Karma Groove (tm)

The notion of "you" in Karma Groove (tm).

I teach Hip Hop Style dance - the style I teach is influenced by Michael Jackson, Paula Abdul, Janet Jackson, Old School and New School styles, House and Video Dance and freestyle influenced by breakin', pop n'lock, expressive movement, reggae, and hence in appreciation for the current styles performed by Usher, Justin Timberlake, Chris Brown, Marion, and Nee-Yo. Music that inspires the movement can truly be anything from Country, Metal, Jazz, Classical, Indie, New Age, Punk, Hardcore, Rock n' Roll, Classic Rock, and Alternative; however music typically used is similar and usually from Top 40, Club Hits, Old School Hip Hop, Hip Hop, R&B, Pop Hits, and Underground Hip Hop.

Karma Groove (tm) is a modified combination of Vinyasa Yoga- using the principles of stretching and connecting with our breath and gradually moving into a cardio dance workout with a small portion devoted to learning choreography. The choreography is original and is a Hip Hop Style dance.

Karma Groove (tm) developed as a natural combination of using the efficiency of yoga techniques in warming up and stretching the body before dancing. Emphasis is devoted to relaxing into one's breath and to clear the mind of judgement and to prepare for self expression while moving. Whether moving with the class, taking direction, the importance of the practice is moving through it- moving through the connections made with direction, choreography, rhythm and dancing. These connections are defined inside yourself. There is no right or wrong move in throughout the class. Each movement created in Karma Groove is correct when it comes from good intentions. Being kind to ourselves, releasing ourselves from judging our movements but feeling free to just move.


http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x561y2_rb-dancers_music

Boomerangs

It has been quite some time since my last entry. About 5 months. It has been an incredulous, consuming, exhausting, emotionally challenging 5 months. And while I have felt like I have sunk down into the depths of my own personal tragedies embedded deep within my human psyche, I have been wonderfully grateful for the love and support that has surrounded me. And the many new things I am learning about myself and life.

For a woman, I have spent alot of time looking into mirrors. Dressing myself, applying makeup, primping, prepping, judging, admiring, admonishing, cherishing, and loathing. They always say that you never truly do know a person, and that there is always that deep mystery within. A galaxy, a universe, a whole world of something...this can be beyond religion, even spirituality. It can be just as simple as emergent behavior combined with the unknowns in our future, and the combination of all of our steps up until now. I am not truly a determinist, because I believe in free-will, however, I also do believe that things happen for a reason...that at any point, sometimes it is difficult for us to see the larger and deeper picture of ourselves and how we fit into the cosmos of our own inner worlds and the world in which we share with others.

I have learned that in the past 5 months, my mind can be both my ally and my enemy. Most recently, I have been slowly approaching my mostly silly and sometimes self-sabotaging mind with love and openness. There was a time before my slow slouching into adulthood that my mind was more of a place for curiosity and questioning. Exploring, adventurous, reveling in the things that existed around me. I remember feeling the joy of a toddler consciousness, feeling a child's personal gratitude for tactile sensations, visual perceptions, and anything that resembled candy. Perhaps, there is a time around there, that in the Eastern tradition of the term ego, our ego is our friend and not yet that wily, mangy, character scaring us into the submission of downward negative cycles. A child's ego is still in it's basic and most simple cravings of surviving, our lists of pleasures and pains is still very short as we experience life.

Our faces and our bodies change as we watch ourselves grow in the mirror, and depending what choices we made in life, and all the circumstances we may not have been able to predict; we begin to experience things in our lives that cause greater pains and yet greater pleasures...most of the time we experience pain as loss of some pleasure. And, our minds keep track for us, mostly because our mind wants to protect us. Our minds combined with its evolving ego, now beginning to find and feel other things in the world as "candy", begins to activate in ways that we sometimes are unaware of.

My own personal focus has been on my heart. Between my crazy ass mind, and my even crazier mother-fucking ego, my heart has been the negotiator between the two. I have found that when I focus on love or, the term used in Buddhism, "lovingkindness", it seems to ignite a calm within me and a wisdom that helps me slice through whatever delusions my mind/ego has creatively conjured up. And breaking down the delusions of our experiences, I believe is the first steps into revealing our truth.

I have always silently felt proud of my own ability for tolerance and unconditional love. However, I have recognized my constant yearning to be loved back unconditionally, to be tolerated for all that I am, as well. This sending out from within me, has been merely an intentional boomerang. I send it out, for the purpose, for the hope, for my desperate ego's desire to "feel" it back. To get it back. And what happens when the boomerang fails?

In meditation, if I can slowly move away from where my thoughts and personal attachments are to both pain and pleasure, and focus within my heart. I find a deep compassion for not only myself, but everyone around me. I begin to see and feel that we all boomerang, that everyone wants to so desperately feel that same love, that same sense of the unconditional. That everyone looks in the mirror, and still sometimes fail to see so beyond just that. That it is merely a reflection, a representation, also part of our delusion at times. When I feel that within myself, when I recognize that my face, my life, my longings are just the same as any others, I am moved beyond myself to something greater. And, I am more moved to just send love because it just needs to be given.

Between Breaths

The past couple weeks have been a little overwhelming...merely in terms of life's transitions...I only recently have given up the corporate world forever, to pursue the bliss that fills me when I teach dance and yoga. Or hence, the time that allows me to be a good friend, counselor, listener, and dancer. Time...

Time has been an inconsistent feeling within me lately. Between spending time with a lover, friends, and being alone...it all feels differently. And then there is the time when we do nothing. When we feel as if we are stalling, or in purgatory, perhaps even feeling like life is at a plateau.

In yoga, there is a common saying, that is mentioned by many instructors...they say, "Find that space between each breath." That space right after the inhale and before the exhale...so continuous that it just becomes a space. What happens there in that space?

What happens to us? When we feel that we are in a space that is between a breath. The space where there is no breath. Lately, that is how I am feeling. And, it is quite actually nerve racking and a little scary. I feel like that I am not sure what to do. I am not inhaling, I am not exhaling...I am in between the breath. But, the moment passes to the next and I find myself in that empty space again. We find lots of empty spaces in life.

Moments when we are alone. Moments when we are waiting for an opportunity to solidify. Moments spent where we just feel like we are in between things and not much is happening for us. They happen when we are in a job search or moving to a new location. The times when we are waiting to hear back from an employer or when everything is packed and we are just waiting for the big day for the moving trucks to arrive. Several of these empty spaces can be forced upon us when we fall ill, or catch a cold, flu. We are then urged to do nothing. To rest. And that is actually in the end, what I have surrendered myself to in these empty spaces I am finding. Rest.

Rest, not as an escape. Rest not as being lazy or disregarding activity. But, when all else is just as it is...and we find ourselves between the breaths of life. What is there to do? But, instead of waiting, actively rest...find that moment to recollect yourself, to bring yourself together and to know that empty spaces soon get filled. Empty spaces are not always empty...and we find old spaces filled and new ones emptied.

So, for everyone who is in between something right now. I share my empty space with you...And I know all too well, that we all will be filled quite soon.

On Being Human…

On Being Human…

In many eastern Philosophies, especially those that believe in reincarnation, such as the transference of energy into another life form after death whether it is a stone, tree, or dog…human existence is the most envied of all existences.

Especially for systems that see that human life is the life of lessons and evolution…and for those that can adhere to the notion of the soul, the evolution of one’s soul.

I once heard the story of Buddhist monks who welcomed struggle and tragedy into their lives. Every time something went wrong, these individuals were thankful. Sort of the attitude of “Bring it on!” Those who welcomed every penchant of Murphy’s Laws!

Smaller examples, for those who are students or graduate students…you have been diligently working on a paper and you are on a roll. Your computer crashes and your paper half lost, because it was not completely saved. Could you even imagine, calmly saying to your computer, “Thank you for crashing and losing all of my hard work, so I have to start over again”?

Yeah right.

In this spiritual practice that I heard of, the effort to accept any of life’s challenges is to say “thank you.” Thank you for this accident, this diagnosis, this loss, this set back, this suffering, because only in human life with the capacity of the intellect and spirit, can I either challenge my potential and get better and get through this, or somehow let this shrivel my soul and cause me to destroy myself. Back to the paper example, I am smart enough to start this paper over and do it even better…thank you for this fuckin’ challenge (although quite irritatingly annoying).

Great examples are of escape…. life gets hard, things we are challenged to face, and if our first reaction is to escape into addictions, obsessions, ego satisfying actions, and superficial pleasures then we have acted cowardly. Not extending our capacity as a human being. Other life forms, even devis or gods, ghosts, super natural existences envied the human life form. Only as a human, can material, “reality” as it is, challenge us with this seemingly sufferance of life…almost like an obstacle course for the soul. We obviously, don’t see life’s challenges especially when the human drama deals with death, loss of love, unrequited love, failures, attachment, abandonment, violence, betrayal, and etc. As something that we say, “Bring it on!”

This idea of saying, “Bring it on,” which I know keeps making you think of the movie with those cheerleaders, is not more of an invite to allow more pain into life. But, to almost say, this struggle is before me because I am capable of getting through it. The challenge is there. It’s like those standardized tests that as you continue to answer the tough questions, and get them right, the level gets harder. I am sure I have lost half of you already that are reading this. But for those who get what I am saying…You know where you are. You get the harder questions ‘cause you are just too damn smart, don’t give up. Keep answering.

Hip Hop: An Aesthetic Look into the Art

"Political rap" was actually something of an invention. The Bronx community-center dances and block parties where hip-hop began in the early 1970s were not demonstrations for justice, they were celebrations of survival. Hip-hop culture simply reflected what the people wanted and needed--escape. - http://www.thenation.com/doc/20030113/chang

I have yet to read Jeff Chang's new book, Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip Hop, however I do hope it is a catalyst in defining Hip Hop as an Art and what makes it viable. And it is certainly, on my short list of books to read.

I was a complete mess over the weekend, thinking about Hip Hop...I couldn't sleep. And, I wanted to talk about it. So, I called my buddy, and a Ph.D. Graduate Student in Philosophy at DePaul University in Chicago, James. Over a bottle of wine and over the phone, we carefully, and candidly discussed the ideas that were causing my insomnia.

I began seeing Hip Hop as dialectical in nature. An art form born out of the housing projects in the Bronx, an American invention, created and needed by a community for self-expression, and as quoted from above "celebrations of survival". I call it an American invention, because this is where it started...and from here is where it spread- to the points in which we now have German, French, and Japanese Hip Hop. Hip Hop is an international phenomena that can be found almost anywhere in the world. Which leads me to believe that there was something, a seed, beyond the political messages that later popularized the art form, beyond whether what remains mainstream or underground, that for something only born in the early 70's, seemed to have spread across the globe.

The world all over took Hip Hop and it branched and churned, and changed, and began to fit into every culture somehow, and from white college students, yuppies, dance clubbers, and from the community that brought us the art form- it was catching on, and caught on. I don't want to get into the different genres of Hip Hop, nor its historical stages, nor its controversial points, nor its cultural implications, nor what it means to different racial communities. We all have a general understanding of American History. Hip Hop was born in a place founded on land usurped from the Native Americans. It is music born out of the projects; of course it will have controversy. I have been living and working in NY for more than three years, and every panel I have attended from the New School, to Columbia, to NYU, and to panel discussions at The Lincoln Center for Jazz; panelists will always get caught in the conundrum of these cultural, political, gender-specific arguments, and then there are those who will just flat out argue that Hip Hop is dead. And, those who argue that don't necessarily believe their own statements. More so, they mean, the art, aesthetics, creative structure, and inspiration of the form.

I want to know what makes it Hip Hop. What makes Hip Hop..Hip Hop?

Rock n' Roll, which also has had a history of controversy in America has been fondly toted as "Sex, Drugs, and Rock n' Roll." And like Punk, Hardcore, Metal, Thrash, etc. certain music forms have come along with a sub culture. Does Hip Hop necessarily have to connect itself with the sub culture that trailed along with it? Even, if we are just looking at Hip Hop, and its musicality? What is Hip Hop removed from that? Is it still Hip Hop? I am inclined to say, yes.

What made Hip Hop spread? What about it, musically, artistically, made it a form that can be flexed by other languages, cultures, and countries? What was the environment in the Bronx and how did it contribute to the spontaneous birth of this art form? What are its greatest affinities and why? What can Hip Hop be, removed from education in urban communities, advertising to youth and minority populations, removed from all the propagandist uses that the media has employed? And removed from understanding it as a movement? Hip Hop, like the art of drama, the art of tragedy, we need to look at what makes Hip Hop beautiful. What is Hip Hop based on its aesthetics and origin?

Possibly, in the end, a Philosophy of Hip Hop might be in order and a strict look into Hip Hop Aesthetics. Colleges and universities have been including Hip Hop academics, mostly in Sociology, African American Studies, and American Studies into its programs due to much interest from students. These Hip Hop studies span from linguistics, music theory, and music history as well. And, these interests have provoked the organization of Hip Hop archives at both Harvard and Stanford University. I think Philosophical research in Hip Hop is indeed worth pursuing. A Hip Hop, that can be boiled down and removed, if possible from it's cultural context of being "black music". Hip Hop just as it is...what is it? What is it, when we are not arguing about bling, derogatory messages, gang violence, the difference between labels of conscious and mainstream rap, and even our argument of whether or not it's dead...we have to slowly peel away all of these other things that have become somewhat outbursts of the phenomenon. Bring ourselves down to only one argument...What is Hip Hop? And only then can we begin discrediting other forms that don't fit, if there are such principles of Hip Hop that make it universal.

Grounding and Clearing the Energy Around You

In New York City, where there is so much energy and people, it is easy to get a little off-balance from time to time. Along with the inconsistent temperatures combined with allergies that seem to come with the change of the season, it can seem difficult to sometimes keep your mind as clear. Especially, when this affects our breathing, and also makes our heads feel a little congested. The weather being a little unstable as well, can shift energies around us too. However, even on top of that, if you are like me, you have a natural inclination to also be a little bit of an "emotional sponge." Being open, and compassionate, and vulnerable can be great things and often a wonderful sign of a courageous and loving human heart, but many of us are also susceptible to being drained or taking on the energies of others around us.

Here are some ways to assess if you are taking on some energies that could be affecting you:
-After commuting do you often feel like you are exhausted, upset, slightly melancholy for no particular reason?
-After phone calls with particular friends, do you feel agitated, frustrated, or tired just by having conversation?
-When strolling down the street in a pretty decent mood, just by passing a particular area or stranger(s), do you suddenly feel unhappy?

These are just simple ways of checking, and certainly if these situations sound familiar to you, you could benefit by taking the time to do some simple things to help you ground and clear your energy chakras. Certainly, some may think, "Oh, you just need a thicker skin" or "Perhaps, you need anti-depressants." However, if you are usually pretty even-keeled, and generally a compassionate and caring person, who sometimes for no reason feels certain feelings that seem to not be in alignment with your natural disposition, I would urge you to first try to do some grounding and meditation to see if that helps a little.

Some things I like to do to clear away energies from people and things around me are the following:
-Sea Salt Baths: You can purchase natural sea salt in most grocery stores for around $2.00. I use the generic brand at Whole Foods. If you prefer, you can also purchase fragranced bath salts, however, I enjoy the purity of the regular stuff. It has been used in healing and clearing psychic energies, so its great to just gently rub a handful on your feet and shoulders in the shower. It works also as an exfoliant, however, be gentle if the grains are coarse. Or simply dissolve in a bath and soak for a while.

-White Sage and Incense: White Sage has been traditionally used by Native Americans to clear spaces of negative energies. It is used at beginnings of rituals and ceremonies. They can be purchased primarily in small bundles and you just gently light it and let the smoke spread and flow around you. I like to take it and start from my feet and focus on clearing each chakra finishing at the crown of my head. It can usually be purchased at most candle and incense places and new age stores for about $5.00 to $12.00.

-Meditation: Sometimes, just finding a quiet moment to sit and relax can immediately clear any negative energies that you may have seemed to inadvertently pick up. You can focus on clearing each energy center starting from the root chakra to your third eye and visualizing each color being cleared and becoming brightened. Also, before even stepping out of bed, some like to visualize being covered and protected by white light, which sets up a mental and spiritual protection throughout the day.

These are just simple suggestions, for those who need the extra grounding from time to time. Certainly, a strong meditation and spiritual practice along with familiar filtering out of certain energies that come, can help keep most of us continually grounded. Also, even with just a good sense of self awareness, one can be grounded constantly. However, these practices are great as well, right before entering meetings where you expect to deal with conflicting energies, or if you are in environments where there tends to be a majority of negative-prone types of personalities.

Dream Journal: Stallions and Glass

I dreamt that I was standing on a hill overlooking green rolling mountains, and deep sinking valleys. All of my senses were beautifully heightened. I could feel the air of the atmosphere enveloping me, the air was like a soft kiss all around me. I was somewhere timeless and at complete peace and bliss.

I stood on this giant hill, and I heard the faint sounds of thunder coming closer. I looked beyond and I could see colors of grey and silver slowly covering the land, bit by bit from very far away. As I stood and watched, the sounds became louder and as the colors began to cover the land below, I realized that it was an enormous stampede of wild silver, white, and grey stallions migrating across the valleys.

My heart soared to see something so absolutely amazing. My dream state turned ecstatic, and I was just in complete awe! So, I prepared myself to lean back, I wanted to lay down on the top of this hill and just watch and let this beautiful thing happen. I just wanted to experience this fully. And as I reached down my hand to support myself in order to sit, I felt a pinch on my hand. I noticed that there were some pieces of broken glass in the grass. I didn't cut myself, but I got angry.

My mind began to focus on this broken glass. I could still feel the earth rumbling and hear the stallions rushing by me as the wind picked up. But, questions went railing through my mind...Why is there glass here? Who was here before me? Who was stupid enough to litter in this beautiful place? What if I had cut myself? And still, there was a part of me that can sense the stallions running, and it was almost as if I chose to miss it, that I chose to be distracted!

Distracted by this broken glass, my mind couldn't let it go, missing out on something beautiful that was happening right in front of me. This is one of the most profound dreams I have had in a while. I have been referring to it alot ever since I had it. Which was way back in February.