by meghanleborious | Oct 25, 2016 | Notes on Practice
“In short, no pattern is an isolated entity. Each pattern can exist in the world only to the extent that it is supported by other patterns: the larger patterns in which it is embedded, the patterns of the same size that surround it, and the smaller patterns which are embedded in it.” -Christopher Alexander
Today features a white sky and a steady rain. Although Brooklyn’s trees are still green, just a few hours north, where I am this weekend, the leaves have started to display their colors.
Last Tuesday night I attended the High Vibration Waves 5Rhythms class at the Joffrey in the West Village, taught this week by Peter Fodera. I had a bad cold with a headache and wasn’t sure what kind of energy I would have, but decided to go anyway to see what might happen.
Last weekend at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton with my six-year-old son, Simon, we talked about the artworks we encountered, trying to identify what might be the main conceptual concern for each artist. Encountering a Dan Flavin sculpture, which featured one, two and then three vertical, white fluorescent lights, I asked Simon what he thought this artist was mostly concerned with. He looked intently at the artwork, then quickly said, “Patterns. And math.” (He is getting pretty sophisticated, this small son. He also said this week, on riding his scooter down the block, “Ah! My back! I’m just not as agile as I was when I was three!”)
In the Flowing part of the class’s first wave, Peter encouraged us to “walk on every inch” of the floor, and to “look for the empty space.” I langored in this opening act, my feet whispering to the floor. Then, Peter invited us to “walk with someone for a while” and to “see their feet.” In Flowing, I love to be pushed and pulled along by the gestures and trails of the dancers around me, occasionally gliding in unison in a shared motion. I particularly love to step into Peter’s wake as he sails through the room—it is like drafting in the water behind a champion swimmer; and as the seas part for him I move in the space he opens up. I slipped from person to person. Even when I have a thought of where to go, something would interfere with my trajectory, and carry me into an entirely different direction. Peter’s next instruction, to “walk with someone” and “see their flow,” had the surprising effect of closing down the movement of the dynamic room. We just couldn’t seem to swoop in and out of each other, and instead became mired in partnerships in one small spot of floor as soon as we joined with another dancer.
When my energy is low, sometimes it is the energy of partnership that carries me through. In Chaos, and continuing through Lyrical and Stillness and the wave’s end, I joined with a dancer I had not danced closely with before. We moved into gentle contact, very much in the hands—in subtle, expressive communion. As our dance concluded, we touched our hands together and rocked back and forth, coming through the wave’s other side once again into Flowing.
In a different partnership during the class—this time with a dancer I was reluctant to partner with—I found myself backing away from him. In the process, I accidentally bumped into a woman behind me. I held onto her arm gently, wanting to express that I was sorry. She tore away from me with a furious snort, moving to the other side of the room.
In the second wave, Peter repeatedly instructed us to partner, then to find a repetition and carry it with us around the room, joining others in brief partnership. As we were moving from partner to partner, I crossed paths with a friend I had sought out but found unavailable earlier. We both smiled, stepping into each other. I am a very small woman; and this friend is a very tall man. He carries his size gracefully, but when I dance with him sometimes I wonder if he feels like he has to contain himself around so many smaller bodies. Absorbed in Lyrical, we did find repetitions, though from the outside, it might not have looked like it. Rather than big, easy-to-follow, repeating gestures as sometimes arise in Lyrical, we skittered down chains of intricately arranged repeating patterns, which would then shift and re-configure, taking form then never landing for long enough to be defined or understood. Our dance featured some bursting and chasing gestures, too. I would rise up on my highest toes, reaching for his height, wanting to be expansive along with him, then squiggle myself down and away. He laughed at my antics, joining in, too. After this long, intricate, layered exchange, we finally ended up doing the initial assignment—a simple repetition—grinning wildly as we both realized it, rocking back and forth.
We spoke for a few moments after class about our experience. “That was such a great dance! You just kept finding all of these patterns—all of this footwork—so intricate!” he said. His compliments opened the doorway to an obliquely procured insight, about one way that energy can be perceived and worked with, something I hadn’t considered before.
I accidentally bumped into the same woman I accidentally bumped into earlier in the class. Later, as we moved around the room, she glared into my eyes as she passed me, both arms raised, her elbows bent. I spent a few moments wondering if she might actually tell me off after the class. I’ve been there! I know how it is to be triggered by someone. And here I was triggering someone! I even prepared a response to the glaring woman in my fantasy version of our possible future exchange. I had two different versions, but in the one I preferred I would say, “I’m sorry I offended you. Thank you for the feedback.”
This conversation with my tall friend helped me find language for a category of repetitive motions that I have experienced in practice. One kind of repetition, I call “catching a glitch.” This can be emotional and personal. For example, when I first started dancing, I had been holding myself so tightly for so long that I found I needed to collapse to the floor again and again. Through all the collapsing, I was able to mine the gesture for insight, and eventually the pattern released me. This is when a repetition suddenly becomes compelling and you follow it along its fully trajectory to see what it has to teach. According to 5Rhythms teacher Kierra Foster Ba, Gabrielle Roth, the creator of the 5Rhythms practice, used to tell a story about a painful memory from babyhood that was lodged in her wrist—and that took years of working with to arrive at.
Another kind of repetitive motion—of pattern—is, I think, the kind identified by my tall friend. Perhaps in this case, the pattern that gets expressed is a tiny window into something that is bigger than any one of us. Perhaps it is something mundanely cosmic—the very movement of energy as it flows around and through us.
Three days later, at Tammy Burstein’s Friday Night Waves class, I arrived late, during the transition of Flowing into Staccato. I know how important it is to ground myself in Flowing, and lowered myself to the floor for a few brief moments. Sometimes, however, you have no choice but to step right into Staccato. On these occasions, all I can do is hope that all the Flowing I have practiced over the years has been integrated enough that I can rely on it. Tammy played a Michael Jackson song that I love. Instructed to partner in Staccato after just a few minutes of being in class, I joined with a smiling woman, actually singing the lyrics as we moved in joyful unison, expanding diagonally into the available spaces around us.
At work that afternoon, a colleague had “thrown me under a bus,” in my own words. When I told a friend about the incident, he said, “No, she didn’t just throw you under the bus. She tied you up in rope, rolled you into the street and then beckoned a bus to come toward you!” I was called into a meeting with supervisors, with no warning, no chance to work up to it, no chance to prepare. As I walked to the meeting, I correctly guessed its nature, and realized that I would have to step right into Staccato, praying for as much skillfulness as I could muster. I let this colleague speak, only expressing myself at key moments, as she dug herself a very big hole. It was truly remarkable. Sometimes, you have no choice but to step right in, and hope that your relationship to the ground is well enough established that it will carry you through, even when the stakes are high.
The valuable opportunity to practice stepping straight into Staccato gave way before long; and, by the end of the class, once again, I explored a new way of perceiving patterns of energy during dance. Moving again in Lyrical, I entered a partnership with a very practiced friend who seems to have a gift for seeing energy. Though I love to soar, this friend prefers to remain grounded in Lyrical due to the need to care for his knees; and I met him there. I experimented with resistance, dragging my feet slowly along the floor as part of the foundation of my gestures. As we transitioned to Stillness, I let go of the dragging feet, but instead found woven resistance residing in the spaces of the air, moving along with this partner, expressing, again, the energetic patterns in and around us.
October 19, 2016, Brooklyn, NYC
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and is not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.
Image: Fibonnacci Spiral children’s artwork published on afaithfulattempt.blogspot
by meghanleborious | Sep 22, 2016 | Notes on Practice
“Ouch!” one teenager cried out as another slammed her into the hallway wall, smiling not kindly, her arm shooting straight out from her shoulder as she passed, not even looking as she struck. The teen who got slammed walked not ten paces, then slammed another girl into the wall as she passed, using the same gesture she had been slammed with. Aggression seemed to be ricocheting around in rip currents.
On September 11, Daniela Peltekova taught the Sunday Sweat Your Prayers 5Rhythms class at the Joffrey Ballet in the West Village. Loving the extra space of Sunday’s class, I stretched out on the ground, rising and falling in the shape of a moving starfish. Daniela lead us through a very fast wave at the beginning of the class, wasting no time. Traveling around the room, I noted a little tourist tchotchke of the World Trade Center—part of the visuals for the class that a member of the crew had created—and remembered with remarkably little emotional charge that it was September 11th.
The music faded and Daniela began to speak, stepping into the middle of the room with all of us surrounding her, still standing. She expressed that the events of September 11 are unavoidably heavy—something that lives in our collective memory as New Yorkers whether we were actually there or not. Although I don’t recall her exact words, she also expressed that there was some aspect of beauty in it, too, something about pain and struggle that gives us grit—the inspiration to push deeper.
My own experience of September 11th feels remote by now, but it definitely marked my life indelibly. At the time, I was working in downtown Manhattan. I rollerbladed to work, as was my habit, and paused on the way to look at what I thought was a fire at the Bell Atlantic building. I even took out my sketchbook and did a few drawings, standing in the middle of the bike path that parallels the East River. Concerned I might arrive late to work, I continued on my way. It slowly began to dawn on me that things were not right. People seemed to be walking slowly in many different directions, some with white stuff (which I later realized was ash) on their hair and shoulders. Skating up Chambers Street behind City Hall, a man was yelling at the top of his lungs, “Get out! They’re lying to you! It’s terrorists! Get out! Save yourselves!” I moved more and more slowly, not processing the information fully. A few minutes after I heard the man yelling, I finally realized that I wouldn’t be going to work. I began to retreat and make my way north. Streams of people now seemed to have direction—they were also moving north, away from the World Trade Center. No one ran, no one screamed. Almost no one made eye contact. The scene devolved into silent slow motion.
I skated north, more or less. I had just given up my cel phone, believing it a passing fad that was having a negative impact on my consciousness, so I tried to use a payphone to call a girlfriend, my sister and my parents. The payphone just buzzed angrily—tied up with system overload. Skating in the East Village and on the Lower East Side while searching vaguely for a working payphone, radios were on everywhere. Many people stood beside their cars with the radio on, staring into space. Everywhere I went, people gathered in silence or walked north in droves.
Eventually, I made my way home to Brooklyn across the Williamsburg Bridge, skating slowly. Stranded and shell-shocked commuters made their way across the bridge on foot. A group of people stood silently on a section of the bridge just before the descent into Brooklyn where they could watch the two burning skyscrapers. Many hooked their fingers on the caged safety wire as they overlooked. I don’t remember anyone speaking. I went to my favorite café. There was a TV on the counter. No one was speaking. I went to the health food store on Bedford Avenue. There was a TV on the counter. No one was speaking.
I went home and climbed up to the roof. I had a full view of the burning towers from there, and stood watching as the first tower turned to toxic dust and crumpled, buckling sideways, then down. Nuns from a church on the next block stood on their own roof, also watching the building fall, their royal blue, full nun’s habits flapping in the wind, emphasizing their frozen gestures.
My mother’s hair turned white that day.
In the first wave, I had stepped cheerfully into partnership with a tall, white man. We began to dance together again just as Daniela began to speak. In concluding her remarks, Daniela invited us to turn to whoever was closest and join them. I smiled unshyly and stepped my foot next to his, by way of introduction. He stepped his foot in relation to mine. I stepped again, turning my foot and noticing how much darker my skin was than his—tanned from a summer spent outside. In this case, we moved in Stillness first, gently around each other, back to back, side to side, rising and falling in response to silent currents in and around us. Then, we moved together into Flowing and into Staccato, receding and advancing, smiling and looking into each other’s eyes.
A friend cut in then. Bereft, she clung to me, sobbing. I held her tightly and rocked with her side to side, wondering if she was feeling the post-trauma of September 11th.
The music got heavy, resistant, hard with only short bits of rest. One song lead me back and forth between dragging, clawing, harsh gestures to brief, uncompressed, spacious movement. I was deep in the hips, gyrating and jiggling. I thought of the song, “My Name is NO!” that I had spent the week dancing to along with my six-year-old son, who has developed an entire choreographed staccato routine to the tune, including a dramatic spin with a hard end-stop.
Chaos was a collective exorcism; and on this day there was no way around it but through. It went on and on and on, sometimes spiking in intensity, but holding back from Lyrical. An idea for a project I have been wanting to make burst through; and I got excited about new possibilities.
I very much wanted to dance with a friend I had met several times in an interesting pocket a few months before—a tiny, contained dance of precision and restraint. He did not seem available, and I stepped into another partnership, realizing that the same unique, quirky dance I was sharing with him came into my partnership with the woman I was then dancing with, as he continued to dance nearby. I thought about how much energy slips around, how mercurial it is, how much we are subject to the currents that race through us.
On September 11th after I watched the first tower fall, I skated to Woodhull Hospital to volunteer. There, I found empty, parked ambulances and paramedics leaning on them with crossed arms. No volunteers were needed, as there were so few survivors. I lingered for awhile, then skated to Prospect Park and looped it again and again on the bike path, watching the smoke rise across the river and hearing the rush of military fighter jets racing overhead.
When Daniela finally lead us to Lyrical, we tipped right over the edge of Chaos and found flight. It contained the beauty that can only arise from maturity, from the clarification of intense pain and perhaps from opening—instead of closing down—to grief, sadness, fear and insecurity.
September 18, 2016, Brooklyn, NYC
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and is not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.
by meghanleborious | Aug 26, 2016 | Notes on Practice
“Take a minute to notice what you’re arriving with,” said 5Rhythms teacher Amber Ryan as she started the Sweat Your Prayers class today with a long, attenuated period of tonal music. I found a spot on the floor in the northeast corner of the studio, nearest to the home of the late Gabrielle Roth—the founder of the 5Rhythms practice. As the music unfolded, Amber also encouraged us to set an intention for our dance today, and to offer as many prayers as occurred to us during the dance. Instantly, a flurry of prayers arose, ending with the simplest and most complex of prayers—a wish for self love.
I lay on back, and drew my legs gently in to my torso, noting a sore back, and resolving to move gently to avoid injuring it further. On Friday, before Tammy’s Friday Night Waves class I had made the same resolution. That day, I had carried a heavy backpack all day, assisting with a field trip for my six-year-old son, Simon’s, camp, then traipsed around with him after. On the way home, he crashed his bike into the sidewalk and I had flung myself off my bike to run to his aid. My neck hurt, my back hurt.
Shortly after I began to move in Friday’s class, the pain disappeared completely. In fact, the neck pain was totally gone until yesterday afternoon when I got a $175 parking ticket—at which point the pain returned with a vengeance. The back pain stayed disappeared until a giant wave knocked Simon and me over at the beach, after we had been playing and diving over and through the waves for nearly an hour. Alone, I would just release and let the wave toss me around until I found which way was up, but Simon is an emerging swimmer; and (despite his protestations) I clung to his swim shirt, holding on as the wave overtook us, moving heavily into my back again during this maneuver (though we ended with tumbling smiles).
Today for the Sweat Your Prayers class I shared the elevator to the 5th floor dance studio with a friend. “How are you?” I asked. She said, “Well, I can finally make eye contact,” and explained that she’d been very sad recently. “I did wonder when I saw you on Friday if there might be something going on.” I had danced up to her, usually a joyful encounter, but she kept her eyes down, her head tilted forward. I got the message immediately that she wanted privacy and moved to give her the space she seemed to need.
There is so much information in the way we use our eyes. Early in my dance career, I thought it would be rude to make direct eye contact with other dancers, like it would be an intrusion, and might break the aesthetic trance they were immersed in. Now, it is when I feel like I need to keep to myself that I avert my eyes. Or if for some reason I can’t or don’t want to invite someone in. Or if I am listening carefully to something that is going on inside. I note with interest that the people who partner the most seem also to be the people who make the most eye contact. Lately, I make gentle eye contact with everyone I encounter, even people I pass on the street. Some days, I feel like everyone in New York and I are in on a private joke, our eyes glittering with the juiciness of it.
After considerable time stretching in gentle circles, I attained my feet and began to move slowly through the room, staying out of my edges completely, especially the edges in my back. I set the intention to see everyone, saying silently, “I see you there; and I am grateful for it.” (A meditation adapted from a practice taught by the Zen master, Thich Nhat Hahn.) I looked up from my looping circles, meeting some eyes and not meeting others, but taking the time to notice each person. The point was not eye contact, but seeing, noticing and acknowledging the presences of the people in the room. The slow, thick music continued for some time as each of us found our individual ground, and as we established a ground as a class.
Pain did not disappear so much as fade from the front of my experience. I still felt a bit of tenderness in the back, but as I released into the wave it was a far-off echo. I marveled at this. Once, I was barely able to walk I was so gimped from dancing ferociously on the first day of a three-day workshop. Somehow I hobbled into the studio on day two, unable to imagine how I could possibly move. Miraculously, as soon as the music started, the experience of physical pain completely reversed. I spent the remaining two days alternating between soaring and flying; and the pain never returned. The biographer of Dipa Ma, a highly realized teacher in the Buddhist Vipassana tradition who did not begin meditation practice until after the age of 40, wrote that before learning to meditate, Dipa Ma experienced such intense physical and emotional pain—including a severe heart problem—that she could only drag herself to the monastery temple where she would practice meditation by crawling up the stairs. After learning meditation, she walked upright, free of pain.
This is not to stay that 5Rhythms practice always makes pain disappear, certainly the opposite has happened to me, too; but I am grateful and amazed for the times that pain has suddenly left me, and wonder about the mechanisms of pain’s disappearance.
Another related example occurs to me. I have had the experience on many occasions that I have been on a chilly beach or other inspiring outdoor site practicing sitting meditation. I might meditate for an hour or more in these cases. Immediately after I decide that I am “done” meditating, the cold rushes in, the wind starts to bite, and I can no longer bear to be subject to the elements. What would it be like if, like Dipa Ma, I could sustain whatever was happening during the “official” period of meditation and generalize it to other areas of my life? And, significant to our consideration here, what are the internal and external factors at play when pain totally disappears as soon as I step in to the dance? (In other words, how can I get me some more of that!)
Once the long, slow arriving began to transform, the class picked up like a windstorm. As Amber told us at the end, she led us through four consecutive mini-waves in the two-hour class. (In contrast, most two-hour waves classes feature just two waves, separated by a break between the two.)
I noticed that I often decide to hold myself back in a given rhythm before charging on to the next one, especially with Flowing. Today, I wasn’t always aware of which rhythm we were in. I thought I really needed to work on something in Staccato; and when I finally let myself leave Flowing and move into Staccato, it seemed like I barely registered Staccato as Staccato before we were moving into Chaos.
The big, nasty parking ticket the day before gave me some insight into aspects of Staccato that I need to repair. I was on a beach trip to celebrate my friend’s birthday and she suggested her favorite beach. We saw a line of cars parked on the side of the road. Also, farther down, a red sign that said, “No Standing.” My friend went to ask the people in a car ahead of us if they knew it was a legal place to park. “We’ve never been here before actually. But they can’t tow all of us!” was their jocular response. Though squeamish, I wanted to honor my friend’s birthday wish; and we gathered our things for the long walk to Fort Tilden Beach. Returning a few hours later, though I was happy to find that the car had not been towed, my smile faded seconds later when I found a prison-orange parking ticket crammed under the driver’s side windshield wiper. Two separate violations were checked—totaling $175.
I knew it was a bad idea. I got the message from my body. My friend would not have cared at all if I said, “This is not a good idea. Let’s go to the other beach instead.” Instead, perhaps influenced by an internalized voice of someone who was close to me for a long time, I wanted so much to be NOT controlling that I overdid it. I knew the best course of action, but I swallowed it. The problem was not so much about having the confidence to speak, as it was about having the confidence to own my knowledge and intuition, instead of talking myself out of it for some stupid identity reason. Not just getting the message, but clearing the channel into proper expression—the skillful application of Staccato.
Lately, I have been considering the continuum between following what feels like intuition and fully taking on each rhythm as it comes, even when it seems counter-intuitive. Since today I often didn’t know which rhythm we were in, the only thing I could do was move with what felt right.
Although I have fallen in love with Flowing and with the ground in recent years, sometimes the mandate of finding the ground feels like a heavy responsibility. I know that if I don’t take the time to really find the ground—what is a better way to put this? I know if I don’t take the time to fully arrive in my body and in my senses, and take the time to slow down and open my awareness to how my own body relates with the environment I exist in—that it is not responsible to move on to another rhythm. That would be to risk causing harm. The ground—and I mean ground in this broad sense—is what protects you and the people around you. Until you find the ground, as Jonathan Horan, Gabrielle Roth’s son and the current holder of the 5Rhythms lineage said, “There is no point in moving on.” I’m not sure why, for me, sometimes, I make it into a “should,” rather than just receiving it as a blessing. It’s kind of like being in a conversation and just waiting to get your point in, rather than patiently listening to the other person’s words. Committing to finding the ground first even when I want to charge ahead to Staccato and to Chaos is an example of taking on the rhythms and experimenting with resisting my automatic responses, rather than always going with what feels comfortable. I think the trick is to distinguish between the pull of conditioned responses and the wisdom of intuition—a key distinction that will be different in every new set of circumstances.
Chaos—off and on—as it came, was delightful today. Continuing to stay out of my edges, I was as totally released as I can be at this time. We are often taught that Chaos is a fusion of Flowing and Staccato; and today my version of Chaos was much closer to Flowing, though without any of its weight. As we moved into Lyrical, I noticed not only the friend I had seen in the elevator crying, but many others crying, too. Though I avoided the deep arcing bows into the ground that I so love, I found glorious flight, high onto my toes, twittering and soaring, at once quirky and extended, aloft, majestic.
I stepped into a smiling dancer who is new to me and started to cry myself, like so many in today’s class. The fronts of her shoulders were exceptionally open. I tried on her gesture, and realized how much you have to open the front shoulders to release the heart. I continued to experiment with the generous arm and shoulder gestures that were inspired by this brief dance for the rest of the class. I also noticed that my diaphragm, which is a part of my body where I typically hold stuck energy, was released today. That spot has not fully let in air for a very long time, but today it was open, clean.
There was something of a pause after one of the Stillnesses; and I began to move in circles with a friend. Amber marked the start of this wave, beginning an instruction with, “As the end becomes the beginning again…” Both of us spun, moving more quickly than much of the honey-slow room. Her spine undulated, released in all directions. Collectively, the exchange went up several notches and we both broke into open-mouthed smiles as our spins began to find weight and we stepped in and out, behind and around, still moving in unending circles. As the song shifted toward Staccato, my friend moved to the other side of the room. Smiling, I followed her for one more pass. As Flowing transitioned to Staccato, I stepped into the field of another friend, very close, extremely gently. We found a tiny, timeless pocket of Stillness, breathing so fully it seemed breathless, sharing a minute portal; then we each spun back into the collective field.
Amber invited us to return to the intention that we set at the beginning as the class drew to a close, the room joyful, moving out of a drum-heavy Hindu chant. In the final phase of Stillness, I moved unselfconsciously, silently enacting an energetic Buddhist practice that feels like home for me.
Amber concluded the class with a ritual (one of her great strengths as a teacher). We sat in a large circle, then Amber asked us to notice the person to our left and the person to our right. We then were told to hold our left hand facing up and our right hand facing down, so they lined up with our neighbors’ hands, without actually touching. We sat there, receiving and offering, generating energy and filtering everything through the heart, for a few minutes.
Self love seemed more available. Pain seemed unimportant. The world seemed workable. My heart felt full. The circle dissolved, the class dissolved.
In the hall, I saw the friend I had taken the elevator with before class who shared that she had been terribly sad. She was smiling even as she pulled a clean shirt over her head, shining, apparently pain free, or at least having a break from it.
“Sweat your prayers, dance your pain and move on.” –Gabrielle Roth
August 22, 2016, NYC
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and is not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.
by meghanleborious | Aug 24, 2016 | Notes on Practice
Heat lightning ripped through the grey-purple sky as I was driving to the Friday Night Waves class. Looking down my Brooklyn street to the East River a bolt jagged to the right and down, next to a looming metal crane. Crossing the blue expanse of the Manhattan Bridge, lightning danced in fractured lines on both sides of me. I felt sure the sky would explode with rain at any moment, though the clouds only managed to squeeze out a few frustrated drops.
In the week leading up to the class and in the days following, the entire city wilted. Even bodies usually kept concealed have emerged and the edges of our garments have crept toward their seams. I have been doing errands in a bra and skirt, for example; and I did yoga today in a bathing suit. My parents came to visit and we all had a slumber party in the one air conditioned room of the apartment. Nearly everyone has a similar dominant experience; and the heat is the main topic of conversation everywhere. I love the feeling of shared challenge and the remarkableness of it, but it has definitely been intense.
A few days before the class, I had a dream in which I knew that I was dying. Some of my friends were going on a bike ride in the heat. Though I was tempted to join, I opted to conserve my energy instead and write notes to everyone I love. Lately, I have felt a generalized dissatisfaction, like I should be doing something other than what I am doing, like I am craving something that I can’t quite pinpoint. I had a painful insight that when I get edgy with my six-year-old son, Simon, because he is taking too long to do a task, the root of my edginess is really a fear of failure. Fear that if I waste time, I will fail to create markers of my experience and identity. That I will die anonymous and therefore succumb completely to death—total annihilation. The dream seemed to re-set my priorities, and I experienced a deepening of meditation practice. I remembered, if only briefly, that now is my only hope.
I hadn’t realized that Tammy would be away this week; but I was happy to see Kierra Foster Ba at the teacher’s table in her place. The air conditioners were on, but it was HOT. Seriously hot. Again, like many, I wore less clothing than usual. Stepping in, I bowed to the room and to the practice, then found a spot on the floor to stretch. I was quickly called to movement, casting into curving, arcing gestures. I found myself doing my current version of breakdancing—athletic circling, rising and falling, putting as much weight on my hands as on my feet, moving in unending circles and arcs.
I would have thought that breakdancing would appear in Staccato, as I see it as edgy and expressive, but for me it has only ever appeared in Flowing. I recall an episode that happened not long after I started dancing the 5Rhythms—at a gallery event that turned into an all-night dance party. One of the biggest obstacles I faced in the beginning of my 5Rhythms path was that I was painfully constricted—trying very hard not to be too big, too unruly, too attention-getting—trying to keep a lid on my explosive inner Chaos. Having just fallen in love with 5Rhythms, I danced every bit as gigantic as I felt. And everyone else did, too! I realized that it is possible that dancing every inch of my dance (not to be confused with dancing gigantic just to get everyone’s attention) could give everyone else permission to dance every inch of their dance, too. A moment from the gallery dance party that lives delightfully in my memory was when I did the worm across the entire length of the gallery, jumping to my feet in peals of laughter at the opposite wall, amongst friends, who also delightfully trotted out their favorite moves.
Taking to my feet, I flowed through the room with the intention of seeing everyone in attendance. I thought of a man I met earlier in the day in downtown Brooklyn. He sat on the sidewalk, with a money-request-cup and a sign that listed the important events of his life. “Father died. Grandmother died…” There was also a copy of a newspaper article, “Boy Survives Fall Out of 6th Story Building.” “Are you the boy that fell out the window?” I asked. He looked at me and nodded and his words began to tumble out. I realized how much he wanted to be seen, and thought about how true that is for most of us. Wanting to be seen. Really seen. Not just looked at. Holding my brand new baby niece, I thought about that fundamental human wish again, as she opened her tiny eyes and in just a few moments of concentrating her tiny baby gaze, seemed to see all of me, everything that is important about me, completely.
Flowing lead to Staccato before long. I noted that my right foot had a slight flatness, in comparison to its usual articulation, but it didn’t stop me from jumping into partnership after partnership—including with one lanky friend who always challenges me to stretch upward and into the farthest reaches of my limbs.
My top lip curled ever so slightly in response to an outburst of yelling from one corner of the dance floor. Kierra picked up the microphone right away and said, “This is a spiritual practice. There is no talking.” I am often impressed by Kierra’s non-didactic approach, and on this occasion I was just as impressed by her pointedness.
Chaos in the first wave found me energetic, spinning, loose. Kierra played a track with tribal chaos rhythms mixed with a riff from Buena Vista Social Club; and I responded with enthusiasm and vigor despite the fact that I was already drenched with sweat.
In the context of the current presidential campaign season, my father has been saying, “In public life, there are two kinds of people: those who want to be somebody great, and those who want to do great things.” This quote came to mind as Kierra began to speak in the interlude between the first and the second wave of the class. “This is not a performance,” she said. “This is a spiritual practice. It’s for you. Not for anyone else. I challenge you to move beyond your self-consciousness, to not worry at all about how you look.” I don’t think she was talking about self-consciousness just as shyness (as it often implies) but, rather, self-consciousness in the sense that you are very preoccupied with how others are seeing you, perhaps losing the center and depth of your own experience in the process.
Kierra stepped forward to demonstrate through moving what a 5Rhythms wave looked like for her in that moment. She moved with grace and vigor as she explained to the eight brand new dancers in the room (and to the rest of us) that the gateway to Flowing is the feet; and that Flowing is characterized by unending, circular movement. She began to move more sharply and to forcefully exhale. “Staccato is really the opposite of Flowing. It is directional, angular. It is a good place to practice having good boundaries.”
At this point, Kierra digressed productively, encouraging us to fully take on the 5Rhythms, “especially if you have a strong will, and you always want to do things your way. For example, you might want to be in the beat, but it’s Flowing—so you flow; and see what’s there, in your flow. See what’s there for you.” The suggestion to fully take on the 5Rhythms is, in my experience, incredibly useful advice. In addition to Kierra, I have heard this theme emphasized by 5Rhythms teachers countless times, including Amber Ryan, Peter Fodera, and certainly by Tammy Burstein. There are times that it is skillful to track the minute shifts of energy that take place moment by moment and to follow every fleeting impulse, but more often, part of the discipline of practice—the seeds that eventually yield the harvest—is to take on the 5Rhythms fully, with the intention of being curious and seeing what comes. It is especially in the receptivity or resistance to a given rhythm that we mine for insights—information we would never uncover if we were always to simply follow our immediate, conditioned impulses.
Demonstrating the requisite release of the head in Chaos, Kierra said something I had never heard before: that we have some sort glands both in our foot pads and in our necks that release endorphins, which is one reason circling the head and neck are important in several religious traditions—such as Sufi whirling. This made perfect sense to me, as I have often been flooded with delightful natural chemicals in the throes of Chaos.
The release of my neck has been one of life’s little miracles. When I first began 5Rhythms, my neck was totally locked. At the end of a yoga class, it was agony to lay prone on the floor because it was so pinched. Instructors often asked, “Are you ok like that? Really?” Gradually, thanks to the 5Rhythms, my neck began to free itself. As it becomes more and more free, moving sometimes with alarming intensity in the rhythm of Chaos, so too, does my mind seem to grow more free. Whenever I feel discouraged by lack of progress on my path, the relative freedom of my neck reminds me of how far I have traveled, how ripe I am for catharsis, and how readily it comes.
Continuing with the litany of the rhythms, the rhythm of Lyrical, Kierra said, “Will look different for everyone.” All the rhythms will look different for everyone! But Lyrical in particular, since in Lyrical we let go of the letting go (of Chaos) and our innate patterns begin to emerge.
Kierra shared an example that Gabrielle Roth, the creator of the 5Rhythms practice, used to offer at workshops. Gabrielle said she would occasionally be washed over with sadness, even when she was in the throes of joy. Over time, she was able to locate the energy of this particular sadness to her wrist. Finally, after working with the sadness for a long period, she got the memory connected to it. As Kierra put it, “She was very young, pre-verbal even, and she had been told to wave good-bye to her father. She was bereft because she didn’t understand that he was coming back. She thought she was waving good bye to her father forever.”
As she moved on to demonstrate Stillness, Kierra said, “Sometimes when people first come to the 5Rhythms, they see a big, fun dance party. And it is that! It is that. But it is also so much more.” Kierra explained that once you faithfully go through all of the rhythms, eventually you will get to a trance. She recalled something Gabrielle would often say, “The body is begging bowl for spirit.” In that place, according to your beliefs and experiences, you will be moving with something much larger than yourself. For example, for Kierra, she becomes aware that she is moving along with her ancestors. This is very much true for me, too. It is in Stillness that I realize I have an entire spirit entourage, that I am not alone in this existence. I have often heard Kierra talk about being interested in “going deep” in practice, and as I reflect on her comments now I wonder if it is precisely this field she has been pointing toward.
Like nearly everyone in the room, I ended the night in a sweaty puddle on the floor that has held me literally hundreds of times. Kierra concluded the class with one of Gabrielle’s most famous quotes, and one of my personal favorites,
“Do you have the discipline to be a free spirit?”
August 14, 2016, Brooklyn, NYC
Image from derrickniehaus.deviantart.com.
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and is not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.
by meghanleborious | Jul 17, 2016 | Notes on Practice, Uncategorized
-
Yesterday we woke to blue skies for the first time since we have been in Ireland. After dropping my son, Simon, off at camp, I set out to explore the local beach again, hoping to find a place to dance. Given the fair weather, there were several people enjoying the beach and I didn’t feel comfortable dancing there. Because it is exceedingly dangerous, I’ve sworn off the unprotected cliff path that departs from the east end of the beach, despite its compelling beauty. I spotted a different cliff path at the west end of the beach and decided to at least try it. This time, most of the path was set back from the cliff’s edge (with the exception of one short section) and I felt more at ease. The vast horizon was striated with deep emerald and turquoise water. Views from the cliff walk included huge rock formations topped with greenery, toppled boulders, squared green fields, rock walls and the endless crashing waves far below.
Absolutely by chance, on the secluded cliff path I ran into a childhood schoolmate of the friend who is hosting us and we chatted briefly. “I think it is a little bit dangerous up here. There has been a lot of erosion lately,” she shared. I nodded and told her that I decided I wouldn’t go on the other cliff path anymore; and that I am trying to play it safe, given a number of holiday calamities.
Reaching the end of the cliff path, I saw a beautiful, unpeopled beach far below. There were only sheer cliffs in front of me and there didn’t seem to be a way down, so I decided to try to reach it by way of the road. Returning, I avoided the one very dangerous section of path by detouring through a heavily prickled patch. I turned off the path and walked through a field, hoping I could avoid returning all the way to the beach I’d started at, but a wire fence that I feared might be electrified blocked my way. I returned to the beach where I’d started, then turned onto the road and tried to find the secret beach. I regretted my choice to walk, as a long section of the road was treacherous for pedestrians, but I jogged along in my flipflops, hoping to get out of the way before any cars came barreling along. I got off the road as soon as I could, then walked parallel to it through someone’s field. Again, I reached a dead end, totally blocked by impassable shrubs and brambles. Determined still, I returned to the cottage and got into the car. Driving west, I spotted a nearly concealed, unmarked road in the middle of a hairpin turn and turned onto it.
The graveled parking lot was at a 45-degree angle and I made sure to engage the parking brake to the last possible “click” before getting out and gathering my things. This was, surely, the secret beach that I had seen from the cliff path. Despite the first-in-many-days blue sky, there wasn’t a single person besides me.
There were two graphic signs on the stairs leading to the beach below indicating falling rocks and strong currents. The stairs were made of concrete with big, coarse rocks cast inside, and were very, very steep. The first flight was relatively intact with the exception of a few crumbles, but on the second flight the stairs were severely eroded, smoothed almost to a flat ramp in some places by powerful high tides.
The beach itself was remarkable. Soaring and crumbling cliffs formed its north face, with fields and endless plants and grasses visible above them. Green-topped rock islands jutted into the sea at both its ends. Rocks and boulders were cast throughout the water, causing the powerful waves to act erratically. Thankfully, it was near low tide, since based on the most recent high tide line, the beach would be treacherous at high tide, if at all accessible. On a stormy day at high tide, the waves could reach the top of the long stairs, pummeling the cliffs and beach and making access impossible.
Looking up, I could see the crumbling cliffs with the turf edging hanging down like thick carpeting. I resolved once again, firmly, to stay off of high cliff paths that are right on the edges of cliffs.
I wasn’t totally sure what stage the tide was at, and I eyed the sea warily. This is dragon land, without question. I ventured a short way down the beach, but chose a spot to dance that was a short sprint away from the steep, cement stairs in case high tide came in fast. I made a circle of stones for myself and also noted a cluster of round stones a short distance in front of me. If the sea reached those stones, I decided, I would call it day and head for the stairs, no matter what phase of the 5Rhythms wave I was in at that point.
I broke the crusty surface of the warm sand with my bare feet. As with the previous day, moving brought tears almost immediately. I don’t know how long I was in Flowing, but I do remember that it was characterized by totally unselfconscious, fluid movement. In Staccato, I moved along the beach so I could dance on the unbroken sandy crust instead of in the sand that was already churned up by my circling feet in Flowing. I felt a tiny bit restrained. Respectful of the danger around me. Chaos, as in the previous days, was slightly restrained, also. I endeavored to release my head, but never moved with wild abandon. In Lyrical, I traced the gliding movements of birds with my hands while raised up onto my high toes, seeking sections of unbroken sand to help with lifting upward.
Stillness in the first wave took its time. I let in the energy of everything around me—cliffs, ocean, sky—and it was almost overwhelming. I had the thought that if you really let in the reality of the absolute, you let in the reality of your own death, too, and let in the reality that those you love will one day die. I staggered a little at the enormity of it, and at the wondrous enormity of the landscape around me. Perhaps that is why it can be so frightening. Sometimes. For me.
One of the biggest benefits of practicing independently is that I can really work with the mercurial shifts of energy as they arise. I realize that (in previous days) it made no sense to “hold” myself in Flowing. The fact is that even once I did move into Staccato, I moved back into Flowing many times. It wasn’t an all-or-nothing thing. Even when I got to Chaos, I still found myself going back to Flowing. I have often felt that I needed to keep myself in Flowing longer than felt intuitive so I could be responsible and find the ground beneath me before taking on any other investigation. Here, the stakes were different. I needed to attend to the many small subtle shifts of energy as I fluctuated between different rhythms. And in doing so, the energy of the land started to reveal itself to me.
It was not what I expected, to say the least. The land or anything else about Ireland. I have contemplated my relationship to this place at length. My Irish American grandmother and aunties were very Irish identified, but as I became an adult, I related uncomfortably to this heritage. I can see how identifying strongly helped them to feel empowered (perhaps in the face of discrimation), to connect with their families and community, and to find meaning and purpose. For me, though, several generations removed, taking it on has felt more like an identity decision, not a real connection to a living culture. Before this trip, I thought, “Perhaps I could connect with this lineage in a real way, and claim this one of many parts of who I am.” I felt strong emotion in the Waterford museum in Dungarven reading about the famine, the independence movement, the seafaring history. And in talking with one well-dressed, sweet, old Irish lady, who strongly remembled my now-gone beloveds. And again, at a country fair, seeing teenagers in a dance performance—jaunty, alive, lyrical. The peasant history, the mystical strains, the aching land. I know all of this in my body. And yet I have felt distant. And more afraid here. I hope I haven’t betrayed my ancestors. My heart wants to be open, though. Perhaps there will be a breakthrough.
The second wave emerged organically. Again, in Flowing I moved in linked, concentric circles, totally unselfconsciously. I found a melody that has appeared in independent practice again and again, feeling like an ancient song. Since I was totally by myself (except for one lone man in a blue jacket, a tiny dot far on the other side of the beach), I sang it with full force. It morphed into a chant—an homage to the sun that had tremendous density and power, and that persisted for most of the second wave. A thread of Stillness passed through as I danced with five black birds who soared together overhead—crossing, dipping, and gliding. The gestures of Chaos arose totally from the angles of my feet in the already agitated sand. In Lyrical, I again found lift, in my own joyful version of Irish step dancing. In Stillness, I let the waves pass through me; and at the end of the wave, I sat briefly in meditation, cross legged on a towel on the sand.
Today, I went again to this achingly beautiful, secret beach. First, I carefully checked the tide charts, since I did not want to be caught far from the stairs in a rising tide. This time, the sky was not blue, but white; and I walked west instead of east. The horizon was a vague shift in densities. Although according to the tide chart I should be ok for over an hour, I continued to fear the possibility of a quickly rising tide and watched the sea carefully. I explored at length, passing the first open beach to a set of giant rocks that would surely be islands at high tide, and on to another open beach (this one with black sand) and to another set of giant rocks. Everyone makes such a big deal about the greenness of Ireland, but here, the power of Ireland’s ancient rocks and stones presented. The stones became anthropomorphic as they began to reveal themselves, and I saw not only people, but animals and otherworldly creatures. I shot them with the phone camera like I was doing portraits; and they revealed themselves even more.
I crossed paths and chatted briefly with the man in the blue jacket that I had glimpsed far down the beach the day before. I noticed that he was attractive and we chatted about the weather. He asked if I planned to swim. In keeping with my recently established personal guidelines about safety, I asked, “Is it safe to swim here?” He said, pointing, “Well, you don’t go out too far, just in that part there.” I didn’t fully take it in, believing the sea much too cold, and said, “Well, have a great morning!” and moved on.
I finally had my fill of exploring, and selected a place close to the sea-damaged escape stairs. In fact, I found another cement staircase and the remains of a man-made walkway that had been totally pummeled and melted by the sea. I fell in love with it—this sturdy man-made creation that was easily felled by the raging power of the ocean. It was both humbling and heartening. Humbling because of the failed hubris of creating human structures on this wild beach. Heartening because nature so quickly reclaimed and restored itself in the face of human intervention—making our constructed foibles look like mere flashes in the pan.
In Flowing, I was happy and at ease. I felt no exertion, no inertia and no self. In Staccato, I felt no urgency or strain.
I saw the man I had spoken with swimming far down the beach, and began to feel like we were sharing a dance. After a long while in Flowing, I realized he had finished his swim and was standing by the escape stairs, drying off and watching me. This was an interesting development. I let Staccato emerge fully, rushing into space far beyond the original circle that I occupied in Flowing, some bold back cross-steps and deep squatting gestures working their way in, as I grew taller, smiling and engaging fully with the sometimes conflicting gestures of breaking waves. I kept glancing at the man, very aware that he was watching, but never made eye contact with him. I wanted to speak with him, to connect with him, but I lost my chance. As Staccato transitioned, I saw that he was walking up the stairs. I had suspected that he was naked but at this time it was confirmed. I waved good-bye to him, wishing he would come back and telling myself, “Oh well, he’s probably married anyway, like almost everyone in Ireland.”
This got me to thinking of physical love, and of the many memorable lovers I have met in my travels over the years. I thought about another beach meeting, near Puntarenas, Costa Rica. In that instance, I was on a long vision quest on the beach, lone, ecstatic, far from the village I was staying in, when a beautiful man literally rode up on a black horse, stopped short and said, “I want to dance with you!” Yes, I said, “Como no?” (Ironically, I never had sex with the horse riding man, who I quickly fell in love with, but instead entered into a primal tryst with an itinerant surfer from Argentina who sold jade jewelry to tourists and lived in a lean-to on the beach.)
For a spell, I was distracted from my senses. Chaos did not so much arrive as support my intention to complete the wave. Spinning, I quickly grew dizzy on the tilted plane of the beach, then found a familiar way of moving in Chaos that I realized is just a very articulated and weighted way of spinning. I moved in and out of Chaos, Lyrical and Stillness again and again, letting the flow of energy have its way.
This place, where two twisting strands of my ancestors hail from, is not what I expected. The pre-digested Ireland of cartoon leprechauns and Blarney Stone kisses is only a tiny piece of the story. In reality, it is much scarier. Much darker. Incredibly beautiful. And still, totally foreign.
July 16, 2016, Annestown, Co. Waterford, Ireland
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and is not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.
