I just found a new doorway from Chaos into Lyrical.
For years, I couldn’t find my way to Lyrical. It was like I was wandering around in a dark forest and would sometimes come to a blue-sky clearing, but it popped up at random times, and I certainly didn’t know how to find my way back there.
When I find a new doorway in individual practice, it feels like a celebration. When I find a new doorway that I can also communicate and share and teach, it feels like a revelation.
In Tibetan Buddhism, terma is an ancient teaching that is concealed until people are ready to receive it. There are even stories of spiritual teachers opening up a hole in the sky and secreting a scroll inside it until the time is right. Sometimes I wonder if terma could be just as much a teaching that arrives in the body, perhaps after waiting patiently to be unlocked when conditions are ripe.
Last night I made my way to my parents’ house in Northern Connecticut to help out with my Dad’s campaign for a local office. It was Halloween and I expected traffic, but I didn’t hit a single delay. Then I slept peacefully through almost the entire night–a rare treat.
Today, before heading to the river to dance, I visited my garden. Everything was dry and colorless except one bright green and red swiss chard plant, which seemed oblivious to the turning of the year toward winter.
I took out my phone to take a picture and saw a calendar alert that startled me. Oh no! I forgot about an important appointment that I requested just yesterday! By the time I saw the alert it was too late.
My mood plummeted. I started beating myself up. When will I ever learn to manage my calendar effectively? When will I actually succeed at adulting?
My moods can feel like wild storms at times. As I gathered myself to go for a run I also noticed some old grievances running in the background like sitcom reruns.
After a short period of self-flagellation, I set out, first running along the river and then arriving at my favorite place to dance.
It might not seem like the most beautiful setting, but to me it is, partly because I’ve developed my relationship to it. I’ve spent a lot of time here, connecting with nature and with myself, honoring the people who stewarded this land for centuries, remembering my grandfather who fished here, and moving with the river itself.
It’s also where I love to practice and where what I’ll offer as a 5Rhythms teacher often pours through.
Today, the only leaves still on the trees are yellow and they quiver loudly every time the wind gusts.
The river is high today; and my little dirt dance floor is obscured by fallen leaves. I tuck my pants into my socks to protect from tics and clear the dry, rustling leaves away with my feet.
When I’m dancing alone with nature, I often I spend a long time in Flowing–the first of the 5Rhythms–but today the second rhythm of Staccato sparks quickly. I notice a lot of future/planning thinking; and that I’m feeling more optimistic than usual about my work in the world.
It’s chilly and windy, and I’m in a long-sleeved sweatshirt for the first time since last winter. It’s a hand-me-down from my son, but it’s still too big for me, and the cuffs hang lower than my hands.
This brings new attention to my arms, and I start replaying a favorite dancehall song in my head as Staccato enlivens me. My arms find shape and purpose, sometimes joining forces in front me, sometimes cutting and carving around my hips and torso.
I recall a question one practitioner has often asked me. “What should I do with my arms?”
I’ve had that same question myself.
When I don’t think about the arms, they can sort of fall out of the field of awareness. But then when I do think of the arms, I can get self-conscious in a way that feels unproductive.
Keeping the arms close to our side is maybe the safest choice. Not reaching out, not risking, not leaving our organs exposed. Or we could just stick them up straight in the air, like at a crowded dance club, and leave the rest of us behind.
What, indeed, should we do with the arms?
In the 5Rhythms, we often place more emphasis on the lower body than the upper body, since being grounded is so important.
In my early years of practice, I often heard prompts encouraging us to drop the arms down and just let them follow.
That makes sense to me, but I also don’t want to feel like I’m fighting with myself, or like I’m disowning my arms or any part of me.
Once I notice my arms today, I start to play and exaggerate. The arms make sense here in Staccato. They have moves to make, things to do, plans to execute. But as I move into Chaos, the third of the 5Rhythms, their role shifts.
If I try to cling to the clear purpose my arms found in Staccato, they get tight and prevent me from surrendering.
But soon they are flopping and arcing and crossing the midline of me, part of this wildly moving matrix. Sometimes as they swing around, they knock against a thigh, a hip, a shoulder.
They’re following, as they are in flowing, but here it’s more sped up, more wild and erratic. Once in a while there is a jagged stop and the momentum of the arms keep going.
Sometimes in Chaos I think about how the hips move the spine, and how the head just follows along, like the last car on a rollercoaster.
But here I see how everything is just following along in Chaos. It’s almost like everything causes a chain reaction for everything else–and it’s just rippling through again and again. When a hip shifts, it starts a new chain reaction that eventually finds its way through the arm. And the feet move the knees which move the hips which move the spine which move the head which move the shoulders which move the arm which flings the other arm which flings the spine. And Chaos goes on, slowing and speeding, rising and falling, rioting and quieting until the energy of Lyrical, the fourth of the 5Rhythms, starts to break through.
Now as my arms are flinging and flopping, responding and provoking as part of this chain reaction, I notice that once in a while when an arm swings around it finds a tiny beat of suspension. And then it falls back into this wild matrix.
And then it comes around again and finds suspension, like the moment a playground swing pauses at the top before gravity draws it back through its arc.
Soon it’s almost all suspension, and my face turns up, taking in the crisp blue sky behind the tree branches.
A single yellow leaf sways and turns its way slowly from a high branch to the river’s surface and I move with it. It is turned around by the current and I, too, turn around. It dips into a tiny rapids and I too dip and speed up. It emerges again with its pale side up, continuing its journey toward the sea.
I spend the rest of the day driving my Dad and two other candidates around so they can campaign, preparing for election day on Tuesday.
In these times, when power is increasingly becoming concentrated and checks and balances seem to be collapsing, we need multiple options for finding our way through Chaos to Lyrical on its other side.
Gabrielle Roth, the founder of the 5Rhythms practice, taught that the hands are the gateway to Lyrical. I’m grateful to have a new way to embody this teaching.
I’m grateful for this tiny revelation, this doorway, this new gasp of possibility.
November 1, 2025
Broad Brook, CT
Meghan LeBorious is a writer, teacher, designer, and mother. She has been dancing the 5Rhythms since 2008 and joined the circle of 5Rhythms teachers in 2021. She has also been formally practicing meditation since 2006 within a tradition that emphasizes the idea that everything we experience, including painful emotions and challenges, can be included on the path to self-discovery and freedom. She co-teaches the weekly class “Body Waves” Friday Night 5Rhythms in NYC and also leads 5Rhythms workshops.
This writing is not produced or sanctioned by the 5Rhythms organization. The views presented in this text are my own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the 5Rhythms organization.