Around 1999, I had very clear cut definitions about what was possible in my life. Career was a "serious" topic. I was a PhD student on track to become a professor of Anthropology. I had very strict ideas about what was "legitimate" as a career path and what was not. I never even questioned these ideas, having been brought up by two overachievers with multiple advanced degrees and jobs with massive world development organizations. Though I didn't know it, I was still walking through the world based on on the vision set my my parents.
I still remember the moment I decided I was leaving UCSB. I had completed my master's degree and was presenting my research methodology to my peers and professors to advance to doctoral candidacy. At the time I was focusing on drumming and healing in West Africa. The words of my dissertation advisor still ring in my ears, "if you do a dissertation about drumming, no one will come to your presentation. No one cares about drumming. We care about theories." Finally, all my naive notions of anthropology as being a field which honored the wisdom traditions of others was dashed. The icing on the cake were the raised eyebrows when I explained that I was guided to do this research project based on some recurring dreams I had. They all looked at me like I was absolutely nuts. I left the program. I was devastated and felt directionless.
On a whim, I attended a weekend
Dreamtending workshop with Steven Aizenstat shortly thereafter. It was at a Psychology graduate school in Santa Barbara called,
Pacifica Graduate Institute. I went just for fun, sensing that I may get inspired to look at my nocturnal intuitive urgings in a new way. What I wasn't expecting was to be completely enchanted with the land, the people, the school and philosophy.
I was introduced to the concept of Dreamtending as a soulful life practice of healing the world. Our visitations at night were deemed valuable, and indeed, sacred. We engaged with each other, coaching members of our pods to give voice to these wise messengers through speaking, drawing and movement. Suddenly, I found myself among people who felt the same thrilling revelations from their inner world that I did! Dream images, personas, and symbols were honored as meaningful with missions to awaken us to our wise selves, our guides and the collective unconscious. We turned our awareness inside-out from being about us dreaming, to the world dreaming us. We asked ourselves big questions... "what does the world want of me?", "what is my soul longing for?", "what gifts and opportunities are waiting for me?"
Dreamtending is based on on the idea that dreams are alive and full of intelligence and practical guidance. Images, ideas and symbols are divine messengers from the world to us. Our psyche is multi-dimensional, meaning, it can access unlimited information from archetypal images which reside in our imagination and visions. Also, there is the idea that everything dreams. Every plant, every grain of sand and every seemingly inanimate object is dreaming us! What is the world dreaming about us? Are we willing to live the dream?
I was taken. I enrolled in the M.A. program in Mythology with an emphasis in Depth Psychology. The summer before the program started, I attended my first Burning Man, which blew open my imagination and creativity. I was on fire with aliveness and inspiration. Throughout the two-year MA program which followed, I felt as if an alchemical transformation was taking place in my consciousness. I was immersed in the true wisdom traditions I had been originally seeking in a mainstream university, couched in the mythological stories of cultures across thousands of years and the globe! Goddesses, heroines, magic, wise and enlightened beings from around the world were studied as keys to a much bigger wisdom and world psyche.
It was towards the end of this degree that I began hooping. This is the part which the TV interviews, newspapers and magazines leave out. "It's too complex", they tell me. "That's too many details." "The story is much cleaner if we just say you left Anthropology to become a hoop star." Pretty soon, I got so used to telling this sensationalistic version of my history, that I bought into it. It was my schtick.
But now, looking back, having "arrived" to hooperdom, I am remembering that this journey has actually been a path rather than a destination. A living laboratory of dreamtending. As an Anthropology student, I had a magical vision about women healing through rhythm and dance. I was ostracized for this dream and felt like a lost failure. But for the last 7 years I have walked in that dream as my reality! I made it happen! I broke through my fears, doubts, insecurities and voices of my inner critics to help create a magical reality of joy and fun, and I've brought tens of thousands of people with me.
I'm feeling this "aha" moment now a days. I am realizing that the true value of what I can offer the world isn't limited to the grace and beauty of hoopdancing. I get goosebumps when I talk about making things happen, especially seemingly impossible dreams. The art of manifesting. The ability to transform yourself and become more than what you thought possible. I am entranced by the process of magical expansion. Re-definition of the self. Re-creating our own mythology of what is possible and who we are. Hooping has given me SO much! But I realize now, that perhaps some of the most precious lessons I have learned have yet to be articulated and explored.
The journey awaits!
Recent Comments