A lovely article by Elissa Yancey in this week's Soapbox about True Body!

True Body stretches work across globe

First Quarter Report to My Shareholders

Dear Friends:

I can't believe I have been at this venture of dancing and living and connecting without a net (aka a full time job) for one full business quarter.

I am grateful to all of you for supporting me in my efforts over the past three months. Some of you gave me money for travel, some of you donated to True Body to support our work, some of you gave me gifts for the girls in Cambodia, and all of you supported me by reading this blog and letting me know that it matters to you. I can't tell you how much all of this has meant to me these past few months.

I am now about ready to jump off the cliff in earnest. My financial resources are depleted while my "possibility" resources are overwhelmingly full. This is the moment of real faith. So here is my report. If any of these things strike you ... as in you think "Oh, I can help with that," or "My friend needs a freelance writer," please let me know. But most of all, keep reading. I appreciate that most of all.

True Body and Transitions Global

I turned 50 in Cambodia on Jan. 23 and kicked off my work with Transitions Global girls on Jan. 24th. We spent every night for a week in workshops together. It was life altering for me and I am hopeful that it made a difference for the girls and for Transitions Global.

As a result, we are creating a workbook for girls who are survivors of sex trafficking and/or other significant traumas. We hope to distribute it widely and make a real difference in trauma therapy, for future girls at Transitions Global and around the world. James Pond, director of Transitions Global, and I will discuss this and more on April 14th at 7 pm at Lululemon, Cincinnati. We will be doing fundraising to help get this workbook to as many girls as possible.

True Body and Teens

We kicked off our spring Teen Class at WWfC. The teens are engaged in a five-week curriculum and will create a blog/website that includes their work. Allison Caller is leading the charge and a wonderful group of guest artists including Radha Chandrashekaran, Tara Poynter, Suzi Istvan and Pattie Byron joining. I will post their work soon!

True Body meets Neuroscience

I was so overwhelmed with Dr. Antonio Damasio's book, SELF COMES TO MIND, that I wrote to him. He agreed to meet with me last week in LA. It was a wonderful meeting where my thoughts about how important the body is to the creation of self and how mind/body patterns work to create wellness or unwellness were met with complete acceptance. I am working on a proposal to further this dialogue with Dr. Damasio to see if we might create a research project that measures posture and movement and correlates it with states of mind.

True Body Workshop for Women

I am conducting a workshop for women next week, hosted by ActThree, entitled the TRUE YOU, FINDING YOUR AUTHENTIC VOICE. I promise you a revelatory time. And fun too. Visit ActThree for info on this April 6th, morning workshop, to be held at the Cincinnati Ballet.

True Body Movement Sessions

While my weekly class at the Yoga Bar (Saturdays at 11) is a great place to start to understand how I approach movement (balance, alignment, patterns - getting smart about your own body to be able do do more in all disciplines of movement and life), I love to have the opportunity to work privately with clients. We can design a session or two to meet you where you are. Call me or write me. We will make it work for you financially and schedule-wise.

Freelance Writing Projects

What has been sustaining me financially is the ability to work on collaborative projects. I have helped CEO's create internal and external communications, done web-based writing, reviewed strategy and created narratives to help position products and services, and facilitated internal workshops to help staff create more compelling writing on behalf of their clients. In short, I love to write and I love to figure stuff out. So if you have something in mind, I would like to have a chance to talk to you about it!

Personal Work - Publishing, Plays, TV

Within the month, my novel NEBRASKA will be available via Amazon and Kindle. Hopefully SWIMMING NAKED too ... am working with the original publisher to sort out the rights for that. THE VIVIAN GIRLS: A MUSICAL, is a semi-finalist for the O'Neill this summer and we wait with crossed fingers to hear about that. I am also waiting to hear back from Samuel French regarding the publication of my play AS WHITE AS O, which premiered in LA in 2009.

Finally, I am working with a lovely and talented and accomplished film and TV director on my pilot script. Next step - it goes to his people for a review. Which is good since I don't have people. Except for you guys, my shareholders, my friends.

Dance

I kicked of my 50th year with a Heather-Britt choreographed dance and a kick-ass party and I have been taking classes in Cincinnati, LA and Asia. I am grateful to my teachers who have met my serious enthusiasm for dance with serious enthusiasm about my dancing. Without this part of my life, all the rest of it would be folly.

Whew.

As you can see, I've been busy. And as I hope you can also see, I am lucky to engage myself in wonderful projects with talented people.

If anything comes to mind for you or you have a question about anything above, send me an email at stacy@truebodyproject.org.

With true gratitude, I'm off to turn possibility into reality in the 2nd quarter of The Year I Danced.

Upcoming True Body events!

There are two ways to come and experience some of what the True Body Project has to offer.

THE TRUE YOU - FINDING YOUR AUTHENTIC VOICE

APRIL 6, 2011

9:30 - 11:00 a.m.

Cincinnati Ballet

Act Three Presents:
A ONE-TIME SPECIAL EVENT: THE TRUE YOU - FINDING YOUR AUTHENTIC VOICE

How do you kick off Act Three when you aren't even sure who you want to be? We spend a lot of our life doing what we think we should do. What would Act Three look like if you were completely empowered to define it?

Join Stacy Sims, novelist, playwright and founder of the True Body Project, in an inspiring session geared to women to discover your authentic voice and to take a look at what old habits or old ideas might get in the way of your new or renewed self.

Date: Wednesday, April 6
Time: 9:30am-11am
Place: Studios of Cincinnati Ballet, 1555 Central Parkway, Cincinnati, OH 45214
Cost: $30 (Note that pre-registration is required)

Information and registration at Act Three. Or go directly to the registration page.

Lululemon presents:

TRUE BODY NIGHT

APRIL 14, 2011

7 - 8:30 p.m.

Lululemon

Find out more about how the True Body Project (Cincinnati-based non-profit dedicated to helping girls and women connect mind, body and voice) and Transitions Global (empowering survivors of sex trafficking with the opportunity to heal and recapture the most basic of human rights: freedom and hope) teamed up in Cambodia to bring True Body work to Transitions Global teen survivors of sex trafficking.

Meet True Body founder Stacy Sims and Transitions Global founder James Pond to learn how you can connect to this important work and create a message about hope and freedom for these girls.

http://www.truebodyproject.org/
http://www.transitionsglobal.org/

Date: Thursday, April 14th

Time: 7-8:30 pm

Place: Lululemon, Hyde Park Square, 3437 Michigan Avenue

Cost: Free admission. Conversation and reception.

If it is going to keep on raining, then I need some visual inspiration.

And in a perfectly balanced world, this I offer to celebrate the masculine energy.

gürcü dansçılarının antrenmanı inanılmaz | izlesene.com

Check it. Feel it. Twirl.

The Voice of a Girl Child - A MUST READ!!

Julianna and friends at the Dadaab Refuge Camp in Somalia.

Yesterday was International Women's Day and I was struggling to find the right content for a blog post. Everything I was reading and seeing was important but none of it hit me just right - until this morning when I saw a post from my friend Julianna Bloodgood about a poem that moved her. This hit me like a punch in the gut: the crystal clear, logical voice of a girl who knows exactly what she is entitled to.

Julianna and her colleague Michael are working at the Dadaab refuge camp in Somalia via their non-profit The Great Globe Foundation. I hope you will connect to their work and stay connected. Tell them they matter. Show them they count.

Find out how to commit to helping Kowsar get the rights she is entitled to - don't be the old man who binds her or the woman with the knife. Our silence makes us complicit with those who limit her.

Reach out today and ask how you can help.

The Voice of a Girl Child
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
By: Kowsar (16 years old, Somali refugee)

Ssh! Listen
Do you hear that?
That is the voice of a girl child
A child who is a future teacher
A future doctor and a future pilot
If only my dreams are not shattered

I think of myself as a star
With my own passion of light
I can shine if given the opportunity
Opportunity to follow my brothers to school
Opportunity to grow up and learn more from the teachers
And if only my dreams are not shattered

I think of myself as a giraffe
My sight set high
Big vision on big things
You don't have to marry me off to an old man
Just because you think school is not the right place for a girl
I need to go to school and pursue my goals

I think of myself as a live engine
Always going never slowing
Time is elapsing
Let my education not be a hot spot
The old man is waiting for my hand in marriage
The old woman is waiting with a knife
I need to go to school and pursue my goals

I think of myself as a lion
To roar loud and be heard
You don't have to take me as your wife
Just because I am a beautiful girl
Instead teach me a mathematical formula
So that my dreams are not shattered

I think of myself as a star
I think of myself as a live engine
I think of myself as a giraffe
I think of myself as a lion
Dear teacher, parents and guardians
Give me the rights I am entitled to

(p.s. if you wish to forward this poem, please make sure you reference the Great Globe Foundation).

ArtsWave at the Cincinnati Ballet (and a ton of other fun stuff to do this weekend!)

Julie Sunderland and friends at one of Cincinnati Ballet's outreach programs.

Last year, the Fine Arts Fund morphed into the new and exciting ArtsWave. And now we get to ride the tidal wave of arts programming that is the new and improved "Sampler Weekend." This year, there are more weekends, more arts organizations, more diverse programs and participants, and even more locations. From community centers to fine arts organizations, ArtsWave is redefining the arts in our community.

In years past, arts organizations would jam a lot of programming into a weekend. It was a great time but it also meant that if you weren't able to attend on that one weekend, you missed out on the free art sampler boat.

Now, the celebration extends to 6 different weekends during the 12-week campaign to help fund the arts in Cincinnati. And here is the extra cool part - ArtsWave has begun to redefine what it means to be a participant in and/or patron of the arts. Check out the schedule for this Saturday, March 12th, to see what I mean. The Cincinnati Ballet (my favorite place to hang out these days), is the featured organization. But you could map out a day that includes ballroom dance, puppetry, gypsy dancing (I saw them practicing - they balance swords on their heads and I am not kidding), robot-programmed, Lego making art, and more.

So if ArtsWave is expanding the definition about what art is, might you expand your own definition of who is an artist? Are you one? Come out this weekend (or for future weekends) and see where and why and how you connect to the artist in your own soul. Visit ArtsWave for more info.

When did you stop dancing?

My friend Lisa Stegman gave me the book MAPS TO ECSTASY this week. And inspired by another friend, Raphaela Platow, I committed to a morning reading practice so I careened through a lot of material in the last few days. One of the things that stuck in my mind is the quote below. I sent it to my inspiring friend Julianna Bloodgood who is working in Dadaab. You can follow Julianna's work here. And I just sent it again to another of my inspiring friends, Julie Sunderland, who I got to dance with today.

I could list 50 more people here who have in some way inspired me this week alone. That is how lucky I am.

So I share with you a little of Gabrielle Roth's bright writing. I hope you lift your own spirits this week with dance, singing, stories and/or silence.

"In many shamanic societies, it you came to a shaman or medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask you one of four questions: When did you stop dancing? When did you stop singing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories? When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence?"

Gabrielle Roth, Maps to Ecstasy

Of time and turning and Friday and rain and inspiration.

A few year's back, painter Kim Krause asked me to write to his work for a catalog called Chronos/Tropos which means, loosely, of time and turning. On a rainy Friday, with Peter Adams' swirling music in the background, I present the closing poem to you.

I wish you a blast of love or inspiration that is so epic that you too allow yourself to fall into the glorious void of the unknown.

***

When Leda was lying with the swan, when it was hard to discern feather from flesh, could she have told you how that story was going to end? When Hero watched the surf pounding the shore, while she waited for Leander to walk out of the ocean to enter her tower, once again, did she imagine anything but an orgasmic ending? When Penelope asked the weary traveler to string a bow to shoot a dozen ax handles, did she already know that it was her beloved Odysseus, finally? When you stare at a white canvas or a blank page, when you are compelled to strike it blue or tender or both, when you begin to feel your way into the gap, do you already know whether or not magic will avail itself to you? When you meet someone who makes every cell in your body spin and dance and shout yes ! yes! yes!, when you can think of nothing else, when you begin to believe that the tide and the moon and all things that turn do so in your favor, can you trust that you will also have time on your side? When you are a mortal soul, does any of this matter so long as every so often when the wind is right and you’ve suffered long, you get a blast of love or inspiration that is so epic, so mythic that you come to believe yourself to be otherwise?

Warning: Only read this if you want to be happier.

In my mind, I talk about my dance class in Cincinnati so much that you all must know everything there is to know about Rhythm and Motion and why so many of us love it so much.

But just in case you missed one of my enthusiastic rants about it, here is a great article (and wonderful photos of the awesome Susan Autran), to fill in the gaps of any missing info you might need to come on down to the Cincinnati Ballet.

One word of warning: if you are not ready to embrace total joy and happiness into your life, don't come. xo

Boy do I know what this feels like.

This is the BEST VIDEO EVER.

Sometimes the dance positions that are so easy for everyone else are so hard for us.

This is exactly how I felt yesterday watching everyone relevé with such ease.

Dancer or not, this will make your day.