#Intimacy Workshop San Francisco

[davonmethod]

Exploring Tantra Yoga and Intimacy Workshops in San Francisco: Enhancing Connection and Personal Growth

Embarking upon the labyrinthine journey of Tantra Yoga and Intimacy Workshops in the bustling megalopolis of San Francisco: Amplifying Connectivity and Self-Evolution

Preliminary Glimpse into Tantra Yoga: Cracking the Cipher to Interconnection and Self-Unearthing

Concealed amidst the tumultuous urban sprawl of San Francisco, a tranquil alleyway towards self-illumination and profound interconnection unfurls – Tantra Yoga. This archaic discipline, shrouded in an enigmatic aura replete with misapprehensions, beckons the seeker onto a transformative odyssey that not only enriches personal evolution but also forges deeper bonds with our human counterparts. Within this discourse, we shall venture into the realm of Tantra Yoga, unveiling its multifarious advantages for the psyche, physique, and metaphysical sphere. Moreover, we shall navigate the intricate fusion of Tantra Yoga with the intimate workshop milieu in the effervescent city of San Francisco.

Tantra Yoga: A Footpath to Self-Revelation

At its nucleus, Tantra Yoga is more than merely a corporeal undertaking; it serves as a spiritual expedition. Etymologically derived from the Sanskrit "tan," signifying "expansion," and "tra," connoting "liberation," Tantra seeks to broaden one's awareness, effecting emancipation from the confines of constrictive dogmas and societal constraints. This expansion culminates in a profound link with both the inner self and the cosmos at large.

The Merits of Tantra Yoga for the Psyche, Physique, and Ethereal Self

1. Augmented Self-Cognizance: Tantra Yoga extols introspection and self-contemplation, equipping individuals to plumb the depths of their innermost beings, thereby garnering a deeper insight into their desires, anxieties, and aspirations.

2. Mitigation of Stress: Through the art of mindfulness and the practice of deliberate breath control, Tantra Yoga acts as a potent antidote to the perils of stress and anxiety, nurturing mental and emotional equilibrium.

3. Enhanced Interpersonal Relationships: By sowing the seeds of self-love and self-acceptance, Tantra Yoga paves the way for more robust and meaningful connections with our fellow beings.

4. Meticulous Mindfulness: Tantra Yoga celebrates the art of embracing the present moment, endowing its practitioners with heightened focus, emotional steadiness, and an augmented appreciation for the simple joys of existence.

Deciphering the Enigma of Intimacy Workshops: Cultivating Profound Bonds in San Francisco

Amidst the kaleidoscope of San Francisco's cultural diversity, intimate workshops present a unique opportunity for individuals to plumb the depths of their connections with others. These workshops are tailored to the refinement of communication skills, elevation of emotional intelligence, and nurturing the ability to forge profound and lasting relationships. They stand as an ideal sanctuary for those on the quest for personal growth and a more profound connection with the human experience.

Intimacy Workshops in San Francisco: A Nexus for Interconnection

1. Forging Deeper Ties: Intimacy workshops provide a safe haven wherein participants may venture into the realms of vulnerability, trust, and the exploration of emotional intimacy with their peers, culminating in connections that transcend the superficial.

2. The Refinement of Communicative Artistry: Effective communication lies at the core of any successful relationship. Intimacy workshops impart the skills of active listening, empathetic discourse, and adroit conflict resolution.

3. Embracing Emotional Intelligence: Participants emerge from these workshops equipped with the capability to apprehend and manage their own emotional states while empathizing with the emotions of others, ultimately culminating in healthier and more fulfilling interactions and relationships.

The Symbiosis of Tantra Yoga and the Enhancement of Intimate Relationships

Tantra Yoga and intimate relationships are interwoven, for Tantra bestows upon couples an arsenal of invaluable tools to enrich their emotional bonds, augment pleasure, and deepen intimacy. Here are several pathways through which Tantra Yoga embellishes intimate relationships:

1. Fostering Deeper Emotional Connections: Tantra advocates for the forging of profound emotional bonds between partners, thereby nurturing trust and intimacy that transcends mere physical allure.

2. Amplification of Pleasure: Tantra imparts techniques that elevate sensory awareness, allowing couples to bask in heightened pleasure and satisfaction during their intimate moments.

3. Augmented Communication: Tantra Yoga underscores the importance of forthright and unreserved communication, an indispensable cornerstone for erecting a robust and gratifying partnership.

4. Fostering Mindful Intimacy: Through the incorporation of mindfulness practices, couples can immerse themselves wholly in their intimate interludes, savoring each moment and deepening their connection.

Embarking on an Expedition of Renowned Tantra Yoga Studios and Intimacy Workshops in San Francisco

San Francisco unfurls a cornucopia of prospects for those eager to delve into the realms of Tantra Yoga and intimate workshops. Here, we shed light on a few illustrious studios and workshops:

1. Love and Bliss Tantra: Nestled within the city's boundaries, this studio specializes in Tantra Yoga, offering workshops and classes tailor-made for individuals and couples seeking to deepen their bonds and intimacy.

2. The Tantra Studio: Gaining notoriety for its immersive workshops and retreats, The Tantra Studio extends a nurturing haven for self-exploration and connection.

3. Authentic SF Tantra: Here, the fusion of Tantra Yoga principles with modern psychology begets workshops aimed at guiding individuals and couples toward the attainment of more gratifying relationships.

4. Intimacy Workshops San Francisco: This organization orchestrates a mosaic of workshops and events curated to enhance intimacy, communication, and the ties that bind among participants.

Discerning the Ideal Tantra Yoga Class or Intimacy Workshop in San Francisco

When embarking on the expedition of self-discovery and connection within the confines of San Francisco, it is paramount to select the intimacy workshop in San Francisco that dovetails with one's level of experience and personal aspirations. Here are some salient considerations:

1. Level of Experience: Classes and workshops run the gamut from rudimentary to advanced; thus, it is imperative to opt for one that aligns with one's familiarity with Tantra Yoga or the realm of intimacy work.

2. Objectives and Aspirations: Ponder your goals with discernment. Are you in pursuit of personal growth, the refinement of communication, or a deeper connection with your partner? The chosen class or workshop should resonate with your aims.

3. Instructor Credibility: It is incumbent upon you to delve into the qualifications and proficiencies of the instructors. Seasoned and certified mentors are apt to provide an enriched and secure experience.

4. Real-World Testimonials: To supplement your decision-making process, perusing reviews and soliciting recommendations from individuals who have traversed the path you contemplate can proffer invaluable insights.

In the Epilogue: Seizing the Transformative Mantle of Tantra Yoga and Intimacy Workshops in San Francisco

Within the kinetic and diverse cauldron of San Francisco, the meandering paths of Tantra Yoga and intimate workshops converge, offering transformative experiences that uplift personal evolution, deepen connections, and incite self-discovery. Whether you are an initiatory neophyte or a seasoned adept, the city unfurls a veritable pantheon of opportunities to delve into these time-honored practices. Venture forth and embark on a sojourn towards heightened self-awareness and profound intimacy, seizing the transformative scepter wielded by Tantra Yoga and intimate.

[coochiequeens]

Let be get this straight - Harvard has no issues with telling their students about BDSM, orgies, porn, fetishes etc but they can’t bring themselves to use the word Woman?

Harvard University is joining a long list of colleges raising eyebrows over what many percieve to be inappropriate extracurricular offerings to students.

On November 9, Harvard platformed fetish workshops as part of its annual Sex Week. Among the workshops hosted by the university for the student-organized event were “Hit Me Baby One More Time,” billed as an “Intro to BDSM,” “My-dentity: BGLTQ Intimacy, Let’s Talk About Porn, Baby," and “What What in the Butt! Anal 101."

A workshop called “Kinks & Fetishes & Taboos, Oh My!” was hosted on November 9 by non-binary sex educator Jamie Joy, who uses they/them pronouns and endorses “non-monogamy."

In 2016, Joy was granted an “Ally to Queer Youth” award for “working on launching a queer youth mentorship program with college students,” and “the implementation of LGBTQ-inclusive sexual health curricula at local schools.”

According to the Facebook event page description, “Jamie Joy (they/them) is a queer Jewish sex educator and hungry slut for freaky fantasies and kinky perversions.”

Participants were entered into a raffle, and winners were awarded various sex toys, including anal beads and lubrication.

One speaker, identified as “Robin from Good Vibrations” offered advice on double penetration. Good Vibrations is a San Francisco-based sex shop with a net worth of nearly $12 million, and sells bondage and fetish gear, as well as breast binders and “penis packers” targeted at young women.

Sex Week at Harvard also held a panel discussion led by Lisa Chiya, President of Genesis Egg Donor and Surrogacy, Inc., on egg freezing, which was promoted as open to “anyone with a uterus."

The week-long series of events were sponsored in part by the Harvard College Women’s Center and The Open Gate Foundation, which was established in 1987 as the Harvard Lesbian & Gay Caucaus but was renamed as the Harvard Gender & Sexuality Caucaus.

Harvard University first began hosting lectures on BDSM in 2012, and isn’t the only top-tier academic institution promoting sexual fetish workshops. In 2017, Newsweek reported on Princeton’s BDSM club for students, saying, “There have been many Sex Week campus events at different high-profile colleges over the years that have also included workshops on the sexual subculture, which can include ropes, blindfolds, whips, flogging, master-servant role play and much more.”

The University of Chicago also hosts an annual Sex Week which includes a BDSM workshop. In 2016, the university hosted a “sexual pain” workshop and BDSM tutorials, and in 2017 it hosted “Intro to Rope Bondage."

In April 2020, a trans-identified male presented a lecture on “forced feminization” pornography for Princeton University.

At least 33 U.S universities currently host BDSM clubs, including Ivy League institutions Brown, Cornell, and Yale.

4W provides paid writing work for over 50 women in countries spanning the globe. This work is made possible thanks to your support on Patreon.

[tonystarkbingo]

Our first roundup for Round Three of the TSB!  This is for the first 12 days, and there are SO MANY FILLS!  It’s awesome!

Title: Adventures of Tiny Dragon Tony and His Treasure (Loki) Collaborator: BennyBatch Link: AO3 Square Filled: T4 - intimacy without sex Ship: FrostIron Rating: Gen Major Tags: none Summary: Tony and Loki ring in the new year. Word Count: 25,717

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Title: The Ghost and The Machine - Chapter 17: I Can Live With This Collaborator: rebelmeg Link: AO3 Square Filled: A5 - ghosts Ship: Tony & Bucky Rating: Teen Major Tags: cliffhanger Summary: Bucky leaves the hospital, does some recovering at home, then goes back to work with Tony in tow. And sees something very unexpected. Word Count: 33,789

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Title: Rise Unwilling and Slow Collaborator: used_songs Link: AO3 Square Filled: S1 - Fireplace Ship: none Rating: Teen Major Tags: implied/referenced child abuse, alcoholism/alcohol abuse Summary: Tony is called home from college to play the dutiful son. Word Count: 944

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Title: Ghost and the Machine - Angst with a Happy/Hopeful Ending Collaborator: rebelmeg Link: AO3 Square Filled: T2 - Angst Ship: Tony & Bucky Rating: Teen Major Tags: angst with a happy ending Summary: The angst ending to The Ghost and The Machine! Word Count: 2821

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Title: Ghost and the Machine - Ouch Ending Collaborator: rebelmeg Link: AO3 Square Filled: R3 - It wasn't worth it Ship: Tony & Bucky Rating: Teen Major Tags: major character death, heavy angst Summary: The ouch ending to The Ghost and The Machine! Word Count: 1352

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Title: Unintended Consequences Collaborator: dracusfyre Link: AO3 Square Filled: K2 - Writing Format: Drabble Ship: Tony Stark & Loki Rating: G Major Tags: none Summary: Tony finds out that Godhood is relative.  Word Count: 100

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Title: Always a Moment  Collaborator: tisfan Link: AO3 Square Filled: T5 - Last Chance Ship: WinterIron Rating: Teen  Major Tags: prisoners together, Winter Soldier!Bucky, hopeful ending Summary: Tony is captured by Hydra, who try to get him to create weapons for them. When he keeps refusing, they throw him in a cell with the Winter Soldier--hoping some time with the Asset will scare him into cooperating, but also accepting that the Soldier might just kill him. Like a snake befriending the mouse given as a meal, the Soldier instead takes Tony as a (consensual) snuggle buddy, becoming fiercely protective of him. Eventually, the two find a way to escape Word Count: 1690

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Title: Two MIT Students in Search of a Comet Collaborator: newnewyorker93 Link: Tumblr Square Filled: R4 - Going on Vacation Together Ship: Tony & Rhodey Rating: G Major Tags: none Summary: The last appearance of Halley’s Comet was in 1985/1986, aka perfectly timed for MIT-era space nerds Tony Stark & James Rhodes to load up their car with junk food and go on an epic road trip to get the best view of it… Word Count: 

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Title: A Hard Day’s Night Collaborator: rebel-author-chick Link: Tumblr Square Filled: A3 - Free Ship: Tony Stark/Reader Rating: G Major Tags: fluff Summary: Tony helps you relax after a hard day of work. Word Count: 879

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Title: Riding the Unicorn Collaborator: Gavilan Link: AO3 Square Filled: R1 - Watching Helplessly Ship: Clint/Natasha/Tony Rating: Explicit  Major Tags: Dom/sub-overtones, begging, pwp, threesome Summary: “He’s making a lot of noise, isn’t he?” Clint remarked, sounding almost casual. “He is,” Nat agreed. “Why, wanna do something about it?” Tony could hear the smile in Clint’s voice as he replied, “Y’know, I rather think I do.” Word Count: 3658

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Title: Occupational Hazard Collaborator: chel Link: Tumblr Square Filled: T4 - Occupational Hazard Ship: Tony Stark/Tony DiNozzo Rating: G Major Tags: NCIS Summary: "So, Mr. DiNozzo, is it?”  “It’s actually Very Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo, thank you Mr. Stark.” “Dr. Stark.”  Word Count: 

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Title: Who’s Gonna Pick You Up? Collaborator: ceealaina Link: AO3 Square Filled: T4 - First Date Ship: WinterIron Rating: Teen Major Tags: Alternate Universe - No Powers Summary: In a world where Tony is less playboy and more awkward nerd, he’s mostly bored and lonely now that he’s graduated from MIT and Rhodey’s off on his Air Force adventures. Agreeing to a blind date with Ty Stone doesn’t turn out to be his best plan, but luckily Nat’s there to save to day. (And even more luckily, she’s got a cute brother and Tony is just his type.) Word Count: 5200

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Title: Blood Will Tell - 1/10 Collaborator: thewaythatwerust Link: AO3 Square Filled: T2 - Myths and Legends Ship: Eventual Stuckony Rating: Mature Major Tags: Vampires, Werewolves, Alternate Universe - Fantasy,  Summary: His short nails rake over the frozen rock, leaving gouging trails in their wake. He can’t interfere. Shifted, lupans are strong enough to be a problem in a fang to fur fight one-on-one, but three-on-one, in daylight, the odds are dramatically in their favor. Word Count: 2717

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Title: A Human Convention Collaborator: politzania Link: AO3 Square Filled: A2 - Writing Format: Drabble Ship: None Rating: G Major Tags: Drabble, Reflection, Inner Dialogue Summary: JARVIS reflects on a human convention. Word Count: 100

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Title: Breathe Collaborator: hddnone Link: AO3 Square Filled: A3 - Free Square Ship: WinterIron Rating: Teen Major Tags: none Summary: Bucky needed feedback about his missions. He needed to know how he did. He needed to know how to keep improving. He needed to know, above all, that he could trust his mind and instincts still in the heat of the battle. He needed to know that he could still do good things. But more than that, he needed all those things from someone who would be honest. Someone who wouldn’t shy away from a critique or confrontation. Bucky found all those things down in the workshop with Tony.  Word Count: 2032

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Title: So Just Let Us Be Three Collaborator: SierraNovembr Link: AO3 Square Filled: R2 - Kink: Anal Sex Ship: Steve/Tony/Sam Rating: Explicit Major Tags: explicit sexual content, Threesome Summary: Tony had been growing steadily closer to Steve and Sam, who are in a happy, good relationship. No matter how much he wanted more, he’d blown his chance with Steve years ago. If he can’t stop himself from finding excuses to linger with them even though he knows they’re settled together, out of his reach, that’s his own problem. Right? Word Count: 2474

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Title: Something Afoot in Frisco Collaborator: Politzania Link: AO3 Square Filled: T2 - Convenience Store Ship: Tony & Eddie|Venom Rating: Teen Major Tags: canon-typical violence Summary: Tony Stark is cutting loose after his first business trip to San Francisco, but after his date goes sideways, he ends up in a neighborhood bodega. The night gets weirder from there. Word Count: 1115

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Title: Blood Will Tell - Chapter 2: ⭑ TONY ⭑ Collaborator: thewaythatwerust Link: AO3 Square Filled: K2 - Amnesia Ship: Stuckony Rating: Mature Major Tags: A moment of descriptive gore/horror Summary: So focused on keeping the contents of his stomach inside his stomach, Tony hadn’t heard Bruce approaching him. “You know, when Clint came barrelling into the clinic this morning, rambling about a horror show, I thought it was his regular hyperbole. But seeing this… Tony, how are you even alive right now?”  Tony rubs his fingers over the dressing covering the wound at his temple. He shakes his head. “I don’t know. Believe me, I wish I could remember what went down, but it’s just… blank.” Word Count: 4493

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Title: All I Needed Was The Last Thing I Wanted Collaborator: martianwahtney Link: AO3 Square Filled: R4- Meet Ugly Ship: Anthony DiNozzo/Tony Stark Rating: Gen Major Tags: none Summary: “You decided to move your buddy’s car as a prank, but you got the wrong car and now I think you’re breaking into my car, what the hell is wrong with you” or where DiNozzo finds Tony Stark trying to break into his car and things devolve from there Word Count: 1060

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Title: AU: Adventurer/Explorer  Collaborator: lronhusbands Link: Tumblr Square Filled: R2 - AU: Adventurer/Explorer Ship: Tony/Rhodey Rating: Gen Major Tags: none Summary: moodboard

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Title: Art Format: Line Art Collaborator: Trashcanakin Link: Tumblr Square Filled: A4 - Art Format: Line Art Ship: none Rating: Gen Major Tags: art Summary: [Fanart] Winter Soldier Tony Stark

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Title: Ghost of Unprotected Sex Past Chapter 1 - Three Things Collaborator: shakespeareanqueer Link: Tumblr Square Filled: A3 - free space Ship: Tony/Reader Rating: Mature Major Tags: Cursing, crying, mention of illness and injury, mention of break up, mention of sex and birth control Summary: You show up to Tony’s NYC mansion with some unexpected news. Word Count: 1887

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Title: I Hear You Call My Name Collaborator: tisfan Link: AO3 Square Filled: S1 - Kink: Sex Magic Ship: IronStrange Rating: Explicit Major Tags: explicit sexual content, PWP Summary: Stephen needs a little extra oomph for a spell. Tony really needs to get laid more than once every two months… Word Count: 2240

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Title: Bog Boyfriends (in charcoal & colored pencil) Collaborator: newnewyorker93 Link: Tumblr Square Filled: A1 - old married couple Ship: WinterIron Rating: Gen Major Tags: art Summary: Everyone on the TSB discord was having so much fun with the Tony-and-Bucky-as-bog-boyfriends idea I couldn’t resist joining in with my version! The glowy green on both of them is some sort of magic that healed them after they each crashed in the bog & keeps them alive as long as they stay there. And Tony is a lil bat creature bc I wanted him to be something that could fly; a bat seemed appropriate :)

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Title: Every Surface in the House, AKA: Permanently Damaged Platypus Collaborator: rebelmeg Link: AO3 Square Filled: T5 - Writing format: documentation/epistolary fic Ship: Pepperony, JARVIS & FRIDAY Rating: Teen Major Tags: implied sexual content, AI feels Summary: Rhodey is scandalized, Tony is only slightly ashamed, Pepper isn't done with Tony, JARVIS is fond, FRIDAY is amused, and Natasha enjoyed the retelling. Word Count: 956

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Title: We're gonna dance in my living room slave to the way you move Collaborator: cutebutpsyco Link: AO3 Square Filled: T3 - carnival Ship: IronStrange Rating: Teen Major Tags: mentions of eating disorder, alcohol and drug abuse and death. Summary: “I… Fuck... “ He whispered.  “You’d like to dine and wine and take him out on a date, don’t you?” He could tell she was smiling and didn’t like that at all. “I think he likes you, but you’ll need him to trust you before even trying. Or he’ll run away. And then I’ll personally kill you.”  Tony laughed. “How did you make him trust you?”  ���No, you won’t have the get out of jail card this soon, Stark.” Word Count: 6597

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Title: That’s What Friends Are For Collaborator: ceealaina Link: AO3 Square Filled: R3 - Old Team Ship: IronHusbands Rating: Teen Major Tags: none Summary: The Tony Stark Protection Squad,” he told her, like that was a thing. “It’s really just me and Colonel Rhodes – and well, you now, I guess – the people who actually care about Tony’s well-being. The people he actually likes, doesn’t play pretend with.”

Pepper had rolled her eyes at him and then yelped when he’d tossed a lemon at her and things had gone back to normal. But she couldn’t really deny that he was wrong. Word Count: 1733

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Title: Marvel Universe Online - Chapter 1  Collaborator:  Eirlyssa Link: AO3 Square Filled: R2 -  Online Interactions Ship: WinterIron  Rating: Teen  Major Tags: None  Summary: Bucky and his friends all play the same online game, where they met the one missing member of their group - Iron. They might not know one another in real life, but their friendship is definitely real. Except they might be closer than they think.   Word Count: 2308

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Title: Want Collaborator: alwaysabrighterdarkness Link: AO3 Square Filled: S3 - Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier Ship: WinterIron Rating: Teen Major Tags: None Summary: “No,” Tony managed to say finally, dark eyes still locked on icy ones. “That’s not…That’s not what I’m wanting to say.   You don’t have to go.  I’d rather you didn’t.  Go that is.”“Then what is you want, Tony?” he asked seriously, brows furrowed slightly in frustration. “I get that you’re still angry and I don’t blame you.  But I’m not gonna keep giving myself whiplash tryin’ to keep up with you.” Word Count: 3039

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Title: IronMachine is Born Collaborator: Tonks Link: AO3 Square Filled: S1 - Fusion Ship: Tony & Rhodey Rating: G Major Tags: none Summary: Clint walks in on something he never knew he needed in his life. Word Count: 100

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Title: Dillan Collaborator: Lacrimula Falsa Link: AO3 Square Filled: Adopted 1 - Afterlife/Ascension Ship:  None Rating: Teen Major Tags: Major Character Death Summary: Turns out they don’t send the Grim Reaper to take you to the afterlife. Word Count: 765

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Title: Bids Collaborator: alwaysabrighterdarkness Link: AO3 Square Filled: A2 - Terrible Choices Ship: Stony Rating: Teen Major Tags: None Summary: Natasha is tired of watching them dance around one another while accomplishing absolutely nothing.  When the Maria Stark Foundation hosts a Charity Auction, she takes the opportunity to make her own plans.  Word Count: 3423

[yestantra]

Intimacy is the key 🗝 • Wisdom from Margot Anand who is the world’s leading authority on Tantra. She learned Tantra from Osho @oshointernational • I received my Tantra Certification from Julia Tindall @tindallyoga & @caroline.carrington 🙏 • Julia Tindall was trained by Margot Anand. 💫 • When I seek knowledge ...I go to the BEST teachers. 🙌 • I’ve also attended workshops by Master Mantak Chia @mantakofficial 🔥 • My first Tantra teacher was Psalm Isadora and I will always have deep gratitude for her as well. ❤️🙏💫 • Thanks to everyone whose lit my path. 🙏🙏🙏 • My mission is to bring more intimacy, love & Conscious connection into the world. 🙌💯❤️🔥 • Share what YOU want to see in the world. I want to know. 🤗 • I found this quote via my soul sister @daniellaveras 🙌👁💜 She shares the BEST quotes. 🔥 • Sending you all much love. xo, Dominique • • • #margotanand #osho #relationshipquotes #sexpositive #yestantra #intimacycoach #intimacy (at San Francisco Bay Area) https://www.instagram.com/p/B09F2qUH1FR/?igshid=1chf5t4oyhzld

[mtraki]

Catherine found him hours later, working through everything he now knew, and everything he felt.  He surprised himself, how little anger there was with the conclusion of things.  The news of Dutch’s execution was bitter, but not as painful as the reflection on his betrayal of everything he’d held dear and taught them in exchange for everything he’d told them to deplore.  In the end, the man who’d been hanged, Arthur supposed, was not the man he’d grown to love.  If that man had ever existed in the first place...

“You haven’t told me your decision,” The lady said softly, taking a seat by the fire next to Arthur who closed his journal as she did so.

“Mrs. Cornwall… seein’ as you’ve been gettin’ letters from everyone, you surely know already that I’ve got TB.” He replied quietly, “So I ain’t gonna be any good for any sort of job you might offer me for long, and I ain’t got much use for your six thousand dollars.”

“Mister Morgan,” She answered in a similar tone, “you aren’t dead yet, and while that remains true, I have invested interest in how you want to spend your remaining days.  All I’ve offered are tools to go about securing that future.  If they’re insufficient, I am open to suggestions.”

He didn’t have any, really.  What he’d wanted, starting out, was more or less already around him.  It seemed she’d been genuine, and the people he cared for, who were still alive, were safe, and would remain safe for some years yet, if they were wise.  He hadn’t planned any further than this.  He supposed he hadn’t expected to live this long.

When his silence lingered too long, Catherine spoke again, “May I make a suggestion..?”

“... May as well,” He sighed.

“Come with me.”

“To California?  Sure--”

“To my house.  Stay with me.”

Feeling his back teeth grind, Arthur shook his head, “...Last thing I want is to spend my lingering days tucked up in a fancy bed all hours--”

“--Then don’t.  The estate has a stables and three orchards, a vineyard and wine press, two workshops, miles of hunting and trails, two or three streams.  Indoors, I’ve managed to collect the largest private library west of the Lanahachee River.  There’s also a gaming room where the men like to play cards three nights a week.  Spend your time how you want.  I just… I want you there.”

Meeting her eyes, he saw that she meant it, and not from a place of pity. “...It sounds real fine...”

“It should,” She said softly, “I had you in mind when I had it built.”

He slept most of the train journey, truth be told, in the private sleeper car she’d had made for them, just behind their private passenger car-- where they were all seated in comfort.  He was informed afterwards by John, Uncle, and Miss Grimshaw, that the journey had been a peaceful one.  Jack was excited about his chance to go up to the engine car with the engineer, and to pull the whistle.  He spent the next week telling his parents he was going to be a train engineer and a gunslinger, and nobody would rob his trains ever.

Arthur would only really remember the morning they finished their journey over and through the mountains and into California proper, seeing the pale purplish light of dawn reflecting off the snow-capped peaks and shifting the thin mists over the rolling hill country with its carpets of wildflowers.  Catherine had stopped beside him to look out the window as well, and as the light slowly turned from purple to gold, he felt her fingers brush shyly against his before he took her hand and held it.  Only for a few moments, but the warmth of her skin and weight of the intimacy in the touch lingered long after she stepped away again.

There were a number of passengers not related to their party, and they were continuing on to San Francisco  Their own stop came not long after sunrise, and another large camp was formed and the train partially unloaded.  After the train moved on, they spent the rest of the day putting wagons back together and walking out the horses and getting everyone used to their feet again.  The horses seemed to have journeyed well, despite most of them not having been packed for shipping before.  The following morning, the smaller group of them-- the remnants of the Van der Linde gang, Mrs. Cornwall, Barnabas, and some of his men-- rode out, leaving the nervous ledger man, whose name Arthur never caught, and the workers and their big tents to deal with themselves.

It was beautiful country, rolling plains of green and golden grasses in the valley and wooded foothills and towering cliffs over those.  A waterfall could be heard in the distance, even over all the horses and the wagons.

They kept a steady pace, stopping for lunch, where Catherine pointed out the town nearest her home, Flintpoint Hollow.  Arthur was paying more attention to the woman, herself.  There seemed to be a strange air coming over her, at once she seemed more nervous and more exhausted.  He wondered if she were not used to traveling days in her new life of wealth.  That didn’t seem right, though, because only a year ago, when she’d come from a similar life, she’d never seemed worn by the rigors of the outdoors.

It broke like a fever in her that evening when they arrived at the estate.  Whatever she had been anticipating, she anticipated no more, for it was upon her.  Before them was a beautiful mansion in the Spanish style in a clearing surrounded by ancient trees.  Three grooms met them to take the horses to the paddocks, and after a brief debate on the matter-- which the grooms surprisingly won-- they proceeded to the gate of the house where they were greeted by the biggest black man any of them had ever seen.  He dwarfed Arthur by at least a foot, and even at his strongest and healthiest, this man had to outweigh him by fifty or more pounds.  His clothes were clean and well-tailored, and he held himself with rigid, almost military dignity.

“Welcome home.” He opened the gate and bowed his head to Catherine, his voice deep and bass, the words rolling with an unfamiliar accent.

“Thank you, Mister Hawthorne.”

Looking them all over, Mister Hawthorne seemed to take their measure in an instant and reported to the lady, “Supper will be ready within the hour and the spare bedrooms are prepared with linens and hot water for our guests.  Will Mister Misser and his men be joining us at table?”

Barnabas spoke up, “No, that’s--”

“--Please join us for supper, Barnabas, at least.  There’s room at the table.” Catherine smiled graciously, then indicated the huge man, “My friends, this is Mister Dmitri Hawthorne.  He runs the manor.  My dear Mister Hawthorne, these are our long-awaited guests: Miss Susan Grimshaw, Miss Karen Jones, Mister Javier Escuella, Mister John Marston, Missus Abigail Marston, Mister Jack Marston, Mister Arthur Morgan, Missus Sadie Adler, and the good-natured fellow we all agree to call ‘Uncle’.”

“A distinct pleasure to finally meet in person.” The goliath responded, his tone quiet and cool, and yet there was no hint of sarcasm, either.  With one massive hand, he indicated a mousey woman in a plain dress and apron, “Miss Withiers, please take Miss Grimshaw, Miss Jones, Missus Adler, and the family Marston to their rooms so they can refresh themselves before supper, after their long journey.  Mister Escuella, Mister Morgan, Mister Uncle, I will show you your rooms, if you would follow me.  Mistress--”

“--Catherine, Dmitri.  Really.”

“--Mistress Catherine,” Mister Hawthorne continued, nonplussed, “I request you retire to your bedchambers and not your office before supper.  Mister Misser and company, I believe you know your way to the front lounge?”

“We’ll be fine, Hawthorne, thanks.” The moustached man assured him, gesturing for his men to follow him.

  Inside, the mansion’s warm cream walls glowed with lamplight.  The rooms were large and airy, and though the furnishings were of good quality, they were not oppressive in their presentation, and very little was present without a clear function.  Miss Withiers led the ladies and Marstons up the central stairs while Mister Hawthorne turned to the right, pointed out the dining room-- which was already lain with about twenty place settings on a long table-- and the adjacent parlor where Barnabas and his men situated themselves to smoke with the big windows open.  They passed a few more closed doors before the big man opened the door at the corner.

“Mister Morgan, this room has been prepared for you.  If you need anything at all, there is a bell pull just inside the door, or you can ask anyone in the house.”

“... So I jus’ stay here…?” Arthur gave the goliath and the men still behind him a dubious look.

“You are welcome to go anywhere you like, but please keep in mind supper will be served shortly.”

With that they left him.

The bedroom was decently sized with large windows and access to the outdoors.  A sinfully comfortable looking bed awaited him, covers already turned down, but Arthur ignored it, as he

suspected he’d sleep right through supper if he laid down.

Not that he was hungry at all, really.  He just wanted to sit with everyone what few chances were still afforded him.

He wanted to see the Marstons flabbergasted at real silver flatware they could eat with instead of steal and fence.  He wanted to see Karen speechless to be waited on.  Susan gobsmacked with the number of courses in the meal.  Javier praising the wine in Spanish.  He wanted Sadie to struggle to find something to be discontent with.  He even wanted Uncle to try and make up a story about how he’d once had a _finer _meal somewhere.  He wanted to see Catherine’s pale eyes smiling at them all from the head of the table over candlelight...

Decidedly avoiding the standing mirror in the corner, Arthur washed up in the basin, discovering the water was indeed heated as Hawthorne had said, and then stepped out the side door into the evening to watch and listen, taking in…his new home…?

Some time later, the big black man came to collect him for the dining room, suggesting he leave his gear in the room, but not insisting when Arthur made no move to take anything off.

  The meal was everything Arthur had wanted and more.  It did not take long at all for everyone to relax warmly into each other's company with good food.  The outlaws kept a modicum of decorum in the fancy environs of their hostess, but table manners were largely overlooked and indeed ignored by everyone except the lady in question, who had been reared with them in her education.  At the very least there was no spitting or smoking at the table.

Everything was going very well until that terrible, familiar feeling clenched through Arthur’s chest like a vise and he began coughing hard and rough.  Having mind enough to step away from the table, the food, and the others, he made it only two paces before the inability to inhale clean again stole the strength from his limbs.  Inky dregs of darkness began to swallow the outside edges of his vision.  He was drowning on phlegm and blood again…

Some part of his awareness caught snatches of activity: how the voices from the table asked after him, John and Catherine getting to their feet…

Someone’s hand on his elbow just before his knees buckled.

Trying to gasp protests as somebody-- or more than one person-- lifted him to be carried.

  He woke what must have been hours later, moonlight streaming in through the windows from the space between drawn curtains, and someone mopping the horrible night sweats from his face, neck, and the exposed part of his chest with a cool cloth that smelled like mint and lemon.  He knew it was Catherine from the way the fingers of her other hand smoothed through his hair at his temple.

Despite every desire to say something to her--maybe to ask her wryly if she was sure this was what she wanted in her fancy house, exhaustion and fever dragged him down again.  It was later that John told him they’d spent three days convinced they were just waiting to bury him.

[perfumerybarcelona]

THE PERFUMERY tiene el gran placer de presentar la marca italiana XSE, EXTRAIT DE PERVERSION de FILIPPO SORCINELLI. Filippo Sorcinelli es un artista italiano excepcional. A los 13 años, se convirtió en organista de las catedrales de Fano, Rimini y San Benedetto del Tronto.   En 2001, Filippo fundó un taller de alta costura para el clero de la iglesia y, entre sus clientes, están los papas Benedicto XVI y Francisco. Ahora, Filippo ha lanzado una nueva línea de perfumes inspirados en el "transgredi" (latín): perderse en el silencio de la intimidad y ser capaz de mirar más allá de los límites de lo permisible o lícito. XSE, EXTRAIT DE PERVERSION se compone de cuatro perfumes extremadamente provocativos desde el punto de vista erótico: Popper-pop, Cyber-sex, Slightly-Bitch y Cruising-area. Sólo para adultos.  ------------------------------------------------ THE PERFUMERY has the great pleasure to present the Italian brand  XSE, EXTRAIT DE PERVERSION by  FILIPPO SORCINELLI. Filippo Sorcinelli is an exceptional Italian artist. At 13, he became organist in the cathedrals of Fano, Rimini and San Benedetto del Tronto.   In 2001, Filippo founded a high-end couture workshop for the church's clergy and, among its customers, are the popes Benedict XVI and Francis. Now, Filippo has launched a new line of perfumes inspired in “transgredi” (Latin)-  losing oneself in the silence of one's intimacy and being able to look beyond the limits of what is permissible or lawful. XSE, EXTRAIT DE PERVERSION is made up of four extremely erotically provocative perfumes: Popper-pop, Cyber-sex, Slightly-Bitch and  Cruising-area. Only for adults.  (en The Perfumery Barcelona) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cab-F8aAqXH/?utm_medium=tumblr

[thetouristchecklistposts]

23 Best & Fun Things to Do in Redwood City (CA)

Redwood city is situated about 27 miles south of the San Francisco peninsula, just about the Bay Area of Northern California. It is the 3rd biggest city in the entire San Mateo County and is strategically sited at the center of the Silicon Valley region.

The name is quite historical because of the redwoods in the area some of which are still present in the city to date. Redwood city is not usually crowned with tourist visitations, but the downtown area is lauded as the home of entertainment and excitement in the whole San Francisco Peninsula

There are quite some things to do in Redwood City, the vibrancy of the theaters, inviting restaurants, buzzing markets, lively bars, active business, shops, special landmarks, significant monuments, natural reserves, and many more makes it a city to beat.

The beautiful all-year weather gives it an added advantage. To aid plan your trip, here are the best things to do in Redwood City.

Things to Do in Redwood City

1. Pulgas Water Temple

Image Source: Flickr Pulgas Water Temple

Thus is an ancient landmark built-in recognition and honor of the zest in accomplishments a given task.

Designed in 1934, the Pulgas Water Temple is an appealing stone structure that was erected in cognizance of a laudable achievement.

It symbolizes the success of bringing water from California down to the Bay area. That is over 160 miles through the Sierra Nevada.

Coated in white, the stone columns of the temple salutes the Greeks and Romans whose ingenuity and techniques were influential in the movement of the water.

It was not an easy one though, as the project which went on during the Great Depression took 24 years and cost 102 million dollars to accomplish.

Feel free to visit during weekdays. You can also have some photoshoots for the memories.

Address: 56 Cañada Road, Redwood City, CA 9406.

2. The Dragon Theater

Image Source: The Dragon Theater/Facebook The Dragon Theater

Here is community theater which offers more intimacy to her users. The theater is a 65-seat capacity auditorium with a complete stage, classrooms (where seminars, workshops, and classes on acting takes place) and then a studio space.

It is owned by the popular Dragon Productions Theatre Company and since 2013, they have consistently fed the general public with play and outstanding theatrical performances. From duets to dramas to comedy, the range is vast!

The theater also plays host to various events during the year. You might have heard of In Deep Radio, Monday Night Play Space, Circus Art Series, or Dragon Late Nights, all these run in the theater.

One can also rent the place as a venue for private functions.

Address: 2120 Broadway, Redwood City, CA 94063.

3. Russian Ridge Open Space Preserve

Image Source: Flickr Russian Ridge Open Space Preserve

Habitat to different species of fauna and flora, the Russian Ridge Open Space Preserve known for its variety in offering outdoor relaxation.

It is 3, 137 acres in space. This park is located in the Santa Cruz Mountains and is popular in the whole region of San Mateo County.

Beautifully bossing the open meadows and a mix of the dense forest, you’ll be able to get an amazing view of the San Francisco Bay from the top of the Borel Hill ( height of 2,572 foot).

There are trails for horse riding and hiking and they span over ten miles.

As you would expect, the park is beautified with flora and fauna such as coyote, Northern harrier, bobcat, kestrel, and birds, if you would love some exploration time, consider adding a visit to this Preserve on you itinerary of things to do in Redwood City.

Address: Redwood City, CA 94062, Phone: 650-691-1200

4. San Mateo museum

Image Source: Flickr San Mateo Museum

Coming into Redwood would be incomplete without a visit to the San Mateo museum. This museum is arguably the most attractive place in the city, makes one of Redwood City attractions.

Features that make it so special are the exhibits that showcase and explores how life used to be over the decade in the entire San Mateo County.

You will find as exhibits, an ancient general store traceable to the 1880s and also a house that explains what life looked like in California (back then, a part of Mexico).

We can’t neglect the array of chronological books and other archived resources from which you can get knowledge about the history of San Mateo. An ideal spot for research of such nature.

Even the building is of historic essence. A courthouse with amazing interior and exterior designs. Avail yourself an opportunity to explore this museum.

This makes what to do in Redwood City for museum lovers.

Address: 2200 Broadway, Redwood City, CA 94063

5. Redwood Morton Community Park

Image Source: Facebook Morton Community Park

One of the fun things to do in Redwood City is a visit to Redwood Morton Community Park

The Redwood Morton Community Park is the biggest sports park in Redwood City. Join the locals in participating in their regular activities.

It’s an exciting place to be and various people from different neighborhoods troop in here to maintain fitness.

Activities here include BBQs, baseball, skateboarding, tennis, gym and work out sessions. Also, it is used for non-sport events such as art displays and tea parties throughout the year. You may be so fortunate to meet one when you visit.

Redwood Morton Community Park is an exciting place to be whether for relaxation or activeness. Go get the best.

6. The Record Man

Image Source: The Record Man/Facebook The Record Man

With over one million vinyl records on El Camino, the Record Man is indeed a dream reality for any vinyl collector.

They have amazing genres of music and records which go through classical, country, hip hop, blues, and others.

It doesn’t matter if you are into record-keeping or not, the Record Man got you covered. They have a massive size of collection of superlative especially for those with a keen interest in vinyl hunting

The Record Man has this popular line of  “if it can’t be found at The Record Man, then it probably doesn’t exist”. I think they are right!

This makes what to do in Redwood City for music lovers, go take a tour back in time at The Record Man.

7. Edgewood Park

Image Source: Flickr Edgewood Park

Do you want to get a feeling of the wild? Then, here you are! Edgewood Park is located just by Interstate 280, thus makes it easily accessible from any part of the city.

The grasslands park is such a beauty of the topography, so admirable it is with the wildflowers covering the area.

The woods and grasslands are a perfect home for some of the wild animals like jackrabbits, snakes, and deers.

Address: 10 Old Stage Coach Rd, Redwood City, CA 94062

8. Vesta

Image Source: Vesta/Facebook Vesta

You do not need to search for a restaurant while in Redwood city. Vesta is there for you.

It is quite a friendly eatery and with inspiration from the Italians, they serve in a bistro-style. The restaurant is managed by Peter and Courtney Borrone (Son and daughter-in-law respectively)

An attractive feature is the way the delicious meals are served in the welcoming environment.

Enjoy the tapas and wood-fired pizzas. You would get to meet its main dining room which renders so much comfort in mossy green walls, beautifully arranged fresh flowers, a black patio (well-covered), and sufficient heaters in the case of cold weather.

You can enjoy all your rustic pizzas, sumptuous tapas, or small plate in the bistro.

The feeling is like one being in seating in a walkway and watching the world pass by. Though some other restaurants surround it, tapas and pizza lovers often make this their first choice.

Address: 2022 Broadway, Redwood City, CA 94063, Phone: 650-362-5052

9. Nazareth Ice Oasis

Image Source: Nazareth Ice Oasis/Facebook Nazareth Ice Oasis

The Nazareth Ice Oasis is an all-year ice rink that sees everything and anything relating to broomball, ice skating, ice hockey, and any sort of stick and shoot games.

Their services in the entire Redwood City is top class. In recognition of the belief in growth and development, there are public skating sessions that assist beginners to progress as they learn at their own pace in the ice.

You may need to try that, I’m convinced you might even consider joining the skate school to improve your skills.

Also, they have Ice Grill in the place, this is to provide food in case one becomes tired or hungry. They offer this at a reasonable rate

10. Century 20 Cinema

Image Source: Flickr Century 20 Cinema

Century 20 Cinema is a super technology cinema situated on Sierra Boulevard.

With high standard arcade games, different separate screens, a machine that issues service tickets, and many more, the cinema stands out.

Also, most recent blockbusters, live sports events, and even music concerts are all featured in this cinema.

This makes what to do in Redwood City for movie lovers, consider adding to your checklist of things to do in Redwood City, CA.

11. Gourmet Haus Staudt

Image Source: Flickr Gourmet Haus Staudt

The Gourmet Haus Staudt was established to give visitors the feeling of Germany while the United States.

The place has a crude beer garden where you can relax with authentic German beer. Also, German dishes and quality snacks are readily available for customers who might be mildly hungry.

You will also find a shop around the venue. And as you might have thought, they sell all ingredients needed to prepare a traditional German dish. Various species and large choice of about 10 different beers to select from.

Having obtained whatever you desire from the shop, you can go sit down in the beer garden. The lush environment is a good blend of relaxation and acceptance of the German culture.

It leaves you with the feeling of home and is a delightful spot in Redwood City for a hangout.

12. The Foundry

Image Source: The Foundry/Facebook The Foundry

What came to your mind? A furnace? Production of metal tools and equipment? No! This is quite different.

The Foundry is a world-class sports complex with state-of-the-art facilities and equipment. They have an ultra-modern gym center along with distinguished features for volleyball and basketball plays.

Its gym is amongst the top Redwood City attractions as travelers and visitors always have a different dimension of what they had conditioned their minds about gyms.

The Naah shooting machines and Vertafex jump machines are examples of class machinery you’ll find there. So, whether a fan of fitness or not, visiting the Foundry is something you must not miss!

13. Stulsaft Park

Image Source: yelp Stulsaft Park

Occupying 42 acres of land, the Stulsaft Park is the biggest in the city.

It also attracts lots of visitors, especially during the summer.

Parents are seen playing with their infant children in the park, couples make the most of their union by relaxing with their lunch in a picnic while outdoor hikers enjoy the privilege of exploring the discrete trails along the hills and even in the deep bushes.

Permission is also to dog owners, allowing them to enjoy the off-leash trails within the park. This came after a persistent request by the people on the need to allow that. Though there are regulations and signs to enter for the safety of all.

The park is full of fun as there is a vast range of activities for everyone.

Did I forget the summer camp for kids? Yes, you can enroll the kids for the summer camp. You will see picnic spots for the family, an amphitheater near it, and some play structures for the children and even a mini water park too!

Address: 3737 Farm Hill Blvd. Redwood City, CA 94062. Phone: (650) 780-7311

14. Bair Island

Image Source: Flickr Bair Island

Moving on to the marshy area of Redwood city you’ll find the Bair Island.

The Island is a part of the San Francisco Bay Wildlife Refuge occupies 3,000 acres in space and is subdivided into three parts, the inner, the outer, and the middle islands.

This place is a natural beauty and depicts the unique scenery of trees. This island is truly a specialty because you will find stylish Italian architecture and other apartments showing class and luxury.

This is a place of class, consider adding to your checklist of things to do in Redwood City.

Address: Redwood City, CA 94065

15. The Fox Theatre

Image Source: Flickr The Fox Theatre

One of the fun things to do in Redwood City for theater lovers is a visit to The Fox Theatre.

The Fox Theatre goes down in history as one of the greatest establishments, especially in the movie industry.

It is situated in the downtown of Redwood City and is even recognized nationwide. Yes, its registration on the National List of Historic Places is no fluke.

Opened in the 1920s, precisely 1929, the Fox Theater has held its glory.

Since the days of famous stars like Vanessa Williams and BB king, who performed in the theatre, they have gone ahead to show different performances, with the likes of live music, musicals, and comedy all coming into play.

In 2009, however, the theater was forced into closure as a result of the financial crisis. But, they are back and still maintain their standard.

Move down to Broadway and visit! Whether you have a passion for performances or not, you will like what you see.

Address: 2215 Broadway Street Redwood City, CA 94063.

Connecticut makes a fun place in the United State to spend some vacation time, here is a guide on fun things to do in Danbury for a fun time in this amazing city.

16. Pulgas Ridge Preserve

Image Source: Flickr Pulgas Ridge Preserve

One of the best things to do in Redwood City is a visit to Pulgas Ridge Preserve

The Pulgas Ridge Open Space Preserve is a 366-acre public park. It used to be a sanitarium for tuberculosis which was owned and managed by San Francisco city.

You would still find old remains from the walls and steps of these ancient buildings.

This recreational area is well-managed, though small, it has an off-leash part mapped out for as a dog area at the base of the Santa Cruz mountains.

The park has trails of over 6 miles, you can hike through them and gain access to the attractive view of the gulf and the environment from a ridge top.

You can enjoy the trails with your dogs as they are quite friendly. There are still massive space for dogs to play around. Visit the park as it usually open for visitors.

Address: Redwood City, CA 94062, can: 650-691-1200

17. Bay Club Redwood Shores

Image Source: The Bay Club/Facebook Bay Club Redwood Shores

Here is another place you would not want to miss while in Redwood city.

The Bay Club Redwood Shores is a multi-faceted luxury resort. The property occupies 10 acres of space having a rich boast of facilities and amenities for the family.

With a dedicated segment for the family and another section for the children, the club has varieties of events and programs to meet the needs of the entire family.

Check up their sports and fitness center (covering 15,000 sq ft) where you can engage yourself in programs like yoga, Pilates and group exercises.

There is also a spa and sauna, squash courts, water slides, indoor and outdoor tennis courts, outdoor swimming pools, and a social spot.

There are shopping and hospitality services ( child care), meeting areas, and more for your engagement.

This makes what to do in Redwood City for a fun time, do consider adding to your list of things to do in Redwood City.

Address: 200 Redwood Shores Parkway, Redwood City, CA 94065.

18. Phleger Estate

Image Source: 86dave Phleger Estate

This used to be a family estate owned by Mary Elena Phleger, it is today one of Redwood city attractions.

In a bid to retain her private property, she sought for a petition, staged a fundraising, and transformed it into a park that will accommodate all and sundry. The park was then named in her honor.

The park which has some redwoods shows how they were spot on before most of them were destroyed by logging.

However, the younger trees fill the space and provide a much more serene environment for your relaxation and enjoyment.

19. Milagros Latin Kitchen

Image Source: Milagros Latin Kitchen/Facebook Milagros Latin Kitchen

Here is another restaurant, but this time it is inspired by the Katin-Americans.

The Milagros Latin Kitchen is a lively and vibrant restaurant which serves the Jalisco region. They have private dining rooms, two tequila bar and an attractive outdoor patio which can accommodate up to 100 people.

The restaurant is full of energy and vibes as a result of the bright decorations and the important piece for arts shows great creativity.

Their dishes are prepared using local ingredients and species with a mix of Latin American flavors. A small organic farm acts as a source of seasonal harvest.

For those who love drinks, there is an extensive arena for original tequilas, Pisco-based cocktails, freshly pressed juices, and even imported beers.

The restaurant also offers outdoor and indoor services. Visit there for your lunch or dinner.

Address: 1099 Middlefield Rd, Redwood City, CA 94063.

20. Kiwanis Redwood City Farmer’s Market

Image Source: Kiwanis Redwood City Farmer’s Market /Facebook Kiwanis Redwood City Farmer’s Market

The Farmer’s Market is a confluence for the local farmers to meet both local and foreign buyers in the city.

Here the vendors are seen talking publicly about their wares and products. You will find varieties of lime bell peppers, honey flowers, squash, vegetables, cheese, and different fruits.

The market normally operates from 8 am only on Saturdays to the afternoon. So one key to a successful purchase is getting to the market on time so that you can buy from the vendors before they exhaust their goods.

But the Farmer’s Market is seasonal ( From April to November) and is usually missed when out of operation.

21. Dug the T-Rex

Image Source: Flickr Dug the T-Rex

Very popular amongst adults and children alike is Dug the T-Rex.

It is a tiny dinosaur that gained fame on the internet when photos of it in amazing costumes were posted by the owners. Yes, different dress codes for sports events and holidays.

You can find it as a feature on different websites like Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, and Reddit.

Currently boasting over 10,000 likes on Facebook, many locals even in Redwood city often brag about their local hero.

Though most residents know where to find him, you as a visitor would be happy you met him too, at least to say “Hi”.

22. Stafford Park

Image Source: yelp Stafford Park

One of the fun things to do in Redwood City, CA is a visit to Stafford Park

This is a very beautiful place for kids to learn and catch fun. Stafford Park is structured in a way that it accommodates all categories of kids.

There is even a special section for toddlers. Almost the whole community come in to relax, or play or picnic, or even join the music concerts.

The park is properly designed with tables, BBQ facilities, and water playgrounds (where the kids can have their run-ins). Visit in the summer and enjoy some music especially by local musicians.

Address: King St. and Hopkins Ave. Redwood City, CA 94062.

23. Unleashed Art Gallery

Image Source: Unleashed Art Gallery/Facebook Unleashed Art Gallery

Known for grooming and bringing generational talents into the limelight, the Unleashed Art Gallery has become a stronghold in Redwood.

Located in the downtown of Redwood City, the gallery is the collocation of premier arts and steadily features up-coming artists with good prospects in San Mateo County.

The primary aim of the gallery is to give new artists that platform to showcase their talents and this has made it gain more popularity amongst visitors.

Although, you’ll occasionally find photography and other works of art featured here, the contemporary fine art is the style art often seen.

Explore other parts of California during your trip to Redwood City, check out this guide on things to do in Palmdale as well as things to do in Sunnyvale for a fun time in these parts of California.

Plan a Trip to Redwood CIty

The diverse places and activities which you can always engage yourself in would make your stay quite a memorable one.

Savor this enjoyable moment with your family, friends or acquaintance. It will make quite a memorable trip

Start now to draw your plans and prepare for your next vacation.  You can always fall back on this piece as a guide to give the best of exploration through Redwood City, CA.

The post 23 Best & Fun Things to Do in Redwood City (CA) appeared first on The Tourist Checklist.

source https://thetouristchecklist.com/things-to-do-in-redwood-city-ca/

[hotelbones]

Deconstructing New Games

There are a lot of misconceptions about The New Games Movement it seems. Everyone that talks or writes about the time knows that there is a history of the games being somehow formed to protest the Vietnam war and its military technologies, but really the specifics of the movement always seem to be changing with a new person’s story.

Here are some of the tellings of The New Games Movement:

From The New Games Book (1976)

“When Stewart investigated how and why people play together, he saw in games the potential for another such tool. ‘Changing games seemed to me to be a useful thing to do, a way to be, a set of meta-strategies to learn.’”

“I felt that American combat was being pushed as far away as the planet would allow, becoming abstract and remote. It suggested to me that there was something wrong with our conflict forms here.”

In 1966 the War Resisters League at San Francisco State College asked Stewart to stage a public event with them. Stewart created an activity that would let the players understand war and appreciate it by experiencing the source of it themselves. He called the event World War IV.

In 1966 pacifists and war protesters were opposed to warfare in any form and repressed their own feelings of anger. Stewart wanted to create a game that allowed them to express that aggression. Stewart created the game Slaughter to create an intense experience to release the aggression.

This is also where Stewart brought the Earthball from his experience in Army bootcamp training.

“There are two kinds of people in the world: those who want to push the Earth over the row of flags at that end of the field, and those who want to push it over the fence at the other end. Go to it.”

From these experiences Stewart conceived of “softwar”, the idea that people could design their conflicts to suit everyone’s needs. Stewart designed softwar as conflict which is regionalized, refereed, and cushioned. Which he made a point of making similar to sports.

George Leonard was interested in “creative play”: the experience of a player placed in an open environment and encouraged to use their imagination to devise new play forms.

George: “Sports represent a key joint in any society. How we play the game may be more important than we imagine, for it signifies nothing less than our way of being in the world.”

George and Stewart presented their new games and theories at the Esalen Sports Center in 1973

Around this time Pat Farrington joined the New Games movement and created the idea of the “soft touch” inspired by the “softwar”

“Games are not so much a way to compare our abilities as a way to celebrate them.” “I felt by reexamining the basic ideas of play, we could involve families, groups, and individuals in a joyous recreation experience that creates a sense of community and personal expression.”

The New Games tournament was to be held on two consecutive weekends on October 1973 in Gerbode Preserve. The New Games Tournament was the first public event held on the preserve.

The funds for the tournament came from POINT, a non-profit distributing the proceeds from The Whole Earth Catalog.

Anyone who challenged another to a weird event was encouraged.

What came from The New Games movement changed from something of a Vietnam protest into a therapeutic form of playing games that was deemed to therapeutically releasing the aggression from the players.

“The New Games is attempting to bring people into harmony with their environment once again.” As the preserve was left the way it was and people were free to explore the outdoor space.

While the thinking of New Games was not unique to the New Games Movement, it did begin to form as an event after the first New Games Tournament as Pat and Ray began to name themselves as New Games Staff

New Games started to be implemented in government parks as a way to modernize and bring more of the public out. The New Games staff also started going to low income areas to play such as Visitacion Valley in San francisco.

The first New Games Tournament was mostly white, middle aged, men. The second New Games Tournament was designed to bring people from many different backgrounds. The staff worked with various organizations to create more accessibility options such as free buses.

The second New Games Tournament left the New Games Foundation in a $25,000 deficit.

The third New Games tournament was inside of San Francisco and retracted the admission price. Now anyone could join and play without any restriction. From miscellaneous sources:

The New Games Movement wasn’t a collective of people, it was a line of thinking that came out of the 70s. A good example is looking at the Esalen Sports Center in 1973. This center had some people that are repeatedly referenced in relation to the New Games Movement, but it also had a lot of other people who were thinking about similar things such as Michael Murphy (Author of Golf in the Kingdom), football player David Meggyesy, sports coach Bob Kriegel and running coach Mike Spino. The program included a session of yoga-tennis, a demonstration of Murphy’s own version of Frisbee, tai chi and aikido workshops, a talk on the exploration of movement using hula hoops, and several of Stuart Brand’s games: Slaughter and boffing.  (Getting Loose: Lifestyle Consumption in the 1970’s by Sam Binkley)

 “The Esalen revolution paralleled efforts in the Bay Area to come up with recreational forms that were aimed at the recovery of intimacy through games focused on ritual violations of social distance that called on trust, play, and bodily touching , often players who were not familiar with each other. These games infused the countercultural sense of play with a therapeutic project of self-development and learning.” (Getting Loose: Lifestyle Consumption in the 1970’s by Sam Binkley)

“They’ve been called earth games, free games, and liberated games.” – NYT December 5

   “Some of them [the games] are brand new. Some of them have been played for hundreds of years. Many can be played competitively, with lots of opportunity for skill and strategy. Others have no object, really, besides getting people together and enjoying each other.”

“You can choose to compete because competition is fun, not because you’re concerned with who wins. If you’ve all played hard and enjoyed it, then you’ve all won. You can change the rules if you don’t like them. So long as you all agree on what’s fair, you can make the game into whatever you want it to be.” (Community valued over the game)

“New Games is for everyone who wants to play. You sex, age, or size doesn’t determine you ability to have fun. And if everyone keeps in mind that the people are the most important part of the game, then no one has to be afraid of being hurt.”

“All you need are a few of your friends and the desire to celebrate the day with play.“

Looking at some of the New Games:

Tweezli-Whop

In Tweezli-Whop two players pretty much just fill sacks and beat the heck out of each other (whopping) while balancing on a rail.  There is no winning condition with Tweezli-Whop, but maybe it’s easy to imagine a version of this game where people are trying to hit each other off of the rail. But, as with many New Games the rules are malleable and it suggests versions where there is no rail at all. It instead focuses on the whopping, and states that it is a terrific way to work out tensions. This is something that I am suspecting will show through many of the New Games, is ways for bodies to act out body movements and touch that are typically repressed from day to day.

Also its important to note that this game came from Wyoming, as many of the New Games came from a variety of different places. It’s interesting that the New Games took this game from Wyoming and made it one across the US that is now played in classrooms.

       Boffing

This is one that is mentioned most of the times Stewart Brand is mentioned in the New Games Movement. A boffer is a custom made object for Boffing. It looks kind of like a practice fencing tool, however it is custom for boffing. This activity also suggests that players have protective eye and ear guards as well. Then both people start to hit each other with the sword. I imagine this game becomes a bit more strategical as you play with each other; Dodging, parrying and more. After the rules have been described in the book, the original rules that were made for the game are given. This is so that the players understand that base of the game, but don’t feel pressed to follow the original, more strict rules.

In the original rules of Boffing, there are certain points of the body that give points to the players. This adds more built in strategy into the game.

Today, boffing has become the word associated with the physical weaponry battles of LARPing and soft-combat. This also seems to have created a culture of a lot of white dudes, interested in a sort of throw back to medieval historical appreciation. Here is a video that I think says a lot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOyOk6dNuHY

        Schmerltz

Schmerltz is less of a game and more of an object. You take a sponge rubber softball, like one of the cheap ones you get with plastic baseball sets and put it inside of a tube sock. The game here is “Schmerltz Toss” which involves twirling the Schmerltz around underhand and then letting it go when it reaches a critical velocity. Then the person who it is being tossed to has to catch it by the tail. Unlike the normal game of catch, Schmerltz Toss asks the players to put a more intensive physical action into the throw, and with the irregular catching involving a sort of alligator snap it becomes more difficult.

There are two ways the Schmerltz continues to be used today. In camp extracurriculars, and as a continued legacy through Bernie De Koven. When schmerltz is searched on the internet, loads of summer camp websites come up, including missionary training camps as well. However, when finding websites where De Koven continues to keep the Schmerltz legacy going, he is referring to the object for games to continue being soft, instead of being possible hurtful.

Apparently, this was invented by a person named Peter Whitely who I can’t find anything about.

Stand-Off

This New Game does not require any equipment to be played and can be played anywhere. In this game two players stand on a surface the length of their arms and then put their hands together with the goal of pushing each other off. If someone moves their foot or changes their stance then the other player gets a point. If both people lose balance, then no one gets a point. The game is won when one player scores 2/3 points.

This game was said to be brought into form by a guy named Scott Beach and seems to be inspired by Aikido. The 70’s was a period where a lot of eastern culture was being appropriated into western life and thinking. Aikido was even written about by George Leonard who wrote one of the fundamental texts for The New Games Movement, “The Ultimate Athlete”.

           Flying Dutchman

Flying Dutchman is a game based on the ghost ship where two players hold hands and walk around a circle of other people holding hands. At one point, the pair will break through a pair of people. The broken pair will then join hands outside the circle, and the original pair will go inside. Then the two will race around the circle to reach the open spot as a replacement. Whoever is left outside has to break through and repeat again.

Flying Dutchman does what a lot of New Games do. It has the players using aggressive actions but with fun so that there is an understanding no one should be hurt. As players bust through the hands and run around they are getting out all of this pent up energy.

This one also shows up in a bunch of camping instructions. https://boyscouttrail.com/content/game/flying_dutchman-901.asp

     In all of this Bernie seems to fit in as someone theorizing and watching everything happening. Not as the origin of New Games, but simply the only person that kept the spirit and theory alive. In The New Games Book chapters are written that contain games, and the introduction discusses how the movement started, but Bernie has a section in the middle theorizing what he discovered from being a part of the movement.

In some ways, it feels like Bernie sees differently what other people saw in New Games. Where Brand saw a different alignment of thinking, Bernie seemed to believe that the games were pointlessly necessary. That none of it was for a purpose.

“Here we are together, to have fun. We’ve already dispersed with the sense of any other purpose. We have no need to prove anything in particular to anyone in general. We’re not looking to be therapized or taught or charged. We want to celebrate. We want to play.”

Bernie’s theory here, is that there is no goal in what everyone is doing. That everything is without meaning, for the sake of fun and without consequence. But really that feels short-sighted. These games were being played in order to allow the players to reframe their bodies and minds, and to understand parts of the world great. Some of those parts are just…other people. All of this comes through moving, thinking, and touching. Just because there is no commodity produced from play, doesn’t mean that it is pointless.

The other theory that Bernie writes here is about the play community, which he later takes into his book “The Well-Played Game”. This is the group of people that connect with each other through the reframing of the mind into the mindset of the game. This quote particularly recognizes this.

“When we find ourselves on one particular side, its not because we feel that one side is any better. We make separation so we can find a new union.”

   Something that is interesting to see in The New Games Book is instructions to help ease people into the mindset of new games. This is actually something I was a little worried about when designing my own games. How will people want to play them if they aren’t in the right emotional or thinking space?

These instructions give tips on the games from the book that aren’t too involved for the beginning, and how to interact with varying levels of people that may be interested in the games. For example, if someone is standing around watching, just invite them to play

This is cool, because this aligns with the thinking I have about making a game without rules. These new games are just descriptions of how one could play, and are not prescriptive.

 NEW New Games

 These were created by Robert Herbst as a way of creating utopias through the retro lens in order to reframe today.

 “means by which people could realize their own visions of living, shape their environment accordingly.”

 Interesting about New New Games, is that some of them are scores.

And just from having these scores on the same page as the New Games it becomes clear what a score does compared to a game. Scores points out parts of the world to its player directly, and then asks the player to act once they have considered what the score has informed them. Games create rules for the meaning to be completely derived from play, like an engine as Colleen puts it.

[davonmethod]

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[yegarts]

2019 Travel Grant Recipients (First Round)

Altameda perform at SXSW. During the first round of travel funding in 2019, the Edmonton Arts Council approved support for 45 artists. The recipients sought out unique opportunities, or were invited to showcase their work, around the world. Diverse art projects and training opportunities—in visual arts, dance, music, writing, installation, theatre, poetry, and film—were supported from Tokyo to Kisumu. Get some inspiration for your own projects and opportunities by seeing what our current travel grant recipients are working on—and where they’re going. For more information about EAC’s travel grants, or to apply for funding, click here. Deadlines are February 1, June 1, and October 1 annually.

Erik Grice, Matthew Kraus, Todd Andrews, and Troy Snaterse of the band Altameda travelled to Austen, Texas with manager Jessica Marsh to showcase at SXSW.

Clare Mullen and Ron Pearson are traveling to West Palm Beach in Florida to attend a conference for magicians and entertainers in order to continue to develop their show Minerva-Queen of the Handcuffs.

Alyson Dicey, Caley Suliak, and Ellie Heath of the improv troupe Girl Brain Sketch Comedy travelled to Toronto to perform at TO Sketchfest.

Connor Ellinger, Jesse Northey, and James Cuming of the band Jesse and the Dandelions travelled to Tokyo for a tour of their new album Give Up the Gold.

Harry Gregg, Kyle Mosiuk, and Maddie Storvold travelled to Montreal with manager Daniel Lenz to showcase at Folk Alliance International.

Andrew de Groot, James Murdoch, and Robb Angus of the band The Dungarees travelled to Tamworth, Australia to perform at the Tamworth Country Music Festival.

Fabiola Amorim and Vladimir Machado Rufino of The Vaughan String Quartet travelled to Montreal to be filmed for a project by composer Frank Horvat.

Ava Karvonen and Scot Morison travelled to Ashland, Oregon to present their documentary feature film Finding Bobbi at the Ashland International Film Festival.

Ainsley Hillyard travelled to Winnipeg to perform a solo dance work, Laisse Fair, at Art Holm.

Musician Ann Vriend travelled to Germany to tour and promote her new album.

Textile and fibre artist Brenda Philip travelled to Blonduos, Iceland to attend a residency at the Icelandic Textile Centre.

Darrin Hagen travelled to Key West, Florida to see performances of and participate in a talk-back for the American premiere of their play With Bells On.

Beth Dart travelled to San Francisco to attend the Immersive Design Summit to inform the development of a new transdisciplinary, immersive musical.

Erin Yamabe travelled to Prague to assist in the recording of the works of Allan Gilliland with the FILMharmonic Orchestra at Smecky Studios.

Gail Sidonie is traveling to Halifax to host and present at the Writers’ Union of Canada OnWords Conference.

Isabella Pisapia travelled to Germany, Austria, and Hungary to participate in invitational auditions for world-renowned ballet companies.

Janet Selman is traveling to Kisumu, Kenya to direct two plays with Ignite Afrika Trust.

Janine Waddell is traveling to Sydney, Nova Scotia to teach stage combat and intimacy choreography at Broadmore Theatre’s iPlay Festival.

Writer Jason Lee Norman is traveling to Denver, Colorado to attend a flash fiction workshop led by writers Kathy Fish and Nancy Stohlman.

Joanne Madeley travelled to Tokyo to attend an artist residency in Japanese woodblock printmaking (mokuhanga) at the Women’s Studio Workshop.

Musician Joe Nolan travelled to Europe for a four-week tour of his new album Cry Baby.

Johanna Wray travelled to New York City to attend publicity events in recognition of her work being included in Art Tour International magazine.

Textile and fibre artist Kelly Ruth travelled to Blonduos, Iceland to attend a residency at the Icelandic Textile Centre.

Visual artist Kyle Beal travelled to Montreal to exhibit artwork at Papier art fair.

Luciana Gomez travelled to Havana to study Afro-Cuban dance at the Conjunto Folklorico Nacional de Cuba.

Maria Palakkamanil travelled to Montreal to study Kathak with Indian Classical dancer Sudeshna Maulik.

Maryam Zarei travelled to Berlin to attend the world premiere of her short film Magralen at Berlinale.

Theatre designer Megan Koshka is traveling to Prague to attend the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space.

Sharmila Mathur travelled to Jaipur to train in Bansuri (Indian flute) from Kamesh Talwar.

[newyorktheater]

With two weeks left in 2018, it’s a time for assessments of the year in New York theater, for better and for worse.

  Top Ten Lists of Top 10 New York Theater 2018

“The Ferryman” was the most popular play or musical among critics whose top 10 lists for 2018 are featured below, followed by “Angels in America” and “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.” Other shows that made at least four critics’ lists: “Dance Nation,”  “Three Tall Women,” and “Oklahoma!” It’s worth pointing out that five of these six favorite are straight plays; the most popular musical among critics was a re-conceived revival staged in Brooklyn.

  Poll: Worst Broadway Show of 2018

  Poll: Best Cast Recording of 2018

The Week in New York Theater Reviews

Nassim

“Nassim,” a play by Iranian playwright and performer Nassim Soleimanpour, is deliberately disorienting, both for the audience, who’s told virtually nothing about the show beforehand, and for the “guest” actor,  who is different for each performance…But if “Nassim” is an example of what you can call trickster theater,  with lots of teasing, it winds up not just clever, but charming, and even warm-hearted. And it offers several lessons, both literal and emotional, that illustrate how language can serve as both barrier and bridge between strangers.

The Net Will Appear

In Erin Mallon’s sweet, modest play, an unlikely rooftop friendship develops between a 75-year-old man and a nine-year-old girl.

Richard Masur is terrific (as always) in portraying Bernard, who sits on the roof of his home, dividing his time between drinking and bird watching. Rory, a talkative, precocious nine-year-old (portrayed by the precocious fifth-grader Eve Johnson), suddenly appears on the roof of the house next door, determined to engage her grumpy neighbor against his will.

Ruben and Clay’s Christmas Show

At the very end of their Christmas show, running through December 30th at the Imperial Theater on Broadway, Ruben Studdard and Clay Aiken together sing the 19th century Christmas carol “O Holy Night.” Their duet is so lovely and powerful it seems to pierce the heavens. It would be mean-spirited and inaccurate to say the two hours preceding it feel like a trip through hell. The feeling is more like a trip to the moon, since so much of “Ruben & Clay’s First Annual Christmas Carol Family Fun Pageant Spectacular Reunion Show” – which is the show’s official, and alarming, title – is made of cheese.

Springsteen on Broadway on Netflix

“Springsteen on Broadway” begins with The Boss explaining what it takes to play before “80,000 screaming rock n roll fans,” but the two-hour show is mostly a lesson in intimacy. This was true when he performed solo for 900 or so nightly audience members in Broadway’s Walter Kerr Theater, where it was supposed to run for just eight weeks, but closed last night after 14 months. It’s even more of a lesson, paradoxically, now that it’s playing for some 100 million streaming subscribers

Miranda in Mary Poppins Returns

Lin-Manuel Miranda in Mary Poppins Returns:What the critics say

  The Week in New York Theater News

After 15 years, Avenue Q will close in April. The musical about young adult puppets trying to make their way in the world began Off-Broadway in 2003, transferred to Broadway, won Tonys, and then moved back to Off-Broadway (at New World Stages ) in 2009.

Rebecca Naomi Jones as Laurey and Damon Daunno as Curley

There’s a bright golden haze back on Broadway! The sixth revival of Oklahoma!, this one the hip production from St. Ann’s Warehouse, will transfer to Broadway’s Circle in the Square opening April 7. The corn’s not as high in this version.

The Mother by Florian Zeller (author of The Father) about a woman adrift in middle-age, featuring Isabelle Huppert, Chris Noth, Justice Smith, and Odessa Young will be produced at the Atlantic Theater Company, February 20 to April 7, opening March 11

Roman Banks,20, has been hired as the understudy for Connor Murphy, Jared Kleinman…and Evan Hansen. “I’ve gotten endless amounts of messages from people of color, both young and old, telling me how much it means to them that I’ll be playing the role…”

One theater marketer discovers: Theater attendance drops in the three weeks before an election,

  Congratulations to the theater nominees of the 9th annual #clivebarnesaward:

Edmund Donovan (Lewiston/Clarkston), #IanDuff (Dutch Masters), @Will_Roland (@BeMoreChill ), and @aanavee (@CollectiveRage).

Award announced Feb 11 pic.twitter.com/B1aAd9lYi1

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) December 12, 2018

Congratulations @harryphordHarrison for winning 2018 @relentlessAPF + $45,000 for his play “The Bandaged Place,” about an abusive relationship between two gay men. pic.twitter.com/QhyA02lmTU

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) December 14, 2018

James Cusati Moyer and Ato Blankson-Wood

New York Theater Workshop is putting on a deliberately provocative play, Slave Play, and people are provoked. Apparently egged on by an article in MediaTakeOut (“the most visited African-American news network”) that attacks Jeremy O.Harris’s debut Off-Broadway play, the fury has gone viral on Twitter. It’s not clear that the most vociferous of critics have seen the play or even read the reviews that explain that the slave-master sexual couplings in the first half of the play turn out to be role-playing by 21st century interracial couples as part of their therapy.

It’s so surreal to me that after two weeks of having some of the most enriching and exciting convos with black people who felt seen, affirmed, and exhilarated by Slave Play. A couple loud idiots saw a post on MediaTakeOut and have decided to get fully psychotic in my mentions.

— Jeremy O. Harris (@jeremyoharris) December 14, 2018

Earlier this year, San Francisco’s Z Space launched its inaugural Problematic Play Festival. “I was much more receptive to plays that might have made me hesitant or offended me in different circumstance,” write Maggie Gaw, a literary manager who helped select scripts for the festival.

  Betty White, who’s been an entertainer for 80 years, explains why she’s never performed on Broadway. (they actually put this as a refrigerator magnet for sale)

Rest in Peace

Charles Weldon, 78, artistic director, Negro Ensemble Company. He was also an actor in such films as Serpico and Malcolm X.

Jazz singer Nancy Wilson, 81, whose albums included “Broadway — My Way”

Best and Worst New York Theater of 2018. #Stageworthy News of the Week. With two weeks left in 2018, it's a time for assessments of the year in New York theater, for better and for worse.

[path11podcast]

330 Kundalini Yoga with Guru Karam Kaur (Nicole Ward)

Guru Karam Kaur (Nicole Ward MacDonald) is a passionate and powerful emotional wellness educator, Kundalini Yoga Teacher Trainer and Yoga Alliance Continuing Education provider serving the San Francisco Bay Area since 2002. As a graceful healer, she is a trusted source in personal development with her work in Self Worth and Healing the Wounds of Life, leading immersions, retreats, and workshops throughout the U.S. for nearly 20 years. This very personal soul work increases awareness, enhances motivation, and encourages healing in every facet of life. Sacred sexual healing develops sensuality and intimacy by removing blocks to our giving and receiving of pleasure. www.yogawithnicole.org

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[wikimakemoney]

Chaotic communication: COVID-19 is rewriting our cultural rules of connection

30-second summary:

Not only are face-to-face chats more frequent, they’re increasingly unannounced, unplanned and unavoidable. A jarring juxtaposition to our pre-COVID habits. It’s communication chaos.

While it seems haphazard, each call, chat and interaction is an expansion of community that chips away at our cultural fear of IRL intimacy and democratizes digital communities.

This migration gives brands a mandate to expand their offerings to bigger, more diverse groups of consumers as they use live-streaming and digital tools to build new communities all over the country.

The foundational cracks in the influencer veneer have been growing over the past few years, but the COVID crisis provides a magnifying glass that’s amplifying influencer’s social media shortcomings.

Wholesome, positive –if not strange and mindless– content has become a balm to cure our anxiety, a form of self-care that fills a void and provides a sense of calm that sheet masks and sourdough cannot.

When we emerge post-COVID, shell-shocked, knowing that catastrophe can hit again at any moment, we’ll still want straightforward talk from brands. Brands need to learn this lesson quickly if they hope to pivot successfully in the ‘new normal.’

Talk to any Millennial or Gen Z’er two months ago, or… text them; they would say there are fewer things more anxiety provoking than actual, in-real-time phone calls. The abruptness; the uncontrollableness; the awkward pauses. But that was the Old World. In the solitude of COVID induced quarantine, a craving for intimacy and personal connection means consumers, once notoriously adverse to spontaneous, face-to-face communications, are now clamoring to hear each other’s voices and see each other’s face.

Verizon fielded over 800M phone calls per day within the first two weeks the country was locked down; the word “Zoom” has become a stand-in to mean any “video chat,” and apps like Houseparty have seen downloads increase 70 fold.

Not only are face-to-face chats more frequent, they’re increasingly unannounced, unplanned and unavoidable. A jarring juxtaposition to our pre-pandemic habits. It’s communication chaos.

Quarantine and the COVID crisis have totally rewritten our cultural rules of communication. But the frantic ways we’re corresponding now will likely shift the way we connect long beyond the end of lockdown.

Shift 1: A quest for intimacy in digital communities

Your bestie going live. Your boss going live. Your bank going live. When we were ordered to stay home, it only took a matter of days for everyone to start broadcasting themselves, most times to seemingly chaotic and confusing ends.

Recently on IG live, comedian Whitney Cummings agreed to talk to anyone in attendance: she wound up chatting with baby squirrels.

I just did an IG live with anyone who asked me to join and I was scared but then the person I picked had baby squirrels and I will now be doing these a LOT pic.twitter.com/MztHwbIkYZ

— Whitney Cummings (@WhitneyCummings) May 2, 2020

The official, verified account of Skittles has, on more than one occasion, stirred up drama in the comments section of Bowen Yang and Julio Torres’ Instagram Live chats.

Club Quarantine— a daily digital Queer dance party that happens every night via Zoom– allows virtual clubgoers to join in with their cams, or just watch from behind a black tile, eliciting both an exhibitionism and vouyerism harking back to the random recklessness of the bygone Chat Roulette era.

But while it seems haphazard, each call, chat and interaction is an expansion of community that chips away at our cultural fear of IRL intimacy and democratizes digital communities.

Club Quarantine is not just a fun party; it’s a way for young queer people all over the world to be exposed to a community they may never have been able to access, or even imagine, before.

As more white collar workers are beginning to wonder not when they’re going to return to the office, but why they would ever return to an office at all, major coastal cities are staring at an exodus of their creative class and a bit of their cultural capital.

This migration gives brands a mandate to expand their offerings to bigger, more diverse groups of consumers as they use live-streaming and digital tools to build new communities all over the country.

Take The Wing, a women’s co-working space founded in New York City with offices in chic urban hubs like San Francisco and London.

When forced to close, they quickly pivoted from Millennial-pink meeting rooms to Zooms, making the interconnectedness of their community and celebrity-speckled programming accessible online for people all over. 

Shift 2: Exasperation with asperation

The foundational cracks in the influencer veneer have been growing over the past few years, but the COVID crisis provides a magnifying glass that’s amplifying influencer’s social media shortcomings.

When the crisis hit, Influencers and celebrities were among the first to draw our ire for using their privilege to improve their situations: fleeing from (highly infectious) cities to (highly staffed) second homes, and broadcasting (off-tune) singalongs after just a few days of being confined to their sprawling estates.

The highly-filtered, everything-is-perfect image that is the hallmark of influencer and celebrity marketing has never been less appropriate than it is now.

In a global crisis, consumers are rejecting content that screams aspiration and are instead looking for ways to share in and mitigate our collective exasperation. So what’s to fill this anti-influencer void? More unpolished, even unhinged, content.

Sixty-four year old character actor Leslie Jordan has seen his following balloon from 80k to 4.2 million thanks to a stream of monologues showcasing the absurd mundanity of lockdown: ironing for fun, baton twirling for exercise, watching porn while eating cereal.

But we’re the stars, too. From live baking and hair-coloring tutorials, to yoga flows in cluttered bedrooms, to organized weekly Zoom sessions, we’re all content creators and each other’s Influencers, now more than ever.

“Coming to you live” from the physical and emotional messiness of quarantine is recalibrating our relationship with reality, causing us to eschew unreasonable expectations and embrace “doing the best we can do” as the new form of “living our best life.”

Heiniken’s recent spot montages the relatable pain points of our endless digital gatherings and nods to the fact that quarantine life isn’t great, but we’re all trying to make it through.

Shift 3: Optimism is self-care

Optimism was already growing as a countertrend to the vitriol on the internet, but today, it’s flourishing.

During the pandemic, against a backdrop of endless doomsday news, we’re clamoring for more optimism. The sarcasm and troll-like tone that was once the hallmark of the internet is being replaced by content that uplifts.

For a moment this week, “Duck Pool Party,” a stream of ducks playing in a pool, was the most viewed Reddit livestream. Even notoriously snarky brands like Wendy’s have shifted their Twitter strategy, at least temporarily, to encourage camaraderie through games, activities and shared stories.

Wholesome, positive –if not strange and mindless– content has become a balm to cure our anxiety, a form of self-care that fills a void and provides a sense of calm that sheet masks and sourdough cannot.

Shift 4: Fascinated with facts

In March, consumers were letting out a collective sigh of exhaustion as their inboxes filled with branded emails detailing how we were all “in this together.”

But against the background of a pandemic, these vague platitudes have a counter-effect, reminding us all just how much these companies haven’t been there for us in the past: what little cooperation we received from airlines and car companies before, and what little practical application they have in this stripped back version of reality.

Instead, we want to hear the straightforward truth.

Unlikely figures like Dr. Fauci and New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo have emerged as the leading men of the pandemic (and even more bizarrely, sex symbols), and Cuomo’s curt, distinctively Dad-toned Powerpoint slides have found a cult-following of their own.

Frito Lay’s COVID-spot “It’s About People” has won praise for saying what they were doing to help employees, instead of selling chips.

But the most trustworthy brand voice comes from a most unlikely player: Steak Umms.

The frozen meat company has emerged as a “voice of truth” thanks to their straight-forward, no-nonsense tweets that are at times, radical, at least for a corporate brand.

Their willingness to tweet bold opinions– and not mild platitudes–earned them double their pre-COVID audience, and the admiration of the internet.

When we emerge post-crisis, shell-shocked, knowing that catastrophe can hit again at any moment, we’ll still want straightforward talk from brands.

Brands need to learn this lesson quickly if they hope to pivot successfully in the ‘new normal.’

Megan Routh is a cultural anthropologist, writer and strategist at Open Mind Strategy whose expertise lies in translating cultural insights and trends into actionable strategies for Fortune 100 companies including: PepsiCo, Calvin Klein, JP Morgan Chase, Mondelez, Target and the United States Postal Service. With a decade of experience conducting research, moderating workshops and cultivating trend and cultural intelligence across countries in North America, South America, Europe and Asia, Megan has helped clients uncover emerging directions in culture, business and consumer behavior to develop strategies and innovate products, services, and experiences.

The post Chaotic communication: COVID-19 is rewriting our cultural rules of connection appeared first on ClickZ.

source http://wikimakemoney.com/2020/05/25/chaotic-communication-covid-19-is-rewriting-our-cultural-rules-of-connection/

[dawnajaynes32]

Florabundance Inspirational Design Days 2019 is now open for registration!

  We are excited to share the sixth annual Florabundance Inspirational Design Days is now open for registration!

The event will take place in Santa Barbara, California on January 14-16, 2019. The venue is the Santa Barbara wedding destination location, the Santa Barbara Woman’s Club, with outdoor patios, rustic & historical architecture, fireplaces, and a full stage. The area is lush and green with much local flora and fauna. There is plenty of room for us to work and play with our flowers.

This conference will provide workshops focusing on inspirational designing, the industry’s latest trends, social media expertise, the business end of floral, and more. Plus, an incredible bounty of exquisite flowers to design with at your fingertips!

The three day event will feature the following Designers and Presenters: Kiana Underwood of Tulipina, Hitomi Gilliam AIFD, PFCI, Holly Chapple of Holly Heider Chapple Flowers, Brian Watson of Myrtie Blue, Alicia Schwede of Flirty Fleurs, and Jessica Zimmerman. *Celebrated as an industry TOP PHOTOGRAPHER, Corbin Gurkin will be joining us during Design Days 2019. This is an experience you cannot miss!

Come let the beauty of the American Riviera inspire your work to reach new heights!

Included: – All cut flowers used during the event and design sessions – Seven Unique Design & Educational Sessions (including all necessary materials) – Professional photos of your curated designs – Daily lunch and a wonderful closing dinner – Opening Night Meet & Greet plus Wine Tasting at the Fess Parker Resort, Sunday, January 13th in the evening. – $250.00 flower credit to be applied to your first or next floral order with Florabundance, to be used after the completion of Design Days 2019.. – Tour of Florabundance including breakfast, product presentations, and networking opportunities – Transportation to and from the Fess Parker Resort to the event locations (by bus) – Transportation from the airport provided by Fess Parker Resort (arranged with the resort)

Registration is now open for 2019! Register for Design Days 2019 in the Florabundance online store by clicking here. If you need further information or have any questions please contact your floral consultant at Florabundance – 1-800-201-3597

Hotel Reservations: A block of rooms will be reserved for the event from January 13th through the 17th at Fess Parker’s DoubleTree Resort in Santa Barbara. The special room rate will be available October or until the group block is sold-out, whichever comes first.

You can now book your hotel room and receive our group rate. If you have any specific Reservation requests or challenges please contact Emily Wasem who is Fess Parker’s on-site Reservations Group Coordinator. Her e-mail address is emily.wasem@hilton.com and her direct line is 805-884-8587.

In the meantime, check out our exceptional group of presenting designers from around the country:

  Kiana Underwood (Burlingame, California) www.tulipina.com

Kiana Underwood is the owner of Tulipina, a boutique floral design studio located in San Francisco, California. She is distinguished as a floral artist and teacher with her signature, garden-style designs that pop with color and texture. Kiana employs unique color combinations and floral varieties, including fruits and foliage, that set her apart from her contemporaries and draws admirers and floral designers from all over the world to her sold out workshops.

Since founding Tulipina in 2011, Kiana has quickly become recognized as one of the top floral designers in the world. In addition to chic local and destination weddings and events, Kiana has taught sold-out workshops to hundreds of students in locations around the United States, and in international locations including Canada, Indonesia, Italy, Korea, Mexico, Russia, and Ukraine.

She splits her time between California and New York with her husband, three children, and dog.

Kiana’s work can be seen in Brides, Elle Décor, Elle Spose, The Knot, Country Living, Design*Sponge, Style Me Pretty, Buzzfeed, Pottery Barn, Flower Magazine, Geraldine, Veranda, Livingly, CulturePop, Veter, Town and Country, Flutter, Utterly Engaged, Geraldine, Paste, and more.

      Hitomi Gilliam AIFD (Vancouver, British Columbia) www.design358.com

Hitomi Gilliam AIFD is a Japanese Canadian floral artist, keynote lecturer, demonstrator, educator and a consultant in all aspects of the Art and Business of Floral Design. She is the Creative Director for DESIGN358 (2008). She has guest-designed extensively throughout North America, England, Japan, Mexico, Taiwan, Bermuda, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, Colombia, Belgium, Korea, Oman and India. Hitomi’s biggest pleasure in life is, ‘SHARING EVERYTHING I KNOW’!!

She owned and operated Satsuki’s Florist in Mission, British Columbia for 28 years. She currently works with her son, Colin Gilliam in an Event & Education business, DESIGN358 which was established 8 years ago. Hitomi has lectured at numerous flower shows, botanical gardens, and art galleries around the world, including Philadelphia Flower Show, Newport Flower Show and Singapore Garden Festival.

Hitomi is the founding organizer of the Annual ‘Survival of the Creative Minds’ Conference in Taos, New Mexico. 19th Annual Conference ‘EXTREME’ is scheduled for October, 2017.

Hitomi is a co-founder with Tomas De Bruyne from Belgium of ‘European Master Certification’ Program. EMC cycle 4 (2017/2018) is in progress with PART I Foundation completed in Italy and Belgium, with Mexico and North America (West Coast & East Coast) upcoming.

In April 2017 Hitomi launched her Youtube channel where she shares design videos and interviews.

    Holly Chapple (Lucketts, Virginia) www.hollychappleflowers.com

Holly started her home based wedding and event floral design studio 24 years ago. Being a home based event designer allowed Holly the opportunity to stay at home and raise her 7 children. In August of 2011 her husband Evan joined the company offering lighting, drapes and event design support. Evan now develops many the props Holly designs. The HHC studio services weddings and special events in the Washington DC area, as well as destination weddings.

In 2010 Holly founded the Chapel Designers, a collective with members/designers all over the world. The Chapel Designer organization has received international recognition for its efforts to support and educate designers who service weddings and special events. Chapel Designer workshops and conferences are held throughout the year in several countries and across the United States. Holly has shared her expertise through these conferences in Russia, Australia, London, New York City, California and several other USA cities. Holly, along with several of the Chapel Designers, designed the flowers for

The Knot Dream Wedding in 2014 at the Biltmore Estate. In 2015 Holly Chapple was chosen as a Martha Stewart top wedding floral designer. In addition her work can be seen in numerous print and online publications. On July 30th 2015, Holly and Evan purchased a 25 acre farm that they named Hope. Hope Flower Farm is a flower art farm and Bed & Breakfast. Designers and educators from around the world will be gathering at Hope Flower Farm for educational workshops and art installations. Hope Farm is also available for weddings, special events and photo shoots.

In October 2017, it was announced that Holly and Syndicate Sales have partnered up to create a collection of products bearing her name. The Holly Heider Chapple Exclusively for Syndicate Sales collection brings Holly’s game-changing “egg” and “pillow” mechanics to the floral forefront, along with a signature collection of coordinating vases. The Holly Heider Chapple Exclusively for Syndicate Sales collection became available January 2018.

      Brian Watson (Fort Walton Beach, Florida) www.myrtieblue.com

Brian was born in Rome, Italy and as a child travelled and lived in many parts of the world including Manila and Mexico City. The Free time of his childhood was consumed with creative playing and “making things” – including the making of “mud pie dioramas” (little landscapes from plants, twigs, moss, gravel, etc in tin pie pans and such). His education included studies in computer science and the arts. (college years were dedicated to studying Studio Arts and Digital & Imaging arts). After college, he started a garden design business and began working in the garden and florist industry. He opened a small retail and floral shop in 1998 called Floribunda!. Brian, then, found a calling for weddings and worked for various companies in the industry before opening Myrtie Blue with husband, Gene.

Brian’s work has been featured in many publications including Flower Magazine, Southern Living, Southern Weddings, Magnolia Rouge, Utterly Engaged, and Weddings Unveiled. His work has also been featured on countless blogs: Style Me Pretty, Martha Stewart Weddings, Brides, Once Wed, Snippet & Ink, Wedding Chicks, Junebug Weddings, Flirty Fleurs and many more.

Working along Florida’s beautiful Emerald Coast (Watercolor, Seaside, Alys Beach, Rosemary Beach, Carillon Beach), Brian has developed his own unique style and aesthetic reflective of a natural, dreamy, and relaxed coastal attitude. His wedding designs fit harmoniously into their surroundings and exude romance, warmth and intimacy – leaving a lasting impression. He is excited to share his love, knowledge and insight on working with flowers filtered through his perspective of nature, light, color, and atmosphere.

    Alicia Schwede (Seattle, Washington) www.flirtyfleurs.com | www.bellafiori.com

Designer and blogger Alicia Schwede is the founder of the leading floral design & industry blog and magazine Flirty Fleurs. She regularly lectures on design and social media at workshops and events around the country. She is also the creative mind behind Seattle-area floral design studio Bella Fiori. Her work has been featured in The Knot and Style Me Pretty and in her book Bella Bouquets.

Alicia will be joining the workshop to present on Photography & Instagram.

          Jessica Zimmerman (Conway, Arkansas) www.zimmermanevents.com

Jessica Zimmerman is the founder of ZIMMERMAN. Jessica’s design work has been featured in People, Martha Stewart Weddings, Brides, Southern Living, and many more. While Jessica is known for her organic and unrestrained design style, she is best known in the floral industry for her business skills. Her course, The Business Behind the Blooms, has helped turn thousands of floral designers into profitable business owners! Jessica loves what she does in her studio, because it gives her the opportunity to invest in what she loves outside of her studio. Her husband, Brian, is her partner in all things life. Together they have a daughter, Stella, and twin boys, Perry and Zeke – a full home and even fuller hearts! Jessica is also a passionate traveler, a lover of the adventure it brings along with the chance to be exposed to all this beautiful world has to offer.

      Florabundance Inspirational Design Days 2019 is now open for registration! syndicated post

[topmixtrends]

LAST AUTUMN, New York Film Festival kicked off an international retrospective of works by the prolific experimental filmmaker Barbara Hammer. For 50 years, Hammer has devoted herself to unapologetically exhuming, assembling, and celebrating the lesbian image as no one has before. Her films, produced in 1974, 1997, and 2015, stage lesbians as unabashed hippie separatists, a Jewish sculptor thriving during the Occupation (Claude Cahun), and a Pulitzer Prize–winning poet (Elizabeth Bishop). More than a hundred moving pictures later, many newly restored, there’s never been a better time to know Barbara Hammer — as much as one can, anyway. As Hammer herself mused during the Q-and-A which concluded NYFF’s Barbara Hammer Program: “Do we ever know anyone? I don’t think we do. I think we die alone and we are born alone and I do my damndest to show who I am by making films.”

Instead of focusing on Hammer’s own movies, IFC Center, in partnership with Queer | Art | Film, enriched the retrospective by screening seven early feminist experimental films, selected by Hammer, that motivated her to grab life by the Bolex. In them, we see her fevered adoration of sex, community, and innovative cinema. Dyketactics’s twirling intimacy and idealism echo Carolee Schneemann’s Fuses (1965); History Lessons’s feminist snicker, Martha Rosler’s Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975); and Place Mattes’s erotic fixation on the hands, Yvonne Rainer’s Hand Movie (1966). Who influenced Barbara Hammer’s work? It is IFC Center’s thorough answer to this question that compels me to ask another one: who is influenced by Barbara Hammer’s work? I recently spoke to several members of the new guard on working in the wake of Hammer. Her presence, while purely administrative for some and literal for others, was always palpable.

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The 1980s produced a large bounty of Hammer films and Hammer scions: young filmmakers — sometimes lesbian, sometimes queer, but always feminist-identified. Now in their 20s and 30s, they are eager to grapple with the idea of a creative disconnect between generations. “The most important lesson I take from Hammer is her self-awareness that she is inventing a lesbian voice, lesbian view, lesbian cinema,” Daviel Shy, who premiered her first feature, an adaptation of Djuna Barnes’s biting 1928 chapbook The Ladies Almanack, at The Roxie Cinema in San Francisco on June 30, tells me. “Formally, I may be far more ‘tame.’ But I operate from a commitment to lesbian cinema, history, and culture as a real and living calling.”

Sex is an all-consuming part of Hammer’s early films, from Dyketactics (1974) to the naturalistic Multiple Orgasm (1976) to the acrobatic arts showcase Double Strength (1978). These are the images created, unbelievably, by a woman who was once groomed by her parents to become the next Shirley Temple. Instead, Hammer imagined worlds that are still being reimagined by the avant-garde’s progeny. In Dyketactics, women, having taken “back to the land,” roam barefooted through water and leaves. Their active, idyllic lives are emphasized by the 16 mm film’s diligent crossfades of flowers, candles, and fruit into nude women — all embodying a Nelson-eque sameness, their homemade coiffures and fair skin a tad too homologous.

Liz Rosenfeld’s Untitled (Dyketactics Revisited) (2005), shot in 16 mm like its Hammer predecessor, assimilates the bodies and environments that have been left on an era’s cutting room floor. “The visual skin and mix of the technologies is crucial to the work,” says Rosenfeld. Untitled isn’t so much a glowing tribute to Dyketactics as it is something entirely new, meant to — as Liz tells me — serve as “reinterpretation of queer contemporary moment and proposition queer future while also referencing its past.” Its frolicking bodies are varied, some clothed, some wearing that which is in-between nudity and cloth: the chest binder. Untitled’s playground is a cold industrial city, Chicago, understood by Rosenfeld to be just as much of a queer colony as Hammer’s. When asked about Untitled in an interview with Polari Magazine, Hammer celebrated the throwback to her old work, declaring, “Long live Dyketactics and may there be more iterations!”

In Shy’s The Ladies Almanack, Natalie Barney engages in a tryst with Oscar Wilde’s drug-addled niece Dolly, revealing a series of moon phases tattooed down the actor’s spine. The ink pairs rather nicely with the Almanack’s subtitle: “showing their Signs and their tides; their Moons and their Changes; the Seasons as it is with them; their Eclipses and Equinoxes.” Colette, like Rosenfeld’s Hannah Höch, has a facial piercing. While historically white, Shy’s casting also aids Barney’s salon in getting with the times: Mimi Franchetti is portrayed by a person of color; so are Thelma, Lily de Gramont, and a number of other late 19th-century creatives who, while renowned and often celebrated for their work and sexual deviancy at the time, rarely grace today’s textbooks. Almanack also cleverly recruits established members of today’s feminist literati to portray the women who paved the way for their work: Eileen Myles takes on Monique Wittig; Terry Castle, Gertrude Stein.

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Joey Carducci, an instructor at Pratt Institute, first met Hammer while working as a contact printer operator in Hell’s Kitchen. When Hammer, impressed by Carducci’s lab skills, realized he was an idling 16 mm filmmaker, she insisted they collaborate. Bolexes in tow, the two roamed through Coney Island’s Astroland on the 46-year-old amusement park’s final day in 2008. Carducci films Hammer as Hammer films Carducci; the resulting project would become known as Generations. A bittersweetness hovers over Generations’s 14 minutes and 36 seconds, as though something new is being born from that which one has yet to properly mourn. Hammer the wiser and Carducci the younger brim with newfound creative energy as Astroland illuminates Brooklyn’s dusk one final time.

This phoenix motif is part and parcel of the Carducci-Hammer collaboration. In 2015, Hammer led A Place Called Hope, a public workshop where she generously offered digitized copies of her film outtakes to participants so they could create a work that was both vintage and contemporary, individual and collaborative. Carducci selected scraps from Tender Fictions (1995), Hammer’s follow-up documentary to Nitrate Kisses (1992). Tender is the closest Hammer has come to crafting a traditional memoir film. “I was born at a time when Shirley Temple was making more money than any other female in the United States. I was taught early to perform and perform I did,” Hammer begins in voice-over, lulling the viewer into a false sense of genre security before shifting into an alter ego. “In Tangiers, I robbed an American Express with my Swiss Army Knife,” she continues, thwarting the viewer’s quest for an earnest documentary.

Tender Fictions was the perfect foundation for Carducci, who by then identified as a transman, to come out to his cherished mentor. In A Letter to Barbara Hammer (2016), Carducci uses her outtakes to ask permission to use them in a broader project about his transition, tentatively titled Coming Outtakes. “As queers, if our identities are expansive and self-defined, am I still a ‘Bolex dyke,’ as we had nicknamed ourselves after making our film? Am I still the lesbian experimental filmmaker you didn’t want the world to lose? Or am I a Bolex dude, another white man in the film industry?” he painfully wonders as clips from Tender Fictions roll. Fearless, Carducci’s respect for Hammer and love for experimental cinema eclipse the weight of his coming out. “I was born at a time when Barbara Hammer was making more 16 millimeter experimental films than any other lesbian in the United States,” he says, riffing on Tender Fictions’s opening line.

If queer cinema traditions possess a shared characteristic, it is this preoccupation with our community’s own expansive chronologies and chosen genealogies. Film allows one to go the distance: to compensate for archival limitations, address forbidden intimacies in the frankest of terms, and approach historical repression with a sense of humor.

Hammer’s third decade is defined by her trilogy of 16 mm historical documentaries: Nitrate Kisses, Tender Fictions, and History Lessons (2000). Borrowing its name from the highly flammable film base, Nitrate Kisses, disputed by funders and faith leaders, ponders the same erasure of queer life to which it was narrowly subjected. Hammer’s early trademark eroticism persists, but with a newfound sophistication: as the gay couple make love, the Hays Code scrolls across the picture. Like its namesake, Nitrate Kisses refuses to be extinguished, even when soaking wet.

The same year that Barbara Hammer and Joey Carducci premiered Generations, Liz Rosenfeld released the first in her own trilogy of semi-historical experimental short films, two being shot on 16 mm. Frida & Anita centers on a chance encounter between the artist Frida Kahlo and Weimar performer Anita Berber in Berlin in 1924. Rosenfeld followed Frida & Anita with speculative biographies about Dadaist Hannah Höch (HÖCH), Leni Riefenstahl, and Eva Braun (Die Neue Frau) in 2014.

This time, Rosenfeld, who is based in Berlin, didn’t realize the parallels between her Surface Tension Trilogy and Hammer’s earlier series. Nor did she realize that they shared a subject in Höch (whose history Barbara explores in her 1998 film The Female Closet). “It’s a funny coincidence,” Rosenfeld says. At the same time, this mutual interest in forgotten figures and their stories seems natural, even imperative. “I think that as queer people we do gravitate toward understanding our own histories, especially because they are so untold, lived through the body, rather than written down, and also based on stories passed down, interpretations of films, books, images that have been left behind, and of course, gossip,” mused Rosenfeld.

Shy, who spent three years researching fin de siècle literary communities before adapting Barnes’s text, echoes her sentiments. “Our history was not codified and canonized, thank goodness, so our history is whatever transpired experientially between women.” It is fitting that Hammer also once desired to adapt Barnes’s modernist fiction (the author’s literary executors rebuffed her efforts to secure the rights to the 1936 novel Nightwood).

The “tension” in Rosenfeld’s Surface Tension Trilogy refers to the relationship between the past and present. It engages in its own variations of Hammer-esque smudging and collage. Apart from period clothing, there is little effort to obscure spatial or physical anachronisms. The three films borrow from the few archival materials available as much as they do a present-day understanding of queer connection and community. “For me, history is at the crux of all my work,” Rosenfeld tells me. “I am thinking about past or future histories, and especially in relationship to how history is carried through the body, which is where my work really lies at the intersection of both film and performance.”

Frida & Anita is shot in the style of a 1920s silent movie, with a letter the author sent to her father while in Berlin occupying the intertitles. The anachronism bleeds through her entire series, beginning with our introduction to the strip-teasing Anita Berber (Richard Hancock), who is presented as an illustrious transwoman. The line between Cabaret and RuPaul’s Drag Race becomes increasingly slim.

An ambitious undertaking, Shy’s The Ladies Almanack, filmed with Super 8 and spanning 86 minutes, also uses the anachronism to link the past to the present. A cast of over 25 is essential to depict the revolving door of writers, artists, friends, and lovers who moved through Natalie Clifford Barney’s salon at 20 Rue Jacob, Paris. While the performers boast the mannerisms, language, and vintage filter of Radclyffe Hall, Djuna Barnes, and Romaine Brooks, the salon’s constituency simultaneously resembles a group of patrons at Henrietta Hudson’s on any given Friday night. This is deliberate. “Any period piece says more about the time it was made than the time it portrays,” says Shy. “My film does not try to fight that fact. The process was always about finding corollaries between them and us, then and now. The anachronisms are to bring them closer, not to give history the middle finger. There is a philosophical and emotional faithfulness to the book that I was trying to adhere to, and to do that honestly we would have to enter the picture.” Like its source text and the almanack form it appropriates, the film occurs over a calendar year, broken up into monthly chapters.

“Recently, I decided to call myself a ‘hystorian,’” Shy tells me. “For us, or any person whose past has been abridged, erased, or doctored, one has to modify the popular story of what happened in order to burrow closer to the truth.” Rosenfeld’s and Shy’s imaginative approach to articulating the past has clear roots in Hammer’s own work. “History Lessons is one of my favorites,” she explains. “I think playing with history is important, and to engage deeply with any material one cannot be overly reverent,” she acknowledges.

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Brooklyn-based filmmaker Sasha Wortzel’s work focuses on an undocumented regional history that isn’t as debaucherous as Weimar Berlin or bygone as bohemian Paris. Her first feature documentary, We Came to Sweat: The Legend of Starlite, which premiered at Film Society of Lincoln Center in 2014, details the rich past of her neighborhood’s oldest Black gay bar, recent attempts to shutter the hub, and the community members who, valuing the Starlite’s past as much as its future, resisted its closure. Wortzel has also tampered with form to connect a current audience with its past. In 2011, having accumulated footage of an elderly lesbian in the wake of her partner’s death, she jerry-rigged these vignettes into a typewriter. When a key is pressed, a clip plays through a screen situated near the obsolete device’s paper table. Titled 42 Butter Lane, the installation features interviews about the quotidian (wallpapering disagreements, anecdotes of homophobia) and shots of the survivor’s half-empty home.

Wortzel’s Butter Lane parallels Hammer’s short No No Nooky T.V. (1987). An Amiga computer emits Valentine-like drawings-in-progress and feminist declarations that symbolize the ebb and flow of Hammer’s short-lived summer romance. Crafted at the height of the debate on film versus video, Hammer decided that she wanted both and filmed her computer. Like Butter Lane, Nooky combines incompatible forms of technology to capture the weight of a lesbian relationship that’s reached its end. In both works, death of format and death of lover collide, albeit in inverse. Wortzel insists that the digital appreciate its elder: the analog.

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When asked, “What do you wish for?” in an 2001 interview with Filmmaker Magazine, Barbara Hammer responded, “I hope that before I die I can start a Barbara Hammer Fund for queer filmmakers who use experimental form in their work and do not replicate the status quo.” Sixteen years later, that wish came true. Yet Q|A|M’s Lesbian Experimental Filmmaking Grant should not be viewed as the Hammer’s first act of creative altruism. Rather, it commemorates the work she has been doing for young filmmakers, unsung, for a number of years.

Daviel Shy first met Hammer at her book launch. “We chatted and she signed my book with the words, ‘Daviel Shy, what a name — as good as Hammer. Go for it — in film and art, Barbara Hammer,’” she recalls. “Hammer came back into my life once more as a staunch supporter of The Ladies Almanack. At our fundraiser at the Leslie-Lohman Museum, she did an impromptu plea for donations and read her favorite passage from Nightwood.” Hammer, who turned 79 this year, has shared films with Joey Carducci, collaborated with Sasha Wortzel, and screened her work alongside Liz Rosenfeld’s.

When asked what she was thinking after the screening of her films at New York Film Festival last year, Hammer responded, “I thought of all the films we are not looking at tonight. All the exploration of what history is, how we’ve been left out of history, this empty hole that is now being filled by courageous, queer, wonderful, diverse, expansive lesbian, gay, and trans community.” Today’s queer experimental film community is the one she has been waiting on since she became the first. “The construction of sexuality and sexual expression seem to me to be fluid and changing. This is most important and interesting, for it leaves open the doors of possibilities for future constructions of sexual histories,” she wrote eight years ago in her memoir.

Doors that, thanks to Hammer, new filmmakers are passing through in strong numbers.

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Sarah Fonseca is a publicly educated film writer and essayist from the Georgia foothills who lives in New York City. Her work has appeared in Black Warrior Review, cléo: a journal of film and feminism, IndieWire, and the Lambda Literary Review, among others.

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Feature image by Alice O’Malley.

The post From Hystorians to Bolex Dudes: The Many Descendants of Barbara Hammer appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/2uKNRV5

[remedialmassage]

#TimesUp: Ending Sexual Abuse in the Yoga Community

Students, teachers, and organizations alike are speaking out—and figuring out where we go from here. Here’s a place to start.

#MeToo

Mary Taylor, Ashtanga yoga teacher and former co-owner of the Yoga workshop

In light of the recent discussion around issues of sexual abuse and harassment that has swept the entertainment, political, and now yoga worlds, I find myself heaving a huge sigh of relief. As a woman who has had her own harrowing experiences with male abuse of power, sexual assault, rape, and betrayal of intimacy over the years, I’m relieved that these issues are no longer taboo to discuss.

But I am also filled with sadness. I’m sad that we, as a species, have treated each other with such callousness for thousands of years. I’m sad that I have not always known how to speak up, how to stand up in my own defense, or how to take action in the defense of others.

There is something particularly foul about sexual misconduct in the context of yoga. Yoga is a path of insight into the roots of decency and desire—into both the glorious and shadow sides of human nature. There is a deeply personal and, for many, an intimately spiritual aspect to yoga. Students often come to yoga in a vulnerable position, pursuing balance, calm, and a clarity of mind. When a yoga teacher sexually abuses a student, it is not only hypocritical, but also incredibly damaging to the student and the tradition. This kind of behavior can throw sincere and innocent students off the path for years, if not lifetimes. It is tragic. Yet sexual misconduct within the yoga world is common.

In fact, it is well documented that my own teacher, Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, whom I love dearly, had certain “adjustments” that he gave to female students that were invasive. Many of these adjustments were sexually inappropriate, and I wish he had never done them. On some level, I also wish that I had spoken publicly about them before now. Yet these adjustments were confusing, and not in alignment with all the other aspects of Jois that I knew, so I didn’t know how to talk about them without disparaging the entire system.

This has been a confusing part of my relationship with my teacher and the yoga community as a whole. Why did he do this? Why didn’t I speak up about the inappropriateness of his assists? Why didn’t others? Why didn’t I make it my mission to expose his wrongdoings as a demonstration of an irreparable flaw in the Ashtanga system?

First and foremost, I still think Ashtanga is a remarkable system of learning and transformation. It is a system of practice that has worked for me and many other students over the years. I do not see Jois’s behavior as a flaw in the system, but a flaw in the man. I think this is part of the reason why, until now, I have only spoken privately to students who ask about this. I have such deep love for the practice—a practice that has saved my life.

When I take a step back and turn my gaze to the future, I see an opportunity for deeper contemplation and an imperative to stay authentic, honest, and real. There is a burning need to question and to look ever deeper at ourselves, our teachers, and the yogic traditions we love in order to find the seeds of truth that lie within. When we place teachers on a pedestal (or, as teachers, when we allow students to put us on one), honest inquiry becomes impossible, and the deep contemplative insight and compassion that is at the heart of yoga may never arise. If the ground of the inquiring mind becomes eroded, then deeply destructive things—like sexual misconduct—find an environment in which to thrive.

Today things have changed. The accounts of sexual misconduct that at one time might have been dismissed are now being met with open minds, support, kindness, and respect.

See also Rachel Brathen Collects More Than 300 #MeToo Yoga Stories: The Community Responds

Judith Hanson Lasater, Restorative yoga and applied anatomy teacher, and former Yoga Journal editor

I've had many instances of #metoo, all the way up to attempted rape. But in the yoga context, I’ve only had one. And that was with Pattabhi Jois. At some point in the late 1990s, he came to San Francisco to teach. We were doing drop-backs from Tadasana (Mountain Pose) to Urdhva Dhanurasana (Wheel Pose). He came over to help me and put his pubic bone against my pubic bone, so I could feel him completely. He had me do three or four drop-backs, and when I came up after the last one, I looked around and saw three of my students, who were in the class with me, looking at me, mouths hanging open.

What happened for me is what I think happens for so many women: I was so shocked that the first thing I did was doubt myself. Did that really just happen? I wondered, silently. The part that I regret is that I didn’t leave. I stayed in the class. The next thing Jois asked me to do was something I thought was physically dangerous for my knees. I just said, “Namaste; no Guruji, no.” And he hit me on the head and said, “Bad lady.”

That was the last time I saw him. It was only years later, when pictures and videos of him assisting women became public, that I recognized that what he was doing was sexual assault. I thought That’s what happened to me. For a long time, I had just brushed it under the carpet, where I had brushed all the other instances. At the time, my context of a male teacher was B.K.S. Iyengar, who never did anything like that. So I was trusting. I believed, and still believe, the yoga studio and yoga mat are sacred spaces. That’s why crossing this boundary in class is a double-whammy upset for women.

Now I make my students repeat this mantra: “Trust yourself first.” I ask them to repeat it frequently. And we talk about what it means: that we all need to listen to our gut, to pay attention to the deep visceral feelings that are arising from our inner wisdom and never to disregard them. In our culture, women are trained to ignore their intuition for a host of twisted reasons: We fear it’ll make us seem impolite or ridiculous. We tell ourselves, “It couldn’t be true, because I know this person well.” If this is you, start flexing your intuition muscle in less risky circumstances, like shopping for new tires. When you walk into the store, slow down and see what your belly says, then immediately act on it. This will help you say “no” when something doesn’t feel right in yoga.

See also 10 Prominent Yoga Teachers Share Their #MeToo Stories

Alanna Zabel, Founder of AZIAM yoga and creator of yoga barre

Years ago I developed a passionate relationship with a fellow yoga instructor. I’ll call him Rick. At first, I was shy and avoided Rick’s advances—but I was also enamored by the energy and attention that he was lavishing on me. He was a revered teacher, and he was interested in me. I was hooked.

In class, Rick would often hover around my mat, caressing my body sensually when he was making “adjustments.” At first, I found it flattering, but I didn’t have the confidence and maturity to separate my youthful desire for attention from my logical understanding of power abuse. The connection turned me on, despite the fact that I always left his yoga classes feeling empty and confused.

Rick became increasingly sexual with me in class, almost as if he didn’t care that other students were there. When I was in Baddha Konasana (Bound Angle Pose), his hands would slip to my crotch; in Revolved Triangle, one hand caressed my butt and the other was on my chest. My attraction and excitement around him eventually morphed into confusion and fear. Gradually when he made these advances toward me, I froze and became very awkward. Rick rolled his eyes and brushed me off, doing his best to make me feel bad for my reaction—shaming me for not responding in the way he wanted me to. It became clear to me that conscious intimacy, mutual understanding, and my consent to his groping were all missing.

One day, I decided I was done. Done with this silent game of power and control. Done feeling awkward around him when he’d shame me for not accepting his advances. Done watching him take no accountability for his actions. Before class that day, I made it clear that I didn’t want him to touch me—that I wasn’t interested anymore. Halfway through that practice, while I was in Headstand at the front of my mat, he pushed me over. Then he threw my mat out the window and told me to leave.

With time and deep self-reflection, I have found compassion in deeply meaningful ways. I’m so grateful that we’re collectively having these conversations now. Talking about past—and present—inappropriate behavior is part of our practice today. The more all of us—teachers, students, women, and men—can see that, the more we’ll be able to co-create a clear path forward.

Excerpted from Meaningful Coincidence: Synchronistic Stories of the Soul by Alanna Zabel (AZIAM Books, 2017)

What’s Next

Advice from the experts on how to navigate turbulent waters.

As news of sexual misconduct rolls out on a seemingly continuous basis—including reports of wrongdoing in the yoga world—yogis everywhere have been disheartened, if not surprised. We’ve known, after all, that the yoga world is not immune to horrible abuses of power—from inappropriate assists from Ashtanga Yoga founder Sri K. Pattabhi Jois to rape accusations against Bikram Choudhury. “A simple web search will reveal that almost every major tradition in modern yoga has at least some experience with alleged sexual misconduct,” says David Lipsius, the recently appointed president and CEO of Yoga Alliance.

But the volume of stories and allegations exploded late last year when yoga teacher and entrepreneur Rachel Brathen (aka @yoga_girl) shared her own non-yoga–related #metoo story—and then started hearing from yogis around the world about sexual abuse, harassment, and assault they had experienced during classes, at their neighborhood studios, and at yoga festivals and other events. Within a week of speaking out, Brathen had collected stories from more than 300 yogis, many angry and confused about what had happened to them. “I was fielding questions like, ‘Are you supposed to have your breasts adjusted in Savasana (Corpse Pose)?’” says Brathen.

Overwhelmed by the outpouring—and committed to doing something about it—Brathen selected 31 excerpts (with consent) to share on her blog, stripping out the names of the victims and the accused. The accounts of misconduct varied—from out-of-line adjustments and being propositioned for sex to being aggressively or violently assaulted. Yet almost all these stories shared a common thread: The victims were shocked to be violated by members of the yoga community, in what they thought was a sacred, protected place. “There’s an extra level of betrayal in having someone treat you in a disrespectful and unsafe way in what should be a safe space,” says Peg Shippert, MA, LPC, a licensed professional counselor in Boulder, Colorado, who specializes in working with victims of sexual misconduct.

Judith Hanson Lasater, PhD, who has taught yoga since 1971, agrees: “In the context of a yoga class, I was dumbstruck that [sexual misconduct] would happen, and it totally immobilized me. I thought of a yoga class almost like going to church, and the thought of that happening was not something I had ever even conceived of.”

Dacher Keltner, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, yogi, and author of The Power Paradox: How We Gain and Lose Influence, adds that unfortunately, there has been a long history of abuse of power in spiritual communities in general. “Think of the women who killed for Charles Manson, the abuse of priests in the Catholic church, or the tradition of polygamy in strict religious communities,” he says. “Spiritual settings create a structure that is ripe for the opportunity for seduction.”

See also After the Fall: The Ripple Effect from Accusations Against Bikram and Friend

Yoga is no exception. “The paradox of teaching yoga is that it is all about relationships: The student needs to yield to the teacher, to be receptive,” says Lasater. “That said, students also need to be very aware that they still have power in every situation.” On the opposite side of the same coin, teachers must be aware of what students are projecting on them. “We all get triggered,” says Annie Carpenter, a longtime yoga teacher who has a master’s degree in marriage and family counseling. “This is where you have to do klesha work and ask yourself, ‘What does my ego want?’ If you’re a teacher, will your students project onto you that you’re a healer or a sexy yoga teacher? Or will you imagine, or even hope, they do? You have to know how to respond to those types of projections that will inevitably happen.”

The bottom line: We need to look at these issues and talk about them—even though the topic can be difficult, says Elizabeth Jeglic, PhD, a professor of psychology at New York City’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, whose research focuses on sexual violence prevention. “We’re still navigating the best way to respond to these things,” says Jeglic. “But overall, the more we can share—with each other and with authorities—the more helpful it will be in how we all proceed.”

When Brathen posted #metoo stories last year she wrote: “I hope that shedding light on this issue will [contribute] to some sort of change.” And it already has. In cases where multiple women have spoken up about the same yoga teacher, Brathen connected the women (with consent) to the media and with each other to see if, as individuals or a group, they wanted to publicly reveal the teacher’s name or take legal action.

Before Brathen’s post, Yoga Alliance—a nonprofit teacher and school registry—had already put into motion an ethics and conduct committee as part of its standards review project. It had also just begun talks with the Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network (RAINN) for recommendations on new policies on sexual misconduct. Lipsius, also the former CEO of the Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health, says the new administration at Yoga Alliance is determined to take on the issue of sexual harassment and abuse in the yoga community. “I personally have witnessed the devastating effects of abuse in a yoga community and know that the after-effects may linger even decades after the alleged abuser is removed,” he says. “The simple fact is those who commit crimes must be held accountable. There’s no excuse for sexual misconduct or abuse of power in a yoga studio, ashram, festival, or any other venue.”

Here you’ll find advice for teachers, students, and yoga organizations. Consider it a start—to help us all process the misconduct that’s occurred and take the steps we can to prevent it from happening again.

See also Kino MacGregor’s Sequence for Inner Strength

If you’ve been victimized, triggered, or want to help...

Go with your gut about what feels wrong—and speak up. 

If you can, tell studio or organization leaders and law enforcement immediately. If you don't feel comfortable doing so, or have questions about what may have just happened to you, there are anonymous, free resources that can help, such as the Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network (RAINN). “RAINN’s hotline (800-656-HOPE) and online chat service (rainn.org) are not just for people who are sure they have been victimized,” says Kati Lake, vice president of consulting services at RAINN. “They’re also for people who are unsure if they’ve experienced unwanted sexual contact, and for friends and families of those affected.” RAINN can also help you understand the laws that govern sexual abuse (they are different for each state). The organization maintains a comprehensive legal database at apps.rainn.org/policy. And, if it feels safe, speak up the moment something happens. “It may be scary, but it may also be an effective tactic to stop the offenders out there,” says David Lipsius. “If just one person stood up in class and said, ‘Please don’t touch me without asking permission,’ the system would change.”

Give yourself permission to be triggered right now. 

Hearing the news of others who’ve been through something similar to what you have can take you right back to your own trauma from previous abuse—and prompt you to relive it, says Elizabeth Jeglic, PhD. “I think a lot of victims have felt helpless in these situations in the past,” she says. “Now, many are reporting feeling guilt and shame that they didn’t come forward before, or they feel like they′re still not in a place where they can come forward with details of what happened to them.” No matter what you’re feeling, Jeglic says, it’s important to be gentle with yourself. And if you feel rocked by recent events to the point of feeling like it’s affecting your well-being, it may be a sign that you need professional help, such as talking to a therapist, says Annie Carpenter, MS. “If there’s a part of you that feels shut down or uncomfortable, you may have some repressed emotions,” she says. “If you don’t talk about those, they have a chance of causing more harm.” 

Support those who have been victims and want to talk. 

While it may seem obvious to listen to someone’s story, Peg Shippert, MA, LPC, says that listening well is one of the most important things you can do—and it may be harder than you think. “A lot of people have a lot to say about this phenomenon going on right now, but a victim doesn’t need to hear your thoughts on the topic—what they need is to be heard and acknowledged,” she says. Try not to ask a lot of questions; instead, simply listen, and convey to them that you believe what they’re saying. “Almost every victim of sexual harassment or assault has had experiences where they tell someone what happened, and that person questions parts of her story,” adds Shippert. “That is so hurtful and potentially damaging.”

Double down on go-to self-care tactics, and use your yoga.

Now is the time to do whatever you usually do to feel good. “For most of us, that often includes connecting with the network of people who’ve been a reliable, safe support system for you in the past. If it feels right, let them know this is a tough time for you,” says Shippert. If yoga has become something that re-opens old wounds, listen to that, too. “This might mean not going to your favorite class, finding another teacher, or trying private classes,” she says. “You might also ask a friend to go with you—someone you feel safe with.” Right now, we all need a practice that helps us feel empowered, says Carpenter. If not asana, maybe work with a deity, such as Durga, that helps you tap into your resilience. Or if letting your voice come out through chanting works, do that, she says. “Use your yoga to feel strong and clear; it’s from that place that you’ll be able to handle it all.”

See also 7 Poses to Release Trauma in the Body

If you're a yoga teacher or organization...

By David Lipsius, president and CEO, Yoga Alliance

Understand power dynamics.

Even when no malicious intent is present, energy can shift easily from healthy classroom relationships to an unhealthy power imbalance. If you’re a teacher, hold yourself accountable to the inherent power dynamic at play in the yoga teacher–student relationship. At minimum, you may be viewed by your students as a more advanced practitioner and an experienced guide. At maximum, you may be viewed as a master, guru, or enlightened being. Either way, do not abuse the power that is enmeshed in the relationship. Teaching yoga comes with great responsibility to individual students and the community you serve; maintain an appropriate boundary, and let the yoga practices themselves become the guru for all students.

Ask permission before all hands-on assists. 

Use consent cards (or “yes/no” discs, stones, symbols) and verbal affirmation every time you assist a student. Every student deserves to be empowered within their own practice. Always ask permission before touching a student. Using clear communication, make each assist an empowering co-creation, inviting students to choose or decline your help, to change their mind, and to alter their answer from moment to moment. All types of hands-on assists require consent, including nurturing presses, manipulative adjustments, and press-point assists. To safely support all students in each class, strengthen your skillfulness with nontouch assists: Use precise verbal cues and invitational mirroring.

Update, clarify, and publish your policies and procedures.

Community leaders in all settings must be explicit about what they will do in the event of a report of assault, rape, unwanted touching, or other misconduct in their yoga space. A well-defined response policy is necessary to lay a clear foundation for public safety. Be clear, be precise, and ensure that all policies and procedures are published and available for everyone to see. Then train your staff to follow those policies and procedures to the letter, every time. Consistent enforcement is essential to develop and maintain a culture of safety.

Set in place an explicit reporting structure. 

It’s unrealistic to think that a yoga institution is equipped to function like a qualified law-enforcement, investigative, or judicial body. For all reports of criminal activity, law enforcement should be notified—without delay. Have phone numbers for law enforcement and victim advocacy groups clearly posted. For noncriminal but questionable activity, clarify the reporting structure within your organization and advise and train all employees, contractors, and students to report violations to the appropriate human-resources professional, an ombudsperson, security person, or manager. Effectively training staff in reporting procedures helps employees at all levels feel empowered to speak up against abuse.

Acknowledge the issue of sexual misconduct, and act as a leader. 

Far too often in yoga’s history, a yoga brand, lineage, tradition, ashram, or organization has failed to properly acknowledge and deal with problems related to sexual misconduct. For a better future, all yoga institutions need to openly discuss their history and take active steps to change the dynamics that led to alleged abuse and the alleged silencing of whistle-blowers. Use external—not internal—experts and support networks to address the issues. Together, we can change cultural systems so that issues are no longer kept within the “family.” Many thriving traditions have become stronger over the years by learning from difficult experiences. Transparency, honesty, and truth can be used to help educate, elevate, and inspire future generations of yogis. 

See also Rachel Brathen on Motherhood, #MeToo, and the Future of Yoga

from Yoga Journal http://ift.tt/2EmilAm