by meghanleborious | Mar 31, 2020 | Notes on Practice
“Mommy, why do you cry so much?”
That’s the quote I remember most from this week.
I was trying so hard to step up for my students. I kept spending hours creating materials and assignments, then realizing I had done everything wrong and having to start over. I spent almost an entire day trying to figure out how to use google hangouts. I also created usernames and passwords for countless websites, trying to learn everything at once.
I felt an enormous amount of work pressure, and have been asking myself hard questions about if it’s being put on me, or if it’s pressure I’m actually putting on myself.
At the same time, I’m managing Simon’s learning, cringing with the fear that he will lose half a year of learning, and cringing more at all the video games he has been logging hours on, as a way to connect with his friends. And feeling the pain and sadness and grief of so much societal loss, and fearing personal loss, too.
Today is day 8 of 14 days of quarantine. It’s Saturday, and I slept until 9, instead of waking up at 6:15, as on weekdays. After breakfast, I did yoga practice for nearly two hours while Simon chatted online and played video games with friends.
Simon and I tried to do the online zoom version of the NYC Sweat Your Prayers 5Rhythms class, but by the time we logged on the class was already wrapping up. Instead, I put on a wave I’d played a few days before. Simon was half-hearted at first, feeling pulled by his video games and friend chats, but we started a dancing game of throwing a shirt at each other and trying to dodge it, and he managed to stay engaged throughout the wave.
Living 24-7 in quarantine in the apartment attached to my parents’ house that was created for my grandparents has been tender. I have always had hesitant excursions to this place, sitting to talk at length with my grandmother when she was frail and with limited mobility, crossing through to retrieve something from the refrigerator when the main house was full and we were cooking for a holiday. Most of life seemed to happen next door, at my parents’ though.
Now, as we are in quarantine, I have a whole new perspective. It is a beautifully designed four-room apartment that is easy to keep clean, and I am grateful for how it has held us. I feel close to my grandmother, my grandfather, and also to my brother, who lived here for a period. And though it hasn’t always been easy, I’ve been grateful for the time with my son, who will enter the teen years soon.
In terms of dream analysis, previously unused rooms now put to use represent finding new layers of consciousness, and new layers of potential.
The world is shifting.
We are in a parenthesis.
It is a period of chaos, fear, and reckoning. As painful as it is, especially for those grieving personal losses, it is also a time of great possibility. A time when we can remember what really matters, when we can collaborate on a new vision, one in which the earth is revered as sacred, where presence is valued above achievement, and where we can prioritize love and community as our greatest wealth.
March 28, Broad Brook, Connecticut
(Photo: dataisbeautiful on reddit)
by meghanleborious | Mar 31, 2020 | Notes on Practice
The stress is making me feel blurry. It is exhausting.
I’m in the third day of 14-day quarantine in an apartment attached to my parents’ house, along with my ten-year-old son, Simon. We are in quarantine because we just came from Brooklyn, NYC, the epicenter of the United States coronavirus plague, and I’m afraid to expose my parents.
I know we are blessed and privileged to have somewhere we can withdraw while the virus seizes every corner of the world. Even here, in a small apartment in Northern Connecticut, I am afraid. For myself, for my son, for my near-elderly parents, for my family, for my friends, for the world. And feeling the weight of worldwide grief.
Simon and I walked on a beautiful path in the woods this morning, and resolved to watch the woods wake up in the coming weeks.
On the way, we found that a neighbor had put out several young adult books that appealed to him. We left the city quickly, and are out of new books. Thinking of the video games I wished to limit, I was tempted to gather some for him, but he insisted it was too much of a risk.
Later, I developed severe allergy symptoms, with a faucet-ing nose and powerful sneezing. I had a video appointment with my (exhausted) doctor who told me it was unlikely to be coronavirus. He prescribed antihistamines, which are so far not helping at all.
During the day, I struggled to do my high school teaching job, nurse my illness, and monitor and support Simon’s learning. I cried more times than I can count.
Tonight, my parents sat near the other side of the wall dividing us from the main house to listen to Simon play songs on the piano. We could hear them applauding each time he paused. We asked if they could throw any dessert food onto the deck, and though they were out of treats, they made chocolate chip cookies and put out a warm plateful.
Overall, though, despite these blessings, I felt sick, tired, down, discouraged. Impatient. Flat. Depleted.
After the work day and after taking care of multiple responsibilities, I found some time to dance a wave in my new makeshift dance studio–once my grandfather’s bedroom–while Simon played video games with his friends.
I decided to video this personal wave. I danced so vigorously that the camera kept migrating, and once fell onto the floor. I have not often recorded myself dancing, and I found it fascinating. To my surprise, I loved watching myself move. From this perspective, I seemed committed and creative. In the wave I danced before making the difficult decision to leave NYC, Staccato seemed blurry, hesitant. In this wave, it was ferocious. I couldn’t believe how much energy and force was released in Chaos. In Lyrical, I bounded, using every level, flinging up from the ground nearly to the ceiling, flexing my back, extending my arms. And I remember how it felt inside myself as I watched the Stillness section. I was spinning disks at all of my chakras, each a color of the spectrum, and then the room was crowded with spirits, helpers, and guides.
I ended with a prayer for health and safety for those I love and for all beings.
March 22, 2020, Broad Brook, Connecticut
(Photo 1: from grizly.com, Photo 2: by Meghan LeBorious)
by meghanleborious | Mar 22, 2020 | Notes on Practice
Pandemic. Coronavirus. Social Distance. Self-isolate.
In this time of worldwide fear and pain, practice is more important than ever. But what we usually do to practice the 5Rhythms is not safe at this time. So we are called on to be flexible, creative, and to test our ingenuity.
I admit that I miss dancing in big groups. I miss patient, belly-to-belly hugs on greeting. I miss the collective shifts of the crowd, like when a spontaneous chaos circle breaks out. I miss darting around into the empty spaces; I miss falling unexpectedly into partnership in perfect alignment; and I really, really miss dancing with my friends.
All of that said, I don’t think that practicing individually should only be considered as an austerity measure. In my experience, individual practice can also be a powerful teacher.
***
The first time I formally engaged in individual 5Rhythms practice was during a winter retreat at a Tibetan meditation center. I was seven months pregnant with my son, Simon, at the time. It was an eight-day retreat; and several powerful energetic teachings that are usually taught separately were taught consecutively.
It totally overloaded my circuits; and I took to the miles of rocky trails to process and integrate so much new energetic information at once. Flat wooden platforms used for tent camping during the warm seasons were interspersed throughout the woods; and I started using them as dance floors instead, throwing down my heavy coat as heat rose in my body and letting loose.
In Flowing one day, I danced on one of the platforms with one hand on a tall stick. I moved around it like it was an axis, dipping and spinning low, switching hands, curving my head, and threading my hips and spine around it.
Though I didn’t plan on it, before long, I decided to make practice formal, and I moved through all five rhythms in the woods at least once a day, often returning to the center windblown and red-cheeked, feeling like I had a glowing secret. One day, late afternoon sun blazed through the trees and through my body, dazzling in its intensity. On another day, I imagined that a pair of small dragons raced out of the woods to dance with me, both with a playful ardency, and with sinewy, powerful movements.
***
Like many, I’ve been practicing on my own a lot lately, as coronavirus locks down cities and countries. At this time, I’m very thankful for practice. It’s helped me to emotionally regulate, to integrate experiences, and to be connected to my communities.
There’s nothing like practicing in a room full of 5Rhythms dancers, where there are endless opportunities to explore relationship, and to see yourself as you are reflected in the people around you.
However, as rich as group practice is, there is also territory that can only be explored in individual practice.
Individual practice is also totally portable, free, and empowers you by allowing direct access to what we might call source–direct access to the depths of human experience–without the need for a teacher to act as a facilitator.
Gabrielle Roth, the creator of the 5Rhythms practice, conceived of the 5Rhythms as a way to relate to the creative process. She believed that rather than discovering or inventing something, she was creating a map for what was already inherent in human experience.
Working with a certified 5Rhythms teacher makes it easier to access deeper layers of reality, when we participate with full awareness in the dynamic, changing display of phenomena, but we actually have all the tools we need to connect with that same source even on our own, especially after we have already spent some time practicing in community.
Once, at my parents’ house when Simon was still an infant, nearly ten years ago, I was dancing a 5Rhythms wave with him in the living room. Within moments, I was filled with emotion. Though I had spent countless hours in the same room, dancing the rhythms there brought me to a layer underneath the mundane. It was like I was watching videos of infinite family moments inside the same room, where my own mother had been a child, and where I had been a child. I could sense and see my place in it, and see my son’s place in it, part of an unbroken line of human beings, the expression of countless acts of love and courage, and, too, of regret, grief, and unexpressed potential.
***
Creating some kind of an opening and closing ritual can support our practice, and provide cues to the unconscious that it is time to switch out of mundane gear. It can also be helpful to create some kind of visual or altar. One long-time dancer says, “My practice includes setting up at alter, which is usually a recent drawing. In the start of a practice, I think about all the giving beings I’ve ever danced with. I think about all the beautiful places I’ve danced. I try to do this at the start and end of every practice.”
Another dancer expressed that she finds it helpful to set an intention at the beginning of practice, and to return to that intention frequently, then to end with it.
***
During the summer of 2015, Simon and I traveled to Costa Rica. There, he went to camp during the days and I spent the time writing and dancing with the sea.
At first it was kind of boring.
I tried to seek out or set up informal dances with others, but it didn’t work out.
So there was no music blazing from high tech speakers, no interpersonal intrigue, no one to partner with and vibe off of, no one to take care of, no one to take care of me, and no external prompts from a teacher to pull me along.
That is to say, it was all up to me.
For the first few days, my dances were uninspired. I remained committed, though, and continued to spend the days dancing and writing. I began to go to a beach called Playa Pelada every day. It was remote enough that few people walked all the way there, but not so remote that getting there was impossible.
I sent some writing to one of the leaders of 5Rhythms, with the disclaimer,
“I know it’s not 5Rhythms practice if it isn’t led by a 5Rhythms teacher, but…”
She wrote back, “Actually, it can still be practice. It’s just that it’s individual practice.”
This validation helped me to believe in what was already unfolding, and I committed myself even more resolutely to practice–at minimum, to move through each of the 5Rhythms in sequence daily.
That brings up another benefit to individual practice–that it allows us to practice daily, even when schedule, geographic location, or, a worldwide health emergency make it impossible to get to a 5Rhythms class.
During low tide at Playa Pelada, warm tidal pools formed and I explored every crevice of the land, often moving in Flowing for long periods, and moving back into Flowing again and again, even as the other rhythms presented.
The first time that I danced the transition from low tide to high tide, I was cured of the problem of boredom.
Playa Pelada gave me so much to work with. There was a small island directly in front of the beach, and at high tide, the wild sea would rush around it on both sides, then meet in the center in a crashing tangle of waves. Shifting sand, rocks and debris would crash at my ankles and radically shift the very ground under me. I never tired of responding, arching, casting, turning over, flapping up fast, letting my hips recede as the waves pulled me, and coasting in circle after circle after circle.
Sopilote vultures arced and soared above the high cliff walls. Clouds shifted and raced. Rainbows appeared and dissolved. Iguanas, hermit crabs, and alligator-like caymen flashed in glimpses. Huge driftwood trees disappeared overnight. The sea rushed in and receded. And I witnessed this rich display and moved with all of it, leaving nothing out.
During our last week in Costa Rica, I danced from one low tide until the next–nearly twelve hours of moving–beginning before dawn. As the sun rose over the island and lit the sky, I immersed myself in a spontaneous ritual, using salt dyed with rainbow colors to create a giant spiral on the sand. I danced from its edge, where I felt I was in the relative, everyday world, along the path to its center, where I imagined I was in absolute reality, a place where different dimensions intersect. I moved back and forth through this spiral throughout the early morning hours as the ocean began to gather into a crescendo and eventually erased the spiral, gathering it back into herself.
Practicing individually in beautiful, powerful places has expanded the possibilities in my own dance. I carry these experiences in my body, even when I enter back into dancing indoors in community. For example, dancing with a powerful river, I visited its deep, cold, dense, black river bed. Now, in Stillness, I can still connect with this experience and remind myself of my own depths, the dark, cool currents that run deep inside me.
The year after Simon and I were in Costa Rica, we spent summer on the southeastern coast of Ireland. There again, Simon attended camp and I spent the days dancing with the sea, writing and making artwork.
The sea was indescribable. Gigantic. The tide goes out nearly a mile, then rushes back in at high tide to pummel everything in sight. 
Slowly, as I danced with integrity over many sessions, this powerful place revealed itself to me, initiating me to its secrets.
In general, I have often felt that I needed to keep myself in Flowing longer than felt intuitive. This was so I could be responsible and find the ground beneath me before taking on any other investigation, especially when dancing with other people.
In Ireland, I learned that another benefit of practicing independently is that I can work with the mercurial shifts of energy as they arise. Instead of holding myself in Flowing at the beginning, I noticed that even once I did move into Staccato, I moved back into Flowing many times. It wasn’t an all-or-nothing thing. Even in Chaos, I still found myself going back to Flowing.
Here, the stakes were different. Attending to the many small subtle shifts of energy as I fluctuated between different rhythms allowed me to follow intuition in a new way, and to observe nuances that weren’t always apparent during a wild collective dance. One day a wave followed this pattern: Flowing, Staccato, Flowing, Staccato/Chaos, Staccato, Flowing, Flowing Chaos, Chaos, Flowing, Lyrical, Chaos, Lyrical, Chaos, Flowing, Flowing Lyrical, Stillness.
***
This week, as coronavirus rolls in crushing waves over the world, like many, I’ve been practicing independently in my own home. I would prefer for Simon and I to be fully quarantined, both to keep us safe and to not proliferate germs, but we have roommates who are still going in and out, so my obsessive cleaning and containment procedures might be for naught.
Yesterday, I danced a five-song wave, one song for each rhythm. It all seemed very mundane at first, with afternoon sun coming in the window and falling in angled squares on my worn living room rug and the cat sitting next to me on a rumpled couch blanket. But soon, it tore itself from my throat and broke open. I spun and angled and dipped in Flowing, letting in fear. In Staccato, I was fierce, expressive, decisive. In Chaos, I was gigantic, kinetic, powerful. In Lyrical, I expanded beyond my small conception of who I am. In Stillness, I offered the merit of my practice to my family and my friends all over the world, and the afternoon living room seemed crowded with spirit guides, ancestors, and deities.
This territory is totally uncharted and the stakes are high.
For 5Rhythms practitioners and to everyone who has a committed practice, now is the time to lean into it.
Early in New York’s wave, I noticed I was trying to bear down hard until the crisis passed. But soon realized that coronavirus might last for an extended period, and that bearing down and wishing time away will only cause me to wish away moments of this precious life, and to close ourselves down emotionally and energetically. Somehow I have to come to terms with it. Better to open to what is, even when it is uncertain, even when we are met with grave hardship, and even when we are forced to stand face-to-face with our deepest, most terrifying fears.
by meghanleborious | Aug 18, 2019 | Notes on Practice
For me, the closing retreat for the Mindful Schools training program for teaching mindfulness to youth started before I even arrived at Garrison Institute. One year before, I had attended the opening retreat for the same program. Last year, it was all new. This time, after a year of hard work and community building, it felt like re-connecting. 
I attended several dance and movement meditation classes in my core practice tradition during the days right before the retreat. On Sunday morning, my all-time favorite dance partner was at class; and we shared four or more dances over the course of the two hours.
From the dance studio in the West Village, I drove two hours to Garrison, New York, did another dance and movement meditation class just a few miles from the retreat center, then went to an Italian restaurant in Fishkill to meet friends from the Mindful Schools training. We greeted each other like old friends. At one point, each person told a story about a turning point when we realized the power of mindfulness in our life. Even with six of us at the table, each story was met with full attention.
The next day I spent several hours at a cafe in Beacon, then decided to visit the Dia:Beacon–a converted factory that is now a museum for modern and contemporary art specializing in famous, minimal, large-scale artworks.
I spent all of my teens, twenties, and thirties devoted to artmaking, and even taught art at the college level. For the past few years, I haven’t been active as an artist, and I forget how much knowledge and skill I’ve amassed, how hard I’ve worked, and what an important part of my identity being an artist has been. I also recollected long diatribes against the macho-ness of minimal art I had delivered over the years, and wondered if any of it still had weight for me.
At a very sensitive time, when it was already becoming difficult to make new work given the circumstances of my life, I had a painful exchange about artmaking with someone I trusted, and my artmaking practice dissolved, perhaps finally.
I had to admit that the artworks were impressive, perfectly sited in this cleaned up, 160,000-square-foot industrial space. I was grateful to find the work of a female artist, Charlotte Posenenske, in the central gallery. I learned that her sculptural work was exhibited alongside prominent male minimal artists in the 1950’s and 1960’s. I also learned that her strong interest in labor rights had lead her to defect from artmaking and pursue a PhD in sociology. She became a labor activist and went on to specialize in employment and working practices.
Tears streamed down my cheeks as I moved through, remembering infinite conversations and experiences that touched on many of the artists and artworks included in the permanent collection, remembering a former self that I hadn’t noticed I was grieving for.
Stepping out of the museum, I found a roiling white sky, with shifting opacities and incredible depth, and quickly changing forms and layers. My eyes wide with light, I filmed a series of one-minute videos of the sky, with no up or down orientation, no reference point. At one point I lay on my back on the ground to record, a bit hesitant about seeming weird, but alight with the fever of artmaking, remembering what I loved about it, remembering a forgotten part of myself.
I wanted to arrive early to Garrison so I could try to get a room with a window facing the river, but as I drove the few miles from the Dia, the sky exploded with rain. I couldn’t see at all and had to pull over to wait it out.
I recalled the year before, at the opening retreat, when there had been a thunderstorm during a period of community silence and relentless heat. We were told there was a severe weather alert and that if we felt nervous we could take shelter on the lower level of the building. The storm tore the sky apart, and it was like the outside came resoundingly inside the soaring, once-Franciscan-cathedral main hall. Still in silence, several of us made our way to the front steps where we had a view of the sweeping lawn and river. The pavement and plants gave off steam. Mist exhaled into the entryway and landed coolly on my exposed arms, legs, and face. A white cliff-waterfall on the other side of the river tripled its size. A woman seated next to me on the marble steps ate a crunching apple, savoring each bite.
Back in the meditation hall, the storm continued as mindfulness became increasingly concentrated. At one point, I realized it was too intense for me, and stepped into the foyer, intentionally interrupting practice. After a few minutes, I went back in and sat down on the cushion again. Then, I had a sharp, sudden sensation on the left side of my head, and was seized by the fear that I might be having a stroke.
I remembered something the vipassana teacher, Dipa Ma, once told a practitioner who was freaking out during a sitting period. She sat next to him and said, “If you can stay with this sensation, you will accumulate great merit.” I settled down and the flash of pain and fear soon faded.
The teachers reminded us of basic meditation instructions, including choosing some kind of anchor for the attention, such as breath, sound, or body sensations. The next day, the teachers each offered thoughts on the topic of befriending, focusing on befriending even difficult emotions.
That first evening, following dinner and an evening program, we entered into almost three days of silence, which enfolded me like soft fabric.
***
I could see the river and waterfall from the window of my small room. The Hudson line trains charged by, whistling loudly at regular intervals. I slept unclothed with a light sheet, loving the sensation of my bare legs touching each other, and of my feet, one cradled inside the arch of the other. I woke to the sound of a roving bell not long after dawn and made my way to the shower before the 7.30 AM morning sit.
In silence, I didn’t feel like I was closing others out. Even in avoiding eye contact, it felt like we were energetically very much in community. It was like we were all in on a precious secret, witness to a deeper layer of reality than the one we spend most of our days navigating. We were still seeing each other, but on a deeper level, taking a break from all the noise of projecting ourselves. For just a few days, I was not colluding in anyone’s ego stories, nor asking them to collude in mine.
The day was passed in alternating periods of sitting and walking meditation, interspersed with brief commentary by the teachers, Alan Brown, Argos Gonzalez, and Erin Woo. Sarah Ludell Beach, who was the retreat coordinator, also stood in the role of teacher at times.
That night, I bounded to the wide front lawn during a final walking period, hoping I would be able to dance with the fireflies, as I had the previous year. This time, we were two weeks later in the season, and the fireflies were not as abundant. Though I still got to dance with the tiny, intermittently glowing creatures, it couldn’t compare to the previous year, when I had been doing walking meditation on the lawn, and wound up dancing at length and through several different energies with the fireflies in a spontaneous expression of pure joy.
***
On this retreat, walking meditation delighted me. My feet delighted me. The natural world delighted me, including the sky and its endless parades; and the gravel, sand, stone, and pavement surfaces that provided so many engaging textures for the soles of my feet.
During a dance and movement meditation retreat in the same soaring main hall just a month before, I had imagined myself as though in a different lifetime. I was a young nun in threadbare orange robes, vulnerable and bare underneath, bald headed and slight, with no holding whatsoever in my body.
My whole architecture was entirely different. My shoulders and upper body were drawn more forward, with none of the “push your shoulders back, pull your chest forward, have good posture” that my culture demands. It almost felt like I was leaning forward and curving myself, but actually I think I was just gracefully upright, belly fully released, diaphragm fully released, with no ego demands on my carriage. As this young woman, I walked through the hall with tender humility, my hands gently cupped together at the height of my navel.
The most extraordinary part of this vision was my feet. In the past year, I had severe heel spurs, and struggled with debilitating pain that I feared might persist. The young nun’s feet were these soft, aware, exquisite creatures who felt and sensed the earth as she patiently walked, practically caressing the road beneath her.
Sitting in silence on a bench during a break, my feet dangled, too high to reach the floor, and muscles in the arch of my right foot spasmed repeatedly. During the week, tiny muscles in my feet released again and again, surrendering many micro-grippings–ego armorings I had designed to hold out experience, to keep me safe from the sometimes-unbearable reality of being fully alive.
Walking outside, now on my third retreat at Garrison Institute, I finally discovered that it’s possible to walk all the way around the main part of the property on a circular road. I was grateful, as walking on grass without shoes in a place with high incidence of Lime’s Disease seemed ill-advised. I walked with uncharacteristic patience and engagement, feeling every point of contact. At one point, I paused to touch a small, fuzzy, white caterpillar with my pointer finger, then put my foot into her path. Without pausing, she climbed right up onto the offered foot, and I sobbed, whispering “I remember, I remember, I remember,” grateful that the caterpillar did not perceive me as separate from the ground, and continuing to marvel at the sensitivity and intelligence of my feet.
Alan offered the instruction that if it felt right, we could let go of our mindfulness anchors at this point, and experiment with open awareness, but I had already made this shift. As mindfulness was well-founded, I knew I could let in more of the world’s vibrant and dynamic displays without losing my ground. At this time, I also noticed how sensitive my sacrum had become–almost like a tuning fork, vibrating with subtle energies.
During a sitting period, scanning my inner body, I became aware of the dark, mysterious recesses of the pelvis. My attention shifted to the cathedral ceiling, then outward to the blue sky above it, then continued to rise into dark, boundless outer space, dotted everywhere with points of light. The inner darkness and the endless mystery of the cosmos seemed to blend seamlessly together.
I thought about an idea gathered from the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Reggie Ray, that being fully embodied involves not only individual embodiment, but also interpersonal embodiment, and embodiment on a cosmic level.
At least once every day I danced with the river. My river dances from the previous year had stayed with me and remained alive in my dance since the opening retreat last year. Sometimes, remembering these dances, I move in the slow, liquid currents of a dancing room, my hands softly conducting and receiving, feeling ribbons pass directly through my porous body as they curve and express themselves, sometimes even cascading in from the corners of the room.
There is this one spot that pulls me powerfully. To get there I walked down a wooded path, across a bridge over train tracks, and up onto a glacial rock lodged into the river’s bank. On top of the rock, I could see the surface of the river from slightly above. The complex play of currents was hinted at by the dancing lines and patterns and erratic flat, smooth places. Moving, the river pulled me deep into it, and I would rise to the surface again with darkness streaming down my back and shoulders. Sometimes my excursion was just a sight-seeing trip to the river, but more often than I expected, I found the moving stillness that underlies all surfaces–a resonant silence that is active and alive.
I’ve been carving a groove so I know the way there, and I found myself chanting again, “I remember, I remember, I remember.”
***
On the afternoon of the third day, we transitioned back into speaking. At first, it seemed ok, but I felt tired and slept poorly. The fourth day was marked by intensive social and professional exchange. The main activity of the day was to self organize into groups of four, then each present a demo lesson to the group. I learned a lot from this activity and gained valuable knowledge, but I again felt exhausted and slept poorly.
On the fifth day, some participants lead breakout sessions on specific topics. Though it was a huge amount of information to take in, all of the sessions I attended left me feeling inspired and added to my knowledge of the many different aspects of mindfulness work in the world. In the evening, we had a show-and-tell period, and people presented activities they had used successfully with their students, songs with themes of mindfulness, and dances.
I had been invited to lead a class in my dance and movement meditation practice for the group, but, although I am in the teacher training process, I am not yet authorized to teach. Instead, I offered to lead one of the twenty-minute breakout sessions on the fifth day, where I would present some basic information about the practice, and talk about the importance of some kind of embodiment practice in conjunction with sitting meditation.
Breakfast was in silence most days, and I sat at length after finishing my meal, visualizing how I would present this information.
After attending three excellent breakout sessions led by colleagues, I went to the main hall, where the session would take place. Twenty or so people appeared, and I gathered them to the most inner part of the room and asked them to sit in a circle. The first thing I said is that I’m not authorized to teach the practice yet, but I would present a brief overview and invite questions. I also emphasized the importance of including some kind of embodiment practice along with sitting meditation, whether that be yoga, tai chi, 5Rhythms, or any other modality. I also shared that the dance and movement meditation practice I do can be seen as a way to embody the creative process; and that it would look different for everyone.
My firefly dances of the previous year had become part of the group’s lore, so I decided to embody the different stages of my dance with the fireflies to show something true about what my practice is for me. I also hoped to inspire people to have faith and integrity on their own path to fully-realized embodiment.
***
Later that day, arriving at the river, I somewhat half-heartedly started to dance on the gravelly sand of a little inlet next to the big rock. I told myself it was ok if I wasn’t that into it, I would just move through the formal practice and see what happened. I started by making circles in the sand with my feet. I kept finding straight lines and angles, then falling back into circling. I softly let my head go, let my body go, let my stories go. Still moving, I ascended the rock where I could see the river from above. After only a few light gestures in my fingertips, the river’s stillness opened its gateway.
During my dances, I had imagined that I could perceive an ancient force, a Naga, a kind of serpent deity that lives in large bodies of water, in this complex and powerful stretch of the river. On this final day, I thanked the Naga and asked it to help and guide me on my path.
The wind grew stronger and seemed to pass directly through my body, curving around my heart and rushing right into the plants of the river bank behind me. A low sound emitted from my belly and throat, and I moved unselfconsciously, whispering “I remember, I remember, I remember” as tears coursed down my face and over my chin.
I had no idea how long I was at the river, but it seemed likely I was late for the afternoon session in the main hall. I started back up the path to the retreat center, feeling my soft feet and noticing the layered textures of green around me. As I emerged from the woods, I encountered three friends, walking with their arms around each other. They asked me something about the closing party we would have that night. I blinked, took a breath, and answered, leaving the world of the Naga and of the many forces by the river, and stepping back into the light of day.
***
An alumni of the program acted as DJ for the closing party, which took place in the dining hall. Without any alcohol, many danced with cheerful abandon. The people I had been grouped with for study meetings over the course of the year had decided to dress as fireflies. One of our members bought yellow tutus and installed a light in the layers of tulle so our tails would glow. Another had purchased wings. The eight of us trailed through the crowd in a glowing line to join our teacher on the dance floor during the Whitney Houston song “I Wanna Dance with Somebody.”
For the final session, we assembled in a giant circle of over 100 people on the front lawn for a closing ritual. As the ritual ended and the retreat formally dissolved, we were invited to say goodbye to people silently. I lingered in patient embraces as the room gradually transitioned into chatter.
On the drive home, I chanted, “I remember, I remember, I remember,” as the cloud sky shifted, the Hudson river curved and twisted, and tears streamed down the valleys of my cheeks.
This blog consists of reflections on my own experiences, and is not sanctioned by any organization or teacher.
Garrison Institute building exterior from: https://www.garrisoninstitute.org/retreats-events/facility-grounds/
Garrison main hall photo from: https://non-duality.rupertspira.com
by meghanleborious | Jul 20, 2019 | Other Writings
“It’s 2019. Just thought I’d let you know that,” jokes Tanya Goldman, who is leading the first Sunday Sweat Your Prayers 5Rhythms class of 2019 in New York City. She doesn’t specifically mention New Year’s resolutions, but she does say, “One thing I’ve learned is if you want to change, you have to move. Physically, mentally and emotionally. It doesn’t just happen.”
Tanya doesn’t talk much during class but somehow manages to bring out the best in people. For this Sunday morning class, the big dance studio is jam-packed and notably porous, the many selves melting in and out of each other, part of a big, collective self.
As the class begins, Tanya leads us in a long, patient Flowing. She seems confident that we’ll stay with her, even if she doesn’t rush to entertain us. In Staccato and a wild Chaos, I dance with a friend who’s seated in a chair, bringing me down low. I also share several dances with a friend who has been a frequent partner over ten or more years. In contrast to our usual ebullient, wide-ranging partnership, we tuck into a pocket, sustainable, riding energy patiently. In Lyrical, I join with another friend, leaping into flight with my shoulders and chest wide open, tears streaming down my face.
At the height of joyful intensity, Tanya plays the 90’s club anthem ’Last Night a DJ Saved My Life with a Song‘. I recognize it immediately, sinking low in a pumping warrior cry as the room explodes.
Tanya has a way of doing this. Of building things up and building things up, then dropping the exact perfect song at the exact perfect moment; and if I had had any sort of conscious thought, it probably would have been: This is heaven. Life could not possibly get better than this.
At the end of the class, I pause to chat with one of the friends I’d partnered with. “That was just amazing,” he says, wide-eyed. I nod. “She is incredibly trustworthy. I feel like it’s safe to totally let go. Like she is holding space and witnessing what is unfolding in, like, a clean way, or something.”
***
I think back to a Heartbeat workshop that Tanya and I both attended ten years before. I was having a joyful and pleasant experience, but it shifted when we were placed into groups of three for an exercise. One person was to move with a certain prompt in mind and the other two would witness the person who was moving, then we would change roles. One of my partners was this very expressive woman who had a huge dance. I had cheerfully joined her in partnership many times during the workshop, but this time when she was supposed to witness me, I didn’t feel like she was seeing me at all. Like she was just totally wrapped up in her own awesomeness. I’m pretty extroverted and don’t feel invisible very often, but somehow this really hurt me.
Thankfully, Tanya was my other partner. Curiously, it wasn’t until I reflected later, still nursing wounds from the experience, that I realized that although one partner had failed to see me, Tanya had very much seen me. I realized what a valuable friend she is and hoped that I could return the favor of her clear-seeing, something I continue to try to live up to.
***
Tanya, who has been a 5Rhythms teacher since 2014, sat down with me last spring to share some thoughts on her life and process. We planned to get together after a different Sweat Your Prayers class in the West Village for this interview. I hadn’t really thought through where we would set up but considered a few local restaurants without fully appreciating how much Tanya has to think things through in advance. Tanya has a disability that affects motor ability and uses a walker to get around, so accessibility is an issue, and she also let me know that she is not able to eat solid food. So instead of a restaurant, we went to a smoothie place at the corner, then sat down together at the closest Starbucks.
Once settled, Tanya patiently blinked her clear, blue-green eyes, and sipped at her smoothie, inviting the first question.
“When did you start practicing the 5Rhythms and what brought you to 5Rhythms for the first time?” I asked.
“I started practicing in 2008,” she began. “I’d already been doing Contact Improv for many years, since college.”
Tanya shared that she went to Oberlin, where Contact Improv was invented, and in fact practiced in the very studio where Contact Improv originated.
“I loved it, and learned that I could really be there, could really be in it despite my limitations. As my disability progressed, it got harder to do Contact Improv. It’s really all about partnering. In partnering, it was like my partner shared my disability, so it would limit what they could do, and not everyone was ok with that.”
She also shared that she didn’t always feel like she was included in the community, and added, “I decided I needed to find another dance community where it would be ok to dance on my own.”
Next, she became part of the Dance New England community and someone there suggested she try the 5Rhythms.
“For my first class, Jonny (Jonathan Horan, the director of 5Rhythms and son of its creator, Gabrielle Roth) was teaching. I didn’t understand it at all, but I felt accepted. Then, it was many years before I started to learn what it was all about.”
The next question I asked was, “How has your practice changed over time?”
“Well, my body has changed. The biggest change is that I now use a walker. That’s been in the last six-to-eight months. In the beginning, my balance was so much better. I could skip and run. Particularly after I got the walker, I was aware that my balance was really changing. For a while, I was falling all the time. My mind wanted to dance faster than my body could handle. The mind doesn’t want to accept the body’s limitations, but once you can go with the changes, then it’s so much easier. And now I’m not falling! But I’m definitely still moving.”
“Do you feel more comfortable with being off balance?”
“I don’t feel out of balance. I’ve come to accept and find the grace within my own dance. But it’s not a definite. One day it’s there and the next it’s like ‘where is it?’”
Then, I asked, “Do you have a ‘home’ rhythm?”
“Not really. For me, it’s all about change. We’re always changing and life is always changing.”
“Tanya, what made you decide to become a 5Rhythms teacher?”
“I did a class with Sylvie Minot and she talked about teaching 5Rhythms to inmates in prisons. I thought that was amazing. Not that she was teaching in prisons, but that she was bringing the work to disadvantaged people. I’m trained as a social worker. I always wanted to help people, to change lives for the better. In fact, when I started the teacher training, I was still working as a social worker. Halfway through the teacher training, I got laid off from my job, along with my social worker colleagues. After, I was too exhausted to go back to work, but I feel like being a 5Rhythms teacher is my offering, my contribution.”
“Did you have to overcome significant obstacles to undergo the teacher training?”
“I definitely had to overcome obstacles. The first was financial, especially after being laid off after the first module. Maybe even more significant were the mental obstacles. I had an internal story that I wasn’t even fully aware of that I had nothing special to offer. At an Open Floor workshop with Andrea Juhan this story came out and I was finally able to deal with it. That was a big turning point for me.”
“While I was going through this, though, I felt supported by Jonny (Jonathan Horan). During the training, we had to learn a kind of two-step pattern, which was obviously pretty hard for me, but I did it.”
She also shared that Jonathan said, “When you do this with Tanya, hold her hands,” and how much she appreciated that Jonathan seemed to get her needs.
“What, in your opinion as a 5Rhythms teacher, is the essence of 5Rhythms practice?”
“For me, it’s about permission and possibility; and it’s about getting out of your own way.”
“What, if anything, makes your perspective on the 5Rhythms unique?”
“I think as a person with a disability, I give a lot of permission to people in general. And, as a person with a disability, I also bring a lot about being willing to be vulnerable. My experience is about being very vulnerable every day. I wear my vulnerability on the outside.”
***
Tanya and I shared a workshop this weekend that was focused on the 5Rhythms emotional map, Heartbeat. At one point, we were working with the emotion of anger, and the room was explosive. We were instructed to line up at one end of the room and several sets of partners at a time would cross the floor to the other side, expressing the emotion of anger with our bodies.
One issue I’ve personally been working with is how to know when to help people and when not to, and how I relate internally to those two options. In fact, in a Sunday class the week before, a man had come in with a walker and paused at the side of the dance floor. I happened to be near him and asked if he wanted a chair. He was irate: “Why would I need a chair? There’s nothing wrong with me!”
Although I have never discussed it with Tanya, I wonder if, because of her disability, she has to contend constantly with people projecting their ideas of what her experience is and should be onto her. When I was pregnant in 2009-2010, I struggled with the visibility of my pregnant body and how much people wanted to tell me about my experience. I felt like a walking screen for everyone’s projections, and that if I heard one more birth horror story I might possibly harm someone.
With Tanya, I want to be available to help, but also don’t want to insult her by offering, and sometimes I get myself tangled in stories about helping/not helping instead of simply trusting myself to communicate effectively and do what’s needed. When we were lining up in the anger exercise, Tanya, who happened to be next to me, turned to me and shook her head, blinking her eyes and looking unhappy. “Does this feel like too much?” I asked. She nodded. “Do you want me to get you a chair?” She nodded again. I carried a chair over, placed it off to the side, and she sat down. The week before, I’d shared a dance with a broken-ankled friend who needed to stay seated, and, deep in a vigorous chaos, she had traveled laterally at least ten feet without harming the floor surface at all. Recalling this, I asked,
“Tanya, do you want me to push you across in the chair?”
Her eyebrows raised and her face lit up. “Really?”
She gave a clear “Yes” nod, so I moved behind the chair and pushed her forward. Tanya seemed delighted as I gently zigged and zagged across. My own dance had vigor and specificity, a Staccato I’ve been searching for lately – a self I’ve been searching for lately –especially as my roles in the world become more complex and I step into more positions of leadership. When we were almost to the end, I signaled to another dancer to please take over and she got the message immediately. I ran back to the first side of the room and crossed again, on my own this time, in an individual anger dance, unselfconsciously ferocious, owning my power without insisting on it.
The next time across, I asked a mutual friend to join Tanya and me. We were just as wild, zigzagging across both in partnership and as a trio, and changing roles halfway across.
I’m sure I benefited much more than Tanya in this exchange, and remain grateful to her for her willingness, courage, and openness.
The next and final day of the workshop, when we greeted each other, Tanya took the time to say, “I feel seen.” I recalled my resolution following a Heartbeat workshop more than a decade before to return the favor of Tanya’s clear-seeing when I had felt painfully unseen by one dancer, but seen by Tanya.
I don’t know if she meant specifically seen by me, but however she meant it, I looked at length into her light eyes and my heart flooded up. So many of the lessons Tanya teaches me are the ones that we already know deep down but conventionally forget, such as the fact that one of the deepest human needs is to feel seen, and that one of the greatest gifts we can offer is to see each other.
***
“Do you have any advice for new dancers?” I asked as our interview drew to a close.
“Have fun! Try not to take yourself too seriously and don’t worry if you don’t ‘get it’ at first. I tried to read one of Gabrielle Roth’s books in the beginning and I didn’t understand it. I couldn’t really hear what the teachers were saying at first, either. I’m very kinaesthetic; I learn through the body. I had to practice before I could get it intellectually.”
“And do you have advice for experienced dancers?
“Same thing! And also keep your mind open, keep your eyes open, and don’t get fixed on a certain idea.”
The final question was, “In closing, do you have a favorite quote or passage from Gabrielle’s teachings?”
“Waves move in patterns. Patterns move in rhythms. A human being is just that – energy, waves, patterns, rhythms. Nothing more. Nothing less. A dance.”
by Meghan LeBorious, based on an interview with 5Rhythms teacher Tanya Goldman on May 27, 2018, and journal notes from 2008-2019.
Originally published in the 5Rhythms Tribe newsletter on April 16, 2019. Photographs courtesy of Tanya Goldman and Jonathan Horan.
