Yoga-Dance in Sundance

I have just left Utah where I assisted my middle son Mischa, his wife Diana and my almost two-year-old Granddaughter, Anaid, in their move from Los Angeles, driving their car with the baby as they drove the U-Haul. They seek out what they feel will be a better quality of life in a beautiful location that is more family oriented and less expensive. It takes courage to make a big move with a family without having a job that is motivating the move.  It’s awesome to assert that we are in creative control of our lives. So much in these challenging economic times is designed to be disempowering; to lead people to imagine that only the wealthy deserve to have freedom of choice. My deepest love and hopes go with them to realize their happy life in Pleasant Grove, Utah.

For me the emotional challenge around their move is about releasing the intimate relationship of seeing my precious grand daughter all the time to one of periodic long distance visits. It has brought up much sadness in allowing that relationship to reconfigure to something new. I’m attached to how it was and I imagine I don’t like how it will be. Resistance…  In addition, my bosom buddy Stephen of 7 years, left the day before our caravan to Utah, making his own move back to his family in Illinois. So this time is a powerful opportunity I am being offered to dive deeply into change.

I get flashes in which my ego imagines something terrible has happened, because it likes the comfort of the old familiar. But the Earth realm is the place of change. But it’s the center point of the heart that holds the constancy of Love; the Love that is my connection with all life everywhere, with Source. Change is a gift, because if I am willing to have an open heart to what I think I don’t want, I must expand in response.  The key is in my willingness to release my agenda and know that in each moment a miracle wants to reveal itself. I have no idea of the Good that lies before me and within me, ready to be revealed, as I am willing to release what is ready to become something new.

I create my experience of the next chapter of my life by my choices in perception. I decide how I will see what is taking place. I can make an unconscious choice to allow my ego to simply react based on past attachments or open my heart to the infinite possibilities of Spirit to reveal something new and wonderful through the changes taking place. My heart must be open and that is a conscious choice.

My way of moving through this process of releasing the old and inviting the new, is through Yoga-Dance. Yoga means union with Source. Yoga-Dance is my way of surrendering to my union with All That Is. I fully feel and dance all the sad and fearful emotions that have touched me around my loved ones leaving, and then consciously choose to invite the feeling of wonder of new beginnings. I bless the time of change and affirm that my greatest good is unfolding even while not knowing what it is.

For my last two nights in Utah, my former husband Raymond gave me the glorious gift of two nights in his beautiful cabin in the Sundance Resort developed by Robert Redford. Being there offered the loveliest repose for making this emotional transition. It is a place of tremendous artistic creativity, environmental responsibility, and pristine beauty.

I hiked to the outdoor summer theatre, which is closed for the winter season, and used the beckoning stage to Yoga-Dance my way through this emotional process. It was majestic and felt so good to remember through my Yoga-Dance practice that I am the artist painting the picture of my life. The emotional colors of that picture are up to me. It’s a living painting, moving and shifting through all the hues and shades of human possibilities; never stagnant. No particular emotions are bad. Feeling sad over the moving of my loved ones lets me recognize how dear they are to me and how powerful their immediate presence in my life has been. The sadness affirms my capacity for deep love and that is good.

Yet to hang onto sadness and grief would be to delve into suffering which is never required. It’s entirely up to me to allow a new life painting or dance to come through me, through my conscious choice and willingness to allow something new to reveal itself. Dance allows me to easily experience the malleability of emotions and perceptions and how my creative imagination can transform my thinking to honor what is as the highest and best good for all. In that moment I am free.

Please watch the video I made of my moment on the Sundance outdoor theatre stage witnessed by no one but my  iphone and a host of wild turkeys, and perhaps now you too.