–lyric by George LaMond

When I was a little girl, my father returned from work every day in the late spring/early summer just before it started to get dark. Other times of the year, he put on leather slippers, lit a pipe, and drank a Manhattan. At this special time of the year, however, he took me outside with a blanket to lie together on the grass and wait to see which of the two of us would be the one to spy the first star. Actually, it was probably Venus.

Each of us deserves to have A Man in her life. It’s so important.

Today,
I came across this,
from the summer of 2006 in Spain.

click here to enlarge

This patch of sidewalk lies
just beside the community center
where all major TaKeTiNa
trainings, workshops, and
other events have taken place
over the last ten years.
I’ve tread this path many times,
but this time it held
particular significance.

Perhaps, you, too, will find
the question intriguing.

She was blind and insensible to many things,
and dimly knew it; but to all that was light and air,
perfume and colour, every drop of her blood in her responded.

Summer, Edith Wharton

Bhutanese prayer flags • Honolulu Academy of the Arts

When I talk to someone for the first time about TaKeTiNa, often that person claims to be “rhythmically challenged” or have “no rhythm.” How can that be? Your heart beats. Your breath flows in and out. Cycles of moons and seasons regulate your life. Your world is a symphony of vibration, pulse, and pattern.

We are rhythmic beings and being in rhythm is our natural state. When circumstances interrupt that state, when unnatural or artificial rhythms are imposed upon us, we feel dis-ease. We suffer.

A TaKeTiNa circle is a place to re-connect with our natural state. There is no agenda, schedule, exam, or grade. We don’t know how far we will go—the journey itself is the goal. In that, there can be no failure: We always achieve our goal.