The Dissolving of the Kingdom and Entering the Gates of Heaven

It’s time. The Queen is ready to go. She has surrendered and let go of everything. She has let go of fear and negativity. She has a strong court she cares dearly about that surrounds her and supports her. There is the mermaid, with horns of a goat and the tail of a fish to guide her on her journey.

And now that the outer world and the kingdom walls are falling away, she has more confidence in herself than ever. So much confidence, that she now radiates with gold. Her gold is heavy in her body and grounds her with its golden glow. She feels it in her body, in her breath. All the terrible and crushing trials of time past have given her the strength, the courage, the wisdom and the persistence to bring her to this moment. Because the visions as the High Priestess and the love and encouragement of the King have shown her the way and cemented her in her certainty.

The outside world is waiting, as the winds of change have come, and its time for her to come out of the darkness and shine. It’s a new era. The Queen passes dissolves the walls of the Kingdom, walks through the High Priestess’s gates of heaven and is reborn in the World.

The Queen of Bohemia is simplifying her life and getting ready to travel with the kids and Storytime Yoga abroad.

This summer is going to rock. I’m selling most of my possessions, storing the rest, sending the kids to Texas for two months to be with their late father’s family, then by August taking the kids abroad on a nomadic tour to some places around the world with Storytime Yoga.

I’m heading for Buenos Aires June 2-18, then have the fantastic annual Mythic Yoga the Story in the Body retreat here in Boulder. Then I'm working on the East Coast with the niños at the Kripalu Kids Camp July 9-18 and I’m at the Omega Institute for the Storytime Yoga Children’s Yoga Teacher and Yoga Play Therapy training July 25-30. By August I may be in Mexico City with the kids for a training I’ve been invited to do, but afterwards I’m planning to stay several months in Buenos Aires, so that we can bring our little black-and-white duality dog, the most Honorable Sergeant Pepe (Prince Pepe don't forget he was promoted). Esme the cat will stay with Opa. From there I imagine I'll come back for a little while. I’m not sure, or perhaps to Lima where I have been invited to train and of course it is my life’s dream to serve and teach the little children of Latin America and take my children abroad to learn and be a yoga family and speak Spanish and oh, my! I can’t wait! I have surrendered and have no expectations, only to be present and joyful.

I would go stark raving mad if I were around my kids 24-7 because as a widow they are around constantly,and that's the hardest part. So I will have some local help, but I’ll be schooling them with a public online school. I’ll be creating yoga home school curriculum for my kids as family yoga with stories, yoga philosophy, peace and character education, writing, reading and oral projects, asana, local geography local cooking and culture, children’s ayurveda and service. Whew! Do I love learning and teaching and yoga or what? We’ll see which ones we get done or how it all ultimately turns out. I surrender and most of all refuse to feel pressure, for I want to go back to that space before the wounding. Before my husband’s suicide, when I was a stay-at-home mother, who cooked carmel-corn from scratch and had a gorgeous raspberry patch, sewed her children’s clothing and taught them at home and told them stories and practiced yoga.

I’ll be blogging about it with You Tube. My Storytime Yoga blog, The Householder Yogini, will cover my Storytime Yoga Children’s Mission, as well as the Queen of Bohemia Cleans her Own House with Mythic Yoga, using yoga, meditation, journaling and mythology for adults to work with life’s challenges for a peaceful, present and powerful life. All this and Storytime Yoga lesson plans of the above are all available when you subscribe to the League of Yogic Storytellers. Certified Storytime yoga teachers are also keeping their own blogs about how they use story and yoga in their lives, families and communities.

Many of my friends ask, “Why on earth are you doing this?” There are many reasons. First, I’ve been expecting the meltdown of the world economy for a while now, my father has been prophesying it since I was a kid, and everybody thought he was nuts, but he did survive Ambarawa 7 and everything he’s told me has been very accurate. The only real difference is that he says we are all going into the fifth dimension and the UFOs are getting ready to reveal themselves but the evil empire keeps holding on with one last gasp and disclosure is thwarted every date that is predicted for this event and I’m never sure about that even though I wish it were true to save us all and Star Trek and Buck Rogers worlds really do exist and are not just my fantasies.

I think the US is going to be a dangerous place, more than Argentina, which was one of the IMF’s first victims and has already been through an economic collapse. The King and I have been researching it for a while now, and Buenos Aires is my kind of town - more psychotherapists per capita than any other place in the world. They love old book stores and opera and naturally the soul of the tango speaks volumes.

I believe that with all the terror threats and our heinous war on Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan there will be strikes in the US. Redneck militia are already coming out of the woods previewing a civil war and there will be more nut jobs crashing into IRS buildings and scapegoating immigrants and Muslims as citizens acquiesce to loss of Constitutional freedoms at a rapid clip with state sponsored terror and propaganda and spiral into fear and chaos and sociel disorder. Greece will look like a TV show compared to what's coming in the Greatest Depression. What’s happening in Arizona is downright nefarious and it all looks like Germany 1933 to me, as we fuel narco war in Mexico with our US arms sales over Arizona’s borders. I’ve seen it all before because of all my father’s concentration camp stories. And just watch Adrian Brodie in The Pianist. It’s heinous. This stuff happens. Americans couldn’t believe it can ever come here. My eighth grade social study teachers in 1980 didn't know what I was talking about when my mother insisted I tell my teachers that my father is a child survivor of a Japanese concentration camp during World War II. But it does happen. I know. Lives change horribly and forever when one day soldiers are knocking at your door and telling you to pack only essentials before hauling you and your little children off to a concentration camp to starve and be tortured and they murder your husband in a forced-labor, Mitzubishi tin mine outside of Tokyo. It lives on for generations. And I have children to protect.

But not to fear, my time is here. It has all fallen into place. Time to get into action and go out on a mission. I’ve never felt so confident and clear of vision and purpose. I envision myself as the Queen of Gold, as I believe gold has been suppressed like Cinderella in the dungeon for a long time, while the ugly step-sister dollar charades around as the real value. But she’s really what’s valuable. And gold and silver will be re-monetized as the economy can’t hold up as the evil empire can’t hold up the debt charade any longer and has lost its grip so our gold comes back center stage. Out the Queen comes! And she shines! I am that Golden Queen.

Another reason I’m going is that when I was a stringer for the Bakersfield Californian newspaper back in 1996, I used to volunteer for religion reporting. I reported on Cuban ministers who described life under Castro, Greek Orthodox priests and the history of the Church, Hispanic Pentecostal revivals on Delano’s skid row, and old ladies who ran Bible classes for retarded adults.

I also did a story on a Mexican priest who was traveling around California and Mexico with the tilma of Juan Diego, who was visited by the Virgin Mary on the hill of Tepeyec, (which was built on top of the obliterated shrine of the indigenous earth goddess Tenotzin.) She appeared to him and told him to build a church on the hill, and sent her image emblazed on his cloak with a whole lot of live roses in the middle of winter as proof to the priests who would not believe the indigenous peasant.

After the telling of the story, the Father asked if I wanted to be blessed with the tilma. I said, "Yes," and he draped it over me and said his prayers. I prayed to the goddess, “Oh, may I be of service to these people.” I have always loved the poor people, especially the indigenous and children. How close they are to nature and spirit still, their folk customs and rich lives, yet oppressed and persecuted with great injustices.

I always loved languages and I married a handsome Tex-Mex trying to make it in a white-man’s world and gave birth Hispanic children. (He said I was Hispanic by injection.) I had spent three months in Ecuador in 1994, and befriended a little girl. I had promised to bring her to the US, as she had been abandoned by her mother and was living with her aunt in a potato chip factory that employed retarded children to package chips in the northern border town of Tulcan, Ecuador. Her name was Carmen, and I spent a lot of time with her and other children doing things together because I hate to see little children suffering. It’s an abomination really that it is allowed at all.

But when I returned to the states, I got busy, working in journalism, making plans to get married. Later I found out that Carmen had committed suicide by eating rat poison. She was only 12 or so, or maybe even 10. I can’t remember. But my remorse and shame was so great. I have always felt the desire to serve children to redeem myself of failing to keep my promise to Carmen. And to be guided by the mother to care for those children who suffer. If we can help them to ease their suffering and educate them for health and literacy with the tools of yoga and story I think the world will be a better place. And we should end war in the name of children, for how my father suffered and how it is an abomination and must be stopped.

Another reason is that I have a minor in Spanish. I love speaking Spanish; I love language. My latest book is the Spanish version of Storytime Yoga Teaching Yoga to Children Through Story – Yoga Con Cuentos – Como Enseñar Yoga a los Niños Mediante el Uso de Cuentos. Published by The Mythic Yoga Studio, LLC. (I finally got an LLC, seven years after starting the biz.) I love traveling and cultures and have been envisioning this since at least 1991. So there is destiny involved with vision. And I want my children to have that experience abroad, outside of the Geography of Nowhere America and suburbia and mythless society trapped in consumption that strangles my lonely soul. I crave a plaza filled with people, art and life. To be in rhythm and connection with nature and the mystery. To rediscover Christianity as well as pagan, indigenous roots and live in community (I will be visiting an eco-yoga farm in Argentina.) I’ll study with my kids the Bhagavad Gita and Yoga Sutras and connect them to their Judeo-Christian roots, while understanding our Muslim, and other religions and applying Buddhist meditation and philosophy. I will not regret leaving the dry, cold, windy, brown Colorado climate I have tried so many times to leave and all its sorrow, but I will also return a lot because there are so many people that I love who still live there.

So I will be on the Storytime Yoga Children’s Mission. Wherever I find some place. I hope you donate to the Mission and support me! As I am sustained by the grace of Lord Shiva. And it is an act of faith and deep love for children and the divine.

I am getting ready to move. The Queen of Bohemia is really cleaning her own house, because I am letting go of so much. Letting go of all the antique collections, artwork and yoga knick-knacks. Selling the Prius (La Gata Negra) so I don’t have to participate in hideous oil dependency that is killing our planet in the Gulf of Mexico as I write this . I am getting rid of about two-thirds of my possessions, but keeping the books and pictures, a few sentimental objects and the yoga props and educational materials. As that is my focus. And it has become so much ever clearer.

I have discovered that the more you let go of your possessions, the less anxiety you feel. You simply stand in the present moment, free of the distracting pull of objects and attachments. To have a simple life and release from the shackles of complexity our culture requires. All you have is your body, and the sensations of the present experience. I’m not sure how I will live without my I-Phone, but I’m hoping to get an I-Pad for educational purposes to fill that gap.

It was terrifying at first. To uproot myself, stir the pot. Oh, the cycle again! Here I go again, creating chaos! I begin to second-guess myself. But I feel pulled always, toward my destiny. The invisible hands massage the heart forward. So I’ve been gentle on myself. Sitting meditation every morning to stay peaceful. Packing it up slowly. I was pissed at Gilbert for putting pressure on me to show this house I’m vacating, for he popped up with little notice of showings while I was in the midst of packing and culling and complained of my artistic temperament and decor. It’s bare bones now, and hope to move a lot this weekend to get ready for the garage sale.

Today I went to get so many art objects and antiques stored at my father’s house to sell at the sale. It was as if I symbolically were finally getting out of my father’s house. I spent the day with him today to get the stuff and also to drive him to oral surgery for a wisdom tooth, since he is 77. It took longer than usual because they couldn’t numb him because he takes so many heavy medications for headache and back pain that he’s tolerant and it took a while to desensitize it.

I will no longer be a part of that filthy house, the desperate trap of despair. I am outside of the house. I am outside of the concentration camp. I am not a prisoner. I am free. I shine for myself, not to care for somebody else and support their dreams rather than mine, which I have done all my life. All this stuff and weight of the past are ready to sell at the big garage sale Friday May 21 and Saturday May 22, 9-4. Many neighbors are having a sale too with me! It will be quite a cleaning, physical and psychic.

Things I will be selling:

Edward S. Curtis original completion prints (5) Gorgeous, turn of the century Native American photographs, but I need the money for a new shopping cart on my website.
Taos pottery and other original artwork, prints from black tie silent auctions I attended with my late husband.
Sydney Solis original artwork. Rare and very valuable.
Antique doll, book, magazine, camera and salt-and-pepper collections. (Keeping the pin, magnet and weaving collections. My Oma started me collecting as a child: rocks, shells, coins.)
A jungle full of plants of assorted sizes. To loving homes only.
My son’s air gun collection (I told him the Xbox and Halo stay in the US)
A bunch of assorted antique bronze yoga knick-knacks, Buddha statues, etc.
A ton of books, art books, literature, poetry, travel, and some library discards given to me by my librarian sister.
Zillions of picture frames.
I never want to spend another winter in Colorado so out go all the winter clothes except the Ann Taylor long black coat, the Saks Fifth avenue wool wrap my late husband bought me on our wedding and the Sorrels for when I do come back and visit periodically and walk in the fresh snow and try snowshoeing or by chance need them because I’m caught in a the cold or blizzard.
Girl’s 4-piece bedroom set of fine wood, although my daughter destroyed it with pens and paint and her one-time step-sister burned holes in it in envy, but we spray painted over it and it looks great.
My son’s bunk bed and desk.
Cute rare pink color Buddy 50 scooter with low miles. Includes basket and helmet.
2005 Black Prius 74k miles
Hammer Dulcimer (Gave up lessons shortly after its impulse purchase while vacationing in Manitou Springs with the kids.)
Kitchen stuff
Kitchen table and four chairs
Lots of CDs (I-tunes is great!)
Shelving, nice chair, kids skiis and bikes, helmets
Clothes. (Gave the vintage dress collection to my Hare Krishna niece.)
Horrifying thought. I have a bunch of stuff at my Arvada house. I will have to contact the tenants to get it out and get rid of it. I was there recently and got my late husband’s collection out, but there is much more stuff, like a 1950s module stereo. It’s really cool!
God, so much crap to get rid of! How to list it all! Just show up! It’s all going! The scary thing is that this is my third garage sale of getting rid of stuff in the past 7 years. I remember my mother, always shuffling around piles of crap from one end of the house to the next in our messy house, throwing things down the basement steps and bringing other things up again. Buying crap from garage sales and getting rid of things in her blue Subaru, most of which remained in the blue Subaru.

I’m also going to have a party, and you are invited, so stay tuned for details when I confirm the date.

Finally, I cannot tell you the weight of a ball and chain that is removed from my heart. I drove to Denver Wednesday and handed the keys, leases headache EVERYTHING over to a property management company for Speer and Arvada because I decided I cannot depend on Gilbert and I need dependable people who don't piss me off. Two upstanding young men will deal with the late night calls, the undependable handymen who don't bring back toilet seats, the deposit of rent checks and the utility billing and collecting the laundry money. They can learn some Spanish and instruct Miguel, Sr. on the exterior painting that I had him get started. I wrote four new leases this month and had Gilbert fill the 2-bedroom. One girl is getting married so that's why they are leaving. I tried raising the rent on the nursing student in the one-bedroom but she flipped out, started crying, and I felt bad and gave the increase to her as a scholarship. She was very grateful. Thank God I don’t have to be pulled in that direction any more. I saved myself from certain death by exhaustion and dread. By clearing my plate of financial management (gave it to my bookkeeper) and running my business (gave it to my assistant, she rocks,) dealing with ex-husband crap (I gave it to my lawyer who filed garnishment of wages and until he files bankruptcy, like he keeps flapping his lips about there is nothing I can do except hold onto the piece of paper judgment that says he owes me $30k at 8 percent interest.) I have plugged the drains of energy. It’s a wash financially, but I was never a capitalist. It’s all dealt with now and I get to live my bliss, the most important thing. Maybe US real estate will tank even more. I got my Arvada property assessment notice, and the value is unchanged. Speer was underwater last year and I haven’t received this year’s value, Speer’s in a hot area so maybe it will improve. But I can’t worry about that. And considering the meltdown, I think it’s pretty much time to surrender and never think about it and leave it to the pros and the combinations of planets at certain times.

So this may be one of the last times I have a free blog, as my assistant insists I give away my best stuff for free, and she wants to make money because after all, this is a capitalistic society we live in, (heavy sigh) and that’s fine as long as children are not suffering and it doesn’t appear to be working right now and that’s why we need to do something about it. (something tells me that on Monday everything is going to change with economic collapse and all these plans could very well change. Such is the lesson of non-attachment.)

OK. That’s enough for now. I'm going to do some yoga and focus on creating a stable pelvis and my uddiyaya banda. It’s a Friday, and the Queen is going to start moving stuff to the storage unit tomorrow and is getting ready for Mother’s Day weekend. Because we honor the mother, that divine energy that is bringing balance back to the earth, putting the heart into the machine, and awakening the kingdom of heaven right here in this moment in this body on this gorgeous, incredible experience of being and love. And I will rejoice in the love that I feel for my children and being their mother. Hallelujah, says the Queen. Amen.

The Optimist Queen and her Transvere Abdominus

The Queen hiked up the mountain today, but alone, for Sergeant Pepe was getting groomed for the ball and to go as Prince Pepe instead. She hiked up, footing skillfully the ice and snow. She remembered her mountain goat self, her steady, rocky ascent uphill. And she remembered her reptilian tail, her fishy, watery instincts in her hips on down. She felt the bird bones and she was quite comfortable there as they propelled her on.

She wore her crown, with the big sparkly blue jewel in it, and she sang her song the Shaman gave her and the feeling that was in her body swept over her. It was a lovely feeling. When she reached the top, she did her usual proclamation to the big, blue mountain, and she said, thinking there should be something to affirm or overcome or wrestle or struggle with and instead she said, “I am at peace.” There was just the moment, and the moment was perfect. Even though the King was still at the bottom of the earth, she knows and feels the shift. He turned the corner, he is headed north again. Her heart is so relaxed and full at that moment it touched eternity looking at the mountain. The Queen’s court called just then. The King’s heart was at her Castle Door! “I’ll be right there!” And the Queen hiked back down the mountain, mindfully but very excited and with a quicker skip to her step.


The past few days have been nothing short of remarkable. It’s amazing how the more you surrender and the more you love the more things fall into place. I think it's because the mind is in harmony with the body and the body is in harmony with the environment, and that's when the boons come. That's what purpose myth serves. Then synchronicities show up. Because you live the mythic life. Things have their own meaning, their own story. You start with today and now and shape it the way you want with the ritual of images and words and intention. No wonder witches were burned at the stake. They were powerful!

I spoke at the Boulder Optimist Club today. It was good for me to go, even though I had a little bit of an upset stomach for some reason and felt a little sluggish in the morning and less than optimistic. I was invited by the 80-year-old widower, Carl, across the street. I had gotten him and my Dad together for lunch at my house to talk war stories no long ago. I like hanging out with old people. They have such great stories and history. So when he asked me I said yes, even though I don’t get paid.

I had a dream a few nights ago exactly standing and talking to the group exactly as I did today. In the dream I was giving a presentation, but said I didn’t have anything prepared. The dream was initially anxiety over the upcoming speech. I needed to think about it and pull it together. Finally I decided to just tell them about the dream! And not TELL them about yoga and story, but just ALLOW them to EXPERIENCE it. So I told them the Buddhist story of the Spirit Who Lived in a Tree, although I didn’t tell them it was Buddhist, and we talked about what images they saw. The Tree. The movie Avatar’s Tree is so powerful too. As if this basic life force and mythic image is erupting full speed ahead! The mother! Most people were senior, and one man was in a wheel chair from a stroke. I taught them how to breathe deeply and rhythmically and watch their thoughts. Then we just stood there in mountain pose, getting into our bodies. Just standing there in our bodies and noticing them and feeling them. I got the feeling that this was the first time for most of them they ever paid so much attention to the sensations of their body. Then they did tree pose, very simple, using the chair if required. I sat them down and then had them close their eyes for meditation and relaxation and told them the Christian story of Jesus on the water, although I didn’t’ tell them it was Jesus, just a master in a boat on the water with his 12 students.

It was nice to just be with people. Hear their stories. Old people like to tell stories. It’s nice to have somebody to listen to them too! Especially those old war stories. He made a point to tell my Dad's concentration camp story as an introduction. A woman bought my DVD. I thought, this was nice. I taught people to breathe, to notice the present moment. It was quite a joyous experience. It goes beyond any measurement our culture can come up with. For it’s measured in the depths of being, of the heart, and that’s where the alchemical story is taking place. As things transform, awaken, emerge. Truly a renaissance is happening to me, and to my heart and the person I love. And as much chaos erupts in the world, the reconsiliation of paradox takes place and there is just that much love, awe and wonder taking place. It’s all taking place in the heart and it’s fascinating. The joyous and loving feeling I had at the ceremony takes over, it lightens the heart, opens the throat. My bird sings, it’s joyous and flowering and so very, very new. Like the birth dream I had not long ago. The baby was coming out fast.

I’ve been having wonderful synchronicities with the King. As he has voyaged to South America and to Antarctica, to the bottom of the earth, to the fierce storms and winds and water, whales and iceburgs. While he was having his epiphany and turning point, I was having mine that same day. Yesterday, I knew it because our symbol, twin birds, showed up.

For in that day’s Shambhala meditation class, Contentment in Everyday Life, this woman I was paired with wore these gorgeous, Mexican twin bird earrings! I shared that last class was profound, as I felt the effects of meditation assisting in my mythic and heroic journey of getting over myself and the mire of struggle and relishing the freedom revealed.

It reafirms the natural goodness, the gentleness and openness of the human nature, not that there is some mistake, something must be fixed. That's how I felt my whole life. No longer. There are tools to assist us in life’s trials, but they are nothing to be of conttradition to each other to the joys of life, but to live in the paradox, and balance those out. Lessen the tension between the two opposites. Undo the complexes and patterning we are born into and are in this organism infused with energy and life force. How we undo the patterns and complexes to purely and simply bask in eternity.

We had been working with emotions last week. Seeing how they arise and working with them in meditation. I shared how this week I didn’t flip out and get my body worked up into a hot, angry fit filled with victimhood, self-righteousness and the need for justice when all in this just one week Speer tenant’s going to skip paying rent and use their deposit instead without my permission issues, repressed landlady who won’t let you paint your daughter’s bedroom something other than stark white issues, slimy ex-husband who isn’t paying you back the judgment you received because he allowed your house to go into foreclosure and not pay you $30k issues and other emotional issues reared their head.

The woman I was paired with wore lovely artsy clothes of red, and the twin bird earings. She’s a painter and a teacher. We had to share the feelings of trust and confidence we had in the past and now and how we may have had mistrusted or feelings of deceiving someone.
I told how the world wasn’t safe for me, didn’t trust many people, didn’t have much intimacy with people because of an isolated childhood with a violent schizophrenic mother and a concentration camp father. The present moment wasn’t safe. But to have the trust, love and confidence in myself that I have gained from showing up in the present and not identifying with my mind allowed a stability and a grounding to take place that my trust and confidence was found experientially through my body and awareness. And I found that the more you surrender, the more you align. And it’s very hard to do, that surrendering, but surely somehow it seems that the universe all along was doing all that icky devil stuff to you just to get you to give up on your ego ideas and point you to the light. And that ever since my ayayuasca ceremony it gave me the shift and incredible vision that I can never forget. The past is past and all that story gone. All I have left of it is a work of art in honor of all the love I have for it and the people in my life of past, present and future. Her story was interesting because she had the opposite, provided everything from her parents and had everything done for her so it created a terrible insecurity about herself, but that she is at peace with her artist self that even if she never sells a painting at a show that's not what it's about. it's about he making art. I really connected on that. We artists just need to create art. We do it for art's sake and because we have to! Hence my showing up at the Optimist Club or creating anything at all! And there is no clinging to an old story, no digging in the past anymore, but rather a starting from where you are.

The rest of the class was an Oniki traditional monk eating lunch. We brought each three bowls, each smaller than the other. We ate in meditative silence, and two women served simple food from bowls, tempeh, sesamea seeds to sprinkle on, mixed vegetables of asparagus, carrot and squash, brown rice. The second third pass was for condiments of tamari, salt or pepper and the sesame seeds. The third pass was for tea in the third cup. I had put food in it not knowing! And had to clean it out of the soy sauce!

We ate in silence, enjoying each texture, the sound of your neighbor crunching, of the different tastes and sensations. It was magical, so present and glowing reality.

Then a woman gave a demonstration on Japanese Ikibani, flower arranging. The two main stems, heaven and man, then the flower, earth. The stillness and arrangmenet meant to stop you in your tracks and point you toward eternity. It’s a doorway, a symbol that juts you beyond time and space and wakes you up to the now. Somehow I find lately everything is doing that - mountains, trees, chairs, flowers and art. Children's faces and even war and terror.

Later I drove to have lunch at Chipotle and conversed with the women in Spanish for my lunch. I stopped off at Guiry’s for art supplies before heading to my body work session.

I was blown away by this session and the depth of knowledge this guy, Jeff, knew. I had met him the weekend after my ayahuasca ceremony. Feeling self love gushing, I went to get a hair cut. I was early to the salon so I ducked in next door for a 10-minute massage for the pain in my neck I had from doing all the hot yoga classes and stretching the muscles so deeply only for me to stop taking the classes due to getting busy with kids and life again and for the muscles to cramp up severely and cause agony in the spot in my choulder from my car accident was 17 years ago and was nagging me all through the movie Avatar. So I had decided to do something about it and that's how I met Jeff.

I learned about my transverse abdominus muscle and how pregnancy separated it and was causing the destabilization in my pelvis and my organs and issue in my ascending colon because of undigested food! The work he did was hard to pin down, he had such an interesting style but I was so impressed with his deep knowledge of anatomy, the nervous system and how the body functions. I did decompression breathing, deep breathing all the way to the nerves in my head and slow exhalations, five per minute. He held the area of my udyaya banda and wehre the abdominal muscles separated and it was an incredible feeling. Like a psychic hole that was leaking out energy had been closed. And as he said, “You will be like before you were a mother.” Like a virgin again! So there is something to that process! It is an energetic feeling at the uterine, abdominal level. I also felt in one position as I looked down my body from the position on the table as if I were back in the hospital giving birth at one point. So powerful is the body’s memory. It was very real and huge. I felt so calm and peaceful and aligned after leaving there. And I naturally Googled everything on the muscle and what to do about it and look forward to more sessions because it’s so healing! I swear, all my health problems related to that issue! And I had no idea! And my son will be 12 this month!!!

And the Bohemian Bombshell never has felt more comfortable in her body, even thought she is plump, by Goddess she is full, FULL! Full I say! Full of life and it courses through her body, her breasts, belly, thighs, hips and arms. It just radiates life and all the good food of the earth moving through her in grace.

The Queen returned to her castle and found the King’s heart there. She knew that it was only a matter of time before the King’s body, mind and soul caught up and were here completely at the castle. And she’s so exited about that. But the Queen is at Peace. She’s at peace with everything right now. And she’s ticking down the days until the King finally arrives.

El Renacamiento de la Reina del Corazon

Vino de las estrellas
Tan Bella es Ella
Tan Bella es Ella Como sola Ella puede ser su misma
Se Coronó su misma
La Reina del corazón
Tan Bella es Ella

She came from the stars
So beautiful is she
So beautiful is she like only she can be of herself
She crowns herself
The Queen of the Heart
So beautiful is she

Song the Shaman sang to me


The Queen of Bohemia went into new territory today. She went up the mountain and then over it. She started scaling a new mountain. And finally she paused, there was a valley, and a the gate before the next spread of mountains. That was far enough of a new beginning. And it is a new beginning.

She lifted her fist to the mountain and spoke the song that the Shaman gave her, and she believed it with all her heart, all her body. “I am good, kind and beautiful Queen,” she said. “I am beautiful of heart and deserving of goodness. And may I be of service to children and to people. I am so grateful for everything” And then she walked all the way back, her body feeling wonderful, relieved, her heart aflame with joy. Her rebirth in an ocean of conviction she feels down to her core, and that is the most important thing.

Last Friday night in Boulder I had an ayahuasca ceremony with someone trained in Peru. I did the grandmother ceremony, which was done all night and in the darkness. I did not realize that I had done the grandfather ceremony of San Pedro years earlier in 1994 in Ecuador. I was with a boyfriend who was in the Peace Corp. You went into town and knocked on the door of this little shack. To the guy who answered the door you said the code, “I want to rent some horses.”

When I was in Ecuador, we ingested it at night. Daytime would have been better. My boyfriend had a bad trip. He revealed the grief of his mother dying at age 9. I baby-sat him and I don’t remember much else except the scent of jasmine that filled the night air. A woman at this current ceremony said, “The grandfather gives you exactly what you need. You’re a mother! You needed to mother him during tht trip!” So I realize I mother a lot of children.

As I prepared for the Boulder experience by fasting, I was a little nervous about the experience and having to confront yet another unknown demon of my unconscious that needed some light shed on it. I was ready for it. I’ve been battling one thing after another for most of my life. Bring it on.

The shaman asked us to to say our intentions out loud. Mine was for healing, to remove any remaining obstacles, and clarity. As well as whatever the plant consciousness wanted me to experience.

After being called by the shaman to drink the very bitter ayahuasca that was hard to get down, the first thing I noticed was the humming in my head, the music I heard. It was like the rainforest. And I remember the rainforest sounds. I remember the way the shaman sang his disconjointed notes, shook a rattle, moved his cigarette in the dark like a bird. 

I remember being in the Amazonian basin of Ecuador, four hours from Tena by motorized canoe. This semi-aculturated tribe grew coffee and we visited a Peace Corp nurse. There was a Shaman there, who said there was a medicine in a vine. I was interested, but not enough (SADLY!) to meet him back then. He kind of lurked in the background, doing his own thing. In my periferal. The nurse told me a story that there was once a really sick girl, and the visiting doctor couldn’t help her. She was dying. They said call the Shaman, and the Shaman healed her.

It is the belief and the ritual that healed her, I believe. We believe in what happens to us during a ceremony. It’s an experience. A shift in our otherwise mundane and profane worlds. And that shift and feeling in the body is so great you are not the same person you started with. Our society doesn’t offer much of a ritual. The old rites don’t give us any meaning for our modern problems.

So at the beginning of the journey my head started popping and the sounds of the birds made me think of my totem animal, the Raven. Bird is my animal. My symbol and spirit guide. My heart sprouted two wings and La Paloma Blanca said, “Sing your Heart’s Song.”

It was opening my heart, opening my chest and singing my song. Not anybody else’s, but mine. In my vision, I eventually came to a rooftop of a house, and out of the chimney appeared my mother’s face, which was immediately replaced by this witch puppet. This puppet was purchased in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1970 when we lived in Albuquerque. It’s a piece of Mexican folkart and part of a slew of characters, like La Dama a pretty girl, El Borrachero, a drunkard, and La Bruja, the Witch. My mother hung it on the front door of our house growing up. It was like a talisman, and it really looked like her, exactly like the Queen/witch in Sleeping Beauty.

Then the witch turned pretty, as if it were I. She showed up to a little girl in a suburban neighborhood and said, “This world needs some enchantment!” And explained to her how she’d take her under her wing and apprentice, they’d work invisibly, bringing kindness and magic to the world, brightening everybody’s modern, mechanical and meaningless lives with ancient rites.

In my vision, then I traveled back to early, early childhood. Albuquerque. Four years old. My toe getting stuck in a tricycle and bleeding. My mother’s abuse and the painful words she told us. The frightening screaming and hitting and pounding our self-esteem into the ground. Her bag lady clothing, used, torn and ripped. Her unkempt hair. Our worthlessness, undeservingness. The witch.

I remembered little things, like a doll named Rosebud who smelled like roses.
I remembered kindergarten at Heatherwood Elementary in Boulder, Colorado. 1971. Standing in line. A boy, Jed Maletz, just turned around and punched me in the stomach for no reason. He turned back around again. Nobody saw it. Nobody did anything. I just doubled up in pain. Why did that happen? For what reason? Did I deserve that? I suffered in silence. And the class moved on.

I remembered the third grade. Playing four square at Douglass Elementary. Some bully fifth grade girls stole our ball. Narrowed me and another girl into a corner. Saying things to us like we were ugly, stupid. I was so bold to try and punch the ball out of the girl’s hand to get it back. But it failed. She grew even more angrier. She hurt me, and when I cried she said, “You deserved it!”

What did I deserve? To suffer? Do people deserve to suffer? How I felt I was undeserving of happiness, of fulfillment, of letting my star shine. So put down by many, so feeling shameful. Did I bring on my life’s problems expecting suffering as all I deserve?

Then that all changed. My thoughts were that I was beautiful, that I am deserving, that I am good and worthy and talented. Storytime Yoga is beautiful. It has great value and merit. I deserve happiness with my King, to have all my wildest dreams come true. Why not reach for it? Why not step into it. You deserve it! You’ve worked hard for it. You are a good person with a good heart. Of course you can be fulfilled and happy! Take it!! Love and be happy! Serve as the Mother with the Storytime Yoga Children’s Mission. Stand in your glory!

The Shaman called us up one by one for individual Limpias. He sang the song above to me in Spanish, and it was profound to hear that. As the Queen, crowning herself. So beautiful is she, like only she can be. She crowns herself I took that as my need for self-love, that assertion and conviction that I was worthy, deserving, beautiful and my work great. That it was OK to let your star shine, to sing your song to the world. That you don't need the outside world to validate your self worth. It comes from within. And that I was to spend my life with the King as my partner in love and happiness, travel, do good work together. Things I have dreamed of my whole life. The shaman then also drove energy into me with his hands, for me to be a little selfish, have boundaries, put energy into me too, not only for others, taking care of others at my expense, as I have my whole life. We spoke in Spanish, and being rather rusty, I was amazingly fluent. After the singing and the personal ritual the Shaman said to me, “Now do you believe that you are not ugly, truly surely from this experience?”

“Yes,” I said. I truly believed it.

Afterwards I thought of other people, my ex, my late husband, my children, old boyfriends. My father and his tight shoulders. To let that all go. To ask forgiveness from them and healing for them. Everything happens for a reason. To be grateful for our difficulties for they bring the most profound results on the other end. You just have to hang on and show up, take the roller coster ride for its ups and down.

Then the vision subsided. It was enough. Things were normal again. My mind raced and raced, but my body was so tired. I did not sleep the whole night until the ceremony was over in the dawn.

In the morning we had garlic lemon water to re-alkalize the body. We talked and ate. I was finished and needed to get back to my children by the later afternoon, but people were going to continue with San Pedro and do the grandfather ceremony.

One thing too, is that you vomit a lot during the journey. You hear others vomiting all night long. It’s quite intense, but also very purging. I vomited so hard sometimes I peed my pants! But it was cleansing and I got all that negativity and old crap out. Whenever fear came up, it usually came up with the feeling of sickness. It made you stay present, listen to the Shaman, the singing, the present moment and release stuff.

And now a week later things have shifted so much. I’ve integrated the experience and cemented it with plans the King and I have made for the future, and with long walks in nature. I am relieved, less tense. It’s wonderful to have somebody in your life. Somebody who has your back. Somebody who you have his back for too. His heart.

I did have my obstacles removed, my demon confronted. Only I was surprised that he demon was so gentle. I was only afraid of myself. Of my own capacity for love, just for myself. To love myself. That can heal everything and shifts the whole world. It is not a terrible place where I will get pain, but a joyous one with expectation of beauty. And it’s not something that happens with just talking about it. You have to have that kind of an experience. It’s a psychological and somatic experience. It was the ritual. One ayahuasca ceremony can save you decades of therapy. A vision is that powerful.

I don’t wake up in anxiety anymore. Just love and gratitude. Excitement too, because the vision was so clear, so profound. It was guidance I never received my whole life. It’s still in my body that feeling of love and joy and happiness. Whenever I feel those old doubts that creep up, the feeling instantly replaces them.

I show up at the Everyday Contenment class at Shambhala Center on Tuesday mornings. It feels good to sit and meditate in the safety and peace of the present moment. It's good to be among friends and community. I like what the instructor said, that meditation is like putting your children on the school bus. Your thoughts will be gone for a little while so you can meditate, but they will be back! Don't worry! You'll see them again, so just make this time for quiet meditation!

I met with the therapist at the Mental Health center. I told her everything. She was happy for me, helped me to cement it in the outer world. I’m working on getting health insurance so that I can have my own therapy, and so that somebody else who is down on their luck and in need of help can receive it. I said I was so grateful for their help. Whom do you turn to if there is such despair? Thank god for Social Services. That’s what makes a society great. That we care for everybody, without judgment regardless of income or circumstances. That every human being has inherent worth and dignity and deserves help and respect. Sadly these services have been cut way back. Whole centers closing in East Boulder County.

I don’t know what’s wrong with this country. Where is its heart? It’s scary about what happened with the Supreme Court ruling today. I’m very scared for this country. The machine, the artificial body, the CORPORATION, has taken over for sure. And the people allow it! Maybe it’s the fluoride. Where is the capacity for outrage? We are not the UCA, the United Corporations of America, and it’s eating everything in sight, most of all your rights and democracy and freedom. Welcome to the Machine! Ruling with money and power to influence campaigns and candidates. The propaganda machine for the masses. For what? Alienated consumers and the machine of expansion. The movie Avatar is a perfect metaphor for this. The Father machine killed the Mother Earth and its creeping around colonizing again with its path of destruction and inhumanity. We live in this stifled matrix of society, way out of balance with nature, and it’s self destructing.

But I think there is going to be a Great Awakening. The Goddess is back. She’s showing up in green technology, medical marijuana and a return to organic gardening, compassion for people in Haiti. The Machine will Stop, and soon. Things are breaking down fast. But that’s OK. For the greatest amount of darkness means there is just as much light as its opposite. That means it’s a great time to be an artist, thinker, humanitarian activist in this age, because your number has been called. The Journey has begun. It’s Showtime! Because you can’t stop the heart. You can’t stop life and you can’t stop the soul. There’s a rebirth going on, so get ready!

So is the Renaissance of the Queen of the Heart, AKA the Queen of Bohemia, who cleans her own house and really loves the King.

Bear

My son said he recently saw a mountain lion one morning biking to school, and that it was as big as a couch. We have deer poop in the backyard, and my dog, Sergeant Pepe, is extremely interested and alert over another strong, new scent there. There was a black bear on our neighbor's driveway last night. The sheriff came around, the lights swirling in the darkness as if there were some arrest. It dawned on me that this time of year, living so close to the foothills, that the apples mushing on the ground in our back yard were attracting bears. As is my compost experiment of just chunking food scraps into the bushes.

There is something deep about all these animals appearing at this time of year. As the trees put on their gorgeous cloaks of red and yellow leaves, and the chill fills the air, I sense and feel a different energy. That dying and going within. Something transitioning, something coming up from the darkness that is emerging as it hybernates. And this energy connects me with all things.

I remember my body as container and as a protective shield. That being so deeply sensual, present and self-aware of how my body is feeling at all times puts me in tune with the now and with nature's rhythms. I walk a lot in the foothills of Boulder with my dog, Pepe. To be in glorious nature is my church, and that brisk, full alignment of the body walking is such great yoga. And to be out with nature there is the edge of sublime. Truly nature - trees, rocks, animals - they put you instantly in touch with the spirit world because they connect you instantly with the deepest archetypes of being. They point to the depths and you get in touch intuitively with that great beyond. You feel it moving through your body, as you, participating in duality. It's like the High Priestess card in the Tarot. I understand the dark side, the negative feminine. I accept my dark side and integrate it into me. I don't reject it. And once you do that you are whole, and you can pass through duality to the transcendent easily on the royal road. And then you become the Magician, in full power of all nature's forces. Whatever your psyche is pulling up from the unconscious is done with great awareness then consciously projected and manifests. But then there is other stuff that you can't quite control, that keeps coming at you.

In yoga practice, I have opened my hips considerably. Tight upper inner thighs are opened with extreme stretching and a good block. Tucking the tailbone and really achieving Mula Bandha opens you up and lets the heart come forward. I do snake pose and mermaid pose, in honor of that heaven and earth union. Then the bird poses, that heaven, and squats, the frog. I am totally into sitting on my sit bones. Even in the car (how those things take the spine out of you!) You really have to make an effort to sit up straight, but that makes all the difference. That and deep breathing. I am really into the legs, janu shirsasana, upavishta konasana. I can actually get my head to the floor, although I know the heart should be there first. But something is opening. Something is changing, transforming. It's the root chakra really connecting again to the body, to nature, to the container and the energy there.

But bear is big now in its presence. I remember I had a dream once of my mother, what was wrong with her? I asked. In the dream I saw her seated at a table and a big bear came along and swiped off a chunk of her head. I interpreted that dream as the powers of the unconscious - the bear in hybernation and its powers, and how my mother was swallowed up by it - in the head with too much thinking, insanity. So somehow the bear, with its eternal cycles of life, hybernating, awakening, has a message for me. This time of year, all the dark stuff can come up from the unconscious. Like you have to accept the most disgusting aspect of yourself. Today walking on the trail Pepe pooped twice, and I had only one plastic bag, already filled. I scooped the poop up with the bag, and had to carry it. It was messy, disgusting. But there is nowhere to dispose of the plastic and it's so damn unsightly on the trail, as people do leave their plastic-wrapped poop on the trail but I could not bring myself to do it. So I carried the poop. I thought poop is sacred too, so the natives even eat poop to say all this is of the creator, of Shiva. I certainly wasn't open to eating eating it so just carried it. I thought about the movie the Matrix. How Neo knew that everything - even Mr. Smith - was part of him. All the dark parts. So carrying the poop was just that too.

All around me on my walk the natural world was so pristine, I could not dump the dog poop not even in the man-made cylinder guiding a flow of the creek water. I just walked with the poop and I forgot about it eventually. Pepe reminded me of duality - his black and white body, the trickster. He comes when I call him 50 percent of the time. The other half you are not sure what to expect of his behavior. Isn't life like that? You just never know what is going to happen. Even if you are conscious. Sometimes you can predict, other times you cannot. So you just surrender to the moment and navigate from there. And you sense the energy changing and make a choice.

Picking up my daughter today at my father's, my father said he hasn't been feeling well. In his gut area, the third chakra. He has begun to throw things out again. That's what's blocking him; to really clean out that house. It came up again that I would have him live with us a little while, enough time in the next 9 months to gut the house, clean it up, start massive gardening on his third acre for our food and self-sufficiency, and we'd move back in by the time my lease is up. So we shall see. We shall see what bear has in store for me this fall.