This session is the final session in our Market Street location. I have been teaching in Seattle for 25 years and for fifteen here at 1716 NW Market Street. I and we together have built quite a unique environment. I have worked 7 days a week running classes, private lessons, workshops, hosting the best international teachers multiple times a year. I have also been heavily involved with Chinese Medicine clinics and colleges, written and taught Western scientific studies. I have been able to train other top notch teachers. I have been interviewed, written and published. All this while managing the studio, its teachers, renters and the overall small business elements. Unexpectedly during these past years I developed a global reputation for successful teaching and successfully transcending the challenges of running a center. (Kim's CV here). I have also continued my own training and the creative development running a shop takes. Most essentially though I have been able to provide safe harbor for a significant amount of people in their transformational process. I have been able to do all this in exactly the way I wanted to with no one to answer to but my own intuition, creative vision and integrity. And you have showed up. You have really showed up. Its been great!
Because I have never done what I do “for money,” my motivation always one of service, and because of my extraordinary deep well of boundless energy I have been able to successfully pull it off, never really thinking about anything else including the financial ramifications and physical tolls. It was always, in my mind, my destiny. However, with rent prices and property taxes sky rocketing in Seattle and especially in our Ballard hood, unbeknownst to me, I was becoming the proverbial frog in a boiling pot of water. (The frog in the pot doesn't feel the water getting hotter and hotter. It can't perceive that it is being boiled to death until its too late).
Last fall when my mother died unexpectedly I got a good look at what unrelenting suffering in one’s final weeks looks like. I turned 60 ten days later. Shortly thereafter I got the notice of the hefty rent & tax increase for the next 5 year lease. Perhaps if that notice would have come one year earlier or one year later I might have been able to suck it up, but I was in quite a raw place, staring at my own mortality in that way. It woke me up. I felt the boiling water surrounding me. I jumped out of the pot.
Dojo environments are the only thing I have really been able to count on in my life. I have been in them for 40 years. They have formed me into the woman I am. I know for sure I have been able to share a part of what I have learned within them with many others. So it was more than a simple business decision when last fall I starkly realized conditions around me have changed and I am unwilling to boil myself to death to keep this particular incarnation of the sacred container going.
What next? The great news is I am not closing our container. I am moving it! We have been invited to move to a lovely shared space: Shift Movement and Healing Arts and we will begin classes there this fall. Its a great open space, has a "dojo" feel, a sprung floor and its actually a bit larger than what we have now. Parking may not be as convenient for some, but access will be better for most. Our teachers are going with us and a few of them are also opening other classes in other locations. We are still, "Embrace The Moon, School for Taijiquan and Qigong." Most of the schedule will remain as is. Also, in Shift, there are other teachers doing interesting practices you may even want to check out. Everything changes in this life, our practices teach us this and train us for this inevitability. And so, the Moon's container will change, but our intentional transformational process will continue.
It is a leap of faith for me to make this change. I do not know where this next incarnation of Embrace The Moon or of Kim Ivy will lead. I have a lot of ideas but I am trying to stay with the creative alchemy that exists in the unknown as long as I can tolerate it. Frankly, I have been more than uncomfortable letting of what has been, putting myself so intentionally in the unknown. And especially being so transparent and openly vulnerable with all of you about it. Its ironic that I am not really a huge fan of change, isn't it?? I like to feel the ground under me. I like my routine. However, after a great deal of wrestling with my ego, studying the options, feeling grief, fear, and much more, I am now fully on board. I am excited to see what this frog can do now that its out of the pot. I'm also excited to have your creative energy join with mine. Its a short life. We should enjoy our collective energy, vitality and spirit and see where it takes us.
Lets celebrate this lovely Market Street space with a strong Spring Session. Save the Date: July 22, Sunday, a big send-off party!
With deep respect and gratitude. I feel wholly supported by you. See you for these last 12 weeks on the Market Street floor! Schedule & Registration here!
Salute!
Kim