When I was around 7 years old, my brother was a incredible breakdancer. He was featured on national television with his crew and frequently did festivals and street performance. My family made ‘break boards’ – cardboard board that folded up with a handle so you could carry your dance floor wherever you went. A few times my brother’s crew took me downtown to break with them. They would put out a hat for donations and set up the boom box and the break board. Then I would take stage and bust out the six step. Yeah, that happened. My brother took me to my first breakdance movies, Breakin’ and Beat Street and I was hooked.

When I do yoga, I’m often thinking about how similar it is to breakdancing. I look at yoga asana and see this slick dance. For years I have wanted to take hip hop or breakdancing. As you know from my other posts, I grew up with music and dance. I danced through my teens and 20’s. You could literally ‘find me in da club with a bottle full of bub’ for like 15 years straight. I killed it on the dance floor. I danced my way though the rave scene of the 90’s, I salsa, bachatta, and cumbia’ed my way through Central and South America. I busted out salsa during hip hop songs and I got low, got low, got low, got low. The later years were all about hip hop. My entire week would be a build up to a weekend of dancing. And it went on like that for a long time.

Dancing and drinking went hand in hand – a little too much, sometimes a lot too much. At some point I woke up with my last hangover, body sore form the dance floor, and a busted bike that I had ridden home drunk. The clubbing sort of stopped then. I realized in a very blunt way that I was dancing and drinking away the darkness of the world. I was experiencing secondary trauma from working on women’s human rights issues and the drinking was soothing the thousands of human rights horror stories that ran though my mind every night. I had to stop everything for a while.

I moved to Sweden and I stopped dancing.

That sentence kills me. Ask anyone who knows me and they will tell you that I love to dance. Sure, I dance with the little dove in our living room at 11 a.m. and I love it. But, it’s not the same as a night dancing away to beats that move every part of your body and soul. In the dark with lights flashing, moving, moving, moving. Sure I knew that clubbing wasn’t really what I needed all the time, but then where does one dance? I kept telling myself over and over that I would take a dance class, but I never did. The confidence I had as a dancer faded and my intimidation grew.

But today, after drinking this power smoothie that I’ll tell you about below, I looked up ‘basic breakdancing’ on the internet. And just like that I was doing the six step again. Yeah, it was in my living room and during my yoga practice. Yeah it was slow and clumsy. But damn, it felt good. You see, sometimes it takes a long time to climb out of whatever well we’ve fallen into. My well was a deep hole where my career as a women’s human rights activist used to be, it was a hole where all my family and friends in the States were, it was a hole of everything I had known myself to be. Wells are damn hard to climb. The sides are curved, wet, slippery, and high. It takes everything we have to inch our way up. I think I slid down a million times in the last four years. Slowly I would build the strength to start climbing again. Then, one day you poke your head out and look around and you see the world with fresh eyes. You see that you can dance again. So you do.

Holy biscuits and gravy! This smoothie is like a dirty little secret that you think you can’t share. For shame! It is so good it must be bad. But guess what? It’s not! It’s packed with goodness: raw oats, dates, cacao, chia seeds, peanut butter, almond milk and banana. It’s like desert for breakfast, but it’s healthy and gives you energy. Say what? Make this now and then go do the six step out of that well! Then come back and tell me about it. Love!

Cacao, Peanut Butter, and Oatmeal Breakfast Smoothie:

Ingredients:

• 3-4 Ice cubes
• 1 organic banana
• 1/2 cup raw oats
• 2 Tbs Chia seeds
• 2 Tbs Peanut Butter
• 2 Tbs Cacao
• 1 to 1 1/2 cups almond milk or other non-dairy milk
• 5 soft dates

Directions:

1. Put everything in a blender and blend on high until smooth. I like the pour the almond milk in as the last ingredient as it helps prevent the cacao powder from poofing all over. Enjoy!

P.S. Here is a yoga video for inspiration. Day 27. You are brilliant.