Practice Journal/Anista Blaisdell 

In the first part of the month I did yoga and stretching with other practices, but in the second half not at all. I felt the sessions to be inadequate because of this, as well as not setting and forming the structure of time very definitively around the practice period part of my day. This left me feeling like I am not sure if I practiced or not. I did a lot of just boogying out which felt refreshing and relieving for me to know that I CAN do this all by myself. Also I worked with very slow movement with focused mind following movement and moving with lightness and seamless flow.

I am practicing using my mind to move my breath to different areas of my body while looking for releases in those areas. I work on letting go of expectation or attachment as to what will occur as a result of the breath and awareness. I am noticing shooting, throbbing pains in the top back of my hip bones lately and a spot about two inches below that upper ridge. I also notice that I am walking stronger with more directive, clear energy.

I notice the practice is serving to quiet my mind better than my sitting meditation practice. Also I am still working with what feels like a pulled hamstring on my left leg which I never mentioned but has been there three or so months now. I find after returning to my stretching part of the practice very recently that I am even more flexible than I was before when I would do it almost daily and I wonder how THAT is!! funny! it seems counter rational... interesting. I continue to gather information... I feel my next venture is exploring why on a concrete level I do this work. even in the ethereal ways I want to know them in a way that has a sense of concreteness to my experience.

I feel on an energetic level so utterly electrified with universal, creative life force. All I want to do after every other spirit moving practice, if I am not dancing, or teaching, or writing is paint and draw my inner tapestry into forms, pictures and colors. I have not wanted to draw and paint for years and the desire is so alive and wild. I feel so WILD!! I feel I have so much passionate energy I am swimming in it but I am not- and have a sense I cannot- do enough to engage it. I know I am not. I feel a yearning to fill it. I am so utterly aware of this love affair I am having with myself and god, the eternal, and it just intensifies with every practice or other creative venture I do that I do not know how to harness it, so I feel this loss to myself and the world for not doing more and channeling it into more creative endeavors to save the hearts and minds of all inhabitants of the earth. I have so much energy and bright vision for the future of mankind!! my writing has for the first in my life felt more clear than my spoken word. Doing this work and documenting it has brought me ever so close to the realization that I am this unmanifested journey unfolding into an everchanging creation of self and understanding of the world from a deep voided abyss. In other words, I live with a subtle sense that life is a mystery.