BAaaahhhhLI.

Deep breath in, deep breath out.

That's what this place is. Over and over and over again. Soul expanding, marrow loving, consciousness spinning, joy dancing lovefest. Bali.

I have to admit that after my not-even-very-long flights here from Cambodia, after clearing customs and sitting in a taxi for what seemed like an eternity in the now-dense Denpasar traffic, I thought, "This isn't worth it."

I thought, "I can't ask people to take a day and a half out of their lives just to get here for a restorative week this summer. It's too hard."I was thinking about my COME TO YOUR SENSES retreat in June. In my mind, it was a done deal. Find another spot. Mexico maybe. What the hell? Why not book it in Ohio? Same difference, really.

And then I got out of my taxi and walked down the lane to the sweet little Ubud Aura, a stone's throw away from the astounding Yoga Barn. Five minutes after I knew for sure I wasn't coming back, I became equally sure I didn't want to leave.

This. Place. Is. Magic.

For the last five days I have settled into a languid pace of living and breathing and connecting. I have had the cleanest more glorious food I have ever had. I have met inspiring new friends and a special tender soul.

The other day, I drank from a young coconut and had the feeling that I might never find the end of the quench. I kept drinking and drinking and drinking from the seemingly endless well of the fruit. A Bali minute later, I was settling deep deep deep into my joints in an open air Yin Yoga class, experiencing the same sense of endless wonder. After that, I sat in candlelight and watched a woman become ready to offer healing with the Tibetan bowls. It seemed an endless ritual and by the time she played the bowls directly above my head, I could see the stars in the deep space of my own consciousness.

Later I walked with a friend and we found a butterfly on the pavement, sprawled out in all its beauty. We took photos. A Balinese man joined us and we admired the beauty together. He held the butterfly and explained how he would place it in his taxi, an offering.

Happy birthday, indeed.

So for those of you who are thinking about joining me, do it. Your best self awaits you here. We will conspire to bring it out together but truth be told, you need only arrive. Bali will do the rest.

And know the journey to get here is just a metaphor for how long you have waited to feel this good.

Yoga studio view.

On the ground floor of the Yoga Barn.

Sweet Ubud Aura. Where I meet new traveling friends poolside over breakfast.

Sign for my weekend workshops!

Even my laptop gets a Frangipani offering.

Just an everyday thing of beauty right off the busy street.

The meditation spot, post massage.

The walkway to the rooms at the Ubud Bungalow - spot for COME TO YOUR SENSE in June.

Imagine. This is YOUR room.

This is your pool.

This is also your pool.

A day-old baby at a Maternal Health Clinic. We will bring supplies for the babies when we come.

Afternoon rain storm? Okay, I'll nap.

We find the butterfly.

A better photo will come soon.

An aside: I think I want a dog.

Random beauty. Just every darn place.

Close up! New baby. Held by healthy mom, thanks to the free clinic.

Dispatch from Phnom Penh

I tried to think of what to call this post to let you know in advance that it was not going to contain a cohesive narrative about my experiences thus far. This trip has been a particularly busy/wonderful/intense/thought-provoking/context-eluding/nurturing/depleting/heart-breaking/heart-warming mash up.

Dispatch implies I am sending this off with great speed, not enough time to process or fact-check the data. I can tell you some of the things I have done and seen and considered, but I sure can't tell you what any of it "means."

I have been in Phnom Penh for over a week now and am coming to the end of my time in this city. Today I spend the afternoon with the house moms and other direct care staff at Transitions, creating a restorative session for them. It is the last of my teaching/sharing encounters with clinical staff, girls, yoga teachers and new friends here this week. I move on to Siem Reap tomorrow and then on to Bali on Sunday. 

Here are some word illustrations of moments I do not want to forget, things I need to think about, and photo evidence of people, places and things. 

---

Sitting on the floor of Transition's Dream House playing a high speed game of Uno with several of the Transitions girls, being instructed several times not to forget to say "You Know!" when I am down to one card or else I will have to pick up another one. One of the sweetest of sweet girls sits next to me and watches our game, all smiles and light. I know from my work before that she was beaten so severely that she has permanent brain injury and struggles mightily in school and with all cognitive concepts.

---

Teaching ballet 101 to the girls (God I hope I got it right, ballet friends) plus a few hip hop show off moves (Gangnam style giddy-up maneuver can earn you major points, fyi) in order to get a return lesson of Khmer traditional dancing with its complicated hand gestures and strange off beat steps.

---

Asking a girl who I know from all three years of my work here to demonstrate with me what happens when we put our palms out to each other, a foot or so apart, and begin to come closer so we can sense the other person's energy. She so badly wants to look at people and can't bear to be looked at so just making eye contact is hard for her. As we got close, the feeling of the energy combined with her hypersensitivity made her literally recoil, as though I had zapped her with my super powers. 

---

Sitting in the Dream House kitchen, eating an incredible meal made specially for me by the house moms, watching the girls eat, while I was being watched by the house moms to make sure I loved the food. I did. 

---

Spending 6 hours with the Cambodian staff of Transitions learning and sharing about how the body holds stress. This was an incredible give and take and one of my most gratifying teaching experiences to date.

---

Working with the NataRaj teachers and junior teachers on a hot morning working on anatomy, posture, and movement concepts related to alignment and restoration related to stress and trauma. Leya's baby is sound asleep on a mat on the floor.

---

So many new friends!! Private sessions with Ayumi and Ruth and Gillian and Caroline, women I met in my first few days of workshops. It is a thrill to learn about how lives meander and conspire to bring us to where we are.

---

The past became present when an old friend messaged me that I should look up "Stony" if I am in Cambodia. I asked where he was. I was told "Equinox" - a club. I look it up. I am, literally, sitting next door to it. I walk over and voila, the 80s come full circle and we swap names and a few memories.

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Sitting with Caroline and her research assistant at Cheong Elk, also known as the Killing Fields, where Caroline is doing her field research for her PhD on cultural responses to mass grave sites. She is an anthropologist so I got to play as one for the day as we sat, watched and shared thoughts and ideas with her young Khmer assistant. It was a fascinating, tip-of-the-iceberg sort of experience in thinking about how our minds work to make sense of things, including what is and is not inviolable, from our own cultural and narrative perspective and how complex it is to truly understand life and death.

---

Always, always, always: my mother on my mind. Thinking of the sanctity of bones, the in's and out's of life and death. Happy now to know she is with her sister sitting in the sun (well hopefully not IN the sun as it is not good cuz of the cancer treatments).

---

Whew!! Dad's surgery went great and he got more massage this week than I did, I hear!

---

I try to tell Cambodian pharmacist through my Pigeon English and miming movements: "My stomach hurts, need antacid." She hands me a pregnancy test."

---

I sat on a porch swing in the enclosed garden of the Dream House. A girl gave me a bracelet she made and another one braided my hair. The house mother told me I was beautiful and outlined on her own face why she thought so, tracing her eyebrows, cheeks, chin. They tell me 52 is so young!!

---

I share Reiki with so many this week, laying my hands on feet and heads and bellies and backs. I sense the energy of hope, of brokenness, and the broken hopeful. I feel courage and I give back my gratitude and love.

Early morning workshop on anatomy of stress and trauma with NataRaj teachers!

Leya's baby. This is the face you want to be looking at early on a Khmer Monday morning.

My host yoga studio in Phnom Penh.

My new pal Caroline and I at Cheong Elk.

Caroline and her assistant.

Bracelets left by visitors to one of the mass graves at the Killing Fields.

This tree was used for purposes of horror and brutality. Bracelets adorn it now.

Monks in morning on Street 278, Phnom Penh.

Color, symmetry, pretty things all in a row.

Small world story. I learn that "Stony", a  friend from the 80s (in case that nickname didn't give it away) works in Cambodia. I find out his club is a few feet away from where I am staying in Phnom Penh.

The end of the world.

Today is perhaps the most auspicious solstice in our lifetime, so auspicious the Mayans considered it the end of the world as we know it.

I observe the transition in Tampa, Florida with my mother and my aunt. We celebrate my cousin Steve's life tomorrow in a memorial service.

Last night I cozied up to the end sleeping in my cousin's old room. We had to move his surprisingly heavy ashes in their sea foam green biodegradable gift-box container to the dresser to make room on the day bed. Tomorrow his motorcycle buddies will spread his ashes on a commemorative ride.

I went to sleep thinking about his life and death, his ashes, and my grandmother Pauline who also died in this house.

I went to sleep thinking about the energy of the living and the dead; of the past and the present. Earlier in the evening I tried to see what relief I could give my mother's aching hips and shared Reiki with her as she lay on the floor, her legs up on the couch.  I put my hands over my cousin's ashes too. There is something still there, I tell you.

This morning we sorted through my mother's papers, trying to decide if she needs both a Living Will and Power of Attorney in Ohio and Kentucky. Her diagnosis matched what we expected: Stage 4 non-small cell lung cancer. They estimate she has 6-9 months to live with a caveat that if she does a round of chemo or two it MIGHT or MIGHT NOT buy her an additional 6 months. She has yet to make the call on that crap shoot.

My aunt made us breakfast and we sat in silence watching the TV bells toll for the victims of the Connecticut mass shooting. We mourned for my cousin too.

But not my mother.

Not yet.

We are too busy filling out the time we have left.

Today we will put together a photo board of Steve's life. And in our search through all the old family photos, I discovered that not only was my mother and my cousin a dancer, but my aunt was an early modern dancer and we found contact sheets with a photo of her dancing in a Life Magazine advertisement.  And as I started combing through my cousin's drawers (boy do I love to go through other people's stuff!) to find a zip drive to get the scanned photo of her dancing to my computer, I found more photos: photos of family, young and beautiful, kicking off their lives without a hint of the wonderful and less-than-wonderful things to come.

So I am off to a Palm Harbor Kundalini and meditation class before I do my Staples' shopping for poster board, guest book, etc. for tomorrow's service.

I will say a prayer for the living and the dead. I will say a prayer for what has passed and what is to come.  I will say a prayer for the dance and the dancer.

My cousin Steve. A dancer and a dreamer.

Aunt Betsy. middle strip, second from bottom, girl #2 (face hidden by dancer #1,  forever her nemesis.)

Freedom.

I had the luxury of spending eight weeks in the company of some lovely young women from Withrow High School, as part of a Families Forward United Way grant to help with after school and other programs for students who could use some help beyond what the traditional school day has to offer. This True Body Project club was open to all girls.

They came because the wanted to be there to learn and to share and to connect. I can't wait to return next spring, where we will co-conceive a service project. I'm sure we will be inspired by our time at the Freedom Center seeing the UnFreedom exhibit and the Half the Sky traveling exhibition.

We also spent time at the UnMuseum at the Contemporary Arts Center plus a quick spin through Warhol and Green Acres.

I know you all know this. But if you ever hear someone comment about a young person in the manner of "They just don't want to learn." Or, "They just don't care," I can assure you that that is 100% wrong. I have never met an incurious youth. I have met MANY with such severe stress and trauma they can barely see straight, but once safety is reasonably restored and they are reasonably seen and heard .... wow. Under those conditions,  creativity, kindness, genius and light abound.

We are currently booking after school programs, workshops and trainings in 2013. Keep an eye on www.truebodyproject.org or "like" us on Facebook or email me at stacy@truebodyproject.org for more information.

What are you waiting for?

Oh my goodness. There are so many SIGNS.

The auspiciousness of 12/12/12. The Mayan calendar ends on 12/21/12. Not to mention all the shifts happening every where you look, both the planetary and the personal.

In consciousness circles, this is considered the time to either get on board or surrender to whatever that thing is that is keeping you stuck in a less than optimal place.

We live in a tremendous community where there are countless ways and places to change your life. The Yoga Bar, Pendleton Pilates, Studio S, Rhythm & Motion, Pilates for Runners, Shakti Factory, Future Life Now in Northside ... you cannot go wrong if you commit to moving mindfully and joyfully this year.

I would love to be on your team to help you move toward your best self. I work privately with many, many clients of all ages and stages of life. I work to help restore movement post-injury, to help writers find their voice, and to help those who want to change but lack the mind/body, sensory conviction to do so.

Part movement, part meditation, part energy work, part conversation, part journaling, these private sessions are tailored for what you need, when you need it. One hour session is $60 and three sessions are $150. They take place in my small home studio or I can also come to you. I am booking appointments now through January 7th.

NOTE: Friday December 28th is donation private day. For those of you who want to do this but are on a limited budget but want to do this work, email me. stacy@truebodyproject.org.

I am also doing the third annual True Body, New Year workshop with Rachel Roberts at The Yoga Bar on Saturday January 5th. Come be restored and renewed with us.

On processing the impossible.

I could see my mom's face when the doctor opened the door. She looked up at him and I knew what she knew.

This was a week ago Thursday at 4 pm. In the same blue notebook I use to write down the beautiful things the girls say in my True Body classes and take notes about how the inhale actives the autonomic nervous system and the exhale actives the parasympathetic nervous system, I made a list:

- Mass in the lower right lung.

- Left rib (10th?) metastasis

- T8 lesion

- Lesions right lung, ground glass

- Lymph glands enlarged.

- Probably lung cancer. Maybe two (??)

- Small cell v. non-small cell. We don't know.

Since then, we have tried to get our heads around this. My mother, Sheila, is remarkably serene about the very likely Stage 4 cancer situation at hand. Some time this week a pulmonary specialist and/or an oncologist will make it official by giving the list a name. My brother came in, many many lovely people have called, come over, written, sent love. A hundred new lists have been made. 

***

My mom and I were trying to jump rope double. She laughed so hard she spit on my head. She thought it was hilarious and it made me nervous.

***

I told my dad and my brother and my aunts and a bunch of other people. I can't even remember who now. I walked into the bathroom and my knees buckled in grief. I thought I might get sick. Then I stood up and looked in the mirror. I thought, "Wow, my hair is so long it actually touches my back." 

***

My mom volunteered in my grade school library, putting the plastic covers on the new books while I returned books to the shelves. I loved the precision of the Dewey decimal system. I loved how you knew exactly where to find a book just from the numbers. I liked watching my mother make neat creases with the book covers.

***

I gave my mom Reiki after her needle biopsy. She fell sound asleep and reported she felt better when she got up. "Must be the medication," she said. "Duh! Reiki!" I proclaimed, holding up my hands. We laughed.

***

She listens to me talk about anything, any time, even during the times that listening required the patience of a saint. I would rattle the ice cubes in my whiskey glass and slur some new obsession or passion. My mother would kindly inquire the next day about whatever the heck I had been talking about the night before. I would act like she was annoying for even asking.

***

We sat in the cafe at Joseph Beth Booksellers. My brother cried and my mother rubbed his arm.

***

I was rehearsing to be the "Littlest Angel" in the elementary school play. I had a fever so they called my mom. I remember her walking down the aisle to get me, past the chorus, toward the stage. In my fever dream, she glided like an angel. 

***

I do not know how to not have my mother. I covered the material in a novel to prep myself emotionally and I could hardly bear it in fiction.

I understand that the species would not survive if we couldn't make it through the loss. But my personal Dewey decimal system, how I know how to find myself, depends on the whereabouts of my parents, my brother and my son. It depends on where you are. All of you. When I lost Kristin, I reorganized my personal navigation system around her family, friends, husband and son.

So if you see me looking lost or making a list or just trying to breathe, you will know why. 

And maybe you can just touch my hand or look into my eyes so I know I am still here, so I can find my way. That's what I am going to do for my mother, as long as I can.

Time To Revisit Addiction. Yes, Mine.

Around this time for the last many years, I have communicated in some fashion about how 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 years ago, I stood in a cold garage with Tina Katz, cigarette and wine glass in hand, and told her that I needed to quit drinking. She cried. I cried. And a month later, by some miracle and with the help of a 12-Step Program, I did it. 

Since then, I have worked diligently to uncover all the slippery slopes in mind that tell me that what I am doing is normal, no big deal, everyone does it. I believed monstrous lies about myself for years so I am aware that I can be easily cajoled into messed-up thinking by my desirous, sneaky narrative-maker.

I also spend a ton of time analyzing that which keeps us in stuck and unhappy patterns. I study movement, somatics, neuroscience and trauma therapy. I work in real time with people who trust me to see their best self and help them move into it. I am considered an educator in this realm. 

I have been reporting for the last year about the effects of dopamine on the system. Dopamine releases in the body when we seek a reward, something pleasurable. Opiods are released when we get the thing we wanted, the reward itself. Current research shows that we are shifting toward wanting the want; that we are becoming increasingly addicted to merely being in search of pleasure.

Facebook, texting, tweeting, emails all fall into the category of dopamine driving activities. And the more information we seek, the faster we seek it and the tinier the pieces and parts get, the more excited we get. I can feel it in my own system when I am waiting for Facebook messages to load or to see a new text message. My breath stops, my brain goes pleasurably numb and I am no longer in the here and now. I am in the world of "Something Exciting Might Be About To Happen." And while I have loved every little bit of info you have given me in the last year, by text or status update or checking "like," nothing transformative has occurred. In fact, I am pretty sure I am devolving.

Since I live alone and am a writer (meaning I spend a shit ton of time staring at the computer), I have spent the last year justifying an INSANE amount of time clicking around on Facebook. I can barely finish reading an article without thinking about posting it. Truth be told, I can barely finish an article. I went back to re-read a few articles about dopamine and addiction and my eyes blurred out after two paragraphs. TWO PARAGRAPHS.

And while I love looking at your babies and your wedding photos and your hilarious updates (for real, some of you are breathtakingly funny), I know it doesn't mean that I really know anything about you. And vice versa. I like to present a cheery disposition online because, in general, that is the truth. But I can't tell you how many times I've been told, "I know what you are up to from Facebook." And I have felt dispirited by that, lonely even. I am crafting a version of me for you to see but it is a marketing-oriented avatar. It doesn't tell you anything of how I really truly feel. I doesn't speak to the vast spaces of time in which my lonely avatar watches your lonely avatar, sharing what we ate for breakfast rather than what we lost or yearn for. 

More important, I can feel my mind beginning to fragment in frightening ways. Words come out of my mouth that I didn't intend. Names are hard for me to remember. Meditation is helping me to be more present but to what? 

I so badly want to write a few more things that matter and this does not mean status updates. I so badly want to connect deeply and meaningfully with people, to make a difference in the lives of others. And I am as certain today as I was 15 years ago that I have to make a profound and fast shift in my day-to-day habits.

So I gotta gotta gotta get this monkey off my back. I am trying to figure out if I have to go cold turkey for a time or if I can regulate my online time. There is stuff I want you to know - True Body Project events, etc. And when I am in Asia in a month, I will want to look in on what is happening back home and tell you about my work in Cambodia and Indonesia.

(And I just want to report that the idea of posting this and not being able to check back over and over again to see who "liked" it or even read it makes me feel like crying. This is not a good sign.)

But I know the power of saying the words out loud, speaking the truth. So I say them here to you and you and you.

I have a problem. I need to spend more time offline than on. I need to work to preserve the quality of my mind and re-value my time so that I may continue to grow and help others. 

I will let you know how it goes, via these longer form posts. And for now, I'm hoping I don't have to quit the brave new world of social media forever. I just have to get my act together. I'll let you know what that looks like!!

Heart and Path + Breath and Stillness

Thanks to Louka Leppard for sharing this photo!

Lucky me.

A few months ago, two things happened. I started a year-long study of Reiki with Sundar Kadayam and Baxter Bell turned me on to the spiritual author Mark Nepo.

My homework for Reiki is to meditate. We have specifics about techniques and we have moved from 5 minutes a day to 10 minutes a day to a 30 minute practice. There are some precepts to consider in the meditation. And I have ended each with a reading from Mark Nepo's "The Book of Awakening." Today's reading begins with a quote from Carlos Castenada.

Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and yourself alone ... Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good. If it doesn't, it is of no use.

Fifteen years ago I cozied up to the discipline of "not being a drunken idiot" and began an immersion in the study of a few simple steps (okay, 12 total) to rethink my universe. I also took on a disciplined practice of restoring myself, limb by limb and joint by joint, via Pilates.

Today, I am so grateful for learning to pick the path with the heart. I am grateful to have discovered what it means to work toward your better self, your future self, rather than to go for the easy fix in the here and now.

So I hope you slow down and breath today. Or move today. Or read something beautiful today. Or reach out to someone in need today. There is some discipline to it. But the path with the heart is right there. Today.

My Half of the Sky

I am so pleased to report that I have entered the fall of 2012 with so many wonderful True Body Project excursions and immersions on the books. This means I get to do my part as a learner and contributor toward making the world a better place for girls and women.

Here is the update:

True Body Project After School Project for AWL Girls

From an AWL participant's True Body Project Journal, 2012

We have just started a 10 week session with 4th and 5th grade girls at the Academy of World Languages. They have a large refugee population and some of the girls are learning the language, a new culture and about how they fit in. Claire Autran, teen True Body alum, is assisting me.

True Body Project After School Project for Withrow Teen Girls

In two weeks, we pilot an 8 week after school project for Withrow High School Teens. I was visiting the school for a meeting when they went into a full lock down due to a gun man in the neighborhood being perceived by police as a threat to the school. So I learned first hand about some of the new kinds of stressors for teens.

Flyer for True Body Program at Withrow High School

True Body Project and Transitions in Cambodia

Thanks to the generous support of Jeff Syroney and his frequent flyer status, I return to Cambodia in January for the third year to work with Transitions. This year, I will work with the staff and house mothers on staff management and craft a workshop for the girls too.

Here are a few photos from my past experiences with these amazing young women who are working to overcome the trauma of having been sex trafficked from a young age.

True Body girls in Cambodia, 2011

Learning language, emotions and identity.

True Body Visits Yorn Chea!

I will visit Yorn Chea's school in Siem Reap again, bearing donations from area friends, and copies of the True Body Project Journal for his classes to use.

Boys and girls alike love learning to write about who they are.

Some of Yorn Chea's students at his free school.

True Body Workshops in Asia

I return to NataRaj Yoga in Phnom Penh and the Yoga Barn in Ubud, Bali this coming January to lead workshops on how stress and trauma habituate in the body.

Workshop at NataRaj in Phnom Penh

Teaching at the Yoga Barn in Ubud.

True Body Workshop with Balinese Orphans

I borrowed this photo from a wonderful photographer. Check out the work. 

Last year I met Natalia Perry, founder of Sacred Childhoods. So this year, I will do a True Body workshop for orphans in Gianyar while visiting, getting to know the particular challenges of their world better on my first visit to the orphanage. 

True Body Come To Your Senses Retreat in Bali

Want to experience your own half of the sky? Come to Bali in June 2013 and find your best self plus do some service work in Bali.  Check out the details. 

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I you would like to know more about the True Body Project and/or to make a donation toward one of these service projects, contact me at stacy@truebodyproject.org. We will also host a leadership training program in Spring 2013 for those who wish to lead workshops and programs. 

It's a big world out there. Let's get to it. And don't forget, local is global so you can make a difference in your own community.

Come To Your Senses, Bali!

COME TO YOUR SENSES
In Beautiful Bali
June 23 - 29, 2013
With Stacy Sims

Come to your senses in Bali, a magical island steeped in Hindu spiritualism, for an amazing mind/body retreat. Bali naturally inspires healthy living, yoga and movement, meditation, healing and adventure. We have taken the best of Bali and crafted a multi-sensory experience so we can journey together toward a reawakening of our best selves.

Your movement itinerary includes True Movement, a yoga-inspired somatic practice to rediscover flexibility, balance and strength, plus guest class with local, internationally acclaimed teachers, meditation, and energy work.

Your mind-blowing Balinese experience begins when you are greeted at the Denpasar airport and whisked to serene Ubud, the cultural center of Bali. Your beautiful Ubud bungalow is nestled near the Monkey Forest and awaits you along with two vouchers for Verona Spa. There you can soothe your jet lagged muscles with a massage, herb scrub and flower bath.

Then, you’ll be ready for your 5 day, 6 night Come To Your Senses adventure.

Included:

- Airport transfers
- Private bungalow and bath with daily housekeeping
- Delicious daily breakfast
- Indonesian speaking guide & concierge available 24/7
- 2 arrival spa treatments
- Daily movement and meditation: Morning True Movement and an afternoon movement/journaling and/or meditation/healing practice.
- Dinner and holy water blessings at the home of Bapak Ketut, Darna, a Balinese dignitary in the village of Celuk

- Herb walk with Balinese herbalists

- Ecstatic open air dance party on the final night

Optional excursions may include pilgrimages to sacred sites, artist studios, and meeting Ketut and Wayan, two of the beloved characters from Eat, Pray, Love.

Retreat leader Stacy Sims is the founder of the True Body Project and a highly regarded movement educator. She founded (and later sold) Pendleton Pilates, a four-studio Pilates and education system in the midwest. Her True Movement work pulls from the most profoundly simple and elegant movements she has selected from her study of Pilates, yoga and dance. She is currently immersed in a year-long study of Reiki and is a specialist in understanding how stress and trauma habituate in the body. She is also a published novelist and playwright and brings creative techniques to her teaching practice.

Hanoman is a yogi and Bali guide, who lives in Bali full time and speaks the language and knows the country. He has been hosting yoga and wellness retreats since 2002 and his perfected his role as host.

Tuition: $1395 per person. Space is limited to 14 people.
Register with your $300 non-refundable deposit now to hold space.

**Credit Cards and Paypal Accepted with small processing fee.

For more information and to request application, please contact Stacy Sims at stacy@truebodyproject.org or by calling Stacy in the U.S. at 513-470-5548.

In memory.

A year ago today we lost Kristin. I was writing about it recently. I share it here.

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It was early December, 2010 and I was in LA visiting Kristin. I was semi-reclined in my usual spot on the cozy, corner built-in couches in her sunny kitchen with my laptop and coffee. Her husband Jeffrey had just left to take Simon, then 8, to school. Kristin sat at the kitchen table a few feet away and checked in with Perez Hilton on her own computer.  She was on a brief hiatus from cancer treatments, waiting for the bone marrow transplant a month later.

“Interesting,” she observed.  From the high to the low, Kristin thought many things were interesting.

“What?” I asked.

“Apparently Miley Cyrus is a bit of a stoner,” she shared.

“Hmm,” I responded.  

“So what should we do today?” Kristin asked, shutting her computer, satisfied with the online world of celebrity meltdowns. “I’m not sure I’m up for the Getty but we could do the Norton Simon. They have a Raphael from the National Gallery of Art I want to see. And there is the best bakery ever in Pasadena that I haven’t taken you to yet.”

“Wait, look at this.”  I handed over my computer to show her the blog I had set up for a personal project I was working on called THE YEAR I DANCED, where I spent the year focusing on dance rather than focusing on being scared to death about the future.  I had been dancing in an adult-fitness class, sort of a Zumba on steroids, for a couple of years and wanted to see what it would be like to take “real” dance classes for “real” dancers. I wanted to have something hopeful to write about and something specific around which to rally my fast-moving thoughts.

“Interesting,” she said. I watched her click around the new blog site.  “But it would be way better if you were much heavier and still drinking,” she observed.  “You know, you circa 1995.” We had known each other since 1990 so she had seen me through many of my own highs and lows.  “And then, say, you quit and then you relapse and do something horrible and then you quit again. ” Kristin was an extremely bright independent art curator with an addiction to addiction memoirs. “They like that,” she added.

“You like that,” I countered. “But I am broke and alone and almost FIFTY,” I offered. She was a decade younger than me. “That’s pretty good, right?”

We agreed it was pretty good, a reasonable set up for a narrative. We agreed it would be especially good if I fell in love that year. I had been single for the better part of a decade and Kristin was a fan of the idea of me falling for either one of the single “school dads” at Sequoyah, Simon’s hippie school in Pasadena, an artist, or a celebrity someone.  

And we agreed that it would be especially good if during the year I fell in love AND got a deal to write something for TV or film and moved to LA from Ohio. I had sold my Pilates studios in Cincinnati earlier in the year, mainly getting out from the business half of crippling debt and allowing the studios to continue on while I re-righted my sorry financial situation and gave myself some space to find out how to sustain myself over the next many years.

I had published my first novel in 2004 and had my first play produced in LA in 2009 so I was hoping that my first screenplay or pilot would enjoy the same charmed process and a stunning, windfall of a fee to go along with it. Either that, or I could make a reasonable living from stipends from residencies, classes and workshops working on the True Body Project program I had created to help girls and women reconnect mind and body. It was a movement and writing-based curriculum that helped discern truth from lie, past from present, delusion from reasonable hope. But my own truth was that as I stared down 50, I had foreclosed on my condo, was nearly $50,000 in debt, was worried about the IRS, and had no savings, no stocks or bonds, no 401K and no job.

It takes a dreamer to believe that words on a page will add up to something beautiful. It takes a dreamer to believe that spending money you don’t have will allow you to pay your staff and buy time to build the business.  It takes a dreamer to believe that you can become a dancer at 50.  And it takes a dreamer to believe that breast cancer followed by leukemia equals happily ever after.

So that day, Kristin and I agreed that the blog was a good idea, relapse or not. We agreed that the waitress at the bakery who noticed Kristin’s bald cancer head and taped up port and decided to chastise her for drinking Diet Coke had a lot of fucking nerve. We agreed that the small, easy to navigate Norton Simon museum was a better choice than the Getty since Kristin got tired very easily.  Standing in front of Raphael’s “The Small Cowper Madonna,” we agreed that the Renaissance ‘chiaroscuro’ technique, the use of both shadow and light to illuminate an object, created a painful sort of beauty.

“God, I love Simon,” Kristin said, as she stared at the painting of Madonna and child. She said that a lot. I think it surprised her how much motherhood had shaken her. We agreed it was a painful sort of beauty, loving someone so much.

We did not agree that it would be okay for Kristin to die less than a year later at the age of 41 after a six year battle with cancer. We did not agree that Simon would eulogize her in her living room, standing on a step ladder, explaining to her friends how much we meant to her.

In December of that year, we still had the luxury of the lazy hours of friendship. We worshipped the entire spectrum of life from the sublime to the ridiculous and gave special consideration to the mundane and granted bonus points to food prepared with butter. We still had the capacity to reinvent hope.

So we planned our year. Kristin set a course to live and I set a course to dance.