Mar 29 2011

Pajama Poppin Pole Party

Yannori

Sometimes your creative Muse is motivated, playful, filled with wild hip swaying, booty bumping energy.  Sometimes your Muse can’t wait to Dance, Dance, Dance.  Sometimes she has a love crazed hard-on (yes, I said it. Get over it.) to grab that pole and make the world beg for more.   And sometimes she couldn’t give a shit.

Sometimes, she looks at that shiny vertical shaft of steel (or titanium, or brass, or chrome) and all she can think about is how cold it probably is right now.  How she’ll have to pull out the yoga mat to warm up.  How tired she is. Or how long it would take to change out of her damn pajamas and into her booty shorts, tank, leg warmers, 6 inch heels, and sexy cover-up, let alone find all those things in her closet.  Le Sigh!

So instead, she decides to skip her workout and visit Twitter for a few last minute tweets before bed… and maybe a stop on youtube for a quick pole video from one of her favorite Sensualistas… and then over to Amazon to pick up that new awesome album by Adele…

But something happens.

 

Something unexpected, especially since she’s wearing slippers, a pink heart covered pajama shirt, and nothing remotely practical. A tingle, a tickle, an urge to move, travels slowly up her spine.  Now, the Muse is no stranger to random movement and assumes it’s just a simple reaction to Adele’s luscious voice singing “Turning Tables”  and “Set Fire to the Rain.”  But as one song leads to another, leads to another, she starts to feel constrained. Her body is too tight, with her legs folded and spine bent squarely, resting on the office chair. Her mind attempts to protest, “Dancing in slippers is simply too ridiculous, and, well, too  slippery.”  But the mind is too tired to put up a fight and the Muse, recognizing the unconscious call of passion, uncoils from it’s dark cave and says “Why the fuck not!”

The Muse still doesn’t give a shit; about training or warm-ups or working her abs or building her strength or any of that practical crap. It’s 10pm at night for goodness sake, and she’s tired.  But that doesn’t mean she’s uninspired.  In fact, now is her chance… to be Deliberately Lazy, Deliciously Dirty, Undeniably Sexy for no damn reason other than she fucking feels like it.

The conscious mind pops out of it’s sleepy stupor to remind the Muse that she’s in no position to be making difficult demands like inverting or pole ups and then goes back to sleep.  But the Muse has no need for difficult tricks.  She just wants to MOVE, BE, BREATH.  The Muse wants to remind us to Live in the Moment because it’s the only one we’ve got.

And so she slinks. Over to the pole for slow, delicious, pelvic circles that take forever.  No, longer than forever.

She slides over to the wall (even easier than usual thanks to her slippery slippers) and paints passion into the air.

Breathing deeply, living for movement, tugging on those pink heart pajamas, dragging her fingers through her hair.

Dancing with sweetness, dancing with compassion, dancing with the steady, slow energy of the quiet night until she can’t remember her own name.

And when the night changes it’s melody from the cooling tones of Adele to the butt bumping beats of Kanye, Katy Perry, and some kind of ET alien invasion…

She gives in to that too.

Sometimes you have to give in the Muse fully, completely, without fear and simply trust that your body knows exactly what you need, exactly when you need it.

BTW, if you can say the title of this post 10 times fast without messing up (to me live, on the phone or in person), I’ll give you a free 30 min Yoga or Pole Private on Skype. No foolin’! PRACTICE FIRST and then contact me to set up a time or just leave a note in the comments.

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Twirl, Swirl, and Fly!


Nov 12 2009

Naked Inspiration, the Bare Essentials

Yannori

Today I was reminded of how critical it is to pay attention to all the stuff you actually give a shit about.  Otherwise you miss all the phenomenal experiences that life is trying to give you. (because sometimes it’s difficult to figure out what YOU care about when your boss, your peers, and the TV are demanding you do totally different things) So how do you know what is really important and what’s just bullshit?

I started my day off by sharing this on Facebook:

I’m going to quietly grmble in my cubicle this morning. :S (I couldn’t even manage to spell “grumble”)

…and ended it by celebrating an evening filled with stable inverted pressaways.  YIPEE!

When I sat down at my desk at 8am today, I was pissed off, frustrated, depressed, and absolutely, completely, totally stuck.  I felt trapped by my own life and so very tired of struggling to understand why, why, why I couldn’t stop cockblocking my own success (yes, I know I don’t have a cock and I wasn’t trying to get laid, but just go with me here).  I was disappointed that I wasn’t meeting my daily writing quota (I’m doing NaNoWriMo this year), that I hadn’t posted anything to this blog or my other blog in 5 or 6 days, and that I kept falling asleep in my cubicle (at 8am in the morning!) because I was so fucking exhausted.

So what the hell do you do when when you keep hitting the same wall of frustration over and over again?  What do you do when you’re seriously stuck in a funk and can’t shake loose?

First, stop trying to use logic to get out of it. If logic was going to work, you’d have found the answer days, weeks, or months ago…

You need an inspiration!

Luckily, you already have a phenomenal technique to create an AHA moment…

All you need is to get your conscious mind to go to sleep and give your creative muse a safe place to explore. Meaning you’ve got to shed some of those layers of assumptions, baggage, and bullshit that you gathered as a grownup…Give your inner child a game to play.. And show her an awesome playground preferably with a jungle gym.   Psst THIS IS WHERE POLE DANCING COMES INTO THE PICTURE.

Your Body In Motion…

Drive home from work, stumble in the front door, banish everyone from the pole room for at least 20 minutes, throw on the playlist that exemplifies your emotional funk, and peel away your inhibitions.

Pick music that makes you feel grumpy, or sad, or predatory… but only if you actually feel that way.  Don’t change out of your work clothes. STRIP out of your work clothes.  Let each layer of your emotional wall disappear as each song disappears.

Ride the wave of your own anger, your own sadness, your own angst until you can’t tell the difference between the beat of the drum and the beat of your heart. (see that upside down lady on the right with the goofy happy smile… THAT’S ME!)

Once you feel your energy start to wane, allow you body to slow down.  Let the new wave of exhaustion set in as your dance moves away from the pole and onto the floor.  Until finally there is only your breath.

Your Body At Rest…

Inhale that next breath, get out your journal (or a piece of paper) and write the answer to these four questions. They are designed to pull the answers to any difficult problem out of your own unconscious mind.  (PS – I’ve included my own answers but not the secret decoder ring, so if anything seems cryptic that’s because my muse likes to speak in alien languages)

Q1:  What do I need right now?

My Answer: Sleep glorious sleep and to stop pushing myself.  To stop second guessing and ignoring my own desires, wants, and opinions.  Because all I’m doing is wasting energy by “should”ing all over myself (shoulding is  when you tell yourself that you “should, must, have to” do something instead of allowing yourself to consciously choose). I work for 9hrs and come home full of resistance. I don’t feel like working on any of my real passions until I can drain that resistance away.

Q2.  What are the things in my life that feel right, that feel easy, that feel like me?

My Answer: my five wishes, my writing career, spending time with J, writing fiction, writing sensually, writing erotica, connecting to my passions through ExpressTheSensual, pole dancing, reading, working with JBT, hanging out with the important people that I care about, feeling love, feeling truth, feeling and expressing my freedom to choose my life and my reality with each breath, to know and experience this moment exactly as it is…

Q3.  What are the things in my life that feel wrong, that feel hard, that don’t feel like me?

My Answer: driving to work, engineering, aerospace, my day job, being a tech writer, worrying about NOT writing, listening to the people that tell me I need to do this – buy that – believe in their miracle product or end up being a dumb ignorant jackass, feeling like a coward, feeling like I have to do EVERYTHING right now, guilt for doing it wrong, guilt for not doing it before, guilt, guilt, guilt.

Q4. What do I forget to tell myself?

My Answer: That even if I feel like I should do everything, I really don’t need to do everything. That I can just let go of all the shit that I don’t want and spend my precious time, energy, and joy building my reality around all the awesome shit that I do want. To focus on my passion and my purpose.  To know that I have a choice and that I have the ability to choose differently as each moment arrives.  Then, my path will stop feeling sticky and I’ll stop feeling trapped.  (At this point angels descended, birds sang, and an intense desire to dance again hit me)

It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.” –Picasso

AHA!

Try this and you’ll discover what I did.  Your REAL PRIORITIES will suddenly be laid out in front of you in such vivid detail that you can’t ignore them anymore. Accept what is critical to you and then make that the most important part of your day.

Don’t just write down the essentials of your answer. Don’t just pay them lip service. Make choices that reflect YOUR priorities. Define your goals and believe in them.

A good friend once told me “Don’t die with your music still in you!”  Break down your walls by listening to your passions. Discover your bare essentials, and share your rapture with the world.

PS…these questions were inspired by a post by Havi Brooks, who you should be reading if you love kooky, fun, and awesome all rolled into one lady…and her duck Selma. Share your ideas in the comment section!

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Sep 22 2008

Follow Your Resistance to Find Acceptance

Yannori

Where Are All Your Ducks?

Do you ever find yourself trying to finish the 101 things on your To Do List, while ignoring the one important thing you really want to do?

Do you try to “get all your ducks in a row” before you take your first step toward an activity that you’ve always wanted to do, but that scares you at the same time?

The truth is that just about everybody has this problem, and many of us beat ourselves up constantly about all the important things we’re not doing.  But what if the actions that we resist are actually the perfect opportunity for us to create acceptance for ourselves and learn what is really important to us at the same time.

Turn Your Resistance Around

Consider any time when you had to learn a new skill.

STEP ONE

The first thing you did (although you might have done it unconsciously) was to accept that you didn’t know enough about the subject and you needed to learn more. You had to turn your initial resistance (lack of knowledge) into acceptance as you made mistakes while you learned to do the new skill.

STEP TWO

Then acceptance turned into encouragement because the more you kept at it, the more you learned, and the more you recognized the importance of your new skill.

STEP THREE

Until finally, encouragement turned into accomplishment as you were able to use the skill with ease.

So the next time you resist doing something really important, don’t beat yourself up, take a minute to consider if this is just the opportunity you need to turn acceptance into accomplishment, and take the first step with confidence.

What do you resist the most in your life? How does it feel when you finally accept it? Share your ideas in the comment section!

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