by meghanleborious | Oct 27, 2014 | Notes on Practice
October 26, 2014
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and are not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.
Lately, I have a very strong sense of being in the middle of many exciting trajectories. My very first post was about Lucia’s Waves workshop in December, 2013; and the key insight that I experienced during the workshop was that I am very much in the middle. At times, I have missed the middle completely because I thought I was still warming up! There is no point in pacing myself, as I sometimes do, so I will have enough left once things really heat up. I can easily talk a good game about being in the middle, about being present now, and about not holding back; but being in the middle in a satisfying way also requires a lot of dedicated work inside the many ongoing beginnings. I think the experience of being in the middle might actually be the pay-off for faith and discipline. Getting older might have some upsides after all (!)
I am being vague. Thank you for bearing with me, dear readers, if, indeed, you have. Let me locate myself in relation to the dance first, then I will be happy to share specifics about my own experiences.
Amber taught Tammy’s class on Friday night. Have I mentioned that I love Amber? It is immediately apparent that she has always been a dancer, and that she has an exceptional ability to teach exactly what needs to be taught. As I stepped inside, pausing and bowing to the room as is my habit, Amber said something on the microphone that let me know she saw me come in. I was impressed and felt she seemed to be able to see everything in the room. One of the first songs she played was a thick, tonal track from Massive Attack and I found myself wanting to pull and slide low to the floor.
During her talk, as we paused and rested in a circle around her, Amber reminded us of the two-year anniversary of Gabrielle Roth’s death—the beloved founder of the 5Rhythms practice. She also taught the core Flowing practice of walking and dancing through the room while seeking empty space; and advised us to consider slowing down. I found a new way to dance the low spaces between people, and kept touching one hand down, swooping one wing, then curving back into higher open spaces.
One man raised his hand after her talk because he wanted to make a suggestion. He said, “I appreciate all of your teaching and insights and exhortations and all of that, but could you just let the music teach us during this next wave?” She said something about loving to dance and he said, “So do we.” I bristled. Amber is part of “we”! How dare he try to include me on his team that made her into an Other! Her response was perfect. She ended with “I think you will probably get your wish,” but not before she explained that in a class like this (a Waves class), we especially come to dance the 5Rhythms and to practice the basics. If we just come in and do what we always do, there would not be any growth. Rather, we come to try on new things and to take on new challenges. I loved that she was sharp and clear and held her ground, without being defensive or emphatic in any way.
As much as I found in the content of what Amber said, I found that the space she created lead me to alternatingly expansive and constrained expressions of abject joy and excitement. New forms kept finding me and; and I felt I was dancing the fullness of many things, the tenor of joy, and the squirmy, specific, arcing and leaping and undulating forms of the creative process.
The things I spoke vaguely about before include several different projects. First, as an artist, I have nearly finished a large body of work that continues to reveal itself to me in delightful glimpses. Shockingly, gloriously, it has dumped me right into the next body of work. If you will excuse a reference that only a few will get, it is just as Mahayana practice might dump you abruptly right into Vajrayana like a great mountain stream emptying in a rushing crash into a deep, dark cavern’s pool. In another trajectory, my avatar as a 10th grade teacher, I have made a little progress, too, and have been sharp and strategic about using what skills I have in the service of students and of the school community. On another note, after an arduous process, my little son skipped pre-K entirely and entered right into public school kindergarten, where he is thriving and happy—no longer the beginning of sheltered pre-school, but full-on even including homework. In addition, we are nearing the one-year anniversary of this blog. Although I am still learning, I am beginning to sink deeply into the process of writing, and to find my voice within this ever-evolving content.
Most relevant to this blog, my own 5Rhythms practice has also opened up in a new way as I take on a role of service within the community through organizing the Family Waves class, New York’s first 5Rhythms class for both children and adults. I have had the excellent fortune to work closely with Amber as the frame reveals itself, and I have benefitted immensely, learning from her and being influenced by her approach to her own practice and to her own life. The Family Waves class itself, as well, has moved into a stage of middle now, and I am thrilled that the community is growing and is acquiring its own identity and vision.
The last movement of the night on Friday was, for me, a breathy trance. The dance loaned me two big, feathery angel wings that I spun gently inside of, forgetting everything but the magic of movement and the quiet grace of being alive.
by meghanleborious | Oct 21, 2014 | Notes on Practice
October 19, 2014
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and are not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.
Occasionally, I suffer with this weird pain. It feels like the sciatic pain I had in my legs during pregnancy, but it is in my arms, too. I feel it most in the heels of my hands and the bottoms of my feet. It is worst right before my period, and can be very intense. It makes me feel afraid. In addition, contrasting my accustomed cavalier attitude about germs, I have been acting like a germophobe in the last two weeks. Anxiety about ebola (whether justified or not) has ricocheted through my mind and body; and I have been subject to the tightening of fear.
Walking into class, I wondered how the pain in my hands and feet would affect my ability to move. I experimented with giving it its full shape, holding my hands, rubbing and pulling at the sore surfaces, curling over, holding my shoulders like they held up tightly folded wings. Thanks in part to Advil, the pain started to subside, and I found myself deep inside a thrilling and tender dance.
I danced with one enigmatic friend, who I have been increasingly drawn to over the last few months. For a long time our dances were similar, but recently have taken on many new aspects. We found ourselves in a soft, tender, breathy dance in the Lyrical phase of the first wave, and I found that I kept turning the soles of my feet toward him—a humble offering and expression of gratitude. On my own, I pressed both my hands down onto my chest in a physical expression of a heavy heart. By the time Tammy stopped the music between the first and second waves, tears were coursing down my face. She had us sit in silence for several minutes. I couldn’t help but think about times when the collective field has been unbridled joy, such as when Obama was first elected, and how much I noted the contrast, feeling on this Friday such gravity.
I did not plan to go to the Sweat Your Prayers class today, but decided to accompany my sister, Courtney, and attend. My sister’s heart is very, very heavy right now. Her best friend, who she has been close with since middle school, is very sick. She will begin receiving hospice services this week. She will have her 39th birthday in November; and she has a seven year old son. Courtney saw her yesterday. I wanted to respect her need to experience her pain without interfering, and also kept feeling drawn to rub her upper back and to move with her. I hoped that I wasn’t being too pushy, but stayed with her as often as it felt right. When my favorite dance partner—my wild Vajrayana-like friend who travels with me into unexpected pockets of reality—came to invite me to dance, instead of falling into a dance with him, I kept close to my sister and the three of us danced together. I wanted to just hold her and hold her. Sometimes there is the mistaken wish that if I can just love someone enough, I can take pain away. Really, I think it is too much pressure on them, and I am just not that powerful. Then the pain becomes about me instead of an honest expression of the loved one’s reality. Instead, I tried my best to hold the space and be as supportive and loving as I could be. And, too, I shared exquisite dance after exquisite dance, including several with the friend I bared my soles to on Friday.
During the final of several waves, the music dropped out during Chaos. The room went wild, and we spontaneously turned the room into a big Chaos circle. I took a turn in the middle, leaping and whirling with all the explosive love of living that came to me in that moment. When the music came back, Peter (who was subbing for Jonathan) continued with the circle format.
Courtney and I left a few minutes early, as I had a firm appointment I could not change. I left feeling amazed, amazed, amazed, as I am on so many occasions at the ability of the 5Rhythms to hold everything, in every way it is needed.
by meghanleborious | Oct 5, 2014 | Notes on Practice
October 5, 2014
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and are not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.
Everything is perfect. Even when it is all a gigantic mess.
I showed up to Tammy’s class on Friday, which was substitute-taught by 5Rhythms teacher Kierra, feeling like my circumstances were impossible and unworkable. I doubted I would be able to move at all. When I walked in, I ducked behind the person who was greeting people at the door because I wanted to walk in naked, on my own terms, not in the lens of another’s gaze. Rather than finding a spot to stretch and de-compress, as is my usual practice, I wandered about distractedly for some time. At one point, I realized I had traversed the room and couldn’t remember how it happened.
I have at least three full-on careers, and several additional professional trajectories—the most challenging of the three is my work as a 10th grade teacher at a New York City public school. The students are delightful—even when they are challenging. The adults, on the other hand, are not always delightful. I have only one kindred spirit in my school community, and she, herself, is marginal to the politics of the place. On Friday, I presented an issue that I feel passionately about and that I thought there would be receptivity to, and was resoundingly defeated.
I found myself talking with a new friend about 5Rhythms on the topic of how each of us relates to rhythm. “I realize, after many years of metaphoric bumps and injuries, that I have a different beat,” I said. She thought I was making a joke, so I clarified, “For a long time, I thought it was just a rebellious teenager thing that I have, but I believe it is deeper than that. I can do the big beat, the rhythm of the room, but very often, left to my own devices, I find myself finding the tiny rhythms, finding the metarhythms, finding myself in the air when most people around me are stepping on top of a downbeat.” This realization, in the context of my school dilemma, made me feel sad. Sometimes I feel so different. (A little sweep of sad gets me as I re-read this.)
Walking in, I was tight, withdrawn, wrinkled. Caught in a story of how I don’t deserve to be wrong. Miraculously, within moments, I remembered that everything is perfect. Even when it is a gigantic mess. Kierra put on a popular song with the lyric, “Say what you’ve got to say…” I danced it to its edges. I rose and fell; I walked and retreated; I emoted and enacted; I spun and stopped and arced and bit. Then, she put on a song with an epic swell and I found the grace and dignity of it, the point, the reason to bother even when it seems pointless and impossible.
Whereas I came in feeling like I wished I had kept my mouth shut at work, wishing I hadn’t come out of the closet as a reformer, after these few songs I had a totally different take. There is no point in being attached to my own experience or to my own righteous position, nor to disowning it. I said what I had to say, there is integrity to my position, and now I will take the consequences and see where things go.
As Flowing unfolded in the first wave, I noticed that I felt vulnerable. I was very aware of the spot in the middle of my upper back—the place behind the heart where an arrow could easily kill you—a part of my body that I worked with extensively in my first year of practice as my elaborate armor began to dismantle. Once I noticed I was feeling vulnerable, and that my back was vulnerable, I decided that I might as well be uniformly vulnerable, to all people in the room and with all parts of my body.
In the interlude between the first and second waves, Kierra prefaced her thematic offering with, “I invite you. I invite you. If it is right for you, if it feels right for you, you take it on. If not, that’s OK. I invite you, not I command you.” She was speaking my language already. I really want to be invited, not commanded. And, as a teacher, I want to invite and not command my own students.
She then said something to the effect of inviting us to take on the idea of being in harmony with the seasons. Next, she said that if we were living close to the earth, this time of the year in this region would be one of harvesting. I thought about my own harvests. About how as a visual artist I just had a wonderful artwork exhibition—the culmination of years of hard work. I also thought about how as a teacher, I have honed some skills and competencies that I can now employ. And about abundance and the fact that I am blessed in infinite ways. When the music started again, I doubled over, determined to feel my feet connected to the floor, the ground, the earth. I lifted each toe with my hands and placed it deliberately onto the floor. Then, I carefully isolated each part of each foot, feeling its connection to ground. Tears arose—of gratitude and release.
I shared many exquisite dances. With two experienced dancers, all of us threading and swooping in and out of each other. Several with my favorite dance partner ever, who I could dance with as a full time job and still find totally uncharted territory in every new minute. With a friend who I seem often to meet in playful Staccato and who I love to keep my eye on by bending backward, even as I spin and dip in our shared orbit.
Sometimes salvation is too much to hope for. I walk into the room feeling terrible and I leave feeling worse. Sometimes, sometimes if the stars are aligned and I have not eaten too much or too little and if I am willing to let everything move and if the sun is not in my eyes…sometimes I can walk in my truth, that everything, absolutely everything, is perfect. Even when it is a gigantic mess.
by meghanleborious | Sep 7, 2014 | Notes on Practice
August 30, 2014
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and are not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.
I dreamt of rainbows.
They came dancing in.
(2010)
While on vacation in Cape Cod, I saw the most vivid rainbow I have ever seen. It manifested in its full expanse, from foot to foot, and there was a second, slightly-more-faint arc dancing around the first.
I arrived late to Tammy’s class Friday night, and with a horrible pinch in my back. Truthfully, it was my own fault that I arrived late. I wanted to get some special body lotion that is sold in a nearby health food store. I would have had just enough time if I was staccato about it, but when I got there I found myself distracted by all the appealing things.
The pinch—an angry nerve in my left middle back—started while I was waiting in line for the bathroom at the store with a heavy bag on one shoulder. It was excruciating to breathe; and I found myself inhaling as shallowly as possible to avoid the sharp stab of pain.
When I entered, I was nearly fifteen minutes late, and the room was crossing the threshold from Flowing into Staccato. The pinch persisted. Although everyone was picking up in energy, I lay down on my back. I tried my best to breathe deeply although it was agonizing. After a little while, I got up and tried to move. A sharp “ouch” escaped me despite the rule against speaking, and I crumpled back to the floor.
I feel guilty when I miss Flowing. It’s like abruptly jumping into a conversation when you don’t know what the conversing people are talking about. The idea that the ground of Flowing is what keeps us all safe is a teaching I have heard many, many times. When I feel pulled out of Flowing and into Staccato, I often try to delay it, feeling like it is my responsibility to thoroughly attend to Flowing before I even think about moving with the vigor and exuberance I ache for.
Not only did I arrive late, but I was working with this terrible pinch. I have had pinches before, and I know that they usually dissolve after a short time, but I did have one that hung on and hung on. Miraculously, the pinch eased and I stood up on the dance floor. The room was fully in Staccato, and filled with friends who I was eager to dance with.
I imagine that my dance looked like Staccato; and I was in sync with the people around me, but privately I was in Flowing. I softened myself as much as I could, avoiding the emphatic collisions between adjacent muscles that I so love, and kept my mind on the sensation of my feet touching the floor as much as I attended to my smiling partners. In part, I was afraid to experiment with any tightness or edges inside my body because I did not want to re-engage the unpleasant nerve pinch.
As so often happens in dance and in life, the obstacle of the pinch showed me something new. Being socially in Staccato, but privately in Flowing gave me something delightful about how to be soft. After Tammy spoke during the brief interlude between the two waves of the class, I moved from Flowing and into a patient Staccato with a lanky, lithe friend who I love to dance with. Energy rolls fluidly down his arms and out his feet and he moves easily to the edges of himself. Even while going wholeheartedly into Staccato with all its gorgeous stops and levels and angles and edges, I retained a trace of the enhanced softness that I had investigated earlier. For the first time ever, I was heartbroken when the music shifted into Chaos and we separated.
My energy flagged briefly at this point, and I lingered near a column where I wasn’t too much in the open. Shortly, the song switched and I was wild in Chaos, flung about with momentum in diagonal, spiral, asymmetrical motion. Still, in Chaos, I retained a trace of the softness that I found by accident earlier in the class, owing to the fact that I was afraid to re-engage the muscle pinch.
During the interim teaching, Tammy called our attention to a group of objects, carefully lit on a little table by the east wall of the studio. She explained that at one time this had been called an altar, sometimes it has been called an installation; but that the woman who first arranged objects for a 5Rhythms event in this way, Martha (Peabody), calls it “visuals.” Tammy shared that she likes using “visuals” best because it has the “most space” of the three options.
On the way to the class, I had been thinking about the theme of space. Before we left our rental cottage at Cape Cod, my son, Simon, and I decided to visit the beach one more time. Astonishingly, yesterday’s intricate sandcastle was intact, beautifully eroded to sheer castle cliffs by surrounding waves at now-passed high tide. Our closing gesture was to stand facing the vast horizon, scanning the sea, with our arms outstretched, and to breathe and take in the vast space around us.
This week, when Simon and I stepped out of the Queens Art Museum and into Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Simon held his little arms out wide and said to me, “Wow! Look at this Mommy! Look at all this space!” while taking a big breath in.
One thing I notice with interest is that in a driving, rhythmically-complex chaos song it is during the brief interludes that have no apparent beat that I feel most alive with creative inspiration.
Chaos emptied me into a low, arcing investigation of diagonals as the force of the solid floor rocketed my foot up and across me again and again. Soon, Tammy had us partner and wove in a song with traditional Irish music. I found myself kicking and bouncing, barely touching down, short of breath—joyful and free.
At the end of the class, as we moved into the sublime rhythm of Stillness, I closed my eyes and let spirit take over. I saw rainbows moving through me and out the palms of my hands, eventually moving in luxurious ribbons around the entire room.
We saw a rainbow
Perfectly rendered, vivid,
Partly doubled—
A shimmering mirage of form
Adorning endless space.
(2014)
by meghanleborious | Aug 13, 2014 | Notes on Practice
August 10, 2014
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and are not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.
I danced myself empty today.
I showed up tired and a little sore from Friday night’s dance and a long (unaccustomed) run yesterday; yet stepped immediately out of pain and into delight.
Friday, too, when I arrived my neck was sore from lugging heavy things around, and my energy was low. Somehow (how does it so often happen?) I enjoyed an almost-instant entrance into embodied movement, and shared exquisite dance after exquisite dance. An active stillness shared with a new friend emptied me right into the next exercise that Tammy proposed. She asked everyone who was feeling “invigorated” to move to one side of the room; and she asked everyone who was not feeling invigorated—feeling inertia—to move to the other side of the room. I didn’t even wait to hear the options, and reported directly to the invigorated side. I was filled with gratitude that I could move with such joy, specificity, and, indeed, vigor. Tammy instructed us to partner and I found myself with a loved friend. We moved through a wordless wave, ending with unselfconscious shapes. One of my feet pounded a heartbeat as we rose from a crouching huddle, facing each other. The people who were feeling inertia were instructed to look occasionally at the people who were feeling invigorated, and vice versa.
Lately, I have noticed a slightly wrathful aspect to Tammy’s instruction. A few weeks ago, she admonished people who cavalierly leave the room during class to chit-chat in the hall or sip water, saying that if you are doing that, “you are shitting on this practice!” Today she explained that a Sweat Your Prayers class (as the Sunday class at the Joffrey that I took today is designated) is designed as a map for people to come in and practice applying the 5Rhythms waves teachings in their own experience. She encouraged people to take at least a few classes so they understand the basic practice. She also very emphatically explained that if you come to a 5Rhythms class, you damn well better be ready to do the 5Rhythms—not any other related kind of dance, specifically mentioning Contact Improv. 5Rhythms begins with finding a ground first, in the rhythm of Flowing, and the practice builds from there; and we find a way to relate to each of the rhythms as we move through a wave. To bring her point home, Tammy said, “This is not free dance. It is dance that frees.”
Tammy also felt that most of us had skipped over Staccato completely in the first wave—the rhythm of the heart, of emotion, of feeling—and rushed from Flowing straight to Chaos. I confess that I arrived late and this might be a factor, but it seemed that the music stayed in Flowing and Flowing/Staccato, then went straight to Chaos. I was actually holding back a bit, waiting for the music to guide me to what I thought was “full” Staccato, but we went instead straight to Chaos. I didn’t mind her instruction though, and assumed there was something in it for me, regardless. She cut the music after Chaos instead of guiding us to Lyrical and Stillness with her song choices, and everyone continued to bound and shake and began to vocalize wildly. Tammy said something like, “Well, that just reminds us it is a full moon!”
I cried when Tammy said, “This is not free dance. It is dance that frees.” Lately, I cry with gratitude when I hear key phrases in 5Rhythms teachings that I have heard again and again; and when I hear the litany of the rhythms (Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical and Stillness). Recently, a friend who is new to 5Rhythms mentioned another form of dance—Bliss Dance, I think—and said, “It’s pretty much the same as 5Rhythms, just with a different brand.” I kept quiet. For all I know, she may be right. I don’t really know. I haven’t done all the other forms of ecstatic dance. But the more I learn about 5Rhythms, the more I realize I don’t know.
My current understanding is that the container of 5Rhythms can hold absolutely everything, but there are a lot of things it is not. As spacious as the practice can be, it also has the diamond-hard indestructibility and vivid specificity of Vajrayana Buddhism, for example, which is often represented by a ritual knife or sword. Indeed, it is not free dance. As beautiful as free dance is in its own right, Tammy explained that the 5Rhthyms are something different, including a map that forms a ground to work from and that holds us in continually moving. (Please note that only when I have quoted or paraphrased Tammy are they her words—the others are my own reflections.)
I have often considered how I can fully engage with the rhythms and yet avoid conforming to something or falling into habitual patterns. Lately, I like the idea that exploring the rhythms is more about how I point my attention than about how I am actually moving.
Something about Tammy’s admonitions to all of us opened a doorway to a dance of incredible depth. I like that she put her foot down. I don’t have time to play games with myself. Nor do I want to be in a roomful of people who do. Her words made me feel safe, like I could relax inside the room and go wherever spirit moved me to.
By way of aside, I note that one of the things I admire about Tammy is her authenticity. She seems to call the words forth as she forms them, without insisting on a pre-planned theme. It is like she has to let whatever comes, come, seemingly without editing. As she finds her way through, she more often than not arrives in powerful territory, striking notes that open new possibilities for being in the dance and for being in the world.
I danced with many beautiful humans, including a wild, creative, edge-filled staccato maelstrom with a friend I love to dance with, immediately following Tammy’s staccato reminder.
My back neck seems to have loosened recently, allowing me now to see the space behind even with my body facing the opposite direction. I was softer than usual, and I shifted playfully in and out of the shadows of each rhythm as I moved through the room.
As I said, I danced myself empty. From the place of empty, my mind decided to take on a thorny emotional issue that could easily have led to self-abuse at another time. Last night I had a dream that I was at a 5Rhythms workshop. It was in the attic of an old and complex house. I think many of the dancers were naked, and dancing hard. Someone told me she wanted me to come downstairs with her, she had to talk to me. I feared that she wanted to castigate me, and was reluctant to follow, but shortly, I did decide to go with her. What had been a fire-escape ladder to climb up to the attic now had a broken rung on top. It became even more impassable somehow, and was just a stepladder standing straight up on a couch. I was terrified. The woman tried to help me by talking me down but I got more and more afraid. I think I even asked if we could call the fire department! My palms were slick with sweat, loosening my grip. Another woman started to climb up the ladder (now it was sort of suspended, dangling at the bottom) and I became completely flustered and upset.
In a later dream scene, I was walking down the street and a teenage boy, clowning, fell off a wall and almost on top of me. I moved and was not hurt, but I told him, “You are responsible for your body! You have to be aware of where your body is in space!” He half-listened, still with a joking attitude, and I moved toward him, re-iterating, with increasing vehemence. This is very similar to a conversation I have frequently with my son, Simon, including the unnecessary increase in vehemence at the end.
There were many additional twists and turns to the dream, but the message seems clear. I have occasional access to some exquisite, timeless, maybe even transcendent realms, but that I haven’t figured out how to bring the practice into daily experience in a reliable way. And that I often think I am in trouble. Sigh. I guess I am a work in progress.
For me, this connected to the day before. I drove to the beach with two adult friends, and with my son, Simon, and his small friend. We sat in brutal traffic; and several people bypassed the line completely, cutting in at the last moment. I kept myself in check, but this infuriated me. I tried my damnedest to keep these rogue drivers out of the line, mostly without success. My face was contorted with anger and my speech peppered with kid-friendly expletives, such as Mr. Peepee Head, Tinkleface and Doodieball.
Later, Simon grew tired. He is four now, and very determined to direct himself. When it was time to change and pack our things to go, he became defiant. Instead of taking the time to work with him, I grew exasperated and mean. My voice got hard, I pulled him to the water to wash sand off while he cried. After an ice cream treat, I insisted that he throw his own trash away, again dragging him when he refused. We repaired shortly after, but I felt sad and ashamed that I had been so unkind with him. As we were pulling out of the parking lot, some people walked behind the car. One of the adult friends said, “Oh, screw it. You might as well hit them! We’ve already seen your angry side today.” In my mind later, I was tempted to be defensive. At dance, I felt instead gratitude to him for planting this seed.
I have worked through so much anger in my life, that sometimes I am tempted to fool myself into thinking I have conquered it. Not so. This dance helped remind me that I have considerable work to do. I don’t aspire to eliminate anger, but to relate to my experience of anger in a way that allows me to avoid causing harm from an angry state, such as I did with my cherished little boy yesterday at the beach.
Today, I could look at this without making excuses; and, at once, without self-abuse.
Toward the end of class, I found myself inside a trance. A gentle breeze blew through my body, coiling softly around my spine. A circle formed at the top of my head and guided me in movement. I saw and felt the energy of my own body, connecting with the energy of the earth and with the space of the universe. As the music slowed and stopped, I started to sob quietly—with heaving, jagged breaths. My sister—dancing in the same room for the first time in months—gently embraced me and rocked me while the sobs subsided.
In the end, although I wasn’t conscious that I had skipped over Staccato in the first wave, there was an emotional lesson I needed to take in that I wasn’t available to until I found the deep Staccato of the second wave.
Tammy gathered us together again. I made my way to sitting, bleary with snot and tears, and quickly returned to the beauty of a blue-skied Sunday, the day of a full moon and indeed a super moon—when the moon is unusually close to the earth, perhaps bringing its glowing celestial body close enough to kiss.
