Fanny

Looking deeply into the question of who I am takes me into a space of not knowing… in which all my ideas about myself seem insignificant and what remains is a quiet simplicity, resting in the moment, receiving sensory impressions, and from here there really is nothing much to say.

And yet here I am, working on my website, and recognising that it can be helpful for anyone considering working with me to have some idea of where I have come from, what has inspired me and what might qualify me to offer what I offer. On any given day, i might describe my life journey differently, but here is one take, a few impressions, some flavours.

As a child growing up in rural Italy, I fell in love with the natural world and longed to find a way to protect animals and plants from what I perceived as the devastating impact of the human take-over of the planet. I then converted to Catholicism at the age of 10, inspired by stories of St Francis and Jesus and the possibility of a true awakening of the heart.  My fervour took me to church every week day and had me spend much of my free time with the village priest asking endless questions which he seldom answered satisfactorily… But I felt disappointed by how elusive and unreachable God seemed and found I most deeply touched a sense of mystery and beauty through being in nature and connecting with animals and plants, the sky and the waters of a wild river running near our home.

By my late teens/early twenties, back in the UK, I had turned my attention towards social justice, becoming politically active as a way to bring positive change. I got a degree in politics with African and Asian studies, and spent much of my time demonstrating on the streets and raising awareness around issues which touched me- the effects of capitalism, colonialism, sexism, racism, war. I also loved to lark about with friends, swim in cold waters, drink in pubs, sing songs, and get myself into all kinds of chaotic emotional entanglements!

After the devastating suicide of my half sister and the subsequent crumbling of my family around me, my interest in spiritual awakening opened up again. 

I turned inwards.  I got together with my first husband who was a deeply committed Buddhist and tai chi practitioner; I had 2 children with him, which opened me wide in love and brought me to my knees at times.  A year after my youngest child was born, I separated from their father.  Heart-broken by the tearing apart of my new family, immense grief interspersed with moments of freedom, potential and the recognition that I desperately needed to find myself again.   I discovered the 5 Rhythms with Ya’Acov and Susannah Darling Khan.  This was the beginning of a great awakening journey for me.  I discovered my moving dancing body, I discovered a level of love for myself, others and life itself which blew me open – and I realized for the first time quite how far I had come from myself, my power, my beauty, and my capacity to really participate in the life I was living.

I then trained with Gabrielle Roth to teach the 5 Rhythms in 1994, and in 1995 was asked by her to start teaching.  So I began with great trepidation, to offer the practice which was so precious and profound to me.

Much as I loved to dance to music, I was also interested in moving without it, finding the impulse from within – finding how my body had its own wisdom and direction; finding how I could be revealed to myself and freed up by listening and following its own intelligence.  I worked with several other inspiring teachers of conscious spontaneous movement as a doorway to embodied Presence (among whom Sandra Reeve, Helen Poynor and Suprapto), and then met Adam B in 1996.  He became my teacher and guide for the next 3 decades.  It has been an on-going revelation, in which I have felt turned inside out, opened and devastated by turns, as who I thought I was got undermined…revealing a constant presence which is always already spacious, at peace and profoundly ok in the midst of whatever comes my way

In 1998 I got together with Colin who I married in 2002; my relationship with him grew me, opened me, inspired me, challenged and stretched me in more ways than I can say here.

The remarkable effects of the work with Adam, my relationship with Colin, my teaching work, my parenting, my friendships - and the unfolding of Life itself - keep taking me deeper and deeper into an appreciation of the ordinary and absolutely extraordinary reality of each moment – and an increasingly capacity to relate with all feelings, states and experiences rather than following the million ways I have learned to bounce off them, avoid them, act them out, numb them, or indulge them.  This is an incredible and yet ordinary, humbling, sometimes devastating and sometimes ecstatic unfolding; and in this, ‘who I am’ becomes more and more fluid, undefinable, and available.

I find myself to be increasingly free.  Which includes being free to feel trapped and caught in the hold of my own conditioning at times.

I find myself to be increasingly happy. Which includes being happy to feel all states including despair; it is not a happiness which is always smiling and bouncy, but a happiness which depends less and less on things going my way.

I find myself to be increasingly at peace.  In the midst of parts of me often feeling shy, afraid, hurt, awkward, inadequate; and in the midst of parts of me feeling confident, exhuberant, humorous, passionate.  None of it defines me.

I recognize that there is no goal in awakening, there is no goal in developing as a human being, there is just an ongoing unfolding which is not exactly safe, but it is deeply held by the process of life itself, and a sense of enduring and constant presence.

A few months ago, I sat with my beloved husband Colin as he took his last breath, after accompanying him through the physically devastating process of advanced cancer.  Our mantra during those last months was this: I give my consent to this, I say yes… finding it in ourselves to bow down to the reality that we are not in control of life, or of death.  I am now finding my way forward, as i grieve him, as I give thanks for what has been, as I find a different kind of strength in myself in my aloneness.  It has shown me more than ever that how we participate in life has a massive effect on how things play out for us, and yet ultimately the only real choice we have is how we relate to the circumstances we find ourselves in.  And whether we can open in love to the unfolding of it all, or whether we close and harden our hearts, finding who or what to blame.  My interest is to keep opening, and yet sometimes I am simply not able to open - and then, how can I open with loving compassion towards my own closure?

I love offering this work and how this offering becomes freer and more fluid over the decades. I love being with others who are interested to live this life more fully, love more freely, surrender to what we cannot control, be willing to be revealed in our darkness and our light. I love that we can explore this being human together. This time in history is such a potent time - so much is hanging in the balance, and yet so much is available to us to support a shift in perspective and attitude which has the potential to change everything.

With immense gratitude

To my ancestors, my grandparents and my parents,

To my children, my grandchildren, and the generations to come,

To my husband Colin,

To all my teachers,

To my siblings,

To my friends,

To all my students,

To the animals and the plants

To the Earth

To Life itself.