This month marks the 10th Anniversary of iskip.com and I created a new Facebook Page for the Skipping Movement to celebrate! Come join the skipping fun and spread the word to your skipping friends.

This has to be one of my all time favorite skipping videos. "Why should I skip and why are you going to put it on a website?" asked gangsta musician Jaye Swift. I must have said something right. Just look at him go!

I am so grateful this magical moment skipping with the one and only Harry Perry on Venice Beach was captured on film. So much fun! Life was surely made for moments like this.

This question recently came through the website:

Recently I started doing skipping. But few of my friends told me that it's not good for gents. It's only for ladies. Kindly let me know.

And here's my reply...

Your friends are wrong. Skipping is for everyone.

It is true that most men have a harder time breaking through unspoken cultural rules to skip. But the brave ones who feel inspired to skip do it anyway. And they do it well. A man named Ashrita Furman recent sent a Guinness World Record for skipping the fastest 5K.

So don't let your friends stop you! Skip loud and skip proud!

I never know just what I might find when I open the skipping mailbag. Take this email that I received this morning for example....

I was being held in Calif. on a 211 p.c. (armed robbery) charge, and I skipped bail, changed my name, moved to the rural south.

I'm currently running a Ponzi scam, and running for city council. These Hillbilly rubes are like children around here, and I'll be skipping this God-foresaken hell-hole as soon as I run the town dry, which will be soon.

I recommend skipping for both fun and profit. It sure changed my life!

Name Withheld
Last single-wide on the left at the end of the dirt road
East Jeuss, Arkansas

Dear whoever you are that wrote it, thanks for the laugh! I love your creative spirit. Skip on! LOL.

After work tonight my will to skip pushed through all the resistance I've been carrying around for what feels like forever and I went on my first long distance skip in eons.

In 5 months I am planning on skipping in a 5K called SEE JANE RUN and that was a huge part of my inspiration.

I went for about two miles... Probably skipped 1/4 mile straight right out of the gate...Then I did walking/skipping intervals. I mixed up the count depending on what happy song was playing on my ipod...I'd walk four steps, skip four steps for a while. Then walk two steps, skip two steps...Etc.

It's amazing how different skipping along a quiet relatively rural road compares to the early skipping days when I lived in downtown San Francisco. It's much easier to go more deeply within with out a lot of people around. That's for sure.

It felt REALLY good to fully get my skip on again...and am intending tonight to be the start of a much more consistent skipping practice. Please send me good thoughts that it will be true!

India was all I hoped it would be and more! I had a fabulous time and still feel like I'm in the process of integrating all I experienced into my regular life.

I've been uploading photos and videos and working on getting them in a sharable format. This video captures one of the highlights for me from the whole adventure. It was taken in a fruit market in Pondicherry and was such a magical moment!

As I type this I am in India! I'm here celebrating my 40th bday. Don't have much time to blog, but am regularly updating my Twitter account. So if you are interested in skipping with me in India click here.

On New Year's Eve I participated in a powerful Native American ceremony called a sweat lodge. This was the third sweat I have done...and it once again proved to be quite a powerful experience.

Sweats come from the Native American tradiition. This excerpt I found on the barefootworlds.net website does a good job describing the intention behind the experience...

"During the purification of one's spirit inside a sweat lodge, all sense of race, color and religion is set aside. As in the Mother's womb and the Father's eyes, we are all the same, we are One. Each of us has the ability to sit with the Creator himself. Healing begins here for dis-ease, physical, emotional, directional and spiritual.

As the steam and temperature rises so do our senses. Messages and vision from the Spirit World are received through the group consciousness of the participants. One at a time, the people inside get an opportunity to speak, to pray and to ask for guidance and forgiveness from the Creator and the people they have hurt. As they go around the circle, they tell who they are, where they are from, and what is their clan, so the Creator, the Spirit People, and all there can acknowledge them.

A sweat is typically four sessions, called rounds or endurances, each lasting about 30 to 45 minutes. The round ends when the leader announces the opening of the door."
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Our sweat took place in a Kiva, which is a large hole dug deep into the ground that is supported by beams, etc. We sang songs from the Native Amercian tradition and took turns praying outloud. At the beginning of each of the four rounds, the firekeeper would bring in more piping hot stones before sealing the front door so the space would become pitch black.

As each of us sang, prayed, rattled, and drummed, the lodge leader added water to the stones which caused the Kiva to fill with hot steam. With each round the steam and temperature intensified...as did the energy behind the drumming, prayers, songs, etc. and my sense of connection to earth and to spirit.

The group of 20 or so people that participated was wonderfully diverse...from the four year-old son of the lodge leader on up to a radiant 79-year old woman who lived next door. Individuals from Spain, Ireland, and Peru were represented...as well as both East and West Coasters there all seeking a deeper connection to spirit and Mother earth. Several different languages were spoken, but we were all had gathered with the same intent - spiritual connection and healing for ourselves and "all of our relations."

Yellowbird, our lodge leader is the founder of the Institute for Cultural Awareness, a nonprofit that is dedicated to preserving sacred sites and indigenous traditions and bridging the gap between the elders and the children. You can read more about the important work he's doing in the world here.

I feel truly honored to have had the experience....what a renewing way to begin 2009. Aho Mataqui Yasin!