A Fear of Falling

In my personal yoga practice, I am always eager to overcome my fears or trepidation about unfamiliar poses. It is a process that makes me challenge my conceptions of what my body can or can't do. It is also humbling to realize that MY body in a pose will look very different from David's or Amy's.  I am well aware of the fact that the yoga mat is the place where you come to "as you are". And so, quite often, my perfectionistic desires find their way to the mat as well. On Thursday morning, I kept trembling and falling..and falling....and..falling some more as I practiced  a new arm balance. Finally, I collapsed onto the mat with a huge smile on my face because I had just been reminded that an integral part of ANY venture into new-ness is incomplete without a few (or many) stumbles, grumbles and moments of insight and triumph.

Forrest for the Tree...

I have been teaching Tree Pose (Vrksasana) in my Forrest Yoga (http://www.forrestyoga.com/) classes a lot in the past 2 weeks. Below are some tips for holding this balancing pose culled from observing my students:


* Use your INNER THIGHS: Press foot-into-inner thigh, thigh-into-foot to wake up the inner legs


* Use your CORE: engaging the belly and butt msucles to tuck the tailbone DOWN so its not just the standing leg doing all the "work"


* Use your BREATH: Slowing down your INhales and EXhales as you focus a soft, relaxed gaze on a static spot on the floor or wall in front of you helps the body find and keep balance for longer

                                                                      Namaste!

Photo Session with Albert Yee

This was a really fun photoshoot in spite of the fact that I was doing arm balances on some toasty pavement. Albert says "Over the summer, a friend of mine asked me to take some photos of her performing yoga. She's a yoga instructor over at Studio 34 among other places. While I gave her the images right away, I'm just now getting to them for posting. Here's Fatima atop one of the rocky sections behind the PMA. Forgive me, I have no idea what the poses are". Hope you enjoy the photos (see link to his site below). Looking forward to shooting more this summer :-)

http://dragonballyee.com/blog/2010/11/13/photo-session-fatima-adamu/

"Quakuba" = A ketubah + Quaker tradition hybrid

I was approached by an amazing couple to paint something for them that had the colors purple and green in it and referenced "planting a seed" in some way. Above are pictures of the result. This was really fun, a much-welcomed challenge and definitely something I now want for my (someday in the future) wedding.
Wedding guests sign the document as witnesses to the union :-)

"Public Transport"

Public transportation, whether you love or hate it, is an integral part of the urban landscape. Some even go so far as to call it a city's lifeblood. Deep, intimate secrets are disclosed in a cavalier manner on a cell phone, friendships made and love affairs blossom along trolley tracks and between subway stops. Shoes accompany us as we traverse the urban landscape and send telling signals of who we "think' we are.

Come to Bus Stop Boutique: http://www.busstopboutique.com on Friday October 23rd between 5:30pm and 8:30pm for a series of 15 minute site-speficic dance performances by Sasha Wright and Me!

First Person Singular

if you close your eyes and slow your breath
perhaps you can feel the life coursing through you

if you close your eyes and clear your mind
you might feel the blood pulse inside you

move slowly and don't make a sound

dance as if there is no one around

if you close your eyes and slow your mind

accompanied by the tempo of a heart

blood. pulse. breath. life.

.......on the horizon"

It was a bright, sunny day and I was walking east on Baltimore Avenue toward the Greenline when I saw it. This gorgeous piece of wood lying next to one of the large, beautiful trees on the 4400 block. I needed a canvas for a new piece of work I wanted to submit on August 29th and it seemed I had found my muse. An awesome friend lent me a powerful little palm sander WITH paper and I got to work....

I had my neighbor cut me a 10 x 10 piece and then I decided to turn this piece of pine (?) into a "tile"-esque object. I sanded out its splintery edges, rounding them out a bit. As I was working on it, I fell in love with the pattern and color of the grain so much that I was afraid to "ruin" it with my attempts at art.


In the end, I found a happy compromise. With a dose of some very-watered down acrylic and silvery line work, my masterpiece was complete. I am quite pleased with the "final" result and have now decided to work on a series of wood-paintings.....Yes, nothing new I know, but I would like to make sure that the wood is the STAR of the show...

Come visit my piece of wood and other 10 x 10 works while listening to 60's French and Cambodian pop by Dj Reve on October 1st at the Inliquid 10th anniversary celebration and benefit: http://inliquid.com/benefit/.

Feet...

The foot as a unit of measure was used in most Western cultures and was usually divided into 12 or sometimes 10 inches/thumbs, or into 16 fingers/digits. The popular belief is that the original standard was the length of a man's foot. In rural regions and without calibrated rulers, many units of measurement were in fact based on the length of some part of body of the person measuring (or for example the area that could be ploughed in a day). In that sense, the human foot was no doubt the origin of the measuring unit called a "foot" and was also for a long time the definition of its length. To prevent discord and enable trade, many towns decided on a standard length and displayed this publicly

Some believe that the original measurement of the English foot was from King Henry I, who had a foot 12 inches long; he wished to standardize the unit of measurement in England. However this is unlikely, because there are records of the word being used approximately 70 years before his birth. This of course does not exclude the possibility that this old standard was redefined ("calibrated") according to the ruler's foot. In fact, there is evidence that this sort of process was common before standardization. A new, important ruler could try to impose a new standard for an existing unit, but it is unlikely that any king's foot was ever as long as the modern unit of measurement.
The average foot length is about 9.4 inches (240 mm) for current Europeans. Approximately 99.6% of British men have a foot that is less than 12 inches long. One attempt to "explain" the "missing" inches is that the measure did not refer to a naked foot, but to the length of footwear which could theoretically add an inch or two to the naked foot's length. This is consistent with the measure being convenient for practical uses such as building sites. People almost always pace out lengths while wearing shoes or boots, rather than removing them and pacing barefoot.
There are however historical records of definitions of the inch based on the width (not length) of a man's thumb that are very precise for the standards of the time. One of these was based on an average calculated using three men of different size, thereby enabling surprising accuracy and uniformity throughout a country even without calibrated rulers.(Source: "trusty" Wiki)

Oooh!! Bike parts!

In spite of the perils of biking in the city, there are many who would pick no other way to travel. Inspiring tales of cross-country trips and rides through the European countryside abound. Sylvia, my 1970's Raleigh 3-speed cruiser feels like my "trusty steed" as I navigate the bumby terrain that is Philadelphia's streets.....and I can always rely on Janusz, the Jamus to get me home after a late night in Center City minus the sore behind...

The 7th annual bike part art show is upon us and I took it....um...upon myself to make a sculpture for the show. I descended into the musty, moldy Neighborhood Bike Works basement and selected some odds and ends that I felt had some "potential"....

It was my first foray into the world of sculpture of any kind. For some reason, it was quite difficult to connect with a welder, in spite of numerous emails and phone calls, so I settled for some Gorrila Glue in the end due to a looming deadline. According to a friend, the end result looks a lot like my paintings. Since I am a self-taught artist, I am often tickled to see that there is a consistent, strong thread/aesthetic that informs my work despite the disparate media I employ....

Mission to create a (what I hope is an aesthetically-pleasing-yet-visually-compelling) piece for the Bike Part Art Show? Accomplished!

Come to the opening extravaganza of food, live music, raffle for a Fuji track bike and visual pleasures on September 18th: http://www.neighborhoodbikeworks.org/BikeArt/index.html

on the subject of helmets....

Ah....helmets.........How useful you are, such unassuming, obedient objects.......Perching on the homo sapien head in a delicate, often sweaty embrace.......Content to merely perform your function of protecting our medullas oblongatas from the dreaded urban cyclist plagues: au.tomo.biles, le concrete, el tar and the ubiquitous les car doors........I hereby take it upon my humble shoulders to grant thee some vibrancy, life, color and......gasp! STYLE.