by meghanleborious | Mar 24, 2015 | Notes on Practice
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and is not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.
Peter Fodera’s one-day Flowing workshop was held at the Paul Taylor Studio on the Lower East Side. I remember once during a class Tammy said that when she first met Peter, he seemed so divine she wasn’t sure he was actually of this world. I try to attend every teaching he offers in New York City and have always felt challenged, supported and inspired by him. It was my first time at Paul Taylor Studio, and novelty peaked my attention as I made my way in the door and up one flight of stairs to the foyer. The space struck me as clean and chic, with high ceilings, open stairs, translucent walls, and cut-out spaces for sunlight to move freely.
The rhythms of Gabrielle Roth’s 5Rhythms practice include Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical and Stillness. Flowing is the first by design; and we are taught that Flowing is the essential foundation of every other rhythm. Its hallmarks are being aware of the feet on the floor or ground, unending circular motion, looking for and moving into empty space, in-breath, and an attitude of receptivity and curiosity.
After greeting many smiling friends, I stepped into the lovely studio, bowing as I crossed the threshold, as is my habit. The black floor was marked and scuffed in subtle, layered patterns that, upon inspection, seemed to have marble-like depth. Crossing the large black rectangle of the dance floor, I stepped into a balcony-like space with a white floor and an entire wall of curving windows that look onto the lower east side and the raised subway tracks peeking from behind a stand of tall buildings.
Martha Peabody had created an installation between the threshold of the two floors and facing onto the large dance floor. Its setting was rectangular, as well, and featured leaf-green netting over a soccer-goal shaped form and fabric of an array of shades and textures of green—the color associated with the rhythm of Flowing. On this foundation, Martha had placed a curving line of wooden shoe forms, mature plants potted in sculpted tins, balls of moss, candles and white roses. She also created perhaps a dozen little wooden stands, each holding a dense cabbage like a head manikin, and each topped with an exquisitely-rendered crown or headdress. Materials included antique clothespins, feathers, glitter, pearls, beading, decorative sewing pins, collected baby forks, a tiny bird, veils and paper lace. A special pussywillow crown had a place of honor on a small, wooden child’s chair in the middle of the installation in honor of Peter’s birthday.
Leading up to the workshop, I was nothing but eager. I noted that I had no ambivalence whatsoever about spending a day investigating the rhythm of Flowing. My one mild hesitation was that I wondered if a one-day workshop would allow time to both come apart and to re-member. I noted that I was a bit nervous about the possibility of coming apart without being able to work through it. In the past, I have only done three-day workshops or workshops that meet once a week for multiple weeks; and in most cases, the narrative arc of the workshop involved some kind of descent, unraveling or release, and then some kind of re-integration.
Peter’s choices of music made it easy to move; and I stepped directly into the river of Flowing—with seemingly perfect release, engagement and fluidity. I felt emotional and was moved by artistic visions, finding infinite new ways to move. I investigated the room, flowing into all its corners and looking into the high-above theatrical works. I felt like a spring stream finding its way downhill, rushing around rocks and fallen trees, swirling, crashing upward, falling back, and then being pulled forward with vigor. It is beyond joyful—these rare moments when movement is perfectly aligned with the inner and outer environments.
I anticipated that we would engage deeply with the “pure” rhythm of Flowing, as opposed to its shadow, but Peter had different ideas. When we say the “pure” rhythm, we mean the rhythm itself, when we talk about the “shadow” of a rhythm, we are talking about a face of the same rhythm that could be read as a different—or even as an opposing—aspect. For example, the pure rhythm of Flowing is Flowing; and the shadow of Flowing is Inertia.
Which is why the day before, when we had blue sky in New York, and a little kiss of spring, I said, “Yes! Let it in, let it in, let it in!” With in-breaths—with inspiration—with open arms, and with feet moving with gratitude on the soon-to-awaken earth. After a grueling winter with many prolonged periods of constraint and a long, thick illness, I was more than ready. I note that letting in joy is not the easiest thing for me. I might even freak out if I get too happy. In fact, I have often prioritized investigating my dark, complex recesses over engaging with simple joys.
Of all of the five rhythms, Flowing has been my most valuable teacher, especially since it is so far from how I experience myself in the world. I was surprised after the opening wave when Peter pointed us toward the shadow of Flowing, since I felt like the pure rhythm of Flowing was unusually available to me. This may or may not have been true for my fellow practitioners; and no doubt there were at least a few who were unintentionally in Inertia, the shadow of Flowing, throughout the workshop. I guess I had assumed that there was so much to investigate just in the straightforward rhythm that the shadow of Flowing would not be a dominant theme.
I am an absurdly compliant student when it comes to the 5Rhythms. Believe me, you would not say this of me in other arenas. They probably have my face on a dartboard in the department office where they administered my most recent college degree, for example. But in 5Rhythms, I wholeheartedly take on whatever investigation I am assigned. So when Peter pointed us toward the shadow, I tried every experiment, at once realizing that I remained very much in the pure rhythm of Flowing. I guess it is possible that only in the face of the shadows can you really find the depths of each rhythm.
At any rate, I felt shining, ecstatic. I had the perfect reserve of energy to draw on and I moved effortlessly throughout the space. I knew I couldn’t force the Shadow’s hand; and that to do so would have been an act of aggression against myself. Within the meditation tradition I am trained in, nothing is wrong. It is not like anything goes, though. On the contrary, it is very precise, but it is all about how you relate to everything. To me in this moment, opening to the joy of letting spring in was skillful, even if it meant I couldn’t fully enact the instructions.
In the middle of the day, Peter asked why some of us take ourselves out of the dance when we get to Stillness. “Did I take myself out of the dance?” I wondered. Faces around the big circle we sat in looked quizzical and slightly tight. “Did I do something wrong?” I wondered. Peter mentioned that according to Gabrielle, it is important to keep the eyes open. I have often wondered about this, since what, exactly, to do with the eyes has been an important consideration in the meditation tradition I have trained in, also. At a 5Rhythms workshop, I once posed this question to the teacher. “Is keeping the eyes open an important part of the practice?” In contrast to Peter’s suggestion, that teacher explained that the instruction to keep the eyes open is really more about safety than anything else. I continued to wonder about this point.
Some practitioners and teachers in attendance shared that the chance to close the eyes and turn inward might be valuable, and we might seem to have stopped moving, but to instead be moving with such subtlety that we only appeared to have stopped. I experimented with applying the idea I was trained with in meditation practice: what if nothing is ever wrong, per se, but the question is, rather, how am I relating to this?
I realize that there are many reasons I might choose to close my eyes. One is because I have been swept away with the abandon of the room, and need to find the beat again inside my body. This is especially true when a new song begins in Staccato. I often need a quiet moment to turn in and find out how the rhythm of the song affects my heartbeat, so I don’t just rush into it without awareness. Another is that with my eyes shut or lowered, I may discover a different kind of seeing that is not available with my eyes open. Yet another is that sometimes my body has to go all out, with total abandon and maybe even with artfulness. I am afraid of showing off, and if I shut or lower my eyes, I can’t tell if anyone is watching or seeing me, so I don’t hold myself back just to not-show-off. I have spent huge amounts of life inappropriately trying to contain myself, and sometimes I need this little trick to let wild grace overtake me when it arrives. And yes, sometimes I shut my eyes because I don’t feel like dealing or because I want to withdraw. Which might be ok, too. Maybe even correct at certain moments.
I think Peter said we did a wave with the Shadow of Flowing in each of the other rhythms. This is a bit tricky for me to understand. I understand the idea of doing a Wave in the shadows of each rhythm, but this is another step removed. Whatever the nature of the frame, I continued to move with joy, creativity and specificity.
When prompted to experiment with the restless aspect of Staccato’s shadow, I began to pace between four doors which were situated in each corner of the dance floor. When Peter asked, “What do you do when you get restless?” I went right into a currently unfolding situation. I really wanted to huff away—to leave dramatically; and I kept storming toward each of the four doors. After many charges, I found a sharp little dance of “this can’t be this can’t be this can’t be yet I have no power the only thing I can do is be sharp show contempt and walk away.” No further insights have emerged; and the situation I was sketching continues.
After so much emphatic movement and so many wholehearted experiments, or perhaps because the shadow fell over me at last, I grew tired and stayed more or less in one spot. The day ended with people actually wearing and dancing with Martha’s spectacular crowns. I approached the altar several times, wanting to wear one crown in particular. It had a netted veil that could be drawn over the eyes and a tiny toy bird perched on it. It seemed too immersed in its environment to remove it, but eventually I gathered enough courage and danced briefly with it on my head—thinking it an auspicious ritual as we move into spring, into new beginnings, into subtle and un-subtle unfurlings, and (I hope) into joy and inspiration.
March 10, NYC
by meghanleborious | Mar 15, 2015 | Notes on Practice
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and is not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.
Today’s Sweat Your Prayers class was held at the Martha Graham Studio on Bethune Street in the West Village rather than at the Joffrey Studio. I arrived on time and whisper-stepped onto the one-step-up sprung floor. I found movement easily, and felt rising emotion as I started to find my feet. The room was neither too warm nor too cold, and I sensed the flush of spring’s optimism despite the tenacious grip of winter. I hadn’t danced (officially) for two weeks. My two most recent dances before this hiatus had ended painfully, with constraint and distraction. Today, it was like my body re-set itself. I found an entirely new dance—investigating suspension with many tiny articulations inside of big, expressive gestures. On the floor, I began to stretch and twist, attenuating the farthest reaches of myself and letting the end of the stretch curve back in, moving naturally into circular motion and to Flowing.
I very much wanted to connect and moved around the room, falling into step with everyone I encountered. I noticed that although I tend to be bold about approaching people to dance with them, I am very quick to move away if they are not immediately receptive. There are often many layers to intention; and I note that, in part, I don’t want to invade anyone’s space. And I sometimes like to move through the whole room without settling in with anyone so I can enjoy the experience of being in the human field. Also, I think part of me is afraid of being rejected.
When someone else approaches to dance with me, it might take me awhile to key into their advance and to warm up to the idea of accepting it. If someone is persistent without being aggressive, I might appreciate that they really want to dance with me in particular, and that they have made a conscious choice to connect. I vowed to experiment with staying a little longer in instances when I approach someone to dance but they don’t immediately (or obviously) engage in partnership.
I note a parallel in my job-work life at the moment. Sometimes I start out gung-ho, then if I encounter resistance, I pull back. Perhaps it is unrelated, but simultaneous to this noticing, I managed to find a new angle—a new way to approach my work with integrity and excitement, rather than by giving up and retreating when I feel like I am running into a wall. For some reason, I still have to remind myself to look for the empty space, especially when I am in partnership.
I was slightly apprehensive about dance this morning. Sometimes when I have a run of unpleasant experiences, I start to fear that the dances of freedom, athleticism, creativity, insight and connectedness that I often experience have evaporated forever. Tears came and went as I was swept by inspiration, repeatedly raising my hands high overhead and arching back with my eyes upward, taking in the antique tin ceiling and stage lights as my head swept back and then rolled forward dramatically again.
During the Stillness after a recent yoga class, the instructor suggested that we should invite what we need into our lives. For me, the first word that came to mind was “inspiration.” The winter has been long and grueling; and although I am not consciously begging for spring, I feel emotionally exhausted. Money has been tight, work has been rock-and-hard-place-y, sleep has been brief, and long dormant issues have reared their heads with unexpected vehemence.
Tammy reminded us that the neighbors below the Martha Graham Studio do not appreciate dancers’ feet pounding heavily on the floor above them, and I experimented with gentle feet, only occasionally forgetting and punctuating a movement of the hips with a sharp, percussive stomp. Knowing how to be powerful without making loud noise is a skill I would do well to learn.
After the first wave, I felt connected and porous. That is to say, I felt like my energy field was uncompressed and could easily mingle with the energy fields of other practitioners. I was able to do what I call “passing through practice,” something that was taught to me by an ancient spirit. I mean, that Iimagine an ancient spirit taught to me.
I wrote this at the time:
“A couple of weeks ago during Jonathan’s class, I (imagined I) was seeing everyone’s
spirits including my own: light bodies, pain bodies, and a diffuse kind of
light. One of my spirits—I think a very old male ancestor—really wanted
to interact with me. At first I felt nervous because he was
manifesting differently than what I usually see. He was more like a shadow
spirit. But I told him, it’s OK, I am not afraid, I am totally porous and I
am not afraid of you. So he started to dance with me, to overlap with me,
and to pass through me. It had never occurred to me that possession could be
so gentle. At times both our spirits were intermingled. Then, everyone
else’s personal energy fields were kind of passing through mine, and mine
through theirs.” –January, 2009
This practice is absolutely not available unless I am in a connected and porous state, but if I am blessed to arrive there, it is simply a matter of intention and shifted perspective.
My energy faltered slightly as we moved toward the end of the class, but I left feeling uplifted and re-connected with myself. Stepping out onto Bethune Street, I found deep slush, hard winds and steadily falling snow. But my heart held a tiny sunshine, reminding me that after a particularly aggressive winter, the awakening of spring is all the more glorious.
March 1, 2015, NYC
by meghanleborious | Feb 17, 2015 | Notes on Practice
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and is not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.
Did I really title my post a couple of weeks ago “The Most Grueling Stretch of Winter”? It is a little like turning to the person in the car next to you and saying, “Wow! This is great! There is almost no traffic today!” The next thing you know, you are going 5 miles per hour and calling your destination to say you will arrive hours later than anticipated.
New York is strident today. The neighbor’s wind chimes kept me up all night flinging themselves in the erratic gusts. The streets are coated with a film of chalky white salt. Polluted snow is frozen in perilous little grey mountains. There is no moisture whatsoever. My lips are cracked and flaking. Great gales of wind blow the salt in visible waves. It is so dry that I stepped on some dog mess and it didn’t even matter. There wasn’t even an unpleasant squish—just hard little poo ice cubes under my salt-stained boot.
Dance on Friday began pleasantly enough. I could move, thankfully, thankfully. Halfway through the class, Tammy encouraged the people who could access Flowing movement to continue to move gently, attending to the many people who found themselves in the throes of inertia. I moved at first with quiet inspiration, but as she instructed the people who were moving to partner with those in inertia, I began to sink into the inertia, myself.
I also grew preoccupied—two different strands of emotional unrest began to assert themselves in my thinking mind; and I found myself with forehead knitted, slowing down, aware that the stream of my breath was growing increasingly constrained. A pattern has emerged lately—I start the class off cheerful, energetic and open; and end the class tired, tight and airless.
In fact, both my voice and my breath seem thin to me these last days. It is like I am speaking only from the mouth, and the slime in my throat and sinuses is blocking energy from my belly and the rest of my body. I have to clear my throat often and my voice has a struggling quality.
Before she paused to offer teaching direction in the middle of the class, Tammy said, “Anything that I say, I might say the opposite another time.” As she often does, Tammy spoke of something she remembered from Gabrielle Roth, the creator and blessed mother of the 5Rhythms practice. Gabrielle had given a set of instructions, then tossed off at the end, “or not!” I love this. I hear it as: take it seriously, take it on, embody the instructions, embrace the rhythms…and at the same time, don’t get stuck on the method, don’t get attached to doing it a certain way, don’t try to escape the unpredictability, and, for the love of Gods, don’t take it so seriously that it loses all its air! I keyed into “or not” even more because my newly five-year-old son was experimenting with the same phrase when we were driving yesterday. I couldn’t help but wonder if Gabrielle was playing with me somehow, and it made me smile.
In the 1990’s a close friend and I were immersed in identity politics. It felt critical to us at the time, but he used to say that after you went on a rant about the dominant paradigm or other pressing injustice, you should throw on “n’ shit” at the end. For example, “The white male hegemonic power monopoly evolved through the systematic suppression of women’s subjective experiences of their bodies…..‘n shit.”
I danced with a friend who I love and had a hard time connecting. I noticed that if I stayed light and kept moving my feet, spinning and leaping, it was easier to be sort-of connected—at least not as apparently out of sync—but that it was hard for me to empathize with her experience of being in her body—which is so often the source of inspiration for me in dance.
My son has taken to mountain climbing the dingy smog-grey ice mountains that edge Brooklyn’s sidewalks. Several times lately, he has asked me to follow his feet, and I have trudged along behind him, noting the tenderness of seeing him thus, and of seeing the way forward through his sharp eyes. It reminds me of a powerful experience I had during Lucia’s workshop in December 2013 (see blog archive) when a “witness” trailed me through the rhythms and I ended the exercise sobbing uncontrollably with my face buried in her hair. There was something about the way she was present and the way she had my back as she followed me that was incredibly moving. And there was something in the way my son trudged joyfully over obstacles, sure about his choices of footing—sometimes a little risky but by no means kamikaze—that made me smile.
Lately, he is going through a phase that reminds me of how he was at age two—tempestuous and impulsive. After a difficult afternoon, when I was trying to get across the point that he must control extreme outbursts, I opened Gabrielle’s book “Maps to Ecstasy” at random and read:
“The best thing to do with an angry child is not to try to turn off the anger, to push it down, to insist that the anger be controlled; rather, it is best to give the child permission, to affirm it. Maybe you can get down with the child and do an angry, stomping monster dance together. It is…vital for us to help our mates, lovers, children and friends in letting their emotions breathe and find apt expression” (74).
As inertia and distraction began to take root in me, an ardent new dancer caressed me as he zoomed past, without even looking at me. My mind said, “Are you kidding me right now?” I don’t know why, but I can be very sensitive to this kind of invasion of space. Similar things happened two other times, with two other people. I guess I was drawing it! Either that or the ardent new dancer was affecting the dynamic strongly. I spent several minutes thinking about how I could tell him at the end, “Please don’t ever touch me unless you make eye contact first and you have some reason to believe that I am receptive to being touched.”
It is an extraordinary contrast between the times when I can move with energy, inspiration and creativity; and the times when I quite simply-can’t. I hovered near one of the columns, moving slightly. I had the thought, “I had better start moving or I am going to get stepped on,” when someone in the throes of Chaos tromped right on top of my foot. It hurt, and I pinched my already unsmiling face further, but I really couldn’t blame her.
Last week in class Tammy talked about how sometimes with the press of life, you can be “in the moment”, but each moment can be totally isolated from the others.
It made me think of a scene in the book “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” by Milan Kundera (or is it in “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting?”) in which a character has a moment when he dislocates from time. He is simply passing a children’s schoolyard and listening to their play songs, but the moment becomes incomprehensible and garish. It is, in a way, the ultimate postmodern experience. Something about the myopia of trying to move in the world in the depths of winter affects me similarly. It is like I am too busy hunching over to protect my organs from the cold to notice the connections between things.
I spent nearly the entire second wave in distracted ill ease, but had a reprieve at the very end when a friend who I love to dance with engaged me. I was drawn in to his great, pendulous backsteps and spinning, wide-armed gestures. I think part of the reason I found a few moments of freedom with him is that, based on years of shared dances, I knew I could trust him.
As always and as is correct, I left without admonishing the ardent new dancer; and hoping that when I got outside I would remember that there is no point in bracing myself against the cold since it wouldn’t actually make me any warmer.
Writing today, I found a little ember of gratitude. I cupped my hands and blew on it, hoping it would keep me warm through the remaining arctic days.
February 15, 2015
by meghanleborious | Feb 9, 2015 | Notes on Practice
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and is not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.
The most spectacular human being on the planet was born five years ago tomorrow. I mean my own small son, of course. Gabrielle’s unabashed adoration of her son, Jonathan, who is now the lineage holder of the entire 5Rhythms tradition, opened the door to openly admitting my feelings, without embarrassment, holding back or making light of it. I wish that every child could be loved as much.
At this time five years ago, I was eating dinner with my son’s father. I had spent the day doing errands in Manhattan, and had been for a swim in the Chelsea Pool. I had to walk slowly, slowly as my body was beginning to cramp around the baby. I did not identity it as labor until after we had eaten and had settled down to watch a movie. The realization dawned on me slowly. “I think I might be in labor,” I said. He reacted badly, suggesting angrily that I call my sister. I tried, but could not reach her. She had just completed the Miami marathon, went out drinking after and was fast asleep. I called the midwife and started to gather some things I might need. We got into a car service. Then, it became very clear that I was, in fact, in labor. The first rounds of real pain caught me off guard. I turned and kneeled on the black leather seat facing out the back window, literally biting the upholstery and calling out in pain.
We arrived at the Brooklyn Birthing Center around 11pm, ahead of the midwife, and found the door locked and the lights off. I could barely stay on my feet at this point, and was becoming shrill with pain. The midwife arrived shortly after and let us in. She examined me and decided to have me move and walk before formally admitting me. At this point, she became strident, “You have to focus. You can’t totally lose it now.” She encouraged me to breathe through the contractions, and showed my partner how to press on the back of my pelvis to help relieve the pain.
I danced throughout pregnancy. In the very beginning, I stopped going to classes because I had heard a rumor that loud music could be bad for a developing baby. I couldn’t find any good evidence to support this; and since things were turbulent at home, I realized I had to return to classes or risk harming my little son with held-in sadness and anxiety. I even did an intensive, weekly shadows workshop that met late on Wednesday nights during the fifth and sixth months of my pregnancy.
It was in dance that I connected with the miracle of pregnancy. For the first time in my life, I was completely filled in every way. I was dancing three rhythms at once, my own, the baby’s, and the rhythm of us together. I was awestruck when I thought about the fact that I had two heartbeats; and I could hear and feel both.
In the Shadows workshop, my process of working with fear-entrenched patterns accelerated, as I hoped to evolve, somehow, before welcoming a new human into my life. I danced hard! It must have been a remarkable sight. When we investigated Chaos, I remember laying on the ground at the end fearful that I might have harmed the baby.
I spent hours and hours in the days immediately before birth tilting gently side to side on an upholstered rocking hasset, sitting in front of an altar that I made—of chandelier crystals and the little rainbows they cast, my grandmother’s glass Blessed Mother statue, and transparent blue and white fabric. I was beginning to turn in, to gather energy, to enter a trance that (in retrospect) lasted for several months after my son was born.
Before and during this period, I felt pulled to spinning. I was powerful and engaged inside a spin, and I dipped and cut the air with my hands, slowing and speeding up for long stretches. It might be interesting to note that when my son was tiny, the best way to calm him was by holding him in my arms and spinning—very fast and very gently.
Because I danced all the way through pregnancy, I don’t think I ever moved like a pregnant woman. Instead, I was able to adjust to my fast-changing body, including to the shifts in balance.
I wasn’t afraid leading up to birth—at least not of the birthing process. In fact, I was interested in testing my limits. Once the midwife re-set me, I got into a rhythm. Between contractions I danced Flowing in the hallway at the birthing center, moving in gentle spirals, my feet in constant motion. When a contraction came, I put my hands on the wall and breathed until I came to the other side of it.
Before long, the midwife declared that it was time, and I was helped into a warm bathtub. In the bath, I felt totally supported. My son’s father, the midwife and a birthing attendant were in the room with me. When the process got very intense, I turned to the side of the bathtub, held onto a metal bar and learned to beat a rhythm on the wall as my body radically adjusted and my pelvis stretched to make way for the baby.
I had to leave the bathtub when it was time to push, and for some reason I insisted on putting on my bathrobe as I was assisted to the room next door. I was patient, ethereal at this time, asking for a sip of water. Then, things got very urgent. The midwife said that the umbilical cord was totally wrapped around the baby and that we had to get him out immediately. I was immune to stress, but followed directions, pushing like I was doing a resisted sit-up. After all the pain leading up to the pushing, I was surprised that the last stage was painless. He emerged easily, with just a couple of pushes hours before dawn.
He gazed at us, centuries of wisdom in his tiny eyes. We spent the morning in the birthing center—where it was warm, dark, quiet and private. My sister also appeared and we took turns holding this still-otherworldly creature.
The year he was born—2010—was marked by blizzards, and we spent our first weeks silent and flowing. The beauty of the snow, the white sky, the silver line of the subway sliding by in view of the window, and the quiet cadence of the soft rocking chair folded into days that slid into nights and opened again into dawn.
The first time I was due to meet Gabrielle was on my son’s first birthday. We were out of town and had to travel back literally during the height of another blizzard. My father drove us to the closest Amtrak platform and waited with us for the long-delayed train. It eventually came trudging down the track, its metal snow plow carving a path ahead of it. Shortly after we boarded, the train went out of service and we had to wait in a station for hours, take a bus to another place entirely, and re-board another train. Gabrielle was already sick by then, and she had to cancel that day because her voice was weak.
After I had been dancing for about a year, I noticed that my relationship to creative work changed completely. Before, I had wasted time on neurotic activity, wondering if I was really a good artist, if I should really be a writer instead, if being a good writer would automatically mean that I was a bad artist—and on and on and on. After, I stopped asking myself these questions, and found that I had (without making any resolutions) started to actually trust the creative process to unfold and show me the way to a form. Creative work started to pour out of me. I was no longer serving my identity as an “artist” in the same way. Instead, I rode the winds of inspiration like a galloping horse.
After my son was born, I shed yet another layer of inane self-talk that held me back from creative activity; and I stepped without hesitation into ambitious projects and opportunities that arose.
A good friend told me about Tammy’s class a couple of days after my son was born. The friend put a picture of my son, showing his tiny head cradled perfectly in the palm of his father’s hand, on the altar. Tammy announced to the class that he had been born, and, according to my friend, many people were moved, some even cried. She said they felt like he was their baby, too, since we had all gone through the experience of pregnancy together.
February 1, 2015
by meghanleborious | Feb 9, 2015 | Notes on Practice
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and is not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.
You know the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz? They are the terrifying, taloned, swooping creatures allied with the Wicked Witch who plague Dorothy and her allies as they seek a way home to themselves. On Friday, I found myself plagued by fears. My little son—who is thriving, happy, healthy and spectacular—has been turning his feet out, rolling onto their outer edges to the point that he is knocking himself over. He has experienced (yet another) massive growth spurt, growing an inch or more since Christmas; and it is most likely a matter of his body adjusting to the fast growth. Even so, my mind panics—especially when it comes to him. In the beginning I was an unusually cavalier parent, but when he was ten months old, he spiked a high fever and had a seizure. I feared he was dying as I waited for the ambulance to arrive. Two years later, the same thing happened. I am told it is not uncommon; and that almost all children grow out of febrile seizures by grade school age, but it changed my perspective and, in some ways, my relaxed feelings. I watched my little son as he walked yesterday, intense, my eyebrows knitted together; and he asked me to stop watching his feet, as it was “making him embarrassed!”
I relaxed slightly as I drove to class on Friday night. I stepped into the already flowing room, bowed, and unexpectedly collapsed onto my knees with my forehead to the floor. I wondered what would happen, and wished for catharsis to cut through the fear and anxiety that were plaguing me. Truthfully, I had already been feeling anxious, even before I noted the change in my son’s feet. Late at night, while writing, I have been worrying away at my fingernails. I have also had stress dreams and have been waking up with bite marks on the sides of my tongue. Years ago, I was sure I had conquered anxiety, but I am reminded that relating to it is an ongoing process.
Lately, too (just to really heap it on), I’ve been grappling with the shamanic aspects of my own practice. I’ve been wondering whether or not opening myself up completely on every level might be dangerous in some way. I think this can happen when a strong fear comes up—it starts to ricochet all over and all kinds of scarcely related things start to come up and seem related. As to the shamanic aspects of practice, over the years, I have developed the belief that if I am energetically empty—porous, unattached, dynamic and connected to everyone and everything—I have nothing to fear. As I started to move, I asked myself, “What might happen if I totally let go?” But then I didn’t. Or couldn’t.
The music for the second half of the class was provided by two drummers. They were highly skilled and the room was alive with rhythm; but I just couldn’t get into it. With all the driving rhythm, I had a hard time finding Flowing—finding my feet, finding continuous motion, finding receptivity and finding graceful presence.
Today would have been my maternal grandmother—my Mamie’s, 87th birthday. Last night I re-configured objects on a little wooden box in my bedroom. One of the objects I chose to include was Mamie’s baby ring, which she gave to me when she realized she was moving toward her death. It is a tiny little gold band, with a tiny little garnet set into it. Too precious to describe with words. I put it on the tip of my little finger and thought about my own son who is leaving his babyhood—about to turn five, thought about my grandmother as a tiny baby as she was adored by her own mother; and I wept as I sat contemplating her life and contemplating, too, the passage of time.
I wish I had loved my grandmother better. I loved her deeply—to be sure, but my self-preoccupation kept me from fully showing up for her. My preoccupation with managing my relationship was a key cause, but I don’t think I ever really considered what it would mean to put her needs first, or to see things through her eyes. In her late years, with limited mobility, she yearned to get into a swimming pool. I vaguely thought I should try to organize it, but I never did—not realizing how finite time with her was. During her last summer, she wanted to take the entire family out to dinner one night while we were on vacation. I resisted, not wanting to leave the beach early. The unforgettable site of her frail, brave, bent back receding as she and my great aunt got into my mother’s car on an outing, instead, to get hot dogs, causes me tremendous pain now.
I have been hard on myself these last few days. Perhaps it is because we have entered the most grueling stretch of winter.
At dance, I tried to connect with the music, but found myself un-creative. At one point, I bumped into a friend’s elbow. Truthfully, he backed up without looking behind him, but the collision was chiefly my fault, as it was me who entered the space he had been established in and it was me who did not notice his backward motion in time to shift and give him the space he needed. He receded with his face pinched and holding his elbow; and I learned that he had been suffering from an injury in that very spot.
Shortly after, scanning the room, I couldn’t locate him. I feared that I’d horribly injured him and that he’d had to leave for the night. I repeatedly looked away from the friend I was partnered with, wondering what to do, abusing myself for my mis-step. Thankfully, he reappeared, and I turned back to my friend. We joined in a breath-powered, emphatic Stillness—smiling and embracing each other at the end.
When I was still with the partner I loved for many years, I spoke with a friend during a day of crushing anxiety. My partner had been out drinking all night following an acrimonious conflict; and I was embarrassed and self-abusive because I had stayed awake all night in a state of agony, waiting for him to come home. The friend said the most generous thing: “Meg, that’s just how it is. When you really love somebody, you are going to have some sleepless nights from time to time. That is just how it is. It’s part of the territory.” I was so grateful that she didn’t put pressure on me to be kinder, stronger or more evolved.
When I write a text like this one, the last thing I want to do is share it with the world. I have a deep fear that attending to my fears might make actually them manifest. Another part of me believes that accepting fear without attaching to it is the only way through, but this voice is hesitant—a poor debater who can’t hold her ground in a heated argument. I am also afraid because this is not how I want you to see me. I want to show you my tenderness, awareness, courage, vitality, my magnificence, my insight. I don’t want you to see me riddled with anxiety, small, frightened and closed down. I beg you to keep it to yourself, and please, to play it down if my name should happen to come up in casual conversation.
I noticed another friend near me, playing with the floor, arcing and suspending with movements surely inspired by yoga. I was delighted to join her for a few brief moments, my limbs growing confidently into the space behind and above me, reflecting her experiments, until we were instructed to change partners.
Sometimes I wish for a certain experience, such as catharsis. However, I have learned that hoping dance will fix me, hoping things will turn out a certain way, or hoping to escape the harsh judgments of my own mind are rarely productive. Sometimes things take time to move; and the only resources that serve are faith, patience and self-compassion.
January 27, 2015
