How I Work with Aversion in Dance

by meghanleborious | Jun 4, 2014 | Notes on Practice

May 18, 2014

This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms dancing path, and is not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms organization or teacher.

Friday I arrived to class twenty minutes late. I tried to find a place to stretch on the floor, but the room was too energetic, the mood too ebullient and I felt pulled into it instead. I told myself that I should connect with my feet first so I could be responsible in the way I stepped in. I spent a few minutes investigating the planes and pressure points on the bottoms of my feet to satisfy this should.

I shared many joyful and interesting dances, including two with close friends. One in chaos—we held onto each other’s arms and bounced and bent ourselves, smiling the whole time. Another was with a friend who has been away for awhile—a friend who has been like an angel to me—who has literally been there to catch me at the apex of many instances of difficult emotion that have emerged on the dance floor.

In this case, we encountered each other at the very end of the night, happily, in a similar energetic space. He seemed to dance the experiences he had accumulated on his trip. I listened in movement, then told him a little about what I have been up to, myself, for the past few months. Our arms moved in sync at moments with the attenuated music. We took turns or joined each other on the floor, emphatic though with few edges.

In speaking with him later, we discovered that we had both been unpleasantly triggered during dancing with the same person. We acknowledged that the feeling of aversion that comes up with some people—in dance and in life—really has everything to do with our own perspective and understanding, and very little to do with the person who is rubbing on one of our edges.

In my case, Tammy instructed us to take a partner, and one women greeted me in a way that felt too conspiratorial, too knowing for someone I had never before met or danced with. She locked eyes with me and smiled ironically; and I was instantly pickled with irritation. Thinking about it later—it seemed like a parody of myself, somehow. I made the huge assumption that she was making fun of herself, of dance, of me, of the whole situation. By no means do I think it is a good idea to take yourself too seriously, but there was something there in her flippancy that I found distasteful, some lesson for me.

The experience reminded me that for a very long stretch, the issue of aversion and how I worked with it in dance was of central importance. First noticing that aversion has arisen, then noticing what it does in my body, then deciding what to do about it is a fascinating process. The decision to stay with a partner who is triggering me, and work with the edge that is revealed, can lead to enormous insight. The decision to move away from a partner who is triggering me can also lead to enormous insight. Either decision can be skillful, depending on myriad factors.

Partnering in dance and even forming groups is something that happens all the time, but when the teacher actually instructs us to join whoever is closest to us and stay with them until the next instruction—well, all kinds of things arise. When I pair with someone on my own, it tends more often to be who I want to dance with, rather than necessarily who I need to dance with. At times, I have felt un-safe. I can’t exactly explain why. It can feel like aggression, like threat, even if my partner’s intentions are scrupulously kind. I might back up, I might sharpen my elbows, I might force myself open and feel myself tighten up, I might force myself open and wind up connecting joyfully. I might stay in a totally different orbit, nominally connected. I might even spend the entire time praying that the teacher would instruct us to change partners so I wouldn’t be stuck at length with the object of my aversion. Sometimes it is absolutely magical—like the person with the greatest charge for me instantly appears, and perhaps an important insight arises.

Then there are the times that I walk away. Sometimes I take on the challenge of doing exactly what my intuition indicates in every interaction during the entire evening’s dance. On such an occasion, if I feel averse to a partner, I leave them and dance alone or pair with someone else. I notice that I never want to risk hurting someone’s feelings, and sometimes it feels harder to walk away consciously than to stay in an unpleasant partnership—interesting information for me on my own path.

Once, just days before I formally broke up with my partner of eight years, I was dancing with a woman I felt little connection to. A friend, the angel I mentioned previously, happened to return from the bathroom. Without pondering it, I abandoned the woman I didn’t feel connected to and joined my friend. For me, our dance expressed dimensions of human grief, pathos, heartbreak and impossible beauty. My broken heart poured out, and I found myself tender, shining and at ease.

Word Dance Workshop

by meghanleborious | May 8, 2014 | Notes on Practice

April 29, 2014

This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms dancing path, and is not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms organization or teacher.

Jewel Mathieson’s Word Dance 5Rhythms workshop this past weekend was a journey that I have few words for. This is ironic since I am usually brimming with words the second a workshop ends, eager to live it again in my narrative and to mine it for beauty, pain, intensity and insight.

Again, we were at the beautiful White Wave studio in Dumbo, Brooklyn. On Friday night, the teacher Kiera lead us through an opening wave. I kept trying to figure out who Jewel was. I had only seen cropped head shots of her, and it took me awhile to hone in on the right person. Eventually, there was no question who she was because she began to speak, with tremendous animation and very playful, confident authority. She introduced herself and said that 5Rhythms founder Gabrielle Roth’s drummer and friend, Tsonga of the valley—along with his son, Tsonga of the city—would be providing rhythm while she read some of her poems. She also invited us to move if we felt inclined as she shared her words.

This is one of the poems she read on Friday night:

We have come to be danced
Not the pretty dance
Not the pretty pretty, pick me, pick me dance
But the claw our way back into the belly
Of the sacred, sensual animal dance
The unhinged, unplugged, cat is out of its box dance
The holding the precious moment in the palms
Of our hands and feet dance.

WE HAVE COME.

This is no joke. Seriously. And she didn’t just read it, she performed. Guttural, moving every part of her body with emphasis, her long pony-tailed hair flying, even screaming at some points. I loved dancing to her words and to Tsonga’s rhythms. I felt wild, creative and explosive and found ways to move that I had never before investigated.

After Jewel read, she told us about her remarkable life, and talked about what she imagined for the weekend. She also told us that she would never actually stop the dancing for dedicated writing time, and that we should write whenever we wanted to. The drummers played a long, rocking groove. I experimented with dancing sometimes and writing sometimes, but didn’t feel like it was working well for me. It seemed like I was half-writing, half-dancing instead of doing both or either. I loved the music, but lost the thread of the groove, digressing occasionally into vague movements.

When I got tired or distracted, I was tempted to shift into writing; but I decided to resist this impulse. I set up a rule for myself that I would not use writing as a means to escape if I was feeling checked out of the dance. Instead, I would write only when inspiration or intuition moved me to, or when I was specific and connected to my dance. In effect, this meant that I spent very little time writing. When I felt inspired and specific, the last thing I wanted to do was to stop moving and write.

This was a bit of an affront. A good one! For many years, I have thought of myself as unusually driven by and connected to words. In this case, I was much less inclined to stop moving and write than my peers. This is a subtle point, and I don’t know if it narrates well, but an assumption about myself, a component of my schema for who I am, ceased to be valid.

The founder of Shambhala, a meditation tradition with Tibetan Buddhist origins, prohibited meditators from writing during practice time. I think he believed that we need to take time to rest in awareness, without trying to produce anything or understand anything. There are stories of Alan Ginsberg sneaking his notebook into the Shambhala shrine room, but Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the founder of Shambhala, argued that if a thought is important, it will still be there when you are done meditating.

I think this train of thought was my brain’s way of mounting a half-hearted resistance to Jewel’s methods, though it did not last very long. Part of me is afraid that if I put too much pressure on a given poem, I will frighten away my muses. After Friday’s dance, I sat with a friend who listened patiently while I blathered on about this topic. He listened so carefully and with such strong attention, that I felt guilty for barking myself up a tree I knew was not valid. I ended our conversation with, “Yeah, but it is always good to stretch yourself and try on something new. You can always reject it later, right?”

Friday, I left tired. When I got home, I showered, just in case some lingering emotion my body was done with resided in the night’s sweat and needed to be washed away.

On Saturday morning, I had to attend a required training for work, so I arrived late. I think I may have missed some key instruction, but it did not feel jarring to step into the space or to join the dancers on the lovely, sprung wood floor at White Wave Studio.

I began to move right away, feeling creative and alert. I sensed Gabrielle amongst us, and decided to ask her for a message or a sign. Instantly, it was as though a big towrope was attached to the middle of my breastbone, and I was pulled in a straight line to the other side of the dance floor. I didn’t even look where I was going, but when I got there I found Jewel and another dancer (the same who was so patient and earnest when I barked up a ridiculous tree the night before). I decided to hold off on thinking about my dancer colleague, and to consider that Jewel might be an important teacher for me.

Saturday, Jewel’s focus was helping us to find images for our poetry; and to find key metaphors. People drifted in and out of dancing and writing, often pausing to stare into space. I noticed that it was harder than usual to connect with a partner, since most of us were involved in our individual, interior journeys.

I realized that I have a great deal of faith in my ability to find meaningful things to write about. In some ways, my concern is more what on earth to do with all of the material I have generated. A quick informal inventory: more than 200 volumes of journals, 1500 or more poems, two books, multiple novellas including a book written to my son while I was pregnant with him, short stories, essays, interviews. I also do an automatic writing practice about creative work that is now hundreds and hundreds of pages long. And that’s just a quick overview from memory.

Jewel shared that she often takes several months to write a poem. This made me think hard about my own poetry practice and what I want to get out of it. Each day I write a poem. Often they are very short. Some of them are beautiful, some are not.As yet, I have not gone back and edited any of them. I love the practice because it keeps me open to poetry all day, looking for key images that stand out. At this time, however, the quantity is overwhelming. They are all on paper, in journal books. I notice that lately, I have not been writing every day. I think I don’t want to add to a bigger backlog, as I keep wanting to get them from the notebooks onto the computer.

I love the daily-ness of it, the directness of it, the rawness of it. I also love the discipline of the practice. Each day, all I ask of myself is that I show up. Once I only wrote the word “poem.” Just as with dance, I have no control over what will happen once I am in it. The work of showing up complete—I can just relax and investigate whatever arises.

At this point, however, I think I would like to process the poems further. In fact, Jewel told us we would work on a poem over the weekend, and most people worked on one piece. I, on the other hand, was pulled all apart. I worked on one at length Saturday and wound up returning to the very first version.

We sat down in a circle to share at the end of the day, and I was reprimanded for not paying attention to the reader and instead looking through my little book for something to read. The truth was, I didn’t realize we would have a chance to share and I didn’t want to miss the opportunity for an audience. The end of the day totally snuck up on me. It was like all the little bits and pieces were separate things—I wanted them to be heard together but didn’t want to nail them down and force them to commit themselves to one poem. I was like an unabashed polygamist, unwilling to marry just one.

People shared some beautiful bits of things, some shared entire poems. One woman—who clearly was a practiced reader of her own work—got up and performed admirably. Between each reader, I tried to find something I wanted to read through my many pages of notes, then put the book down again quickly as someone started to read. I wished I had asked for five minutes to organize before the arrival of this moment. This happens to me so often—that I am thrilled with the process but am caught off guard when a deadline jumps on me. I was riffling through again between readers, when I realized that everyone’s eyes were on me. I still hadn’t decided what to share, but chose:

I have been burnishing the back of my breastbone for months now
Scraping off blood, fur and muscle
With 1000’s of arcing gestures
My prostration, my prayer.

I was grateful for the supportive attention.

Leaving on Saturday, I felt zonked. I stepped out the door and looked to the left, there was sunny rain, and started to search for a rainbow. To my right, a spectacular rainbow emerged from behind the power plant across the street from the studio and disappeared again behind some buildings. I opened the door and hollered, “Come quick, all of you! There is a rainbow!”

I had just re-read a poem from 2010:

I thought of rainbows.
They came dancing in.

Sunday I actually arrived a little early. Though I feared seeming ridiculous, I decided to bring my entire set of poem-a-day journals. I crossed paths with Jewel on the way in and rushed into showing them to her before she’d even put her coat down. I needed to create a desk for myself, so I took a chair from a stack and posted up at the edge of the dance floor. I feared I was taking up too much real estate—especially since I know Elyce, the producer of the workshop, likes to keep the space as tidy as possible. However, it was a necessity and I decided to get over my shame for using as much space as I needed, and any apology or defensiveness about it.

I lit into my journals, beginning at the beginning, when the practice first organically evolved four years ago from a shared haiku game with my sister. I felt nostalgic, not for wanting to live it again, but for the sheer beauty of it. When Simon was tiny, when this practice first arose, I spent hours and hours every day while he was breastfeeding or sleeping on my lap or on my shoulder just breathing, noticing and reflecting on the awe of an exquisite new human. Before I even got through reading the first book, I was sobbing. I sought an appropriate poem to share, but couldn’t extract myself from the very emotional experience I was having. During the beginning of this practice, as well, I was in the process of leaving my relationship of eight years with the father of my son. It was the saddest, most poignant, most beautiful break up, and there it all was, pouring back into me. Snots were pouring down my lip and I had risk a trip to the Kleenex. I tried to avoid everyone, snot covered and sobbing raggedly as I was, but a friend greeted me with a tender hug and asked how I was, “Crying already,” I said, laughing softly through my tears. He commended me, I think.

Then, I put my big stack of books away and stepped into the dance. We moved through a wave, then Jewel instructed us to spend some time preparing to perform our poem, and shared some of her own process. She explained that we would work in groups using a ritual theater format favored by Gabrielle Roth. Each person would read their poem, and four others would follow their direction, either moving a certain way, repeating a gesture, or holding a particular shape. I spent another period going through poems, instead of preparing to perform one. We had a short lunch and I finally selected a poem. I went to an alley behind a big building to practice. As I ran through it, I changed it and added to it.

After lunch, we began with a wave. This was a tender and lovely room. Everyone who had been writing feverishly was in the dance now. At one point, we were instructed to look in a partner’s eyes, find a shape, then move on. I connected with one friend and was reduced to tears. Her big, shining eyes did not waver. I could tell she didn’t really want to be touched, but both of us had our hands folded in prayer and I linked our little pinkies together. Then, we rolled away from each other and I stepped right into a playful partnership, and for the first time ever, found that I could keep eye contact while turning around by tipping my head all the way back. I have attempted this maneuver many times in the past, but always found glitches around 4 o’clock and 8 o’clock if 12 o’clock is my nose. A delightful development!

Then, we assembled into groups and instructed each other about what to do. I wish I could tell you the names of the four women in my group because they were exquisite, but I must be discreet, of course.

Right before we began this part of the day, I randomly opened Jewel’s big dictionary to the word “offering.” After we prepared our parts, we all arranged ourselves in a semi-circle with the wall of high black velvet curtain behind us. I believe there were 26 of us including Peter and Jewel. The offerings were tremendous. One friend wrote about her struggles with debilitating sickness, another of her impossible ache to connect, another of how it hurts when something dies. We were the second group to present; and I felt very connected to the four members of my group during our performances. I was last, and initially delivered my poem while moving since I had—to some extent—memorized it. Peter and Jewel both asked if I could please repeat it, either much louder or without moving around. I was grateful for the opportunity, and could feel the energy of it vibrating in my throat. This time, my voice quavering but strong, I began,

Sometimes I dance the grief of spirits—
Those who no longer have bodies to dance for themselves.
Sometimes I dance the pain of the living,
Including my own.
It was not so much that I danced a healing dance for him,
But rather, that I danced as him.
I feared that my heart would shatter with grief-
(His and mine, not separate)
Instead, it broke with beauty.
Standing atop my father’s moving feet
As he teaches me
I dance now
The infinite heart of tenderness.

I felt like I was seeing myself from a little bit above and at an angle. The whole experience was intentional, precise and compressed; and to me it felt shamanic and epic.

I stepped back to my group members; who had been moving around the space as though they were dancing on their fathers’ feet; and we held hands and stood quietly regarding the audience, then returned to our place in the semi-circle to make space for the next group.

I was moved to tears many times by the integrity, inventiveness and vulnerability of my colleagues. One apparently unassuming older woman who was visiting New York from Australia stood up to speak and I thought, “this is going to be amazing.” She delivered a visceral, wrathful narrative admonition with maximum volume and intensity—a roaring witch of the highest caliber.

Instead of dancing another wave right away, we gathered in a less formal circle to share anything else we wanted to. My spot in the circle closed and I got up the courage to go and sit next to Jewel, where a spot was open. I had danced with her and spoken with her at moments, but found that I was shy around someone I respected so much. She hugged me and complimented my efforts. Many of these poems, too, were beautiful. One woman stood up and shared a compelling new song. My own last poem was:

I am too tired for poetry now
Maybe if I can just hold this pen upright.
The universe will flow through it.

Jewel then shared that she had been trying to find a metaphor about the death of her adored sister two years ago. She left the poem aside and told us the story-half poem, half narrative. She cried out her pain, and all of us cried along with her. She honored us by saying that she had been trying to get to this place for a long time, but it was the first time that she felt the kind of supportive space that allowed for it.

We officially said good-bye after this chapter, then danced one final quiet wave.

Parenting (Pregnancy and First Weeks)

by meghanleborious | Apr 14, 2014 | Notes on Practice

April 6, 2014

This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and is not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.

Dancing 5Rhythms with my small son has made me a better and more reflective parent; and has helped me to use parenting to become a happier person. I went through an agonizing period during the first months of pregnancy when things were volatile at home and I was besieged with anxiety. My first inclination when I learned I was pregnant was to discontinue dancing, as I’d heard some vague rumors about loud music causing fetal brain damage. After a few weeks off, I was in too much emotional pain to stay away from dance, and returned to attending a 5Rhythms class at least weekly. I even did an intensive workshop during the 6th month of pregnancy. At times, when the room was wild with chaos, I would dance in a quieter adjoining room, moving with great spinning momentum. Since I was able to work consciously with the changes in my body and the balance of weight, I never moved like a pregnant woman, though I certainly looked like one.

Although the difficulties at home continued, I was able to connect with the magic of pregnancy. When a stranger on the train started in about the inconvenience of swollen feet and the trauma of childbirth, I explained that I felt sacred and connected to the fabric of life in a way that I could not explain. It was exquisite to have two heartbeats; and to be so intimately overlapped with another human. I got to know some of his favorite movements, such as arching his back and pushing his head and butt out, resulting in an oddly distended and imbalanced belly. To soothe him, both before and after birth, I would spin and rock. My mother was concerned when she saw how vigorously we danced, but she had to admit he was content, even cradled in my arms inside a wild spin.

During the pre-natal period, Simon danced with all of us. Many of the people I partnered with weren’t sure if they were dancing with one or two people, in fact. After he was born, it continued to be unclear if we were partnering as one person or as two. For the first several weeks after he was born there were many blizzards and heavy storms and we were essentially shut in. During that time, I danced a wave every day—sometimes holding him, sometimes placing him in a baby seat next to me while I moved. When we danced, I totally let go of red tape. The tender, patient presence that we shared was indescribable, and Simon would nuzzle his tiny head into my neck and shoulder as we moved in Flowing. Even out of town, dancing in a room filled with family history and personal memories, I felt inundated by the river of time and humbled by my place in it, moving and weeping with love. A few close friends even came and danced with both of us when he was brand new and the miracle of birth still clung to his aura.

When I sat down today, I thought I would write about the many insights and experiences that have come through dance during Simon’s first four years of life, but I find that it is too big a topic for one post. I have only written into the first delicate weeks of infancy.

By the way, I was in labor for less than 5 hours. Simon was born at the Brooklyn Birthing Center, without any drugs or medical interventions. Between the strongest contractions, Flowing, I danced.

Exuberance & Gratitude

by meghanleborious | Mar 30, 2014 | Notes on Practice

March 30, 2014

This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and is not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.

Writing is so much like dance, in that I never know what will happen when I jump in. If I am lucky, I dive into a current and get sucked blissfully along. I arrived ten minutes late to Tammy’s class on Friday night, which often makes it harder to get a groove with the energy of the room. In this case, Tammy’s husband, Jason, was leading the music for the first time, DJing on Tammy’s computer, and it swept me away. Instead of finding a spot to stretch and rocking myself into Flowing as I often begin, it was like I stepped on an electrified surface as soon as I stepped into the room.

For the last several weeks, I have been writing about working my way back from an injury with restrained acceptance. Nonetheless, all along I tried to conceal my pining wish for the gift of exuberance. On Friday, nothing hurt! Not the tangle of recent muscles pulls, not my lower back, not the knot in my neck that plagues me, not the ligaments of my feet, not my left Achilles, not my knees. I got to step into the gigantic dance that feels like home.

During the short interlude between the first and the last wave, Tammy said something like, “I’m not sure how people do it in other places, but in New York, it tends to be full-on! We go deep and all out. We keep looking for the edge and even going over it.” I expected her to say something like, “but it’s not always like that. It can be quieter, it can be subtle,” but she didn’t. Instead she said, “And that’s just how it is.” Music to my wild ears! She also said that it is about showing up authentically in the dance, whatever that means in the moment. When you give me the space to be the full expression of myself as Tammy did in this instance, then I never have to insist on it. It comes and it goes, like weather, like emotions, like love.

At one point, early on, I overdid it, bending forward tautly and backing up vigorously like a giant male peacock. Then, I accidentally stepped on the foot of a friend. I apologized and knitted my eyebrows, and returned to the humility of Flowing and of feet. Shortly after, I found myself back up on an exuberant tide, with a little more dissolved awareness and a little less freneticism.

There were other beautiful images that I offer now as vignettes: Tammy’s discussion of the sometimes fragile, sometimes very strong threads of light that connect us. Tammy’s loving acknowledgement of her husband, Jason, in his musical debut. Experimenting with Flowing as feet arcing in half-circles, and of course, as always, looking for the empty space—the doors to movement that open for us in every moment, inviting us to explode or to whisper, as our feet and our hearts demand.

Thank you, dear body. Thank you, Tammy. Thank you, Gabrielle. Thank you, Jason. Thank you, dancers with years of practice. Thank you, new dancers. Thank you, spirits and bunnies and moon-swept tides and ancient songs and Madonna ballads. Thank you, thank you, thank you. From the bottom of my feet!

Lessons Arising from Injury and Even More Notes on Flowing

by meghanleborious | Mar 11, 2014 | Notes on Practice

March 9, 2014

This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms dancing path, and are not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms organization or teacher.

Dancing on Friday night, I moved with about 60% intensity, as I am still tentative after a recent groin/quad muscle pull. The lesson of the injury has arrived slowly; and has evolved over the past few weeks. As I wrote in my last post, it has made me grateful for the many times I have been able to move with full intensity; and eager to fully express myself the next time that I can.

It has also given me new physical insight. I did a motion I realized I had to back off of—a spinning leap that begins with a fling and a push from my big toe, engages the muscles of my upper leg and rushes me into an athletic spin that rises and twists. I am surprised to learn how much time I spend in my hips, how much movement and articulation I have been able to find there. It is remarkable, exhilarating even. I can’t wait to investigate further.

I have also been thinking about aging. At some point, if I am lucky enough to get old and lucky enough to be old and dancing—I will not have the same athletic capacity. This injury was a sudden and temporary drop in ability, but as I age this drop will unfold over time. It has been like a little preview. It frightens me, frankly, and I wonder how it will go.

About halfway through the class, when the whole room was engaged in dances of partnership, someone took a big back step and landed squarely on my left baby toe—undoubtedly breaking the poor little digit. I will say that the same toe has been broken several times and was unusually fragile, even so, it hurt. Bad. He briefly acknowledged the accident at the moment.

I continued to dance, and partnered next (by chance) with the toe breaker. I began by jokingly covering my toe, hiding it from him. We had an interesting dance, but I felt like he was looking over my shoulder, and not fully engaged in our meeting.

My first thought after class was: it is interesting that when I am feeling injured I seem to draw injury. Then, I started to feel anger toward the toe breaker. A few minutes after the injury I went to the med kit and taped up the toe—as much to have a splint as to alert people to be careful of it. At the end of the dance, I passed him sitting on the floor. He did not seem to notice the toe tape, and did not acknowledge the injury in any way. I said nothing. I wished I had said, “Hey! You broke my toe, you know!”

On the way home, I began to think about how bumping into people, stepping on toes or other accidental physical contact has played out for me since the beginning of my 5Rhythms career.

Of all the rhythms, I have always felt most at home in Chaos, but, notably, I was never actually in Chaos for the first several months of dancing. Instead, I was in a kind of agitated Staccato. When I accidentally found my way to Chaos for the first time, I was overwhelmed by the tenderness of it and wept copiously. I realized that I was afraid to release control of myself because I might then hurt someone. On a base level, it had to do with being afraid to crash into a body, but, as you might imagine, it had psychological levels that directly correlated to the physical experience. I have always perceived myself as powerful, and thought I had to keep myself in check. In the end, it was a kind of cruelty to myself.

I find myself back at Flowing again, my own fountain of insight, for the next chain of thoughts. When I have found Flowing—when I have encountered Flowing—with integrity, I have learned that I can follow my dance through all the rhythms and be every bit of everything that I am—uncontrolled, sometimes explosive, messy, unpredictable, sobbing—whatever it is in a given moment, and I can trust myself to not cause harm. This is an extraordinary insight. If I learned nothing else than this, dancing for all these years would have been worth it.

When it feels right for me, Flowing is not only released, unending, circular motion, but it also has a kind of humility. Just these feet, just touching this earth. It may have its artfulness, but it is these gentle feet, carefully finding their way on one tiny spot of the giant earth that gives me the foundation of awareness that I need to travel confidently to every other place that the dance takes me.

I note with curiosity that nearly every post I have done so far has dealt with the theme of Flowing, even when I thought it was about something else.

The first time I traveled in Costa Rica, long before I knew anything about 5Rhythms, I danced many nights in a row at a local bar. I was amazed that people frequently bumped into each other and kept moving, and that it did not seem to give them pause. It seemed, rather, to be part of the dance. For me, I would tighten everything up if I accidentally touched someone.

If I find that I am chronically bumping into people, I usually take a deep breath and press a reset button. Sometimes, I return to the physical feeling of my feet on the floor and can find my way into awareness. Sometimes, if I am chronically bumping into people it is because I am out of sync with the room, panicked or disconnected. At these times, I might dispatch myself to a quiet edge of the dance floor—in extreme cases I lay down and move on my back—to observe the painful feeling of disconnection I am experiencing. Once a feeling like this has set in, I find that the only possible thing to do is ride it out and know that things will surely shift again. Trying to force it results in bumping and imbalance and it is painfully apparent.

With the foundation of Flowing, ideally, there is a porous engagement with the room that allows me to soften instantly when I make contact with someone else, greatly diminishing the possible harm. There are times too, when there seems to be an agreement that some amount of bumping is ok, we might even swing into partnership, or grab each other affectionately in these moments, or quietly whisper sorry and acknowledge each other with grace.

As I have expressed, I have absolutely done my share of bumping and crashing, but I really didn’t appreciate getting stepped on this time. We were definitely in the rhythm of Staccato, and I couldn’t help but think, “if you are going to totally commit yourself to a particular direction, for God’s sake, consider who you are stepping on!”

Halting, Tentative Steps

by meghanleborious | Feb 23, 2014 | Notes on Practice

February 22, 2014

All of the remarks in this blog depict my own subjective experiences within the 5Rhythms® dancing path.

I have less to write this week. My practice is correct but it doesn’t narrate as well as usual. As I wrote in the last post, I badly pulled a muscle in my upper right leg, and as a result declined to attend the last day of Tammy Burstein’s Light and Shadow workshop. The leg no longer hurts, but I have been trying to avoid placing full weight on it, or moving too deeply in the hip. It seems impossible that it could be better so quickly, and I am fearful that I could re-injure it.

I was torn about whether or not I should attend class on Friday night, given the injury. A gallerist friend has all of her gallery’s openings on Friday nights; and I was tempted to go to her opening instead of dance this one time. In the end, I did decide to go to Tammy’s Friday Night Waves class at the Joffrey Ballet—the class I attend nearly every Friday.

I entered, chose a nice little piece of floor to uncoil myself in, and found movement easily. I kept the injured leg softly straight as I stretched and warmed up on the floor. Once I got to my feet, I moved with halting, tentative steps—almost tiptoeing—as I traveled around the room. Even this halting, hesitant dance was not without specificity and engaged my interest. As restrained as I was, I was able to access each of the rhythms.

I wished I had worn some visible sign of my injury, such as an ace bandage or perhaps a shirt with handwritten black sharpie that said, “leg injury.” I was almost embarrassed by my lack of vigor, but at once felt cheerful and engaged in the dance I could do. For the most part, I avoided taking long steps, making any sharp turns (as this requires some depth in the hips), any sort of leaping or hopping, high or spinning kicks, squatting gestures and kneeling. I also avoided sudden changes of gravity as rising and falling, coming to the edge of my balance, sudden stops, sudden bursts and merengue-style back steps. This still left a lot of possible ways to move, but I did feel sad I couldn’t meet people the way I wanted to, especially new friends who I connected with during the Light and Shadow workshop the previous weekend.

A couple of times during Chaos, I forgot myself. There is no doubt that I could have danced the whole night with my usual intensity and paid the price later, but I had given myself a firm talking-to before arrival. I caught myself quickly, recalling that I needed to keep my feet on the ground and to take it easy if I wanted to get over the injury. I smiled the whole night, engaging cheerfully, but wishing for more.

I would like to say that I found a whole new way of moving, or that I broke through the armor of vanity and ego, or that I had a great psychological insight, but I didn’t. Not this time. I was, at least, happy that I could dance and moderate myself, and that I did not just fling myself over a cliff in wild abandon.

I had some thoughts on Chaos since I had less access to Chaos last night, as well. To me, it sometimes feels like that a big, energetic Chaos may be perceived as a lack of restraint or awareness—a moral deficiency, even. Perhaps it is just that, or perhaps my perception is not accurate.

At any rate, I have been thinking of a routine by the comedian Chris Rock, in which he talks about how privileged our picky American eating habits are. “You don’t hear about lactose intolerance in Rwanda!” he bellows. He goes on to say that you don’t hear about people in developing countries who don’t eat red meat for health reasons. “Don’t eat any GREEN meat, that’s what you have to think about!” He concludes this part of his routine by saying, “if you happen to be one of the few people in the world lucky enough to get your hands on a steak, bite the shit out of it!”

Chaos is my steak. I am lucky to have it. I love it, I sink my teeth into it, I devour it. When I don’t have access to it, it is ok, life goes on, but when I do, I don’t want to go simpering along about how I really should cut down on red meat.

Normally, I am drenched with sweat after dance, but last night I ended nearly dry. I left after the first wave, made it home a little early, and slept peacefully.