☯️🐯🐻 Today You Are a Tiger and a Bear

March Madness, Day 20: The Spring Equinox

(Welcome to Day 20 of our March Madness series and continuing celebration of Mardi Gras, with love from Genevieve & Ali & the Ally Show. Today is special because

• it’s the Spring Equinox AKA the first day of Spring

• the Google Doodle is about the real March Madness (the basketball one) and I decided to pretend it’s about us so I feel global famous right now)

Balance: I Do Not Think that Word Means What You Think It Means

kk team so I bet it’s been a while since high school astronomy so lemme remind us what the heck an Equinox is again.

The Equinox occurs when the Earth’s hemispheres aren’t tilted towards or away from the sun. At the moment of Equinox, the sun is located directly above the equator, and both hemispheres receive an almost equal amount of sunlight. I stole this nice diagram from the nice people at Starwalk:

At the moment of Equinox, the earth is not tilted one way or the other. Diagram courtesy Starwalk.space.

If you are obsessed with balance like I am, you will immediately notice that at the moment of Equinox, it’s as if the Earth is perfectly balanced on its own axis, without the usual tilt that we are used to seeing in this kind of diagram. These eqinoxical moments occur just twice a year. The March Equinox (today!!) marks the first day of Spring in the Northern Hemisphere, and the first day of Fall in the Southern Hemisphere. The September Equinox works the opposite way as the Northerners usher in Fall and the Southerners welcome their Spring.

So qigong fanatics like me don’t want to miss the chance to talk about the balance of opposites on such an unusual day as today.

I heavily endorse the idea that whatever your default modes are, it is good practice to exercise the opposite modes on and around the Equinox, to explore the idea of balance rather than constantly tilting to one side.

So just for example, try any or all of the following, and feel free to roll your own:

• If you are usually bathed in words, seek silence and/or visual stimulation (like look at a field of flowers without saying anything about them)

• If you are usually super-visual, treat yourself to some darkness (e.g. lie down on your bed in the daytime with an eyemask on) or more words than usual (try an audiobook) or both (lie on bed, close eyes, listen to audiobook or music with a lot of lyrics)

• If you tend to be quiet, get loud

• If you tend to be loud, get quiet

• If you tend to be on land, go to sea (seriously, take a ferry ride somewhere or go swimming or do something that involves a body of water)

• If you tend to be rational and analytical, try doing something irrational and intuitive (start small, this one can be heady)

• If you tend to be irrational and intuitive, try analyzing something (like make a good ol’ pros/cons list for the next decision you have to make today)

• If you tend to be serious, get goofy

• If you tend to be a complete goofball like me, try to be serious for a second

Here’s me being serious for a second: this ability to balance between two modes rather than always tilting the same way may be the key to resilience. I am doing a serious scientific study of this topic among survivors and super-agers and will report back.

Was that serious enough? I certainly hope so because I just about used up my whole seriousness budget on that paragraph.

In the spirit of doing the opposite of our default today, I am going to do the opposite of what I usually do, which is write lots and lots and lots of words at you in these newsletter posts for March Madness.

Instead, I am going to embrace a truly innovative mode for me, which is recording myself on video and allowing another living human being to view that. Here we go, ladies and gentlemen and everyone, here goes Auntie Genevieve charging all the way into her discomfort zone. Send me vibeeessssssss:

Waaahhh! That is the first-ever video I have ever put on YouTube, ladies and gentlemen and everyone. I can see it’s not technically perfect but it made me laugh watching myself so I have a glimmer of hope that it can entertain you too.

In case it’s too long or poor quality for you let me recap. In that video I teach you my version of the qigong exercise called Head Rolls, in which you alternate being like a Tiger with being like a Bear. This exercise is excellent training for balance and resilience in real life. I learned everything I know about qigong from Malcolm and Annie Dean, who founded and run Luminous Ground Online Tai Chi and Qigong Classes. If you like this video you will love their channel right over here: https://www.youtube.com/@luminousgroundschooloftaij1500

Phone a Friend to Escape the Dragon’s Cave

And before I let you go today, I have one more story to tell you about doing the opposite of what I usually do today.

I usually:

• have a whole bunch of ideas

• but fail to execute on any of them

• but still think they would have been the best things ever

• but still not execute on them

• and still hold them dear - they are my secret guarded treasures like a dragon’s gold, I am jealous and possessive of them

• look at people out there in the world designin t-shirts and writin books and designin apps and makin music and I’m like wwwaaahhhhhh how did they DO that, I wanna do that

• cycle repeats ad infinitum until I’m probably dead with very lil to say in my obituary, you know?

The idea I’m going to tell you about now has been one of those in the secret dragon’s hoard for a long time. I first started studying qigong with Malcolm and Annie Dean in 2021. This idea struck me while I doing the Head Rolls exercise with them that first summer of my qigong studies so I believe this idea has been taking up space in my secret treasure chamber for at least three years, probably more like four.

And who knows what prompted me to do the opposite of my normal pattern this time, but I was thus prompted somehow and I did the opposite of what I usually do in two different ways:

1. I decided hell yes it was time to execute on this idea rather than take it jealously with me to the grave

2. (even more important) I realized I could reach out to someone else to help make the idea come to life. This is NOT the usual greedy dragon behavior. This entailed being “vulnerable” to a friend which is something I only learned to be recently.

kk so get this, ladies and gentlemen and everyone, I suddenly knew exactly with whom I should work in order to make this idea come to life. This piece of the puzzle I had not hoarded jealously for three years. This piece of the puzzle fell into place suddenly just a few weeks ago, as if:

💡a lightbulb was suddenly switched on

⚡️I was struck by lightning

🍎 an apple hit me on the head (or in this case, a 🧩 puzzle piece)

👑 I had struck gold (different than the dragon’s golden hoard, but still gold)

💥 I had a "wake up" or "a-ha" moment

The person I suddenly knew I needed to talk to about this idea was my friend Brandon Redenius, a long-ago colleague and friend with whom I worked at Indiegogo approx 100 years ago or so.

Not only did I suddenly know that I needed to talk to Brandon, I also saw in my mind’s eye in perfect detail a t-shirt design he had made approx 100 years ago and knew that this was the correct approach to the idea I had in mind now.

Kk so enough chatting. There’s more to the story actually but I’ll save that for later so I can get this newsletter to you while it’s still the Equinox 😉

Are you ready?

Are you ready to see the idea that was waiting in the wings for over three years, just waiting for a creative powerhouse to scoop it up and bring it fully into the spotlight?

Here we go, ladies and gentlemen and everyone:

Can you see it?

This design is tailor-made for the Equinox.

This design is about balance - about the fact that you can alternate between being a Tiger and being a Bear.

And then you will be in harmony with this ancient symbol of balance, which I tend to see everywhere these days because I’m attuned to it by daily qigong practice:

Yesssssss. It’s the yin-yang. It’s the engine that makes the world go.

This design makes me feel wonderful just to look at it.

If it doesn’t make sense to you quite yet, please go check out the YouTube video ⬆️ and see if my chitchat and unfettered motions there can help you make sense of this very special picture, especially today.

Thank you, Brandon, for making my whole Equinox 😍 and potentially my whole year.

Thank you, everyone, for bearing witness to me doing the opposite of my normal thang in so many different ways today.

May you find some ways to do the opposite of your usual tilt, too.

Try it and report back.

Take Our Quick Reader Survey

If you’re the type of person who would normally never take a survey, it’s deeply important that you take our little survey today 😈

🌸🏀 March Madness Halftime Survey

Yes, if usually you stifle your feelings and views like a dragon with his golden hoard, go ahead and let it all out in this survey. I’m the only one who will see it and I am both a Tiger and a Bear so I am pretty robust to strongly worded notes. Go ahead and be honest, especially if your usual tilt is to obscure your thoughts so they will run no risk of hurting anyone. You can’t hurt me via this survey, I promise.

Wishing you a wonderful rest of your Equinox and a safe journey to the next one, September 22, 2025, when Fall and Spring change places for the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. See you then if not before.

And don’t go it alone,

Genevieve

P.S. When you are on the right track with a project, you will start to see things all around you that let you know that. For example, the very same week Brandon and I were finalizing the design for our new tiger/bear yin-yang symbol, I saw these two tigers painted on a shop window on Cortland Avenue in Bernal Heights (FTX Studio). I sent a quick snap to Brandon and he said, “Love those synchronistic moments where you keep running into things that reaffirm your vision!” Hell yes.