AMA with AMA: Answering YOUR questions!

Socks... where we go when we fall asleep... and some of my most interesting dance locales!

Dear Kula Diaries,

Hello, friends — I hope you are all having a beautiful week! It’s Wednesday, which means that it is time for my weekly ‘AMA’ - ‘Ask me Anything’ column. Each week, I peruse the Kula Diaries Vault for questions… and then I select a few of them to answer. Today is actually the 32nd AMA column that I’ve written — how wild is that? I’m thrilled that I get the opportunity to talk about deep things here, so thank you so much for reading this column.

Before we begin, a quick reminder…

I am not a therapist. These are my words, opinions, and advice. Please use curiosity while reading them and take what works for you, and feel free to ditch anything that doesn’t. Above all things — trust yourself more than anybody else (including me).

Ok, let’s get to the questions!

Dear AMA,

What is your favorite kind of sock?

Well, this is a very loaded question - ha! As somebody who hikes and walks a lot, I have developed some pretty particular opinions about socks, and I’m happy to say that I’ve narrowed my sock obsession down to a few brands that I prefer more than others. I will also mention that all of these are brands that I’ve personally purchased, and while I would be happy to be sponsored by a sock company, none of the links below are affiliate links — these are all just socks I genuinely love and use.

First and foremost, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the Pride Socks that Amanda designed for Kula a few years ago. These socks are, without a doubt, my all time favorite socks — they keep me warm on cool mornings when I’m wearing shorts, and they are PERFECT for rollerblading. I’ve found that rollerblading is much more comfortable when I have calf or knee-high socks so that the skate doesn’t rub on the side of my leg. These socks are comfortable, they don’t budge and they are smooth and warm. Sadly, we don’t have any more of them left, but you can find similar socks on the Pride Socks website. I also have the ‘Ethereal’ print, which I love, and Kitty (the artist) is just a gem of a human. If you purchased our Solidarity Kula several years ago, you will be familiar with Latasha Greene, the artist who designed that piece of art. You can even find a pair of Latasha’s artist series socks on the Pride Socks website.

The next brand in my personal sock wardrobe are the Tough Cutie Lightweight Hiker Crew Socks. Tough Cutie is a woman-owned sock brand, and Brittany knows how to make an amazing sock. I started wearing these during my dance experiment and I now own 4 pairs of them — they are durable, soft, great for hiking, and they feel like they are giving my feet a soft hug. The socks resist blisters and wick moisture. They are breathable yet insulating and have natural anti-odor properties as well as light compression around higher impact areas, so they are perfect for hiking (or dancing for 1100 days).

From the Ground Up Socks is a small sock brand founded by PNW-based entrepreneur Rami Nasr. Many years ago, Rami and Rainier Watch founder David and I got together at a brewery to talk shop about being an entrepreneur. This was in the very very beginning of Kula (I can’t recall if I even had a finished product yet). We all sat and chatted for a few hours and really tried to cheer each other on and uplift each other. The early days (well, and even the later days) of starting a business can feel pretty tough and lonely, and it was so helpful to chat with both of them. It’s been really fun to watch Rami’s sock business continue to flourish. Rami’s socks come in fun designs with mountain landscapes around them — I have the Olympic Mountain socks and they have outlasted most of my other pairs of socks by a few years… and I still wear them at least once a week for dancing and hiking! The socks are anti-microbial, anti-bacterial, blister-resistant, and odor-resistant, and I recommend them highly!

The Glacier Peak version of From the Ground Up Socks!

Wright Socks Double Layer Anti Blister System Socks are the final socks in my personal sock wardrobe that are worth bragging about. Many years ago, I used to wear a silk sock liner with my mountaineering socks, and it usually made my boot fit poorly and my foot was reduced to a sweaty mess. When I crossed the Patagonian Ice Cap in 2012, I used a regular hiking sock (I can’t remember which brand), and my feet got soaked on the traverse and on the hike out. We had originally planned to be on the ice cap for 6-8 days, but due to an approaching storm system, we only had one day to cross the entire ice-cap and then one day to descend back to El Chalten. As a result, I opted not to wear my heavy mountaineering boots, which would have been devastating to wear on a speed dash across the ice cap. Instead, I opted for a lighter pair of hiking boots which was decidedly not designed for a trek across the 2nd largest ice cap in the world while wearing snowshoes. With wet socks and feet, the 15 blisters that I ‘achieved’ on our 20-ish mile hike back to town nearly had me convinced that I would discover blistered stumps upon removal of my boots.

Once I made it back to the US and my blisters had healed, I set out on a search for the perfect anti-blister sock. My searching led me to the miraculous world of Wright Socks and, specifically, their double layered anti-blister socks. I purchased a few of them on the spot, and the results were astonishing. Since I started using the Wright Socks on longer hikes, I believe that I’ve experienced less than 5 blisters since 2012, and those were likely because I didn’t take the time to properly clean my feet.

I have tried ‘toe socks’ before, and I really dislike the feeling of having individual miniature socks around each of my toes. In general, my blister prevention regimen is pretty solid: I usually hike or backpack in trail runners (Hoka Stinson)… I wear my Wright Socks… and I try and stop at least 1-2 times per day to brush off my feet and let them dry off completely. On these breaks, I will usually take my socks off and turn them inside out in the sun so that they can dry off from any sweat moisture as well. At camp, I take my socks off and put them inside out on my pole handles, after poking my poles upright into the ground. I make sure that my socks are positioned in the sun so that they can dry off. If I’m unable to do this because it’s raining, I will slip on a clean pair of socks before bed and I take my slightly damp socks and I put them against my thigh inside of my long underwear pants. When I wake up in the morning, my socks will be perfectly dry and ready for another day of hiking. If I’m hiking for more than 2-4 days, I will alternate pairs of socks and wash them in between uses. Once I wash a pair of socks, I will hang it on the outside of my pack to dry while I’m hiking that day.

My feet take quite a beating… between the daily dance habit and my daily walking habit, I get my money’s worth when it comes to my feet, but it has definitely given me an appreciation for fine socks. I used to think that socks were boring, but now I realize how wonderful they are. Isn’t it a gift to be able to slip on a pair of socks and walk out into the world to dance and discover all of the beautiful things that it has to offer? Socks are a comfortable vehicle to adventuring, and I feel really grateful for all of the places that my feet have taken me.

Dear AMA,

When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?

At first glance, I wasn’t sure if this was a question for me or a song recommendation for the Dance Experiment…

So, I decided that it can be both. If you’ve never listened to that song, it’s really great — and it comes from an album that shares a title with this particular AMA question. This question is, in my opinion, somewhat unanswerable — because it points at something that, in the history of the universe, has never been answered in words or with equations. I do believe, however, that the answer can be felt. So, while not specifically providing exact details or fabricating a story… I’m going to answer the question without answering it… and hopefully you’ll be able to sense something new.

I want to start by saying that I’m not qualified in anyway to answer this question, other than as a curious human. I have never studied neurophysiology, my name isn’t Eckhart Tolle, and while I’ve actually done a sleep study before — it was a terrible experience, and I learned nothing. Well, nothing except for the fact that it is nearly impossible to sleep when you have 100 wires attached to your head. For curious minds, I was struggling with a lot of fatigue many years ago, and I was tested for sleep apnea. I hope that I never have to do another sleep study ever again — sleeping in a hospital bed while a technician in a room watches you in a camera is… not relaxing.

All of that being said, I do have a great interest in meditation and the concept of human consciousness… and consciousness in general. For much of my life, I was mostly unconscious. What do I mean by that? I mean that I was entirely identified with the thoughts in my mind — if I had a thought, it was real. I thought obsessively and constantly about anything and everything and I created fake scenarios in my mind — it was a chaotic world of what-ifs and worry and doubt. I created stories about other people and what they were ‘doing’ to me. I connected things that were unrelated and turned them into ‘clues’ that something was going on. At one point, I distinctly remember being 100% convinced that I was going to get fired from work. Why? My boss had sounded different on the phone, and I was sure he was going to fire me. As it turns out, he was distracted because of something completely unrelated and had been having a hard time focusing. The story of me being fired was completely manufactured by…. me. For decades and decades I was my own worst enemy — things would always start really well… and then they’d come crashing down when I had the chance to think them into a hellish oblivion.

Most humans begin their life this way — as a young child, we learn ‘who we are’… we learn our name, and we begin to associate with the words ‘me’ and ‘mine’. As we do this we create the distinction between me and the other. We see ourselves as a separate, frail and unconnected being. Life, during that time, appears perilous and fragile at best. As we become more and more rooted in our own identity and as our individual wounds come into play, we find ways to create drama in even the most perfect environments. I’ve ruined amazing jobs… friendships…romantic relationships… and opportunities because I created stories that were completely imaginary. We can even create drama within ourselves. Are you feeling really happy and like everything is going perfectly? If you’re completely identified with your mind… give it a few weeks… and even if you were living in your dream house on a private island… you’d find something to create drama about.

For me, meditation was the key that unlocked the door to sensing the existence of myself not as ‘me’, but as a consciousness. I can’t recall exactly when or how it happened, but as I began the practice of meditation, I started to understand that there was me and there were my thoughts, which I was somehow able to ‘watch’. This begged the question: If I am the observer of my thoughts, does that mean that I am not my thoughts? And if so, who am I? The recognition that I am not my thoughts was the first time that a gap existed in my own consciousness — a tiny bit of space between me and the imaginary world that I had created in my mind. I started to see that my own consciousness was like a blank canvas, and the thoughts and experiences of my life were like streaks of paint on that canvas. Suddenly, conscious awareness crept into my mind and heart. The self-created drama started to dissipate, because I could recognize that the imaginary conversations and ideas that I was creating were not real. I began to feel a sense of peace and love, and I stopped talking to myself as much. During my meditations, while I have never been able to completely stop my mind from thinking, I had moments of pure awareness — simply sitting and being completely present.

The more that I practiced being present, the more that it started to creep into other areas of my day too. I found myself discovering moments of stillness in even the most ‘busy’ moments — a sense of timelessness that existed in every breath. While I remain far removed from the presence of a spiritual teacher like Eckhart Tolle, I currently believe that my daily experience of life ‘waffles’ back and forth between moments of unconscious (mind-identified) thought and conscious awareness. Usually, if I catch myself lost in my mind, I’m able to ‘snap’ myself out of it and come back to where I am. Of course, there is a usefulness to some mind activity — it’s obviously helpful for planning, writing, and doing other normal tasks. However, pointlessly projecting out into an imaginary future that is frightening to behold is exhausting, unnecessary and anxiety-inducing. I’m not always able to catch myself immediately, but usually, I can reel myself back to the present moment.

All of this is to say: while I don’t have any scientific basis for my answer, I do have personal experience and a basic understanding of the notion of consciousness. I also believe that consciousness is not something that can be conceptually understood by the human mind. The depth of our consciousness is something that defies explanation — it’s a remarkable miracle, and the mere fact that humans have the awareness of self that they do is mind-boggling to fathom. There is a beautiful line from Russell Brand’s interview with Eckhart Tolle that made me cry the first time I heard him say it. You can watch the whole interview here (if you get a chance, please watch it, it’s pretty profound), but the direct quote is this: “You are just a microcosm of the universe. When you realize the essence of who you are the universe is realizing its own essence through you, this little thing. It’s such an amazing thing. Why this is not common knowledge, I don’t know.”

A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to participate in a live virtual Q&A with Eckhart Tolle, and there is one thing that he mentioned during that session that has never left my heart. At one point, he was talking about the consciousness within a human body and he said that if a body were lying on the operating room table and somebody said, “Where’s Anastasia?” (using myself as the example here), not one person in the world could point to any specific part of me and say, decidedly, “This is Anastasia.” There is no amount of dissection or analysis of my physical body that could determine where I am in there. And when we, as humans, look into the eyes of another human — we are decidedly seeing something more than just a body. We are seeing the beingness and the consciousness of another person. Where is it? I don’t know. But it’s safe to say that there is something non-physical that makes us who we are. This is our consciousness that inhabits our body, albeit temporarily, during our lifetime.

Eckhart often talks about the difference between the ‘little me’ and the ‘Deep I’. The ‘little me’ is the ego — our mind-made ideas of who we are, based on our past. The ‘little me’ is our personal story. But, the observer — the ‘Deep I’ — is beyond that. The ‘Deep I’ exists as pure, conscious awareness. It is our essence — an unchanging energy that is the blank canvas upon which our lives are created. When we sleep, the ego and our consciousness temporarily recede. We slip below awareness and into a state of restorative rest. I don’t know exactly where we go — but I do know it’s very important. Without sleep, humans deteriorate very quickly. Consciousness is a strange thing, because it is the invisible building blocks of everything in the universe, and yet, it is simultaneously nothing. Physics might say that it has something to do with the energy in the quantum field. I’m not exactly sure how to do the math on that — and so, I’ll simply say that even though I might never be able to comprehend the nature of consciousness, I do know that I can feel it. I can feel it in the love that I know is real — in the stars I see in the sky — in the sense of awe and wonder that I feel when watching a sunrise. It is a feeling of connectedness to all things, and a deep inner-knowing that there is, truly, nothing to fear. It is a letting go of the worry and the doubt and the talk that imprisoned me in a self-made hell for many years… and the knowing that as I walk on this planet, I am a part of something that I may not be able to explain, but I can still know.

I’ll end with another Eckhart Tolle quote about consciousness, because I think it’s very fitting for this question — who we are is whole right now and there is nothing we need to become. We don’t need to understand exactly how we ‘work’ — but we can learn to feel it, sense it, and live our life from a place of acceptance and love:

“Give up defining yourself - to yourself or to others. You won't die. You will come to life. And don't be concerned with how others define you. When they define you, they are limiting themselves, so it's their problem. Whenever you interact with people, don't be there primarily as a function or a role, but as the field of conscious Presence. You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.”

Dear AMA,

What’s the strangest location you’ve hosted a Dance Experiment from?

I will start by saying that hosting the Dance Experiment is a little bit different than doing the Dance Experiment. Hosting the Dance Experiment requires a really good WiFi connection, so the places where I have hosted the Dance Experiment are very limited. In fact, I’ve only ever hosted the Dance Experiment from my mini former-Kula HQ garage and my neighbor’s back porch. Why my neighbor’s back porch? Well, once upon a time, we only had access to satellite internet at our house. We live in the middle of the woods, and had zero high-speed service available. The internet was so bad that I was using cellular data to do Zoom calls… and to make matters worse, our cell service was also so terrible that I had to sit outside in order to get enough reception for a call. In 2020, I hosted a class called Stuck To Summit, which was a 6 week coaching class that took place during the winter months. Since I didn’t have enough cell service in our house to host the call, I’d set my phone up on a tripod on our front porch… put a lightbulb on a stick in front of me to illuminate my face… and I bundled up in 3 down jackets to lead the call. I still remember some of the shocked faces of the attendees when they dialed into their call and saw me sitting outside in the middle of winter in multiple jackets with an unnatural fluorescent glow being cast across my face - ha!

Summit of Sauk Mountain at sunset, North Cascades.

In 2021, our neighborhood had a unique opportunity to install high-speed internet. Originally Comcast had given us a quote of $180,000 to dig a ditch and install fiber optic cable to our house — which was decidedly out of the question. However, through a strange series of events, a cell phone tower was getting installed above our home… which meant that two different crews were going to be, you guessed it, digging a huge ditch for fiber optic cables. With the help of a very knowledgeable neighbor, we purchased one mile of fiber optic cable and installed it in the ditch that was being dug for the AT&T cell tower (with their permission of course). This was a complicated and involved project, and as a result of it, I now know how to install a small fiber optic network!

Me, laying some of our fiber optic cable in the ditch!

The Dance Experiment — and any amount of virtual classes hosted by me — simply would not exist if we hadn’t installed that mile of cable. We now have high-speed Comcast internet at our house, and while we still have some ‘quirks’ with the system… it usually works flawlessly. Two summers ago, our internet failed for an unknown reason and we simply could not figure out why it wasn’t working. For nearly a month, I hiked down to my neighbor’s back patio on the days when I was leading the session so that I could host the call using their WiFi. Ultimately, we figured out that a bad media converter was the culprit and I’ve been back leading sessions from my little studio ever since.

When I don’t have to lead The Dance Experiment, I’m free to join the classes from anywhere… or do my personal dance session on my own. I’ve joined sessions from the middle of a deserted dirt road in Winthrop, WA while on vacation… and from random hotels and AirBNBs. I’ve been a part of our Dance Experiment group for so long, that I honestly miss it on days when I can’t attend live. If I don’t attend our group session, I always dance on my own no matter what — and I’ve danced in so many different places. I’m going to try and write down a comprehensive list, but keep in mind, I’m probably forgetting a lot of them:

• in a gazebo on an island in the middle of a lake in Rapid City, South Dakota

• on a Washington State Ferry

• in line waiting for the Ferry to arrive

• in an airport (SeaTac)

• at a gas pump (Safeway and Costco)

• in the Costco parking lot

• on the top of a boulder in the Glacier Peak Wilderness

• on the summit of Vesper Peak

• on a boulder in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness

• on a boulder in Mt. Baker Snoqualmie National Forest

• on a dirt road in Montana

• on the beach in Seaside, Oregon in the dark

• at the cell phone tower above my house

• on a tent platform on Orcas Island

• on a tent platform in Seven Lakes Basin, Olympic National Park

• at a school playground in Oregon

• at PCT Days

• at a backcountry lake in Montana

• in downtown Tacoma in the middle of the night

• rest stops along I-90

• in a canyon at Capitol Reef National Park

• in a canyon in Escalante, Utah

• at Quake Lake in Montana

• the summit of Sauk Mountain

• the summits of a lot of other mountains

• Artist Point at Mt. Baker

• down an aisle at Haggen’s grocery store in Lake Stevens

• Trader Joe’s vegetable aisle

• on a knoll overlooking Icicle Creek in Leavenworth, Washington

• on ‘Stage B’ at Cave B Winery

Aforementioned ‘Stage B’ at sunrise — I loved this stage so much!

I am sure that there are many more spots — but those are the only ones that I can remember off the top of my head. Each place that I’ve danced has been fun and different and has felt like a completely new and different experience. I never imagined that I’d ever be comfortable dancing in broad daylight in front of other people, but I’ve discovered that once I’m dancing, I don’t really care what anybody thinks. It’s more about being present, listening to the music, and having fun.

I’ve shared this story with the Dance Experiment folks before, but I’ll share it here too:

Many years ago, when I was a relatively unhappy person, I was driving around in my patrol vehicle during my job as a railroad police officer. I was on Ruston Way in Tacoma, when some movement on the sidewalk caught my eye. I was startled at what I saw: a woman dancing. Immediately, I had so many questions: Why was she dancing? And, most importantly, What did she have to be so happy about? I couldn’t possibly understand where that unbridled joy was coming from. Didn’t she know about all of the awful things going on in the world? How dare she dance so happily and freely! And yet, as I watched her, I felt something loosen within my heart — and I’m nearly positive that I felt a smile crack at the corners of my mouth. The joy that she was radiating had rippled — just a teeny bit — into my own life.

Olympic National Park - Seven Lakes Basin Loop

I remember that woman dancing to this day more than anything else that was going on in my life at that time — more than the things I was complaining about, my ‘miserable’ situation, or the drama that I was creating in my own mind. When I think back to patrolling the Tacoma area, my heart always comes back to remembering that one woman — who truly has no idea that I even saw her that day. I can still see the smile on her face and the absolute freedom and joy that shone from her heart as she swayed and bopped to the rhythm of life. I wondered at that moment if I could ever find a similar feeling of joy.

Seven Lakes Basin tent platform — Olympic National Park

Joy and happiness are not the same thing. Happiness is often based on external circumstances that are pleasing — but joy is an energy that we can create within our own hearts. It is something that we can create, despite any circumstance that we might be feeling or experiencing. It is the embodiment of love, shining forth from our own hearts in a beautiful way. When I dance, even if it’s been a tough day for whatever reason, I always feel joy. It doesn’t matter if I’m dancing at a gas station or on a boulder in a pristine wilderness — the beauty is always there and the feeling is always one of deep gratitude for life, in all of its various shapes and forms. I dance to be free. And, as that woman taught me many years ago, maybe I dance to free others too.

Friends, thank you all so much for being here and for continuing to ask such fun questions — it’s really a joy to answer them. If you have a question you’d like me to consider for an upcoming AMA column, you can submit it here anonymously. I am so grateful to each and every one of you, and I wish you ease, peace and joy in your day and in the week ahead. Sending you all a lot of love!