by meghanleborious | Jan 24, 2021 | Notes on Practice
Today I danced a clean wave.
A wave – in the 5Rhythms dance and movement meditation practice, that’s when we move through each of the five rhythms: Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical, and Stillness – might feel heavy, spastic, reluctant, spacious, inspired, cathartic, precise, or any other way.
Today it felt clean.
The heat stopped working in my car yesterday, and I debated if I wanted to go to the beach to dance – a personal practice that has emerged in recent months – in such frigid temperatures. I was afraid I would be uncomfortably cold when I arrived, cold on the beach, and cold when I got back into the car to drive home.
Since the start of the pandemic, many of us have gotten a lot heartier about cold. All over Brooklyn, friends are posted up dining at plein air restaurants, kids are playing outdoor soccer in January, and people are meeting up on park benches to laugh and commiserate together.
I put on my son Simon’s bib snowpants, a heavy coat, balaclava, winter hat, wool socks, and ski gloves and made my way.
Arriving at Riis Park Beach, the wind was strong at my back as I headed across the vast beach to the water. The tide was extremely low, and the water was unusually calm, with the waves moving almost parallel to the beach. I was delighted that this revealed a huge section of packed sand – a much larger dance floor than usual.
Beginning to move in Flowing, I noticed that it was easier than usual to let go of thoughts as they arose and drop my weight down, settling the body as the slope toward the water pulled me into circling. I felt dragged by the ending waves, as they too were pulled by gravity, and I dipped and curved with the waves’ contours. In my heavy coat, my arms looked stiff in the shadow cast on the sand, so I unzipped the coat and softened my shoulders, allowing the arms to rise, fall, and circle along with the rest of me.
Often when I dance with the sea, it takes a really long time for Staccato to spark, if it comes at all, but not so today. A staccato song I love came to my head and I played with the energy of it, though the only soundtrack was my own breath and the gently lapping waves. A seagull came close, standing on the strong wind with her wings up, probably hoping I would toss out some Taquis or french fries or something. Birds don’t usually bring Staccato to my mind, but this one was literally suspended in a pause ten feet from me, eying me directly, in my mind wanting to connect. I dropped into my hips and played with her, moving my own elbows and shoulder blades, open to her message, willing to share mine.
After this spike of Staccato, I sank back into Flowing again – the river under every rhythm – with a deeper ability to luxuriate in circling.
I took off the heavy coat and put it down on sand. The wind kicked it over, also picking up little rivers of sand, looking like the ancient spirits who were accidentally released in the 80’s adventure movie Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Before long Staccato came back and I beamed, playing with small, tight movements then bursting overtures, before long adding crossovers, stepping one leg back across the other and leaping into spin, crossing one arm over the other and finding a descending angle with a hip sharply to the side. As I turned the planes of my body, there was a precise fulcrum when the wind faced one side of me, then shifted onto the other side of me as I turned.
I noted a man walking two big furry dogs a short distance away, and a family with two kids on top of the sand hills that the beach rangers erect in winter to protect the park buildings from being battered.
This distant potential audience gave me a tiny push to get bigger, and I shifted into a relaxed Chaos. I expanded to a wider radius, noticing rolls of Lyrical, drops back into Staccato, and the easy, sustainable momentum of a patient Chaos that’s fueled by both the underground river of Flowing and the heat of Staccato.
Chaos with a flavor of Stillness visited, as I raised my eyes to the horizon and followed a soaring bird with my gaze and gesture.
By now I was sweating and breathing heavily, but there was no sense of exertion.
Lyrical emerged right on cue, taking me to an even wider radius, casting me down and up again. A tiny bird scurried by and I followed her, sinking low and shimmying my hips along the edge of the water, then leaping up into the fingertips and stretching my chest with each soaring opening of the arms, one at a time, then both, casting down and rising up, extending into the farthest reaches of me without dropping my weight, relying on a different kind of balance.
Stillness called me; and I felt the sea’s depths and the wide horizon. I closed my eyes and moved with wind and breath. I emerged on the other side of this wave feeling cleaned out, and ready for the next wave.
January 24, 2021, Brooklyn, NY
(Image from bridgeandtunnelclub.com)
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms dancing path, and is not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.
by meghanleborious | Jan 11, 2021 | Notes on Practice
Today I danced with the sea. 
I seriously bundled up with a heavy coat, sweater, wool socks, ski gloves, and hat since the last time I danced at the beach it was frigid. But to my surprise it was relatively mild. I was able to dance in just a sweater, and before long I also took off my gloves.
The week has been another rollercoaster. During the work day, I usually ignore news, so on Wednesday it wasn’t until 4pm when I turned on the radio that I learned that a mob of white nationalist Trump supporters who refused to accept the results of the US democratic election had invaded and looted the US Capitol building, in an act of terrorism and insurrection.
It was only later that I learned that Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff both won runoff races for Georgia’s two Senate seats, shifting the balance of power in the Senate to the democratic party. But this was even bigger.
Before the election the two Republican Georgia Senate incumbents joined forces, one of them saying, “We are the firewall. Not just for the Senate, but the future of our country.” No one misunderstood what they were trying to say.
Georgia, like most of the US, has a history of suppressing the votes of Black people to shore up white supremacist power, through a host of mechanisms. Leaders like Stacy Abrams and legions of activists went all out to analyze and combat voter suppression tactics. These tactics include the propagation of false narratives that certain people’s votes don’t matter. But Black voters turned out in droves, proudly cast their votes, and had a massive impact on national politics, in the process dealing a blow to white nationalism.
Like many, I expected that Trump supporters, stoked by his racist rhetoric and ongoing lies, would resort to violent action. There is a debate about whether he has amplified white nationalism or if he has just brought it out of the shadows, but for his supporters to actually take over the US Capitol, for the National Guard to be so slowly dispatched, for lawmakers to be huddling in fear, and to watch gleeful terrorists ransacking desks and cavorting through the halls of the US Capitol, at least one brandishing a confederate flag, and the lynching platform they erected outside, was horrifying. And perhaps the most bitter pill of all, the knowledge that they got into the Capitol, when people looking a different way than white would never have made it up the steps, and would likely have been shot on sight if they had entered and tried to ransack the Capitol.
I listened to the ongoing coverage, dismayed, and at once furious that Americans who are happy about the historic outcome of the Georgia Senate races – like me and like the people who worked tirelessly on the campaigns and who dared to hope that their vote mattered, and then found out that it really did – didn’t even get one day to celebrate.
I had been dancing all week, but was eager to bring this matter to the sea.
The tide was rising but there was still a wide section of packed sand to move on. I settled in, also removing my shoes and dancing in my knee-high, polka dotted wool socks.
There were barely clouds and the sky was endlessly blue.
I turned my attention to the waves, feeling especially the pull-back of ended waves, and the pull of gravity as it drew my body down the sandy inclines and into circles and loops. I thought about a book I’m working on and different phrases and ideas drifted by, occasionally catching hold for a brief time, then dissolving again with the ending waves.
I really settled in, wishing I was totally alone but avoiding eye contact with passing beach strollers, at least during this period of settling the body.
One thing I love about dancing with the sea is that there is no external soundtrack telling me what to do with my body, no external prompting. It is just me, and I can be as patient or as manic as I need to be. On this day, I felt like I could stay in Flowing for a very long time, sometimes attending to gravity, feet, and circling; and sometimes shifting attention to the ocean to inspire my weighted gestures, breathing its power in, letting its lowing depths sigh right through me.
Staccato sparked when it was ready, reminding me to move my truth, to speak my truth. I thought the book I’m writing was going to be about teaching mindfulness to teens. In the chapter map, there was one chapter dedicated to racial justice and reparations, and I knew racial justice would make its way into other chapters, too. But when I sat down and started to write, the book tore itself out of me. I wrote seven chapters in seven days between Christmas and New Year’s Day. And as it turns out, much of the book is about racial justice and injustice, white supremacy, and oppression, and what I hope are ways to combat these complex, interconnected systems, on the granular, implementation level of an individual classroom.
I’ve been on fire and in agony, contending at once with my own complicity, my own white privilege, and contemplating my small trajectories of activism and how to amplify them.
Staccato came and went, shifting before long into Chaos. I took off my hat and placed it uphill with my coat and sneakers so it wouldn’t fall off and go tumbling into the icy sea. I let my head flail around, getting an eyeful of sun, then seeing red afterimages everywhere I tossed my spinning gaze.
The only Lyrical that seemed likely to emerge was in tiny pockets inside Chaos. I could already feel Stillness pulling me and accepted its invitation.
Just when I’d accepted that Lyrical might not fully emerge, I shifted fully into it, opening up my radius, rising onto my toes, rolling my arms high and out, beaming with my face toward the blue sky. I stayed in Lyrical and in Lyrical Stillness for a long time, whisper dancing, and at last coming to a grounded stop, feeling the vast horizon, the endless curve of the sky, and the mysteries of the ocean’s depths.
Gazing outward, preparing for the work ahead.
“History will rightly remember today’s violence at the Capitol, incited by a sitting president who has continued to baselessly lie about the outcome of a lawful election, as a moment of great dishonor and shame for our nation.” – President Barack Obama
January 10, 2021, Brooklyn, New York
(image from dw.com)
by meghanleborious | Dec 30, 2020 | Notes on Practice
Dancing near the humble Scantic River today, language rolled through me.
Out on a run, I was drawn to a smooth beach, its surface wrinkled with recent currents. It had poured on Christmas and nearly a foot of snow had melted in a single day of warm temperatures, and the river had overwhelmed its usual path. The water had since receded significantly, leaving me this perfect dance floor. 
I began to move in the rhythm of Flowing, using the shore’s incline to pull me into circles. At the edge of the water, the frozen mud gave slightly, making a subtle crackling sound.
My ten-year-old son, Simon, and I are staying with my parents for two weeks over the holidays, on a short hiatus from our lives in Brooklyn, where fears about COVID continue to impact our lives significantly.
Being pulled along in the direction of the river, I rose up onto a walking path where it was easier to see the surface of the water. I observed that although the main gesture of the water is pressing in a curving line toward the sea, there are infinite sub-gestures. The closer to the edges, the more coils and eddies and interruptions.
I let this be my musical score, dropping my hips low to spin and loop back, catching the drift of a different current, slowly making my way by curving around fallen trees to greater space on the other side, then getting caught inside another eddy where I whirled for who-knows-how-long before a floating branch came by and shifted me out of my spin.
I reflected on the passing year. On the slow crushing roll of the pandemic and the toll it has taken, on families, on communities, and on the fact that it has killed nearly twice as many people of color as white people. I reflected too on the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Aubery and so many others, and on the protest movements these events have catalyzed. I thought about Simon and his learning pod, a group of four students who meet every day to learn and connect, and of the many challenges of establishing and sustaining this construct. I thought about the six months Simon and I spent living with my parents, of our thriving vegetable garden, of dancing every day in the woods or the yard, and of our nightly dinners, where all four of us lingered long after the food was eaten, talking about social justice and its despicable enemies and challenging each other’s assumptions. I thought about washing floors every day, opening boxes with gloves, masks, alcohol pads, facial shields, and hand sanitizer. I thought about teaching remotely and the challenges and insights it has brought. I thought about sleepless nights and then the explosion when Joe Biden was declared the winner of the US presidential election, when I personally went bananas, and New York City exploded with a brief interlude of unbridled, uncaged, untethered joy.
Flowing, I knew that whatever language came I could watch with curiosity as it passed through my mindstream. That there was no need to write it then or to try to capture it, that whatever arose that was needed would still be there later, when it was time to write.
I smiled, remembering a canoe trip during summer 2020 on this same river with Simon and my father, where we encountered obstacle after obstacle, but were able to work through them, a relief after so many grueling months of daunting uncertainty and countless challenges.
Staccato touched me between the river’s undulating coils, decisive expression arising periodically, then settling me back into circling. It took some time to notice that I was in Chaos, coming so quietly today as it did. I spun and dipped with bits of stories, a softly released head, fragments to write later like bits of broken mirror, watching bits of psyche flash by in the process.
A creative project that knocked at my door for years has found its voice in me, and I’ve been swimming in it for the last several days, in the process of giving birth despite periodic, crippling self doubt and anxiety.
Lyrical had me rising up onto a slight incline, arms raised high and moving around a bigger radius.
Stillness brought me back to the river, and to every river, feeling its currents pass all the way through my body. I remembered another time when I danced with the majestic Hudson River near Garrison, New York. I was on a meditation retreat, and still made time to practice the 5Rhythms every day. On this day, I was going through the motions, uninspired, until something in the river beckoned me, moved me into a different space entirely, dancing with the cool, black density of the river’s deepest channels.
May you thrive in 2021 and always.
May you give and receive many gifts.
And may your river carry you to freedom,
In every way imaginable.
December 30, 2020, Broad Brook, Connecticut
by meghanleborious | Jul 30, 2020 | Notes on Practice
My earliest memory is of watching a summer parade from our big, second-floor apartment window in Chicopee, Massachusetts with my father. What I remember most was not watching, though. It was what I heard and felt. A passing marching band included a musician with a huge bass drum. When he slammed the instrument, the air vibrated. I was stunned, my little mouth wide open. I could feel the drum through my entire body.
Gabrielle Roth, the founder of the 5Rhythms practice said, “Rhythm is our mother tongue.” Lately, rhythm is holding me, even during this period of grueling pandemic uncertainty and intense racial reckoning.
Today I danced the same wave – the same song list – twice. In 5Rhythms, a wave is when we move through each of the 5Rhythms – Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical, and Stilness – in sequence.
The first was at high noon, after a long bike ride with my ten-year-old son, Simon, and a period of sitting meditation. I slathered on sunblock and set up speakers in the backyard at my parents’ house in Northern Connecticut, where Simon and I are temporarily staying.
Thoughts circled in my brain as I settled down into Flowing. Thoughts about racial justice initiatives, red tape I need to attend to, the many challenges around Simon’s schooling for the fall, and challenges around my own work, which is also in a school, kept spiking even as I turned attention to the feet again and again, moving in unending circles in the dappled shade of a maple tree on the yard’s edge.
As the flowing songs I had planned ended, instead of a flowing staccato song to transition into Staccato, I put on a thick, twitchy, poetic track that moved me to shake and swoon, a mini moment of Chaos that set the tone for the rest of the wave.
For the second rhythm, Staccato, one of the songs in this playlist was a remix of a Paul Simon song. I thought at length about a conversation about how different songs had impacted different people; and how important it is to listen carefully to lyrics, to research the artists, to understand the context of a song, and to consider it through a lens of racial justice before playing it publicly. I find this remix irresistible, but because of issues of cultural appropriation (which may or may not be valid) with Paul Simon’s work in South Africa in the 1980’s, I would be hesitant about playing it publicly.
Still, I felt ferocious as song after staccato song ran me all over the yard.
Chaos surprised me. When I dance at high noon, I have to be under the shade of the big maple tree, and I’m much more visible than usual to my parents’ neighbors and passing cars. I tend to be less vocal and less explosive. Today, that was not the case. Some potent emotion came gripping my throat and I danced it before I could name it, throwing my head wildly, dropping low, vocalizing, and moving in a wild matrix.
The emotion that was presenting was rage.
In recent facilitated conversations during this moment of racial reckoning, I’ve tried to talk myself out of this emotion.
Who am I, a white woman, to feel or express rage now, of all times? At a time when Black and Brown voices should be centered, my place is to listen deeply, to be in service. But then what to do with this emotion, that is boiling over, that is taking over my body? It’s rage toward myself for the times I should have spoken up or taken action against racism but stayed silent. For the times I’ve been unskillful. And for the times I’ve caused harm.
Back in April, I had a conflict with a family member who wasn’t observing social distancing with my ten-year-old son, Simon, in a way that felt safe for me. And just last week, my sister came to visit with my niece. My niece wanted to see something in the garden, and without even thinking about it, I scooped her up and carried her over the fence, totally disregarding social distancing, and certainly upsetting my sister. I didn’t even realize I’d done it until the next day.
Some unexamined impulse that felt automatic came up and I just acted. Just like my own family member who I was so upset with. This is part of the inner work for me now, to deeply examine what feels automatic for underlying narratives of racial superiority, and its supportive underpinings.
This is not only a moral prerogative, but I also stand to personally benefit. Every time I identify and interrogate a story that makes me believe I am in any way separate, I move closer to truth, freedom, and a true sense of belonging.
And this rage that came up in the dance wasn’t just directed toward myself. It was also rage for the systems we are immersed in. For all the times I’ve brought things up and been gaslighted. For what I’ve seen and felt and known as the parent of a child of color. For all the instances of generalized oppression and othering that contribute to and create a basis for racism.
Who am I to feel all of this?
And yet I feel it and what to do. Where to put it, where to express it. Ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch. And this body, that is not separate from all bodies, is in pain. And this pain is problematic, but there it is, searing and tight.
I want to express this and I don’t. I don’t want to bog down collective forums with the individual work that I must take personal responsibility for. And at the same time, I answer to my body, above everyone else, and it is speaking loudly.
I love and respect the activists who are generous, patient, and committed to the long haul. But I’m not feeling that way right now.
Right now, I want to blow things up.
I’m tired. I’ve had a front row seat to oppression for too long now, as a white teacher in a segregated public school district; as a human being in a country that voted for Donald Trump; as a practitioner in a Buddhist tradition that basically detonated because of patriarchy and abuse, where I bumped into a wall of opacity again and again.
Please, please don’t tell me to put it into the practice. For more than a decade, I’ve been putting it into practice. And that has helped me to cope and to gain insight. But it can’t just end with personal practice. Now it’s time to move beyond just my personal reckoning, to a reckoning on a larger stage. To a systemic reckoning.
And all that was just the first wave.
Later in the day, I danced to the same wave. I had planned to join a group of dancers via zoom, but misinterpreted time zones and class invites and wound up on my own instead. I considered having a glass of wine and relaxing with my family, but decided to play the day’s earlier wave and move to it again instead.
Flowing was brief. I thought maybe I could half-ass it a little, cut out some of the songs, sort of move through the motions. I felt bad because my family was finishing up dinner, and I didn’t want the music to disturb them. I was clipped, noting the very hard, dry ground and wondering if I could even go all out without hurting myself.
Then that same thick, poetic song, which was “Let the Devil In” by TV on the Radio, exploded me again, giving me exactly what I needed – a peek into gigantic, poetic reality, a chance to shake myself to life. I thought about the folk belief of letting the devil in, the idea that you made this mess, you brought this on, you let it in, and I couldn’t help but relate it to American society as I now experience it, and my part in it.
I put on a lyrical-feeling staccato track, Jerusalema, by South African DJ and producer Master KG featuring vocalist Nomcebo Zikode. I threw down in delighted engagement, at times doing my best to replicate the dance I’d seen on a youtube video, moving my hips for four counts, jumping my feet in scissors for four counts, dipping and turning, then repeating the sequence.
In staccato chaos, I fell out to a song by Tribe Called Red, which I’m embarrassed to say I only just learned is an Indigenous Canadian band. I sunk low, rocked hips in a planar experiment, and bounce-paused in rhythmic expression.
Chaos was, again, the centerpoint and critical mass of this dance, seducing me to explode with what I was carrying. I thought Chaos was over after a long, psy trance track, but the next song took me deeper still.
This was also a TV on the Radio Song, this one titled “Happy Idiot” – my version of a shadow lyrical song. It’s about a breakup, but also about shutting down and trying to convince yourself and others that you’re happy when you actually are not. It’s the same song I had put on after a long, formal conversation about racial justice the day before. It was like a demon took me over. I growled from the deep belly, occasionally acting as a “Happy Idiot” and waving enthusiastically, then switching back to a sarcastic rage I wasn’t fully aware lived in my body.
I put on one of my favorite lyrical tracks, then a beautiful stillness track, though I still wasn’t fully ready to wind down. I could have growled in Chaos for several more hours, but life called me back.
Tomorrow is another day of reckoning, another chance to be whole, another chance to remember that for all of us, rhythm is our mother tongue, calling us back to who we really are, calling us back to our birthright – which is love – and calling us to action.
July 29, 2020
“And someday when we do finish that long journey towards freedom, when we do form a more perfect union — whether it’s years from now or decades or even if it takes another two centuries — John Lewis will be a founding father of that fuller, fairer, better America.” –President Barack Obama
“All this dancing is bullshit if we aren’t taking it into the streets.” –Gabrielle Roth
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and is not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.
(Image: cincinnatimagazine.com)
by meghanleborious | Jul 19, 2020 | Notes on Practice
This is where indigenous Podunk people once lived during cold months, where my grandfather loved to fish, and where I’ve brought my ten-year-old son, Simon, to experience the changing seasons more closely. For months, since Simon and I have been staying with my parents in northern Connecticut, I’ve run nearly every day in the woods by the Scantic River, then found a place to do the 5Rhythms dance meditation practice. I’ve loved the flowing river, the soft ground, and the shaded seclusion.
Like many practices, it started with following my intuition, then as it felt right, turned into a daily (or nearly daily) practice. But as the river got summer-low and stagnant, I started to feel less inspired. Still I ran and danced there almost every day, and still I was grateful for this beautiful place.
For a week or more, dance didn’t feel good. Most of the time, dance feels good. Even when I’m coping with a lot of anxiety, I can often let it go and let go in movement. Sometimes it’s even cathartic. But at times, I don’t feel any better after dancing than I did before I started, and I stay mostly flat.
I was on such a streak.
Thankfully, after over a decade of practice, I know what to do when it doesn’t feel good: keep practicing regularly, embrace whatever arises (even if it sucks), and remind myself that the magic always comes back eventually.
Yesterday, instead of turning right to head down the big hill to the woods and river, I turned left instead. This time, I ran one house down, then turned into the athletic grounds behind the town’s middle school. Here, rather than running in the dense, enclosed woods, I ran on a half-mile gravel track surrounding a wide open field. I relaxed, pausing frequently to gaze up and take in the open sky. After the first loop, I changed direction, so more of the time I would be facing the widest open space.
Practice is always a mix of discipline and flexibility. The teachings of Staccato teach us to apply intention and energy to our work, including holding our own feet to the fire in daily practice. The teachings of Flowing support us in following our intuition, and in being flexible and attentive to our own needs. As the Buddha taught, if practice is too loose, we could say with only flowing energy, it will not be effective. If practice is too rigid, we could say with only staccato energy, it will not be effective. It takes a balance of both of these energies to avoid stagnating or developing unskillful habits.
After four loops around, I decided to dance a 5Rhythms wave – which is to move in sequence through each of the 5Rhythms of Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical, and Stillness.
I found a tucked away inlet of cut grass, off to the side of the field where there was a small platform for outdoor exercise like sit-ups. I stepped up onto it, immediately liking the low friction feel of the wood-like material, and sinking into the circling movements of Flowing. I sank low and swung my hips over the edge, moving in a big arc, curving up onto one heel and back in the other direction, with a gesture like an athlete coiling a heavy discus.
I felt no rush to move into the second rhythm of Staccato, instead feeling like I could keep doing this gentle circling all day. Eventually, the rhythm of Staccato did break through just as the humidity shifted to a thick, slow rain that rattled the leaves like a percussion instrument. The sky remained light and blue on the other side of the field as I moved with sharp edges and exhalation, sinking low in the hips, emphatic with my elbows and the outside ridges of my hands. Next I moved in Chaos, briefly, gently, my gaze flopping around and rushing through clouds, grass, trees, my own feet, my own hands, the blue edge of sun, a bit of a house across the field.
Then, for the first time in over a week, the rhythm of Lyrical visited. Lyrical is like a bird on your shoulder. If you make a loud noise or look directly at it, it flies away. If you stay porous and move gently, it might stay there and coo, maybe even dancing along with you. I fell upward into extensions, turning my smiling face to the sky again as I raised my hands up.
For a short time I moved with everything – the spirits of the woods, the rain, the changeable sky, the breathing trees.
There was something in me that needed to let in space this time. Maybe I will return to the woods. Or maybe dancing in the field will become a new practice. I don’t take ending the woods practice lightly. At the same time, I don’t need to cling to it if it is no longer serving.
Then a jogger joined me on the other side of the field and I knew it was a matter of time before she was right beside me on the gravel track. Not wanting to shift into being verbal just yet, I climbed down from the platform and walked back home in the attitude of walking meditation, loving the sensation of each foot touching down, feeling alive and reverent.
Walking, I barely thought about the difficult question of whether or not I will send Simon back to school in September. I barely thought about my own teaching job, and what the school’s hybrid teaching plan might look like. About the new science that’s showing that COVID may have significant long-lasting impacts and that people who die of it are riddled with blood clots. About how children may be vulnerable. About how having the disease once may not provide immunity. Notably, I barely thought about our foul, inept, self-serving president and all the blood he has on his hands. And I even took a break from thinking about the intricacies of racism in our country, and what would need to happen to eradicate racism, patriarchy, and all oppression, including what I could personally do to have an impact.
I just walked slowly along, stopping once to eat a wild blackberry, then making my way back home.
Individual practice is keeping me alive. Truly. But at the same time I recognize the need for collective work that goes beyond just working on ourselves. Inner work is absolutely critical, but if practice is just there to make us feel good, then it’s not practice. It is actually a sedative, a conditioned habit.
Practice is a tool to pierce through layers of illusion to the radical, shining truth, even if it is politically inconvenient, uncomfortable, challenges our personal views, or challenges existing power structures. I’m extremely grateful when practice feels good, but hope I can push myself toward the truest truths, even if it doesn’t feel good sometimes.
Later in the day, I brought speakers outside and danced in the yard. To my surprise, I again moved with engagement. In Flowing, I moved with a circular swing in the yard. I dipped low, rolling it around my hips and moving in a big circle around it, at times moving toward it and falling, then rising and arcing away. At first, my arms followed my body like sea kelp, but soon, I started holding the swing and pulling it to its curving edge, then falling back into circling. In Staccato, I stayed in the shade of a big maple tree, feeling creative and vibrant, finding new ways to rise and fall, advance and recede, and work with the kinetic energy of the moving hips. Chaos challenged me to explode and release, and I let my head go and moved in a fast matrix, going all out. I was surprised that I had two long Chaos songs in a row in the playlist, but decided to go with it, telling myself to release and release and release further.
A chaos-lyrical song started and I bounded over to the computer to change it, putting on one of my all-time favorite tracks instead of the one I had planned. Lyrical overtook me; and I found a whole new category of movement. This time, pointing a leg and rushing into one direction while leaning back from it, and somehow a wild skittering with the other leg covering 10 or 15 feet in a gushing, joyful gesture, then bounding, leaping and twisting, all with my face tilting upward, smiling.
I have no idea what’s coming, but I suspect that for some of us, this might be a blessed interlude, a raging storm’s quiet eye. I hope I can settle into it, be available for joy if it visits me, step up to help dismantle injustice in ways that are skillful and collaborative, and love the people around me to the best of my ability.
That’s the best I can do for now.
June 16, 2020, Broad Brook, Connecticut
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and is not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.
