A Life in Motion
Who Am I? A Story of Movement, Seeking, and Transformation
Hello, friends!
Over the past month-ish I’ve gotten nearly 200 new subscribers—
WELCOME!
So I thought it would be a good time to introduce myself. Here goes.
My ancestors on both sides were homesteaders in Washington, when it was still a territory, not yet a state. Most of my relatives lived in Yakima, but my parents and I lived in Seattle. It does something to a person to grow up seeing big mountains and large expanses of water out your front window. I was prone to dreaming and getting lost in the blueness.
My friend, Celeste and I used to play in the woods above the beach in our neighborhood. We didn’t know the names of plants but somehow we knew which one to break in half and rub on our nettle stings. In the summer we walked up the hill to the U.S. Army Fort Lawton—now Discovery Park—to ride our skateboards. On the rare occasion that we had a winter snow, we would slide down the hill on pieces of cardboard.
In 1971 I went to Chapman College in southern California. Thanks to the insight of my often-stoned, highly educated professors, I started studying yoga and meditation, became enamored with Indian art and spirituality, and did a lot of hallucinogenics. I even got a semester credit for going on a retreat with my yoga teacher in Joshua Tree Desert. It was the perfect recipe for my spiritual yearning.
Almost all my friends were PKs (preacher’s kids) like me. We were raised in a liberal Protestant tradition that filled us with love and goodness but the religious structure didn’t hook us.
So we would smoke some hash and go to Laguna Beach at midnight. We sat in a circle, all facing the same direction with our legs in a V, making a human ouroboros. We chanted OM until the sound became the same as the waves. We felt alive and opened up to everything: the sea air, the cool sand, our breathing together, the Indra’s net of stars above us. Phrases like Be Here Now, or The Present Moment or Be Mindful were not yet ubiquitous in our culture. So we called the new religion we invented the Religion of Reality. We were high with our natural energy and full of longing to touch the sacred world.
During grad school I lived in a two-story warehouse storage unit in Newport Beach that someone before me had turned into a living space. The downstairs could have housed an entire car repair shop with a little kitchen in the back. I never once cooked anything but I choreographed my graduate dance thesis, based on my obsession with the Elysian Mysteries. My teachers liked it. I won the Alumni Award, got a $1,000 and then a Fellowship to the Whitney Museum of Art in NYC.
A steep, handmade staircase hugged the storage unit wall up to my bedroom which was bigger then most of my future NYC apartments. My bed was directly beneath a large skylight and on full moon nights, I couldn’t sleep. So I stood up on my bed, reached my arm straight up and pushed the window open. I was a strong, young dancer so it was easy to pull myself up onto the flat warehouse roof. There I sat for hours staring at the moon until I felt like I was the moon. My boyfriend started calling me Luna.
He was 6’2” with a big blonde beard and destined to become a Las Vegas headlining comedian. But long before that happened, we drove my VW bug halfway across the country, jumped on a plane and arrived in NYC. My friend, Goodwin, had arranged a one-month sublet for me three blocks from Washington Square Park. It was a railroad apartment with the bathtub in the kitchen. The tenant, Carlo Pelligrini, was on tour but he left all his clown hats hanging in a grid of hooks on the wall.
The Whitney Fellowship got me to New York which is where I wanted to begin my modern dance career. My last concert in New York, in 1994, was called The Beat Suite/Dharma Dances. My dharma brother, Allen Ginsberg, let me use his songs. I choreographed to “Do the Meditation Rock” and “Brother Death” and Allen played his harmonium and sang live. At the end of that run, I realized I was more into Buddhist study and practice than trying to get the right funders to come to my show, so I decided to quit my choreography career at the very moment I got a call from the Joyce Theater telling me I was on their short list for the next year’s programming. Even that couldn’t seduce me back into the world of art schmoozing. My mind was set.
Yoga became the center of my life once again and in 1998 I opened a yoga studio called OM Yoga Center. The studio was around for 15 years and in that time, I trained thousands of students and yoga teachers. It was the first yoga studio to identify as Buddhist-based, rather than Hindu. Instead of kirtans, I hosted dharma talks by Gelek Rimpoche, Bob Thurman, Sharon Salzburg, Mark Epstein, Reggie Ray, Enkyo Roshi and others.
It was a big leadership position for me, one for which I was completely unprepared. If I gave people what they wanted, they thought I was generous. If I didn’t give them what they wanted, they thought I was mean. I wasn’t confident enough to understand that what people think about me is relative and not necessarily true. People will always have ideas about who you are.
The thing is, we also have ideas about who we are. I identified as a New Yorker for years after I moved away in 2012 because I thought there was nothing better, nothing cooler, smarter, more fun or creative than New Yorkers. Now and then, a little New Yorkiness pops out of me and it’s fun. But it’s not really me anymore because the New York I Iived in is not there anymore.
You probably know that your body changes every seven years but did you know that it doesn’t happen all in a single swoop? Various body parts have their own schedule so one or another part of you is always in flux. Every day part of our body changes and part of our mind changes and some of our feelings change.
Can anyone really say who they are? This essay is just the start of a long list of all that I have done and who I did it with. But is that who I am? Was it ever? Is it now?
So often we define ourself by our accomplishments and/or our relationships. I am your friend, your wife, your teacher, your dharma sister. I am the daughter of my mother. We are all many people and sometimes nobody.
In Buddhism, we do a meditation to grow our compassion by imagining that everyone we meet was our mother in a past life. And, if you are not crazy about your relationship with your mother, you can flip it and imagine that you were everyone’s mother in a previous life. It’s all fluid.
When I look back at my life and then look at it now, I see lifelong threads of spiritual seeking and a love of movement that are still being stitched. But what are they stitching together?
Just the other day I said to my husband, “I don’t think I know who I am anymore.” We all talk about “my life” but what is that? When you go beyond, where will your life be found? Opening to this is incredibly freeing and also a little bit scary.
I still look at the moon, but not if a cloud is passing over it (bad luck). What can we ever do but take things breath by breath?
SPECIAL EVENT! ALL DRIP PAID SUBSCRIBERS ARE INVITED TO A MEDITATION AND TALK ON SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 23. YOU WILL BE GETTING AN EMAIL FROM ME WITH THE ZOOM LINK ON SATURDAY.
IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO GET TO KNOW ME A LITTLE BIT MORE:
Practice Opportunities
Mindfulness Meditation Mini-Retreats!
Sign up for one or go big with your commitment to practice and sign up for all THREE for a discount.
March 24-28
30 min/day
7-7:30 pm ET
July 14-18
45 min/day
12:15-1:00 pm ET
Dec 1-5
15 min/day
12:15-12:30 pm ET
Paid subscribers, and Moon and Stars sangha members: You can redeem your $40 discount pricing using the button at the bottom of each retreat’s registration page.
Also, you can purchase all 3 retreats for $120:
Join Lifting the Gaze Sangha
Join Lifting the Gaze! We meet 3x/month for meditation and discussion. In February we will be discussing Confession of a Buddhist Atheist, so this is the most perfect moment to join this sangha.
This retreat is already half-full, only 8 spots left!
This retreat is open to everyone! Our practice will focus primarily on sitting and walking mindfulness meditation, sustainable yoga, and restorative yoga. Yoga props will be available in the yoga studio and modifications will be offered for everyone. Each morning will include a short dharma talk and group discussion.
all humans (passed say 5
years old) ...share
awareness, exploring,
creating, and
challenges of karma
(choices in this
world)...where WE can
benefit from GPS !!
gratitude
presence
surrender 🌞
Cyndi you are amazing and an inspiration to us all!
Thank you for continuing to share your personal story, your life, and for your honest approach-
It is so uplifting in this day and age!!!
Kelly