Today, equal parts excited and nervous, I photographed my first post-birth mother for my project ‘A Beautiful Body’. It was perfect that this project began with her, really. She is fiercely beautiful and as tender as a newborn baby. You would never know that under the thin layer of clothing that covers her body, she has the most gorgeous collection of stripes on her stomach and breasts in the formation of a sun from some... Read More

I am scared to share these photographs and writings with you. If asked why, I may be tempted to nonchalantly say I have no idea. Except that would be a lie. Deep down, I know why: Because I am a rebel with a cause. Because I want to say fuck you to our society’s view on a woman’s body.... Read More

These are my first thoughts put to paper with a beautifully-perfect 7-pound-and-some-ounces baby attached to me, sucking at my breast. As I sleepily search for words to write to accompany the photographs I took last week when the entire family was in town to meet Sequoia, my sweet 11 day old son, I can not help but pause frequently and stare at the perfection feeding from my body’s milk. Every little sound... Read More

It’s nearly time to part ways now. The honor of facilitating the making of a human body in my own body is nearly over. This belly will never be this exact belly ever again. My Son will never again receive nourishment from his umbilical cord. I will never feel him slowly stretch and move against the inside of my abdominal wall as if her were dancing a sacred warrior dance. These last days... Read More

My life as I know it is about to change: forever. In about 4 weeks, most likely under the guidance & protection of the full moon of February 7th and surrounded by my own tribe, I will give birth to my son.

It’s scientifically proven that happiness makes the human heart grow younger. Happiness is the abundant side effect of being interconnected with those in our life that inspire us and to those we had no idea we could possibly love. Happiness is the practice of forgiving those who have “harmed” us so we may be free... Read More

I was born on an insanely hot day during July in the Sonoran desert. Upon a bean bag chair sprawled on my Mother’s bedroom floor, I took my fist Breath. The midwife was called in the late afternoon and I came out with a cord wrapped around my pasty purple-pink neck by Twilite. ’Jade Twilite at your service’, I said to my wide eyed and innocent 10... Read More

I am in love with Those whom we have learned to judge. I am drawn to Those we are told to hate. I am best friends with the Ones whom we call names in the shadows but smile to in daylight. I am in love with the Ones you might be afraid to fully embrace. I am engaged to Unconditional Love and the Ones whom we... Read More

It’s in west Africa where I feel the most beautiful. There are barely any mirrors in the places I seem to stay and visit. People do not react to my white skin and blond hair. Men easily and vocally appreciate the body which my entire life has been called, “big boned”. People cry when I leave and dance when I arrive. I understand this kind of existence.

My yoga practice has gone out the door. With it has gone rising early and eating mostly raw food. I am 2 months pregnant, unmarried and just today I signed up for the first time in my life for AHCCCS (a state health-care for poor folk) and food stamps.

And yet…

I carried her all the way upriver in my young arms because I wanted her to see my house. I wanted to bathe with her in my secret place in the El Tuito river. I wanted her to listen with me the chorus of jungle birds outside my home which was surrounded by banana and papaya trees. Since her wheelchair could not make the journey up the... Read More

I haven’t always been able to stand naked in front of a full-length mirror and smile. In fact, there are still days that my shoulders slump as I uselessly gaze at myself. All I can see are the soft love handles above my hips and the sprinkle of pimples on the left side of my chin. On those days of useless gazing I have to practice with a... Read More

I learned how to forgive on a dry, windy and pleasantly warm afternoon in Taos, New Mexico.

I started choreographing dances when I was 8 years old on the sandy arroyo bed outside of my familia’s palapa, our hut. I would rally with some pretty intense authority all the kids form my dusty neighborhood. ”¡Vamos, Wilbert, àndale Yeni, apùrate Zujey!” I would enthusiastically yell. ”¡Vamos a bailar!” We are going to dance, I would scream with my hands flung to the cloudless Central Mexican sky.

It can be said, I say from personal experience, that after one feels the swift brush with Death the colors of the world and the sacred-ness of one’s reality seem much more brilliant and tactile and abundant. The flowers smell sweeter on one’s walk to the park. The Golden Retriever dog hair piled up in the corner of one’s apartment seems more like evidence of a precious life instead of a dirty house.

People assume a lot of things about me. I would say a lot of it is inaccurate. I have heard that because I appear flirtatious and sensuous, that I must be some sex kitten. I am the farthest thing form a sex kitten. Meow. I bathed in my soggy underwear until I was flippin’ 15 (due to growing up in a Mexican Catholic village where we bathed... Read More

He sets out in his walker with his hunting rifle strapped to his back and tied to his body with a white string resembling a long shoelace… With one real leg and the other prosthetic lower leg, Mr. W makes his way around the Rez, gaining respect from everyone around him and anyone who knows him. Mr. W often walks on the desolate desert highways on the Tohono O’odham Nation with his heart... Read More

When you find yourself living in a Mexican village in the middle of nowhere with no electricity and it’s the 80ies, whoever has a good ghetto-blaster is your God. Therefor, Lang and Nancy were God.

Seyla Rodriguez hated me and I was determined to make her love me. It was 1989 and I had brought back from El Norte (the USA) Barbie Dolls for Marina Lorenzo and Yeni Chavarìn, but not one for Seyla. She hated me for that.

I fell in love with her coconut-buttery skin when I was 12. Or maybe I was 10. Desa Rea has always been an inspiration of beauty and of Sacred Feminine for me. Leading by example, she has taught me how to live with the awareness of leaving a small carbon footprint. She has shown me that coconut oil can act as a natural sunscreen,... Read More

Have you noticed that when you like someone, I mean when you really really likesomeone, you may start to laugh like, walk like or dance like them? Have you considered lately all of the hundreds of people that you have met in your life of 20, 30, 40 or 88 years? How those hundreds of Authentic Spirits have influenced your life? How they have added to your personality, to... Read More

It was when Marty and Karen yelled into the canyon below us, “tenemos medicina, tenemos agua (we have medicine, we have water),” at the top of their 60-something year old lungs that I shed my first tear and shivered from a body covered in goose bumps. I couldn’t help but love humanity with all my heart in that moment.

I am passionately in love with myself, but it has not always been this way for me. I have always loved to dance, but I have not always been welcomed or encouraged by my peers, teachers and inspiration-creators. I am “Big Boned” and could certainly never be a modern dancer much less a ballerina… I have no connection to my ancestry, you know: those people with blond... Read More

In my backyard there is a woman and maybe her baby on the fringes of death for something as basic as dehydration, that’s why. I was raised in a village with dark haired children and I, a child of a foreigner, was treated like an equal, like a princess, that’s why. Because I believe in every one’s dream and am here to support those dreams, that’s why.

As soon as you accept Your Own Divinity, you will love what you see.

It’s Thanksgiving and I just polished off a bowl of black beans with hatch green chilies over a bed of fresh, raw spinach. Guapo rested by me and my simple dinner after gobbling his own kibble. We both like how silent our old building is today… We both are enjoying the solitude and peace today offers and we soak up energy infused in the... Read More

Like I have said before, I was raised by musical hippies. Religion was not enforced upon my growing-up self. Finding my authentic and artistic being, however, was strongly enforced. My Tia Esperanza tried with all of her heart and soul to bring me to the Catholic Church, and I liked it. Occasionally. Especially on Sundays when we got to wear new outfits and cute black suede shoes... Read More

Some People are dog people. Some are Cat People. Some are Horse or Parrot or Snake People. I was born a “Dog People”.

Some people are born in clean, white hospitals. I was born on a bean bag chair in my mother’s house on a record hot day in Arizona. Instead of the sound of machines that I imagine hospital rooms contain, there was the soft music of my mother’s flute with the melody of my big sister’s violin upon my arrival into this World.

My name is Yari Bangoura, and you do not know my story. I was born into a Lucky-Pot. It was an old, well seasoned cast iron Lucky-Pot that over time had fed well over 5000 people in my village. Whenever someone ate out of this Lucky Pot, white magic would most certainly visit you that night. Some say this is why I have been... Read More

The first time I met Maisha she was safely and warmly curled up inside of Heidi’s belly like a little kangaroo in Taos, New Mexico. Heidi had come to my dance class in Taos to bring a guest teacher and she was juicy and ripe in her pregnancy with Maisha.

The first time i landed on her red-tinted soil, my entire selfish world changed. I silenced my words and opened my eyes and learned how to live every day with the key ingredient: Love. I daydream about returning to Africa, primarily west Africa, almost every day. These images i took last time i was there serve as medicine until i return and learn all over again... Read More

I know some pretty Authentic and Beautiful humans… These two are certainly not your average beauty. They have befriended a creature that most of us label as scary, dangerous, possible even evil… I fell in love with these strong legless creatures while photograping these two humans.

Blackie is in his mid seventies, has somewhere around 13 children and works hard landscaping in the Sonoran desert heat… His skin is a road map of countless tales and i feel that his heart is visible through his eyes. He spent many years in prison and now cares for his children’s children and several other women that he is somehow related to. Blackie speaks 3 languages and... Read More

The first time my feet landed on her, The Rich Coast de Costa Rica was in 1998. I was 18 and it was almost my birthday. I had driven across the Nicaragua border into Costa Rica with big dreams of Jungle exploration, dancing naked on unpopulated and safe beaches and swimming until the stars came out.

Do you believe that one’s realities is shaped by one’s beliefs? Do you know how powerful you, the person reading these lines, are? Do you know that there is no-one else on this planet like you and that the space on the outside of your skin is no different than the galaxy on the inside of your skin? Do you feel like a Goddess or God? Are you hung up on... Read More