by meghanleborious | Dec 4, 2014 | Notes on Practice
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and are not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.
Tammy’s “Faint of Heart” Heartbeat workshop took place over three days at the Martha Graham Dance Studio in the West Village. I arrived preoccupied, as I’d been mentally tangling with a sticky interpersonal issue throughout the afternoon. After organizing my things in the female dancers’ locker area, I stepped into the big, open room, and instantly forgot my pressing dilemma. Once inside, I crossed another threshold by stepping up onto the welcoming sprung floor. People were more or less evenly distributed throughout the space, prone with closed or averted eyes, moving slowly. Instead of finding space on the floor to stretch and unfurl as is often my inclination, my spine moved quickly into Flowing—curling and undulating the rest of me. I took tiny steps, in deference to the many quiet bodies around me, noticing the movement in my released spine as it rose up from subtle connections of all the parts of my feet with the floor.
5Rhythms is articulated through a series of “maps” that Gabrielle Roth, the creator of the 5Rhythms practice, laid out. The first map is the Waves map, which is the foundational practice, and is concerned with the investigation of each of the 5Rhythms—Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical and Stillness. The Heartbeat map comes next; and is a way to investigate emotional experience. This was my third Heartbeat workshop, and my second Heartbeat workshop with Tammy.
I wasn’t able to attend the last day of the workshop because I attended, instead, a wake for my sister, Courtney’s, best friend, Lisa. She and Courtney were close friends since childhood; and Courtney stayed close to her as she moved painfully through the process of dying. Lisa was 38 years old, and left a seven-year-old son behind.
I was at Courtney’s house just moments after she got the news that Lisa had passed. She had called to ask my opinion about whether she should go to Lisa’s immediately after receiving an alarming text from Lisa’s fiancé. She also wanted to alert me that I might need to pick up Simon (my son) who was sleeping over at her house that night. I decided to go to her in either case, and was there within five minutes. During that time, she received the call. When I walked in, she was coiled sideways on a barrel shaped chair, rocking, sobbing quietly, keening at moments, and clutching the phone while she talked with another close friend who wailed audibly.
That first night, I moved with great freedom. It is absolutely amazing to me that I can spend countless hours dancing and still, again and again, find new ways to move. My spine was very released and I found a lot of my gestures ending with looking up, often arcing back and raising my hands above my head.
Tammy led us through an exercise called a “body parts meditation.” Next, she told us to take a partner and to take turns with one person doing the body parts meditation while the other witnessed them. After each took a turn witnessing, the mover then told the other what she felt during the exercise, and the witness described what she saw. I went first. My partner was a dancer who I have developed a relationship with over many years. I closed my eyes for most of the exercise and moved with inspired focus. At the end, I stood facing my friend. I said, “I was really into moving my spine—like twisting and curving and undulating. I was thinking about how unbelievable it is, all the infinite ways of articulating the spine.” I also said, “There is a spot in my neck that I can’t really get into. I noticed that it correlates with my sore right shoulder and inflexible right shoulder blade.”
She said, “First, I want to say that I love your dance.” It made me feel happy to hear that, celebrated, in a way. “I’m always happy when you are in the room. You really did seem to be moving from the spine, from the heart. It is like your entire rhythm is heartbeat, like it’s inside your bones. It gets a little heavy at times, and then light again, but it is always from the heart.” I loved her poetic words. It was magic to be seen so tenderly. After her dance, I said, “There is something frontal that your arms do, sort of straightforward. Maybe it is offering? Your elbows are very flexible and willing to go along with whatever your shoulders decide is happening. There is also a kind of integration to the way you move, and you are very planar and diagonal, somehow.”
We had another group talk at the end of the night, and it seemed people had endless comments. Although many were insightful, I was nervous that we went 20 minutes over. I gathered my things and went into the blustery night without even pausing to change out of my cold, sweaty clothes so I wouldn’t arrive home too late.
On Saturday, we started fresh. For me, it was another beautiful wave—characterized by a fluid spine, creative engagement and new discoveries. I began with dramatic balancing stretches and found my way quickly into unbridled movement. A plaintive, tonal opening song by FC/Kahuna included the lyric, “Don’t think about…all those things you…fear. Just be glad to be here.” I sobbed raggedly as I moved, grounded firmly, yet drawing everything up, toward heaven, my eyes half closed, finding inexplicable movements as the music moved into Stillness. Grief—both for Lisa and for other lost friends—found its shapes with my body.
After Saturday’s first wave, we gathered together to talk and Tammy opened the floor. After a couple of comments, she encouraged us to try to stay involved with what we were actually feeling physically—at least for now—and to avoid analyzing the feelings or considering the many metaphors that arise. She explained that the work we do in the territory described by the Heartbeat map is specifically about the infinite aspects of how we feel. This proved to be too much for us, collectively. Another hand went up and shared a story about childhood, and another, a personal insight.
Today, Lisa’s minister, Pastor Bessy, lead the service at the funeral home. She emphasized again and again, the many accomplishments of Lisa’s short life, and the many people she had loved well. My sister and another friend stood at the podium to share their own experiences. Courtney’s words were very moving. She was humble; and she grounded her words in lived experience. She quoted from letters she had received from Lisa; and she included many of the people in attendance in her generous reflections.
Next, Tammy assigned an exercise that involved firmly clasping a partner’s arm, then reflecting on what arose. My first partner had piercing blue eyes, and I moved slightly forward as she touched my arm. At once, I felt like laughing. With the second partner for the clasping exercise, when I stood in front of her and looked into her eyes, I felt such a surge of tenderness that I almost began to cry. When she clasped my arm, I felt solidly grounded and did not react aversively at all, nor did I dig in or resist the movement.
Later, again seated and discussing our felt experiences as a group, my second partner shared her thoughts. She first said that when she came to face me, she felt I was someone she could trust, partly because I am short (yes, short!). She went on to say that with her first partner, she had a key insight that when she was clasped, her neck went into a sharp sideways jolt. She felt like she was always supposed to be moving forward and accomplishing things, and this was her learned way of resisting. She shared that she’d had chronic neck pain for years and hadn’t realized that this action was the root of the neck pain. When she came to be partnered with me, I went first. She felt like my response to being clasped was to surrender forward, like an undulating wave. She decided to try on her perception of my approach, and again had a key insight.
These words, too, made my impressionable ears happy. I reflected on the fact that upon entering Friday, I was embroiled in my own thoughts about a difficult interpersonal situation, but that I let it go. And not just for the moment, and not that I am just going to walk away. Rather, that I will act as skillfully as can, and will employ all the passion and vision that I possess, but that, on some level, I have surrendered. I cannot control the situation, and whether I like it or not, it will unfold as it unfolds. No need to be preoccupied, since it won’t change the outcome. After my partner spoke, I experienced this little moment of gratitude. It seemed, at least for that moment, that after eight years of devoted practice, I was finally beginning to see a tiny bit of progress. I don’t think anyone in my life ten years ago would have observed an epic, graceful forward surrender, for example. Quite the contrary. Maybe there is hope for me after all!
The thing about Lisa dying—my private sadness—is that I wish I had loved her better. Things haven’t always been easy with my sister, and although I was occasionally invited to be part of their close circle, I chose instead to protect myself and to remain apart.
On Saturday at the workshop we worked extensively with fear. At the end of the day, I shared that I wouldn’t be able to attend Sunday’s session, and thanked Tammy and my fellow dancers in a breathy rush for their many beautiful offerings—my palms pressed together like a prayer as I spoke. I chose to offer my own insight (not limiting my comments to how I was feeling), that it is a very worthwhile project, working with fear. “Tomorrow I have to attend a funeral,” I said, “Not only does fear hold us back from fully living. But fear also holds us back from fully loving the people we love, and we really need to realize that they won’t be here forever. And neither will we.”
Tammy designed an exercise that involved encountering another dancer as “fear” with different variables. A dancer who was new to me touched me while my back was turned, caressing me at length. I was furious. I even thought about sharing publicly that if we don’t already have a relationship that includes touch, I would appreciate if people would make eye contact and see if I am really receptive to being touched before they touch me.
I danced with a very close friend at length—a dance of fear and reticence and the sharp edges that fear engenders, each of us with, at once, our hearts at stake. This dance continued in three major movements during the course of the day, finding us together in conclusion, linked in wordless honesty.
After so much strenuous dancing and so much sobbing, I needed to spend lunch reflecting and writing. The workshop producers had laid out tea and snacks for us, and I gratefully helped myself to an apple, some chips and a thick rectangle of dark chocolate before venturing outside.
Outside, I plodded along, dazed. After several blocks of aimless walking, hoping to find a comfortable place for tea, I settled on a deli and planned to sit in the cold on an outdoor bench across the street. Inside, I encountered the same dancer who made me angry by caressing my back. I found her manner off-putting; and I squirmed, wanting to be alone during lunch and hoping she would not ask to join me.
After lunch, we danced yet another beautiful wave. Tammy was extremely bouncy in Lyrical as she stepped away from the music-generating computer and moved around the room; and I cheered inside to see her so apparently happy.
Tammy asked us to take a partner, which, as always, means to turn to the person closest to you without thinking about it. My partner happened to be the very same person I saw in the deli, the very same person I was angry at for caressing my back when I didn’t want to be touched. Of course. How could it be otherwise? We were instructed to face each other. Then, she explained that one person would keep asking the other, “What do you fear?” I answered first, while my partner asked the question. I only remember a few of my responses, but without any warning, my answers veered into past life experiences. I took a sharp in-breath, alarmed by the sudden intensity, and let loose a shuddering sob. When it was her turn to answer the question, “What do you fear?” I realized that she and I had a lot in common, that she suffers, and that she is just trying to be happy, like everyone else in the world. By the end of the exercise, my irritation with her had dissolved completely.
Next, we used the same format for the question, “What makes you angry?” Remarkably, I had a hard time calling up sources of anger and kept finding myself silent and shrugging. When I do experience anger, it is so red-hot, so urgent, so dense, so intense…yet I couldn’t recall much at all. “When people try to team with me against other people,” I said. “When I get a parking ticket.” “When someone tries to round me off for their own understanding,” I continued. “When I burn the food.”
Shortly, I found myself in a dance exploring the gestures of Yes and the gestures of No with a friend, T. T. and I have totally different ways of relating to the beat in a given song, but in the Yes/No dance we were more in sync than we ever have been before.
I encountered T. again later but during the same wave. I had told her about Lisa during the lunch break; and when she looked into my eyes I felt totally seen, then felt a rush of sorrow. We fell into an emotional dance and gently held hands and spun each other as we moved through the wave of emotion. I passed through another episode of sobbing, finding myself cleaner and more empty after every round.
The thing is that if you are blessed to love a lot of people, and you manage to stay alive for a certain number of years, then there is no doubt that you will experience a lot of grief. When I experience grief again, it charges up all the burning embers of grief that lay scattered through my psyche. I was crying not only for Lisa, but for all of the friends I’ve lost.
I had no idea how much I loved my friend, Howard, for example, until I lost him. On a white day in early November, I was teaching then-infant Simon how to dance to the flights of soaring and arcing flocks of city pigeons when I got a call telling me that Howard had died. I was instantly ravaged with grief. Perhaps it was a dream, but two days after Howard died, he came to Tammy’s daytime Thursday class. Not knowing what else to do, I offered to loan him my body, so he could move and physically process this most difficult of experiences. He was grief-stricken, and accepted my offer. (That was the first time that I danced the grief of a spirit.)
This reverberation often angers the people for whom the grief is most immediate, in this case my sister, another close friend of Lisa’s, and Lisa’s closest family. For them, there is no once-removed, it is just the full intensity of final and irreversible loss.
Later in the afternoon, Tammy instructed us to make a big circle and we took turns dancing in the middle. I did not feel moved initially, but after the second Chaos song, I wanted to be in the middle. Several people beat me to it, however, and I hung back. I jumped as soon as a person left the middle and didn’t realize for several seconds that another friend had already entered the circle, too. I bowed and started to back away to give her the space, and in the process we began to interact. Tammy instructed us to go with it, and to turn it into a couple’s dance. My friend and I became emphatic, dancing Yes/No according to our instructions, dramatically recoiling to the floor and sailing around one another in circles. I literally lost my balance and found myself flat on my back. For a couple of seconds I surrendered, throwing my hands up and smiling in a snow angel pose before I bounded back up onto my feet and back into the dance. Many other couples took their turns; and I was awed by the creativity and specificity of the many displays.
By the end of the day I felt wrung-out and fully-open. I found myself in the third phase of a dance that went on all day with the first friend I mentioned, moving un-self-consciously and with patient reverence as the dance paused momentarily at day’s end.
I left this writing to attend to other urgencies, thinking I was in the middle of the story and that I would return to the writing as soon as possible. I realize now as I re-read it that I reached the end quite suddenly, without realizing it. Thank God I held nothing back in the telling, and that my heart danced me completely. I can only hope that I may say the same for my life.
November 10, 2014, NYC
by meghanleborious | Nov 30, 2014 | Notes on Practice
November 29, 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 have been away from New York for a few days visiting my parents in northern Connecticut. Since I couldn’t make it to Tammy’s class on Friday night, I decided to attend a dance event in Northampton, Massachusetts called Dance Spree, which I have attended perhaps nine or ten times now. It is held in a lovely room—a spacious ballet studio on the fourth floor of a historic building, with a kinetic sprung wood floor. The event begins rather late-at 8.30 PM-and continues until midnight.
I was one of the first dancers to arrive, and found my place on the dance floor, stretching and unfurling in the face of patient, tonal music. Lately, to warm up, I find arc after arc, pulling my sides, drawing my leg around and down, and moving in attenuated circles on the floor. Although no one there is thinking of the 5Rhythms, I found Flowing quickly and began to move with freedom and creativity. Slowly, people began to arrive. The last time I was at Dance Spree, I was a little disappointed that people seemed reluctant to interact. This time, I found quite the opposite, but it didn’t seem like anyone was interested in interacting with me. Instead, several couples peopled the dance floor, and seemed exclusive to their individual partners.
This irritated me. I felt like they were performing, and were unwilling to move in the collective field. I decided to dance with my own self in the mirror, and found inspiration there, though the couples kept encroaching. I found I wanted to move just to get away from them. I even considered leaving early. Slowly, the couples started to re-sort, and people began to dance with different partners. My irritation shifted, though I still felt somewhat separate from the room. I continued to move with freedom and creativity, experimenting with known forms and finding new forms as I worked with what came up.
For the most part, I liked what the DJ was playing, though I craved the compelling narrative of a 5Rhythms wave, and especially craved the intensity of fully-expressed Chaos. If a song had even a lilting break-beat or a slight suggestion of Chaos, I released my head and body in spinning, rising and falling arcs since I didn’t know if another chance would arise to fully release myself..
Dancing to a song I found interesting, I began to experiment with awkward, sharp, inturned edges—the polar opposite to my dance recently, which is characterized by sweeping gestures, spinning, and rising and falling balances. Another dancer, one of the hyper-coupled people I noted in the beginning, began to fall into my dance.
I turned to him, receptive, and we stepped into a closer dance. We weaved and moved together for a few short moments, when he began to speak,
“Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you. I won’t even move you against your will. Only if you want to move,” he said.
This surprised me. In a 5Rhythms room, there is no talking. Maybe a whispered, “I miss you.” Or a quiet, “I loved your show,” but certainly not this level of communication. In fact, it felt so incongruous to me that it was surreal, almost like I was tripping. I could only murmur, “Hmmm” and nod.
We danced a little more and he continued, “It can just be like you are a tree. You can just stand there and hold your space. And I can move and even use you to move me. Then, I can get quiet and you can move and I can be the tree.”
I experimented with these instructions, awkwardly.
He explained something about squiggly fingers, moving into the partner’s joints, and demonstrated, showing me something about finding U’s and V’s with one another’s bodies. It seemed there was a lesson about receptivity, and at once a lesson about holding space.
“You can just be there, and hold that space,” he said, “you don’t have to be so wibbly wobbly.”
I felt no aversion to him, and was instead very interested in what he had to teach, though I felt a strong sense of my own limitations. I thought of the sharp, handsome friend who I write about occasionally, who I can’t quite hang with, and who I can’t quite figure out how to interact with.
Occasionally, I have been breathed into the most exquisitely intimate partnerships, but I felt like this dancer opened a portal into one of the places I have yet to let go, yet to fall into, yet to discover, about interacting with the people around me.
“This is my job,” he said, “and now I have to stop teaching!”
I thanked him, and he thanked me, asking my name at once. “In love and kindness,” he said, bowing, as he moved on, into another partnership.
I left before the event’s conclusion, around 11pm. I had a solid dance, though there was nothing of catharsis, nothing of intensity. Instead, the sense impression I have of the night is of patient curiosity. Maybe this new teaching, which came to me by way of a different field, will find its way into my practice in the coming weeks. To be quite honest, I hope so.
by meghanleborious | Nov 24, 2014 | Notes on Practice
November 24, 2014
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and are not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.
One of my favorite things to dance to is the flight of pigeon flocks, especially as they are directed by a keeper from a rooftop. They arc and swoop in great, epic, collective gestures. My arms and body swoop and arc and spin as they do. Four years ago this month, I was teaching then-infant Simon to dance to the flights of birds just as I got a call letting me know that my friend, Howard, had died.
Recently, I have been wondering about something within my practice. How willing am I to fully take on the rhythms and to try on whatever instruction comes to me under this category? At what point does following the instructions become an orthodoxy, and hinder progress instead of supporting it? Is there a point that I should ignore the instructions and follow an inner guide? Likely, this is a shifting continuum that changes over time, but it is something I consider often. It makes sense to take intuition as a guide, but (un-enlightened as I am) I wonder if I mistake my own complex conditioning for intuition. I have no time to lose, after all, and I want to adopt the most productive mindset so I don’t waste too much of this short, precious life I’ve been blessed with.
I have been studying the history of western civilization lately, where the Ancient Romans have a big role. It seems, the Romans had many different ways of divining the future, including analyzing the flights of birds.
On Friday, I stepped into Tammy’s class feeling slightly unsettled, and, as often happens, was quickly folded into the room, forgetting my ill-ease. There is not a theme that dominates my memory, and there doesn’t appear to be one emerging here, but I noticed that nothing hurt, that I had a perfect amount of energy, and that I was neither holding back nor overexerting.
A neighbor asked Simon if he was good. Being four, he said, “No!” laughing as he said it. The neighbor said, “Well, what’s bad? If nothing’s bad, then you’re good, right? That’s how it works!”
In a dance of partnership, Tammy instructed us to investigate what feels like too close and what feels like too far. I fell into a friend who was the perfect ally in this investigation. He is sharp, confident, very handsome, unflinching. It makes me nervous to dance very close with him, yet I always want to engage him. Perhaps he is just matching me, but I perceive that he has an exceptional capacity for precision—many razor sharp edges that are not aggressive–but vivid, articulated and wild in the most cosmic sense possible. We stepped sharply in and out of each others’ fields, spinning and stopping, behind, beside, around—stretching the space between us, then snapping back together and rolling away from each other like two grooved cogs.
I also continued a dance begun during Tammy’s Faint of Heart workshop with a friend who witnessed me as I moved and who I witnessed as she moved through a body parts meditation. We fell forward and back, rotating up and down like coins spinning and slowing, coiled softly around one another’s spines, holding each other’s eyes by arching backward even as we spun all the way around.
Looking for answers from the sky, my eyes soar upward, into vast space, and I realize, once again, that I am but a tiny little piece of this vast, poetic dance, and that my own little dance is one of an infinite number who collaborate in creating the world, moment by moment, gesture by gesture.
Note: There is a post that precedes this one that has yet to be published. It should be up within 2-3 days (once it is approved by everyone mentioned in it) and will shed additional light on some of the topics discussed in the current post.
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.
