Stacey Butcher – unabashedly female

February 16, 2014February 16, 2014

The Force that compels us to Rise

Rising for Justice

For many people around our planet,Â February 14th is becoming associated with One Billion Rising, a global campaign to demand an end to violence against women and girls. We rise as women, as men, as human beings who know another world is possible and who are willing to speak out to help bring about this new world.

This year, One Billion Rising was about rising for Justice.***Â One Billion Rising is a tidal wave of change IF we understand it is not a fad to take part in and then move on to another, but rather a clear opportunity to verbalize and put into action our desire to end this violence.

For many of us in Western cultures, it’s Valentine’s Day, too.Â This past Friday night, Feb. 14th, 2014, I had the pleasure and joy of co-hosting a One Billion Rising women’s movement ritual with Stacey Butcher and Lakshmi Devi. Stacey, a 5Rhythms teacher, hosted a 5Rhythms wave; Lakshmi, a singer and songwriter, sang her songs, and invited us to sing as we moved into stillness at the end of the dance; and I shared writings and poetry, as well as recorded spoken-word poetry mixed with a beautiful instrumental song at the end of the dance wave.

Here I share with you what I shared on Friday evening. I hope it inspires you to listen for the deep wisdom inside of you, and feel for the force that will cause you to rise and stand for what you know in your heart to be true, and for a kinder, more tender world where all can live in dignity without fear of violence.

Love and Justice

Today we celebrate love. Today we rise for Justice. The two are inescapably linked.

When we love Life, Life itself that gives us this life, we cannot help but feel the call for justice in our bones – a justice that honors life itself.

Tonight we are sharing in a movement ritual.Â As I was preparing for tonight, I wondered what ritual is really about and I found this excerpt from an interview with Joseph Campbell.

“A ritual is the enactment of a myth. And, by participating in the ritual, you are participating in the myth. And since myth is a projection of the depth wisdom of the psyche, by participating in a ritual, participating in the myth, you are being, as it were, put in accord with that wisdom, which is the wisdom that is inherent within you anyhow. Your consciousness is being re-minded of the wisdom of your own life.â€

Tonight we are here together to move in ritual, as women who desire to rise in service to justice. And, through this ritual,Â we are here to be reminded of the wisdom of our own lives, the wisdom that is within us, a wisdom that has been within us all along.

We are here to remember the mythology that is at the heart of our lives as women in a world that is so much more than what we sometimes see it to be.

So, What is it to rise?

What does that even mean? Rising is a movement upwards. If we are rising, what are we rising up from? And what is behind the rising?

What is the force that compels us to rise?Â

The invitation tonight is to dance these questions, to dance yourself open enough to hear a response from within you, a response from your wise self, your Soul.

This wise self is instinctive and instinctual. She is visceral, animal, and primordial. She is feral. She is wide-eyed and sensual.

Your Soul knows how to rise.

Rising is in your blood and bones. It is in your cells. It is in your belly, because love desires to move through you, to rise you up into the world, way beyond what your mind thinks you are capable of. And love desires to move us all to live in accordance with what love desires, not what we desire.

“Love is not a matter of getting what you want. Quite the contrary. The insistence on always having what you want, on always being satisfied, on always being fulfilled, makes love impossible. To love you have to climb out of the cradle, where everything is ‘getting,’ and grow up into the maturity of giving, without concern for getting anything special in return. Love is not a deal, it is a sacrifice. It is not marketing, it is a form of worship.” ~Thomas Merton

Many years ago,

I danced in Mill Valley, on a Tuesday night with Kathy Altman. Leading the class, she did something truly extraordinaryâ€¦at least it was for me. I remember that night like it is this night. I remember it because I was led to dance a dance where I was so awake, so alive, deep in the cells of my body, that every move was imprinted in my cells.

This dance was visceral. It was instinctive. My Soul danced this dance, and then we wrote this as a way to capture words about something beyond words.

Tonight I danced.

Tonight I danced and came alive.
Tonight I danced and cried and pulsed and throbbed.

She told us to make our presence known.
She asked us to step so strongly there was no question we had been there.

She reminded us to track ourselves,
to be so aware of where we had been and where we were going,
so much so that our path wrapped its way around and around us until we were tightly wound balls of Being.

My hands connected,
molasses-like energy stretching from mama earth to the tips of my fingers.
As I perched on my paws, I felt her kindred spirit suck me into her tendrils of love.

Tonight I danced and came alive.
I felt his pulse, absorbing it into my body.
I felt her love, letting it run down my arm and fill my heart.
I felt their joy, knowing it was mine, too.
I knew other as self.

Tonight I danced and came alive.

So, tonight…

Here, together, let us come alive.

Tonight, together, let us dance these questions.

Tonight, remember the wisdom within you, reveal your instincts, feel the desire in your body to dance into its wholeness. Our bodies are creatures, instinctual creatures with hearts, longings, and voices that must speak.

Later, at then end of the dance as we moved into stillness, Stacey played a song that was a compilation of my spoken words and a powerful instrumental piece by Max Richter, On the Nature of Daylight.

Whatever youâ€™ve been through, whatever life has brought your way, whatever injustices, betrayals, or abuses you have experienced, you have survived.

You are here. Alive. Breathing. Dancing.

Whatever injustices, betrayals, or abuses you have perpetrated, you have survived.

You are here. Now. Alive. Whole.

Breathe this in, really take this knowing in. That you are here, alive, whole, and awake regardless of what happened in your past. Feel this aliveness in every cell of your body, a body that longs to know this aliveness, longs to live its fullness. Allow your heart to expand to the capacity that is its nature. Allow your arms to spread as wide and open as they long to be. Allow your belly to pulse and swell with the primordial creation that infuses your being with this precious life.

You are here, on this earth. You are alive on our beautiful planet. You are whole, a wholeness that is filled from the mother.

And, it is time to bring this aliveness to the world. To bring your wholeness to this world that is hungry for feeling, thirsty for truth, dying to be alive, wanting to be touched.

This is your gift to this world. Your aliveness. Your wholeness. Your breath. Your beauty. And to live this is to live what life is asking of you, what life is asking you to give. It is yours and yet it is not. It is given. It is given to you, through you, so that you can in turn give it forth.

It is this simple. Spend every breath completely, but not just for yourself. Spend it for Life, for others, for what is coming into being, for what is being born.

Be full. Be whole. Be love. Be truth.

There is already a mythology and an inherent wisdom within us that knows how to move mountains, and to birth something new.

riseupreclaimbadge275

Dance yourself open. Listen Deeply. Track yourself. Come back and tell us what you discover.

Allow it to show you where Justice lies, where Hope lives, where Love beckons.Open to this Force within. Dance, listen, and allow it to move you.

I hope you’ve enjoyed and have been inspired by these words.

If so, I ask you to share in the comments below how they’ve inspired you to rise.
I ask you to share with other women and men you know who are ready for similar inspiration.

If you’d like to read about last year’s rising, you can download this complimentary eBook, ‘rise up & reclaim’.

*** from OneBillionRising.Org:
ONE BILLION RISING FOR JUSTICE is a global call to women survivors of violence and those who love them to gather safely in community outside places where they are entitled to justice â€“Â courthouses, police stations, government offices, school administration buildings, work places, sites of environmental injustice, military courts, embassies, places of worship, homes, or simply public gathering places where women deserve to feel safe but too often do not.Â Â It is a call to survivors to break the silence and release their stories â€“ politically, spiritually, outrageously â€“ through art, dance, marches, ritual, song, spoken word, testimonies and whatever way feels right.

Leading Image: LicenseÂ Some rights reservedÂ byÂ mikebaird

February 15, 2013February 15, 2013

A tsunami doesn’t just stop when the clock strikes midnight!

Now what?

One Billion Rising is over. And, it has just begun.

I first joined One Billion Rising about a year ago. The day, Feb 14, 2013, seemed so far off. Yet, the vision pulled me in. One Billion women rising. I wondered how that would shift things. I wondered how that would change the feeling on the planet, in our cities, in our hearts.

Last night, I co-led a beautiful event with Stacey Butcher, a teacher of 5Rhythms. Stacey created a gorgeous dance wave and she led us through it with love and grace. Kim Rosen, a well known spoken-word artist, and a personal friend of Eve Ensler’s, shared two spoken-word treasures that lit a fire in us before we moved into the dance. And, for the last song of the wave,Â Christine Hodil sang a beautiful song that we all joined in on at the end. Our hearts were opened, moved, fired-up, and lullabied. We were the one billion, and we danced for the one billion. And, there were so many men present, who danced alongside of us, who danced for the women they love, and for the women they don’t even know who continue to face abuse, violence, and harassment.

It is jarring to be in a beautiful event such as this, to open our hearts, to invite in the possibility for a world that is different, and then to step back into what seems to be the same old world.

What I do know, now, after witnessing so many women and men across the planet rising and dancing by way of live-streaming and the internet, is that this is no longer the same old world. While on the outside it may look that way, on the inside we are changed. We’ve cracked open the cage. We know something different now. We’ve experienced the fire and joy and creativity that comes when we dance, and come together, and rise.

One Billion Rising IS a new way of life. It’s a new way of being. It’s living unabashedly the fullness of our womanhood.

In practical terms? Itâ€™s about allowing out all the parts of ourselves we keep hidden for fear of being abused and harassed.

Our patriarchal conditioning keeps an essential aspect of us locked up in an internal prisonâ€¦the aspect that is the most powerful and enlivening for our souls. This aspect is nourishing and healing. It is our instinctual, sexual self, that when expressed brings forth playfulness, joy, passion, creativity, and a good dose of fire. It is not easily controllable, meaning our own internal conditioning has to work really hard to control it. It gets exhausting.

You know what Iâ€™m talking about, donâ€™t you!?

Weâ€™ve internalized the oppressor, so we continue the oppression against ourselves, along with the fear of oppression from outside. Eve Ensler so wisely saw that we have to break the chains ourselves, we have to break out of the cage we keep ourselves in, and dancing is a beautiful way to free this instinctive erotic nature that is both organic to our souls and a sacred aspect of life.

Before I go any further, I want to reiterate, that the erotic as it is understood in the current paradigm, is simply a small thin slice of what it truly is. When I shared my thoughts with one man I know and used the word erotic, his response? â€œThatâ€™s porn.â€ This is what weâ€™ve been conditioned to think eros and the erotic are.

Yet, what the erotic is is a beautiful aspect of life, this aspect that is at the heart of our creative, sensual, sexual, joyful, and loving natures. And because it is at the heart of creativity and embodied love, it is also the channel that will bring about lasting change, and deep nourishment to a world that has been out of balance for far too long.

And, it is exactly what our world hungers for just as it is what we hunger for. How could it be otherwise?

Life is wholeness. When we pretend we aren’t whole, we aren’t really fully living.Â

To dance is to unleash joy.

To dance is to step back into the flow, to move that which has been stuck.Â

To dance is also to reawaken our natural relationship to the body, to music, to rhythm, and to the beat of the drum, the beat of our blood pressure, the beat of our hearts.

One Billion Rising is “unleashing a feminist tsunami, an energetic rearrangement of our universal chemistry. the biggest volunteer action maybe ever of women across the planet, a seismic collective remembering of who we are, a calling back of our authenticity, a world dance shaking up our original energy and wisdom.” ~ Eve Ensler

So what do I now know that I didn’t know before yesterday, V-Day 2013?

I know that we can come together as women to reawaken our wisdom and nature.

I know that we are hungering to rekindle the fire of our erotic nature.

I know that many men all around us want us to do this. They know they cannot. And they know that it is in all of our best interests to do so.

I know that many women fear this aspect, along with many men. And, I know we have the courage to dance through this fear for the sake of life itself.

I know that dance is sacred, that our bodies are sacred, and that it is up to us to embody this truth.

I know that women have something important to do in this new era that men cannot do and it is time we do it.

I know we’ve stepped through a threshold and we cannot turn back.

I know that women across this planet can come together to rise in service to each other, and to all of life.

I know this. We’ve witnessed it. I felt it last night. I feel it today. I feel it right now.

Margaret Mead wrote, â€œNever doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.â€

If a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world, just imagine what a feminist tsunami of a billion women and men dancing can do. Imagine it. Feel it in your bones. Pray it. Dance it. Paint it. Sing it.

A tsunami doesn’t just stop when the clock strikes midnight!

Take your sisters and brothers by hand and step across the threshold into this new land. And, keep dancing. We must be committed to dancing.Â We are in this together. Isn’t that a wonderful thing to know!Â

I’m putting together the pieces I read last night, along with a little something else, into a complimentary ebook for my newsletter subscribers. If you’d like to receive it, be sure to sign up for my newsletter in the top right corner of the page. When it is ready, I’ll send it your way.

Here’s the One Billion Rising video from San Francisco. It’s hard to see me, but I’m there. I love seeing myself dancing. I’m so serious here, so passionate. It’s a lovely thing when you FINALLY accept your intensity is a beautiful thing.

January 18, 2012January 24, 2012

Are You Breathing?

I am in class, on the dance floor. Stacey, the teacher, begins to weave her magic and invites us to, “Move from the breath.” I instantly breath more deeply. How simple yet powerful is the reminder to breath.

I move.

And, I move.

And, as I move from the breath my movement deepens, my body opens, a simple joy makes itself known.

The breath carries me into the wave: a wave of rhythm, a wave of pleasure, a wave of release, a wave of not knowing…

My body begins to feel like liquid – liquid breath, liquid love, liquid life – and then I soften, open and receive. I receive everything I need to keep moving, for as long as the Spirit moves me.

It isn’t always so simple…or at least I tell myself that is so.Â But if I’ve learned one thing from dancing the 5Rhythms, it is to always come back to the breath.

When life feels hard, come back to the breath.

When I don’t know anything at all, come back to the breath.

When I’m scared shitless, come back to the breath.

When I’m ungrounded, spinning, and caught in one of those circles of drama, come back to the breath.

When I’m joyously alive and feeling on top of the world, come back to the breath.

When I hate what is happening, come back to the breath.

When I’m flowing, come back to the breath.

When I am mad as hell, come back to the breath.

When I have no idea what to do next, come back to the breath.

Whenever, whatever, wherever, whomever, however… come back to the breath.

I’ve found breathing is a supremely sensuous experience.

I am breathing.