Birthday Reflections, Dance, and Poem!

It's my 27th birthday and I spent the first half of my day at Tennessee Valley Beach near the Marin Headlands in California. This gorgeous place is about a 20 minute drive from my home. When the time is right to move out of California, I will miss the beaches and bright weather.

Hope you enjoy the dance! In the end of the video, you'll see me cheering on the fifth person that attempted get to the other side of the cove where I was. You have to navigate high tide areas with waves crashing against the rocks.

In my meditation before I started dancing, these songs spoke to the emotional states that were moving through me at the time.

1. Fade into You - Mazzy Star
2. Radha Rani - Jai Uttal
3. Flamenco Mexicana - Willie and Lobo, Wolfgang Fink, Willie Royal
4. Flowers in December - Mazzy Star

From the moment I woke up this morning, I've carried a profound sense of gratitude for life. All the turning points and struggles, the cultural and family past I was born into, the beautiful people in my life, my temporary youthful states, and the wisdoms and insights that have come before me that I now carry with me in my toolbelt of life. When I feel a true sense of gratitude, I can feel all of it. I can feel my sadness, sorrow, and grief. Yet I also feel my ecstatic joy, wonder, and awe of life. They influence and co-exist because of each other.

I can feel myself changing so much. It's exhilarating yet overwhelming at times.

Through music and dance, I become the space to hold all of these states.

I'm stepping more into my yin, the feminine. An energy force beyond gender constructs, the feminine is the archetype for receptivity, surrender, slowness, softness. The masculine yang is action, goal directed, strong and directed. Each of us carry both forces that create the larger whole. Life is a series of polarities, a constant balancing act. I'm committed more than ever to hold this creative tension of life.

One of the most profound discussions on the power of the woman is called Miriam’s Circle Dance from the inner teachings of the Torah. This work presents a glorious vision of the things that will change when a woman recovers her full stature and feminine consciousness, now matured, and will exert greater influence on the world and its values. And that the revelations that come through are so big to contain standing still, that dance and movement are necessary. Even though these states are clearly not just for women, I found this to be quite touching.

The lights of the circle world are so vast that they cannot fit into the brain as an isolated organ of consciousness. They require full body participation (as in dance to create a container sufficiently spacious to hold their revelations.
- Sarah Schneider, Woman and the Circle World

And... to close off this post, a beautiful poem by Oriah Mountain Dreamer.