Practice in the Time of Coronavirus: Concluding Self Isolation

I’m listening to a livestream piano concert now given by a teen named Donny, who is the nephew of a friend. She shared that he has blastoma and autism, and just lost his mother. As I join the stream, Donny opens with three of my lounge-singer-grandmother’s favorite songs: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Misty, and Unforgettable. 

***

I’ve been crying intermittently all day. 

After 14 days of strict quarantine, my ten-year-old son, Simon, and I were able to join the household of my parents, in their house in Northern Connecticut yesterday.

***

Now Donny is playing Somewhere Over the Rainbow. He’s not reading any sheet music, and he’s really good and really into it. He mentions playing something “just like mom used to play it” and a male voice off the screen says, “You played that song at her service.”

***

Yesterday, Simon was very excited, got up super early, and raced to my parents’ room to climb into their bed and hug them. We had planned a whole coming out party, with dance and singing. 

But this morning, Simon and I struggled. He seemed resistant to everything and uncooperative. He didn’t want to sing, dance, or help his Nana make a giant chalk drawing in the street to express thanks to health care workers.

Simon’s father, who was officially my partner for eight years, and has been my not-husband and close friend for another ten, decided to stay in Brooklyn, rather than come to stay at an apartment nearby we were able to arrange for him. 

***

Every time Donny finishes a song, the off-camera person (his father?) claps enthusiastically.

***

I took a break from parent-child volatility to dance the Sunday Sweat Your Prayers 5Rhythms dance class at 11AM, happy to connect with community. Before joining, I took an emotional call from a family member I’ve been worried about.

I started late because of the call and caught only the tail end of the rhythm of Flowing. Today I cried hard as soon as I started to move, especially during a song with lyrics about loss. Lately, I’ve been recording myself when dancing for my own interest; and on the video my feet seemed a little hesitant in this beginning part. In Staccato, I had no trouble finding expression and inspiration, but with so much yoga and dance lately, my knees are a little tender, and it’s like I was trying to avoid stomping, a tiny bit aversive. In Chaos, I moved quickly, coiling and shaking. In Lyrical, my hands seemed to take over, but my arms didn’t seem to be fully extending. Overall, I was kind of flat today, compared to my usual athleticism.

Near the end of the Sweat Your Prayers class, Simon’s came in and said, “Mom! Get. Me. Socks!” Another period of challenging exchanges was set off.

While I was dancing, my Mom created a giant chalk drawing across the street that says, “Thank you, helpers!” She tried to engage Simon, but he was resistant. Challenging because the reason she designed the project was specifically to engage Simon. A motorcyclist went out of his way to avoid damaging her cheerful drawing. Another passing driver beeped and waved, smiling.

Everyone in the house seemed to be having a hard time. 

Now? When we’re faced with so much danger, so much uncertainty? How can we be anything but overjoyed to be together? Unceasingly loving and kind? I know connecting with the people we love is the top priority now, and felt dismayed that it wasn’t going well.

Eventually this wave of unrest managed to work its way through, and we agreed to sing a few karaoke songs together. 

Singing is very emotional for me. My Dad loves to sing, and we’ve been singing together like this for my entire adult life. It’s easier for me to sing with him because I can follow him. On my own, it’s much harder to carry the tune. When we sing, I feel the mixed happiness of being together in joy, and pain of knowing how much this will hurt if there is a time I don’t have him any more. Also, my Dad is the most tender-hearted person I know, and it comes through in his singing voice.

All four of us were smiling and dancing. Simon, though still young, is a trained musician with a strong, clear voice, and belts out a few of his favorite songs. I put on a hot pink tutu that I found near the karaoke studio in the basement. I was having a little trouble because sadness kept bubbling up; and it’s hard to control your voice when your heart wells up into your throat, but still sang with feeling. My Mom alternated between singing and dancing–at one point waltzing with Simon–and she took a video of Simon, my Dad, and me singing a melodramatic 80’s song.

My Dad had a heart attack two years ago, and was recently diagnosed with diabetes. My Mom and my Dad will both turn 70 this year. As we sing, I think again and again of how precious these moments are, and how grateful I am to have them.

***

Now my mom is sitting with me, watching and listening as Donny plays Ave Maria

***

In Stillness of the 5Rhythms wave in the Sweat Your prayers class, I sink deeper inside myself, imaging that I’m channeling light, and sending it out one hand, around the entire world where it pours out white fire, then back into the other hand after a trip around the world. Soon, I imagine the entire world engulfed in purifying flame, flickering with spirit fire.

***

Donny ends with Danny Boy, a song my both my grandmother and my great grandmother loved, and we are in tears, sobbing along to the lyrics.

At the end of the concert, Donny walks toward the camera and takes a formal bow, then signs off.

***

I didn’t want surprises tomorrow morning right before I have to work, so I checked my work email right before posting this. I learned that another student I’m close with has lost a family member. 

My heart breaks. So many people are suffering now, most especially those who are vulnerable because of poverty. 

For now, there is nothing to do but practice, and pray, and try our best to love the people who are close to us as skillfully as we are able.

April 5, 2020, Broad Brook, CT

I Hear a Glow on You

“Mommy I hear a glow on you,” my eight-year-old son, Simon, told me when I spoke with him for the first time after three days of silence.  I had been in the woods, wondering at the complex root systems of the trees underneath the forest path I walked on, sitting at length in a meditation hall, eating in silence, and noting the intensity of a thick heat wave.

When I spoke with him, I was in the middle of a week-long retreat with 90 other educators who are entering an intensive, yearlong program for teaching Mindfulness to youth.  The retreat center, Garrison Institute, was formerly a Franciscan monastery, but has been repurposed for use by groups of any and all spiritual traditions.

The meditation hall was once a cathedral, and still has inlaid wood floors, soaring, curved heights with a circular narrative of symbols in stained glass, and an overlooking balcony that may have once housed the pipes of a resonant organ.  Half of the space was populated with meditation cushions and chairs, arranged in a semicircle facing the four teachers.

During the first morning of practice, the teachers provided considerable physical instructions and we did sitting and walking meditation throughout the morning. In stages, they described three fundamental “anchors,” or places to hold the attention, including breath, body sensations, and sound, suggesting finally that we pick one anchor to work with.  I chose breath, and so returned my attention again and again to the physical feeling of breathing.

Before lunch, one of the teachers, Kaira Jewel Lingo, gave instructions for mindful eating.  “Eating is a celebration,” she said in her remarkably gentle voice.  I heard, We can consider all of the many people and conditions that had to come together in order for this meal to come to us.  We can really take the time to notice all of the flavors and textures of each bite.  We can chew until the food is really liquid before we swallow it.

Despite my increasing mindfulness, lunch seemed kind of bland.  To remedy this, I shook a  bottle of tobasco sauce vigorously over my plain brown rice.  Within a few bites, my eyebrows raised in shock and my tongue and lips burned.  I had also spooned on a considerable amount of chunky salt, and after the first wave of heat started to normalize, a salt crystal landed on the tip of my tongue.  I raised my eyebrows still further, continuing a roller coaster of culinary sensation.  I got up to investigate the label on the tobasco sauce, my lips still on fire. Surely this must be a special edition, habanero, extra spicy tobasco sauce? It couldn’t possibly be the same tobasco that I regularly douse my food with?  I was surprised to learn that it was in fact regular, standard tobasco sauce, the exact same.

Setting out for a walk in the woods after lunch, I chose the only path that seemed available.  After a short time, I chose to veer left from the path and crossed a bridge over railroad tracks.  To my delight, this path emptied onto a big rock formation at the edge of the Hudson River.  I felt slightly tired, but hoped I could dance a wave, moving through each of the 5Rhythms – Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical and Stillness – in sequence, the fundamental ritual of my core practice.  Instead, after moving with noise in my ears for a few moments, I clicked into a groove and entered directly into Stillness, moving gently with breath, expressing the different currents of the river and ribbons of energy as they reached me.  It was as though someone had turned the sound off on the world.  I moved closer to the edge of the water, descending to where waves created by passing boats touch the rock.  A gentle Staccato found me, the rhythm that has had the most to teach me lately – the rhythm of form, expression, direction, and of making things in the world.  I moved with my arms and hips to the flips and curves and edges and advances and retractions of the relationship between water and rock.

Back in the meditation hall in the afternoon, I felt slightly sick, constricted through the diaphragm, and hot at the level of the face.  Lately I have recognized the need to be able to release energy when I am overfull, like a pressure valve.  How to do this hasn’t been exactly clear, however.  It seems that the energy of mindfulness has its own strong momentum.  Once I’m in the stream of mindfulness, I can’t just say, “OK, I’m not going to be mindful anymore.”  Then, I just start being mindful of trying not to be mindful.  In this case, I stepped briefly out of the meditation hall, letting go of the attitude of concentration, and that seemed to regulate me.

Reflecting later, I considered this progress in my practice.  I’ve been reluctant to back off of my edges in the past, occasionally resulting in depression and ill ease.  After these few short moments of casual attitude in the foyer, I re-entered the hall and took my seat among my peers in a more relaxed state.

Another of the four teachers, Erin Woo, presented a talk that evening on the topic of authenticity, and the many limiting stories we tell ourselves that diminish authenticity.  She included personal examples of a story that has impacted her own experience, the story of “not good enough.”

During the final walking period of the evening, the early July sky lit with sunset.  I stood on an overlook, facing the Hudson river and a wide field.  I gasped as the field and bordering woods shimmered, alive with fireflies.  I was concerned about seeming like a show-off, and of hogging the space of the overlook, but I slipped into motion, tracking the fast appearing and disappearing lanterns of the little bugs, again in Still Staccato, spine released, and long, ranging gestures with sudden stops and dips, and with occasional twitters in the hands and fingers, expressing the tiny dots and pauses of light that danced in the field below.

Silence wrapped luxuriously around me.  Part of the instructions for silence were to avoid even eye contact.  I felt too meek with my eyes cast down, so I held my head up instead, occasionally meeting people’s gazes and lighting up slightly.  In the past, I have inhabited silence with a hard line, entering so deeply into my own small space that I might even feel the need to defend it if someone spoke with me or made beseeching eye contact.  In this case, although I was in silence and very much turning in to the experience of my own inner body, I was still part of the collective field, and remained energetically porous and connected to the people around me.

A moving bell at 6.45AM mingled with my dream state and woke me on the third day of the retreat, which happened to be the 4th of July.  After a morning stretch, meditation period, and breakfast, I walked in the woods again.  I felt enveloped by the tunnel of trees, and imagined the deep and complex root systems which allow the trees to communicate, even crossing under the very path on which I walked.  This time, I cried at length, thinking about the current state of the country.  I reflected especially on the fact that its current prosperity is due in large part to the labor and subjugation of enslaved peoples, and to the land taken without remorse from its original inhabitants.  An extra painful history to consider at this time, especially as racism and xenophobia have increased exponentially.

The teachers offered a taste of many different practices, and during the afternoon session, another teacher, Robert Thomas, offered a practice that involves open awareness, letting go of a reference point or anchor and hanging out in open space.  As we prepared to move out of the meditation hall to practice walking meditation, he suggested that we consider gazing upward toward sky.

I made my way to a hallway of tucked away classrooms, but finding them already occupied continued on to a covered walkway between two second-floor sections of the main building.  Three people were already there, arms resting on the balustrade, gazing upward.  After some moments, a low growling began to emerge from the darkening sky.

At the end of the walking period, I made my way back to the main hall and took my seat again as the sky continued to rumble.  After longer than I expected, rain began to pelt the high ceiling, creating a loud hush.  After some moments of meditation, the retreat manager announced that there was an emergency weather advisory, suggesting that some might wish to leave the big cathedral and move to the basement level.  No one seemed inclined, but the teachers suggested a five-minute break in case people wanted to close windows or decline to practice in the main hall during the storm.

Along with several others, I made my way to the front steps, where the sweeping vista of the Hudson River was blurred by heavy rain.  The heavy wooden doors were each held by one retreatant.  Without hesitation, I stepped out into the rain, tipping my head back and letting rain pour over me, grateful after several days of grueling heat.  Acknowledging the frequent lightning, I returned to the stone steps under cover, and sat in silence.  A woman next to me ate an apple with decisive crunching bites.  Two enthusiastic birds continued to sing in the bushes to the right of the doorway.  Mist from the rain landed on my forearms and cheeks.  Across the wide river, a cliff waterfall I hadn’t noticed before swelled to three times its size, crashing with white water.

A bell summoned us back to the meditation hall, but some of us lingered on the steps, breathing the storm in.

Returning to our seats, the storm continued to activate the big room.  I found myself rapt, counting the spaces between the thunder and lightning, aware of the dynamic, dimensional space of the sky around the building and of its intersection with the inside. At one point, I felt terror approach from the left, from the direction of a simultaneous flash of lightning and crack of thunder.  My vision got weird and I felt terrified:  heat, sick, rising.  For a moment I was afraid I might be having a stroke.  The words of an Indian master to one of her students came to mind, “Don’t worry, if you can just stay with it, you will accumulate great merit.”  The experience rushed through me, arising, peaking and concluding in less than a minute.

In the evening, after a patient, slowly-chewed, silent dinner and evening sit, Kaira Jewel gave a talk on how to cultivate mindstates that lead to happiness, and discourage mindstates that lead to suffering. She called these processes “The Art of Happiness” and “The Art of Suffering.”

Kaira Jewel began her talk with a reflection on “Interdependence Day” and the fact that there is no thing that is only America or American, but there are many phenomena that make up what we know as America.  Some include the enslavement of human beings and the experience of being enslaved, and the genocide of the people who originally inhabited the land.  Walking in the woods earlier, I felt strongly that July 4th needed to be formally addressed, and I was grateful for Kaira Jewel’s words.

After Kaira Jewel’s talk, we headed out of the meditation hall again for the final walking meditation period of the day.

Instead of staying on the overlook, this time I headed down the stone path straight into the heart of the firefly field.  I hesitated briefly, afraid some part of me might want to show off.

Within moments, however, I was immersed, moving through a full 5Rhythms wave, the fundamental ritual of my core spiritual practice.  I moved in Flowing, feeling and honoring my feet on the forgiving grass, then began to move in the direction of every firefly I perceived in the expansive field, exhaling forcefully, sinking low into the knees, using the pinky sides of my forearms like swords, rising and falling, building heat in the body, watching the edges of my vision for a new flicker, responding to three nearly simultaneous lanterns, then waiting with full lungs during a brief pause in flashing.  The precision of Staccato attention built to the fever of Chaos, and I let my head go, the pricks of light in the air around me blurring as I spun, dipping and coiling inward and away from my own axis, and in and out of my own field.  Breathing erratically and sweating heavily, I began to notice the individual fireflies around me, lifting up onto the toes and reaching toward a rising light with the fingertips, leaping and falling, beaming unreservedly, in an expression of pure delight.

Finally, sound fell away again, as I moved with one tiny bug at a time.  Lightning bugs tend to hover and linger, so they make excellent dance partners.  Still dusk, I could see and track an individual even when it was not lit, and I cupped my palm, letting it lead me, rising and opening my hands in a slowly turning gesture, delighting in its slow transition into illumination, bowing my head to its tiny expression of majesty, part of the unified whole and spectacularly unique at once.

Still pulsing with life, I sat with my peers for the final meditation period of the evening.  Every time I half-lowered my eyes, I saw shimmering lights both inside and outside of me.

The next day passed in a river of sensations, challenges and joys. We moved out of silence and began to consciously build community through a variety of exercises and shifting constellations.  Kaira Jewel led us in an optional movement session, introducing us to the practice of Interplay.

Another of our teachers, Alan Brown, offered a talk, making a compelling case for the importance of self-regulation, especially for teachers. “Attention is a form of love.  Embodiment is a form of safety,” he said as he described how young people can regulate themselves and can learn to self-regulate through the adults they are in contact with.  “Just being a self-regulated adult in the classroom, before we’ve even taught anything about Mindfulness, is already a powerful intervention.”

He opened his talk with an astonishing story about his own path, which includes a diagnosis with Tourette’s syndrome.  “Mindfulness was literally a medical miracle for me,” he shared, as he summarized the insights of many years of practice.  In his case, deep investigation and inquiry into the body, along with some strategic questions posed by his teachers at opportune moments, lead to a radical decrease in the symptoms of Tourette’s and enduring faith in the power of Mindfulness practices.

Following an afternoon of community building which included tears and howling laughter, Alan was also very, very funny, and the room roared with good humor.  The teachers also shared several games we could use with students in our classrooms, including a competitive game that physically modeled the paths of neurotransmitters through a line of bodies, and a game that involved passing a full cup of water around a circle.

At one point, Kaira Jewel led us in a structured Lovingkindness practice within a smaller group we will work closely with throughout the entire year of the course.  At its conclusion, we offered Lovingkindness to all beings everywhere, without exception.  I saw a pulsing dome of energy high above us, into the sky and beyond, twisting light ribbons edging moving planes of energy:  powerful, building, resonating.  The woman to my right perfectly described my own vision, saying she could see it through me somehow.  “We should consider teaming up in card games,” I joked.

The retreat formally ended with writing prompts and shared reflections in our small cohort groups, inspiring words from each of the four teachers, and a ritual of passing a string around the gigantic circle.  At its conclusion, the teachers cut a tiny section for each of us, and we tied it around our wrists, a way to remember our experience and to recall our purpose as we re-enter the streams of our lives outside the container of the retreat.

During the days after we let go of silence and engaged in speaking, at least ten people commented on my dance with the fireflies.  “Are you a Tai Chi master?” one generous woman asked.  “Was that Brazilian fight dancing you were doing in the field?” asked another.  I smiled and said with some effusion, “I was just dancing with the fireflies.”  If pressed, I would describe the dance in more detail, and if pressed further, shared information about the 5Rhythms dance and movement meditation practice.  Many said they thought it was great that I wasn’t afraid to let go, something that never crossed my mind, though I did hesitate because I feared that part of my intention was to show off.

What most said was something along the lines of “That was so beautiful!  I just stood there watching you.  Your joy was enormous!  I love your energy.  It made me feel so happy.”  Some even said it inspired their own joy.  I inevitably choked up, touched that the people in this new community were so unreservedly happy for my happiness.  Had I given in to self doubt and kept myself contained, I would have missed an opportunity to experience joy, and in the process of suppression would also have missed a chance to share joy.

I’m not surprised that you “hear a glow” on me, my dear son.  This week has lit me from the inside.  The path, at least for the moment, rises to meet me, showing itself a little at a time, tiny increments of light, moving in a collective field.

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

Journey into Trance

“Moving with the spirit has taught me all I know.”  -Gabrielle Roth

I didn’t have much time to contemplate what I might experience when I signed up for “Journey into Trance,” a two-day workshop with Jonathon Horan, who is both an experienced 5Rhythms teacher and the current holder of the entire 5Rhythms lineage. Stepping out of the elevator onto the 5th floor at the Joffrey in the West Village, I happily greeted many friends and prepared to step in to the studio, bringing many ongoing narratives into the room with me.  Right before I entered, I ran across Jonathan and embraced him in greeting.  Immediately after, I wished I had been more discreet, thinking that he probably has people coming at him from all sides, and may not have actually wanted to be hugged.  I let that go and moved across the threshold of the studio, feeling a knot of emotion in my throat, along with a rush of gratitude.

A few days before I’d had a conversation with my seven-year-old son Simon about the difference between brain and mind.  The brain, I shared, is a thing in your head with complex electrical wiring to the rest of your body.  The mind is your brain, but also stretches past just your own head.  Because all that you think and perceive and experience is influenced by things outside of your body, you could say that your mind also includes everything that ever is or ever was.  After that, he asked several profound questions about the nature of existence and consciousness.  Then he said, “Mommy, can we still get that book to hold all my Pokemon cards?”

Another thing I carried into the studio was the experience of teaching Mindfulness to teens.  I have been dabbling for several years now, but this is the first year it has become a significant part of my schedule.  The technique I taught students this week was “First Thought,” when you watch for a thought, then when one appears, simply label it “thinking” and return to the object of meditation.  My experiences with the students (and also some with the adults) crowded my mind, and I kept reviewing my inspirational speeches, past and future.  Then, I would catch myself and say, “thinking” and return to the experience of feet, breath, body, rhythm.  Truly, I gave myself few escapes this weekend.  A fortunate thing, because it doesn’t seem like Jonathan would have accepted less.

I started most sessions with laps around the perimeter of the room. I felt like it helped me to arrive in the space. I also imagined I was helping to establish an energetic container.  On my first lap, as I walked past the beautiful black-feather-themed visual presentation created by Martha Peabody Walker and Peter Fodera, I discreetly dipped my hand into a metal washtub of salt that was part of the installation, scooped up a small amount, and rubbed it onto the soles of my feet.  Initially, I moved gently around the space, saying internally, “I see you there; and I am grateful for it,” as I encountered each person.

As the wave progressed, drenched with sweat and thirsty, I paused to drink water, facing out the 5th floor window onto Sixth Avenue.  For the first time ever, I saw people high up on an outdoor walkway by the clocktower of the historic church across the street.  Smiling, I raised my hand in greeting.  One woman waved back, and nudged a man next to her, who did the same.  Delighted, I continued to be strongly connected to everyone in the room, and also to the world outside the studio throughout the weekend, often picturing the sky on the other side of the ceiling, and occasionally, the curving, vast earth.  Once in Stillness I sent energy from one hand to another, but it took a long route, traveling not just across my hands, but around the entire sphere of the earth to arrive in my other hand, creating a long, circular arc that I completed into a circle with my own body.

In this opening wave, I danced a ferocious Chaos.  At times, I wasn’t sure which rhythm we were in.  Lately, I have had work to do in Staccato, and have been deliberately holding myself in Staccato rather than charging on directly into Chaos.  During “Journey into Trance” there were times that I suddenly realized we were already moving into Lyrical without ever having really let loose in Chaos.  As a result, my neck was very sore the first day.

Continuing to reflect on my own students, who are mostly people of color, I thought also of the courage of people of color who are part of the 5Rhythms community.  That week, I had led circle discussions about the events in Charlottesville.  During the same week, a student in a different class spoke out hotly during a reading, “This is making me feel a certain type of way!” he said.  “How are you feeling exactly?” I asked. He started to explain that a character’s remark seemed racist.  A teacher, who identifies as white, like me, and who I share the class with, tried to talk him out of it.  “Well, I have a neighbor who…” I let her talk for a few moments, then said, “You could definitely read that statement as racist.”  “Thank you!” gasped another student.  I thought about how many times I’ve been in full 5Rhythms rooms where there has been just one apparent person of color.  I thought about how incredibly important diversity of all kinds is for the integrity and vitality of the 5Rhythms community.  I thought, too, of the incredible courage of my fellow dancers.  How despite the daily ravages of racism, how somehow many people of color have managed to step up to be courageous, surrendered and vulnerable, fully in the dance.  And how remarkable and valuable that is.  And how inspiring.  A point of hope in this ugly world that seems to grow uglier daily.

We took a break in the late afternoon.  I didn’t feel like socializing, and ate in the nearly empty studio.  I made a few notes about the morning in my journal, then followed the suit of another dancer and sat in meditation with my back to a column.  Then, I lay myself down and entered a chthonic, deep relaxation, falling into the floor, the earth and darkness.  As people returned from the lunch break, they thundered by me with their pounding footsteps, but I continued to rest until the music started again.

Instead of leading us into a wave right away, Jonathan gathered us together and began to speak.  He talked about Gabrielle Roth, the founder of the 5Rhythms, first.  He said that witnessing her dance, she was so transparent and embodied, you could just cry looking at her.  Gabrielle Roth was also Jonathan’s mother, and he spoke of growing up with her at spiritually radical Esalen Institute in California, then moving to New Jersey at the age of 7, where he felt out of place.

At this point, he switched from his own experience to ontology.  He argued that we have all pretty much entered into a fool’s agreement, “That I won’t see you, and you won’t see me.” Why be half-hearted? He posited.  Gabrielle, herself, was not a rule follower.  Instead, she relentlessly sought what was real and true and beautiful.  What I heard was, Wake up! Wake up!  Your very life is at stake.  I’m making it all sound funny because it is, but we don’t have time to languish in generalities.  Let go of the many limiting ego stories that are stifling you. Life is passing so quickly.  Before we know it, we will die.  Jonathan said later, “After all, we may only live once.”

Next Jonathan invited us to consider the frame of “Journey into Trance” and reflected that trance might look differently for different people.  He also suggested that we approach the weekend with curiosity and an attitude of spaciousness, accepting that some might need to roll around on the floor screaming, make odd noises, or act in other socially unacceptable ways.

After Jonathans’ talk, we began with simply walking around the space.  We experimented with allowing ourselves to be led with our bellies, and then with allowing ourselves to be led by our heads.  I noticed that I had a much lower center of gravity when the belly was leading, and that I felt like part of the collective field, as opposed to when the head was leading.  Despite a sore neck, I danced a very athletic wave.  Every time a thought arose, I said, “thinking” internally and returned to the physical experience of my body, finding endless new ways to move: big back steps, a new complication of low-weighted spinning with open shoulders moving my hands up and over me like coiling carnival rides, deep front and back movement in the pelvis and sacrum, sunken with my heels touching the backs of my knees and then stepping forward, my heart bursting open, then coiling my entire abdomen back inside, then bursting my heart forward again, sometimes continuing this arcing in the space in front of my spine, and through the hips and pelvis.

“Are you in or out?” Jonathan asked.  “And if you’re out, can you come back in?”

At a moment when my energy dipped, I encountered a friend at the outer edge of the moving room.  She, too, seemed tired, and somehow we fell into each other, quivering, shimmying, small, precise.  We rolled inside discreet shoulders, cascading forward and back.  Making oblique eye contact, we both smiled.  Moving from our bellies, I recalled images of Fela Kuti’s many wives who accompanied him onstage, dancing with vibrancy, the rhythm of the body pouring out at the heart, with arcing, arching intensity.

At day’s end, I was thoroughly exhausted, and my neck was very painful.  I recalled that not only had I perhaps not given myself fully over to Chaos, but also that Simon had woken up very early and put on a movie, which I half-watched along with him, my neck propped awkwardly onto pillows and twisted for the duration of the three-hour film.  I darted out, making my way to the subway, where I made the happy discovery that I had a little bag of snack food in my bag, then spent several minutes trying to open it.  Struggling, I finally resorted to attempting to pierce the bag with one of the sharper keys on my keyring, when I finally looked around.  Just across from me on the same platform stood Jonathan, two blazing sapphires staring out of his face, his arms crossed over the railing, one forearm over the other, grinning and giving off sharp little glints of light.

My parents were in town to care for Simon, and I met up with all of them.  I was too tired for intelligible conversation.  I went to bed as soon as I got Simon organized, tucking a sheet onto the couch in the living room since my parents would sleep in my bed, and settling in as quickly as possible.

Saturday night I slept very deeply, and, miraculously, woke Sunday with no pain in my neck.  I went to brunch with my family, then made my way back to the Joffrey for the second day of “Journey into Trance.”  As I pushed open the glass door from Sixth Avenue into the Joffrey, Jonathan was entering too.

As the music started, I did a few laps of the perimeter, then found Flowing easily.  I was gentle, small, with my arms close to my torso, totally fluid, slotted in among the many prone dancers, almost crying, connected to the entire field, not separate.  Moving around the space, I did what I call “Passing Through Practice” where I sort of energetically whoosh through everyone and everything–even the columns–and let them all whoosh through me.

Jonathan spoke of a “deep inquiry into the interior self.”  Listening carefully to the teacher’s talk is a practice itself, and every time my mind drifted, I directed it quickly back.  “Are you in or out?” he asked again, “and can you know when you’re out?  Can you stay in?”  I rebelled internally, thinking it would be better not to grasp and push, and instead to just notice.  But maybe this is a different level of practice, I thought, maybe it is possible to stay in the entire time.  Maybe even all the time, on and off the dance floor.  Jonathan also suggested that we experiment with “soft eyes” rather than direct gaze, to support the experiment of working with trance.

eHe also said to the group, “If I were you, I might have come in with resistance today after dancing like you danced yesterday.” I reflected that I have, in a way, encountered very little resistance to 5Rhythms over the years.  Even when I am aware of how vulnerable I am, how torn to bits, how connected, how surrendered, how energetically porous, even when I have felt judged or left out–even at these times I am not late on purpose, I don’t lie to myself and blame others when I don’t feel good (even when I do), and I always step into each rhythm with the sincere willingness to fully bring it to bear.  It is a curious thing.  In other practices, such as yoga, I have encountered much more resistance.  Sometimes the edge is razor sharp, though, and when I go very deep I may spend ensuing days feeling irritable or otherwise “off,” perhaps my ego’s desperate attempts to re-assert itself.

At one point, Jonathan said something about how ridiculous it is to pay attention to how you look in the mirror.  Here, too, I rebelled, realizing I had been so intent on not looking in the mirror, that it had acquired the flavor of aversion.  So I spent a little time right next to the mirror, turning to the side so I could fully examine the complicated sways and arcings of my stomach, lower back and pelvis.

After the talk, I glued my belly to the floor and moved with weight, pulling myself around with my arms and coiling spine.  I pulled up onto my knees and set about finding as much movement in my spine as possible, my head forward and simply following and completing the many ratcheting, twisting and undulating gestures of the spine.  I stayed deeply connected to myself as new forms arose in Staccato.  At one point as we moved from Staccato into Chaos, I played with balance, staying on one foot, and swinging, bounding and descending with the other, looking for the farthest edges of balance.

I recalled that when I first started dancing, I pretty much always kept “soft eyes” as it seemed rude or intrusive to look straight at anyone.  Back then, almost a decade ago now, I often stayed inside a heavy trance for the duration.  For me, it became most intense during Chaos.  I was kind of a trance junkie–craving that depth, that intensity, the shamanic glimpses, the sense that life is deeply meaningful, that “this” layer of reality is just a tiny piece of the picture.  Then, I started to open my eyes more, literally.  I found the ground, I met people’s gazes more directly, more often.  I felt like instead of privileging transcendence, I was connecting with greater awareness to the world.  Trance would still come in pockets, spirits would visit, ancestors would soothe me, visions would present, energy would move tangibly and visibly.  But I never experienced the sustained trances that I did in the first two years of dancing again.  To my surprise, “Journey into Trance” was, for me, an opportunity to re-integrate those early experiences, and to enter into other dimensions with the full support and protection of my spiritual community and teachers.

Call on your guides, your ancestors, your spirit animals, your lineages, Jonathan invited at one point.  I spread my arms as wide as the room and grew very tall, regal, a great trailing cape rushing from my arms as I moved in sweeping ribbons through the space, my spirit entourage in a phalanx beside and behind me–my emotional support system, my protectors.

During this wave, I was very released in Chaos, unleashing a massive proliferation of forms, including everything, somehow, leaving nothing out.  In Lyrical, I again moved through the room, passing through people and objects, feeling the whoosh of merging.  In Stillness I had a vision of eyes on the palms of my hands.  Even with my eyes shut, I could see everyone in the room, could see the sky through the ceiling, and could see inside of my own body and the interior bodies of people in the room.

Before Sunday’s break, Jonathan lead us in a guided meditation.  Laying with my full back on the floor, my arms and legs extended, he spoke into the microphone, suggesting an image for the cessation of ego defenses.  At its conclusion, I had to remind myself where I was.

I floated down the elevator, avoiding eye contact, not wanting to dissipate, not wanting to disperse.  I went to a local health food store, and chose food as efficiently as possible, thinking that I would write after eating.  Unfortunately, I had forgotten my journal on the bench in the locker room at the Joffrey, so I didn’t have any way to write.  Instead, I listened to the most curious, avant-garde recording of two older women in a fascinating conversation about movie stars from the 1980’s that was playing on speakers in the dining area.  Slowly, I realized there was also music playing.  Then, I realized that only music was playing, and the conversation I was listening to was actually taking place in real time, between two women just a table away from me.

I thought of a story about a conversation between Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the founder of the Shambhala Buddhist tradition, and His Holiness Dilgo Kyentse Rinpoche, who was the head of the Tibetan Nyingma lineage.  As the story goes, the two friends were sitting in contented silence on a bench in a garden, enjoying a pleasant afternoon.  After some time, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche pointed and said to the other, “They call that a tree!” at which point they both broke into peals of laughter, which went on for some time.

After lunch, Jonathan started us off with intentional self-care, guiding us as we massaged our necks.  Most stood up for this, but I remained on the ground, sticking various parts of me to the floor emphatically.  At this point, I moved around the room in Flowing, my eyes soft, saying, “I feel you there, and I am grateful for it,” rather than what I often say internally in Flowing, “I see you there, and I am grateful for it.”  During this wave, I partnered less, turning more and more inside, “cruising the emptiness” as Jonathan said, quoting Gabrielle.

“What’s real, what’s true, what’s deep, what serves the big dance of love,” Jonathan chanted, ever suspicious of sanctimonious bullshit, calling out our egos stories, our feeble escapes, our neurotic self-making again and again.  In Chaos, I moved with total engagement and energy, released, erased.  I hung my skin onto a nail while I danced around in my skeleton, near a friend who always inspires me, both of us totally plugged in, but on different journeys.  Moving into Lyrical, my bones glowed with ancient writing, light on every bone’s surface, the plane of my shoulder blade, the big femur bone of my leg, on every separate link of my spine.  Then, a spirit visited me (or so I imagined).  I remembered him from many years ago, when he came to dance and overlapped with me, weaving in and out of me as I swooned and tears poured down my cheeks, teaching me the Passing Through practice.  This time we danced again, becoming one body and then separating, ending with swaying, my hands pressed to his hands.

Jonathan selected a soaring, tender song with the lyric, “There is a place I know.  Only I can go there,” that I associate with the passing of his mother, the beloved Gabrielle Roth.  A low, grazing groan of grief dragged out of me, a deep-bass lowing.  I moved in a gesture that finds me nearly every time I am in Stillness, looking down, moving my hands slowly to the left, turning my body around, and felt I could see the origin of this gesture, many lifetimes ago, in a scene of trauma and destruction.  I was a gigantic, swooping, flapping vulture, and the air displaced as I beat my wings.  Still groaning, crying, breath totally moving me, not separate.  Even as I gasped, every muscle echoed it.

Though I was totally lost in this place, I gently settled back in, like a feather landing.

At the end, my breath was rich and resonant.  Like some ancient grief had cleared.  In the coming days, I would experience the irritability and emotional volatility of an ego that feels seriously endangered after it has managed to step into the sky, into the vastness of experience, where its tiny stories are drowned out by the deafening hum of existence.

At the end of the day, I made to leave, still feeling private.  I changed my mind and lingered for a little while, talking with several friends with whom I had shared gestures or insights.  I made my way to Jonathan, remembering that my earlier hug might have been overkill, and stood with my hands in prayer, touching them to my forehead as I made a tiny bow, my eyes smiling. “Thank you.  This has been so beautiful.”  He gave me a generous hug and a kiss on the cheek.

The five-year anniversary of the death of Gabrielle Roth was just a few days after the “Journey into Trance” workshop.  I hope we honored her memory this weekend.  I hope we served her vision.  I hope trance continues to unfold for all of us, in Jonathan’s words, inside this “cathedral of bones” this “wilderness of the heart.”

October 16, 2017, Brooklyn, NY

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

 

Raising Kids with the Rhythms

“I think we’re here to learn to be calm and gentle. And also to be fast. And to notice things.”
— Simon, age 7

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My son, Simon, has taken a risk and let go of my hands for the first time today, up-rocking breakdance-style with intricately syncopated steps, twisting his waist emphatically, using all parts of his fast-moving feet, and following their gestures with sharp-angled arms. He is nearly as tall as me, lithe and bursting. Tight, brown, carefully-clipped curls frame his face, and his dark eyes flash with excitement and focus. Simon and I are at the Joffrey Studio in the West Village – in a Sunday morning 5Rhythms class. Simon suddenly looks around at the many dancers, then grabs hold of my hands again, pulling hard on my wrists.

Of everything that I do as a parent, I think giving Simon access to the 5Rhythms is, quite possibly, my best offering. Even at the age of 7, the practice has already equipped him with a powerful toolkit for moving through life.

Three years before Simon was born, I started dancing the 5Rhythms at the suggestion of a trusted friend. For the first two years of dancing, I cried almost constantly. I found that I needed to collapse again and again — an antidote for years of holding things back in difficult relationships. Sometimes I was crying out unexpressed grief, sometimes I was crying for joy; and often I wasn’t sure why I was crying — only that my at once tender and defended heart was becoming more and more available.

On first glance, a 5Rhythms class would probably just look like a wild dance club, but for most people, it is also much more. For me, it is a laboratory for life, encompassing psychological, emotional, philosophical, interpersonal and shamanic levels.

I had already been practicing for two years when I became pregnant with Simon. For me, pregnancy was a study in contrasts. My relationship with Simon’s father was marked by conflict and I felt anguish on a daily basis. At the same time, I loved being pregnant. In dance, I found a way to express and release the pain I was experiencing. Although I was as big as I would be by six months into pregnancy, I never moved like a pregnant woman as dancing gave me the ability to work with the fast changes in my body and allowed me to adapt consciously as my balance shifted. Also in dance, I was deeply aware of the miracle of pregnancy. I felt so full. So un-lonely. So fascinated with my own body. I danced both our rhythms at once, marveling that I contained two heartbeats and that I was both one person and two people at the same time.

When I was five months pregnant, I danced like a wild animal in the rhythm of Chaos during an intensive workshop and became concerned that I might have harmed my small son. After that, I decided to play it safe and take a break from 5Rhythms until after the baby came. Things got even worse in my relationship, however, and after a week I realized that I urgently needed my supportive 5Rhythms community to balance out the conflict at home. I also feared the pain I was experiencing could harm my son unless I was diligent about moving and not allowing the energies of afflictive emotions to lodge in either of our bodies.

In a way, I am grateful even for the difficulty, as it caused me to stay with practice, yielding moments of incomparable beauty. I continued to attend 5Rhythms classes until less than a week before Simon was born.

At a 5Rhythms class, sometimes an arrangement of objects and images is included in the studio, rather like an altar or an artwork installation. Right after Simon was born, the same friend who had first invited me to 5Rhythms included a picture of him in such an arrangement for the Friday Night Waves class. In the picture, he is tiny, his head nestled in the palm of Daddy’s hand, in exquisite profile. The teacher, Tammy Burstein, also announced that Simon had arrived, and, as my friend tells it, several dancers were moved to tears by this news, since they felt they had been dancing with him all along.

I took a break from classes right after Simon was born, but continued to practice daily in my apartment, putting him down in a baby chair when my movement became vigorous, but holding him through much of the practice. After a month, when he could take a bottle and I could be away from him for a few hours, I resumed regular attendance, at least on Friday nights.

When Simon was an infant, still only held or carried, I brought him several times to a small daytime 5Rhythms class that Tammy Burstein held at the now-defunct Sandra Cameron dance studio on the Lower East Side. I would dance with Simon in my arms, letting the weight of his little body pull me into dipping spins in Flowing, his presence affecting my experience of each of the rhythms. Dancers would partner with us, and we had many playful, deep, fascinating exchanges. I felt confident about dancing while holding him, and continued to be fully engaged in my own practice. Sometimes Simon would travel with other bodies, usually comfortable with being passed around. Once, I sent Tammy a song I thought she would love, “Be My Little Honeybee” from one of Simon’s children’s albums. After two absorbing waves, she surprised me by playing the honeybee song in the rhythm of Lyrical. Simon, though still barely speaking, recognized it and lit up with delight. The moment lives in my memory as one when I was fully aware of the gigantic, tender love that I feel for my son. In fact, it has been inside 5Rhythms classes, when I am not thinking about red tape or setting boundaries or the challenges of day-to-day living, that I have most fully noticed and enjoyed the powerful love that I have for him.

I knew from the beginning that I wanted to raise Simon with the 5Rhythms. Truthfully, I couldn’t imagine not raising Simon with 5Rhythms. But the question was: How? A few 5Rhythms teachers offer classes for children, but there are no classes for children in NYC, where we live. I was able to bring Simon occasionally to small, daytime classes, but once I started working during the day that was no longer possible. The guidelines for including children at night classes were extra hazy. It was sometimes done, but it seemed to be a favor granted on a case-by-case basis. Also, a lot of the night classes seemed too energetic, and occasionally too emotionally dark, to bring a small child. And I didn’t want to intrude too heavily on the adult space of the practice room.

For over a year, I produced an all-ages 5Rhythms class called Family Waves in two successive Brooklyn venues. The class was taught by rotating teachers including Jason GoodmanMichelle LampisAmber Ryan and Alex de Willermin, who generously volunteered their time. Picture many small children (including mine) running in circles and criss-crossing the room, narrowly missing (or not missing) collisions and occasionally indulging the adults by following the teacher’s directions. The class lasted only an hour, but we ranged through various terrain as the teachers attempted to address both the children and the adults at the same time, so it wouldn’t be either a children’s class the adults were just hanging around for or an adult class the children were permitted to attend.

For so many of us, 5Rhythms is what has allowed us to heal from a lifetime of pressure to stop moving. It is a doorway to freedom, a path out of constraint. How powerful, I thought, it would be to never stop moving — to have it from the beginning. To be taught and encouraged from when you are tiny that it is alright to be exactly who you are, that the possibilities for aliveness are beyond our wildest imaginings, that you will experience infinite different emotions and that they are all OK. That you are absolutely the only one who can dance your dance, and, at the same time, that you are in no way separate from the fabric of humanity, but are intricately connected with every other being. I very much wanted to share these teachings with my son, to help him to thrive in our increasingly stressful world.

But in reality, my precious child was like a wild animal, running at top speed, totally out of control. I was mired in conflict. Authentic movement seemed essential to my vision as a 5Rhythms parent, but somehow my son had to observe certain boundaries. I struggled to set limits without giving him the message that his way of being was somehow incorrect. Eventually, I had to admit that the format really was not working — at least not for Simon. And I was so stressed with trying to manage the red tape of the class and Simon’s behavior at the same time that it didn’t make sense to continue the project. Fortunately, a short time after the Family Waves class dissolved, a policy was made officially allowing children to attend the Sweat Your Prayers class on Sunday mornings, so I had a new way to hold the door open for Simon.

When I contacted Alex de Willermin, one of the Family Waves teachers, to ask her opinion about the best way to expose children to the 5Rhythms, she emphasized that the first point of contact is for parents to dance with their children at home so that their children could “see their parents dancing and feeling much more relaxed, present and connected after they do.” She stressed the importance of using “language to help tap into their curiosity, playfulness, and imagination; as well as clear rules: whether to give permission or set boundaries.” In Alex’s words, “Society could only benefit from children becoming more confident and comfortable in their bodies — with their emotions allowed and their being affirmed.” Notably, Alex is currently teaching Family Waves classes in her hometown, Paris, a re-incarnation of the multi-generational class that we piloted in Brooklyn.

Daniela Plattner, a 5Rhythms teacher who herself began practicing around the age of 8, also shared her thoughts on raising kids in the 5Rhythms. “The best way to expose children to 5Rhythms is to bring them to class.” She went on to say, “We need to get 5Rhythms in kid-relevant places.” Daniela, for example, did her first 5Rhythms class at her local skating rink.

Daniela believes that the practice could positively impact children. In her words, “It will help them develop their fine and gross motor skills, become comfortable in their skin, learn to work with healthy boundaries and non verbal communication, decrease stress and anxiety, and provide a healthy outlet for anger and sadness.”

Asked to describe her experience as a young practitioner and how it may have impacted her development, Daniela shared, “I practiced as a kid with Gabrielle growing up. When we were filming one of her videos, I remember thinking that I could do anything. I was free. I always felt empowered and intrigued by the 5Rhythms, especially with Gabrielle and Jonny (Jonathan Horan, Gabrielle Roth’s son). It gave me confidence to strut on the street and to be bold and brave in board rooms.”

In response to a question about how 5Rhythms is different for kids, Daniela said, “They need specificity and images, and sometimes more guidance. My preference is for teaching concepts through dance. Kids don’t need as much information about the science and goals of the practice as adults do in work-place settings.” The fundamental objective of 5Rhythms is the same for all ages, though: “to get people moving and expressing themselves.”

I asked a parent who has been diligently practicing the 5Rhythms for nearly twenty years his opinion on raising children in 5Rhythms. He stated, “I started 5Rhythms when my second child was born. I didn’t explain 5Rhythms or teach it to (my children). We just danced all the time. They came to one class and didn’t care for it. … What I’ve learned for myself is that if I’m grounded in my body, I’m a better parent. The funny thing is, my daughter is 20 now and is extremely confident; and my son is 17 and a professional dancer.”

At a Sweat Your Prayers class taught by Kierra Foster-Ba, I was joined by Simon, our ten-year-old cousin, and my uncle, who were visiting New York for the weekend. On entering, the two children settled into a spot at the edge of the dance floor and played with some action figure toys they had smuggled in. Before long they moved to the middle of the room, still playing with their toys, sticking close to a column. My uncle had entered before us, and seemed right at home, falling into movement right away.

In the car on the way to the class, I explained the expectations. “There aren’t too many rules,” I said, “But we can’t talk inside the dance room; and also you have to keep moving—at least a little. Even if you get tired, then you still just find a way to move a little something.” I asked Simon if he had anything to add. “You can’t crash into anyone,” he said — a rule he has heard many times repeated. I added an extra rule for the sake of my excitable little close-talker: “And you can only give your family member three hugs for the duration of the class. The other times you have to give them their personal space!”

I had a delightful dance, myself. At one point, one of my all-time favorite dance partners entered the studio and we jumped right into a high-energy dance of joyful abandon. My cousin watched this unbridled engagement with hesitant interest, but both children continued to play on the floor. I danced near them several times, gently prompting movement, then drifting away again, leaving them to their game. At one point I looked over and both were on their bellies, holding their ankles, laughing and rocking.

It wasn’t until the second wave that they started to enter into the dance, themselves. Remarkably, they got up the courage to move just as we entered into Chaos. I cheered them on with my gestures, smiling as they jittered and jumped, getting into the music.

This week, Simon turned seven. We had a jam-packed, rollicking party with nearly seventy people in our apartment that included singing, dancing, playing music and rough-housing — a chance to practice a manageable version of Chaos in the face of the growing chaos of the national arena. The day before his birthday, Simon called me back to the room after I put him to bed, crying. “Mommy, I’m sad for you that I’m getting older and I’m not a baby now!” “Oh, no! Simon, I’m a little sad that you are not a baby anymore, but I’m even more happy and proud about the young man you are becoming!” Realizing he is growing up quickly strengthens my resolve to offer Simon all that I can in terms of coping skills as he matures and inherits this crazy world.
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Simon and I have a ritual for entering a class that started when he was tiny, designed to help him to be aware of sacred space. Our ritual is to stand on the threshold of the studio door, hold hands, take a big breath in, then, as we exhale forcefully, we jump into what we call “The Magic Dance Room.” Today, once across the threshold, we find a spot, tucked into a comfortable corner near a pile of coats, and Simon gets himself settled as I start to move around the room in Flowing. He pretty much burns through all of his snacks during Flowing in the first wave, then gets up in Staccato to join me on the dance floor. He wants me to hold both his hands, and he makes this very clear when I try to release one hand and extend my range of motion.

In the elevator, people are generous with their attention, and Simon feels seen and welcomed. The class’s producer, who is set up with a small table filled with postcards announcing upcoming events and a folding chair, kindly welcomes Simon’s hug and kiss with open arms as we prepare to enter the studio.

Simon and I have a ritual for entering a class that started when he was tiny, designed to help him to be aware of sacred space. Our ritual is to stand on the threshold of the studio door, hold hands, take a big breath in, then, as we exhale forcefully, we jump into what we call “The Magic Dance Room.” Today, once across the threshold, we find a spot, tucked into a comfortable corner near a pile of coats, and Simon gets himself settled as I start to move around the room in Flowing. He pretty much burns through all of his snacks during Flowing in the first wave, then gets up in Staccato to join me on the dance floor. He wants me to hold both his hands, and he makes this very clear when I try to release one hand and extend my range of motion.

When Simon was tiny, he often wanted to be carried during a class. If he was on the ground, he would wrap his arms around my leg. I found an entirely new and fascinating way of moving, a previously undiscovered aspect of self, even with one leg restricted and grounded, that I would never have otherwise uncovered — the depths we can perhaps only find when faced with limitations. I reflected that although some might see having a child as limiting their experience with his dependence and in providing certain constraints, Simon has given me a door into vaster freedom than I had previously been able to conceive of. Especially in the first two years after his birth, creative work has flowed from me into the world.

Since we had just celebrated Simon’s birthday, I relived the memory of giving birth to him. Simon was born at a warm, quiet birthing center without any drugs or medical interventions. I danced Flowing in the intervals between contractions, and worked through each of the rhythms in the process of giving birth, pounding out a staccato rhythm on the side of a large bathtub as I labored, raising massive energy and letting go in Chaos as the baby came to light, blinking my eyes in delighted Lyrical as I looked at him for the first time, and breathing in Stillness as we rested together, absorbed in a whole new reality.

In this case, in the Sunday class, I am moving very much in Staccato; and my dance remains attentive to Simon’s needs. He trots out some more fancy footwork as we move around the room, still holding tightly to my hands, and looking at all the dancers around us. As Chaos arises, Simon goes back to his spot in the corner and plays with his Legos. I move around the room, then join with a good friend in Lyrical, letting extensions pull me upward, and following her pendulous spinning.

In Stillness, Simon and I both stretch out on the floor and roll slowly, side by side, into the middle of the room. Before long, I sit up, continuing to move near him, but he remains on his back, pushing himself slowly through the room with his bent legs, gazing upward at the dancing adults.

Another 5Rhythms teacher who taught the Family Waves class, Michelle Lampis, is now the parent of a two-year-old. Although she feels her son is too young to attend classes, “we dance almost every day for fun. There are times when a particular rhythm stands out more. For example: on a given day my son might be feeling frustrated with not getting his way. I can help him move that frustration by stomping my feet along with him and saying ‘No’ to a staccato beat, or just by being playful in Lyrical together. Expressing his (and often my own) frustration can also introduce humor to the situation.”

Gabrielle Roth in “Maps to Ecstasy” writes, “The best thing to do with an angry child is not to try to turn off the anger, to push it down, to insist that the anger be controlled; rather, it is best to give the anger permission, to affirm it. Maybe you can get down with the child and do an angry, stomping, monster dance together. It is so vital for us to help our … children … in letting their emotions breathe and find apt expression. Compassion supports other people in entering into and releasing their authentic feelings.”

Michelle also believes that exposing children to 5Rhythms concepts “gives them more tools for expressing what they need and how they feel. Each rhythm can become a reference point and provide emotional vocabulary.” She goes on to say, “We don’t have a culture that gives us avenues to explore and understand our emotional world. Mostly we aren’t meant to feel ‘too much’ or ‘too big’. The 5Rhythms provide a place to express it all.” She adds, “I hope it will mean that my son and I have a language that will involve all aspects of our experience — our thoughts, our emotions and our bodily sensations.” 5Rhythms has the potential to not only expand our shared language but also, in the process, to expand our very capacity for experience.

Longtime 5Rhythms teacher, Jane Selzer, talks about the ways 5Rhythms training has influenced her as a parent. “The (advanced 5Rhythms maps) Mirrors and Cycles, in particular, have helped me to shift with my son as he grows. At the Waves level, 5Rhythms helps me to avoid getting stuck in patterns that aren’t working. Also, the playfulness and creativity of the practice have always helped me keep my relationship with my son light and fun instead of rigid and judgmental.”

As the next wave starts, Simon takes another Legos break. Joining me in Staccato, we dance close to where he has his Legos and toys. He lets go of my hands again and gets creative with his feet as we move toward Chaos, letting me loop around him, ranging over several feet. As Chaos deepens, Simon goes back to his spot in the corner again, while I move into an exceptionally creative Chaos with the favorite dance partner who has delighted me by making an appearance.

At home, we have always danced. There are often 5Rhythms-inspired experiments, but really it is a blend of yoga, dance and rough-housing that most often takes place in our living room. We also use the vocabulary of 5Rhythms in our discussions. For example, using the language of Flowing to talk about how to move on a crowded sidewalk in our home neighborhood, Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Another example is talking about the energy we need to bring to getting somewhere, Flowing — “taking our time and looking at everything mode,” or Staccato – “efficient mode” — when we need to be about business and timetables. Yet another is in talking about the Chaos of trying something new, and how sometimes people get stuck in ruts and are afraid to experiment. In fact, many of our daily conversations are inflected with the 5Rhythms, which helps us to connect and to communicate in ways that are meaningful.

Back to the Sunday class after the 7-year-old birthday party, in Lyrical, Simon points silently to the door, and we both step out of the studio briefly. “The music is too loud. It’s hurting my ears,” he says. “OK, we can stay out here for a little while.” “We can go back in when the song is done,” he says, leading me back into the room as soon as the music shifts.

Coming back through the door into the studio, the rhythm of Stillness has already begun to unfold. Simon pours his weight onto my forearm, as he does when we are walking home and he is extremely tired. We are invited to partner in a conscious speaking exercise to answer the question “Why are we here?” and sit on the floor facing each other, in “criss-cross-applesauce” posture. We snuggle with his head on my shoulder and our arms wrapped around each other. After a few moments, I say, “Do you want to talk about why you think we’re here?” Without pausing Simon says, “I think we’re here to learn to be calm. And gentle. And also to be fast. And to notice things,” he says, probably answering in terms of why he thinks we are here in the class, today, not existentially, as I had assumed the teacher meant the question. I kiss his forehead, then take my own turn to speak, saying, “I think we’re here to make others happy and to make ourselves happy.” It seems that his “today” answer and my “existential” answer were pretty similar anyway. We continue to snuggle and to rock back and forth gently. At one point, I gather him into my arms, sideways, like when he was a small baby, and rock him gently. As the final song begins, Simon rests the back of his head on the tops of my feet, leaning backward over my knees, relaxed. I feel a rush of love and gratitude, as we hold hands and gently move each other’s arms, listening to the last song Gabrielle Roth ever recorded.

When the music concludes, the mood in the room is reverent. Simon leads the way to our things. We quietly pick them up, then head out of the studio. “Simon, I’m so proud of you,” I say, “When the teacher asked us to leave the room silently, you followed the directions.” He responds, “I didn’t even hear that, Mommy. I just knew I was still in the Magic Dance Room and I couldn’t talk.”

I am grateful for the many moments of glorious connection, when the practice draws back the veil of mundane experience and reminds me of the divine blessing of my sweet little boy, my darling son. We end our adventure with a special lunch and talk about our experiences. I say, “Simon, I am so happy to have had this chance to practice with you. It makes me so happy. I hope that the 5Rhythms will help you build up your happiness skills”. I think, but don’t say, my little one, who is quickly getting big, I hope the practice arms you to deal with a frightening world that I can’t protect you from. I hope your heart will guide you always, and that you will never forget that moving is your birthright—the destiny that gave birth to you, that gave birth to all of us.

Practical Suggestions for Raising Kids in 5Rhythms

(Originally published in the Moving Center Newsletter, Summer 2017)

To Notice Things

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“I think we’re here to learn to be calm.  And gentle.  And also to be fast.  And to notice things.”

-Simon, age 7

Have I mentioned recently that I adore my son?  Absolutely, totally and completely adore him.  Gabrielle Roth, the creator of the 5Rhythms practice, provided a model for me in this.  She adored her son, Jonathan Horan, too—unabashedly, wholeheartedly—and made it no secret.  Sometimes I think my own wounds might have kept me from fully embracing and displaying this love if it hadn’t been for Gabrielle’s powerful example.

This week, my son, Simon, turned seven.  We had a jam-packed, rollicking party with nearly seventy people in our apartment that included singing, dancing, playing music and rough housing—a chance to practice a manageable version of chaos in the face of the growing chaos of the national arena.  The day before his birthday, Simon called me back to the room after I put him to bed, crying.  “Mommy, I’m sad for you that I’m getting older and I’m not a baby now!”  “Oh, no!  Simon, I’m a little sad that you are not a baby anymore, but I’m even more happy and proud about the young man you are becoming!”

The times I have felt closest with Simon and most aware of the love I have for him have been inside 5Rhythms classes.  I started dancing two years before Simon was born; and I danced throughout pregnancy, right up until the very last week before giving birth.  A short time after he was born, he started to come to daytime 5Rhythms classes; and he has been attending classes periodically ever since.

Simon is too young to come to Tammy Burstein’s Friday Night Waves class (though he has been trying to convince me otherwise), but I thought of him during the class this week, especially since his birthday was just the day before.  In the first wave—what we call it when we move through each of the 5Rhythms in sequence: Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical and Stillness—I entered the studio after Flowing was already transitioning to Staccato, but still felt I had enough of Flowing, somehow.  Though I have noted some reluctance toward Staccato recently, I entered into Staccato with ease.  Trying to work against my recent impulse to rush through Staccato straight into the next rhythm, Chaos, I lingered in Staccato.  In the process, I missed Chaos completely, waiting, as I was, for it to fully arrive.  I vowed to let loose in Chaos during the second wave if it was at all available to me.  At moments, I thought about the chaos of the country and how it might affect Simon’s life.

In the gap between the first and second waves of the class, Tammy offered spoken instructions as she moved through the different rhythms.  Her words caused me to reflect on what I consider to be “normal,” and how much my perspective on what is normal has shifted since November’s election.  Given that affronts to democracy have become frequent, frequency does not mean that these affronts are normal, by any means.  There is absolutely nothing normal about the current moment.

In the second wave, I made sure not to miss Chaos.  As Flowing began, Tammy encouraged us to turn in, and I had a flash of the starry cosmos inside as I lowered my eyelids.  Stepping in to Staccato, Chaos seemed to come quickly.  I shook, almost violently, rocking deep in the pelvis during the transition from Staccato to Chaos, then continuing to shake.  More than one rhythm operated on me at once.  I intersected with a friend briefly, and we were wild, creative, expansive.  We separated, then came back together again in Lyrical.  Lyrical kicked in like a switch had been hit, with a flick, and with a rush of delighted inbreath.  I noted the millisecond it arrived, thinking, “Lyrical!  Here it is!” We twittered and flew, but retained the ferocity of our earlier Chaos.

Next, I joined with a dancer I hadn’t ever seen before in an athletic Stillness.  We bounded and leapt, on and off the ground, in an attitude of breakdancing, sliding and twittering, pulling and gliding, pausing in curious, emphatic shapes the whole while, once with my cheek pressed to the floor, weight in my hands, and my legs twisted and raised, with tension in the balls of the feet.  I tossed myself under the bridge of his back, both of us laughing.  We disregarded Tammy’s instructions when she said, “Change” into the microphone, inviting us to take a new partner, but after the third “Change” we bowed melodramatically to each other and finally moved on.

I joined, once again, with my creative and expansive friend, both on our knees, our hands fluttering a gentle dance.

Simon and I had decided to attend the Sunday Sweat Your Prayers class the night before, and waded through the considerable rubble of Saturday’s birthday party, deciding to leave the bulk of the cleaning for later in the day so we would have enough time to get a snack before class.  He was short-tempered as we were preparing, and I told him, “That’s it!  You can’t use a screaming voice.  I don’t think we’re going to be able to go today.”  “No!  Please! Please, Mommy! Please! Please, I promise I won’t scream anymore!  Please take me to the class!”  I told him he would have one final chance and we set out.

We arrived at the Joffrey Ballet, where most 5Rhythms classes in NYC are held, with enough time to pay and get settled.  There was a line all the way up the stairs and out the door that seemed to be made up of ballerinas, based on the tights and smooth ballet hairstyles.  We learned that they were trying out for a professional ballet company as we threaded past them and into the crowded elevator.  In the elevator, people were generous with their attention, and Simon felt seen and welcomed.  The class’s producer, too, kindly welcomed Simon’s hug and kiss with open arms after we arrived on the 4th floor.

Simon and I have a ritual for entering a class, designed to help him understand and notice sacred space.  This was especially useful when he was smaller, to help him notice that once we enter, we don’t speak with words.  We stand in the threshold of the studio door, hold hands, take a big breath in, then, as we exhale, we jump into what we call “The Magic Dance Room.”

Once across the threshold, we found a spot, tucked into a comfortable corner near a pile of coats, and Simon got himself settled as I started to move around the room in Flowing.  He pretty much burned through all of his snacks during Flowing in the first wave, then got up in Staccato to join me on the dance floor.  He wanted me to hold both his hands, and he made this very clear when I tried to release one hand and extend my range of motion.  When he was tiny, he often wanted to be carried during a class.  If he was on the ground, he would wrap his arms around my leg.  I found a whole way of moving, even with one leg restricted, that I never would have otherwise uncovered.  In this case, I still moved very much in Staccato, though my dance remained attentive to his needs.  He trotted out some fancy footwork as we moved around the room, still holding tightly to my hands, and looking at all the dancers around us.  As Chaos arose, Simon went back to his spot in the corner and played with his Legos.  I moved around the room, then joined with a good friend in Lyrical, letting extensions pull me upward, and following her pendulous spinning.  The dancers close to us influenced the dance, too, as we found unending new forms.

In Stillness, Simon and I both stretched out on the floor and rolled, side by side, slowly into the middle of the room. Before long, I sat up and moved near him, but he remained on his back, pushing himself slowly through the room with his bent legs, gazing upward at the dancing adults.

At one point, someone triggered my anger.  I perseverated for a few short moments, then let it go, not wanting to taint the experience for myself or for Simon.

As the next wave started, Simon took another Legos break.  In Staccato, we danced near his spot.  For the first time, he let go of my hands and got creative with his feet as we moved toward Chaos, letting me loop around him and ranging over several feet.  As Chaos deepened, Simon went back to his spot in the corner again, while I moved into an exceptionally creative Chaos with one of my favorite dance partners.  We found new patterns, as one of us would express a sequence and the other would fall into it, each delighting in surprising the other with a new idea or expression.  The room was crowded, and our usually unbridled dance was softer (though still wild) and slotted in around the dancers close to us, but still taking up all the space we needed.

In Lyrical, Simon pointed to the door of the studio, and we both stepped out briefly.  “The music is too loud.  It’s hurting my ears,” he said.  “OK, we can stay out here for a little while.”  “We can go back in when the song is done,” he said, leading me back into the room as soon as the music shifted.

Coming back through the door into the studio, Stillness had already begun to unfold.  Simon poured his weight onto my forearm, as he does when we are walking home and he is extremely tired.  We were invited to partner, and to take turns telling the other, “Why are we here?”  We snuggled with his head on my shoulder and our arms wrapped around each other.  I said, “Do you want to talk about why you think we’re here?”  “I think we’re here to learn to be calm.  And gentle.  And also to be fast.  And to notice things,” he said, prompting me to kiss him on the forehead.  I took my own turn to speak, saying, “I think we’re here to make others happy and to make ourselves happy.”   We continued to snuggle and to rock back and forth gently.  At one point, I gathered him into my arms, sideways, like when he was a small baby, and rocked him gently.  As the final song began, Simon rested his head on the tops of my feet, leaning back, relaxed.  I felt a rush of love and gratitude, as we held hands and gently moved each other’s arms, listening to the last song Gabrielle Roth ever recorded.

When the music concluded, the mood in the room was reverent. Simon lead the way to our things.  We quietly picked them up, then headed out of the studio. I said, “Simon, I’m so proud of you.  When the teacher asked us to leave the room silently, you followed the directions.”  He said, “I didn’t even hear that, Mommy.  I just knew I was still in the Magic Dance Room and I couldn’t talk.”

We ended our adventure with a special lunch, and talked about our experiences.  Of everything that I do as a parent, I think that giving Simon access to the 5Rhythms is, quite possibly, my best offering.  Every phase of his development and of our ever-evolving relationship has been reflected in the 5Rhythms.  I am grateful for the many moments of glorious connection, when the practice draws back the veil of mundane experience, and reminds me of the divine blessing of my sweet little boy, my darling son.

February 7, 2017, Brooklyn, NYC