When I opened SGC, I had a vision of a Collective. I knew if I built it, they would come. And many people who need what we offer have found us. We have positively impacted so many lives, including our own. At our September Radical Careworkers meeting, Kate was talking about how one of the things that she loves about the work she does for SGC is that she is able to give and receive. She is able to offer her curated movement and meditation practices, and she has been able to grow personally and professionally through the programs that she has attended and the mentoring she has received.
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This is exactly what I wanted for SGC to do and be. And as Kate was talking, I realized that this is exactly the benefit that I get as well. I have learned and grown so much from both the embodied movement experiences that I curate and facilitate as well as from the events that I attend at the SGC. We have so many talented curators and teachers and what we offer is, I think, unique in our community and maybe even beyond.

It is easy for me to give, but it is often nearly impossible for me to receive. I am working on that. At that same Radical Careworkers meeting, I angsted about the pressures of “owning” SGC, which comes with a lot of financial stress and obligations. I try not to let it get to me. I try to stay focused on the fact that SGC is my community service, my laboratory, and my art studio. Still, it is difficult to carry all the weight all of the time. In addition to managing the entire enterprise, I teach 4 to 5 times a week and I do not pay myself. All of the money I make from teaching goes directly back into the business.

I am fortunate to have support from SGC curators and teachers as well as the regular feedback and reinforcement from many of our community members who remind us that the SGC makes a difference in the lives of our Collective Community. So, thank you!

And in the spirit of keeping the doors open for another year (and growing into all we want to become!), we also thought it would be nice if we gave our Collective Community an opportunity to more directly support our mission and vision—an opportunity to give a little extra if you are able to. What you give need not be financial, though we certainly appreciate financial support!

Here are a few things you can do that don’t cost any money (and during our October celebration we will offer 20% off of any purchase if you do any of the following):
Post a review on Google Business telling people about what you love about SGC

Bring a friend. Their first class is free. You can even send them the promo code on your fitDEGREE profile to help us track the connections our community makes.

Make a commitment to share our Fb or Instagram posts for a week (or more!)

Tell your coworkers about what we offer or ask your workplace to support the well-being of their employees by opting into one of our new Professional Development Packages

Attend our 2-yr Anniversary Celebration on Saturday, October 12 from 4:00-6:00pm

If you have extra money to give, you can contribute to help supplement the many operating costs:
If you pay an extra $5 a month, you help us pay for a month’s worth of toilet paper

If you pay an extra $10 a month, you help us pay for ½ hour of cleaning

If you pay an extra $15 a month, you help us pay for 10% of the monthly cost for the fitDEGREE App

If you pay an extra $20 a month, you help us pay for 3 months of ginger chews

If you pay an extra $25 a month, you help us pay for a month of internet access in our space or a month’s access to Canva where we design our advertising and social media posts.
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We are so grateful for all that we receive through our work. We are grateful that we can give back so much to our community. We want to keep on giving and growing… and it’s good to receive your support as well! Just reach out or stop by if you have any questions about how you can give back or pay it forward.

As I take a moment to reflect on what we have accomplished at The Spiral Goddess Collective in the two years since we opened, I am overwhelmed. It’s always good to look back and take stock. Because there is so much that I want to do, it is easy for me to forget the magnitude and depth of what I have done. And what we have done together is even more powerful!

We have offered a wide variety of weekly classes, unique workshops, and dynamic events and we have solidified our mission and vision as a community center that offers trauma-informed yoga, dance, meditation, and embodied movement.*

Since we started using the fitDEGREE app, 314 people have attended our weekly classes and events.**

We have awarded approximately 25 SGCCF scholarships for 5 free weekly classes (a value of approx. $1800)

We have given approximately $1500 of sliding scale discounts on events since February

We have supported other community organizations and causes:
We have donated money to OUT Maine, The Together Place, HEAL (Health Equity Alliance), Downtown Bangor, Third Space/Bangor African Festival, Wabanaki Health Alliance, Tandem Mobility, and Robinson Ballet.

We have donated time and services to Partners for Peace, PACE alternative sentencing program, UMA-Bangor, Maine Women’s Lobby, Bangor Chamber of Commerce, UMaine CHAARG, UMaine Black Bear Mutual Aid Fund, MAPIL (Maine Association for Public Interest Law).

And all of this is only what my not-so-perfect record keeping reflects. Our weekly class schedule has grown and we are regularly reminded about the positive impact that we have made in people’s lives.

We are asking you to help us celebrate our 2-year anniversary through attendance at our special events on October 12th (Art + Transformation open house) and October 19th (Radical Careworkers with a special offering from artist Edner Fago and an opportunity for chakra-inspired, transformative art through embodied movement). We also have a variety of special deals and opportunities, with more exciting events coming in November!

​I appreciate all of the support from our community, and I hope that all of you will help us to not only keep the doors open, but to serve more of our community for years to come!***
 
*We will be sharing more information about our mission and vision over the month of October (and beyond). Did you know that our website is a rabbit hole of information about who we are and what we do? I update it as often as I can to reflect our growth and evolution.
**Did you know that you can use the fitDEGREE app to: communicate directly with our curators and teachers, purchase a class or event for a friend or family member, register for your favorite classes ahead of time?
***My second blog in this 3-part anniversary blog series has ideas on how you can help us to survive and flourish.

Even though I am relatively successful, I can’t help but feel like I am bad at business. In October of 2022, I opened The Spiral Goddess Collective, a Center for Mind/Body Movement. I cringe when I am referred to as the owner. I want to jump out of my skin when someone calls me an entrepreneur. Both of those terms are accurate, but they don’t feel like a good fit. They make me feel dirty, manipulative, and like an imposter.
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I call the business of The Spiral Goddess Collective a not-for-profit because this too is an accurate term, even if it is not sanctioned by the world of business as such. My tax man instructed me that I have to make profit, otherwise the IRS will see my business as a hobby. But my definition of profit is different. I make profit so that I can give back to my community.
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My business is not-for-profit because everything that I earn goes back into the business. While I pay a portion of the money that comes in to the instructors and curators who teach classes and hold events, the money that comes in from the classes that I teach goes directly to business expenses (rent, internet, supplies, printing, software, etc) and my full-time job supplements the costs of operating The SGC. I don’t (yet?!) make money through my business, but we keep growing! Maybe someday I will make back my initial investments in this grand experiment, this dream, this community hub for embodiment and connection.

The Spiral Goddess Collective is a business, but it is also my community service and my activism. It is my laboratory and my art studio that complements my academic work as a Professor of Transdisciplinary Cultural Studies. It is where I put theory into practice. The classes I teach and the workshops and events I offer are a part of this, but providing a space for others to offer their classes, events, and workshops is another big part. And providing this space and all of our offerings to our community at Pay What You Can/Sliding Scale prices is the whole.

My university views my work at The SGC as a conflict of interest, and I have been trying to make the argument that this conflict is actually a benefit to the university, the community, and to our students. But the truth and reality of what The Spiral Goddess Collective is and what it does is not in alignment with policies written to attempt to limit greed, exploitation, and business as usual.
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My mother told me that I should not tell people that I am bad at business. Maybe it is not that I am bad at business as much as it is that I don’t like to play by the rules that most businesses play by—the rules set by capitalism and intertwined with other oppressive systems and structures.

And there are some business things I am pretty good at. In less than two years I have learned two different class management software systems. I’ve learned how to use a variety of other software programs and how to navigate a maze of aspects related to owning a business. I have built upon my skills, experience, and knowledge from my dual careers in academia and the world of fitness. I am highly organized and really good at making and managing schedules. I’m pretty good at website design and social media and program development. I’m good at communicating and valuing people. I can do a lot with very little and I am a multitasker in all things, but there are a lot of details to manage.

There are too many things that I want to do for the business, but time is never on my side. Thus, the biggest reason that I am bad at business is that I have a full-time job as a professor—the kind of job that has no boundaries and a million expectations (and is particularly dangerous for people-pleasing overachievers who tend to lack boundaries!). It is the kind of job that can never be left at work; it always follows me home.

My “real job” bleeds over into my work at The Spiral Goddess Collective, and it has threatened my health and well-being many times over the years. My job in academia is one of the reasons why I teach movement, dance, yoga, and fitness classes and preach self-care and embodied social justice. It is an attempt to find balance.
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In my work at The SGC, I’ve tried not to confuse my desire to provide access with the martyrdom that sometimes comes along with preaching Pay What You Can/Sliding Scale options and offering full and partial scholarships. I want to offer everything for free, but there are bills to pay and friends in the business have told me that people can’t wrap their heads around free. Free means that something has no value. Free means that they are unlikely to invest in themselves. Free means that I don’t value my own worth.

And what they tell me is evident in our culture: too many people want to buy into myths about weight loss. They want to be told that they can reach all of their impossible goals. They want to know how many calories they will burn; they want to see the results on their Fitbit or Apple watch. They want it all to be quick and easy. They want to punish themselves. They want to fit in and they want to stand out. They want superficial transformation—a body to envy. This is not what we are offering.

I want to have more faith in people. I want to think that there is a different way of doing fitness and business as usual.

And I think that we are beginning to see cultural shifts that will make what we offer at The Spiral Goddess Collective more valuable. I think that people are tired and need more rest and relaxation, deeper restoration, and support for their mind/body/spirit. I think people are disconnected—from themselves and from each other—and that they are looking for authentic connections and opportunities for embodiment. I think that people are searching for meaning and purpose and that they are looking for something different than fitness as usual and business as usual.
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For all of the struggles, my work at The Spiral Goddess Collective makes me happy. Teaching what I want to teach, the way I want to teach it, in line with my principles and values, and supporting other people’s teaching makes me happy. When I opened The SGC I envisioned it as a collective and it has become more and more of a collective every month. I have generous, supportive instructors and curators who often give their time, money, and energy as well. And we have grateful members of our collective (aka: clients, participants, customers) who love our space, our vision, our mission, and our offerings. I am grateful for all of the people who make The SGC what it is—a unique center for mind/body movement.

I want to believe that there are ways of doing business as not so usual, and I see the evidence of this possibility every day.

On Thursday, July 27, I am offering a JourneyDance class at the Wilson Center in Orono. The Wilson Center is “an independent, progressive religious and spiritual organization” that “aims to build community for spiritual exploration and multi-faith dialogue.” For this JourneyDance and potluck event I put together a special “Mindbodyspirit” playlist and have been thinking about the context of spirituality in JD and in my life and life’s work.

I.
I have never described myself as a spiritual person. I was raised Presbyterian, but religion never resonated with me. Church was a drag, except for the donuts. Sometimes I envy people who believe in God, who have an anchor to what I consider to be the unknown and the unknowable.

Sometimes I would imagine what it would be like to be able to say, “I’m not religious, but I am spiritual.” Sometimes I would joke that yoga was as close as I got to church; I taught most Sundays and it’s as close to a spiritual practice as I have ever gotten. Perhaps I would connect spirituality to my relationship to nature, mountains, the ocean—the vastness of the universe. A love of science fiction is, perhaps, a kind of spiritual practice? It wasn’t until I participated in JourneyDance that I began to participate in what I might describe as spiritual practices. And I began to see other aspects of my life’s work as spiritual.

Before JourneyDance, I took an Embodied Social Justice certificate program through The Embody Lab and was introduced to the work of Rev. angel Kyodo williams. If I was going to be religious, I would probably choose Buddhism, but all religions are too structured and too limiting for me. For a short time, I investigated Paganism, which resonated in many ways. And when I recently read a bit of Starhawk’s classic The Spiral Dance, I found that many of her descriptions of witchcraft—in history and in practice—resonate with the teaching I do in and out of academia.

But, nothing speaks to me as a whole, contained spiritual belief system. Like my interdisciplinary academic work, I take bits and pieces from a variety of sources and cobble them into something that resonates with me and remains flexible. This approach is not unlike Octavia Butler’s creation of Earthseed (which is now a “real religion”) in her Parable duology. Her character, Lauren Olamina, an empath raised in the strict religious practices of her Baptist father, collects truths from a variety of sources and leads her followers through dystopic landscapes as Shaper. My students have likened me to Olamina, but I would not be so arrogant as to make this comparison myself.

And yet, I am a “natural leader,” an empath, and a visionary and the power that I hold is not unlike what Olamina wields (collecting ideas, writing, taking care of people, providing opportunities for education) or what Starhawk describes as a “power that comes from within” and that “is never power over another.” Instead, it is a power that helps to grow the power of others and depends upon “personal integrity, courage, and wholeness” and “encourages healthy pride, not self-effacing anonymity; joy in one’s strength. Not shame and guilt.” This is the power—and the path—that JourneyDance has helped me to embrace more fully.

II.
Through The Embody Lab, I was also introduced to the work of Staci K. Haines and her book The Politics of Trauma. In addition to describing “the ever-expanding universe, the energies, beyond human, that we are living with,” she also explains spirituality as “a connection to something more vast, felt yet unknown.” Around the same time, I was introduced to the work of yoga therapist and psychologist, Gail Parker, who describes spirituality as “an ideal that lifts you beyond your everyday struggles and helps you clarify, reflect upon, and understand life from a deeper perspective, and to live more artfully.” All of these ideas about spirituality turn up effortlessly in my JD teaching, which is an art that I feel my way into.

 When Haines writes about spirituality, she is also writing about embodied transformation as “ways of being, acting, and relating [that] are aligned with what [we] most care about.” Gail Parker expands on this idea as she explains: “The spiritual dimension refers to our relationship to the beliefs, ideals, values, and principles that we live by; this dimension determines how we operate on the other dimensions [physical, mental/emotional, social] and how we make sense of the world.”

Before JD, I had largely made sense of the world intellectually. I would push away anything that felt too woo-woo. But my JourneyDance training came about through an unbelievable string of synchronicities that cannot be dismissed as mere coincidence. People of faith might explain my experience with other words, but I can only say that there was a spiritual dimension that I have continued to explore through movement, meditation, oracle cards, and an open mind to learning more about myself and my purpose—education, embodiment, and empowerment—and the path that I walk, or dance, through this life.

Gail Parker explains that “it is by connecting to this higher state of consciousness that you begin to reconnect to values that express your internal truth, allowing you to create meaning for yourself and make sense of things.” And this is the key to a spiritual life for me—this reconnection and the creations that have been birthed from my desire to “make sense of things.” The Spiral Goddess Collective is one of these creations and each JourneyDance playlist is a stepping stone on this path that has no destination, only process.

III.
This “Mindbodyspirit” playlist brings together some of my favorite songs and practices from other playlists and provides a variety of ways of considering the connections between mind, body, and spirit. The titles of the songs for the first few tracks speak for themselves: “For My Soul”; “Waking Up”; “Gold Flow”; and “My Mind” take us through a welcoming of our mindbodyspirit, connecting to our internal truths, to seeing the bigger picture and connections between the individual and the structural, feeling the full weight of our bodies on the earth, and appreciating the portal of our minds.

We start to connect to each other through Trevor Hall’s “2 Oceans” and Lakeside’s classic “Fantastic Voyage.” The former resonates with spiritual vibes and the connections that make us human regardless of which ocean we find ourselves by. The latter taps into the sci-fi quality of the fantastic, but also into the power of pleasure in our bodies and collective celebration in “the land of funk.”

We then turn to one of my favorite process song, Milkman’s “Controversy,” which layers The Beatles and Tupac, Eminem and Britney Spears, and other artists who invite controversy for a variety of reasons. We play with ways of embodying masculinity and femininity and exploring the spaces in between these culturally polarized opposites. Our bodies anchor us to these energies that our culture pits against each other and we break out of those constraints by employing mind/body connections and exploring a third space of possibility.

A couple of songs directly engage with more religious connotations of spirituality: “Praising You” and “Save our Soul.” The first takes Fatboy Slim’s classic and gives it a feminine party vibe. In the second, we tell our story to the dance floor through Lexxi Saal’s soulful exploration of the state of our individual and collective souls as we navigate the challenges of this world that we live in.

From here we turn to an extended process of climbing a mountain to a clearing where we find our favorite place (real or imagined) and meet our inner guide for a JourneyDance ritual of parts work exploration. Through this ritual we discover what we need to know in the moment, but also that we have a wealth of wisdom within us already and that we can access this inner wisdom whenever we want to.

In the last section of class we explore all of our senses and sensuality as we dance to Annie Lennox’s version of “I Put a Spell on You,” which brings us back to ourselves, reminding us of all of the ways that we avoid getting too close to the parts of ourselves that we fear, but that we belong to ourselves and deserve to love our whole selves, even if we have to use enchantments to find that self-love and self-acceptance.

And finally, we connect back to the power of nature with Lo Wolf’s “Be Like Water,” a repeating mantra that connects us to all of the ways that we can be like water as we flow around obstacles in our path, carve new possibilities, nourish ourselves and others, and expand and contract to meet the circumstances. We sink back into the earth and into ourselves, contemplating the ever-expanding universe through two instrumental pieces: “Writing Poems” and “My People Have Deep Roots.”

This is just a glance into the bigger picture and deeper meaning of this particular JourneyDance playlist. Each playlist is unique even as it follow the flow created by Toni Bergins. And each time we come to the dancefloor, the journey is unique to the moment we find ourselves in and the people we find ourselves with, even if the playlist is the same.

Part of the reason I opened this space was to offer something to our community that is rarely found in other places and spaces dedicated to fitness, wellness, dance, or yoga—a space that is inclusive of all bodies and identities not just in word, but in practice. I wanted to bring my particular approach to yoga and movement, which is queer—unconventional, radical, inclusive, trauma-informed, creative, and “deeply rooted in truth, love, and justice,” as Jacoby Ballard describes (and as I quote in part 1 of this blog). There are many ways to be queer, and one way is to challenge gender binaries and social and cultural norms of all kinds.

Many gyms draw strict gender lines with offerings for men and women, reinforcing stereotypes that weight rooms are for men and group fitness classes are for women. Locker rooms where you have to choose to identify as “man” or “woman” will likely feel unsafe if your appearance is gender non-conforming. Some yoga classes offer a certain pose variation “for men” or “for women” and reinforce binaries of gender. The music used in a lot of classes reinforces heterosexual narratives about love and romance and stereotypes about men and women (and boys and girls).

Further, many group fitness classes are populated by people who are thin and already “fit” and fat bodies are conditionally welcomed into that space if they want to lose weight, as if this is the only goal of moving one’s body. The messaging in and around group fitness is largely about losing weight—about changing your body to be more “fit” or “healthy,” which ultimately means more socially acceptable. But “fat” is not just a physical weight we carry; it is often related to trauma—the psychological weight we carry. And narrow cultural norms reinforce the psychological weight that queer people, and all socially unacceptable people, carry.

Before opening The SGC, I taught fitness classes for over a decade at a community non-profit where I did not feel comfortable being out (and I taught fitness classes elsewhere for many years before I was brave enough to consider myself queer). I was discouraged from including “political” messages in my classes and promotions for classes. I taught a program where I was required to use music that often had lyrics that I found to be offensive to women and to reinforce stereotypes related to race and sexuality. But it was deemed “clean,” and context was ignored. Still, being in my fat body, leading a class, was the least I could do to push back again one of the norms of fitness spaces. More than once a new participant walked right past me to talk to the thin woman they thought must be the instructor. Too often, we are unaware of the limited scripts we participate in on a daily basis and most gyms and fitness centers prefer not to have these societal corsets pointed out.

One of the worst examples from this past teaching gig is something that happens all the time in mainstream/corporate America. One day I walked in to the facility to witness a large, masculine person teetering around in high heels and “acting” like the female CEO because he had won the honor of “CEO for the day.” The staff filled the lobby as everyone laughed and cheered for this offensive display, which was probably considered to be a light, fun team-building activity. I felt extremely uncomfortable as I passed through to teach my class and imagined what it would be like to be trans and witness that display. I debated for weeks about whether I should say something to my supervisor or just let it go. I still regret that I let it go.

So, opening The Spiral Goddess Collective is also an opportunity for me to be more brave, more open, and more in line with my values. This is part of “the potential for queer identity,” what Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore describes as “the radical potential to choose one’s gender and one’s sexual and social identities, to embrace a radical outsider’s perspective, to create a culture on our terms, and to challenge everything that’s sickening about the dominant culture around us.” The Spiral Goddess Collective embraces a radical outsider’s perspective.

Despite a name that is feminine, and perhaps makes people wonder if men are allowed to attend classes and events at The SGC (the answer: of course they are and they do!), our space is pushing up against the boundaries of the norms of fitness spaces as well as the norms of social justice movements. The Spiral Goddess is not just a symbol for women—it is an archetype that informs what we birth into the world, how we use our energy, how we treat ourselves and each other, and how we connect our inner and outer worlds.

Feminine qualities and values like collaboration, compassion, empathy, nurturing, and flowing are seen as weaknesses. Women are expected to work out to get hard, but not too hard. To be thin, but still curvy. We compete against ourselves as much as the other women in the room. And, women and femme people of all genders, have been excluded, abused, and threatened in fitness spaces (and the larger culture), to say the least.
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Men are made to feel like they have to be stereotypically masculine (competitive, linear, logical, assertive, independent, controlling), which just adds to the problems of our patriarchal world and the mental health problems of men, women, and children and everyone outside of these gendered categories. Individuals are forced to choose one side of the gender binary or to push back as non-binary, both of which can lead to violence against ourselves and others.

At The SGC we embrace the radical, political meaning of queer and practice radical acceptance—we invite you to come as you are and to discover that you are so much more than you’ve been allowed to be. We invite you to start healing your wounds so that we might also heal the systems and structures that cause these wounds. Transformative healing happens form the inside out and the outside in. When we move our minds/bodies together, we are stronger—we are a collective of power and potential!

Queer is a reclaimed word. It is an umbrella term and denotes a spectrum of identities and sexualities that have been marginalized and demonized. I like this term because it is inclusive, political, and ambiguous; and the word also means unusual, not normal, odd, eccentric, and unconventional. To queer something, as Jacoby Ballard describes, is to “critique, challenge, and transform toward something more radical—that is deeply rooted in truth, love, and justice.” In this way, The Spiral Goddess Collective is a queer enterprise. And there are many ways to be queer.

Despite my professional life as a professor and fitness instructor—both things that appear to be the realms of the extrovert—I am a shy, introverted, home body who likes to spend time by myself—usually with a book and preferably with a cat or two or three. I’m not the type to yell from rooftops or wave a flag in a parade regardless of how passionate I am. When Hannah Gadbsy asks where the introverted queers are in her brilliant stand-up special, Nanette, I whisper “right here” and feel seen.

When I filled out the forms to propose Bangor Pride Events—a Queer Yoga/Yoga Outside the Box event on June 17, First Friday Free Dance on June 2, and a table among the vendors at the Pride celebration on June 24, I was reminded about how much anxiety can come from inclusion and visibility. I’m sure I am not the only introvert who feels this anxiety when they are asked to expose semi-private parts of themselves toward a bigger cause. And yet, brave acts by marginalized people have created social change and continue to transform our world. I would like to be so brave, but my role is to support and facilitate. And I am far more comfortable behind the scenes.

I have offered several events at Bangor Pride in the past through my role as a professor at UMA-Bangor. But now I offer these events through The Spiral Goddess Collective, a Center for Mind/Body Movement. Part of my desire to participate in Bangor Pride is to bring more visibility to the space and our offerings. We are a space where members of the LGBTQIA+ community can come for dance and yoga and healing modalities that are inclusive, trauma-informed, and social justice-oriented.

And The SGC is a space where we want everyone to feel welcome. We are not simply a yoga studio; we are a center for mind/body movement. What we offer at SGC is not an ordinary approach to "fitness," dance, or yoga—it is something deeper and it is difficult to get people to come try something new, especially something that requires vulnerability and self-reflection. As Jacoby Ballard argues, queer and trans people don’t often have “the opportunity to be in their bodies as their whole selves” and a queer approach to yoga (and JourneyDance!) “creates expansion and spaciousness.” The Queer Yoga/Yoga Outside the Box event on June 17 is partially inspired by Jacoby Ballard’s book A Queer Dharma: Yoga and Meditations for Liberation.
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We all deserve to be in our bodies as our whole selves and this is one of the goals of SGC. Our work is inspired by a desire to make a difference in our community. We offer scholarships and encourage people to pay what they can. We offer a space where people can come together toward embodied wholeness—movement that isn’t about meeting the demands of dominant culture, but meeting ourselves where we are.

Yesterday I realized that Monday is our 6 month anniversary at The Spiral Goddess Collective, a Center for Mind/Body Movement! In celebration, everyone who attends a class this week gets a free SGC sticker (1 per person) and gets their name entered into a raffle for a grand prize for each class. This includes all of our classes from today, Sunday, April 2 through Saturday, April 8, including First Friday’s Get Embodied! event: Dance Yourself Free!
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As we look back over the past 6 months, I offer a quick look at what we have been doing, some feedback we have gotten, and some frequently asked questions. We’re always happy to get questions, comments, and ideas as we continue to expand and hone our offerings. And I am so grateful for all of the support and excitement that we have shared and will continue to build upon!

Here’s some of what we have offered in these last six months:
249 classes and workshops
8 Spiral Punch Cards via The Spiral Goddess Collective Card Fund Scholarship
3 additional scholarships for Spiral Series workshops
40 comps for first-time visits

Here is some of the repeated feedback I have received in the 6 months since The Spiral Goddess Collective opened its doors.
What a beautiful space!
I agree! It was beautiful before we decorated and filled the space with feminist art, a Girls on Fire lending library and Mind/Body resource center, plants (and more plants), oracle and tarot decks, a comfy hang out area, a family heirloom tea set, chaga tea and snacks, lights, color, and positive energy!

Your website is a little bit overwhelming.
Yeah. I don’t really do anything half-way. I plan to simplify a little bit and make some of the more pertinent information easier to find, but I have a lot to say and the website reflects that! If you’re confused, just ask! (Many of you have asked! Thank you!)

One of the songs and mantras that we dance to in JourneyDance is “You Are Enough,” but I struggle more with the feeling of “you are too much,” compounded with the feeling of not enough. I am an over-thinker, an over-explainer, and I’ve been told that I am “scary” and intimidating. Sorry, not sorry. But also, I’m working on it!
Thank you for being you!

Wow, what a compliment! I mean, I’m not trying to be anyone else, so it’s good to be seen and appreciated!

Thank you for creating this space in our community.
My pleasure! Creating this space is a dream come true and being able to share it with other curators and with the community is the best part!

Here are some Frequently asked Questions:
Can men attend classes at The Spiral Goddess?
Of course! Men do attend classes at The SGC! In the world of group fitness, yoga, and fitness dance, every space that I have been in has been dominated by women (the opposite is true of weight rooms). Our culture is segregated and full of stereotypes that keep people boxed in. People gravitate to where they are most comfortable and we want everyone to be comfortable at The SGC. Your gender identity is not what defines you in our space. But one of the things that is different about The SGC is that we aim to create an environment where feminine qualities and feminine energy are valued and celebrated: connection, empathy, compassion, community, letting go of competition, nurturing, flowing, caring, feeling, understanding, and supporting each other. We all have feminine qualities regardless of our gender and if these qualities were the most valued in our world, it would be a much better place.

How much does it cost to take classes at The SGC?
Yeah, so here’s that tendency toward “too much” and what might seem like an overwhelming amount of options. We aim to meet each person where they are. So, the short answer is $10 a class. But, we have sliding scale prices and people who can afford to pay more do so. And we have punch cards that reduce the per-class price. And we have memberships that help to support our mission and vision and to fund The Spiral Goddess Collective Care Fund, a scholarship that provides the opportunity to attend classes at no cost to community members who cannot afford to pay for self-care and healing modalities. So, if you are unsure what to pay, please just ask!

Why can’t I get the App to work?
I don’t know! There are many great aspects of the Mindbody App, but there are a lot of little issues that I don’t have the time or skill to fix. We’ll keep working with it for at least another 6 months! You don’t have to use the App—just email, message, call, or drop in and we will work it out!

The Salt Eaters, a 1980 novel by Toni Cade Bambara, opens with a healer, Minnie Ransom, saying to her patient, Velma Henry: “‘are you sure, sweetheart, that you want to be well?’” Velma, an activist, mother, and wife, has attempted suicide and she is having trouble holding onto herself, let alone the stool she is perched upon. Later, Minnie continues, “‘cause wholeness is no trifling matter. A lot of weight when you’re well.’” Staying well is a challenge even in the best of times and circumstance. Being well requires work, patience, self-compassion, and resources. The struggle is real. As Susan Raffo argues, “healing is dangerous work. Healing is about going into the struggle.”
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The struggle to be well is neither a straight line nor a quick fix; in fact, as Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, argues in her book, Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice: “the idea that survivorhood is a thing to ‘fix’ or ‘cure,’ to get over, and that the cure is not only possible and easy but the only desirable option, is as common as breath.” We want to believe in cures because this is an idea that our culture feeds us, and our healthcare system supports the idea that a pill or a procedure can cure whatever ills us. In Who Is Wellness For? Fariha Roísín argues that “In the worlds of health and wellness, there’s an inconsistent belief that if you try hard enough at something, eventually you will see results.” Just lose a little bit of weight. Just eat organic whole foods. Just exercise three times a week. Just take this prescription. This isn’t bad advice, and wouldn’t it be nice if being well was just this easy? But what if, as Susan Raffo argues, being healed or cured is not what we should be seeking, but instead, what if “struggling better is the goal”?

Many of us avoid struggle as often as we can. If we are struggling, our culture tells us, then there is something wrong with us. But the idea that we can avoid struggle, just like the idea that we can find a cure or heal completely from our trauma, is a myth. As Piepzna-Samarasinha reminds us, the idea that we can be fixed or cured is “a concept that has deep roots in ableist ideas that when there’s something wrong, there’s either cured or broken and nothing in between.” But there are a lot of spaces and possibilities between broken and healed—in these spaces there is room to move, to shift, to transform. As Roísín writes, “Healing is an everyday practice that requires personal resolve and diligence [and] relies on reworking, reweaving, and reimagining what it looks like to feel safe and at ease with oneself.” We have to think differently, but we can’t just think our way out of trauma. We have to engage our bodies as well as our minds. In fact, when we engage the body/mind, the results are far more powerful.

We pursue all kinds of ways of finding ease, often deferring, deflecting, dismissing, detouring, avoiding, ignoring, replacing. Sometimes these coping strategies are just what we have to do to get through our day, our week, our life, and that’s okay. It is hard work to venture toward wellness and the path is circuitous and often hazardous. As Melissa Febos writes in her book, Girlhood, “It is slow, and there is no shortcut. . . It is sometimes painful and often tedious. . . . it requires consistent tending. We must choose it over and over.” And we cannot choose heling or wellness all alone: “A lasting, conscientious change in the self is similar to one in society.” We need to do the inner work and the outer connection. This is where JourneyDance comes in.

In JourneyDance, we move our bodies in ways that help us heal emotional wounds. We loosen up trauma that has become wedded to our bones and tissues, embedded in our mind/body/spirit matrix. More than one participant has told me that JourneyDance has helped them make deeper and quicker progress toward healing than they were able to find in talk therapy and other attempts at healing that do not address the mind/body connection. This, too, is my experience with JourneyDance. We often say: “you have to feel it to heal it,” and the mind often wants to control the process and intellectualize it. But when we dance, we can’t help but feel what we feel and what we find sometimes surprises us.

Melissa Febos writes a lot about the body and about her journey to overcome addiction and to work toward wholeness. She writes, “When I think about healing in the abstract, I imagine a closing-up, or a lifting-up. In my fantasies, healing comes like a plane to pull me out of the water. Real healing is the opposite of that. It is an opening, a dropping down into the lost parts of yourself to reclaim them.” We can’t rely on external factors to drag us out of our mire; in JourneyDance, we drop into the deepest parts of ourselves and claw our way back into the world to struggle another day. And another day. And another. And we become more powerful and more empowered.

Before I found this healing modality, my introvert tendencies convinced me that I could work toward healing and wellness mostly by myself. Reaching out to other people was (and is) a huge part of my process, but reverting back into my shell often feels like the easy way out. JourneyDance provides a sacred space where we can be alone and together; we can work on our own stuff, but we can also hold the space for other people. I created The Spiral Goddess, a Center for Mind/Body Movement, to be more than just a space to do yoga and dance and move our bodies in the pursuit of health and wellness. It is a space for healing and processes that take a commitment to our own mind/body/spirit as well as to that of the collective. When we change ourselves, we change the world. This cannot be overstated.

As Minnie reminds us in The Salt Eaters, “‘got to give it all up, the pain, the hurt, the anger and make room for lovely things to rush in and fill you full’” (16). There’s nothing wrong if we “‘want to stomp around a little more in the mud puddle . . . like a little kid . . .Nothing wrong with that’” (16). We’re all just stomping around in the mud, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But when we can harness our play toward healing, rather than toward distraction or avoidance, the possibilities abound. JourneyDance lets us play, experiment, explore, push and pull, open and close, mimic and create. Each time we return to this practice, we find new things about ourselves and new possibilities for our lives. We don’t have to ask, or be asked, if we want to be well because we are already moving toward—not a destination, but a weigh station—and our hearts, minds, bodies, and spirit are carving a journey where we can enjoy what we find along the way.