It's my anniversaries!!!

Partnerships, Substack, The Art of Ensoulment, and What is Happening.

Woo-hoo! Big anniversaries over here! 45 years of marriage to Stephen, the 45th anniversary of meeting Phil Porter in Body and Soul Dance Company, 35 years of InterPlay, and the one-year anniversary of this Dancing Center Substack and The Art of Ensoulment Playbook designed by Marla Durden.

If you are newish to The Dancing Center, welcome!
Special thanks to colleagues who recommend the Dancing Center especially Kelsey Blackwell at The Drinking Ghourd, author of Decolonizing the Body, Monisha Mittal’s (tiny) Voice of Big Love , Leslie Zehr’s The Universal Dancer, Diana Turner Forte’s Wonderfully Human, and Angela Jernigan’s Soul Care Studio.

I’m offering a big GIVE AWAY to celebrate my anniversaries.
Head to the bottom and check it out.

Thank you, Ruth Schowalter, for your beautiful artwork,
support and love over the years!

Friends,

If you bought the playbook, THANK YOU!
If it’s on your shelf waiting to get cracked open, THANK YOU!
If you’ve joined others and the Playbook is one of your landing spots for a meaning-making party, blessings!!!

I am giving away some gifts to celebrate
Head to the bottom if you can’t wait to see.

If you’re asking, “What’s this about Ensoulment?” here’s a peek at the book’s beginning.

The Playbook could be a bit magical. Some might say woo-woo. Certainly, not a book for everyone. Yet it fits well in the hands of someone who knows that Soul is a key, someone who connects deeply with inner and outer ecosystems but can’t always make sense of them.

These pages might offer hope for a reader who pines for friends with whom to rabble-rouse, rejoice, romance, and riff on the way Divinity dances in body and Soul. As we endure waves of despair, terror, and rage, many of us are like that mystic dancer Hafiz who wrote,

I sometimes forget that I was created for joy. My mind is too busy.

My heart is too heavy for me to remember that I have been called to dance

the sacred dance of Life. I was created to smile, to love,

to be lifted up, and lift others up.

O sacred one, Untangle my feet from all that ensnares.

Free my Soul that we might Dance

and that our dancing might be contagious.

For decades, I’ve navigated art, spirituality, healing, community health, and its opposite injustice. With play and art as north stars, I confess, I’m still a recovering, serious person, meaning monger, and work/creation in process.

You too? Culture, ancestry, and our struggle to feel safe and belong are part of it.

I am also highly sensitive. HA! Some of us metabolize SO MUCH that they made up a name for us – depth processors. What are we, spiritual composters?

I process way more than mental activity. I dance a daily tango with layers of data streaming through words, images, sounds, gestures, and movements. It’s wild! Some of it is mine. Lots of it isn’t.

How do I sort and make sense of it? What information am I responsible for? Am I supposed to do something with it all? What do I do with information that acts important, like an election, when I am already paddling as fast as I can? Oi.

I need a special map for this crazy terrain called Life, a meaningful order. Order is a blessing in times of overwhelm. The map I need especially needs pitstops and ways to reset from being meaningful and in charge. The Art of Ensoulment is my map.

I wouldn’t have found it without InterPlay, a system I cofounded with Phil Porter that offers a body-caring way of thinking and creating that appreciates physical reality. What grace to have simple entrees to the intelligence that lies in wait when we dance, story, stillness, and give voice. Our deeper truths, guidance, and joy open up. We come alive. We feel better. We’re connected.

Still, embodiment isn’t enough for me.

Since childhood, I’ve sensed into and beyond my body. We honored this in InterPlay with the word “bodyspirit.” But spirit isn’t enough for me. I need a word that evokes the sacred operating systems. I need to claim a physicality of Soul in body that gets to deep inner and bigger “we” stuff, stuff that anoints our individuality within the GREAT Interconnected Mysterious Wholeness.

We can use words other than Soul, but for me, I CLAIM SOUL AS REAL AND CENTRAL TO EMBODIMENT.

I’ve spent my life researching the experiential power of play, sensitivity, dance, body, Soul, imagination, psychic tools, liberation, oppression, and improvisational experience. I learned to listen and ask questions of Body, Soul, Mystery, Life, and Earth.

“How do we/I foster freedom? How do we/I invoke a sacred order that doesn’t lead to harm? Given our/my sense of Great Love and the call to collective care, how do I/we heal and transform relationships, communities, and the world?

Coresearching with colleagues and practitioners, we fell into a beautiful order that I feel taps the root system of humanity’s spiritual intelligence. It feels incredible to be in a way of creating and thinking that aligns body, Soul, and relationships.

• That honors but doesn’t borrow from historic lineages.

• That is recognizable and not hidden, hard, or holier than thou.

• That relies on basic life stuff and is fun.

• That counters harm and restores health.

• That is compassion-based.

Even when All Hell Keeps Wanting to Break Loose, we can still return to the Divine Dancing Center in an ensouled world that nourishes, connects, and coordinates all things.

So here I am. Thank you if you are following along, especially you 24 coaches and all who keep leaning into The Dancing Center.

I’m ready to celebrate and honor the Playbook's first anniversary with a Big Giveaway.

• One Free Art of Ensoulment Course!!!!!!

• Two Art of Enouulment Courses at Half Off!

• Three Paperback Playbooks

• Four Art of Ensoulment Kindle Playbooks

• And my new “Soul Primer” Powerpoint.

  

  Claim Your Gift Here

And check out the upcoming Free Introduction Sept 18th and my weekly Online Course Coming Home to Body and Soul: Creative Strategies for Efficiency of Energy, Clarity of Vision, and Courage to Love Sept 25-Nov 20th, Wednesdays from 9:30-11:30 Pacific Learn more here.

So Much to Celebrate! BIBOLOVE!