For years, I wrote about my own experiences on the 5Rhythms dancing path almost every week. It was posted both on my own website and on the official 5Rhythms site. Since I became a 5Rhythms teacher, however, a lot of that creative energy now goes into designing experiences for participants in my own classes and I haven’t written about my own practice as much.
I want to write about my perspective as a teacher on last night’s “Body Waves: Paint My Spirit Gold” class, since this time it was extra clear how much the participants teach me.
It’s been a challenging stretch, and leading up to class, my personal energy was low.
I plan the scope and sequence for each theme far in advance, and I had planned to offer a class with an emphasis on the rhythm of Lyrical. However, I had been feeling anxious and heavy-hearted, and it was hard to imagine how I could possibly embody Lyrical, which is often associated with joy and lightness.
I thought about changing the plan and instead offering a Flowing class with an emphasis on grounding, or maybe a Chaos class with an emphasis on messiness.
In the end, I decided to stay the course, and find a way to connect to Lyrical exactly as I am at this time.
I managed to gather music by Thursday night, but still couldn’t visualize how it would come together.
That day, I had several things dropped on me. Despite a full-court-press, I didn’t complete the tasks I needed to, though I was at work by 7:30AM. Sleep the night before wasn’t great and I wasn’t feeling particularly flexible or well-resourced. I realized yet another task I had to complete just as I was leaving work and plopped down with my coat still on to bang it out.
I got a message on the group chat for “Body Waves” crew that several would be able to make it to class, along with some enthusiastic and supportive words. “Crew” doesn’t seem quite accurate. This group includes two old friends and two new friends; and it’s starting to feel like a family. Their messages warmed me up on the cold afternoon, but I was still feeling low energy and slightly nauseous.
I arrived before 6PM and found that everything we needed was in the space, and that one crew member had arrived before me.
I actually love setting up for class when it’s not stressful; and this time it went smoothly.
I thought back to when I was teaching at the Joffrey and had to bring all speakers, sound equipment, and visuals by car to every single class, and softened with gratitude for how much the process has eased.
The first participant arrived at 6:15 for the 7PM class and wandered in to where we were setting up. We got her checked in and settled in an adjacent studio while we completed preparations.
Before long, I put on low, tonal music and gave the person who was checking people in a thumbs up. She started letting people in around 6:45PM.
Following the stretching music, I put on an Indie Rock song that aligned to the theme, Paint My Spirit Gold, and looked across the room, wondering how it would land. It was quite a transition, and I knew there was a chance it would flatten people out, and that they might need to be coaxed into moving.
To my surprise, many responded right away, beginning to sway and make their way up onto their feet.
It’s not always like that. People could come in locked in grief, not having slept in days, constrained in anxiety. You just don’t know. But on this night, people seemed to arrive very much ready and eager to move.
My whole system started to relax and have fun, and I made some trips around the room, pausing to dance with people along the way.
I offered a few prompts to help us ground in the rhythm of Flowing, but mostly let the music carry the wave.
As the first wave started to dissipate, I invited people to continue to move while I offered a few comments. I spoke into the mic as I moved throughout the room, sharing that I was considering changing the rhythm that I would emphasize during this class since I wasn’t feeling particularly connected to Lyrical, but that I had decided to go ahead anyway.
What came through is that Lyrical, though associated with lightness and joy, is a deeper energy. It holds joy, lightness, and too, fear, rage, grief, shame, and everything else inside of it. In fact, it holds everything in our experience inside this vast, spacious container, and like a soaring bird of prey takes in the panorama from above, seeing the entire picture.
I also shared that it took me years to learn the pathway to Lyrical, and that I would often panic when the room shifted from the rhythm of Chaos into Lyrical. One of the stories that blocked me from accessing Lyrical was the incorrect belief that if I was in joy it would be an affront to another’s suffering.
I also shared a quote by the baby boomer, African American poet Toi Derracotte, “Joy is an act of resistance.”
I love the idea that joy is not just self-indulgent, but that it can also serve.
If we are mean, afraid, small, tight, myopic, righteous…we are easy to control. But if we step into the full spaciousness and power of Lyrical, we can move mountains.
There are so many gifts practice has given me, but this is one of the most precious ones.
I put on a song called “Blessings” and many responded right away, beginning to gather into a second wave.
The next song was a thick, heavy Flowing track, and I cut it short to put on a soaring track with a waltz time signature. I made my way through the room and noticed that one dancer had started to waltz, stepping and holding both arms up, then letting them cascade down and stepping again while swaying his arms up again. He inspired me and I, too, started to waltz. Soon, the entire room seemed to be waltzing. I moved back to the DJ table with a big smile on my face, and continued to watch the room with delight.
The wave moved quickly from there, and the room seemed dynamic and charged. One woman was off to the side stretching and swaying. I put on a longer track then made my way over to check in. She smiled and said she was fine. “Ok! Do whatever feels right to you!” I said and moved away, thinking of a recent experience when I was having a hard time, and really would have appreciated it if the teacher had checked in with me.
Sometimes I have to work hard to keep myself grounded during class as the energy gathers and rises, but on this occasion, I felt gentle, present, and delighted.
I joined with another dancer, dipping our shoulders toward each other and circling around.
Tears rose up as the class wound down, and many dancers continued to move with wholehearted, creative expression.
I had arrived feeling tight, anxious, nauseous, and now here I was in the deep silence when the music ends and before anyone moves or says anything, just oozing gratitude, with gold spilling out all over.
After class, I ate with one of the crew members. She is less than half my age and is very wise. She shared her perspective on recent developments on the national stage, and I nodded, soaking it in.
One thing she said is that she knew she was always going to be involved in the fight for justice, and “that’s never changing.” This idea, that it’s not a failure that justice has not been achieved, but that it would always be in process, and that engaging in the process is worthwhile, touched me deeply.
I’ve always known that I gain a lot in the role of teacher, both in my daytime work with high school teens, and in my nighttime work teaching the 5Rhythms to adults, but on this day, it was an extra powerful dose of medicine.
I went to bed after midnight, slept over nine hours, and woke feeling optimistic, and remembering that God is everywhere, thanks in every measure to these wholehearted, powerful students who helped me to remember.
President Biden’s decision to step aside is a powerful example of surrender–a theme I’m still immersed in following the two-day 5Rhythms workshop “Surrender” that was led by Croatian 5Rhythms teacher Silvija Tomcik.
Friday I was unavoidably late. I just accepted a new job and a new role, and needed to attend a work event. I’ll be a founding teacher at a brand new high school.
This is exciting because I love beginnings. I love the creative territory when we have to create the map, when we can’t rely on what’s already in place. As a visual artist, I’m trained to make somethings from nothings; and I love feeling like anything is possible.
With Silvija’s skillful guidance, this is the territory we explored–the territory of Chaos, which is the third of the 5Rhythms.
Chaos is where we surrender to reality exactly as it is. Where we stop clinging to the past and grabbing toward the future. Where we let go of old habits and identities. And, as Biden embodied today, where we stop clinging to power and instead make space for something new to arise.
I don’t know what happened before I arrived on Friday, but by the time I got there people already seemed very sweaty and softened. I entered as gently as I could, and Silvija greeted me with a wide, wholehearted embrace. I joined two other dancers on the floor where we each spoke about where Chaos is showing up in our life at this time.
For me, I was almost never in Chaos for the first year that I danced. I thought I was in Chaos, but I was actually in a very fast, agitated Staccato–the second of the 5Rhythms. I hadn’t realized it, but I was actually afraid of Chaos. Afraid of being out of control and causing harm–a pattern I knew far too well.
The part of my life when I was most out of control is coming up for examination again now. Truthfully, I spent many years confused about what it means to be a free spirit. I thought it meant rebellion and saying fuck you to social norms and throwing myself recklessly into intense experiences.
I made a lot of unskillful choices during that time. My fourteen-year-old son, Simon, is taking a behavioral neuroscience class and part of what they are exploring are the impacts of alcohol and drug use on the brain, especially on developing brains. He’s wondering about how my choices might have impacted me and how they might have impacted him, and is asking a lot of hard questions.
Another reason I avoided Chaos is that I had somehow internalized that I was too big, too wild, too messy; and I had spent decades trying unsuccessfully to make myself smaller and tidier. When Chaos finally broke through for real, completely by accident, I was broken apart. My entire self sobbed and rocked and shook. I could finally just be myself. My whole self. Not my ideal self, not the self society makes of me, not the self I was trying to be to avoid triggering my partner at the time, not the fixed self that my ego is always angling for.
But instead someone real and alive and actually free.
So many practices are about trying to contain Chaos. Trying to control things. Staying positive, always being our best, being on point, holding ourselves together. But in the 5Rhythms, we understand that Chaos is an essential part of the creative process.
It’s because of Chaos that I decided to marry the 5Rhythms; and during the almost two decades since have become a 5Rhythms teacher myself.
For the rest of the session, Silvija guided us through exercises that encouraged us to integrate the spine and the head into our movement. She said, “The head is part of the rest of the body, not just up here all judge-y and critical.” She demonstrated humorously with her own body, and then showed us what the opposite would look like, when instead of the head being a tyrant who rules over the rest of the body, we drop down and surrender.
I took this on wholeheartedly, eventually moving through the entire space as I curved and twisted and undulated and dropped my head down and let it follow the rest of the body again and again.
At the end of the session I texted Simon, who was home alone at that point. He asked me to call him on facetime so he could show me something. Our kitten George had launched himself off the top of the kitchen cabinets and knocked down a large ceiling light fixture which shattered on the tile floor. Simon started his story with “This man…” I belly-laughed the whole way home.
I’ve been meaning to replace the outdated light fixture; and you could say George helped me make way for something new with his own flying leap of surrender.
The next morning, I found an unpublished text that I wrote about Silvija’s “Read My Hips” workshop in 2019. At that workshop, too, Silvija offered many new tools and insights. One that has been important for my own process is that moving the hips moves the spine which moves the head. When I teach and I say, “Maybe imagine that your spine is a roller coaster and your head is the very last car,” this comes directly from insights during Silvija’s “Read My Hips” workshop.
The next morning, I was determined to arrive on time following my late arrival the night before. I felt emotional as I walked from the J train to Paul Taylor studio on the Lower East Side. Part of my new job role will be teaching Art, and I kept thinking about ways to move with my students and open the doorway to the creative process, beyond just offering the tangible skills of art-making.
I silently greeted many friends of a decade or more, including several 5Rhythms teachers who were in my same teacher training cohort–a bond that is very meaningful to me.
We danced and danced and danced and danced. Sometimes alone, sometimes in partnership, sometimes in groups.
Early on, Silvija invited us to move in the first rhythm, Flowing, as though we were on an ocean boat, rocking with the swelling sea. I loved this, and rose and fell and circled and ranged through the big studio, allowing my legs and spine to buckle and soften and pull me deeper into circling.
We danced a full Chaos wave, then moved to different kinds of music that could be embodied as Chaos.
At one point, Silvija had us interact with a partner and move with something we want to surrender, and then what it would look and feel like if we actually did surrender this thing.
My partner went first. Then it was my turn. Per Silvija’s instructions, I whispered what I wished to surrender into my partner’s ear, “Blame and resentment.”
For years, I kept tweaking my left ankle; and I worried that if I really kept throwing myself into the dance as I’d been doing, I would injure it again. I also noticed a pain in my left hip flexor and groin. Lately sometimes after sitting, I get up and limp because it gets pinched and tight. I’ve had some brutal muscle pulls over the years, and I thought, this body has held up for 51 years. I’m so blessed that it’s not breaking down yet. But I should take it easy, I should moderate. I will get hurt if I fling myself into this in the way that I want to.
Curiously, when I sat down to write this, I totally forgot that I had been afraid. It took several layers to get back to it. I kept remembering, then it would jump out of my head again, and I’d be sitting in front of the computer thinking, What was it that I was about to write?
Probably it was my imagination, but a presence next to me said, “Don’t worry, you’ll be ok.”
I went all in. Dancing blame and resentment: pointing my finger, tightening my face, slamming my raised elbow backward, controlling my hips. Then I went all in with surrender, even moving throughout the room with maximum intensity, somehow with all the energy I needed–spinning, dipping, letting my head and spine stretch out and arc, touching down with my fingertips then stepping up and diagonally, coiling and twisting and twittering on the razor’s edge of completely out of control.
Later, my partner from the surrender exercise passed me in the hall to the bathroom.
They said, “I received a message for you.”
“Oh? What was it?”
“The message that came through was ‘You are protected.’ ”
I thanked them and slightly bowed my head, then continued down the hall.
We took only a short lunch break. I sat alone briefly, thinking I might make some notes. When I realized I had no pencil, I surrendered to not making notes, and happened to find one of my closest friends, who herself had been planning to make notes, but her pen had stopped working. She too surrendered and we instead took time to connect and share our experiences.
I stepped to the foyer outside the studio, where there were snacks and tea, and one friend shared that she was confused about these new and sometimes conflicting aspects of Chaos. I said, “I hear you. Sometimes I realize I’m working too hard with a prompt, and I just say, ‘fuck it’ let me just dance.” It’s possible I was giving advice more to myself than to my friend, as is often the case.
I also shared that to me, Chaos has two faces.
There is the intensity, the buildup, the press toward maximum expression and the moment when it explodes. This can also be a feeling of breaking through ropes or a straightjacket, a cathartic throwing off of societal conditioning, traumatic holding, oppression, existential gunk, and the relentless tyranny of should.
The other face of Chaos is the face of surrender. This face is much softer. It is a totally different kind of freedom. It lets everything in without having to relate the self to it, and lets everything right back out without clinging or pushing away. It is a freefall in the dynamic unfolding of all that is, ever moving and shifting and changing. It’s where the ordinary world and the absolute collide and we realize that everything, absolutely everything, is part of this vast, exquisite cosmic dance.
I had a dream when I was a teen that I’ll never forget. I was inside a painting that was in the process of becoming. It wasn’t so much about the material or the frame, but that I was inside, immersed in the very creative process, the irrepressible, unbridled, dynamic expression of life force.
When I first started dancing the 5Rhythms, artwork exploded out of me. Since then, I’ve surrendered much of my fixed identity as a visual artist, and instead open myself to the flow of creation as it arises, including creating 5Rhythms classes for the participants I’m blessed to work with.
I’ve become more of a midwife than a master; and it no longer matters to me what form creation takes, only that I swim in its river and am at its service.
This brings me tears as I write. What a blessing to live a creative life. Gabrielle Roth, the creator of the 5Rhythms practice, wrote in her first book, Maps to Ecstasy, “If you like to write, you don’t have to make the bestseller list: write letters to your friends, poems to your lover. Sing to your children. Make something for your mother. Once you enter the creative mode, you discover what it means to live in your soul.”
After our brief lunch, we continued to dance, exploring Chaos as it lives in each of the different rhythms.
Silvija playfully challenged those of us who actually seek out Chaos instead of just surrendering to it when it comes, and kept up a stream of prompts and suggestions to support our investigation throughout the afternoon.
Feeling loose and alive, I stopped at a grocery store on the way home, and the woman working at the checkout noticed and commented. I can’t remember her exact words, but it was something about shining.
I waited for the train next to a broken video screen. It was still working, but the glass was spider-web-shattered and the image twittered in disjointed ribbons.
I come back again and again to what Gabrielle said when she laid down the map of the 5Rhythms for us, “It takes discipline to be a free spirit.”
To my immense surprise and delight, I realize that I have become a free spirit. All it took was practice.
Thank you, Silvija. Thank you, Gabrielle. From the depths of my wild, free spirit. Thank you.
Yesterday, Saturday, the bright sun was too much for me. Grey clouds parted in the afternoon and instead of feeling the joyful charge of spring, I stood in the middle of the sidewalk blinking, unable to take it. The bright, warm afternoon just felt like too much pressure.
For the past couple of weeks I’ve been struggling. What is that tiny shift that happens when things go from workable to hopeless? The truth is that there is nothing wrong – at least not compared to what people around me are coping with. I know better than to try to talk myself out of feeling bad, but still there I was. Miserable and shaming myself on top of it.
I did yoga in the living room in the morning. It helped to move, but a few times I noticed myself stopping. Not like taking a break, not even like holding my breath, really. More like just blanking out in the middle of a chaturanga with my face to the floor. And thinking vaguely of some ancient reason I should beat myself up until I gave a little shake and restarted the breath and movement.
My thirteen year old son, Simon, was feeling down, too, and I was happy that he decided to join a friend’s family for dinner and a sleepover.
Almost simultaneously, I learned that Amber Ryan was offering a 360 Emergence class at Paul Taylor studio on the Lower East Side; and I bought a ticket immediately. Amber is a former 5Rhythms teacher; and the 360 Emergence is a new practice with deep roots in the 5Rhythms.
I barely had time to gather my things, bring Simon to his friend’s house, and find parking. On the way, I learned that a powerful storm was in the forecast, and that there was a tornado watch.
Me and a crowd of afflictive emotions walked up the stairs, and they all entered the studio with me. I paused to move through an energetic ritual as I crossed the threshold, then walked across the wide floor.
One friend’s gaze seemed to skitter over me, not registering when I tried to catch his eye to silently say hello.
I moved around the edge of the room to orient myself to the space and the group, bringing attention to my feet, and occasionally glancing my fingertips or inner arm along the wall to wake up sensation in different parts of the body.
And soon delight arrived.
It’s not always like that. You never know what will happen when you step into practice. Sometimes you even feel worse at the end than when you started. But on this evening, I made the barely perceptible shift from feeling like things were hopeless back into believing they are workable.
Within ten minutes, I was ranging softly through different levels, stretching intuitively, and tasting the air in the different parts of the room.
Amber guided us through a practice to connect with different energy centers in the body. As encouraged us to engage the ribcage in moving energy around the solar plexus, a wide groan escaped me along with unleashing some painful teen and early adult memories.
Since Simon has become a teen recently I’m finding that I have new strata of unresolved trauma – trauma that I thought had been long dispensed with. I recognize the need to move with it quickly, so I can be clear and direct in parenting this extraordinary human, and not mire him in the tangles of my own psychology and the fears that arise for me.
A friend from my long-ago days in the underground dance world found me this week, too. She wants to hold a reunion – a rave, actually – for those of us who are still alive. I was happy to hear from her, and plan to participate, but it knocked on the door of some pesky demons.
My whole face was wet with tears as I threaded throughout the space, slipping through gaps between bodies, sliding in and out of partnerships, and collaborating with the circling room.
Amber kept inviting us to pause and return to “zero” throughout the class.
Many years ago, Amber led a workshop in this very same space called “Zero Zone,” which was the first time I heard her talk about zero.
I wondered briefly if “zero” was influenced by Dzogchen, an energetic Tibetan practice of dropping into raw awareness on the spot. And I wondered how it relates to Stillness in the 5Rhythms. And a chain of other associations. Then, the thoughts receded again into the background as my own body and its experiments emerged in the foreground.
At one point, Amber invited us to very intentionally move with the breath, then opened up the music again to allow us time to integrate these new seeds that had been planted.
When the intensity peaked again and again, I found myself right in the middle a lot of the time, moving with all the energy I could need, sinking to the ground, then spiraling back up, casting upward, diagonaling myself back down and across, sometimes finding myself face to face with a partner, and sometimes on my own.
I was so engaged that I didn’t notice darkness shining through the many windows until there was a flash of lightning outside.
In an experiment that involved taking turns with one person in the middle while three others supported them and held space, I felt heat rising to my face and crown when it was my turn to be in the middle. And I felt just as engaged when it was my turn to hold space. I remembered my nature as a healer, as an energy worker, and that we are all healers and energy workers.
In the final stretch of dancing, some stayed with their small group, while others moved through the space. Amber put on an electronic dance song with an engaging beat that pulled us deeper into motion. Then, to my surprise and delight, the beat dropped fast in a low, heavy bassline and the room exploded.
I found many new ways to move, sometimes quirky, jerking, skimming, bursting. I found a new loop around the back of my neck, a new way to rise up through my back from the hips, a new flutter in the heels, a new triple count step to stop short without jamming.
All that is to say that I found new ways to be alive.
Before stepping in, I wondered if I would have the energy to move given how disheartened I had been feeling.
By the end I felt grateful again. Grateful to be alive, grateful for the dancing path, grateful to have the chance to do my best as a parent, grateful that my body has accumulated decades of athletic experience yet still hasn’t broken down, grateful for the spirits and ancestors who I believe dance with me. Grateful for all of it. For everything.
My body remembered why I set foot on this dancing path to begin with. I also remembered what my body never forgets – that the mysterious tiny shift I was contemplating is really just a matter of being embodied. Of being alive to this moment, to this precious life.
Thank you, Amber. Thank you, Gabrielle. Thank you, my son. Thank you, this body. Thank you, this life. I am blessed in every sense. My path is strewn with flowers, and I can again see the gentle rain of blessings.
Meghan LeBorious is a certified teacher of the 5Rhythms dance and movement meditation practice. This writing is not sanctioned or commissioned by the 5Rhythms organization and is solely the writer’s personal experience.
Today I found myself dancing on a wide open hill with some soaring birds of prey. At the time, I was looking for a trailhead at the Himalayan Institute in Pennsylvania, where I decided to spend the last few days of summer. When I finally did find the trailhead, at the edge of the sloping meadow, I decided against it and continued to circle the field instead. In some areas the shadowed edge of the grass was still wet with morning, though by now I had already been up for several hours.
The Himalayan tradition, from what I gather, is a wisdom tradition with a lineage of teachers from the Himalaya region. Retreatants are allowed to pay a daily fee and enjoy the grounds and trails, three lovely vegetarian meals per day, and are allowed access to the meditation building–a circular structure that is at the heart of the campus.
Being here reminds me that there are an infinite number of traditions that can lead us to wisdom and awakening. One of the most wonderful things about this place is that it is not focused only on individual practice, but on worldwide, sustainable activism and empowerment, currently in the countries of India and Cameroon. They also make Moka chocolate, and source ingredients and materials ethically from communities around the world.
Entering the meditation building, as I did at 6 AM this morning, means walking to a side entrance, removing your shoes, stowing any belongings in a side coatroom, and stepping into a circular hallway that surrounds the main shrine room. All of the door handles are tied to minimize noise, but stepping through one of the three doors to the shrine room still inspires the wish to move with dignified silence.
Inside is quiet. Very, very quiet. People sit on chairs or sand-filled meditation cushions and a small mat on the floor. The ceiling is circular, and there is a diffuse light above the line of the ceiling. There is small altar with flowers and a metal object in the part of the room that people orient toward. I spread my small mat, posted my sand-filled cushion, and joined the river of collective silence.
Before coming to the Himalayan Institute, I went to Jacob Riis Park to practice the 5Rhythms dance and movement meditation practice with the sea. This time, I didn’t travel so far down the remotest part of the beach that I lost phone reception since I wanted to be reachable in case of any emergency with my son, Simon, who is at a sleepaway camp for the first time.
The tide was extremely high, pushing my steps into the soft rather than packed sand when the waves pressed toward the dunes. I was not in a crowd, but was definitely not alone either. A nearby fisherwoman eyed me curiously as she monitored her line, and beach strollers passed every five minutes or so. As is so often the case, I began to move in Flowing and wondered if I would ever gather the energy to move onto the next rhythm of Staccato. I stayed there for a long time, settling attention downward, and orienting awareness to the feet.
At some point, Staccato came through. My body showed it to me before my mind did. It arrived somewhat feebly, though I gave it breath and attention as I stepped more decisively, with more clarity. I noticed all of the lines of the beach–the high tide line, criss-crossing lines of dried seaweed, the quickly receding saturation line, and the lines of the edges of arriving and departing waves. I let myself off the hook, recognizing that I might not be in a space for the fullest expression of Staccato, wanting to sink into this very last stretch of summer and put off planning and scheduling and organizing priorities for just a little bit longer.
I needed to use the bathroom, but didn’t want to swim in such a remote area. I also didn’t want to head all the way back to the public bathrooms. I felt exasperated with my own inner dialogue at the expense of practice, and waded into the water to use the bathroom. Problem solved. No need to have a huge long conversation with my own mind about what to do.
I stayed half in the water after that and continued to play with the edges of the waves, Staccato becoming slightly more alive in the process.
I finally let myself move into Chaos, at first gently, then growing in physical intensity, and expanding my radius. Lyrical was unbounded, moving all across the wide beach, scanning the horizon, and lifting up, even leaping in curving twirls. Stillness wrapped me into its folds, deep in the comfort of home. I continued to move for another 30 minutes or so, not in any particular rhythm, finding myself ending with prayers for Simon, myself, and many others as we start a new school year.
Back at the Himalayan Institute, a teacher guided a small group of us through an evening Hatha yoga session. He encouraged us to balance out the body and to let go of tension. Sometimes it is just that easy. To identify friction, discomfort, obstacle, and remove it or let it go. Sometimes it is just a choice, and noticing that there is a choice.
Last night, I didn’t fall asleep right away. Fears popped up. Regrets made an appearance. Guilt. Shame. I hit a little patch of self-hatred, one of my default patterns in the fact of transition or challenge. I’d been in and out of it for the past few days, not with searing intensity, but enough to pepper the edges of my awareness with ugly holes.
Today, after the early morning meditation session, I moved between walking meditation in the woods and sitting meditation in the deeply silent shrine room. In the early part of the day, I continued to suffer with self-hatred off and on.
I paused on a flat rock and closed my eyes to listen. I heard insects, birds, and small animals moving. My mind followed them in the space around me.
The community here touches me. I ate lunch in silence, tears streaming down my face, remembering my place in things. Remembering home and the interior paths that lead me there. Remembering that beauty is only attention. Remembering that kindness is the only thing that’s real.
September 2, 2022, Himalayan Institute, Pennsylvania
Meghan LeBorious is a writer, teacher, and meditation facilitator who has been dancing the 5Rhythms since 2008 and recently became a 5Rhythms teacher. She was inspired to begin chronicling her experiences following her very first class; and she sees the writing process as an extension of practice—yet another way to be moved and transformed. This blog is not produced or sanctioned by the 5Rhythms organization. Photos courtesy of the writer.
***For NYC dancers, Meghan has a seven-class 5Rhythms series coming up that starts on October 14, “Spirit Drenched in Gold.” Join a single class or join the full series for a discount. Registration is required – https://spiritdrenchedingold.eventbrite.com
***Meghan also has a five-class online writing/dance 5Rhythms “Writing Waves” class that starts on September 15. Registration is required – https://www.eventbrite.com/e/writing-waves-tickets-397987811257
This week, in West Dennis Cape Cod with extended family, my mornings are devoted to practice with the ocean. Today was my earliest start time this week, since many of my family members–including my 12-year-old son–were up early for a deep sea fishing trip. By 7:30, I was walking ankle deep in the waves toward West Dennis Beach.
I treat all parts of this process as practice, which is to say that from the time that I leave the cottage to the time that I return, I do my best to settle into the experience and not press forward, wishing time away. It also means that I show up every day–or nearly every day–regardless of conditions and sometimes regardless of what I feel like doing. For example, yesterday’s forecast was for 100% likelihood of rain. I wasn’t eager to get up early and head out to the sea, but I pushed a little, recognizing that practice means you don’t evaluate it every day; and you don’t allow your mind to have a conversation with itself about the pros and cons. I put my towel in a plastic shopping bag so when I got out of the water it wouldn’t be drenched, and headed out.
Today was bright and high tide was falling. My mom, who is delightful, enthusiastic, walked with me for a while. We paused to interact with a dog, fondly remembering our own dog of many years ago who was mostly the same breed as this one based on our best guess.
After I passed the Lighthouse Inn, I pulled out swim goggles and cap, peeled off the layer I had on over my bathing suit, then dropped my backpack with afterswim supplies on the sand and continued west.
Walking away from the morning sun, I gave my attention to the feet as they fell on the ultra-soft sand, to the sound of the waves, and to my moving body, inviting the shoulders to relax down, the belly to soften, and the hips to deepen in their sockets. Whenever I shifted into a story, a plan, an explanation, an analysis of my body’s symmetry, or an argument for or against my good character, I noted it and gently shifted attention back to the feet when I could so without excessive effort.
At Bass River, the boundary between West Dennis and Yarmouth, I turned my back to the wind and bent over to gather my hair in my hands, then stood up and turned toward the wind to coil it just behind the crown of my head. I put on the bathing cap and goggles, then hesitated briefly, tightening my shoulders against the cold water and wind, then wading in and diving hands first, heading back east.
There was a fierce chop today, and the wind was coming from the southwest, an assist on today’s eastward journey. In a pool, once my attention starts to settle with movement, I move my focus throughout the body. But in the ocean, there is usually plenty to anchor my attention in the present. Today, the waves rolled across me, lifting me up and casting me down, and I had to pay attention to the timing of my breaths to avoid getting a mouthful. The water was ochre and gold, the bottom rippled sand or obscured in stands of seaweed. I noted razor shells, clam shells, one big conch with an animal still inside it, and horseshoe crabs underneath me.
Periodically, I lowered a leg down to make sure I could still stand. I can handle the deep water just fine as a swimmer, but a (somewhat irrational) fear of sharks keeps me close to shore. And I figure if a shark ever does attack me, I’ll have a better chance of survival if I can stand up on my feet and punch them in the nose. I have it all figured out.
That doesn’t stop me from an occasional mounting shark panic, but I try to see even that emergence of fear as another opportunity to work with my mind.
I’ve been doing this swim or a similar swim for over 20 years now. It started back when I actually competed in triathlons, and really took off when my sister was doing triathlons too. Those days are long gone, but I still love long swims in the ocean. At first it was an occasional thing, at any time of the day it happened to fit. Over the years, I noted how much it helps me–not just during the week that I’m doing it but in the bigger picture, too–and became more and more committed to the point that I actually plan around it, even declining the offer to join a deep sea fishing trip with my son, my Dad, and other family members this morning.
That’s just how it went when I started to dance the 5Rhythms 15 years ago. At first it was just a class or two here or there. But within less than a year I was planning my life around attending Tammy Burstein’s Friday Night Waves class in the West Village, and also added whatever additional classes I could squeeze in and every workshop that came up.
Everything changed for me then. I galloped through layers of trauma and learned habitual patterns. Creativity exploded. I was able to connect with people with much greater intimacy. I was more playful. Walking on the sidewalk in Midtown became a game.
I also moved through agonizing stretches of feeling isolated, witnessing my own self abuse, and coping with difficult emotions, but following each period of agony somehow emerged even more committed to practice.
After the wild west end of the beach, I passed the first lifeguard chair: white painted wood with a red number 8 on its side. The wind and waves helped me out, and I continued to note each successive chair from 7 all the way to 1 as I made it the two miles back to my backpack in what seemed like a shorter time than usual.
I moved quickly to the towel, then changed my wet bathing suit for loose pants and long sleeve shirt. I sat for a while in meditation, then decided to do some yoga movements to warm myself up. Once I was warm I sat for longer, in no particular hurry to get on to anything else.
Last night, I danced the 5Rhythms. I walked with some family members, but they headed west and I stayed put. The evening beach was more crowded than I hoped, but I found a quiet-ish corner to practice. The tide was high and I circled up and down from the high tide line as I began to move in the rhythm of Flowing. In this session I made a clear distinction between each of the five rhythms–Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical, and Stillness–as I moved through each of them. I could see my sister, brother, brother-in-law, and niece in the distance, occasionally bending over to gather a treasure, and figured I would dance just until they made it back to me. After moving through each of the rhythms, an internal gear slipped me deeply into Stillness, and I whisper moved with the waves, the horizon, and the soaring birds. Vision tracked energy. I could feel heat rising to my cheekbones and the crown of my head. Chemical releases in my leg muscles set loose a shake. When they were almost back to me, I reconnected with my feet, intending to reconnect with day-to-day reality, though practice had opened the doorway to a different layer.
This morning, caked in sand, muscles awake and stretched, wind making a flag of my loose shirt, hair knotted and half-wet–I could feel my edges softening, recent and past experiences moving through, and my selves gliding into alignment.
Thank you, my beautiful son. Thank you, family. Thank you, ocean. Thank you, Gabrielle Roth. Thank you, practice. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. I bow down to the universe, to my teachers, and to this precious life.
August 18, 2022, West Dennis, Cape Cod
Meghan LeBorious is a writer, teacher, and meditation facilitator who has been dancing the 5Rhythms since 2008 and recently became a 5Rhythms teacher. She was inspired to begin chronicling her experiences following her very first class; and she sees the writing process as an extension of practice—yet another way to be moved and transformed. This blog is not produced or sanctioned by the 5Rhythms organization. Photos courtesy of the writer.
***For NYC dancers, Meghan has a seven-class 5Rhythms series coming up that starts on October 14, “Spirit Drenched in Gold.” Join a single class or join the full series for a discount. Registration is required – https://spiritdrenchedingold.eventbrite.com
***Meghan also has a five-class online writing/dance 5Rhythms “Writing Waves” class that starts on September 15. Registration is required – https://www.eventbrite.com/e/writing-waves-tickets-397987811257
Today I found myself dancing on a wide open hill with some soaring birds of prey. At the time, I was looking for a trailhead at the Himalayan Institute in Pennsylvania, where I decided to spend the last few days of summer. When I finally did find the trailhead, at the edge of the sloping meadow, I decided against it and continued to circle the field instead. In some areas the shadowed edge of the grass was still wet with morning, though by now I had already been up for several hours.
Meghan LeBorious is a writer, teacher, and meditation facilitator who has been dancing the 5Rhythms since 2008 and recently became a 5Rhythms teacher. She was inspired to begin chronicling her experiences following her very first class; and she sees the writing process as an extension of practice—yet another way to be moved and transformed. This blog is not produced or sanctioned by the 5Rhythms organization. Photos courtesy of the writer.
This week, in West Dennis Cape Cod with extended family, my mornings are devoted to practice with the ocean. Today was my earliest start time this week, since many of my family members–including my 12-year-old son–were up early for a deep sea fishing trip. By 7:30, I was walking ankle deep in the waves toward West Dennis Beach. 
Last night, I danced the 5Rhythms. I walked with some family members, but they headed west and I stayed put. The evening beach was more crowded than I hoped, but I found a quiet-ish corner to practice. The tide was high and I circled up and down from the high tide line as I began to move in the rhythm of Flowing. In this session I made a clear distinction between each of the five rhythms–Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical, and Stillness–as I moved through each of them. I could see my sister, brother, brother-in-law, and niece in the distance, occasionally bending over to gather a treasure, and figured I would dance just until they made it back to me. After moving through each of the rhythms, an internal gear slipped me deeply into Stillness, and I whisper moved with the waves, the horizon, and the soaring birds. Vision tracked energy. I could feel heat rising to my cheekbones and the crown of my head. Chemical releases in my leg muscles set loose a shake. When they were almost back to me, I reconnected with my feet, intending to reconnect with day-to-day reality, though practice had opened the doorway to a different layer.
Meghan LeBorious is a writer, teacher, and meditation facilitator who has been dancing the 5Rhythms since 2008 and recently became a 5Rhythms teacher. She was inspired to begin chronicling her experiences following her very first class; and she sees the writing process as an extension of practice—yet another way to be moved and transformed. This blog is not produced or sanctioned by the 5Rhythms organization. Photos courtesy of the writer.