by meghanleborious | Feb 22, 2022 | Notes on Practice
I woke up at some point during the night. Things I hadn’t gotten around to yet that had been nagging at the edges of my mind moved to the foreground. Even so, I kept bringing attention to any muscle that tightened and encouraging it to relax – forehead, stomach, jaw, the arches of the feet. Eventually I fell back to sleep.
After meditating and several hours on the computer, I decided to run to one of my favorite places, a small system of trails near the Scantic River in Northern Connecticut, where my twelve-year-old son, Simon, and I are staying with family this week.
I was surprised to find several utility vehicles near the modest river, and picked up the pace to investigate. My attention shifted suddenly when I felt a pinch in my right inner thigh. I paused and gently stretched it, hoping it wasn’t a pulled muscle. A couple of weeks before I’d had a similar sensation while running, but it had disappeared overnight.
I moved out of sight of the utility vehicles, looking for an inspiring spot where I could dance a 5Rhythms wave, part of my daily personal practice. The light rain picked up; and I wondered if it would rain hard enough to damage my phone. I climbed down onto a small, muddy beach but quickly realized that the mud and the slight incline would be too much of a strain on the vulnerable muscle, so climbed back up onto the main trail.
I moved cautiously, taking care not to cut into the muscle in question, and began to circle in the rhythm of Flowing. Some writing I had been working on drifted in and out of my mind, bringing new ideas and perspectives. I continued to move, not holding tightly, knowing that whatever is important would still be there when I sat down to write later.
Needing to move cautiously made it harder to feel engaged. I decided to make a video to show a viewer what Flowing might look like from my perspective. This idea drew me in, and soon I put the phone away and started imagining what the palms of my hands were seeing as they moved all around me, above, below, around, behind. I moved in a looping matrix, seeing with new eyes, including things that are normally invisible. Soon, I also started to “see” with the soles of my feet.
Moving into Staccato, I played with slicing the air with the edges of my hands, sinking low, though continuing to be careful of taxing my legs or twisting too suddenly – more ideas for writing and life came and tested themselves out. A very slight pop in the side of my right knee seemed to relax the tight thigh muscle in a tiny increment, but I continued to move gently.
Chaos was subtle today, too. I started with jiggling my right leg, then the left, and let myself bob and coil until a quiet Lyrical emerged through the tops of the bare trees. Stillness brought me back to the sound texture of the river and the cold rain on my face. I also remembered the feeder stream to this river, the river this river feeds, and all the bodies of water they connect to.
Then I ran back home. In fact, if I look at it a certain way, everything I experience can be seen as part of this process of coming home.
Meghan LeBorious is a writer, teacher, and meditation facilitator who has been dancing the 5Rhythms since 2008 and recently became a 5Rhythms teacher. She was inspired to begin chronicling her experiences following her very first class; and she sees the writing process as an extension of practice—yet another way to be moved and transformed. This blog is not produced or sanctioned by the 5Rhythms organization. Photos and videos courtesy of the writer.
by meghanleborious | Feb 21, 2022 | Notes on Practice
My phone screamed an alarm “Weather Advisory: Snow Squall Warning.” I was already in the woods anyway. Besides, snow squall didn’t seem so scary. It wasn’t like “tornado” or “microburst.” I ran a fast loop around the trail, then chose a spot to dance a wave on the bank of the swollen Scantic River.
The temperature had dropped suddenly, and the snow had already started up. I fumbled with cold hands, trying to take a video of the water rushing around a recently felled tree. It had torn up a whole corner of the hiking trail and left a new, raw cliff.
Beginning to move in Flowing, my phone screamed again. I ignored it and continued to move in looped circles, with no beginning and no end, no edges and no stops. Visibility dropped as snow fell wet and heavy against my cheeks and forehead. The wind started to pick up, too, and the bare trees rattled together high above me. “I think it’s time to head back to the road,” I reasoned. 
I thought about the giant tree that had been felled across the river, and wondered about the probability of big branch landing on my head. My twelve-year-old son, Simon called just then. “Mommy, are you heading back soon?” “Yes, I’m on my way. I’ll see you soon,” I said as my phone lost battery.
I made my way back to my parents’ house, where we are staying for the weekend. I didn’t get to dance a wave in the woods today. No need to be a hero this time. Tomorrow is another day.
Meghan LeBorious is a writer, teacher, and meditation facilitator who has been dancing the 5Rhythms since 2008 and recently became a 5Rhythms teacher. She was inspired to begin chronicling her experiences following her very first class; and she sees the writing process as an extension of practice—yet another way to be moved and transformed. This blog is not produced or sanctioned by the 5Rhythms organization. Photos and videos courtesy of the writer.
by meghanleborious | Feb 14, 2022 | Notes on Practice
I didn’t even know snow was in the forecast until I woke up and looked out the window.
Following an in-person yoga class, I wavered on my plan to go to the ocean to dance the 5Rhythms – my Sunday ritual since the beginning of the pandemic. The snow was coming down pretty hard, and it was the goopy, wet kind of flakes. I didn’t have a hat and couldn’t turn one up even after rummaging through the car. In the end I decided I might as well give it a try. If it was horribly uncomfortable I could always bail.
I had made my weekly pilgrimage in less temperate weather than this, I reasoned. Plus, when the weather is horrible, there’s a good chance I can actually be alone, which means I can scream, cry, move like a demon, sing loudly, or allow whatever comes through in a way that I’m unlikely to do if there is anyone around to see me.
In the car on the way, I heard Bulgarian journalist and activist Yana Buhrer Tavanier on the topic of play even in the face of grave circumstances, and carried her words into my practice. I tightened the laces on my snow boots and jogged across the wide sand, pausing to examine whatever captured my attention, allowing curiosity to be my guide.
I noticed a set of footprints and started following them toward a sand dune, talking cheerfully to myself as I roamed.
My eye caught on what I thought was a seagull perched at the top of the sand dune, barely visible with the white snow and white feathers against the white sky. I wondered why this seagull was sitting so upright, not like rubber-ducky posture like seagulls usually sit when they’re resting. This bird was vertical, with dignified shoulders. Could it be an eagle? It was also bigger than most seagulls, and totally white. It didn’t even have an orange beak. Then, she twisted her neck around like it was on a track and I wondered if she might actually be an owl.
I took a few pictures, then crept a little closer, daring to take a video. I honestly couldn’t believe it. Owls seem magical to me – a symbol of wisdom, power, and ancient mystery. She stayed a little longer, then got spooked or maybe annoyed and took off down the beach, gliding low.
I got onto my knees and touched my forehead to the cold, wet sand.
The snow had slowed, but picked up again, landing wet on my forehead and cheeks. I began to move in Flowing around the jagged contours of ended waves. Often, I pick a spot, put my bag down, and even draw a big circle to dance inside of. This time, I let myself move wherever I wanted to, at one point going to examine some thick tangled rope, then reversing course and heading west along the edge of the water. I was grateful to be alone and vocalized loudly, moaning, crying, and even making up songs and poems, then offering them to the sea and the sky.
Today I wasn’t sure which rhythm I was in, I just knew that I needed to move. Streams of wisdom poured through and I gave voice to all of it.
The snow picked up more, to the point that the sea and sky were barely distinguishable.
I climbed up onto the dune, dancing along its spine and looking for evidence of the owl, at one point in Chaos letting myself go while trying to avoid tumbling down either side of the dune.
I walked back across the wide beach feeling tall, striding – despite the cold, despite the winter, despite the state of the world. Remembering my place in things. Heartbroken and free. Grateful. Alive. Ready.
Meghan LeBorious is a writer, teacher, and meditation facilitator who has been dancing the 5Rhythms since 2008 and recently became a 5Rhythms teacher. She was inspired to begin chronicling her experiences following her very first class; and she sees the writing process as an extension of practice—yet another way to be moved and transformed. This blog is not produced or sanctioned by the 5Rhythms organization. Photos and videos courtesy of the writer.
by meghanleborious | Jan 17, 2022 | Notes on Practice
The first time I set foot in a meditation center was on Martin Luther King Day in 2007. I had to work during the day, but I felt called to find a way to observe the occasion in the evening.
I snuck in an internet search at work, and found that a meditation center in the West Village was hosting a public sit that evening. Meditation felt right to me – a way to reflect on and honor the legacy of Dr. King and countless other activists who have given their labor and lives to the cause of racial justice.
There was never a time that I didn’t meditate, but this was the first time I found myself in a mediation community. Previous to this, whenever someone brought up meditation or anything else that seemed New Age-y I would roll my eyes and make sarcastic comments, even though I was meditating daily myself.
Following this night, I was swept onto a new path entirely.
Today, I hadn’t been to dance with the ocean in a couple of weeks. I dug through storage to find ski clothes, and put on snow pants, winter boots, wool socks, a sweater, ski jacket, neck warmer, hat, and gloves.
There was very little traffic, and I arrived in less than 30 minutes. The giant parking lot at Jacob Riis Park Beach in Queens was almost completely empty, owing to the frigid temperatures.
The sand of the wide beach was laced with ice. The old wooden pilings that were being slammed by powerful waves had ice caps. And the tide was low, leaving a wide area of packed sand for a dance floor.
Once I stepped onto a path of meditation, I progressed quickly. Thankfully, the tradition I joined had an initial linear path, so I didn’t have to ask too many neurotic questions about what to do next. I just kept stepping forward.
Today, I drew a giant circle in the sand, then walked around it three times, calling my teachers, ancestors, spirits, guides, and deities. I decided to record myself this time, and pulled off my neck warmer to prop my phone onto. As I began to move in Flowing, I occasionally glanced at the phone, checking to see if I was in the frame.
I asked for answers to some questions that seemed important to me in that moment: Where does the swelling anger that rises in me at times come from? What should I do about a particular work dilemma? What is my path forward?
Less than a year after I stepped onto this meditation path, I also stepped onto the 5Rhythms dancing path, and the two traditions have worked together to dismember and remember me again and again.
Over the years, I’ve thought a lot about how meditation can support racial justice, especially since I teach meditation to teens of color in a Brooklyn high school. Meditation can make us aware of the inner stories and assumptions that drive our words and actions, the necessary prerequisite for beginning to mitigate our internal biases, including internalized oppression. Meditation and other forms of practice like the 5Rhythms can also be essential triage and harm reduction for people who may be subjected daily to harms arising from living in a racist culture.
From my perspective, the purpose of practice is to be fully in reality – that is to say without the filters of coping mechanisms, escape behaviors, racist assumptions, the push and pull of desire and aversion, stuck emotions, ego attachments, unprocessed trauma, cultural conditioning, and internalized oppression.
No wonder that it was on Martin Luther King Day that I first found meditation as a path. The call is not only for individual practice, but is also a prayer for collective awakening.
Today was cold and I knew I had to get moving quickly. As soon as the giant circle in the sand was drawn, I brought attention into my feet and began to move with the pull of the deep sea and the dynamic, shifting waves and tides. I also started working with the feeling of having weight in my hands and feet, and let that draw me into circling and shift me through different levels and spinning tracked circles.
I was in no rush to leave Flowing. My body felt like it was sloshing, rolling liquid in a container. Today, I kept rising and presenting my chest, then falling back into circling. I sang whatever bits of songs drifted into my mind, grateful to be almost completely alone and more free to vocalize. Lately, I let my body dip and fall in circling, then catch my weight and spin again around the track I’ve created.
Work has been shitty lately, and it doesn’t seem like I have many options to improve it at the moment. I didn’t expect Staccato to arise easily, so when it did it surprised me. First it just peeked through my patient, delighted circling. I took off my coat and moved with confidence and vigor, still bursting my chest forward, now sitting back low, squatting, dropping, growling, and calling out with guttural force. I moved forward and back in a line, hesitating then bursting, then stepping back across, using the elbows to power my gestures, receiving an answer to one of my burning questions.
I kept myself in Staccato just a little longer when I was already feeling the pull of Chaos, and finally letting myself fall into it. After the drawn-out ferocity of Staccato, I thought I would stay in Chaos at length, but today it blew through like a storm. Lyrical, the fourth of the five rhythms, lifted me and also blew through quickly.
Stillness found me tiny, a little speck in a gigantic landscape with the roaring sea stretching to the wide horizon and luminous overcast sky huge above me.
A few weeks before when I was dancing with the sea, a pod of whales appeared, shooting water through their blowholes, with a crowd of sea birds swarming around them.
At this point, I started crying from the throat and belly, almost braying. I don’t even know what rhythm I was in at this point. In fact, most of my practice today happened after the first wave completed itself. I kept thinking about the whale that was beached here in December, how it died alone. I thought about the likely future for whales, the likely future for the earth, and ongoing, entrenched injustices. I cried a lot, pausing to compose myself when a lone pair of beach walkers strolled by, then shifting into a bounding Lyrical, then back into sobbing. Now I was moving with gratitude and freedom, still sobbing, still moving. I laughed at myself, then started crying even louder.
Eventually I was empty. The questions I had dropped into the well of practice were answered, as much as they could be for now. I was ready for Martin Luther King Day. I knew the way forward. Remembered. Back where I started and ready to begin again.
Meghan LeBorious is a writer, teacher, and meditation facilitator who has been dancing the 5Rhythms since 2008 and recently became a 5Rhythms teacher. She was inspired to begin chronicling her experiences following her very first class; and she sees the writing process as an extension of practice—yet another way to be moved and transformed. This blog is not produced or sanctioned by the 5Rhythms organization. Photos courtesy of the writer.
by meghanleborious | Dec 29, 2021 | Notes on Practice
Ouch. Is a sore lower back a possible impact of Covid?
I’ve been in quarantine along with my 11-year-old son, Simon, after we tested positive for Covid. We missed family Christmas, but have had relatively mild cases and have been making the best of it. I’ve made serious progress on my to-do list and have had more time to write, think, and practice. My not-husband and I are taking turns making dinner, and in the evenings we watch a movie or play a board game.
Between working on the computer, interacting with Simon, and mundane rituals, I’ve been practicing and writing. Today I practiced sitting meditation for 45 minutes right after I woke up in front of an altar made to celebrate my recent graduation from the 5Rhythms teaching training program. Later in the morning I did yoga. And meditated again after lunch. It wasn’t until mid-afternoon that I finally got around to 5Rhythms practice.
I’ve been hobbled by a sore back since yesterday; and I wasn’t sure if it was advisable or even if I would find any inspiration.
I thought of something Gabrielle Roth, the founder of the 5Rhythms practice, wrote in her first book Maps to Ecstasy about a student who was having severe back problems. She wrote, “After doing the rhythms for several months, her whole body started to loosen up. Now, when her back starts seizing up, she moves gently to the rhythms rather than giving in to the spasms, and the tension eventually subsides.”
I vowed to move gently and rolled up the living room rug to reveal the hardwood dance floor beneath, put on a playlist I already had made, and settled in. The day before my practice had been flat, and I wasn’t sure what I would find.
I began to move in Flowing to a lullabye-sounding song that I danced to with Simon on my shoulder when he an infant. I felt fully engaged, and looped around the space, feeling the soft give of my feet, rocking up like the swinging pirate ship ride at the amusement park, and falling slowly back down the other side of the loop, then turning and circling and rocking upward again. I felt no rush to progress beyond Flowing, and was grateful that the playlist still had two more flowing songs to move with. I remember now that I was also crying in this part.
I sneezed hard and felt the muscles in my lower back clench, and wondered if frequent sneezing might be a factor in the lower back distress.
As the playlist cued me into Staccato, I discovered that raising my knees high and crossing over the midline of my body caused pain, so I found different ways to move instead. The staccato songs on this playlist are irresistible to me, and today was no exception. Before long I was moving in sweeping diagonals, stepping back and across hard, turning and even dropping low. A fast Staccato Chaos song brought me even lower and jittered me, flipping me through the spine, and continued to pull me along. “Just take this ride, Meg. Don’t push anything,” I reminded myself.
The first chaos song was a delightful, twisting jazz track that coils me in every direction and angle, and today was no exception. I thought about skipping the song to try to avoid too much twisting, but something interesting started happening. Some kind of chemical release in the legs and spine. I wondered if Covid was working its way out of the spine and out of the body, and dug a little deeper, let go a little more, gave myself a little more permission, and let the sacrum lead the rest of me into release.
The last chaos song was wild, and I growled with ferocity, trusting something in me, in my body, in my ancestors, in my teachers, that told me this dance was necessary, that told me I was moving something that needed to move, even as I shuddered, sunk low in the hips, jumped my knees in crazy forward and side-out patterns, and contorted and released my face as my released head whipped all around.
Lyrical found me grateful, shining. Still moving with engagement, though with slight hesitation.
During the one brief Stillness song, I watched my hands in the darkened TV screen that is mounted on the living room wall, gave thanks, and almost immediately started thinking about all the things I would accomplish in the afternoon.
Then I put myself in the shower to rinse off whatever poured out in sweat and sat myself down to write.
Meghan LeBorious is a writer, teacher, and meditation facilitator who has been dancing the 5Rhythms since 2008 and recently became a 5Rhythms teacher. She was inspired to begin chronicling her experiences following her very first class; and she sees the writing process as an extension of practice—yet another way to be moved and transformed. This blog is not produced or sanctioned by the 5Rhythms organization. Images in this post are courtesy of the writer.
