holding space, Jan 22

i am facilitating a Soul Motion-inspired class next Tuesday evening, January 22 in a small, sweet studio space in Oakland's Rockridge neighborhood, and i would love to see your most excellent selves there to support me in this practice of presence. most of you know that i am in the Soul Motion teacher training program, an awareness-based movement ministry that offers grand opportunities for self-expression in the golden bowl of community. and for those less comfortable with such lofty context: come, dance, discover.

here come the details:

$5-$10 sliding scale. 6:00-7:30pm

NOTE: Different space than our usual Berkeley class with Zuza:

A beautiful space just a few blocks west of the Rockridge BART station, with plenty of street parking. Pristine sprung wood floors touched only by socks and bare feet.

NOTE: It's NOT "Danspace" which is right next door.

5390 Miles Avenue, Oakland, 94618

Photos: http://www.jeffreybihr.com/studio.html

Directions: http://www.jeffreybihr.com/directions.html

NOTE: Hudson Street is just across the street from the 24 freeway entrance off of Claremont - but it's not marked.

hope to be with you next Tuesday!

first class :: where do i stand?

one of the inspirations for these posts is my work with Vinn Marti, Zuza Engler and a brigade of dancer-student-teachers of Soul Motion™, a conscious movement practice i'm training in. there are many layers and points of view to this work; in this particular context, what i'll say is that the practice has helped me to see, and reveal myself, to others, in a clearer, more courageous way. and to be available to see the nature of my fellow dance-travellers as a reflection-echo of who "i" am. i am learning, in achingly small and magnificent increments, to utter -- in movement and stillness -- words like god and love. my intention in engaging in the first formal Soul Motion teacher training is to encourage in myself and in all those, seen and unseen, clarity of experience. i taught my first Soul Motion class on New Year's morning in a wood-heated yurt at Salamander Camp in the Santa Cruz mountains, inviting the theme of Ground with a group of seven. we'd spent the previous few days cooking, cleaning, hiking and making art together, with plenty of time spent apart, too. often i feel challenged (plagued by comparing mind, where everyone loses, by the way!) interacting with "strangers," and, truth be told, nearly retreated from the role of space-holder in a movement meditation session i'd planned. when i reminded the group the evening before, one man's stark questioning -- "no, i still don't understand; just what will we be doing, exactly?" -- provoked hesitation, fear and self-doubt in me. i even the next morning announced that i'd just play the music -- with no real container, intention, commitment, i imagined with relief -- in the kitchen as we ate and cleaned for our departure later that day. somehow, though, we gathered the next morning to begin together, including those who had questioned the night before. we warmed up with spare, vocal, tribal, prayerful music (it was so thrilling to put the playlists together); paused with an inquiry into what ground meant to each of us -- what we stood for, where we aspire to move from as the new year lay before us, with David Whyte's "Opening of Eyes" leading into my comments-- and continued for 45 more minutes. i was nervous to speak to this group of newer and not-so-new dancers, and stated that right out; that helped *me* ground, allowing a trust of the awkward (a flightless bird?), the defeat of expectation. as the music rose and fell, i spoke words of encouragement (sometimes tagging onto a lyric or a rhythm in the music); named what i saw as i moved through the room, listening, engaging, letting be (that last one was the most challenging!). when i noticed people sitting, not really "dancing," my mind presented its usual lecture about my pointless, ineffectual existence. from somewhere else, a soft and clear sense suggested nothing mattered and everything was important. i often lost conscious track of the theme during the session; or, rather, that theme expanded without external suggestion, to include generosity, support, and companionship with self and everything else. duets and small ensembles formed; at one point we wrapped one dear mover with the spiral of art paper we'd created the night before, as she raised her arm, triumphant: Lady Liberty welcoming a thousand pilgrims to solid ground. we ended sitting in a clump by the stove, and each, without prompting, spoke with heart about the year just passed and that just beginning. i saw eyes bright and eyes turning downward and upward; felt joy and communion and gratefulness; and imagined a soft and clear field we built together. here's the playlist: warmup Beata Viscera Jan Garbarek Officium Utferd Jan Garbarek/Agnes Buen Garnås Rosensfole Prayer 1 Jami Sieber Hidden Sky Looking Back Bob Holroyd Without Within Song for the unborn (Reagákeahtes) Mari Boine Gávcci jahkejuogu (Eight Seasons) Orange Sky Alexi Murdoch Time Without Consequence Opening of Eyes David Whyte Close to Home Spiritual High Moodswings Mood Food Bittersweet Symphony The Verve Urban Hymns Stay Human (Stereo Steambath Remix) Michael Franti & Spearhead Six Degrees 100 Jibaro Elkin & Nelson St. Moritz Vibes, Vol. II: Suite Royale Cowboy Rumba Ned Sublette Cowboy Rumba Tengo Sed (The Batidos Song) Batidos Six Degrees 100 Civilians Joe Henry Civilians Will The Circle Be Unbroken The Staple Singers The Oxford American - Southern Sampler 1998 Down In The River To Pray One Accord alive one

dying before we die: risk and the Hero's Journey

i just returned from an inspirational day with psychiatrist / anthropologist / transformational synthesist Stan Grof at Spirit Rock. well, it wasn't exactly me and Stan alone, trashing theoretical, mainstream psychology over single malt Scotch before a roaring fire, our suede-patched blazers tossed into a pile his Russian wolfhound Vladimir used for a bed. 200 other seekers of insight joined us in a lecture entitled "The Ultimate Journey: Consciousness and the Mystery of Death." Grof's clinical research on the nature of the human psyche has spanned nearly 50 years: from his beginnings as a Freud-o-philian psychiatrist in Prague; through his own gateway experiences with LSD in the late-1950s and its application to psychotherapy; his development (at Esalen) of a non-substance-based technology for inducing the healing power of non-ordinary states (Holotropic Breathwork), and setting up a training for breathwork facilitators.

What rang the bell of truth in me was something about how cautious i've been in most of my life, and how that stay-with-the-known strategy has largely kept me from taking the risks, and walking through the unknown's fire, that can forge and temper the Hero on his journey to full adult power and resiliency. Moving through the darkest part of the forest (see Joseph Campbell, who hung out with Grof at Esalen, not surprisingly), with vulnerability and even curiosity, dying to the old dynamics of parental protection and predictability: this is formalized, as Grof described yesterday, in rites of passage from world cultures in pre-industrialized times. What do we have here in the West? i learned to chant my haftorah in Hebrew at age 13 at Congregation Beth El in suburban Maryland; big fucking whoop!

How can i learn to go towards those experiences which seem dangerous, impossible, deadly: and tune my instrument in the process, as i learn to embody the imperatives of personal responsibility? most crucial experiences where we actually learn something bring on a whole load of pain; have you noticed?: the tragedies of romance, the loss of loved ones, the scaling of heights where the air -- and the veil between the worlds -- is as sheer as the eyelids that try to protect our vision from unwanted intrusions. and yet it is in these landscapes that we develop our heart and spirit muscles of flexibility and focus.

without prescribed ceremony to guide, i began to find my own, turning the eye inward towards places of somatic and psychic activation, movement, agitation. circles of like-minded souls, breathing, singing, moving together. ceremony where prayer for wisdom invokes teachers from all kingdoms, not just human. is it immortality i seek, or the experience of a more crucial and engaged life in this mortal form? supernatural mindscapes, or the unfiltered, everything goes (and comes, and goes) nakedness of presence?

My Graphic Design Work, announcing an event worth considering

in some of my entries, i'll display a piece or two of my recent graphic design work, like this card i designed for a New Year's event at Spirit Rock out in San Geronimo Valley. i've been working this year with Spirit Rock's Karen Gutowski on a variety of projects, and this one announces a gathering with performance (hilarious and deep Wes -- aka "Scoop" Nisker; amazing improvisor Nina Wise), ritual, dancing (led by 5Rhythms teacher Davida Taurek) and meditation. do take a look at their website http://spiritrock.org/. and, hey!, as long as you're at it, roll on over to my site, http://luciddesign.net/
there's a bunch of my occasionally brilliant print design displayed there. thanks!
btw, the dancing skeletons on the card are Tibetan Buddhist citipati, wrathful protector deities in an eternal dance of glorious, inevitable, clarifying death. Happy New Year (Moment, Miracle, Magnificence)!

first off: absolutely no idea

there are those who would
applaud the leap with no line
in mind to cross, no shape nor shadow to fill.
somehow preferable, this splatter in the
night or morning, no matter?

the way to begin is to start.