Quarantine food diaries day 1, Salmon Poke Bowl

So, here I am...at home with one of the only things that comes to me naturally...cooking. It is the one thing that calms me without fail and I would say that that is necessary for me and countless others right now. To some of you who know me better than others you know I never use recipes and I can walk into just about any kitchen and make myself perfectly at home. I’ll ransack your pantry, finding the ingredients you bought for the recipes you made once, like the adventurous day you made hummus,the tahini still 3/4 full, when you realized it was easier just to buy it, and for the most part also cheaper. Or the miso paste, for an attempt at homemade miso soup that now sits sadly at the back of your refrigerator in the no man’s land of condiments and possibly leftovers that should have been tossed weeks ago.
And then like a little kitchen fairy, an apron as my wings I’ll flutter my way through your ingredients on hand and between a sip of wine or two, be lovingly working to nourish us all. Many of you have asked me for recipes and I have thought about how to stay calm and enjoy those that are quarantined with me until this subsides, and well, that means me in the kitchen.
Over the years I have had the opportunity to cook in restaurant kitchens, private supper clubs and catered events and have even had my endurance tested on a yoga retreat of 65 hungry vegetarian yogis eating 4 times a day for two weeks straight. I’ve held workshops and had countless conversations on adaptogens, nootropics, and conscious cooking, the power of the alkaline diet, high vibrational foods and what it means to eat with your eyes.
Some 13 years ago I was diagnosed with a bizarre auto immune disease, which after battling using western medicine for two years to no avail, I turned to a naturopath who changed my world forever through diet. I left his unassuming home office with a list of things I could no longer eat. I had been cooking in our family restaurant, had been cooking for years before on my own in a very traditional Italian way. My father being from Italy insisted each time I would go to visit him that I learn the ways of pasta making, gnocchi, a base sauce and how all red sauces came from this most basic tomato sauce start. I spent hours perfecting the lightest fluffiest gnocchi, the perfect ragù di carne ( meat sauce), delicately stuffed fried eggplant, deep fried stuffed zucchini flowers ( fiori di zucca), the perfect Genovese pesto, and then in one fell swoop all that was gone for me.
Flour, particularly the gmo flour we have in the U.S. was out, as was red meat and all night shades, yup, eggplant and worst of all, sugar. Sugar like in sweets and in wine, I was seriously devastated.
I had to start all over. I was not interested in the idea of fake pasta. I will admit that gluten free pasta has come a long way since my diagnosis and I have found some pretty good substitutes.
I lost so much at once that I overdosed on milk products and eventually became lactose intolerant on top of it all. I found my palette searched for new ethnicities to explore, my
own now having become for me, toxic.
My daughter Sonia was almost 4, Simona just a baby still, and Sebastiano in kindergarten. I mention this because it was during this time that I would go out for lunch often and Sonia was my sidekick, to this day, now 16, her palette is outstanding and she can balance flavors with ease which I totally attribute to our “eating around the world days” as I used to call them.
I was looking for a culinary home. I wanted to be excited about being in the kitchen and I needed inspiration. Ultimately I gravitate towards Japanese, they are supremely alkaline, almost completely dairy free and use very little flour in their savory foods. But Sonia and all my kids would tell you I never stick with one country exclusively, so many flavors and textures to explore.
The key to a great meal is the balance of salt, fat, acid and heat, once you understand that you are on your way to opening your repertoire of cooking to much more than a single cuisine.
I think if you asked me what my go to meal was I would have to admit that it is my own version of a poke’ bowl. I say my own version because it is neither Hawaiian nor Japanese but it looks the part, so day 1 is my poke’ bowl recipe for you.

Miso Glazed Salmon Poke Bowl

Feeds 4-5

Disclaimer here:

A thing about salmon, and all my other ingredients in general. We live in a world where toxicity and pollution infiltrate our food sources on multiple levels. The deciphering of all of the labeling to express the care that businesses are taking can be daunting, so a few little hints here. I often prefer Whole Food’s Atlantic salmon to their wild caught anything, Sock Eye, King etc for two reasons; one as with grass fed meats, that are super lean, so to is the Sock Eye and King Salmon, and I need a little fat to keep things juicy! Also, wild caught means just that, not entirely sure what this fish has been eating where Whole Foods stamps my Atlantic salmon with a certified non gmo, non Monsanto farm raised diet. It’s up to you and ultimately looking with your eyes first when deciding is paramount. Just assume everything else I buy that is fresh is organic if possible, my sensitivities to pesticides are wild. When I use bottled, canned or packaged items, if I can’t find an organic equivalent I scrutinize the ingredient list for bat shit craziness like msg that is still used, unbelievably, and dyes like reds and blues.

One last thing, my suggestions for veggies and fruit that atop this bowl in a rainbow of color really depend on what is fresh and seasonal and available organically. So please especially now, don’t buy something that looks like it should’ve been tossed but hasn’t. Nothing worse than a too ripe or not ripe enough avocado. This is my end of winter version of this bowl, you’ll notice the seasonal beets, radishes, Brussels. These are all root veggies and in Ayurvedic eating, root veggies help us to feel grounded, safe and secure.

Ingredients:

1 lb salmon

1 -2 avocados

3 beets

4 radishes

Bunch Brussels sprouts

1 cup Nishiki short grain rice

1 cup white quinoa

Pea tendrils or sprouts to garnish

I begin in the morning with my beets, make more than three, you can use them in an appetizer later in the week, I’ll send the recipe! Set the oven to 275 F and cut off just the greens leaving skins on wrap them individually in foil, place them in a baking dish and forget about them for two hours, three if they are on the bigger side. They should be tender to cut through when they are ready. Let them cool and literally rub off or peel off the skin, maybe wear gloves, we all should have them by now, and you’ll save your hands from being fuchsia!

Furikake seasoning :

So this garnish is not totally necessary, you may never use the bonito flakes again so they can be omitted, but the texture, the flavor this adds is noteable, and it can be stored for up to a month !

1/4 cup Sesame Seeds

2 tbsp Organic black Sesame Seeds

2 tbsp bonito flakes

3 sheets unseasoned nori, (dried seaweed)

2 tsp Sicilian Sea Salt

Toast the sesame seeds in a dry pan, moving them around constantly careful not to burn they will smell and taste bitter if you do!

Put cooled seeds and all else in a food processor and give a few quick bursts. You are making a white and black sprinkle, don’t over blend!

Miso glaze :

1 tbsp white miso paste

2 tsp freshly grated garlic

2 tsp freshly grated ginger

2tbsp Mirin

1 tbsp barbecue sauce

2 tsp sesame oil

Mix all ingredients together, place your salmon skin side down on a sesame oiled cookie sheet, coat the length of the fish abundantly and let sit while you prepare your other ingredients. The fish depending on thickness, if it is as thick as the height of the tip of your finger to the first knuckle than it will be no more than 10 minutes under the broiler at the second to highest oven rack level.

Prep the rice!

Soak rice in cold water for 10 minutes and rinse quinoa to remove bitterness.

I combine the two it makes for a really great nutty texture but you can opt for just one or the other, remember we are trying to use what is in your pantry! That means maybe you are using a totally different grain like wild rice or couscous.

Put rice on to boil : 3 1/4 cups water and rice together, when it reaches a boil add the quinoa salt and let boil for 3 minutes, then cover and reduce heat to low for another 7-8 min. Remove from heat add in 1-2 tbsp mirin and let sit covered. You can also sprinkle in and mix around the homemade Furikake here !

Slice your Brussels thinly lay them not overlapping much, onto a cookie sheet tossed generously with olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic powder. Make sure your salmon and Brussels can fit side by side under your broiler at the same time. Sometimes I divide the use of the same cookie sheet, it works!

So timing ...now your beets should be sliced, your radishes and avocado as well, furikake is made, rice should just be reduced and covered with 7-8 min to go and it’s time to put your salmon and Brussels under the broiler!

Watch them carefully, you will need to move the Brussels around, they char a little but really browning and crispy is what you’re going for.

Remove the cookie sheet and the rice should now have been sitting for a few minutes covered off the heat, let the salmon stand.

Compose your bowls, make them a rainbow of experience!

Layer the quinoa and rice first, and let your family choose their own arrangements it’s fun! Presentation, presentation, presentation! Eat with your eyes first!!

I AM • WE ARE

 “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes”

Who are you? Are you your name? Are you the color of your hair or the clothes you wear? Are you the voice in your head when it tells you you are not enough, when it tells you you are amazing? Are these things who you are?Then if you marry and change your name is that now you? Did you change who you were? If you grow out of your clothes and change your style and your hair grows grey or you  dye it purple are you a different person then? What if none of those things were you. What if I told you these things, your name, your hair, your body, your thoughts, your sense of self were not you.  What if you could understand them as various lampshades covering a lightbulb, and the light was you. That these lampshades we call ourselves are not who we really are at our true essence; they influence us, mask us, change us, mold our actions and thoughts. 

What we are talking about is our soul, spirit, true self, atman, purusha and it is the pure white of the color spectrum. The beginning essence of us to which all the colors of the rainbow are added to color what we look like, sound like, feel like and think like. 

Easy right? No, not at all. How do we reach the innermost core of who we are? How do we see past the many layers of color, or lampshades covering the bulb? We cannot simply intellectualize ourselves there, though this is classically the way one tries to evolve by understanding. But understanding alone is not enough to reach our true self. Though one may truly understand this concept,  the reality is we all probably need to work through some very difficult personal patterns of thought that create specific behaviors and decision making. These are called samskara.

I see these thought patterns or samskara as the tornado surrounding the eye of the storm. The eye is calm and clear, unmoved, undisturbed. Imagine you are the eye of the storm, that the you that is infinite, in perfect stillness, and the thought patterns are the tornado that is on all sides. Life is the tornado around you, mostly unknown, chaotic and moving at such great speed, understanding seems impossible. This is why the human experience holds so much suffering and beauty, for every thing light there is dark, for everything beautiful there is also an ugly side making nothing that is light without dark. These are not new discoveries. 

At the center of this tornado is where residing feels like home, the home of the true self.  Getting there is like walking through the tornado with the utmost in focus.

Meditation is said to be the way to the self, and this is true but to meditate is not something everybody is ready to do. I know you’re thinking you have meditated for 3 minutes, or even 3 hours but true mediation that leads to the knowing of the self requires repetition, discipline, physical stamina, an open mind and a mastery of the breath. How many of you dropped off the list of “I meditate” now? 

Let’s see if I lose a few more of you now; what does it mean to have an open mind? It means loosing oneself from the grips of samskaras, thought patterns. So I believe you if you tell me that you can sit for hours, that you can control the pace of your breath, that you do this daily. Here is what I don’t believe. I don’t believe that you have examined the way that you think about things and why that is. I don’t believe you have broken down thought processes in your psyche and changed or broken these patterns to allow for your true unsheathed self to shine through your various psychological reference points that tether your thinking to beliefs that are not yours. This is the discipline that is most difficult. The body trained, the first lampshade lifted. The breath mastered, the second lampshade lifted.  The emotions and thought processes, so here is where we become stuck.  Intellectual thought and study can begin to unravel some of this. But more is needed. 

 “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes”.

Proust was right in this very simple but accurate statement I use as mantra.  And the way in which to do this over an over again is to pull oneself to the present moment. The present moment is the eye of the storm.  When the mind wanders creating connections that are interpreted in the present moment into feelings or actions, then the mind isn't actually present. If while you are arguing with a friend your mind takes you to a filing cabinet that pulls several files out on self worth and emotionally runs through each time you have felt less then. You are not giving full presence to the argument in the moment without it being affected by all of your past experiences. Equally you are probably imagining how you will not be treated this way  in the  future either and you bring  that back to your thoughts and feelings about the present argument. Then your brain pulls more files from the books you’ve read, your political and social views, what your family has said about arguments like this, and maybe for good measure you are also recalling previous arguments with the same friend. All of this is happening in your head, probably in their head too and what is happening is that neither of you are in presence. Instead you are both in the tornado of thought. 

Our beliefs and systems of thought are the slipperiest part of how we identify the self, they are like trying to cut through
 oily residue with nothing but water. 

So let’s try that argument again. What if in the moment you begin to have discord each of you takes a breath, or two or three. What if you notice your surroundings, your bodies, your eyes. What happens then? The tornado of thought also slows. What if then you became so present to that moment that you could actually feel the suffering of your friend and before your brain went into the hyper-driven card catalog search of defense mechanisms you held compassion for their suffering? And what if they were doing the same exact thing? Don’t get me wrong, this is no easy feat. But it is the ultimate goal to being in harmony with ones true nature, ones true self and it has to be practiced with the utmost awareness, discernment, and discipline. As we walk into awareness, we can recognize that we are all in different places without it triggering a reactive defensive response. Harmony like this is the utopia of consciousness. But we can agree that it is one that it  is well worth our disciplined effort, right?

So how? Where is our guidebook to presence? Without giving extensive commentary to enlightened philosophers, bodhisattvas, yogis, prophets, theological texts, and the like,  the truth of it is, this 21st century would not be where it is, talking about PRESENCE without them. So as not to intellectualize this very visceral moment, just start with NOTICING. To notice you must stop thinking, to stop thinking you must notice first that you are in your head of thoughts. So slow it all down to right now, this breath, this inhale, this exhale. Close your eyes, see the thoughts in your head as images from a movie and to each thought ask if it is you, if it came from you, if it serves the you that is infinite, the you that is one with all. Watch this thought leave and once again turn your focus back to your breath, inhale, exhale. Make a constant practice of this. It is not easy, it is a discipline and you will lose it and have to find it again all the time. But this is the answer. There are an infinite number of tools to use in your toolbox to the self, ones that tweak and wrench and beguile you into presence over and over again and not all of these tools are right for everyone to work out the path, but everyone is going in the same direction so find the tools that work and use them.

Repetition, words, breath, movement, song, energy healing, mantra, poetry, dance, yoga, meditation, drawing, painting, making, running, the tools are limitless, use what works to shake or still your mind to open. Create the new eyes that can transform the same landscape you have in front of you and you will see more and more glimpses of your true self, the infinite you. 

Join me for a workshop working with the koshas, reiki healing and this therapeutic drawing in Paris next month!! Find ticketing information below:

KOSHAS • CHARCOAL • REIKI WORKSHOP GET TICKETS

Read :

I Am That

The Untethered Soul: Journey beyond the self

The Truth of Suffering and the Path of Liberation

The Empath's Survival Guide

The Miracle of Mindfulness


Listen:

Spotify I Am

Gratitude vs the rest of it all

What do you choose to do with the seeds in you that are not serving a space of gratitude? Are you watering and nurturing seeds of: blame, anger, sadness, envy, loneliness, self pity, bitterness, avoidance, ego, ignorance and all those damaging things that go on and on and on? Why? Why water and nourish these thoughts and feelings and unhealthy behavior patterns if they are not serving you? We are creatures of habitual behavior, that is why. We are set a lot of the time to default or auto pilot. Learned behaviors from family, society, influence of friends, desire to speak our truth and insecurity, all these repetitive patterns are enacted with a sort of waking mindlessness. We think we are aware of our actions and thoughts, often times we can be, but when it matters most, when we are not having a good moment, then our destructive patterns return and we return to our auto pilot, mindless self talk, mindless whining, nurturing the weeds of our consciousness allowing the flowers of gratitude to be choked out.
Recently, I attended a Kundalini workshop, I am forever wanting to open and learn about this practice of yoga in all its forms and while Kundalini may not take a primary role in my practice, accessing and purifying the chakras in this way is one way to find balance.  At one point we were asked to hold anger and move from this space, breathe from this space. I realized that after this daily discipline of gratitude I was finding this incredibly challenging. I release anger. I have been releasing anger as a discipline daily. So when we were asked to use it as a motivator, as a focus I struggled, but it was just that that inspired this post.
What am I grateful for? I make a mental or even at times a physical list each day. If I am in gratitude I cannot be in anger, blame, etc these states of mind cannot  co exist. Being aware of where your thoughts are drifting, maybe allowing yourself an indulgent whine or lament for a moment but quickly finding the awareness to come back to your state of grace.. acceptance. Acceptance allows for the space needed to cultivate gratitude.
Many a classic quote is conjured up for me, across all philosophies it rings true:

“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only  

creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”
-Lao Tzu

“The moment that judgment stops through acceptance of what it is, you are free of the mind. You have made room for love, for joy, for peace.”
-Eckhart Tolle

“Non-judgment quiets the internal dialogue, and this opens once again the doorway to creativity.”
-Deepak Chopra

Make a mindful commitment to challenge your own beliefs, to deeply look within at the ways in which you speak, think, act and if they are serving you, if you are in the flow state of acceptance, able to experience gratitude. 

If not, one moment at a time, question and ask why?

Nurture seeds of : gratitude, self reliance, strength, hope, wisdom, patience, mindfulness

What we are listening to:
Sat Nam ( I AM ) playlist

Present moment, nourish the body, bend the mind

It's been 5 months I may finally be adjusting to my new home, transitions are a hard place for many of us and moving rocks your very roots, this makes three moves in 6 years.  I have been given a gift that I had not anticipated and my constant practice of staying present has opened my eyes to it, the seasons.  The clock turned back I wake up now with the rising sun and an 8th grade daughter, a flurry in the kitchen and she's off to school. I have taken this golden time to bundle up, I live across from a natural preserve, latch a leash on my dog and set out to learn from mother nature. The seasons in a forest have had such an impact on me, daily walks in the early morning have been such a gift.  Just a few short weeks ago the trees were lush and full, a canopy of green I would walk through bathing in the forest light of early sun, soft warm amber pine needles just beginning to cover the forest floor, loamy sand, it was vibrant bursting with fruits and berries, juicy with scents undertones of sea and wheatgrass. Dew covered the grass and on the occasional morning as it approached cooler nights I would catch the mist burning off the expanses of the golfing greens nearby. I would think how amazing each step was, from the floor of the forest to the skies and how nothing stayed the same, it was a constant cycle of birth, death and rebirth from the microcosm to the macrocosm. Each organism has it's purpose in this cycle of impermanence.

I am aware of my attachments and think about how to cut them loose to allow for new life.




As days pass the leaves turned into a blaze of color painting the sky like licks of flames against a sunrise of warm ambers and apricot echoing the color of the now more dense cover of pine needles on the forest floor. I am surrounded by warm tones as the winds pick up and rains soften the sandy ground beneath me.
Hastened closer to the house while the rains take down more leaves and soak the forest when I return the path has become filled with scents of decay and fertility, heavy, wet and pungent. The trees now stripped almost bare extend skyward from the potpurri of decay at their roots like arthritic fingers. And I know mushrooms will abound. Deer cross my path, dreamlike there are 6 or 7 and they are walking majestically not more than 5 feet from where I stand. 

Everything is interdependent, a beautiful balance, an orchestra of unfolding.

We try to compartmentalize in our daily lives, job and activity over here, and family over there, things to do and places to be, ideas of on time, or late. I'm not there yet. I don't have a poetic perfectly articulated philosophy to share other than, watch nature, observe, witness.
Quietly exist in your breath with no demands or criticisms of yourself. This is the beginning. Notice what is around you and how nothing is bad or good, right or wrong it is just what it is. Lose thoughts of want and don't want, this constant push and pull of desires and disdains is what Buddhists say is the root of suffering.  Breathe in and breathe out. Pay attention to the quality of everything, your breath, your posture, your diet, your words because all things are interdependent and all is written, or at least this is where I am in thoughts these days.

"It is not what you do, but how you do, not who you are but how you are"

I say this practice is a daily one because it is a discipline to work against beliefs that have been ingrained by family, society, advertising and the melange of external forces unable to see the simplicity our existence has and how it is complicated by ego, fear, attachments and avoidances.
I would say these concepts are more mainstream now and not as foreign but pay attention to how your practices of meditation or mindfulness manifest, are they sincere? One need not attend a yoga class to find the opportunities to practice mindfulness or even meditation. This is where I am, a walk in the woods, seeding a pomegranate, making a bed are all ways in which this discipline of awareness and inner peace happen.


Nourish the Body
Leaving summer behind the fruits  and veggies of fall call my name, apples, pomegranate and celery root.

Heated Fall  Pomegranate, Cayenne Honeycrisp, Celery Root Salad





1/2 of a red onion chopped fine
2 tbsp yuzu rice vinegar
1 tsp sugar
pinch cayenne
Himalayan pink salt

julienned celery root 1/2 a bulb soak in water to keep color
1 finely sliced honeycrisp apple
 1/2 jar Tonino brand tuna filets in olive oil
handful chopped cilantro
 1/4 cup goat cheese
toasted pecans
1cup raw quinoa cooked and set aside to cool
1 cup pomegranate

lime zest, cayenne, paprika

mix the yuzu, sugar cayenne and salt together in a small bowl to dissolve, add finely chopped onion set aside 30 min

add all other ingredients and to taste add lime zest, olive oil, Himalayan pink salt, pepper, cayenne and paprika.


Spotify cooking and writing

 https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2lZtMvwBsbY1dXStjLOMNa

The Gold of I Am

Dance though you're broken open, move the body to move the mind. I have always felt that movement worked through the most stuck places in the body to free the thoughts from suffering. That if I danced or  practiced yoga I could move past the conscious binds that held me to familial beliefs or social standards, if I literally expressed in my body I would crack open and all that didn't serve me would just pour out. I could witness all that was not me, all that was imposed thought upon me, all that I empathically drew into me and assumed was mine.
I move imagining myself as if shattering to the floor, emptying, resting, and then repairing and filling back up with me.
There is a practice of this exact interpretation, it is called  Kitsungi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery, with gold.
This practice of reparation looks at the newly created pottery as being more beautiful than the perfect piece that it had been before the break. Kitsungi, part of the larger Japanese aesthetic called Wabi Sabi sees beauty in the juxtaposition of perfection to imperfection and transience. In Wabi Sabi, a perfect zen garden must have a few leaves sprinkled haphazardly across an immaculately created rake design to be more beautiful. A face with imperfect features or carved lines of age show beauty through wisdom through contrast. Our notions of beauty are relative, in the west through marketing and social conditioning we are guided to be more sympathetic towards symmetry, perfection, shiny, new whole. This is not the case in the eastern aesthetic system of Wabi sabi, taken ultimately from the buddhist and zen philosophies of impermanence and emptiness.

Our wounds, our hurts, all these chips and cracks have the potential of being sealed together, repaired with the beauty of our growth, if we let them. I could leave all that was not my true nature, all that was on the floor and seal myself back up with the gold of my own energy, the gold of  I am, not what should be or what should not be.

What am I listening to:
Gold of I am playlist

Alchemy

Alchemy A/W 2019

Alchemical elements

 The Symbol for Alchemy is the Ouroboros, the snake eating it's own tail. Alchemy is defined as taking something ordinary and making it become extraordinary, sometimes in a way that cannot be explained.  
Each morning, no matter what the previous day has held, I wake to the possibility of magic, alchemy, in any given moment. To do this, one has to be awake, open and receptive, neither looking forward nor tarrying to the past. The potential for each moment to be viewed as ordinary or extraordinary lies within our seeing, I make pieces to help manifest this way of seeing. We have been bombarded in mainstream media with ideas of mindfulness, yoga and meditation, it is within each of us to take these and other tools to our ultimate understanding of the self and the self in relation to the world.

What if by our own discipline and study we could turn both our suffering and joy into serenity. If we could create a balance between both extremes that lands us in awareness, we would see each as one in the same and practice a detachment to both.

The pieces in this collection of reimagined antiques have been inspired by these thoughts. This collection as each of our collections can be used as talismans to hold intention, to define or focus thought.

I want to create mindfully, re-using existing pieces in combination with additions of small scale sculptures utilizing local craftsman and local foundries, creating a minimal carbon footprint.

I want to tell the stories of these objects and their juxtapositions to the new additions, creating a context for the collector.

love me twice (repurposed altered 14k gold antique wedding band)

Air Element (Antique wand, yellow resin, gold filled disc air element engraving)

Our winters are deep and cold, the warmth created by fires, book reading and Serge Gainsbourg and his ilk keep the heat going. The physical practice of yoga and meditation calm the mind and soften the body into opening. Mornings bring wild violet orange sunrises streaked  across an urban roofline.  And my mind's eye takes a forest walk covered in a canopy of emerald green hues. 

Our Music ..... 

Itunes list below

Heated French n'est-ce pas?

emerald hues in fairydust bands

Pleiadian pendant

Champleve Enamel has been used to create the deep blue night sky of the Pleiadian constellation.

"The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper"
- W.B. Yeats

The Anatomy of human interaction

Justin Marx and Marisa Incelli

Why do we behave the way that we do in interaction with others, with ourselves? If a movement could represent a way in which we interact with others, what would it look like? If it could show the many veils we wear, the many filters we use to mask our authentic selves what would these movements look like? And if we could remove these filters, these veils of fear, attachment, avoidance, ego and ignorance could the other feel our authentic self more immediately?  Would we see ourselves more clearly as well? Someone once said to me, "if you like your life, don't do yoga" I thought it was such a strange and offensive statement until I began studying Svādhyāya,  the Sanskrit word for self study. This awakening of the self led to voracious consumption of all I could read on yogic philosophy and further into Buddhist tenets. The practice of yoga is not only the postures the physical body takes on but the stilling of the mind that happens through the physical action of the body.

 And this is yet only one aspect of the full practice of yoga. 

This performance uses this facet of yoga and flow to explore these filters of attachment, avoidance, ego, ignorance and fear in human interaction. Each piece is spontaneous not choreographed but rather the energy of the room felt and translated into movement, the energy of ourselves in that given moment. Done in tandem through movement,  shamanic drumming and playing of the heart chakra crystal bowl. What is the conversation? How authentic is the connection, when is it shrouded and what is it shrouded by? Can you connect to the energy of the space? Drop into your breath and be a witness without judgement? How does it feel? 

This work asks questions to the viewer if the viewer is receptive to receive.

Join us for a a journey into the Anatomy of human interaction

This First Friday @

Lululemon Fishtown

Friday January 4th 

6:30- 8:30

We are super excited to be there with Elements of Aura

as well!!