Sacred Body: Biology and Soul

The focus of today’s class was Nia Principle #13: Dancing What You Sense.
When we experience the essential lesson of Nia — that life is lived through sensation — we become connected, connected to the body, connected to our lives, connected to the world, and connected to the moment and to the great presence that lives [...]

[Read more →]

Here are three of my favoerite poems by Kabir.
When my friend is away from me, I am depressed;
nothing in the daylight delights me,
sleep at night gives no rest,
who can I tell about this?
The night is dark and long . . . hours go by . . .
because I am alone, I sit [...]

[Read more →]

April is National Poetry Month, and today, April 29th, is Poem In Your Pocket Day.  In honor of this, each student chose a poem at random from the basket.  Our focus for class was the cross-pollination of the first line of each person’s poem, read aloud:
Wage peace with your breath.
The same stream of life [...]

[Read more →]

This is one of my favorite poems to say, to hear, to feel the echo of spiraling through the past and the future and the present.  We heard it at the end of the Nia New Year’s class this morning.
I Live My Life
I live my life in growing orbits,
which move out over the things [...]

[Read more →]

It’s weird to be back on all the asthma meds again — high levels of prednisone and doing the nebulizer four times a day — after all these years baruch hashem of feeling so healthy.  But I bless all these drugs which allow me to live.  There are big differences now, compared to when I [...]

[Read more →]

(First in a series about healing pneumonia and asthma.)
Last night, my friends Sharon and Ronen came over to visit.  They brought chicken soup.  Ronen read this poem.

 
 
 
 
 
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to [...]

[Read more →]

Eternity
He  who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy.
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sun rise.
– William Blake
(1757-1827) 

[Read more →]

Red Brocade
The Arabs used to say,
When a stranger appears at your door,
feed him for three days
before asking who he is,
where he’s come from,
where he’s headed.
That way, he’ll have strength
enough to answer.
Or, by then you’ll be
such good friends
you don’t care.
Let’s go back to that.
Rice?  Pine [...]

[Read more →]

The class focus on Saturday, chosen at random from the basket of focii, was “Daily Connection With the Earth.”
What is the sensation in your body when you hear and feel these words?
My teacher, Robert Bly, taught me how to spontaneously tweak the language in a poem I am reading according to the promise of the [...]

[Read more →]

Just as it says in the song from “Hair,” at dawn on February 14, the moon was in the seventh house and Jupiter aligned with Mars — all in the sign of Aquarius.  In honor of that planetary configuration and in honor of the play “Hair,” we danced to the entire original soundtrack of the [...]

[Read more →]