Category: Newsletter

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Newsletter

light yourself on fire

“Success is not a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.”

— Arnold H. Glasgow

How do I light a fire under me? How do I get back to the fifteen projects on my to-do list that I started a year (three years) ago and haven’t gotten back to? Or do I let them go, cut them, decide they are as done as they are ever going to be?
It’s hot here. August can be brutal. I’m in tank tops most days, forgetting to put on some sort of bra. It feels exposing. Sloppy. Unheld. All of the fire dials are up to red, all of the parks say “no smoking!,” the Berkeley hills caught on fire a few days ago and spread for acres. The dried out golden grass catches easily.
But I don’t catch easily. Sometimes I wither. Sometimes I’m that obnoxious green that is so dense it’s almost impossible to break it or rip it.
I keep waiting for someone else to set the fire. For deadlines, for some sort of external motivation that will ‘make me’ do this work. But it’s not going to just happen. It’s not flowing in the morphic fields waiting for me to step into it. It’s me — I have to do it. I have to set myself on fire.
— Zed

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Newsletter Poetry

A combustion of words

A poem, an offering

This delightful poem speaks of combustion, our planetary theme for August.
Enjoy!
—Amy

Combustion

Sara Eliza Johnson

If a human body has two-hundred-and-six bones
and thirty trillion cells, and each cell
has one hundred trillion atoms, if the spine
has thirty-three vertebrae—

if each atom

has a shadow—then the lilacs across the yard
are nebulae beginning to star.
If the fruit flies that settle on the orange
on the table rise
like the photons

from a bomb fire miles away,

my thoughts at the moment of explosion
are nails suspended
in a jar of honey.

I peel the orange

for you, spread the honey on your toast.
When our skin touches
our atoms touch, their shadows
merging into a shadow galaxy.
And if echoes are shadows
of sounds, if each hexagonal cell in the body
is a dark pool of jelly,
if within each cell
drones another cell—

The moment the bomb explodes

the man’s spine bends like its shadow
across the road.
The moment he loses his hearing
I think you are calling me
from across the house
because my ears start to ring.
From the kitchen window

I see the lilacs crackling like static

as if erasing, teleporting,
thousands of bees rising from the blossoms:
tiny flames in the sun.
I lick the knife
and the honey pierces my tongue:

a nail made of light.

My body is wrapped in honey. When I step outside

I become fire.

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Newsletter

Wonder Body Coloring Book coming August 15th!

Wonder Body!
the new adult coloring book from Body Trust
is coming August 15th with a party on the 17th

If you’re in Seattle, come join us for a free celebration book launch party on Thursday, August 17th 7:00-8:30pm at Mt. Baker Community Clubhouse (2811 Mt. Rainier Dr. S, Seattle, WA 98144). There will be wine, beer, snacks, and also a big 6’x6′ dry-erase coloring mandala. Amy and Alex will tell tales about the back story of the book and how it came into form. We’ll have copies for sale and happily autograph them!
Join us!
Thursday, August 17th 7:00-8:30pm
Mt. Baker Community Clubhouse
2811 Mt. Rainier Dr. S,
Seattle, WA 98144
Check out more about the coloring book at wonderbody.us

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Newsletter

Portals of Pleasure, an offering

When two of more gather, a circle emerges. The circle has potential, is greater than individual, and holds life. Circle work: we gather in community to explore soulful embodiment and to replenish ourselves—individuated and interdependent—utilizing the group energy for the micro and macro. Circles form and dissipate intentionally, spontaneously, and naturally. An intentional circle can be a portal.
There is a portal in New Mexico. The Body Trust retreat Portals of Pleasure is occurring from July 19 through July 23 in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico. Individuals are prepared and traveling, guided by intention, the circle is formed and we are drawing close.
During these days and nights together, we create a particular portal for transformation. From a distance, there is opportunity for you to connect. How to join? Set an intention to tap into the portal and receive the energetic offering.  It could look like meditating in the morning knowing that we sit in meditation, or taking time to nourish yourself, or finding a somatic pleasure and sharing it with another.
Feel it,
Alex

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Newsletter

ice portal with birds

https://vimeo.com/225497718

Watch the strange, stark, intense beauty that is an iceberg. All sorts of things are portals.

Video taken by Zed in southeast Alaska a few weeks ago at Tracy Arm fjord.

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Newsletter

In praise of serendipity

How we discover

I often feel like I move through the world backwards as compared to the more goal-directed folks all around me. They march forward, a clear destination in their sites. I meander, side-to-side, traversing and spinning along an emerging path, patiently awaiting surprise.
But what if there was value in that wandering? Or as this article on serendipity asks: How do we cultivate the art of finding what we’re not seeking?
Finding pleasures in the body often needs that same serendipity and openness to unexpected delights. Otherwise, we run the risk of narrowing our focus to what is already known, seen, or felt. I mean, how would I have discovered the pleasure portal of someone’s heel pressed into my armpit (really! you should try it) or the potency of having someone whisper in my ear a description of their favorite breakfast (the one that makes us both swoon!) if I hadn’t wandered down some overgrown embodiment paths. The terrain is full of surprises if you wander off the main trail.
— Amy

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Newsletter

Behind the scenes in booklandia . . .

Our super-secret coloring book project is coming closer to it’s debut. Heck, it’s even getting its own ‘beauty shots’ taken (see above). We’re super proud of Wonder Body: A Coloring Book for Curious Adults, which will be released on August 15th. It’s a quirky adult coloring book—as only Body Trust could bring you—exploring all things embodiment: 15 unique senses, the subtle body system, and 10 random portals of pleasure.
We believe so much in this book and it’s potential to bring more aliveness into the mind, body, and hearts of colorists, that we’ve hired the fabulous folks at Three Girls Media to get the word out. Together, over the next few weeks, we’re going to really ramp up our social media posting to build some buzz. I mean really ramp it up.
You know the Body Trust team well enough to know that Zed is really the only one of us who is truly a social media literati, while Lizz, Alex, and I are, shall we say, somewhat less fluent. Therefore, Three Girls is going to help us out (kind of like a vantriloquist and its dummy) as we enter the conversation more often on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and Twitter. Please be patient with us we fine-tune this collaboration, find our voice, and reset our participation levels from ‘quiet’ to ‘chatter-box’. It’s for a good cause!
And let us know what you think along the way. We’d love to hear from you as we . . . put the pencil to the paper and find the pleasure on the page!
— Amy, for the Body Trust team

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Newsletter

Sweet Darkness . . .

Sweet Darkness

BY 
When your eyes are tired
 the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone,
 no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark
 where the night has eyes
 to recognize its own.
There you can be sure
 you are not beyond love.
The dark will be your home
 tonight.
The night will give you a horizon
 further than you can see.
You must learn one thing.
 The world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds
 except the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
 confinement of your aloneness
 to learn
anything or anyone
 that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
Happy summer,
Lizz
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Newsletter

Dear introvert: You are amazing.

I am not going to sing your praise in a loud public way, knowing that you will shrink into the sidelines from too much exposure. I will shout it out here, so that you can take it in while drinking a cup of tea or hear it whispered to you by a beloved.

 

Your thoughtful creativity emerges from deep inside. The fingerprint of your soul is expressed through your art. Thank you for taking the time to ponder, to be alone and to create. Thank you for letting me see what you have created. I feel the effect.

 

You are a good friend, and fun company. You know sensate pleasure. You can savor the taste of food, listen to moving music, be touched by beauty and have fun with your body. You have emotional intensity, and ask deep piercing questions.

 

Take time to nurture yourself, resting and being solo, because those moments feed you and your dynamo. And it is your dynamo that can feed the planet. I adore that flow in you.

 

With love, 

Alex

 

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Newsletter

Seeing from the outside in

How accurately we depict . . . or not
At the most recent Seattle Erotic Arts Festival, I had a chance to take part in David Peterman’s amazing Me by Me project. The premise is that the “artist” quickly draws a life-sized nude image of themselves then poses next to it—buck naked.
I was feeling a little gas-and-bloat that day and it was making me grumpy. I drew quickly too (less than 2 minutes) knowing that would be the only way to keep my perfectionist “artist” at bay. The drawing that emerged felt accurate in that moment.
While David and his crew “framed” my picture, I stripped down behind the curtain. Even though I was in public and had David, his camera, and a bunch of helpers coaching and encouraging me on, it felt like the most natural thing in the world to be standing there. Me beside my drawing. Me by me.
Now, when I look at the image he captured, I’m struck by several things: the energy in my face, the strength in my body, yet the way the energy fades as my gaze travels down to my feet. The energy of the top doesn’t seem to match the energy at the bottom. Almost like one of those kid’s books where you can flip sections—rearranging top/middle/bottom—to make your own magical creature.
But maybe that is just the story I tell. An old story. Maybe making things visible like this can reshape something. A little truth and reconciliation within my own psyche.
June’s theme is all about visibility and putting forward who you are. Happy Pride, everyone!
— Amy
P.S. Thanks to Zed for showing me this technique for making a photo SFW. The white lines are mine, not David’s. And kudos to David and his crew for creating such a strong and positive container for this experiment. Magical and fun!