What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
Door.
This is a door.
This is me approaching the door.
This is me standing here: threshold.
This is me going through the door.
Door.
This is me saying DOOR.
Door door door door door.
And sometimes: Hello, Door.
Entry.
Last week I taught this class on the Art of Embarking.
It was about setting things up and preparing for the voyage.
And later a bunch of people asked me how you begin to start paying attention to entry.
They wanted to know how you begin to establish rituals of entry.
What’s a ritual?
A ritual is not as weird or complicated as it sounds. Or rather: it doesn’t need to be.
It’s really just a marker.
A ritual is a marker.
Anything that marks time or space. Anything that says: I am here. Anything that reminds you about your presence in a specific place or moment.
Start with the doors.
Symbolic and literal entrance. The moment of door might be the easiest place to begin.
Or maybe it’s three moments:
- The moment before the door.
- The moment of door.
- The moment after the door.
Or maybe it’s hundreds of tiny little moments. It doesn’t matter.
That is: it doesn’t matter for our purposes right now.
Being aware of DOOR as you are crossing through is another form of the pause. Paws!
Today I’m entering Crossing the Line.
We begin the Crossing (password: haulaway) at 5:00pm this evening.
I am saying hello to all the entryways as I pass through the doors.
The literal doors:
The door to the building, the door to the Playground itself, the doors to the Refueling Station, the Treasure Room, the Toy Shop, the Galley and my Pirate Queen Quarters/Dressing Room.
The pink fairy door.
And other more internal doors.
The doors to teacher-me and writer-me and dancer-me and the me who knows how to be at the front of the V.
The doors to creativity, inspiration, play, delight, curiosity and the scientific process.
But here’s the thing.
Everything is a door.
Even walls, as uncle Ralph said.
So the question becomes:
If everything is a door, what am I doing to mark the moment of passing through it?
Hello, door.
This is me and this is the door.
Me and my relationship to the door. Me and my relationship with myself as I am going through doors.
Me and the person I am becoming as a result of having experienced this particular passage through this particular door.
All of it.
Play with me!
Self-practice and the giant communal and commenting blanket fort.
We can invent rituals.
We can name doors.
We can pile on ridiculous things so that our door-rituals become more and more baroque, and the entire day just becomes one giant door-crossing extravaganza. (I’m picturing illustrations by Dr. Seuss.)
We can have doors for depletion and doors for celebration.
We can put doors inside of doors. We can say door over and over again until it loses all meaning. We can make doors for future-us.
Usual comment zen applies. We all have our stuff. We’re all working on our stuff.
We take responsibility for what’s ours, we let other people have what’s theirs. We don’t give advice. We’re supportive and welcoming. Everyone belongs. We play.
Very Personal Ads #120: I hardly even know her? No one should laugh at that.
Personal ads. They’re … personal! Very.
Each week I write these VPAs to practice asking for what I want. And to get clarity on what that really is, even when asking feels conflicted.
I always get useful information about my relationship with various aspects of the ask. Join in if you like!
It’s Sunday, you guys!
Not sure when that happened.
Of course you can VPA all week, if you like. Okay.
Thing 1: It’s happening. Shiva Nata workshop in Boulder!
Here’s what I want:
Guess what? I’m going to be teaching a two hour fun-crazy-wonderful destuckifying Shiva Nata workshop in Boulder, Colorado.
It’s going to be on Thursday, November 10.
3-5pm.
All levels welcome, including total beginners and people who have no idea what this is.
It’s going to be amazing.
What I want: 18 people! And for everyone to sign up in the next couple days, so that I don’t have to talk it up because I’m going to be running the Crossing this week and next week.
Ways this could work:
First off, I am going to give you the link so you can read all about it.
Then I am going to ask you for all your questions about this (or the questions you would have if you lived in or near Colorado).
So far all I’ve done is put up the page and also I told the Frolicsome Bar. And six people signed up right away, which is excellent.
Let’s see.
I can let people know at the local pub (yes, twitter).
And tell the much-neglected HAT list (aka Havi’s Announcing a Thing).
Tell the shivanauts. Update the Doing a Thing board posts at the Kitchen Table.
Put it up as an event on Facebook…
And of course, I can talk to slightly future me and find out how she did it. While wearing a costume!
My commitment.
To keep making my favorite not-funny joke.
Boulder? I hardly even know her. Ahahahahaaaa. COLORADO!
To be present for this. To be joyful about all the fabulous people I get to hang out with there.
To remember to wear my outrageously colorful shopkeeper’s hat when I’m telling people about this, because that makes everything easier and more fun.
And here’s the link again: http://ShivaNata.com/boulder
Thing 2: Advance planning, whoah! Crazy.
Here’s what I want:
For the past few years I’ve kind of taken advantage of the weird thing that is internet fame.
Mainly because I’m crazy-busy and also it’s just been the easy way.
Like announcing things five seconds before they start, because they’ll fill. See: the ask directly above this one.
Or forgetting to tell the announcement list about events/programs/special-weird-opportunities that are happening. And then people — rightfully — feel upset about having missed stuff. Sorry sorry!
It’s not fair to my people. And it’s not how I want to treat me-from-next-week either. It doesn’t go well with conscious entry, which is the thing I’m trying to live by.
So. I want to start announcing things way in advance, and giving everyone plenty of planning time. And I’m going to play with this.
Ways this could work:
Looking at what is working. It’s not all terrible. Steps are being taken!
A couple of the 2012 Rallies are already full.
We’ve already opened registration for NEXT November’s Great Ducking Out. As in, not next month but a year from then.
*waves to the brave signer-uppers who have a year to prepare for this*
And while my Crossing the Line 8 Day Voyage program starts this Toozday, you can already go ahead and apply for next October. Password: haulaway
Progress.
What else can I do?
Some stone skipping to find out what’s next. I can schedule the Rallies for 2013. I can finish the HAT for Shivanauticon…
My commitment.
To experiment and play.
To invoke the qualities of safety, exploration, permission, autonomy, form and preparation.
To notice how my teachings about FLOW (our quarterly theme at my Kitchen Table program) are related to this wish.
To have fun with this when I can. To forgive myself when I can’t. There’s probably a good reason for why the old way has been the way.
Thing 3: posties….
Here’s what I want:
So if I’m teaching straight for the next eight days, not sure when/how blog posts are going to get written.
But they just are.
That’s what I want.
Ways this could work:
I have a list of 16 post ideas at the Playground…
Could share some of the capers we’ll be doing.
Or bits from my journal.
Or this could just magically resolve itself in a perfect simple way.
My commitment.
To love this space for what it is: a safe place to process, experiment, discover and goof off.
To stay connected to the culture of the blog, the Playground, and the Crossing. To feel or remember how they’re all connected, knowing that they share the same qualities:
Freedom, amnesty, safety, sovereignty, play, wonder, delight, calm, peacefulness, creativity, possibility.
Thing 4: Calling all KT-ers, past and present.
Here’s what I want:
We extended the Rally sale for Kitchen Table mice, whether from this year’s KT or graduates from 2009 or 2010.
Through November 4th.
I’m not going to have time to do a lot of spreading the word, so I need the word to somehow spread itself.
Ways this could work:
Not sure yet. Obviously I’ll put it up at the KT. And I’m planting this here.
The link. Password: crackers
My commitment.
To find out where I’m stuck on this. To ask wise, loving questions. To be willing to be wrong. To throw confetti.
Thing 5: Nailing Thriller and then learning the Shim Sham
Here’s what I want:
I’m feeling pretty good about the Thriller dance.
At this point I can do it at full speed without watching the video as long as I have audio cues.
This week I’ll practice some more until I can do it without any help.
And then I want to learn the Shim Sham!
Ways this could work:
I’ll get to practice Thriller at Last Thursday, and then during the Zombie walk next weekend.
And I can practice on my own.
Plus I’ll do some Shiva Nata for extra fabulous-coordination-agility-hotness magic.
As for the Shim Sham? I’m putting here and will let the wish percolate for a while.
My commitment.
Grab and pull, punch-punch-punch-down!
Dance it up. Dance it up.
Progress report on past Very Personal Ads.
Just to update you on what’s happened since last time.
I wanted to learn Thriller, and I did!
It took going to three different classes and studying the youtube videos, but I’ve got it and it looks great.
Then I wanted love notes from shivanauts who do roller derby. Which happened but then I didn’t do anything with them, so that’s the next step.
I wanted to Go Dark and run away, which sort of happened and sort of didn’t. But big progress happened on my secret hideaway, so I’m feeling good about that.
Also I wanted to plant surprises for slightly future me, and we worked on that all week. So that was pretty cool
I asked for lots of people for the Art of Embarking, and for it to be incredible. Both of those happened too. A pretty good week this time. Right on.
Play-filled comment zen. Here’s what I’d love today.
- Wanted: Your own personal ads, small or large. Updates on past ones if you like.
- You can also do these on your own or in your head. You can always call silent retreat!
- Leave your gwishes! Throw things in the pot!
- Things we try to keep away from: the word “manifest”, telling people how they should be asking for things, unsolicited advice.
- VPA amnesty applies, of course. Leave yours any time between now and next Sunday (or whenever, really) — it’s all fine by us!
xox
Friday Chicken #168.5: accidental wormhole (not a band!)
In which I cover the good stuff and the hard stuff in my week, trying for the non-preachy, non-annoying side of ritual and self-reflection.
And you get to join in if you feel like it.
I was in the archives this week (for the love of god do not click on that — they are endless!) looking for something or other that I already can’t remember.
And I discovered — much to my shock and horror — that somehow we skipped Friday Chicken #163.
We didn’t miss a Friday, of course. That’s never happened.
But a number is gone. It’s screwing up the count. Hence the point five. Might not be the best solution but it’s the first thing I came up with.
Anyway, shall we? Let’s chicken.
The hard stuff
Over-teaching.
Note to slightly future me. Or really, to the me who gets to leave presents for her:
Please do not plan to teach three teleclasses the week before leading an eight day retreat.
The first class was fantastic. Same with the third one. The one on Toozday I didn’t do a great job on. Sorry. Overloaded.
Apparently people got really good stuff from it anyway? So yay. The content was killer. But bleargh. I was not as there for it as I would have liked.
So much busy.
What with seventeen million things to do, and all the different forms of preparation.
Zombie thriller is totally hard and not fair not fair!
Somehow I’d thought that since I dance every day, this would be pretty easy for me.
I’ve got it down now, pretty much. But it took so many more hours of practice time than I’d imagined.
Bah.
Administrative nightmares all over the place.
Systems are mostly-working.
So the holes are just that much more noticeable.
Too many things.
Maybe not seventeen million but still overwhelming.
Had to go to a box store. Twice.
Imagine a dog coming out of cold and unpleasant water and shaking it all off.
I want a long weekend!
But it’s not going to happen this weekend.
The good stuff
Getting stuff done!
The hanging-out-with-my-iguanas session, which I thought would be horrible but was actually fascinating and useful.
I learned all sorts of things about the stuff I don’t want to do and why.
Learning the Thriller dance, finally.
So. Much. Fun.
Also, I like that this weird hole in my dance vocabulary has now been filled.
Shivanauticon.
Oh, yes.
We’re having a convention. Well, an Unconventional.
Details coming soon. EXCITEMENT!
Internet high five! Which I got from @sockdreams….
Fun stuff coming up! Who wants to do fun stuff with me?
Like going to the costume sale at the Oregon Ballet Theater warehouse this weekend?
Or going to the Rosebuds bout Saturday night?
Or doing Zombie Thriller next weekend???
Come on! Tell me.
Just happy.
I don’t know.
Smiling to myself. Crunching fall leaves. Eating squash.
Things are good.
Dance dance dance!
This week I was living and breathing in dancing mode.
My body is sore and happy.
Barbara F-ing Sher, ladies and gentleman!
So it’s no secret that I adore Barbara Sher.
Some of you might remember when I flew out to spend a week in North Carolina to do a retreat with her.
She’s one of the smartest, wisest, funniest, most fabulous people I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. I sleep with a copy of Wishcraft by my bed. If she ever finds herself without a place to stay, I”m going to move her into my house and make her omelets.
We did a Kitchen Table call with her yesterday and it was so good!
Also do you know what she said about me?
She said: “I think you have a special handle on fun and joy. I like it when you sulk and grumble too, but you have never lost that magical thing that children have.”
Which is so perfect because I forget this like, three hundred times a day.
Crossing the Line!
It begins on MONDAY. It’s here. Password: haulaway
We are crossing. The line. And this is the voyage I care about most.
And it is going to be the most amazing thing ever.
I have planned all sorts of things and I am giggling over them.
Also, soon I get to buy the pie!
And we will have stars on the ceiling, and everything will be better.
The fun part of the Chickening happens here.
Tabstravaganza! Or: what’s Havi been up to with all those open Firefox tabs?
- My friend Madeleine’s marvelous no-stress manifesto, which is basically an anti-manifesto manifesto. Love.
- This made me so happy I can hardly even stand it.
- Also the candification of our food. By which I mean “food”. YES.
- This piece by David Erik Nelson (another Ann Arborite) called In it for the money.
- Thank you, Hayley for making me read this piece from Maya Angelou.
From the archives.
Some old, weirdly pertinent posts that I don’t remember having written, encountered while looking for something else:
- Destuckifying a hurt. (July, 2009)
- Visibility, Invisibility, Power, Pirates. (May, 2009)
- This one called Who me?, which might even be the first post I wrote about dancer-me. And then promptly forgot about.
Man. That second one I need to use on everything.
Playing live at the meme beach house — it’s the Fake Band of the Week!
Background? Ez and I make up bands. Stu (retired Bolshevik-fearing voice-to-text software) once translated “people will hate me and be jealous” to “they’ll hang out at my Meme Beach House“. It’s just one guy.
This week’s angry but hilarious band:
It Takes A Village, Asshole.
Their first album was, as everyone knows, Closer To Rants. It was pretty awesome.
Though of course, it’s really just one guy.
Hallo Hallo! I am saying Hallo Hallo. Announcement time.
Picture me wearing that crazy hat…
- The January Rally (Rally!) is nearly full. February is more than half full. So take a look and make something happen.
- Do you have an iPhone? If not, go to your local pub and chat up someone who does. Tell them they need to get the Shiva Nata app. Then borrow their phone for five minutes a day.
- Shivanauticon, people. If you’ve never done Shiva Nata yet, don’t worry. It will happen. But we are going to have the most unconventional convention that ever was.
I think that’s everything? If not, I’ll add stuff to the Very Personal Ads over the weekend.
That’s it for me …
And of course you can join in my Friday ritual right here in the comments if you feel like it.
Yes? Anything hard and/or good happen in your week?
And, as always, have a glorrrrrrrrrrrrious day, a restful weekend and a happy week to come. Shabbat shalom.
p.s. It’s okay if it’s not Friday anymore. There’s complete chicken amnesty — join in whenever (or not) and it’s no big deal.
The hotel inside my head is delighted to offer a wide variety of in-house entertainment options.
I have been having lots of long talks with Cairene about exhaustion. And the consequences of exhaustion.
Like how all the stupidest and most regrettable things I have ever done (see: sneaking into self-forgiveness) all end up being related to how ridiculously little sleep I was running on at the time.
And how most of the people I know, most of the time, are in a state of nearly permanent depletion. Including me, of course.
In fact, most people I know are so used to running on empty that it isn’t even that noticeable.
You only recognize it when you’ve gone beyond depletion. Past whatever reserves were left. When it’s the full-on falling-apart everything-must-crash time.
So yeah. I’ve been doing a lot of interacting with the various pieces and elements. As you know.
And today I need to tell you about the hotel.
When I reach a state of worn-out, I can’t really make decisions.
I definitely can’t make the kind of decisions that support slightly-future-me.
That’s why I’m always practicing. Trying to be — and become — the person who can take care of her.
We have long conversations where I ask her questions about what she knows and what she needs.
I do stone-skippings. I plant presents for her, and make notes about what she likes.
I consult the Book of Me. And the Dammit List.
Basically I’m trying to avoid situations where she’ll be worn out. And if she is worn out, I want her to not have to make hard decisions.
It’s not letting future me get into the wrong kind of shenanigans.
Cairene said something super crazy smart about how the tired mind is pretty much always going to decide wrong. Or it will choose the things that don’t help.
So the idea behind all this conscious entry and preparing for the voyage that I am always talking about is basically this:
Set stuff up so that there aren’t any of the kind of choices that are going to be stupid and terrible.
Don’t offer up any of those things that take you away from yourself as possible options.
Set it up.
So then we were talking about how at fancypants hotels they slip that sheet under the door telling you about all the things happening the next day.
You get to pore over all the stuff there is to do. And even if you don’t do any of it, your choices are still guided into the same general pathways. Do I want to do something restful? Something fun? Something entertaining?
And so Hotel Playgroundia was born.
Hotel Playgroundia is part-imaginary and part-not.
It’s the idea of the place that I go to chill. It exists to take care of me. And to remind me to take care of me, if that makes sense.
It’s also what I’m calling the new extra-cozy loft-bed-blanket-fort deal in my Pirate Queen quarters at the Playground. Which also doubles (metaphorically) as my Dressing Room.
In the hotel room there’s a guidebook.
It’s that kind of binder that hotels have (a bit like the PLUM, the Playground User Manual).
It’s all about how things need to work when nothing is working.
There’s a page about food options.
About movement classes and old Turkish lady yoga.
Where and when you can get a massage. What you need for the pool.
Room service options. The mini-bar. Entertainment choices.
Emergency services (what to do when you freak out and fall apart).
That’s what I did today.
I played with magic markers and construction paper.
And stickers.
I made eight very colorful pages.
While having fits of giggles resulting from my attempts to invoke cliched hotel copywriting:
“At Hotel Playgroundia, we are honored to provide a variety of nourishing snacking selections…”
“Our plentiful and varied entertainment options include an exciting assortment of books that are already on your iPhone…”
But it’s all there so that I don’t have to decide.
Or if I get to the point of Beyond Tired, the only decisions I can make are between X thing-that-is-supportive and Y, that thing-that-is-also-supportive.
I won’t be able to choose the things that hurt me because they won’t be available options at the hotel.
And if it doesn’t work, I’ll play with it some more.
That I’ll get tired and over-tired is a given. Being alive involves playing at the edges and discovering what my boundaries and limitations are, sometimes the hard way.
But my gwish is that the coping mechanisms I’m putting in place will bring my attention back to being cared for.
That way, instead of constantly trying to make my way back from beyond exhausted, I can eventually find out what it’s like to live in a state of 90% preventative and 10% recovery. And not the other way around.
Play with me!
Self-practice and the giant communal and commenting blanket fort.
There was kind of a lot packed in here today.
Probably because I just taught the Art of Embarking on Monday, and then on Toozday I did a class for my Kitchen Table program on flow, depletion and recovery. So I’m kind of swimming in this stuff right now.
Here’s are some things we could possibly mess around with today:
- Identifying the signs of oh whoops, in depletion again. Obviously, the People Vary rule holds true here. But what are yours? How do you know when you’re there?
- What types of things would your hotel guidebook include?
- What would you-from-a-few-weeks-from-now love to have in [his/her/your-favorite-pronoun’s] hotel?
Usual comment zen applies. We all have our stuff. We’re all working on our stuff. We take responsibility for what’s ours, we let other people have what’s theirs. We don’t give advice. We’re supportive and welcoming. Everyone belongs. We play.
Confidential to [redacted] — past-me would like to add that she does not at all regret you-related-decisions of a decade ago, extreme lack of sleep be damned. Though she apologizes for obviously-stupid other you-related-decisions that happened the next year. For the record.
Planting hidden surprises for later.
Yesterday I talked about the practice of leaving presents for future-me.
And Larisa told this awesome story in the comments about how her brother used to throw fistfuls of Jolly Ranchers into the backseat of the car to discover later.
Exactly. Like that!
There are so many marvelous surprises that we can hide for later.
What kind of presents and surprises?
Presents and surprises for future-me can be small or large.
They can be really obvious. Or things that might not even be noticed.
Maybe she’ll trip over them and then say ohhhhhhhhhhh, got it.
1. Words and qualities.
Sometimes I go a few months ahead in the calendar and I write a word on a day. Any day.
Like REJUVENATION.
Or AUTONOMY.
Or TRUST.
It’s planting a day that is full of the essence of that. And then when she sees it, slightly-future-me will have a flash of remembering.
She’ll know what it means. Or she’ll find out.
We have a colorful wall of words and qualities at the Playground in the Refueling Station.
I like to sit in the rainbow hammock and breathe in the words. Me-who-is-arriving-in-a-few-weeks is even better at taking time for that.
In fact, she’ll probably know why the word I chose for her is important — and she’ll know it in ways that I am not yet able to understand.
She’ll also know why that day was the right one, and then we’ll giggle over it together.
2. Experiences.
Booking her a massage for before and after Rally (Rally!).
Scheduling secret artist dates for her at her favorite cafes.
Buying a giant box of crayons just for her.
Sending a postcard to my uncle to tell him she’s going to visit him and hide out in the woods with his dogs.
3. Reminders.
Mailing her postcards with coded messages.
Putting things where she’ll see them.
Flowers.
Planting presents for the next two weeks.
Things are going to be busy and amazing for me-who-is-arriving.
She is teaching Crossing the Line, which is an eight day retreat. That’s a lot of work, and also a lot of batshit crazy life-changingly great epiphanies that she’ll be having, what will all the shivanauttery.
She’s going to need spaciousness and time. Love and support.
What can I do to make things easier on her?
- Use secret agent code words to set up a rendezvous with Liz.
- Flowers and love notes in her dressing room.
- Everything she doesn’t need to deal with can go into a box and be put in the office she won’t be using.
- Give her a small tactile reminder of who she is. Maybe a necklace from her friend’s Etsy shop?
- A list of reminders.
- A round with the First Mate to review.
Play with me!
Self-practice and the giant communal and commenting blanket fort.
We’re leaving presents for future-us. Yay!
What could we maybe-possibly-theoretically-if-we-wanted-to plant now for later?
Usual comment zen applies. We all have our stuff. We’re all working on our stuff. We take responsibility for what’s ours, we let other people have what’s theirs.
We make this a safe space to play by not giving each other advice (unless people ask) and by paying attention to what we need.
Also: we can declare Silent Retreat whenever we feel like it, dammit.
Kisses.