by meghanleborious | Nov 22, 2017 | Notes on Practice
“Dance like this is your last dance,” Ray Diaz, who is teaching this morning’s Sweat Your Prayers class at the Joffrey in the West Village, tells us. “Because you never know when that last dance could be.”
Stepping in to the studio, the room is very full. People are sprawled all over the floor, beginning to stretch and unfurl. A little current of wind turns me right away, and I rise and fall, one hand touching ground the other reaching to sky, my shoulder rolling open and turning me in the opposite direction – big, weighted circles on the ground’s plane and on every diagonal, my head blissfully released.
Ray encourages us to move slowly and softly, and to begin to “fill up the inner reservoir.” I find a spot near the middle of the room and stretch to my full length, rolling over the back of my head, stretching my hips, leg muscles, pressing my chest down to stretch the front of my shoulder. Before long I am on my knees, with a raised leg that crosses behind me and drags me into a spin, sinking to the ground again, coming up onto my shoulder blade and using its momentum to pull back up into my hip and raise my heel high up behind me, undulating back again, and beginning to move toward rising.
Before class, I filled myself with inspiration. I listened to a Buddhist talk on stillness, that included the idea that although the positive behaviors and habits we cultivate are an important part of the path, ultimately, even these are a mask, and if we are to fully wake up, we have to let go of even these positive stories that we tell ourselves. In the morning also, I read some selected excerpts on Dzogchen, a spiritual system that emphasizes opening to bare, naked, luminous, absolute reality, on the spot. Here. Now.
Staccato’s appearance is unmistakable, and Ray encourages us to let go of the hips. The room is wild, expressive. I move around, connecting with many successive dancers, including my favorite dance partner of all time, who I circle in a twittering lasso, my hands grazing the ground as I greet him, entreating him to dance. After my first turn with him, I partner with a young woman who I haven’t seen before, and she teaches me a new way to engage my knees, opening possibilities for moving. “Go even deeper, with breath,” Ray offers. Next, I join with an exuberant dancer who seems to move from her inner thighs. I imagine that I am moving in her body, exchanging myself for her, exchanging self for other.
Chaos appears exactly when it should; and it is everything. Sometimes it is hard work for me to be in Flowing and leave the edges out. I am grateful to be in Chaos, where anything goes, and I can be as sharp as I want to be, as soft, as tense, as released, as gigantic, as minute. The room continues to be dynamic, with some people dancing in a given spot, and others moving quickly around the space. A thought comes and I say “thinking” and return to awareness, moving totally creatively and as part of the entire organism at once. I imagine that I remove my skin, hang it on one of the room’s center columns and dance around in my bones. The outer boundaries of me are not so clear, the other bodies might be my body, too. I dance my friend’s heart, feeling the pain of her heartbreaks, feeling her incredible tenderness, her magic, her power. Chaos and Lyrical dance back and forth with each other as the wave finds its closing expression. In Stillness, cold wind from the window causes a strong sensation on my exposed skin; and I turn to dance with it, beginning with the rocking and bouncing tree branches below the height of the window, then with the wind itself. Turning toward the room again, I move with inner winds that swirl around inside and near my body, especially along the sides of the spine.
After the first wave, Ray pauses us only briefly, not calling us to sit around him, but instead inviting us to stay where we are and just turn toward him for a moment. “We have to dance like this could be our last dance,” he says, “because you never know.” He goes on to say, “I’m going to share something with you. Almost exactly twelve years ago, I lost my wife.” He shares that this tragedy is what compelled him to step over the line into 5Rhythms. He goes on to say, “Hold nothing back. Just give it all you’ve got,” and “I invite you to dance, too, with those who are no longer with us.”
Ray appears to be in a place of humility and strength, of vulnerability and clarity, and capable of transmitting this clarion call, this urgent message, in a way that we can hear. Hold nothing back, his entire self communicates, hold nothing back, you have no time to lose, you might not get another chance to give more, to give better, to give fully, this could be your only chance.
I feel a gasp of sadness rise up into my throat and the woman next to me starts to sob. I don’t know her and I don’t want her to think I’m trying to fix her, but after a momentary hesitation, I reach out and put my hand behind her upper spine. She turns and hugs me, still shaking. She smiles through her tears, eyes shining, mouth closed, and puts her palm on my cheek.
I think of a work colleague who died this summer, young, in a car crash. In a circle discussion at work, we each had a chance to offer our thoughts. “If my time comes,” I said, “I only pray that I have emptied my whole self out. That I have been of service. That I have offered everything that I have in me to offer.” Breath snagged on something inside; and I cried for several aching heaves.
Ray starts the music again, and I check out for a few short moments, then say “thinking” and come back in. Energy flags slightly, I note slight inertia in Flowing. We glance through Staccato and then dive fully into Chaos again. “Release!” Ray cries out from the teacher’s table, and the room explodes. Chaos keeps going and going and going, rings of a tree, going back to its start as a sapling, as an acorn, when the tree was already contained in it. I connect with a dancer I’ve never seen before, delighted by her unique expression. I remember my maternal grandmother and cry, wishing I could have loved her better. I think of my paternal grandmother, who just died this past spring, and how she left in a whisper. Friends of similar age to me who have died come next. My friend Gerard, who died at 36, tells me again, you just have to do it, Meg, just open up, step up, let it in, you don’t need anything but what you already have. Howard, another dear friend, who died just a few weeks before Gerard also comes to mind. When I got the phone call about Howard’s death, I was with my son Simon, then an infant, dancing to the flights of birds from a rooftop pigeon coop who swoop in a rolling loop over Wythe Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, while Simon watched me from his stroller, the reflections of clouds rushing over the planes of my eyes, my arms raised and turning all of the planes of me.
As I move through the room, the energetic bodies that extend beyond the skin pass through me.
The sky beckons me. I ache for it. I start to climb up over the ballet bar, but am sure it’s against the rules and withdraw my leg. A new friend seems to think I need help and holds my elbow, unwittingly encouraging me. I know I’m going to get into trouble, but I just have to. I mean I have to, so I climb up over the bar, through the window, onto the cold metal fire escape. I keep my feet planted and soar up into the sky. I think of the Dzogchen teaching of open sky, the principle of space, of unrestricted awareness. My movements are unmoored from intentionality, totally intuitive. Tears pour down my face, drawing around the curve of my chin and neck. I am barely visible, with my back to the bricks, my feet on the cold metal, but a member of the crew spies me and comes and says, “This is not safe. Sorry, but you have to come down from there.” I climb down into the room and continue to move, near the window, to the wind, the sky, with space. I move again throughout the room, whispering through, not separate. I find one dancer sitting in meditation, and lower myself down next to him. Thoughts come but awareness dominates. I reflect that I can wake up fully in this lifetime, that I am destined to, that all of us are. The room is luminous, bodies alive. Ray mixes a tonal track with a recording of Gabrielle Roth, the revered creator of the 5Rhythms practice, speaking. She says, we believe that if we keep dancing, over years and hundreds of dances, we can shed what doesn’t serve, we can let go of what no longer serves. Tears are a river down the whole front of me.
Ray brings us all into a circle that completely fills the spacious studio, and enacts a closing ritual that allows each person to be heard and seen, re-membered after having been shattered and scattered and taken apart during the course of this Sunday morning 5Rythms class.
If this was my last dance ever, I know that I stepped up with everything I had to give. What else is there, really? Nothing but boundless love, the cessation of all that blocks it, and the chances we are given to live it. Nothing but this tiny life and what we choose to fill it with. Ojala, gods-willing, let me choose well, let me not die wishing I hadn’t held back during my very last dance, let me empty out my whole heart first, in service and in love.
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and is not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher. Unedited Image “Riskall” copyright Meghan LeBorious
by meghanleborious | Nov 18, 2017 | Notes on Practice
Daniela Peltekova, who moved from NYC to Los Angeles a year ago, taught the Sunday Sweat Your Prayers class at the Joffrey in the West Village today. For her, a homecoming, for me, an occasion of unbridled joy and unflagging engagement. I asked Henya, the class producer, “Daniela’s teaching today, right?” just as a friendly hand rubbed my back, which, it turned out, belonged to Daniela, who sort of waltzed into the studio wearing a long, red dress.
In part because I have been teaching mindfulness to teens, I have been reading “Mindfulness in Plain English” by Bhante Gunaratana. He writes that although at a high degree of attainment, compassion will arise spontaneously, for most of us we need to enact some intermediary steps, when we consciously cultivate compassion to help us along. He writes that resentment is by far our biggest relative impediment, and implies that we need to divest of resentment at all costs if we want to progress on our paths.
Stepping into the room, I move through a Tibetan practice, then offer, “May I be of service” and bow deeply, acknowledging the sacred space of the practice room. I take a slow lap around the room’s perimeter, carving around the piano, pausing by the teacher’s table to share a softer and more flowing hug with Daniela, then continuing my lap, carving around the speakers, and around the occasional edge-hugging bodies who are warming up slowly on the floor.
An installation has been created especially for the class. It includes a table draped with several shades of red fabric ranging from tomato to almost-purple red. There is also a large, red glass Buddha head, and several other sparkling red objects. Shambhala teacher Irini Rockwell has written extensively on the idea of the Five Buddha Families, including the idea that we each tend more toward one of the five. “Amitabha,” she writes, “the Buddha of the Padma family, is red and represents discriminating-awareness wisdom and its opposite, passion or grasping.”
A practice intention to rid myself of a difficult-to-extinguish thread of resentment began to form.
After my opening lap, I lowered myself to a spot on the floor to the left of Daniela’s table. A tonal version of the mantra of the sort-of-Tibetan-deity, Tara, pulls me into coiling motion as I circulate, extending the side of my body, stretching my ribs, grabbing my toes as I rise and turn around, stretching the big muscles of my upper legs. I sprawl out flat on the floor, both on my back and stomach as I continued to move through every spoke of a great wheel.
Not sure I was ready to let the ground be so far from my heart, I drew myself up to my feet with slight hesitation. A woman who has triggered resentment for me over the last few years danced exuberantly, taking up space. Resentment first snagged at a workshop, when the teacher invited us to partner and I joined with the man closest to me. We began to move together, but this woman very boldly stepped sideways right between us, facing him and casting her hand up, her back to me, seeming to totally disregard me. I felt annoyed, but moved away and found a new partner, enjoying an overall delightful workshop. In the years that have followed, though, whenever I see her, I remember that experience, and I just can’t be happy for her when she is exultant. I rehearse what I want to tell her about how she wronged me. I notice her in the room. It is a perfect manifestation of resentment, that harms no one but me. Intellectually, I know that resentment doesn’t give me more power, but some part of me still seems to believe that it does.
My mother-in-law used to tell an allegory about a churchgoer. The woman would say again and again on her knees, “Lord heavenly Father, please remove these hateful spider webs from my heart. Lord heavenly Father, please remove these hateful spider webs from my heart.” After years of this prayer, another churchgoer finally said to her, “Sister, I don’t know about all this praying about the spiderwebs. I think what you need to do is get that old spider out of your heart!”
The wave carried me along delightfully, delivering perfect energy. Moving with open, expressive hips and leading shoulders, I noticed the friend who had reminded me Daniela would be teaching this day. She was beaming, casting her arms behind her as she leaned deep forward, her released head keeping the beat, deep in her hips, too.
As we moved from Staccato to Chaos, I shared several brief dances, thinking I would dance with the whole room, then unexpectedly found myself in partnership. Another excellent friend, my favorite dance partner of all time, appeared as I was starting a swooping lap, and I leapt into movement with him. We were wild as Daniela mixed a track with a house club anthem from the 1990’s that I love. We were also totally available to each others’ surprises, extending and falling, wiggling and rolling energetically on the ground. He started to move around me in a circle, and I started to follow right behind him, laughing, changing direction abruptly to meet him face-to-face in his arc, then both of us spinning out, extending the space our dance took place in. I felt incredibly stable on my legs and feet for some reason, and did a lot of experiments with raising, twisting and engaging my knees, sometimes on one leg for long stretches, reaching my fingertips to the ground, my knee and leg up.
Soon, I found another friend, and we shared a subtle dance in Lyrical, carefully carving the air around us and tracing designs on the linoleum floor with our toe tips.
Instead of stopping everyone and sitting down between the first and second waves, as often happens in two-hour classes, Daniela kept us moving, speaking briefly as she moved among us, talking about “picking up the many pieces of ourselves” as we moved. I didn’t know how to relate to a few of the tracks in this middle transition, and engagement flagged slightly, but very soon I was swept away again by the second wave. I danced with the entire room, tunneling through avenues of legs, soaring and gliding into the spaces above and between.
The spider in my heart grew transparent, a white line drawing. I directly invoked the spirits and asked for help, not for getting rid of the spider webs, but for help with eradicating the spider completely forever, asking for an end to resentment, letting the dissolve and then realizing it needed a more dramatic gesture, and envisioning it being blasted instead.
In Lyrical of the second wave, I joined with another good friend, released, joyful, creative, digging into tiny details on the ground, and alternately extended in flight.
A rain of gold leaves came down, landing on the upward planes of me, then entering and filling the volume of my body, cancelling out the spider. I looked to their source and saw only vast, endless space and the glittering of falling blessings.
November 12, 2017
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and is not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher. (Images copyright Meghan LeBorious, 2007)
by meghanleborious | Nov 12, 2017 | Notes on Practice
The themes Tammy addressed during this week’s Friday Night Waves class aligned with what I had been experiencing in my own life that day. Yet another hurricane had ravaged the Caribbean a short time before, causing vast destruction, including flattening nearly the entire country of Puerto Rico into piles of sticks and broken concrete. Robert Glasser, The UN Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction, commented, “There can be little doubt that 2017 is turning into a year of historic significance in the struggle against climate change and all the other risks that put human life in danger and threaten the peace and security of exposed and vulnerable communities … who find themselves in harm’s way from hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes.” (Vox.com, September 22, 2017) The violent white nationalist movement appears to be gaining strength. The president has escalated his nuclear saber rattling toward North Korea. And the same president attempts to abuse football players who want to express their disenchantment with the current state of America into silence.
Working on a book at a café, I am swept with tides of weepiness. Having trouble getting my mind off of the 70,000 people (including a friend’s family) in Isabela, Puerto Rico, who live in the shadow of a giant dam that is on the verge of bursting after such an incredible amount of rain with Hurricane Maria. As I said in the last post, I no longer find the Christian idea of apocalypse so far-fetched.
In the morning, I go to a walk-in medical clinic, certain that I have an ear infection. For the two nights previous, I woke up in the early morning and couldn’t fall back to sleep because of the pain. In fact, I am so sure I have an ear infection that I take an amoxicillin pill that I have on hand, a medication often prescribed for ear infections. To my surprise, the doctor says she sees no sign of infection whatsoever. Not even slight redness. “Do you grind your teeth at night?” she asks. I nod, thinking, who in America isn’t grinding their teeth lately?
Despite my serious concerns about the world and my place in it, I have been experiencing joy lately, too. At the moment, I’m teaching mindfulness (almost synonymous to meditation for these purposes) to eight different classes at the high school where I teach. It has been a dream for me to bring this work to students, and it could not be more timely. Also, my no-longer-small son, Simon, is happy and thriving after the first two weeks of second grade. On top of that, the weather has been spectacular. To make me even happier, Tammy, who teaches all over the world and often has to rely on substitute teachers for the Friday Night Waves class, is leading the class, and I manage to arrive on time.
In the rhythm of Flowing, Tammy plays a heartbreaking song with a West African vocalist, whose tender voice soars. I often start on floor off to one side, but today I’m on my feet, moving through the room, looking for all the movement that is available in my spine, feeling the people around me, pausing in pockets to stretch and move on the floor, but feeling integrated with the room at once.
In Staccato, Tammy plays a song with a lyric that is something like, there is no warning for the revolution. I am fierce, gigantic, taking huge sideways steps, clenching my fists, crying out gutterally, and sinking low into the hips. I think about revolution, in detail. I join with a friend and we explore the following song, which is full of resistance and grit. I find flexion in my pelvis, front and back, even when I sink low with my hips nearly on my heels, scooping the air, drawing power in, sending it out.
The rhythm of Chaos lasts and lasts. I am wild, both with partners and on my own. Chaos, the rhythm of release, is a fusion of the rhythms of Staccato and of Flowing, but today my Chaos very much tends toward Staccato – the rhythm of action, of stepping up and taking one’s place in the world. I keep taking breaks to totally soften myself, then return to engaging resistance, finding odd and unexpected forms, including picking up my heels sideways, reaching with force to the farthest edges of my range, and exploring balance, sometimes passing its edge.
Lately, I have noticed a pressing outward, sideways at the back of my neck. It is planar, linear, like a giant grain of rice. I have been able to soften this area, feeling my head and neck grow upward as a result. I sometimes have a sore neck after yoga or dance practice, but today my neck seems more released than usual, even with such a Staccato edge in Chaos.
As the wave concludes and we move through Lyrical and Stillness, it hits me that I probably won’t be taking Simon to meet (his paternal) family in Puerto Rico this summer, as I have planned, and further, that the coastal town most of them live in, for most intents and purposes, probably no longer exists. So far, we have not had any contact with them, and have no idea how they have fared. My face tightens in grief. I move inward.
“We have all the time in the world, and yet, we have no time to lose,” Tammy says during a period of verbal teaching between the first and second waves of the class. I cry while she talks, hot tears, jumping forward and out. Tammy talks about the many disasters of the preceding week, offering, that some people here have relatives they can’t even reach at the moment. I realize I am in that category, though grief seems even bigger than one event. Tammy also evokes the creator of the practice, Gabrielle Roth, expressing gratitude for the map she has established for us, and recalls that Gabrielle herself believed we had entered into a period of collective Chaos. She says something that reaches me as: even when it feels like the world is falling apart, at least we have this practice.
Moving into the class’s second wave, I am withdrawn. I open my attention to the people around me and try to bring mindfulness to the feeling of my feet on the floor. Even so, I have lost the caterwauling ebullience of the first wave and sort of creep along. Internally, I think, “Please let me find a partner so I can get out of this constrained little story in my head.” Sure enough, before long, Tammy invites us to partner, and nearly everyone in the room quickly pairs up. I’m snapped back in, engaged, and I beam, joining forces with successive partners, though Chaos, too, finds me more subdued in this second wave.
In Lyrical I join with a favorite partner, sharing a dance of seedlings, of offering, whispering, twittering, of casting forward, down, up, around, leaping through every available level, brushing my hands on the floor and then skyward again, experiencing the full extension of my arms, then undulating forward from the sternum, breath filling my hands and pouring out of them onto the floor, into the room.
I drift away from my friend as the room transitions into Stillness, and move closer to Tammy. My movements become subtle, and I turn my attention to finding every possible articulation of my coccyx, thinking again about the idea of apocalypse, wondering how much my practice will be tested in the coming months, wondering how much I have to give, wondering how bad things can get and if they will ever get better. I also wonder if I can find a way to wake up no matter what, and if I can lead the way for my son, no matter what comes, even if the dam breaks.
“Strive at first to meditate upon the sameness of yourself and others. In joy and sorrow all are equal.” –Pema Chödrön, No Time to Lose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva
September 24, 2017, Brooklyn, NYC
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and is not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.
Image: http://cdn.cnn.com/
by meghanleborious | Oct 25, 2017 | Notes on Practice
“Moving with the spirit has taught me all I know.” -Gabrielle Roth
I didn’t have much time to contemplate what I might experience when I signed up for “Journey into Trance,” a two-day workshop with Jonathon Horan, who is both an experienced 5Rhythms teacher and the current holder of the entire 5Rhythms lineage. Stepping out of the elevator onto the 5th floor at the Joffrey in the West Village, I happily greeted many friends and prepared to step in to the studio, bringing many ongoing narratives into the room with me. Right before I entered, I ran across Jonathan and embraced him in greeting. Immediately after, I wished I had been more discreet, thinking that he probably has people coming at him from all sides, and may not have actually wanted to be hugged. I let that go and moved across the threshold of the studio, feeling a knot of emotion in my throat, along with a rush of gratitude.
A few days before I’d had a conversation with my seven-year-old son Simon about the difference between brain and mind. The brain, I shared, is a thing in your head with complex electrical wiring to the rest of your body. The mind is your brain, but also stretches past just your own head. Because all that you think and perceive and experience is influenced by things outside of your body, you could say that your mind also includes everything that ever is or ever was. After that, he asked several profound questions about the nature of existence and consciousness. Then he said, “Mommy, can we still get that book to hold all my Pokemon cards?”
Another thing I carried into the studio was the experience of teaching Mindfulness to teens. I have been dabbling for several years now, but this is the first year it has become a significant part of my schedule. The technique I taught students this week was “First Thought,” when you watch for a thought, then when one appears, simply label it “thinking” and return to the object of meditation. My experiences with the students (and also some with the adults) crowded my mind, and I kept reviewing my inspirational speeches, past and future. Then, I would catch myself and say, “thinking” and return to the experience of feet, breath, body, rhythm. Truly, I gave myself few escapes this weekend. A fortunate thing, because it doesn’t seem like Jonathan would have accepted less.
I started most sessions with laps around the perimeter of the room. I felt like it helped me to arrive in the space. I also imagined I was helping to establish an energetic container. On my first lap, as I walked past the beautiful black-feather-themed visual presentation created by Martha Peabody Walker and Peter Fodera, I discreetly dipped my hand into a metal washtub of salt that was part of the installation, scooped up a small amount, and rubbed it onto the soles of my feet. Initially, I moved gently around the space, saying internally, “I see you there; and I am grateful for it,” as I encountered each person.
As the wave progressed, drenched with sweat and thirsty, I paused to drink water, facing out the 5th floor window onto Sixth Avenue. For the first time ever, I saw people high up on an outdoor walkway by the clocktower of the historic church across the street. Smiling, I raised my hand in greeting. One woman waved back, and nudged a man next to her, who did the same. Delighted, I continued to be strongly connected to everyone in the room, and also to the world outside the studio throughout the weekend, often picturing the sky on the other side of the ceiling, and occasionally, the curving, vast earth. Once in Stillness I sent energy from one hand to another, but it took a long route, traveling not just across my hands, but around the entire sphere of the earth to arrive in my other hand, creating a long, circular arc that I completed into a circle with my own body.
In this opening wave, I danced a ferocious Chaos. At times, I wasn’t sure which rhythm we were in. Lately, I have had work to do in Staccato, and have been deliberately holding myself in Staccato rather than charging on directly into Chaos. During “Journey into Trance” there were times that I suddenly realized we were already moving into Lyrical without ever having really let loose in Chaos. As a result, my neck was very sore the first day.
Continuing to reflect on my own students, who are mostly people of color, I thought also of the courage of people of color who are part of the 5Rhythms community. That week, I had led circle discussions about the events in Charlottesville. During the same week, a student in a different class spoke out hotly during a reading, “This is making me feel a certain type of way!” he said. “How are you feeling exactly?” I asked. He started to explain that a character’s remark seemed racist. A teacher, who identifies as white, like me, and who I share the class with, tried to talk him out of it. “Well, I have a neighbor who…” I let her talk for a few moments, then said, “You could definitely read that statement as racist.” “Thank you!” gasped another student. I thought about how many times I’ve been in full 5Rhythms rooms where there has been just one apparent person of color. I thought about how incredibly important diversity of all kinds is for the integrity and vitality of the 5Rhythms community. I thought, too, of the incredible courage of my fellow dancers. How despite the daily ravages of racism, how somehow many people of color have managed to step up to be courageous, surrendered and vulnerable, fully in the dance. And how remarkable and valuable that is. And how inspiring. A point of hope in this ugly world that seems to grow uglier daily.
We took a break in the late afternoon. I didn’t feel like socializing, and ate in the nearly empty studio. I made a few notes about the morning in my journal, then followed the suit of another dancer and sat in meditation with my back to a column. Then, I lay myself down and entered a chthonic, deep relaxation, falling into the floor, the earth and darkness. As people returned from the lunch break, they thundered by me with their pounding footsteps, but I continued to rest until the music started again.
Instead of leading us into a wave right away, Jonathan gathered us together and began to speak. He talked about Gabrielle Roth, the founder of the 5Rhythms, first. He said that witnessing her dance, she was so transparent and embodied, you could just cry looking at her. Gabrielle Roth was also Jonathan’s mother, and he spoke of growing up with her at spiritually radical Esalen Institute in California, then moving to New Jersey at the age of 7, where he felt out of place.
At this point, he switched from his own experience to ontology. He argued that we have all pretty much entered into a fool’s agreement, “That I won’t see you, and you won’t see me.” Why be half-hearted? He posited. Gabrielle, herself, was not a rule follower. Instead, she relentlessly sought what was real and true and beautiful. What I heard was, Wake up! Wake up! Your very life is at stake. I’m making it all sound funny because it is, but we don’t have time to languish in generalities. Let go of the many limiting ego stories that are stifling you. Life is passing so quickly. Before we know it, we will die. Jonathan said later, “After all, we may only live once.”
Next Jonathan invited us to consider the frame of “Journey into Trance” and reflected that trance might look differently for different people. He also suggested that we approach the weekend with curiosity and an attitude of spaciousness, accepting that some might need to roll around on the floor screaming, make odd noises, or act in other socially unacceptable ways.
After Jonathans’ talk, we began with simply walking around the space. We experimented with allowing ourselves to be led with our bellies, and then with allowing ourselves to be led by our heads. I noticed that I had a much lower center of gravity when the belly was leading, and that I felt like part of the collective field, as opposed to when the head was leading. Despite a sore neck, I danced a very athletic wave. Every time a thought arose, I said, “thinking” internally and returned to the physical experience of my body, finding endless new ways to move: big back steps, a new complication of low-weighted spinning with open shoulders moving my hands up and over me like coiling carnival rides, deep front and back movement in the pelvis and sacrum, sunken with my heels touching the backs of my knees and then stepping forward, my heart bursting open, then coiling my entire abdomen back inside, then bursting my heart forward again, sometimes continuing this arcing in the space in front of my spine, and through the hips and pelvis.
“Are you in or out?” Jonathan asked. “And if you’re out, can you come back in?”
At a moment when my energy dipped, I encountered a friend at the outer edge of the moving room. She, too, seemed tired, and somehow we fell into each other, quivering, shimmying, small, precise. We rolled inside discreet shoulders, cascading forward and back. Making oblique eye contact, we both smiled. Moving from our bellies, I recalled images of Fela Kuti’s many wives who accompanied him onstage, dancing with vibrancy, the rhythm of the body pouring out at the heart, with arcing, arching intensity.
At day’s end, I was thoroughly exhausted, and my neck was very painful. I recalled that not only had I perhaps not given myself fully over to Chaos, but also that Simon had woken up very early and put on a movie, which I half-watched along with him, my neck propped awkwardly onto pillows and twisted for the duration of the three-hour film. I darted out, making my way to the subway, where I made the happy discovery that I had a little bag of snack food in my bag, then spent several minutes trying to open it. Struggling, I finally resorted to attempting to pierce the bag with one of the sharper keys on my keyring, when I finally looked around. Just across from me on the same platform stood Jonathan, two blazing sapphires staring out of his face, his arms crossed over the railing, one forearm over the other, grinning and giving off sharp little glints of light.
My parents were in town to care for Simon, and I met up with all of them. I was too tired for intelligible conversation. I went to bed as soon as I got Simon organized, tucking a sheet onto the couch in the living room since my parents would sleep in my bed, and settling in as quickly as possible.
Saturday night I slept very deeply, and, miraculously, woke Sunday with no pain in my neck. I went to brunch with my family, then made my way back to the Joffrey for the second day of “Journey into Trance.” As I pushed open the glass door from Sixth Avenue into the Joffrey, Jonathan was entering too.
As the music started, I did a few laps of the perimeter, then found Flowing easily. I was gentle, small, with my arms close to my torso, totally fluid, slotted in among the many prone dancers, almost crying, connected to the entire field, not separate. Moving around the space, I did what I call “Passing Through Practice” where I sort of energetically whoosh through everyone and everything–even the columns–and let them all whoosh through me.
Jonathan spoke of a “deep inquiry into the interior self.” Listening carefully to the teacher’s talk is a practice itself, and every time my mind drifted, I directed it quickly back. “Are you in or out?” he asked again, “and can you know when you’re out? Can you stay in?” I rebelled internally, thinking it would be better not to grasp and push, and instead to just notice. But maybe this is a different level of practice, I thought, maybe it is possible to stay in the entire time. Maybe even all the time, on and off the dance floor. Jonathan also suggested that we experiment with “soft eyes” rather than direct gaze, to support the experiment of working with trance.
eHe also said to the group, “If I were you, I might have come in with resistance today after dancing like you danced yesterday.” I reflected that I have, in a way, encountered very little resistance to 5Rhythms over the years. Even when I am aware of how vulnerable I am, how torn to bits, how connected, how surrendered, how energetically porous, even when I have felt judged or left out–even at these times I am not late on purpose, I don’t lie to myself and blame others when I don’t feel good (even when I do), and I always step into each rhythm with the sincere willingness to fully bring it to bear. It is a curious thing. In other practices, such as yoga, I have encountered much more resistance. Sometimes the edge is razor sharp, though, and when I go very deep I may spend ensuing days feeling irritable or otherwise “off,” perhaps my ego’s desperate attempts to re-assert itself.
At one point, Jonathan said something about how ridiculous it is to pay attention to how you look in the mirror. Here, too, I rebelled, realizing I had been so intent on not looking in the mirror, that it had acquired the flavor of aversion. So I spent a little time right next to the mirror, turning to the side so I could fully examine the complicated sways and arcings of my stomach, lower back and pelvis.
After the talk, I glued my belly to the floor and moved with weight, pulling myself around with my arms and coiling spine. I pulled up onto my knees and set about finding as much movement in my spine as possible, my head forward and simply following and completing the many ratcheting, twisting and undulating gestures of the spine. I stayed deeply connected to myself as new forms arose in Staccato. At one point as we moved from Staccato into Chaos, I played with balance, staying on one foot, and swinging, bounding and descending with the other, looking for the farthest edges of balance.
I recalled that when I first started dancing, I pretty much always kept “soft eyes” as it seemed rude or intrusive to look straight at anyone. Back then, almost a decade ago now, I often stayed inside a heavy trance for the duration. For me, it became most intense during Chaos. I was kind of a trance junkie–craving that depth, that intensity, the shamanic glimpses, the sense that life is deeply meaningful, that “this” layer of reality is just a tiny piece of the picture. Then, I started to open my eyes more, literally. I found the ground, I met people’s gazes more directly, more often. I felt like instead of privileging transcendence, I was connecting with greater awareness to the world. Trance would still come in pockets, spirits would visit, ancestors would soothe me, visions would present, energy would move tangibly and visibly. But I never experienced the sustained trances that I did in the first two years of dancing again. To my surprise, “Journey into Trance” was, for me, an opportunity to re-integrate those early experiences, and to enter into other dimensions with the full support and protection of my spiritual community and teachers.
Call on your guides, your ancestors, your spirit animals, your lineages, Jonathan invited at one point. I spread my arms as wide as the room and grew very tall, regal, a great trailing cape rushing from my arms as I moved in sweeping ribbons through the space, my spirit entourage in a phalanx beside and behind me–my emotional support system, my protectors.
During this wave, I was very released in Chaos, unleashing a massive proliferation of forms, including everything, somehow, leaving nothing out. In Lyrical, I again moved through the room, passing through people and objects, feeling the whoosh of merging. In Stillness I had a vision of eyes on the palms of my hands. Even with my eyes shut, I could see everyone in the room, could see the sky through the ceiling, and could see inside of my own body and the interior bodies of people in the room.
Before Sunday’s break, Jonathan lead us in a guided meditation. Laying with my full back on the floor, my arms and legs extended, he spoke into the microphone, suggesting an image for the cessation of ego defenses. At its conclusion, I had to remind myself where I was.
I floated down the elevator, avoiding eye contact, not wanting to dissipate, not wanting to disperse. I went to a local health food store, and chose food as efficiently as possible, thinking that I would write after eating. Unfortunately, I had forgotten my journal on the bench in the locker room at the Joffrey, so I didn’t have any way to write. Instead, I listened to the most curious, avant-garde recording of two older women in a fascinating conversation about movie stars from the 1980’s that was playing on speakers in the dining area. Slowly, I realized there was also music playing. Then, I realized that only music was playing, and the conversation I was listening to was actually taking place in real time, between two women just a table away from me.
I thought of a story about a conversation between Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the founder of the Shambhala Buddhist tradition, and His Holiness Dilgo Kyentse Rinpoche, who was the head of the Tibetan Nyingma lineage. As the story goes, the two friends were sitting in contented silence on a bench in a garden, enjoying a pleasant afternoon. After some time, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche pointed and said to the other, “They call that a tree!” at which point they both broke into peals of laughter, which went on for some time.
After lunch, Jonathan started us off with intentional self-care, guiding us as we massaged our necks. Most stood up for this, but I remained on the ground, sticking various parts of me to the floor emphatically. At this point, I moved around the room in Flowing, my eyes soft, saying, “I feel you there, and I am grateful for it,” rather than what I often say internally in Flowing, “I see you there, and I am grateful for it.” During this wave, I partnered less, turning more and more inside, “cruising the emptiness” as Jonathan said, quoting Gabrielle.
“What’s real, what’s true, what’s deep, what serves the big dance of love,” Jonathan chanted, ever suspicious of sanctimonious bullshit, calling out our egos stories, our feeble escapes, our neurotic self-making again and again. In Chaos, I moved with total engagement and energy, released, erased. I hung my skin onto a nail while I danced around in my skeleton, near a friend who always inspires me, both of us totally plugged in, but on different journeys. Moving into Lyrical, my bones glowed with ancient writing, light on every bone’s surface, the plane of my shoulder blade, the big femur bone of my leg, on every separate link of my spine. Then, a spirit visited me (or so I imagined). I remembered him from many years ago, when he came to dance and overlapped with me, weaving in and out of me as I swooned and tears poured down my cheeks, teaching me the Passing Through practice. This time we danced again, becoming one body and then separating, ending with swaying, my hands pressed to his hands.
Jonathan selected a soaring, tender song with the lyric, “There is a place I know. Only I can go there,” that I associate with the passing of his mother, the beloved Gabrielle Roth. A low, grazing groan of grief dragged out of me, a deep-bass lowing. I moved in a gesture that finds me nearly every time I am in Stillness, looking down, moving my hands slowly to the left, turning my body around, and felt I could see the origin of this gesture, many lifetimes ago, in a scene of trauma and destruction. I was a gigantic, swooping, flapping vulture, and the air displaced as I beat my wings. Still groaning, crying, breath totally moving me, not separate. Even as I gasped, every muscle echoed it.
Though I was totally lost in this place, I gently settled back in, like a feather landing.
At the end, my breath was rich and resonant. Like some ancient grief had cleared. In the coming days, I would experience the irritability and emotional volatility of an ego that feels seriously endangered after it has managed to step into the sky, into the vastness of experience, where its tiny stories are drowned out by the deafening hum of existence.
At the end of the day, I made to leave, still feeling private. I changed my mind and lingered for a little while, talking with several friends with whom I had shared gestures or insights. I made my way to Jonathan, remembering that my earlier hug might have been overkill, and stood with my hands in prayer, touching them to my forehead as I made a tiny bow, my eyes smiling. “Thank you. This has been so beautiful.” He gave me a generous hug and a kiss on the cheek.
The five-year anniversary of the death of Gabrielle Roth was just a few days after the “Journey into Trance” workshop. I hope we honored her memory this weekend. I hope we served her vision. I hope trance continues to unfold for all of us, in Jonathan’s words, inside this “cathedral of bones” this “wilderness of the heart.”
October 16, 2017, Brooklyn, NY
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and is not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher. Images are copyright Meghan LeBorious.
by meghanleborious | Sep 17, 2017 | Notes on Practice
My close world is torn apart with natural disasters – hurricanes in Texas, and in Florida & the Caribbean, earthquake in Mexico – at the same time, it is a spectacular day in New York. Temperatures in the 70’s, low humidity, blue skies with the kinds of clouds that are easy to see as friendly animals or as elaborate castles. In the Sunday morning Sweat Your Prayers class at the Joffrey Ballet in the West Village, taught today by Jason Goodman, I held both realities.
I have been teaching high school students for the past few years and the beginning of the year makes me feel joyful. Meeting new students, I can’t wait to find out what they can do. I’m twittery, imaging all the great structures we will co-create, thinking about how to set things up for them, reviewing my inspiring speeches and clear explanations. Imagining all of us having fun together at the first dance. Having done this for a few years, I also know how much I will come to love them by the end of the year; and I can feel it already. I’m choked up in advance just thinking about it, even as I write.
At the same time, sadness and fear visit me. People all over are suffering terribly, in particular as a result of the hurricanes and earthquake. I keep feeling wracked by sadness. And I am afraid. As of late, the Christian concept of apocalypse no longer seems as far-fetched as I once believed. As a human community, we really don’t seem to be moving in a good direction.
There was a time when I wouldn’t have let myself have access to joy in the face of this suffering. I would have thought that feeling joy would be an affront to others’ pain. Now, I feel differently, though. I realize that if I am suffering too, I haven’t actually helped anyone. There are just more of us suffering.
Stepping in to the fourth floor dance studio, movement nuzzled me from all sides and I felt free and inspired. I delighted in the clear blue sky pouring in the windows, smiled to greet many friends, and found myself a spot on the floor. There, I moved in big, arcing circles, attenuating my body in long gestures to stretch at the same time, pulling my feet up to warm up my quadriceps along the floor, rolling over my shoulders and over the crown of my head.
I wore wide-legged pants with a tucked-in tank top, which allowed me a full range of motion, and that I exploited with every angle, level and gesture. Lately, I have a good relationship with Staccato, and I sunk deep into my hips, playing with rocking my pelvis and taking big backsteps – at times holding my leg up and rocking my knee forward and back before placing my foot emphatically on the floor, garnering tremendous momentum and force in the process. Jason spoke of the need for Staccato, sometimes for ferocious and sudden action, since staying in Flowing all of the time would, at minimum, mean we might get nothing done; and at maximum, might mean we fail to act to save our own life or the lives of the people we love. Sometimes we don’t have the luxury of a patient warm-up, instead when the situation calls for it, we have to step into Staccato instantly, as warriors, with all of the power and force that is required of us.
We seemed to spend more time in Chaos than in any other rhythm today. Jason spoke directly of the devastating hurricanes and earthquake; and also reflected on the tragedy of September 11th, 2001, which he, like me, personally witnessed. I recalled a class Jason taught in the same room just three days after the election of Donald Trump, when he also kept us in Chaos for song after song after song. I reflected on the words of my yoga teacher, Maria Cutrona, in the days after the election, “As painful as this may be, as hard as it may be to take, this is exactly what we have been practicing for over all of these years. This is it. Right now.”
The ultimate test of our practice is to keep moving even inside a swirling maelstrom of Chaos. To find a way to ride the Chaos so it doesn’t destroy us. As the rhythm of Chaos unfolded, I was often low, finding a growling thread of Staccato, realizing the need for action. Deep in my knees and hips, I held my arms cactus-like and rocked and cracked into my upper spine at great velocity. I joined two friends, including the very woman who brought me to a 5Rhythms class for the first time over ten years ago, and we leapt and twisted and spun, inspiring me into a whole new set of gestures and ways of working with weight and extension, every minute muscle of my feet steering me into unending expression. I moved around the room and joined with several others in sequence, including with a man I hadn’t seen before whose lyrical expression of Chaos softened me into joy.
This school year, I will be teaching mindfulness & meditation to nearly my entire school community, going into many different classrooms for 20 minutes each week. I thought about how I would introduce the work. “Dear Ones, this world is crazy,” I rehearsed in my head, “We have hurricanes, earthquakes, racism. Donald Trump. There is pretty much nothing in the external world around us that we can count on. Even if you are lucky enough to have a safe home, enough money, classrooms where you feel respected and valued. Even if you have all that stuff, at some point, you, too, are going to feel like the world is crazy. Because that’s what the world does. It’s always changing and throwing new stuff at us. Since the external world is so crazy and is constantly shifting and changing, we can’t rely on it for our sense of peace and safety. Our only hope is to develop our internal world, what’s inside, so that we have at least one place of refuge we can count on, that’s always available to us, regardless of our shifting circumstances.”
In the second wave, I grew slightly distracted as a result of rehearsing my speech in my head. I forced myself to return attention to my feet, telling myself my speech would all still be there later on, after it was no longer time to practice; and I moved around the room in Flowing. I met the blue-green eyes of a woman who was close to my own diminutive height and felt flooded with sadness, receiving, feeling the emotions around me. I noted that I had hunger pangs and put my hand to my lower stomach. My energy dipped slightly. Playful regardless, I knelt with my forehead down next to two friends who were back to back, and they inched their feet apart, delighting me by making a little bridge for me to crawl under. I squirmed to the other side of them, then pushed hard on the ball of my right foot, leaping high into the air and curving into emphatic motion like a cartoon wizard casting a lightning spell.
I had another wind during the closing gestures of the class. In Lyrical, I, like many others, swooped throughout the room, joining other dancers in brief partnerships. In Stillness, I keyed into tiny articulations of my coccyx and lower spine, closing my eyes and feeling the movement of energy throughout my body, moving my hands in space as these quiet modulations swept to my edges. Jason gathered us into a big circle where we continued to move in Stillness, ending at last with several deep, collective breaths.
At the end of the class, I chatted for a moment with an effusive, beaming first-time 5Rhythms dancer who I had helped to greet. Then, I spoke with a friend who had seemed interior during the class, and learned that many of her family members live in the southern part of Florida, where they were being pummeled by Hurricane Irma even as we spoke, her eyes pinched in pain, her shoulders raised, her tone incredulous.
September 10, 2017, Brooklyn, NYC
( First image: of St. Thomas after Hurricane Irma from nydailynews.com. Second image: nbcnews.com of Florida during Irma)
by meghanleborious | Aug 31, 2017 | Notes on Practice
“Wave anatomy is very simple. The highest surface of a wave is called the crest, and the lowest part is called the trough. The vertical distance between the crest and the trough is called the wave height. The horizontal distance between two adjacent crests or troughs is the known as the wavelength. … But wave behavior is a complicated dance, choreographed by the forces that cause them and the ocean around them.” –National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Monday
I’ve been on Martha’s Vineyard for over a week and I still haven’t found a place I love to practice. After dropping my son Simon off at camp, I spent an hour or more snarled in errands, in part arising from a minor car accident the previous week. I decide to try South Beach in Edgartown, and discover that it is just 11 driving minutes away. I find the sea spectacular, but the beach crowded. I look west and see open space, so I walk in that direction. I get happier and happier as I walk along, thinking I have finally found my place, how wonderful, how blessed. I am pretty much skipping. Then a bellicose man with grey teeth drives up to me on an ATV and tells me I have to go away, this is private property. “Don’t worry,” I say, wide-eyed, “I know I can’t go above the high tide line, and I’m not going to put down a blanket or anything, I’m just here to find some peace.” “You can’t be here. This is private property.” “But you can’t own the sea! The law says…” “I know the law. Are you saying you’re not leaving then? Do I have to call somebody?” I think about pushing it but instead say, “I’m leaving for today, but I’m going to do some research; and I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Tuesday
“The wind not only produces currents, it creates waves. As wind blows across the smooth water surface, the friction or drag between the air and the water tends to stretch the surface. As waves form, the surface becomes rougher and it is easier for the wind to grip the water surface and intensify the waves.” –National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
In the morning I do a yoga class and it pours heavily, visible as white lines in the space of the air through the big window of the studio. I decide it is a perfect day to dance on the beach.
The loose sand of high tide gives me sore calves as I dance in Flowing. I move with the cresting and ending waves, rushing back under, folding into the next, curving to block. I try to hold myself in each of the rhythms a little longer than feels intuitive to stretch out my practice and give myself time for the rhythms to act on me. Staccato moves me quickly, still the thick sand crowds my ankles. My outbreaths are audible, rushing. I am not totally alone anymore but I can still move, letting the head go letting the diaphragm go, avoiding eye contact in case the family that just arrived thinks I’m crazy. Lyrical is the rhythm that most calls me today, though even when I feel light and my gaze lifts upward with the soaring sea birds, I still have no lift owing to the soft sand that doesn’t offer a foundation to leap off of. In Stillness, arms around, curving, gliding hand-to-hand and arcing up.
After Stillness draws to a close I practice sitting meditation for 20 slightly-distracted minutes, then have a brief swim in the swelling waves.
Wednesday
“As the waves close in on the coast, they begin to feel the bottom and their direction of travel might change due to the contour of the land. Eventually, the waves run ashore, increasing in height up to 1.5 times their height in deep water, finally breaking up as surf.” –National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
At Norton Point Beach in Edgartown. Black sand with striated markings like german shepherd fur. It is high tide again and my feet sink into the coarse sand. Two children are making a sandcastle when I arrive. It is huge, spanning 10 feet or more. They are using the same tools that are used for demure, small castles, but the open ocean and big waves seem to inspire things on a grander scale. In heavy fog, I walk out of sight.
There is no horizon. Flowing is the waves washing back being subsumed again to the ocean, form washing away, the backwash and the sea’s depths and their connection. I let it catch my back and pull and dip me, feeling the wide sea, deep and heavy and heaving. I could do this forever, I think. My legs too tired in the deep loose sand, a big hill of black sand dipping down to the waves. Staccato is the waves as they barrel toward shore. Staccato and I take forceful breaths out, deep and low, elbows bent like a destructive goddess, fire exhalation, the sand still deep. Chaos is the flowing backwash crashing into the staccato wave, the collision, the twisting, sometimes the diminishing of the big wave – cresting to end, sometimes they multiply each other, sometimes they crash and collide. Chaos and I let my head go. I have an audience now I try not to care, I want to be seen and I don’t at once, I keep giving myself permission to let go, let go, why such constraint and pessimism when life is so short, so infinitesimally tiny. Ferocious heartbeat, sweat between my breasts, my strapless dress drifts down becoming a skirt, a wave reaches us, saturating its hem. Fine mist kisses my exposed skin. I no longer feel limited by the deep sand. Gliding down the little sand cliff, finding suspensions with the uphill side of me, looking toward the fog-obscured horizon, for the first time seeing the birds, gliding, skittering, flapping, coasting. I am on and off the sand, on my knees, arcing up and around, to a knee then up in one powerful gesture. In Stillness I bow forward toward the sea in a reverent curtsie. One hand creates an arc drawing in the sand in front of me, then the other, from the other side, then the other again to make a little rainbow. I bow lower, then end standing with knees bent out to the sides, arms bent at the elbows, up and open – receptivity fused with strength.
I spend 19 restless minutes in sitting meditation, trying to force myself not to look at the timer on my phone.
Thursday
“After the wind begins to blow for a while, the waves get higher from trough to crest, and both the wave length and period become longer. As the wind continues or strengthens, the water first forms whitecaps and eventually the waves start to break. This is referred to as a fully developed sea.” –National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Hoping to get to another beach with surf, I type Long Point Beach into the GPS. It leads me down what seems like an unpaved cowpath, but seems to have expensive private homes set behind thick brush comprised of pines trees, shrub oak and tangled vines. I come to a gate, deep in the pine wood, and decide to continue forward into what appears to be a Wildlife Reserve. After 20 minutes of slow driving over ruts and rocks, I park and head up a path over a dune to the beach. Descending the dune, the waves are impressive, four feet or more, crashing with great force. I look to my left and see empty beach, so I head in that direction.
Before long, a sign announces that the area is not accessible because of wildlife preservation. Though I am tempted to continue on, I stop just before the sign, still in view of the beachgoers near the path, but far enough away to feel relatively alone.
Beginning to move in Flowing, I let the waves drag me into curves, attentive to the undertow – to the lacy, diagonal layers of swash – my feet sinking into the deep sand. I let my head release down, spine spiraling into gravity, into the coiling ended waves. As an ended wave rounds back into itself, I turn my body around, low, low, weight in my thighs, in my calves, in my feet, arms extended down from the shoulders. A cold breaking wave touches the skin of my feet and I move again toward the sea, feeling the magnetism of it, its pull. I consciously choose to stay in Flowing a little longer than I want to. It has a hint of inertia to it, and I am eager for the more vigorous energy of Staccato, which overtakes me soon enough. Now, I lift my gaze to the four foot waves racing toward the beach, piling one on top of the other. My arms come alive, as my feet are still in coarse, unpacked sand. Sharp angles and exhalations arise as the waves draw up, I draw my arms up too, arching my spine, deep into the back of my hips. As the wave crashes I arch forward, drawing my fists into my belly and rocking my pelvis. Bending my knees low, then lifting my legs one at a time, I start to gather energy, sweat on my skin, audible breath, strong heartbeat. At times my feet are still moving to the undertow and its curving pull, while the rest of me is arching and crashing. Chaos comes and goes quickly. As I start to release my head into it, a little current of Stillness flutters by and I honor it, pushing behind it with both hands in a plane. Then, I bound and twist, my head flailing, feeling the coming together of the heavy, spent undertow and the raw break of the wave. Before long, I extend my range, including the birds and horizon in my aperture. Feeling the broken waves on my skin, rising into extensions, letting my fingertips take over. Settling, hearing the hum under the breaking waves, a series of slow, tracked gestures arises, my hands are again moved by currents, my feet sinking into the sand as the waves lap around my ankles.
From there, I create a little pile of sand and dig a hole for my feet so I can perch comfortably, then sit in meditation. Absorbed, precise mindfulness shifts with my stream of awareness. After 20 minutes, I realize there is a slight vibration under me, and wonder what it could be. I remember my alarm, and realize I can’t hear over the crashing surf, but I can feel it from its place in my bag on the sand next to me. I had forgotten about the time.
Given the wave height and fast breaks, I decide to move back toward the more populated section of the beach before swimming. Because of the huge breaking waves, I have to time my entry carefully. Then, I am doing butterfly, flipping up into the fronts of waves not yet breaking, and briefly floating on my back. I check to see if I can touch the bottom and am knocked down by roiling undertow behind me. I gasp and wonder briefly if I am in a riptide, then it dissipates. I decide I should get back to the beach, and get knocked down two more times before I am on dry land thirty feet or more down the beach from where I put in. My hair is matted with sand, seaweed, and tiny blue-black mussels. My skin is a layer of salt, my eyes marine light, my spine a ululation.
Friday
“Winds drive ocean currents in the upper 100 meters of the ocean’s surface. However, ocean currents also flow thousands of meters below the surface. These deep-ocean currents are driven by differences in the water’s density, which is controlled by temperature and salinity.” –National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
A white, chilly day, I head again to South Beach, hoping to find it quiet. I walk a short distance, then start moving with the waves – much smaller today, one to two feet at most – rising, falling, and turning as the waves wash up onto the shore, slow, and fall back away, receding and dissolving. I feel the changes of direction in the backwashing water deep in my belly, and sink lower, being lead from there. Staccato sparks but doesn’t ignite. Instead, Flowing keeps re-appearing, gentle. I could do this all day, I think. I start running back and forth in a little curved dip that is horizontal to the breaking waves, rushing up, turning, falling to the middle, then rushing up the other side, like I am at a skate park. Facing the waves head on, my arms raised like a cobra’s hood, sinking deep and flattening the plane of my arms definitively, I find momentum briefly, raising my knees, bounding, articulating small gestures in my pelvis, occasionally balling up my fists and drawing them in.
Using 5Rhythms creator Gabrielle’s Roth map of the 5Rhythms helps keep me engaged, even when I am practicing on my own. I could just come to the sea and dance, and sometimes I do, but giving myself new problems to investigate and holding myself in a given rhythm at least until it fully manifests (in some way) offers the possibility of greater insight.
Today, Staccato keeps wavering. I am edgeless, patient. I tell myself, face the sea, greet the waves as they roll in and gather force, the bottom of the wave slowing as it reaches the shallows, the top of the wave still racing, rising up, cresting. I sink deep again, and put my hand on my crotch over my black bathing suit bottom, rocking my pelvis forward and back with the muscles of my lower back and stomach, then find clipped, precise movements in the shoulders, elbows and legs. Finally, I accept that I have drawn Staccato out of myself, if briefly, and let myself move into Chaos. Chaos, like Staccato, is quieter than usual today. I have dug in and worked hard and know I can let Chaos act on me as it wants to. I release my head and bound around, shimmying my legs one at a time, shaking and spinning. I am happy to let go of the weight of Flowing, to rise up but still have the edgelessness, the unceasing movement, here becoming emphatic and expansive. Within just a few short minutes I let myself transition into Lyrical. I am covering ground, moving parallel to the sea, and away and toward, high up on my toes, arms outstretched, dancing a lilting waltz. I could do this all day, I think. Stillness finds me again moved by and creating currents, my hands in a unified plane, wind making my hair into a horizontal flag.
I am alone on the beach and I set up a throne for myself in the sand and sit for twenty patient minutes. Toward the end, I let go of formal practice, and instead eat a boiled egg and look at everything, the tiny ships sitting on the line of the horizon, the birds in their trolling arcs, the breaking waves, the lifeguards who have just arrived.
I consider not swimming today because it is so chilly, but I decide that going into the ocean every day is a practice, too, and I don’t know if I will have another opportunity today. The tide is starting to come in and the surf has picked up. I stand facing the waves for some moments, then finally take a few steps and dive, swimming butterfly straight into the horizon, then floating. The cold is sharp and exhilarating. Back on land, I am happy I pushed myself, happy for the influence of the sea on my body.
July 14, 2017, Oak Bluffs, Martha’s Vineyard, MA
