Screen Doors: Knees & Elbows

August 18, 2021 Susan McCulley

In front of The House in the Woods with the Red Front Door: my grandfather, uncle, sister and father after winning the neighborhood regatta (September 1973). Still looking for a photo that has the screen door in it!

Most of my girlhood summers were spent at my Nana and Grampa’s cottage near Buzzard’s Bay in Massachusetts. Built in the early 1950s shortly after Grampa came home from the war, it was their simple, summer escape. The cottage was an uninsulated, cedar-shingled place for my grandmother to sunbathe and drink Fresca and my grandfather to sail his boat, Sabrina.

In our family, the cottage was never called “the cottage.” It was always called “The House in the Woods with the Red Front Door.”

Not only was the front door red, but the screen door, too. The big wooden red door was almost always propped open with a big rock from the beach. The red screen door was the door we actually used. It was much more screen than door, attached to the jamb with loose-ish hinges and a big spring.

That screen door was the flow of the house. Grownups and children and dogs were in and out all day. Even when it was closed, it was where the inside spilled out and the outside spilled in. Smells of pine trees and salt air, coffee and ripe peaches, sounds of sea gulls and blue jays, laughter and barking, rays of sun, sprinkles of sand, pinecones and puddles of rain flowed in and out.

Knees and elbows are much like that old, red screen door.

Water Over Stones: Wrists & Ankles

August 10, 2021 Susan McCulley

As we investigate the Essential Nutrients of Movement, we’ll take a close look at the joints since this is where conscious movement happens. As we age, we tend to narrow and limit how and how much we use the joints. I like to explore the “Sister Joints” of thumbs & great toes, fingers & toes, hands & feet, wrists & ankles, knees & elbows, shoulders & hips, spine & eyes (yes, yes, the eyes aren’t really a joint but humor me). Nourishing our bodies with movement invites a connection with all of our moving parts.

SISTER JOINTS: WRISTS & ANKLES

The wrists and ankles are four oft-neglected and often-vulnerable joints. They offer a wide range to play with in terms of strength, flexibility, mobility, agility and stability. The very nature and placement of these joints at the extremity of the body lend themselves to expressiveness and movement variety.

I think of movement in the wrists and ankles like water moving over stones. Like a pebble beach, the stones receive the energy of the waves, whether strong or gentle, and move and roll with the water.

Enough Enough Enough

July 28, 2021 Susan McCulley

Enough.

I love this word. And I love how it impacts my practice and my life.

I am enough.

There is enough.

Enough is enough.

While I was away in July, I had all of these ENOUGH moments and they shifted my experience every time. My ENOUGH trip, reminds me of this post I wrote in February 2020, just before the world tilted on its axis.

I am enough.
Americans pride themselves on “never enough.” I had a teacher in elementary school who drilled it into us: Good. Better. Best. Never let it rest. ‘Til the good is better and the better best. The cultural norm is constant growth and improvement and relentless striving for more, faster, better. I’m all for challenging our habits and making positive choices but I prefer to do that from a place of “I am enough” right now.

Flip Turns, Camping Trips & Other Transitions

June 23, 2021 Susan McCulley

In a few days, my partner and I will load up our big red truck, hook up our little camper and head to Minnesota to celebrate my mother-in-law’s 90th birthday. In the past year and a half we have cancelled three trips (March 2020 because lockdown everywhere, July 2020 because surely we wouldn’t be in lockdown for more than a month, maybe two, and September 2020 because a huge storm washed out the beach), so we are super excited and pretty rusty on how to do all the prep and packing.

Which brings me to my blog series for this month: transitions! As we all stand in the interim time of this personal/communal/global transition, how do we navigate it with skill? This weeks’ post draws on the wisdom of my (then) 14-year-old niece Olivia and the connections between flip turns, travel and transition.

MAY 31, 2015

In 2013, we bought a camper. If you had told me in 2012 that we would buy a camper, I would have smiled politely while internally rolling my eyes at the silly person talking nonsense. But we did. We bought one called Le Que and now, contrary to all my expectations, I love it. Honestly, it’s like having a play house that we pull around with us to beautiful places where we go hiking and biking and it is more fun than I ever could have imagined.

Anyway. We love our camper and we love planning trips and we love going to parks (Virginia has some incredibly wonderful state and national parks, y’all). But the transition, from being home to going out in Le Que? That is almost always a bumpy ride.

The planning goes fine and the packing is always fine and even loading up the camper is perfectly fine, but when it comes to the moment when we shove off out of our driveway, something almost always happens. I either forget to put the tailgate up or I forget to get the yellow wedge things from behind the tires or I leave the truck door open when I get the yellow things nearly asphyxiating Frank with diesel fumes. Whatever it is, we have a rough patch as we move from doing one thing (being home) to doing another (going out in the camper).

After a few times it dawns on me that I am bamfoozled by transition in a lot of situations. It is often difficult for me to switch from doing one thing to doing another thing. The places between movements and songs in my teaching are devilishly tricky. Moving from one pose to another in yoga wobbles me something fierce. Shifting from working alone in my office to being with other people feels clunky and stiff. Transitions, it appears, are awkward for me.

In the summer of 2015, Frank and I went through a big and multi-staged transition out of one house, into a handful of temporary situations (for us, our belongings and our cat), and then into another, smaller house. These months of moving around loomed in front of me like a long exit down a four-month bumpy driveway with Le Que towed behind us.

Given all this thought about transition, I did what anyone would do: I talked to my then 14-year-old niece (she’s 20 now) about flip turns. My niece, Olivia, is a competitive swimmer and has been for most of her life. She’s a speedy thing in the water, I’ll tell you what, and she goes careening down her lane and then – shazzam! – she flips around and is zooming in the complete opposite direction just as smooth as you please. I figured if anyone could tell me a thing or two about transitioning from one thing to another, it was Olivia.

So here is a very official Focus Pocus Interview between Olivia and me (with annotations by Auntie):

ME: What makes an excellent flip turn?

OLIVIA: An excellent flip turn has three parts: the approach, the wall, and the push. The approach must be faster than ever, and the flip to the wall must be precise and fast. The push should be like a squat off the wall.

The first thing that strikes me about this is the one-step-at-a-time of a flip turn. I find that when I’m approaching a transition, it all feels like a swirly mess. But if I break down what’s happening to, say: the sorting, the packing, the storage, it feels less confusing and disorienting and more like I’m just doing what’s in front of me.

The second thing I notice is the boldness of a flip turn. In order to make it work, you’ve got to swim into it “faster than ever.” A tentative approach leads to a lack-luster turn. Once the decision has been made, approach with confidence.

ME: Sometimes you’re not just changing directions, but changing strokes, too, like when you’re swimming an IM [individual medley]. How is the turn different in an IM?

OLIVIA: In IM you do what is called an open turn, and you touch the wall with both or one hand depending on the stroke, and take a breath when you touch. Then you push off into the next stroke.

This transition thing is a complicated business and here I notice that in the midst of the one-step-at-a-time, Olivia mentions when to take a breath. So how do I do that when I’m changing from one thing to another? When do I take a second to nourish myself and get the energy I need to do what needs doing? Seems best to think ahead about when to breathe.

ME: It seems like flip turns would be scary. When you were learning them, were you ever scared at all?

OLIVIA: For me, no, but one thing is that no matter the depth of the pool, you can do the turn. You won’t hit your back on the bottom.

She’s a brave thing, my Olivia Jane. Unlike her, I feel all kinds of anxiety when I’m making a change. But I love the confidence of this: “no matter the depth, you can do the turn.”

To recap Olivia’s flip turn wisdom:
– take it one step at a time
– move into a transition with confidence
– know when you’ll take a breath
– and it’s okay. You can do this.

Wise counsel that I am grateful for in these wildly transitional days. Swim on, friends.

Transitionitis (or Vacation Packing Anxious Pants)

June 16, 2021 Susan McCulley

We continue our exploration of transition and how we might approach the massive personal, community and global transition that we all face in these days. Today’s post I wrote in 2016 before a two week trip to the Great Smoky Mountains. I had all the ruffled feathers before we left and I’m now exploring how I might smooth out those ruffles 5 years later.

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SISTER JOINTS: WRISTS & ANKLES