Eagle Therapies

Balls of Clay

Posted on March 25, 2020

A potter sits with a ball of clay, shaping and molding this piece of raw material into whatever they dream or desire. After they get it to the desired shape, they allow it to dry and do special steps to prepare it for the kiln. After trimming and waiting for it to get to a certain texture, they fire it. If they want to paint it to decorate it, they put a special glaze on it before firing it again. This is the transformation from raw material to a useable tool such as a bowl, plate, cup or vase.

One of the biggest takeaways that I experienced while traveling across the south west and installing these solar panels, is that in some form or another everyone is in various stages of turning themselves into beautiful pieces of pottery. Many people are still these raw pieces of clay. They haven’t been transformed by life or have allowed themselves to dry out to sit in the fire. Some people that I met were exquisitely shaped and painted into beautiful pieces of pottery, but weren’t very functional. Some people were not so pretty on the outside, but were functional as hell. Regardless, I’m starting to tell who are the people who allowed life to transform, mold, and shape them into functional works of art. They did the work to allow themselves to sit in the fire to harden them into who they were meant to be. They didn’t run from the discomfort of life trying to teach them a lesson. They learned to push forward even when it was changing the very constitution of who they were.

I would like to touch on the people who I saw that are still raw balls of clay. They keep being pounded on by life, constantly being changed and molded into different shapes. When put in different situations, they can’t make up their mind or go back and forth because they are missing the experience of sitting in the fire to have them make that strong and confident decision. Some have a natural default of being a “victim” because they are complaining of how life keeps happening to them, being beat this way and that. Others who are still clay tend to “go with the flow” and depend on others to make decisions for them so they don’t have to make a choice (which allows them to not sit in the fire).

There is no judgement, just observation on my behalf. But there is definitely a sadness that wells up in me when I see someone that is well into their “adulthood” that is still a ball of clay. I see the potential for them to be anything that they could or would want to be, but they choose not to.

The biggest growing experience was interacting and working with one or two of these people. I was angry at their indecisiveness, until I looked inside myself to ask why. I found a part of me that was a ball of clay that had not been shaped into a functional tool. It was being beaten by life, and I found an aspect of myself as the victim ball of clay. I was angry at myself because it was a resource within myself that was wishy washy, not sure of herself, and not fired by life. No wonder why the balls of clay got under my skin. I was one.

I share this because of connection. Not because I need connection, but just to relate my experiences to any other balls of clay out there that are scared to sit in the fire. Ask yourself the question if there is a part of you that is done with being shaped and knows what shape you need to take? What parts of you have already been shaped and fired once, but need to be decorated with different glazes so they can be fabulous? With the fire and the hardening comes a concreteness of knowing who you are. These are also ways that you can really dig deep for those resources and USE them more effectively in your life. This is the path of self mastery, and of getting to know yourself that much more deeply. Interesting thoughts to ponder as a majority of our society is in quarantine at the moment.

Lots of love from me to each and every piece of pottery, and the hands that shape them 💕

A Teaching of Water

Posted on November 4, 2019

My elemental home is water, which means my spirit aligns more with the element of water. This easily shows when I am dancing. I flow from one movement to the next, and allow my bones and muscles to be like water until it feels like I AM the water.

Water holds the shape of whatever container it’s in. If it’s in a round bowl, the water will effortlessly flow to fill the round bowl. If it’s in a tall glass, it will easily take the shape of that glass. In a way, Water mimics the shape of whatever container that it’s in, and I found this to fill me with gratitude for the boundary of containers. I emulate this in the dance by standing next to, or in front of other dancers and mimic their movements. It’s something that allows me to feel connected to their movements, their heart, by honoring their movements as sacred and joining with them, just as water effortlessly takes up shape after shape as it flows downstream.

This weekend during the dance, I noticed how sludgy I felt as I was beginning. Then after the dance picked up momentum, even though I was feeling sludgy, I started mimicking other people during the dance. I was surprised, because I still found joy in being like water, mimicking others. But I also noticed that I emulated another property of water, which was its cleansing property. I noticed that as I mimicked the other dancers, my water inside got a bit murkier. I still felt joy because I was embodying the true nature of water.

Then I asked myself, “Well… if cleansing is a gift of water, how does water clean itself?”

The answer came so abruptly that it startled me. “It doesn’t…”

I got images in my minds eye of the sand on the riverbank, and how when the water flows from underneath the earth, it gets cleansed by the sand. The water doesn’t clean itself, the element of Earth acts as a filter. I was being water to the point of disconnection, feeling the swirling of water with no boundaries. A river cannot be a river without the banks of the river to hold it. As soon as i remembered the “earth” of my body, I felt myself getting filtered and being cleansed. Water is the blood that flows in our veins, but earth is our flesh, our muscles, our tissue.

Where was I allowing the flow of my own emotions to get stuck because I had the expectation that my emotions cleansed themselves? Where was I not allowing the wisdom of the body to come in and filter out my emotions? The trick is to feel and allow it to move. Once an emotion is truly felt, it becomes water, changes shape, and flows. But it has to be felt in the body, not held onto – or else it gets stuck, there to surface another day.

Water taught me about emBODYment, what it meant to have a body, and to work with both my emotions and physical body. May you find the wisdom of the ground beneath your feet today. May you feel the flow once you rise from your feet. Blessings to you on this day!

Dandelion Seed

Posted on October 11, 2019

It’s honestly been a pretty rough week. A lot has been happening in my personal life. Most, good! But others send me for an emotional tail spin.

I made a big post about dancing for the mental illness in my family line a week or so ago. As if my Mother heard me, her health and living situation rapidly declined. Please don’t ask about specifics, because you don’t need to know. I share because this is a connecting post for anyone who has watched a parent decline, unsure when their last days might be.

It’s been impacting me in many different ways. It’s challenging for me to be present for my mother when I had such a dysfunctional upbringing. Many times I catch myself either shutting down or getting very emotional whenever I’m around her. These trainings I’m undertaking are so mind blowingly helpful for me to be present as an adult instead of a wounded child.

As I was processing this transition, I openly cried many times during a 5Rhythms dance with Ann Kite. I practiced letting go, and acknowledging the grief that’s in my heart from seeing my mom this way. I danced my broken heartedness as I danced the knowing that I’m not the only person going through this situation. This grief stretched my heart and deepened my capacity for love as I picked up the pieces of myself along the way.

A strange thought occurred to me during the dance. There’s this part in 5Rhythms called “lyrical”. I’ve been trying to feel what lyrical is like in my body and I just didn’t get it. How could one be light and airy but at the same time be grounded? I danced, and breathed, connecting with my feet. And that’s when the image of a dandelion seed came to mind. I danced until I became the dandelion seed, floating through the air on a big puff ball. And I asked the dandelion seed how it was grounded.

It was startling, because I just felt all my attention go to my hips. It took me a while to understand it (mostly because dandelion seeds don’t speak in English), but the seed just felt so confident in itself. It knew who it was. It was a fucking dandelion. And it knew it’s purpose, which was to grow into a dandelion. And in that purpose, it was connected to the web of life.

I was trying to find meaning and purpose in the fluff. Not the seed. The seed is the groundedness even though it’s not touching the ground. The seed knows who it is, and it knows what it came here to do. It’s that simple. How many times have I doubted who I am? How many times have I second guessed myself and have been ungrounded while flying through the air panicking?

This was when I asked what i was made of. What is the true nature of my own seed? As the music transitioned to stillness, I recognized that one of the reasons why I have been so deeply upset by seeing my mother this way, is because deep down I have a fear that I am crazy. That one day I will lose all my bearings on reality and just detach. Part of my grounding in lyrical and stillness was all about viscerally understanding and FEELING in my body that I am not my mother. I am not her mental illness. That even if I was born of her, that doesn’t make me responsible for what she does in life, or even how it might potentially end. I need to focus on being a dandelion, and not worry so much about the dandelion that sprouted the seed. I do what I can for her, and am able to do – but no more guilt trips. No more taking on responsibility that’s not mine. Time to focus on my seed and what I came here to do, not distract myself with the fluff and forget who I am.

Part of the floating in the air while being grounded, is being so connected to my purpose that I trust the winds to bring me wherever I’m needed. That’s the true essence of letting go and surrendering.

A deep gratitude goes out to my dance family, my shamanic family, and my farm family. The talks and the space for ugly crying has been invaluable. And a thank you to you whose reading this. May you have a beautiful week.

Bloom where you are planted.

Photo credit: Martin Konz