Author Archive for Suzannah Weiss

Aikido Irene

We weathered the storm and I learned something from the trees.

Image of Hurricane Irene from spaceIt was a blustery night and all the activity in the branches of the trees was scary, but very peaceful in a weird way.  We experienced gusts and swirls of wind, rather than sustained hurricane force winds and what I saw was the trees take an aikido-like approach to dealing with the wind.  The branches twisted and swayed and bend with the wind.  They looked relaxed in a way which allowed the wind to push the big branches around, but not break them off the trees.  My living room window looks out on some very old big, tall trees with long reaching branches. There was a beautiful cacophony of movement during the night with the branches dancing with the wind.  Fantastic way to learn how to deal with conflict and adversity; bend and go with it. The trees looked like they were emphatically conducting an orchestra. Read More→

Aye Aye Aya

Aye Aye AyaI was going for the Joy thing.  I spoke about choosing sensation and Joy and sustaining and tweaking and all that.  It was a decent intro.  I reviewed the DVD before class.  I really took my time going over a few sequences that I always get stuck on.  I believed I was in a great place for delivering the Promise of Joy and Nia.  Well….. I sucked.  I sucked out loud.  I was off my music cues, I was cueing stuff that wasn’t supposed to happen, I stopped one song – tempted to start it over and I just flubbed the whole thing.  I am sure that no one else in the room could have possibly been experiencing Joy since the whole thing was incredibly hard to follow and fast and steppy and all the rest.  If there was any joy it was when I said step out.  What to do about this?  I am looking for the lesson.  I wonder if there is any gift, small or large to be gleaned from that experience.  I suppose I could chalk the determination to be “In Joy” in spite of difficulty and discomfort could be a joy enhancing nugget to take away from this, but somehow I think that is pushing it.  I didn’t feel any joy. The routing hurts me.  It is complex. The music is great, but matching to the steps to the fractioned music make a mess of my leadership ability.  There is a lot of cross back and front cha, cha, chas and that really hurts my foot. I have not (in a year) found decent ownership of this routine and it’s possibilities and I think I will provide myself with some joy by taking it off my play list for a while. Read More→

Day One – TJOM and suj

The Joy Of Movement ~ sensing universal Joy

White Belt TriadsClass today was focused on this triad.  I invited the students to choose sensation, make it pleasurable, if it wasn’t what they ultimately wanted for pleasure sensation, they were to tweak it and choose something else until pleasure was in their grasp. Choose, sustain, increase, tweak as necessary…

The routine was R1.  I like this routine for a study in Joy of Movement and tapping into Universal Joy because right from the get go, it’s about being part of the ONE.  We are all connected.  We Are All Connected – the very first song.  We are connected to one another, to Universal Joy whether or not we know it.  Sometimes practicing that we know it is all you can do, but eventually you believe it and be it.  The conscious connection of front to back, site to side, up to down, in to out, reminds me that the whole body is one and to pleasure one part of my body means the whole body is being pleasured.  To make pleasure in my body means that I raise the pleasure vibration of my students (and friends and family), my classroom, my city, my country, my world, my universe, which happens to be everyone else’s universe too. Read More→