Today is day one of a new spin (a new calendar year) on the Mayan calendar (which I personally align with so deeply!) SO! Happy New Year!
Today, as it’s a new year (and hence my Mayan diary by dear sister Jyoti Imix finished yesterday!) I am starting to use my NEW Journal to JOY today! which feels so exciting!
With the retrograde ending, spring in the air, The celebration of Iemaya (A Yoruban deity of the sea, Imbolc and the end of the Mayan year, today feels like a beautiful day for fresh starts, intentions and ponderings (and you know how much I love to ponder!).
So here is something my beautiful-brilliant-butterfly-brain pondered deeply this week…
What are the three things (not humans) I most love on this planet?
Mine were (and this took much deliberation!):
1: Water (I do get withdrawal if I can’t have a bath/sauna/swim/visit the sea/visit the river (one of these in a week is ok but otherwise I miss her so much) plus water is just so delicious to drink!)
2: Music… of all the arts… music is the one that has to be present for me to create… sometimes music expresses the things I cannot find the words for, or inspires me to cry/move/write/sing/feel/create… plus I always said I am a musician but dance is my instrument… my favourite being Hip hop
3: Grounding… honestly I am obsessed (my closest friends and family know this right now) with my grounding sheet! (Send me a message to talk grounding please so my friends can have a rest 😂) I realised early in 2022 that I can actually feel the healing powers of Mother Earth when I sit/lie on the ground, and in January 2023 I finally got a grounding sheet to sleep on and Oh.My.Goddxx it is the best thing on this Earth: I love how it plugs me directly in with Mother Earth, and how well well well rested I feel after a night of grounding: so much so I want a home on one floor as close to Madre Tierra as I can be.
This is my Mat if you want to read more
So what are yours?!? Please hit reply and tell me!
This week, I went to see Lowkey with my Dad… in Bristol… it was the first time me and my Dad ever went to a club together… also at the first club I ever went to (underage)… I remember being so nervous…funny now to go and with my Dad who was worried if he was the oldest one there! The first track (HipHop ain’t dead) reminded me why I so love breaks! And the whole night why I love the arts, and music and hiphop! And once again how art “is not a mirror to reflect reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.” Bertolt Brecht. It reminded me how art can be an opportunity to create revolution. And a release from politics, the world, the capitalist conditioning around what and how success should look like, and it can speak out and express the change we want to see. Plus it is a beautiful opportunity for unity: uniting all humans regardless of class, age, ethnicity, language etc…
I also got to thinking about how hiphop & yoga are connected… because DJ Cool Herc (who many say first created hiphop) said (of how he made breaks) “I go to the yolk of the egg: I get the yolk out” (He yoked out the best bits of the music to create the bit we all go off to!) And yoga means to yoke… which I understand as being uniting ourselves: our left and right, our masculine and feminine, the split in our shadow identities and true identity… and many say yoga means “to link,” “to connect,” or “to join with.”
And so, on Monday in the Thekla in Bristol… what was obvious to me as I danced to the breaks is that breaking, the breaks, yoga, yoking… they are all connected… we are all connected…
Hiphop is revolution
Yoga is revolution
As Audre Lorde said “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
It is allllllllll connected me thinks…
What about you ?
What are your thoughts on my ponderings this week?
And please can you share your three favourite things with me?(remember not people: your three favourite things on this planet: and get as creative as you like with your answers! (because the earth without art is just eh!)
And if you want to tell me more about why yoga and hiphop are connected (for example, freezes, asanas… the same!) I am all ears!
And happy new year beautiful heart!
Ps come see my show not this weekend but the one after at Yorkshire Dance (go to www.ellamesma.co.uk for tickets)