Teaching and Learning

This spring, I am traveling and teaching in Mexico and Brazil. I am hosting teachers at the Field Center and looking for a new place to call home. All of this is happening while I process the grief that comes from the war and violence that are still central to the human experience. Violence is normal within my life’s experience, even if it is not desired. I, too, generate suffering even as I work to alleviate it.

I work and pray for a time when we, as humans, have more tools and more nuanced solutions to our differences. A time when we learn from our mistakes and recognize our deeply interconnected nature. I dream of a time when we learn to hold the knowledge of interconnection at the center of our actions, economies, and relationships. Without connection, without belonging, we humans cannot thrive.

Last week it was my great pleasure to teach at Longe do Mar, a sister Capoeira school in Mexico city.

In March I will be teaching from the Axis Syllabus in Brazil, and developing a performance with Sara Parisi, a fellow dancer and mother based in Serra Grande, Bahia. All is very small and local. It is my honor to be invited and included into the work of likeminded individuals across borders.

Finally I want to highlight a workshop that we are hosting at the Field Center March 14-17, titled Invagination and Clitoral Embodiment.

This is a Body-Mind Centering® workshop led by Nicole Bindler, a radical performance and healing artist from Philadelphia with whom I have worked since coming to the East Coast.

It has been important for me to realize that just putting the words “invagination” and “clitoral” on a flyer is a political act. The need to do such work has never been clearer than now, as we face the outcomes of patriarchal violence. Even in the year 2024, there is a struggle to learn from and honor the feminine. Yet the feminine is here and always has been.

There are alternatives to warmongering and domination. The most direct way is to study the design of life and learn to honor it. Body-Mind Centering and anatomical study can facilitate this learning.

I am hopeful that we can let go of the compulsion toward violence, by renewing our connection to the feminine. We all have a lot to learn.