Here is the next part of body dharma.

Randee Fox sent me this link.  Daniel Mollner is 47 years old and is making a film a week about being a dancer, something that he has only recently claimed.  It is a brilliant, generous idea.

I have just started making solos again. My friend Ryder hosts an open mike at Cafe Helsinki in Hudson, NY.    She said, “Why don’t you do something?”  And I thought, “Yeah.  Why not?”

I have not performed a solo for over ten years.  Here is what happened:  Over a period of twenty years, I lost my ability to move, even to walk.  My hips were GONE.  Everyone said, “But you are too young to have the surgery.”  Really I wasn’t, but I liked that they thought so.  By the end, I could not even walk across the street.  I felt a terrible sense of shame.  “I am a dancer.  I cannot move.”

The other thing that happened was 9/11.  Many of my artist friends were creatively derailed.  Mute.  Numb.  It went on for many months, even years.  I went into a creative deep-freeze that lasted about seven years.  I felt ashamed. “I am an artist. I cannot make art .”

It was finally the horses that brought me back, and a persistent, wonderful image of making a dance with horses and an aerial dancer, the beautiful Paola Styron.

The one thing I know about body dharma is that it is not one thing.  It is not a straight line.  It is a meandering river with backwaters and tributaries and terrible, ferocious class 5 rapids that will leave you washed up and rinsed out way downriver.  It is also the only place to be:  in the water, between the banks, flowing.

Sharing my experience and  passion in a way that helps and supports others is what I love.  I am always thinking about new ways to do that.

So here are three of my body dharma offerings:

• one-to-one:  coaching for engaging the artist within
• Breaking into Blossom:  the eBook
• Cookbook for the Bonehouse:  a workshop

I have other offerings.  You can check them out here.