all means I’m in a period of sincere growth.

    It’s the least I could hope for, like I’m in a dark tunnel and I’m leaving behind a known landscape for a totally new geography I’ve never encountered before.

    I’ll just keep at it until then and maybe, any day now, it’ll be clear how far I’ve come as I exit the darkness and emerge into a place I could only have dreamed of before.

  • Practices in Love

    Vulnerability.

    I like this word partly because it can feel hard to do, difficult to be.

    It’s also, impossible not to be; can truly be so easy.

    As a mother, vulnerability is many things. I feel so much love I could spill over and often do. Sometimes, I’m brought to tears when I watch my son sleep or do really anything at all. How is it possible to love this much? I expand and fill space like never before, my supple form a soft pillow to the sharp edges of the world. My heart never-ending. My arms more encompassing. My capacities widening and deepening like water seeping into porous spaces.

    I feel thin, fragile, like I could shatter when my toddler screeches and screams; decibels that grate through my spine. Or when he throws his body around and thwacks my head just perfectly to elicit the sharpest pain and the quickest tears. In these moments, I try to remember to breathe, to get down on his level, to become supple again for him to lean into and for myself to fill.

    Fleshy, penetrable, perceiving, we can’t not feel, react, respond. Maybe sometimes it’s with more skill and composure than others, but all interaction is a series of action. The more I lean into my capability to be vulnerable, the more supple and receiving to life I feel, the more connected, thoughtfully responsive, generative and patient I can be.

    My son teaches me about relationship. His requests are so clear if I slow to listen and they are always about connection. We work together to solve whatever arises. I take those moments of the simplicity of request of my toddler into my life with others, or try to. How can I be more patient, listen and really hear my partner or family or friends? I try to ask clarifying questions and repeat back what I hear, to gather information with receptive eyes, body language, and intuition, just like I would in a client session. It makes me laugh a little at the simplicity of skills in theory and the gravity of them in practice. Listening truly is a skill. I often find I have more patience for my son than I do for anyone else. So I reflect, practice, and try again.

    I take these reflections into my movement practice. I slow, listen internally, listen to the space around me, watch the wind. I respond to any felt sense, follow the kinesthetic delight, wait for whatever tugs me forward. What is it to truly be somewhere, to listen with all of the body and be moved by the presence of other in the more-than-human world. Taking off the tunnel-vision visor of human to human seeing and peering beyond into the vibrant world that surrounds. The glowing coffee mug, the sparkling leaves, the angle of the light.

    External stimuli can be just as informative to our state of being as the more inward check-ins of body scans and internal sensing. A magical relationship unfolds when we slow to listen and respond with care. The gentler we are with ourselves and others the more impossible it is to not feel how connected we are. Which doesn’t necessarily mean we have control over all the feelings and reactions, but it does allow us to at least name them and move through them.

    Being vulnerable means being receptive, responsive, open to authenticity. We allow ourselves to be moved by the world around us and ultimately feel more at one with everything in a simple yet profound way. Offering our attention to our space, the people around us, and ourselves cultivates a sacredness even in the mundane. In the end, it’s venerable to practice vulnerability.

  • My Body is an Ancestor

    Originally written in 2022 after a body mapping exercise involving creative drawing and collage in response to prompts on a full-size outline of my body. I recommend listening to The Buzzard by Old Blind Dogs while reading.

    My body is a structure un-swirling from spinal waterfalls, winding rivers, a tidal gateway of toes stood barefoot on the edge of an ancient cairn where someone quite like me once lingered; a time filled with mist that softens the distance from here to there. Home is a place with many latitudes, waves break on familiar shores like buoys to distant dreams. Sea-glass, kelp, cliffside rock tumbling, shadowed wing, and dewey mint, a flower filled with rain, a whispering wind. Home is a question, a hope; am I safe? 

    My body is lost and found like grains of sand on the beach, waves crashing coral, churning, forgotten and remembered again. A timeline expands like rough, spun yarn, twisted and tangled in roots, over branches, wrapped up into precarious nests where I am eager to curl up in the warmth of a feathered familiar, my body like the barbed hooks of wool holding on to whatever it can grab. How far back would I have to go to feel belonging? Or how many layers would I have to peel back to belong? 

    Curiosity swings the door on hinge, in a burst, to answer the knock and song, a pulsing, rhythmic opening to a core where voices join in a clamorous joy. Are we in a communal hall celebrating or under a tree in reverence where the old churches used to be?

    I am magma erupting, oceanic whale dances, my gills a life-vest from drowning, born to swallow emotions until I am my own sea, impossible to sink. Extending fin, or shoulder, or chin to trace the curves of womb; my mother, my mother’s mother, my father’s belly—a humor emergent, a loneliness, better to bury than sweep. Dirt beneath nail and the glitter of mica on my fingertips, the cool soil a tender kiss on my palms and knees. The roundness of moss a pillow made of another world, softness of undergrowth decay. A tenderness to be consumed, to be held in an embrace. To be held in a way that feels like home.

    My body is a map, a multidimensional treasure hunt that leads me to myself where my breath brings me home again and again and again.