I’m sitting at a heavy wood table, with pillar candles flickering in the fireplace. As it’s gotten darker, the snowfall has gotten faster.
The first thing I saw when I walked into Karen Ritscher’s Fire in the Belly 5Rhythms Heartbeat workshop in the blackbox studio at Gibney Dance was a bold installation, created by Maamoun Tabbo, with red lights and sheer, red fabric hung from high above eye level, crystals, a prominent pelvic bone, and a slinky black dress that once belonged to Gabrielle Roth, the creator of the 5Rhythms.
It held the space beautifully, and cast a glow throughout the room.
Karen opened Friday night even to people who weren’t attending the full workshop, and it was packed. We started with a wave, which is to say that we moved through each of the 5Rhythms–Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical, and Stillness–in sequence.
This was the first time Karen offered the Fire in the Belly workshop, and I know it’s something she’s been called to offer for a long time.
Soon, we stepped into a partner exercise that was about working with our inner judge. To my surprise, I sped up and went into the rhythm of Chaos, moving toward and away from my partner and almost writhing into spinning. It had kind of an “in your face!” feel.
Chaos is why I first fell in love with the 5Rhythms. I spent many years of my life trying to tidy myself up, hold myself back, make myself smaller. But in Chaos, I found that I could be as gigantic as my spirit wanted to be–and that was often wild, explosive, and unruly. In so many traditions, Chaos is a thing to be tamed, to be opposed. But in the 5Rhythms, Chaos is seen as a necessary part of the creative process.
On this opening night of Fire in the Belly, however, I noticed there was a script running that believed if I became chaotic enough, I would be unknowable. I would move faster than my partner’s judgement could keep up.
This Chaos discovery was an interesting shock. Sometimes I’ve seen Chaos as a deeply-wired part of my nature. It has always seemed like a place of power and of healing for me, but this time Chaos came through like an escape habit–a way to be in a defensive position, and maybe even to outrun intimacy.
Drummer Tsonga of the Valley, Gabrielle Roth’s longtime collaborotor, and his colleague, Laura, settled in to provide rhythms for the packed room, and people went wild as the intensity rose and fell.
As I rode the J train back home to Brooklyn, I explored this new Chaos thread, and reminded myself that any seemingly skillful habit can just as easily become a type of ego armoring, depending very much on the layers of intention that we bring to it.
That night George-the-Kitten snuggled under my left armpit purring, but still I slept fitfully. I put my book away and settled into the pillow, but my system was amped up.
I found myself tangled in anxiety thinking. When a new anxiety thought would come through, I could feel the sudden release of stress chemicals near my solar plexus. It was almost like a sewage pipe suddenly bursting into action, pumping polluted water and waste into a river. Instead it was pumping chemicals into my system, as my heart rate spiked, and my muscles tightened in an almost choreographed dance. I kept noticing the scrunching of my eyes, the clenching of my arches, a lessening of space in the hip joints. Then it would start to dissipate until a new anxiety thought would come and it would trigger a new flush of chemicals.
Eventually my thoughts turned on myself directly; and I started doubting myself and my choices, and judging myself harshly.
The snow continues. I’m in a remote house in southern Connecticut, a rare night on my own. The only sounds are the occasional voices of the pets I’m here to care for.
In Tara Brach’s book Radical Acceptance, she writes about the Dalai Lama’s response when a western student asked him how one should deal with self-hatred. The Dalai Lama was incredulous. He asked how someone could think like that when we are all a part of Buddha nature. He just didn’t get it at all.
I watched as my mind beat me up. Eventually I must have slept, but there wasn’t even any clear moment of waking.
I gathered my things to prepare for the next day. I thought I would have a slow morning, but I ran late and had to rush.
I finally got myself to the J train to head in to Gibney Dance, but after just a couple of stops the train stopped on the track to wait for a stalled train ahead of us.
I missed most of the opening wave on Saturday, and as I stepped in Karen invited us to move back and forth across the floor, embodying qualities that block “fire in the belly” such as resistance, rigidity, and numbness.
Then she did the loveliest thing. She gathered one person’s hand, and then another’s, and just waited in silence until everyone noticed that we were moving into a circle, rose, and joined their hand to another’s.
We moved into a seated circle, and Karen shared a triangle model for us to consider: victim, savior, and perpetrator. An incredibly honest, funny conversation bubbled up, with each person spontaneously contributing real-life examples of how these roles play out in our lives–our inner victim stories, savior stories, and perpetrator stories.
When the circle dissolved, a glimpse of mirror peeked through the black velvet studio curtains; and I was surprised by my image. I’d had long hair since I was a teen, and I had just cut it short. It was thinner on the ends and in the back, and I’d basically kept it in an unruly knot at my crown for several years, dying it blond-ish to try to hide the streaky grey.
I knew it needed to be changed, but I’d been a person with long hair for so long, it was hard to imagine deleting that part of my identity.
My stylist–who I visit much less often than I technically should–is a friend from childhood. I showed her a picture of a short, curly style I’d seen muraled on a wall during a run through Ridgewood, Queens. She told me she thought she could get close to the picture. Then looked at me and said, “Are you sure you want to do this?” I surprised myself by responding, “Yes! It’s just hair, right? It will grow back if I don’t like it.”
After years of resistance to this small cosmetic change, I was suddenly bold. She started to cut and even while the hair was still wet, curls started to bounce up. She cut off the dyed hair and what was left was a blend of dark blond, light brown, grey, and white.
I peeked into the mirror, then pulled my head back, playing hide-and-seek with myself, wondering what took me so long and why I thought changing my hair was such a big deal. After so many years, I just took the leap and it was perfectly fine. Good, even.
Karen released us for lunch at this point. In the past, I would have gone outside to gather a snack or tea – a holdover from many years ago when I was a smoker and would always step out for any break. I briefly considered leaving, but decided it was too cold, and that all of my needs were met inside anyway. I assembled cheese and crackers from the lovely spread Karen and Mary Beth, the producer, arranged, and prepared a spicy black tea with milk.
For lunch, I joined inside the studio with the good friend I had shared the judgement exercise with–when I had the realization that I sometimes use Chaos to evade feeling known or judged. My friend’s impression was that I had demonstrated a big range of ways to deal with judgement, and that I kept trying out new things, rolling out new strategies. I loved this idea. It was interesting that her takeaway was so much kinder to me than my own.
Before long, more people joined us for lunch. When we were two or three, we sat in folding chairs, but as more people came, we all shifted to the ground, and widened the circle seamlessly.
Tsonga and Laura joined us on drums again on Saturday afternoon. My neck was a little sore from the night before, and I was grateful that this wave felt gentle.
I had a really hard time in a recent workshop, and here I was grateful to feel immersed, engaged, and in love with the practice.
In a partner share, I spoke something with a catch in my throat and realized its truth. That I have my dream job, and that in a lot of ways the stuff of vision boards is my reality. And, too, that a dream realized becomes subject to the challenges of day-to-day reality, though that doesn’t make it any less a dream come true.
I realized that this time for me is not so much about finding my voice and my path, as it is a matter of finding joy in all of it.
5Rhythms teacher Ann Kite from the Washington D.C area collaborated with Karen throughout the weekend. She led the opening wave on Sunday morning; and the statement I remember most is, “I want to feel everything.”
The day moved by like a river.
After Sunday lunch, Karen led us through a wave. One thing that stood out was a jaunty, playful, chugging staccato dance with a good friend. Later in the wave, I silently invited a new friend to follow me, and we moved throughout the space together, soon switching so I was following her–swooping through the empty spaces and around the other dancers, at times coming around and surprising each other and lighting up with delight.
As the light started to fade in the studio, Karen set up an exercise that gave us a chance to move with a question we were working with.
The question I posed was, “Should I stay attached to relative, everyday reality, or let that go completely and expand into the absolute?” Before this exercise I had been tired, but once we started to move, energy was perfectly available.
What unfolded was exquisitely beautiful, as one dancer represented each option and I got to interact with them. What I noticed was that I could embrace both fully. I could meet relative reality with tenderness, and could stay connected with absolute reality at the same time. It was less a binary choice than a radical allowing.
One of the dancers told me after, “I was ready to let you be with the absolute, but you kept pulling me back.”
With full darkness outside, we each took a partner and prepared to dance a prayer for an intention they shared. I was touched by partner’s supportive words when I shared my intention, and by their commitment to helping to bring my prayer into being. My partner’s intention inspired me, and I did my best to give myself wholeheartedly.
We ended in a standing circle, with each person drawing an index card from a large singing bowl and reading it aloud.
The cold is strident today, and the many surfaces covered with white snow make the light seem blinding.
I didn’t write this for the singing bowl at the workshop closing, but I’m writing it now:
This fire in the belly,
This fire in the heart,
Let me keep it alive with love and breath.
It is all so very precious and temporary.
Thank you, Karen. Thank you, Gabrielle. Thank you, universe. I am blessed and grateful.
This writing is not sanctioned or produced by the 5Rhythms organization, and represents only the personal experiences of the writer. Meghan LeBorious is a certified 5Rhythms teacher, longtime 5Rhythms practitioner, and is an educator, maker, mother, and author.
January 19, 2025, Easton, CT & February 9, Brooklyn, NY