Tensegrity Coaching

04/07/2025

Is excellence an individual quest or a group effort?
What are the similarities and differences between these two paths to excellence in your experience?

10/27/2024

So: Who can really cook? Who can cook real food, not stuff prepackaged or in a box? (No Kraft Mac N Cheese or Stouffer’s Lasagna). I look forward to seeing your surveys, on YOUR OWN page.

HAVE YOU EVER:
1. Made bread from scratch? Yes
2. Cooked fresh okra or squash? Yes
3. Made homemade soup? Yes
4. Fried chicken? Yes
5. Made spaghetti sauce from scratch? Yes
6. Made homemade rolls or cinnamon rolls? No
7. Baked a cake from scratch? Yes
8. Made icing from scratch? Yes
9. Cooked a pot roast with all the veggies? No
10. Made chili from scratch? No
11. Made a meatloaf? No
12. Made potato salad? Yes
13. Made mac/cheese from scratch? Yes
14. Made any pies from scratch? No
15. Made sausage from scratch? No
16. Made fudge? No
17. Made cookies from scratch? Yes
18. Cooked a pot of dried beans? Yes
19. Cooked a pot of greens? No
20. Made cornbread from scratch? No
21. Made a pie dough from scratch? No
22. Cooked a whole turkey? No
23. Snapped green beans & cooked them? Yes
24. Made mashed potatoes from scratch? Yes
25. Prepared a meal for 30 plus people? Yes
26. Made homemade tortillas? No
27. Made pancakes from scratch? Yes
28. Roasted vegetables in the oven instead of boiling them? Yes
29. Made pasta from scratch? No
30. Made tamales from scratch? No
31. Made tuna or chicken salad? Yes
32. Fried fish? Yes
33. Made baked beans? No
34. Made ice cream from scratch? No
35. Made jam or jelly? Yes
36. Zested an orange or lemon? Yes
37. Made grits from scratch? No
38. Made an omelet? Yes
39. Made homemade pizza? Yes
40. Lived in a house without a dishwasher? Yes

I can’t wait to see who does this survey. I know I have some cooking friends out there !

08/09/2024

Some gentle reminders 😘
Like and follow if you found these helpful ❤️

07/24/2024

PRACTICES for parenting an embodied magical child:

Bathe your child with chamomile water to fill them with energy, vitality, joy and confidence.

Let them walk barefoot in the garden, so they have contact with the earth and can be more rooted in nature and life.

Bless and Intend your food, so that it nourishes the body and models the habits of a healthy person.

Create a magic wand together with which one can conquer one’s fears.

While combing them visualize how the brush removes bad thoughts, beliefs or negative ideas.

Hug your child by placing them close to your chest, heart to heart so that her heartbeat synchronizes and she feels safe.

Meditate together so you can begin to know yourself and fill yourself with tranquility.

Paint protective seals on the soles of your shoes.

Place a rose quartz near your bed so that the energy of love surrounds you.

Before leaving the house, visualize a large blue sphere that completely covers and protects you.

We give our children these beautiful practices and teachings of embodied love and magic, they are the future.

07/04/2024

A very touching piece to listen to.

‎Show Sounds of SAND, Ep #92 Gaza & the Bodhisattva Path: Gabor Maté & Tara Brach - Jul 4, 2024

05/27/2024

One of the core tenets of somatic transformation lives in the habitual postures of our bodies.
How we hold ourselves upright and move in the world is both, a reflection of everything we have lived through, and the main engine driving how we are able to show up for new challenges. For this reason, building the new in our lives can be done with so much less resistance when we incorporate practicing new postures and movement patterns - ones that align with the new vision/position/lifestyle/career we are invoking.
I know this well, and have seen its transformative efficacy in my personal somatic practice as well as in the lives of my clients.
This morning has me reflecting on posture through the lens of the nursing mother, for that is a chapter that I’m currently in again.
Looking at the first image in the thread, and considering the ways in which it mimics the posture of nursing (especially those middle of the night nursing sessions) I am curious about how this repetitive posture will reshape me in the coming year or two, and I am curious about how I can find better structural alignment while breastfeeding my baby.
I think of other mothers, working hard in their homes and their jobs, and wonder how we manage to accomplish so much with our back so bent.
For generations, the posture of motherhood has been a posture of self-abnegation.
As we move into a different era of possibility for women and for parents, I’m curious to play with how to redefine the posture of motherhood/of caregiving. How to discover a new way of holding ourselves through it, that does not compromise the structural integrity of the body.
As I try on different ways to stay aligned in myself while sharing deep connection with my little one, perhaps I will remember to take some pictures and share with you all what I’ve come up with.
If you have practices of your own around staying in postural alignment while nursing/mothering/caregiving, please feel free to share ❤️

05/20/2024

It has been a while since I posted here.
I have always found it easier to retreat from human interaction when facing challenging periods.
The last six+ months saw me facing challenges on several levels. My third pregnancy was by far my most challenging both physically and emotionally. A respiratory infection led to chronic symptoms that I am still wading my way out of. A series of unexpected misfortunes visited my household.
And in times like these my historic somatic shape is such that I turn to nature and solitude, and more pointedly I turn away from expansion; I turn inward; I turn away from any large scale human interaction.
Truth is, even after all these years of moving past generational and personal trauma, it still takes tremendous effort for me to be seen by the public; and to be seen when feeling hurt/vulnerable/pummeled by life liberates a charge inside of me that is equal to being hunted by a tiger.
This is, of course, a very human and very common experience. I still have to remind myself how human and common it all is.
I can share the wisdom of turning to nature, of co-regulating with the trees with you. I can share the wisdom of centering in yourself and finding regulation and connection that way. These are the tools I have become masterful in using in my own commitment to aliveness and meaning in my life. And I am witnessing the ways in which these same tools have become crutches, coping mechanisms, while I still barely skim the world of human connection.
Oh, my connections in my personal life are rich and deeply satisfying. I speak more of work, of my passion project of a business I am trying to grow, I speak to the forgotten social media pages and the abandoned mailing lists, the cancelled events. To make myself available to a larger public audience, to expand access to my offerings, to give more to more people, to be more known - this is a major growth edge for me, one I find myself more often than not shrinking away from.
On April 20, 2024 Taisiya (my third daughter) came earthside peacefully in our home in full health. In the haze of exhaustion and bliss that is postpartum, I reach out to touch the world again.

01/07/2024

On emergence and being witnessed:
I recall the nascent years of social media, and how reticent I was to engage with such a concept… for the first 5 years I watched my friends join and become connected with each other and with a larger world while I held myself back and aloof - almost in a holier than though posture against a virtual reality that was only gaining gravity and momentum.
I recall when first I broke down against my prejudices and joined the book of faces, I entered this virtual play ground boldly, and would write rants and updates and soul insights and heartbreaks for the world to see me as I am on any given day. I would share political opinions, and medical opinions, and philosophical debates. I would engage in virtual activism and invite/incite others toward the same.
It was both performative and authentically raw in equal measure, and it felt easy - like spreading the right temperature butter onto bread.
Over the last decade, I have become more of a lurker.
I stay mildly up to date and simultaneously uninvolved in what is going on in the world and in the lives of my friends. The algorithm has refined a curated stream of content that is educational and enlightening on all my favorite subjects, in a lovelu flow of memes and reels that are just so relatable. I get to have passive consumption of content with minimal requirements for engagement.
Truth is, I am so engaged in the life of raising children, and healing, and walking my talk, and holding space for my immediate community - that social media is not a place that I come to for engagement.
I don’t have that capacity to engage with the broader audience, even my various friendships that are separated by large distances or affiliations that are not immediate on my geogrpahical and energetic locale - I love to see that photos they post, or updates on their life. But I don’t have space to comment or engage or reach out beyond the lurking and passive content consumptions.
It has also become equally exhausting to make myself visible, to share of myself and post about the real living that is unfolding in my corner of reality.
I don’t know why, but to be perceived feels like a drag most of the time.
And at the same time, my path of embodied living and learning includes a commitment to exploring, playing with, and hopefully building capacity to expand my reach in the world and to expand my capacity to hold a greater charge for the sake of deep connection, for the sake of compassionate impact, for the sake of building a living legacy.
The upanishads have a beautiful line, that has touched me so deeply over the last several years:

Two birds in a tree,
One eats the fruit the other simply sits and watches.

And we are all at one time or another one bird, or the other, or both, or the tree holding them or the fruit being eaten.
When I take in this phrase, a well of sadness arises in me, because it feels as though I have spent a significant portion of my time on earth trying to become the bird that simply sits and watches for fear of becoming the bird that is trapped by the voracious appetite for tasting fruit that distracts them from truly reckoning with their own mortality.
From my youngest memory I knew that death would come one day, and I was committed to be ready to face it when it comes - which translated to not getting sucked into the world of chasing pleasant sensations.
And the well of sadness that arises in me when I realize this, is that in many ways I’ve managed to coast through life and experiences, a diversity of them for by external fact it can be said that o have lived rather boldly, yet I have managed to coast through it all not really letting any of it touch me.

My commitment in my journey towards embodied living and learning is that I have begun allowing the world to actually pe*****te my aloofness, I have begun tasting the fruit. And I have had to start very small, because I don’t have the stomach for it as it’s turned out. My capacity for contact and for tasting is like that of an infant, on the energetic level.
Three years ago, when I began this lesson, the slightest contact, the smallest morsel of fruit tasted would put me into a coma like collapse.
Like a newborn, whose stomach is the size of a cherry pit, I would taste, and then close in to sleep deeply trying to digest.

This new year, the approaching year of the dragon, sees me beginning to gain a ground of being where in I want to push the envelope a little and see how much more of the world can I stomach, beyond my very small and intimate circle. We will see how much I can keep it going. This post is one step at revealing myself again as I once used to.
And I will see how I can digest the energetic pendulum swing of taking this action, whether I can manage it in an embodied way, with the emotional and energetic integrity I now hold myself to.
And then, perhaps I will feel like I have capacity to do this again, to engage on purpose, and may be even with some regularity.
Hello virtual world. I see you. I feel you.
I am open to tasting your fruits with embodied intention and commitment to living fully so that the art of living may become married with the art of dying.

12/21/2023

Solstice snuggles from our family to yours!
#2023

12/21/2023

Had to change this to tomorrow, due to venue being double booked today!
(Mercury retrograde at its best!)

12/18/2023

I am finally well enough, after a month of respiratory turmoil, to facilitate an OM dome circle again!
Join me this Friday, December 22 at 6:30 pm for a Winter Solstice OM chanting, where we will use our voices to call light, compassion, and peace back to our world on the darkest night of the year 💗
I will have some cushions available, but bring your favorite meditation cushion or seat, as we will be on the floor.
Koei-Kan SLO Dojo
3468 Sacramento Drive
San Luis Obispo, CA