Today, December 31, 2024, I’m reflecting on what I release as the old year exits, and what I invite as the new year enters.
Today is the last day of the holiday break when I can practice in the woods by the Scantic River, near the home of my parents. I wake up early, to give myself time to reflect on this last day of the year, and sit at the counter in the quiet morning writing, then gather my things so I can go for a run and dance in the woods.
On the first day of the break, it was so frigid that I had to bundle myself in many heavy layers, but today the sun is shining and the dirt under my feet is soft. Early in the week, this bend of the river was completely frozen. Yesterday, it was opaque and fast with new mud, but today I find it clear with a strong, visible current.
As soon as I start to move in Flowing, I start to cry. I wonder how it is that I’ve moved in this place every day for over a week and this is the first day that tears come. The water is higher than it was yesterday, but there is still a smooth, sloping bank to dance on. I soften, drop my center of gravity, and allow myself to circle, working with the push and pull of weight as I move up and down the incline in low circles. My stomach tightens and reminds me that I haven’t eaten, and I’m grateful for this reminder of being a body.
In the spirit of the rhythm of Flowing, I release anxiety and welcome in a grounded, settled nervous system that believes itself fundamentally safe.
I release ill ease, craving, wishing things were different, pressing toward the future, pushing away the past, and addiction in all its subtle and gross forms; and I instead welcome in contentment, temperance, mindfulness and embodied presence.
I release self-importance and invite the tenderness of humility.
I release my false stories of separation, my futile, incessant selfing; and othering in all its forms including judgement, gossip, righteousness, and resentment.
Instead, I welcome community, collaboration, belonging, and immersion in the collective field.
Still moving on the soft ground of the riverbank, I’m surprised to find myself moving with the clarity of Staccato. Sometimes Staccato can be elusive, especially in times of low confidence and indecision, but in this moment, it seems to appear right on time, and I segment my elbows, rock my hips, and play with the angles in the heels of my hands.
In the spirit of the rhythm of Staccato, I release criticism, constraint, constriction and tightening to try to protect myself from past, present, and future harm.
Instead I welcome generosity of spirit, patience, compassion, the willingness to assume best intentions, and the wisdom to remember that no being is separate or other (and to let that wisdom guide my words and actions).
And too, I release self-criticism and self-hatred, with the recognition that being excessively hard on myself has never actually helped me to improve.
Instead I welcome self-compassion, and the knowledge that I am equally worthy of my own kindness.
I release defensiveness and instead welcome healthy and clear boundaries, skillful communication, and receptivity.
I release the tyranny of urgency, and instead welcome diligence.
I release holding my tongue and connect again with my voice as a writer, inviting the whole of existence to move through and find form in language.
I release the blinders of societal conditioning and instead invite the ability to accurately read phenomena and see the truth.
Though the pull is strong(!) I release nihilism and despair, and invite instead courage, conviction, motivation, and the belief that my words and actions matter.
I release morality and hypocrisy and instead invite grounded ethics; and invite the rhythms and creative life force to make me a vessel through which you can blow.
I keep dropping back into the low circling of Flowing, then back into Staccato, and now my newly liberated curls dance all around my head as I loosen my neck and spine, disorganize myself, and watch as the world spins by in blurring trails and dissolving shapes in the rhythm of Chaos.
In the spirit of Chaos, I release old patterns, entrenched positions, outworn identities, and clinging to the past.
I release the long hair that I’ve had since I was a teenager, and instead invite a return to the unruly curls of my youth, and remember my little- girl-self who was sensitive and wise and very much tapped into the sacred.
I release fundamentalism, one-true-god-ness, fixed thinking, and my own psychological autocracy.
Instead I welcome comfort in discomfort, ease in uncertainty, and radical acceptance for reality in all its messy, wild, shifting flux; and its unceasing rising & falling, shaping & dissolving, coming together & falling apart.
Lyrical comes softly, with an audible breeze in the naked tree tops, and cloudless blue shining through. I range wider than the circle I’ve made, opening the fronts of my shoulders, and finding extended, tiny, and twittering gestures with my hands, the bottoms of my feet, the joint between my head and neck, and the edge of my chin.
In the spirit of Lyrical, I release myself from small-mindedness and myopia, and instead invite equanimity and the widest possible view, where I can hold all things that arise in a vast container of space.
I release squandering my attention and dulling my senses with things that don’t matter.
Instead of overvaluing transactional thinking, I welcome artwork, poetry, voice, creativity, magic, and the soul’s creative expression in all its myriad forms.
I release the intractability of either-or thinking and instead welcome nuance, flexibility, and possibility.
I release jadedness and instead invite fascination.
I release superficial and half-hearted engagement, and instead welcome interconnection, delight in others’ successes, and shared joy.
I release clinging to the wish for a certain kind of love and instead welcome opening my attention to all forms of love around me, including the love that has no object.
Eventually, after being immersed in practice for I’m-not-sure-how-long and moving in and out of the first four rhythms again and again, silence envelops me. My gestures talk with the river’s woven currents. Ideas, emotions, and bits of poetry tumble through. I crouch, expand, trace, and breathe, and send this prayer far and wide, along with wishes for everyone I love and for all beings everywhere.
In the spirit of the rhythm of Stillness, I release my attachment to temporary things, and instead welcome the perspective that all things that arise and fall away are but expressions of absolute reality–source, the silence, divine resonance, the mystery, deity–home.
I release my petty preoccupations, and instead wear the mystery like a velvet cloak of night and stars, losing myself in its soft folds.
I invite non-separation, and take my place in the vast web of existence and all that is.
And for every day and every minute in 2025, may I move with the knowledge that this precious, interwoven, temporary life is a gift, and may I bow down in gratitude.
December 31, 2024, Broad Brook, Connecticut – With wholehearted thanks to my teachers and guides.
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and is not produced by the 5Rhythms® organization.
Meghan LeBorious is a writer, teacher, designer, and mother. She has been dancing the 5Rhythms since 2008 and joined the circle of 5Rhythms teachers in 2021. She has also been formally practicing meditation since 2006 within a tradition that emphasizes the idea that everything we experience, including painful emotions and challenges, can be included on the path to self-discovery and freedom.