The sky is white and the mist is so thick it feels like rain against my cheeks and eyelids as I run down the hill toward the Scantic River on this Easter Sunday. The tree branches are still bare, but there are new patches of spring green on some of the open expanses, and a few yellow flowers are starting to appear.
At the bottom of the hill I turn right and take the path into the woods, thinking I’ll head to my favorite spot next to the Scantic River, where I dance every time I’m here visiting my parents. I hear the rush of a rapids section where there will be just a languid current later in the season, and pause to watch the water dance over the rocks.
Instead of settling into my favorite spot, I decide to continue further into the woods, running along the edge of the river in its same direction. A giant blue heron takes flight as I approach and glides around the riverbend until it’s out of sight.
I planned to wake up early to run, but it took me hours to fall asleep, so I slept in and got a later start. I’m a little worried that Easter dinner preparations
are happening and I should be helping, but I give myself to the moment and vow to work hard once I’m back.
Before I left, my mom shared that she found the straw Easter bonnets my sister and I wore to mass when we were small. There is a faded photo of us in the hats in front of the house in pretty floral dresses, along with my brother and cousin in their tiny navy suits. St. Catherine’s church, where my parents and grandparents were married, where I was baptized, and where we went to church on holidays like Easter, is just a mile from where I’m running now.
As a kid, mass seemed like something to be endured, but on Easter Sunday, my senses were fully engaged. The giant stained glass windows would be tipped open, and sharp early spring wind would be pouring in with the sunlight. When mass was finally over, there would be groups of new purple and yellow crocuses and daffodils quivering a spring greeting beside the church walkways.
Back in the woods, I run around a loop that will be hard to access by late May. I decide to finish the loop, then continue through the first stretch to come back again to a sandy beach.
I descend down a little trail, and create a circle to dance inside of on the river beach.
My mind drifts back to when I was a young teen and first got into distance running. Maybe because I was interested in pushing my limits. Maybe because I wanted my body to match the bodies I studied in Sassy and Vogue. Maybe because it was a way to feel more alive. Or maybe because it was a way to outrun the difficult feelings I didn’t have any other way to manage.
My Dad drove with the odometer on to help me map the distances I was covering; and I’m pretty sure I had just completed a ten mile run.
I loved feeling my feet slap the pavement, the time with my inner world, and the routine of relating to each different stretch of the route.
But what I remember most from this day was the bath I took after my run. We had an old claw foot bathtub and the bathroom was in the eaves with a sloping ceiling. For the first time that year, the window was wide open and the eyelet curtains were flapping wildly. The sun was bright, though there was still a winter bite in the air. I knew I had just pushed my limits and given my best, and I felt relaxed and happy–elated even–with this first rush of spring.
Anxieties pull at the edges of awareness, but I shift attention to my feet and the give of the sand as I drop my center of gravity and set my hips and shoulders to circling, comforting myself with the thought that I can always go back to this crowd of anxieties later if I still want to.
Memories pour through as my body continues to circle.
During my last winter of college, our upstairs neighbors in Jamaica Plain lost their boa constrictor. They told us they weren’t too worried since the same thing had happened the previous year. They shared that the giant snake had burrowed into the walls to ride out the winter, then had re-emerged once the weather warmed up.
At the time, I was in the process of extricating myself from underground club culture – a deeply unsettling process where I lost all of my friends, sense of purpose, and identities all at once.
That winter, the winter the snake disappeared, I had vivid nightmares. Sometimes they would be of demons. One was of a club kid with slitted cat eyes who kept trying to get inside my apartment.
Color oozed out of the edges of everything, leaving me grey and dim.
On the first warm day, the Fugees version of Killing Me Softly drifted in with the spring wind from a passing car. Something in me thawed; and long-frozen tears started flowing.
Despite everything, spring had once again arrived.
And sure enough, the boa emerged from the walls soon after.
Back at the river beach, Staccato snags my attention on a tree across the river. Exhales get louder. My hips drop and carve as another spring memory emerges.
When I was fifteen, my boyfriend and I had a half-day and went to his house afterward, thinking we would be alone.
We were upstairs in his room when we heard the backdoor slam.
His father’s planned flight had been cancelled and he was downstairs, banging in his suitcase and opening cupboards. I leapt into the closet while Jacob–who was to be my last light-of-day boyfriend for many years to come–went downstairs to greet him, probably in boxer shorts. For seventeen heavy minutes, I waited in the closet on a pile of dirty clothes, gazing out through the wooden door slats, tensely watching the illuminated red minutes change on a bedside-table clock, trying not to breathe too loudly, my heartbeat exploding despite the tiny clipped breaths I was taking.
I heard Jacob’s father enter the room. Without stopping, he walked directly to the closet, pausing with his hand on its doorknob while I fully held my breath. He yanked the closet door open and found me there, naked, my clothes somewhere in the tangled bed. My breath rushed out in shock and I said something ridiculous, inappropriate, incongruous to the situation. I think it was, “Hi, how are you doing?” He said nothing to me, and instead hollered down the stairs for Jacob to come immediately. When Jacob appeared he sneered, “Well, take care of her,” with a tone of contempt. “Does she need a ride home or something?”
I dressed and ran down the street to the hockey rink, where Jacob had practice later that afternoon. When Jacob finally arrived at the rink he told me he had been kicked out of his house, then curtly turned his back, and walked away. I ran outside and flung myself down on the grass, rolling around and hitting my head on my arm. Yet I remember another strand, too. Though I was deeply upset, I think some part of me was also enjoying the drama, possibly even feeling alive in it.
I imagined that Jacob and I would have to stand up proudly for our love despite parental disapproval, but he broke up with me shortly after. In my mind, this episode, which made my sexuality so public, in some weird way both proved I was desirable and also proved I was unacceptable – strands of identity that came to be woven deeply into me, planting some early seeds (seeds I would continue to unconsciously water) for years of crushing anxiety.
My feet are carving up the river beach now. My elbows and hips sync up, dropping and twisting, and before I know it my head joins in, loosening my organized movements and setting them in a thousand different gestures at once. My hair is growing out after an actual styled cut, and it covers my face as my head drops down, and falls back as my head rolls around. Before long, it flies out wildly, blending with the spinning landscape.
Here I’m not trying to outrun the difficult feelings. I’m just letting them storm through, and moving along with them.
I wish I’d had this practice as a teen, or any practice, really. I think if someone had told me I didn’t have to always act on difficult feelings, that I could just stay with them and let them run their course things might have been easier for me.
When I finally found the 5Rhythms dance and movement practice, it gave me back what I loved so much about underground club culture: the creativity, the mystical communion, the intensity, the shared consciousness, the freedom. And it also gave me a way to deal with difficult feelings rather than always trying to outrun them.
Extended family is already starting to arrive for Easter dinner as I hurry into the shower. No one seems to mind that I’m rushing to put out the cheese I brought from Brooklyn; and I’m still able to do my part, be present in close conversations and playful banter, and help out with cleanup after.
With my hands in soapy water, I look out the kitchen window to where the river continues, unseen, beyond the trees.
At this point, I’m grateful for everything on my path that has brought me to this place. I’m also hoping this new spring will offer me a fresh start, and once again remind me who I am. Will remind me that underneath all of the temporal identities, I’m a dynamic moving being; and I can always re-invent myself.
Daily routines during the school year can be crushing. Not only am I a teacher with a long list of roles and responsibilities, but I also work hard to support my own 12-year-old son in his learning.
There are many things to catch up on, projects I want to attend to, outings to plan, and many competing priorities.
But for the moment I’m in a Flowing space. Flowing is the first of the five rhythms in the 5Rhythms dance and movement meditation practice. It is receptive, circular, patient, grounded, and humble. It bides its time. It listens to the vibrations in the ground. It reminds me that if I try to charge forward without first finding my “ground” any actions will lack integrity.
It takes me awhile to change gears and trust that I don’t have to press to do every single thing in the most efficient way possible. I think it’s partly because the longer days make me feel like I have more time.
Even when I’m trying to work my way through my list, for the past week I’ve more or less drifted from task to task.
“You have to know what you want! You have to really see it, visualize it, know it as real, to make it a real thing!” Excellent job-seeking advice from a trusted advisor.
But I’m just not there.
I’m still detoxing, integrating, processing. I don’t know the way forward just yet. My practice at this moment has been to take a break from trying to know, and instead to dive into practice.
Today I practiced and practiced and practiced. I did sitting meditation, yoga-type movement, ran in the woods, and danced multiple 5Rhythms waves to music in the backyard at my parents’ house, where my son and I are staying for much of the summer.
I played with weight in the rhythm of Flowing, imaging my feet were weighted, or that they were made of metal and the ground was a magnet. Before long, I also imagined that my hands were weighted, dragging me toward the ground after a dramatic rise, and pulling me into endless circling. Moving into the rhythm of Staccato, the powerful ground that had been established opened the doorway for exuberant expression.
I have nothing tangible to show for these many hours spent in practice. And yet, the time feels well spent. To be honest, I don’t think there could be any better use of my time.
Later, as I ate dinner on the back deck with family, the sky started to rumble and wind coursed across the landscape like contour lines on an elevation map.
I sat myself down to meditate by my little altar as the sky opened, wracking every surface with pelting rain.
I remembered another thunderstorm, this one during a meditation retreat at Garrison Institute that I wrote about in 2019, during a period of community silence and relentless heat.
“We were told there was a severe weather alert and that if we felt nervous we could take shelter on the lower level of the building. The storm tore the sky apart, and it was like the outside came resoundingly inside the soaring, once-Franciscan-cathedral main hall. Still in silence, several of us made our way to the front steps where we had a view of the sweeping lawn and river. The pavement and plants gave off steam. Mist exhaled into the entryway and landed coolly on my exposed arms, legs, and face. A white cliff-waterfall on the other side of the river tripled its size. A woman seated next to me on the marble steps ate a crunching apple, savoring each bite.
Back in the meditation hall, the storm continued as mindfulness became increasingly concentrated. At one point, I realized it was too intense for me, and stepped into the foyer, intentionally interrupting practice. After a few minutes, I went back in and sat down on the cushion again. Then, I had a sharp, sudden sensation on the left side of my head, and was seized by the fear that I might be having a stroke.
I remembered something the vipassana teacher, Dipa Ma, once told a practitioner who was freaking out during a sitting period. She sat next to him and said, “If you can stay with this sensation, you will accumulate great merit.” I settled down and the flash of pain and fear soon faded.”
Later I realized this was an important turning point in my path; and revelations poured through in the coming days. I have always loved storms, but now a storm can feel like a blessing.
In the evening, I finally sat down to write about practice.
Today new information about the January 6th insurrection also poured in, and I am amazed to find that my jaw can still drop. For now, I am gathering, receiving, biding my time, and listening to the ground.
I just lived through a difficult school year as a teacher at a public high school. Now that the rushing river of the school year has emptied me out into the ocean of the summer, I’m finding that I need to re-align myself before I’m even in a place to set new goals or imagine my own way forward.
Flowing is the first rhythm in the 5Rhythms map. For me, it is a place of humility, of supplication.
Today I created a circle in sand to move inside of, then danced to birdsong and the laughter of a shallow river over rocks. A simple prayer came through:
Help me to know
Help me to see
Help me to feel
Help me to be
In Flowing there are no experts. There are no showy moves, just movement. No beginning, no end, nothing to grasp toward, nothing to push away.
After this prayer arrived, I realized I need to allow myself to be less directed for a while.
For me, Flowing is where I re-align myself. Where I establish my mindfulness. Where I connect with my feet and let in whatever thoughts, emotions, sensations, or external phenomena appear, without forcing everything to have some kind of a supporting role in the ongoing story of myself. I try to move until it all flows by in the river of my mindstream.
Most days, I dance at least one full 5Rhythms wave as my practice.
Today, I was so absorbed in the rhythm of Flowing that I decided it was fine if I never left Flowing at all, and continued to circle, undulate, and rise and fall, different parts of my feet edging into the soft sand.
For now, I’m taking a break from professional goals, and committing myself wholeheartedly to personal practice.
Today, the rhythms of Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical, and Stillness did also arise, but I left with the intention to patiently embrace Flowing until Staccato breaks through and leads me in a clear direction.
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.
The late afternoon sun on my closed eyelids lets me see the orange-red blood in the eyelid’s tiny capillaries. Turning away from the sun brings them back to shadow. My eyes still closed, I turn into the dazzling sun and back into shadow again and again, moving with my own breath. Bird song filters down from the tallest tree in the yard. Wind starts as a rustle at the tops of trees, then causes a progressive cooling on the exposed skin of my arms and face, as my feet softly turn, feeling every curve and dip of the ground.
But I begin with the end, with the rhythm of Stillness. There were so many things that led me here, to this quiet reckoning, to this cloudless sky.
***
The day was already getting away from me; and I was tempted to cancel or rush through a video call I had planned with a friend. And then it seemed that every corner of the house was full of sound: the vacuum cleaner, my ten-year-old son, Simon, on his own video call, lawn-mowing outside. I keep moving around trying to find a place I could actually hear and settle down. I’m sure I seemed spastic, and my friend even suggested it might be better to postpone. Finally, I found a quiet corner and settled in.
Speaking with her reconnected me to myself, and I left the call thinking it was time well spent.
Over the past few days, I’ve been engaged in an ongoing discussion with another friend on the subject of feet. She is deeplyimmersed in the practice and teaching of yoga, and is also a dharma teacher. She wrote about how the soles of the feet are connected to the different regions of the body, and how the feet are really the beginning of the chakra system. She also shared that there are many images depicting the feet with fanned flower petals underneath them, indicating that the entire body is supported by the “lotus feet.” She wrote, “As the lotus feet ‘bloom’ they encourage similar openings in the nervous system and subtle body.”
I found that I had some things to share from the perspective of the 5Rhythms about the subject of feet.
It is the feet that connect us to our intuition, our instinct. One of my teachers, Kierra Foster-Ba, often says, “We, like any other animal, get a lot of information from our feet,” including vibrations in the ground. In this way, the feet can be seen as a gateway to primal, unconditioned awareness.
Each of the 5Rhythms is associated with a body part; and the rhythm of the feet is Flowing. It is considered the receptive rhythm, where we are letting in, sourcing, and gathering energy and information.
I’ve been investigating my relationship to Flowing anew of late, especially as I’ve been dancing in the woods, gardening, and attending to nature’s cycles like the moon and the seasons since retreating from NYC because of the pandemic.
In 5Rhythms, some talk about “finding the feet” as the measure of embodiment in 5R practice. It is as though to what degree you have “found your feet” indicates your level of attainment. This can be interpreted in a straightforward way–actually paying continuous attention, on purpose, to the physical feeling of the feet on the ground.
Personally, I tend to generalize this a little more, and interpret “finding the feet” as establishing and maintaining profound mindfulness, while using the feet as the primary object of meditation.
The entire dance is built from the ground up, and there are times we return to Flowing, even when we have shifted into the other rhythms that follow in the wave: Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical, and Stillness.
***
My first movements into the rhythm of Flowing today seemed twittery, but before long, I resolved to drop my full attention and weight into one foot and then the other, and this opened me into generous, weighted circling. Sometimes my steps were even subsumed and pulled into the larger falling circling of the body.
A different friend shared that in one class she had started to feel bored in Flowing. I could totally relate. For many years, I was so eager to get from the first rhythm of Flowing to the second rhythm of Staccato that I had to force myself to stay in Flowing for longer than felt intuitive. I often felt bored in Flowing. It’s humble edgelessness held little appeal for me, and I was eager for the expression of Staccato and the explosive catharsis of Chaos.
I realized that I had severed my relationship to earthiness, and, in the process, to the ground. It took many years of devoted practice, especially working with the rhythm of Flowing, to begin to reclaim this relationship.
Thanks to my own song choices, I was dropped abruptly from Flowing into the rhythm of Staccato. I occasionally let out a warrior cry, and my body was dynamic, alive, finding every diagonal, bending and flexing, bouncing up and curving down, sticking my butt way out, then pushing my pelvis forward, with my knees and elbows talking loudly.
Though I so needed Chaos today, I had to talk myself into it. I imagined my body was moving on a roller coaster track, and my head was like the last car that hops a bit off the track at the end of the train’s whipping gesture. I had a lot of energy in this part, though it wasn’t until the second chaos song that I actually moved intensely enough to be out of breath. At one point the music paused and I leaned forward and held my hands out behind me then crashed them together, rocketing back as the beat kicked back in. I used up all the space available to me, kicking my heels behind me, cross-back-stepping, and flinging my arms up.
Lately in Lyrical, the top of my chest rises up. Today, I was so happy. I’m so happy for myself, that I got to be this happy. I found a tiny little mound of earth to stand on top of, twitter down the side of, twitter down the other side of, back, front; and then the beat dropped again, and every bit of me coiled and bounced, it was like I was on a trampoline, my arms flying way up, body effortless.
Lately, I sometimes make videos of myself dancing alone, and today, as I watch the video, I cry. I can’t believe how lucky I am, that I get to experience such joy. Lyrical only opened itself to me after many dedicated years of working with the ground, with the feet, and with the rhythm of Flowing. Before then, it felt totally unavailable.
I suspend my leg forward and pause, bounce back, then suspend it backward and pause.
Then, this beautiful song comes through the speakers and I close my eyes, noting the variations of light on my inner eyelids. And that brings me back to the beginning, to the Stillness I opened with, to the flashes of light and birdsong, to the rustling breeze and its effect on my skin.
The last thing I do before breaking down my equipment and going inside to cook dinner is walk on the soft earth, my feet alive and knowing, absorbing the messages the earth needs me to hear.
May 18, Broad Brook, Connecticut
Images: Simon’s feet on grass (photo by Meghan LeBorious), The Auspicious Lotus Feet of Lord Vishnu (vivianlawry.com), Self attending to music (photo by Meghan LeBorious)
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and is not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.
I’m making a garden. Today, a local man came with a rototiller and churned the ground up, breaking through a thick layer of grass.
And yesterday I spent the afternoon planting flower seeds.
I haven’t experienced spring outside of a city since I left home for college in the 1990’s; and it has been fascinating. Cold is very slowly transitioning to hot. The trees are unfurling. Active, small creatures like squirrels, chipmunks, and birds romp at the edges of my perception. The field behind my parents’ house–where my ten-year-old son, Simon, and I are hoping to wait out the pandemic–is nearly solid yellow with dandelions. They would normally have been trampled by the high school athletes who use this field to practice, but this year they are abundant. Nearby, the grass and plants at the contours of one of the river’s gurgling feeder streams are emerald green now, translucent with sun energy.
Following my work day, I thought I would do a friend’s zoom class. After playing on the swing in the backyard with Simon I was running late, but decided to set up the speakers and computer outside and join anyway. As it turns out, I got the days mixed up. I knew I didn’t have time to pivot because of a work commitment later in the afternoon, so I decided to go with my setup and dance to a playlist I already had prepared.
Earlier, talking with a friend, I had recalled the gardens of my childhood. At Simon’s age, I had a big garden. My grandfather would help me till the soil and plant in late May, then I tended it myself. The first year or two, I had to haul water in my little wagon some distance every day to water my plants.
I spent hours there. I remember placing a pepper or other vegetable upright in the sun and sitting and staring at it for long periods, what I would now call a form of meditation, though I didn’t have (or need) language for it at the time. I remember eating the butter-and-sugar corn I grew slathered with butter at backyard summer dinners. I remember the dark dirt, the weeds, the sweat, the chicken wire fence, the dangling green beans, the prickly thistles, the crawling around on the damp, uneven soil between the rows.
Knowing my own son at this age, I marvel at my childhood ability to take on this big project and accomplish it without reminders, rewards, or adult interventions of any kind. I’ve been trying to help Simon learn to be a creative self-starter, but have faced challenges in getting him to buy in, perhaps not unusual for his generation. As a child, I had vast stretches of unstructured time, something that led me to learn and create without pressure and often without audience.
I became an urban person in my late teens, immersing myself in a totally-indoor underground dance world, and lost my affiliation with the earth.
My brother lived for many years in Colorado. Before then, I always said I was an “ocean person,” like some people say they are a “dog person” or a “cat person.” But when I went to visit him in Colorado and explored the raw, jagged Rocky Mountains, I decided I was a mountain person, too. I realized it was limiting to make myself be one or the other.
In the same way, in becoming so urban, I became not-earthy, not-rural, not-small-town.
But the truth is that I didn’t have to kick out one affiliation to insist on being another. They can both live in me. And now I’m remembering a nearly-lost self who had a numinous connection to natural phenomena, who followed the cycles of the moon, who read the tarot, who perceived everything as alive, and who studied nature-based religions with keen interest.
Back to the speakers and computer in the backyard, I decided to dance a wave. In 5Rhythms, that’s when we dance through each of the five rhythms in sequence: Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical, and Stillness. I was tired, and I didn’t really think I would get into it. In fact, I weighed the possibility of doing yoga or going for a run as soon as I pushed through this short wave.
The speaker volume was way up and I started to move in circles and pay attention to my feet in the rhythm of Flowing.
Of the five rhythms, Flowing seems most foreign to my nature. In Flowing, we connect with the earth. We drop our weight and our attention down. There is a real humility to it. And to be honest, I have sometimes found it boring, and have been eager to rush into the fiery expression of Staccato and the explosiveness of Chaos. It’s almost like in sticking with Flowing, I’m just doing my due diligence.
It’s possible this disinterest in Flowing relates to the fact that for so long I disowned my earth-self in favor of a more desirable identity. It took years of bringing my attention to the feet again and again to even begin to find my relationship to Flowing. It took many more years to fall in love with it.
Today, I felt the soft earth under me as I moved, and let it be simple, let it hold me, let it call me.
My Dad appeared on the back steps and asked if I had any ideas for dinner. I gave my input, then returned my attention to the feet, finding increasing engagement.
In Staccato the music spoke to me; and I couldn’t help but be inspired to sink low, to travel, to explore my elbows, to exhale forcefully. A song I absolutely love played and I leapt and bounded, removing my shoes and bouncing directly on the soft grass. And another song I love. And another. This one was a coiling, fast-tempo jazz song in the transition from Staccato into Chaos.
By Chaos, I was untethered, spinning and bouncing back and forth; in a rushing, weighted, articulated spin with sailing head, low and pumping, light and loose. One knee has been sore with so much practice, but dancing on the grass protected it, and I went all out, traversing a wide radius.
In Lyrical I was ebullient, cascading to the ground and into the air, beaming, coursing an arm up and then another, crossing over, rising a kicking leg to the side, falling into a dramatic squat and rapidly uncurling in an upward whirlwind. I added one more Lyrical song since I was nowhere near done with this exploration. I rocked my elbows in a plane around me and let them pull me up into my side angles, nearly kicking up my heels.
It wasn’t until many years of dedicated work with Flowing and with the ground that Lyrical started to reveal itself to me, and since then it’s become a place I love to visit.
In Stillness I was still rushing, alive with light-sugar. The lowering sun peeked through the emerging tree leaves. When the song faded, I continued to move with everything, feeling the humming molecules of the ground, the trees, the small animals, and even of the plastic and metal around me.
I love taking my friend’s class, but I also love dancing alone, and it kind of seemed like a blessing that I’d mixed the days up. I love what individual practice teaches me. I love that it is self-generating, and that I don’t need anything but what’s inside of my own heart. And connecting with the land gives me endless things to dance to–a rich symphony of form, space, and energy.
I startled, remembering I had a work commitment at five, and ran to check the time.
I had another half hour, so I decided to practice yoga in the sunshine. Standing alert, with my feet flat on the warm patio, hands aloft, I spotted a bird of prey, almost invisible it was so high up–seeming to hover in the air, barely moving. Moving through several poses, each time I found myself on my feet and looked up, the far-off bird was still hovering in that one spot. Then, the next time I folded my head down, moved through a sequence, and rose back up, it had disappeared, leaving nothing but endless blue sky.
Simon and I raked the grass clumps out of the newly-tilled plot that will be our garden, hauled them to the edge of the lawn, and dumped them into a raucous pile.
Later, I ran in the woods on a path along the Scantic River. White and grey clouds began to roil and it started to rain. I danced with the river’s currents, seeing into the depth and contours of the river because of the lack of sun glare. I saw the land’s contours above the water line, too, and perceived the continuations of the rivers and streams with all other flowing water.
I found a peaceful spot to meditate, patiently noting each cold rain droplet on my exposed hands and face, grateful to be in the woods, grateful to be sitting on the soft sand of the river bank, grateful to be alive, grateful to the earth.
May 6, 2020, Broad Brook, Connecticut
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and is not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.
I remembered something the vipassana teacher, Dipa Ma, once told a practitioner who was freaking out during a sitting period. She sat next to him and said, “If you can stay with this sensation, you will accumulate great merit.” I settled down and the flash of pain and fear soon faded.”
I just lived through a difficult school year as a teacher at a public high school. Now that the rushing river of the school year has emptied me out into the ocean of the summer, I’m finding that I need to re-align myself before I’m even in a place to set new goals or imagine my own way forward.
immersed in the practice and teaching of yoga, and is also a dharma teacher. She wrote about how the soles of the feet are connected to the different regions of the body, and how the feet are really the beginning of the chakra system. She also shared that there are many images depicting the feet with fanned flower petals underneath them, indicating that the entire body is supported by the “lotus feet.” She wrote, “As 
Thanks to my own song choices, I was dropped abruptly from Flowing into the rhythm of Staccato. I occasionally let out a warrior cry, and my body was dynamic, alive, finding every diagonal, bending and flexing, bouncing up and curving down, sticking my butt way out, then pushing my pelvis forward, with my knees and elbows talking loudly.
I’m making a garden. Today, a local man came with a rototiller and churned the ground up, breaking through a thick layer of grass.
Back to the speakers and computer in the backyard, I decided to dance a wave. In 5Rhythms, that’s when we dance through each of the five rhythms in sequence: Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical, and Stillness. I was tired, and I didn’t really think I would get into it. In fact, I weighed the possibility of doing yoga or going for a run as soon as I pushed through this short wave.
Later, I ran in the woods on a path along the Scantic River. White and grey clouds began to roil and it started to rain. I danced with the river’s currents, seeing into the depth and contours of the river because of the lack of sun glare. I saw the land’s contours above the water line, too, and perceived the continuations of the rivers and streams with all other flowing water.