by meghanleborious | Jan 3, 2015 | Notes on Practice
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and are not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.
Today I went to one of my favorite places—a quiet spot next to a river that my grandfather loved. Though it was cold, I sat in meditation on the ground, patiently attending to my breath, to the icy wind grazing my cheekbones, to the sheer bank on the other side of the river, to the glowing late afternoon sun behind the trees, to the ground beneath me, to the moving water, and to everything reflected upside down on its surface.
This week, I was not able to formally practice 5Rhythms; and I find myself considering broad themes within my own practice, rather than specific experiences that have arisen in a given class.
When I started an intensive formal meditation practice in 2007, I slowly came to understand that mindfulness and awareness are two ends of a certain spectrum of experience. Before then, mindfulness and awareness seemed like vague synonyms, but after they became quite distinct. Mindfulness, strengthened in meditation through strategic attention to one thing, such as the breath, is about sustaining focus and overriding the mind’s tendency to disperse itself. Awareness, strengthened in meditation through equanimous attention to everything that arises, is about being wholeheartedly present and open to what is happening in a given moment.
I quickly realized that I had a strong tendency toward mindfulness, rather than awareness. I found I could hold my attention to the breath like a vise. Within a few months, I could sustain mindfulness of breath during almost all of my waking hours. When it came to awareness—and the receptive, accepting, patient quality that awareness engenders, it was (and is) much less intuitive for me.
I came to 5Rhythms and to formal meditation at almost exactly the same time; and both found me eager, dry tinder ready to be set alight. Having two core practices was a lot like having two fluent languages, since it gave me insight into what is unique and what is universal no matter what language you are speaking. What I learned from my meditation teachers, I investigated in the laboratory of 5Rhythms classes. What I learned in 5Rhythms fueled and deepened meditation practice and study. When I found concepts in both traditions that aligned closely, I paid them extra mind.
Today by the river, I got cold as soon as I decided I was done meditating. Nothing changed, except that during formal meditation I was emphasizing mindfulness and concentrating on my breath, and after I wasn’t. I have had the same experience dozens of times—wherein as soon as I stopped formally meditating, something about the environment was unbearable, though I had been perfectly at ease just moments before during the period of meditation. This, to me, offers evidence about the potential power of mindfulness practices to affect how we experience our lives.
In dance, Flowing is where I find my ground. I attend to the physical sensations of the feet again and again, ideally until I feel satisfied that I have established a ground in mindfulness. Until that ground is well-established, it is pointless to move on. Otherwise, I run the risk of causing harm to myself or others, and it is unlikely that I will be available to subtle aspects of practice. During the course of a wave I move back and forth again and again on this continuum between mindfulness and awareness. In dance, often the return to mindfulness is a return to the sensation of the moving feet—a key teaching in Flowing. If I am lucky, I may find myself eventually moving un-self-consciously in Stillness, with awareness of breath and spirit.
Perhaps because of my tendency toward mindfulness, I fall easily into states of concentration. As a child, I set up all sorts of focusing games for myself, such as sitting in the garden and gazing for long periods at a single vegetable, looking into a mirror, or staring at length into the ocean. I never didn’t meditate. I didn’t acquire any language for it or any formal training until my late teens, but it was something that I did intuitively.
In dance, this concentration often expresses as trance states. I go through long periods when dance is quite normal—perhaps psychological, emotional or social—but not archetypal or mystical. I also go through phases when different planes of reality are rendered in sharp relief. I might imagine that I find messages hidden in time, that I communicate with spirit ancestors, or that I see compelling visions, such as jewels pouring out of my palms. I might even feel like I have specific memories of different lives I’ve lived. Sometimes, inside a trance, I catch a glitch in a particular movement and repeat it again and again until its repetition opens the doors of time and offers some key insight.
The transition from Chaos into Lyrical is the time when I am most likely to look up, look around, and notice everyone and everything in the room. My hair, wild with the rigors of Chaos, gets pushed away from my eyes. I often lighten up, and start to move energetically throughout the space, dancing with many, but rarely settling into a dance with one partner. For me, this moment has often been accompanied by the clutch of fear, perhaps in part to do with how I relate to awareness.
There is more that I want to say tonight, as I sit engaging in this rather intellectual examination of how I experience my practice and how mindfulness and awareness get enacted for me. I love to travel these trajectories, but I just stepped outside on a bright moonlit night, standing among windless trees and noting the glitter of winter frost. I remembered that the magic, the beauty, of practice is that moving brings me to life, and wakes me up to the life I am already living. Any frame I care to set up is just a lovely exercise. Really, the words are just a rounding off of the real experience–a quest to understand and communicate what is, ultimately, wordless, timeless and inexplicable.
December 29, 2014
by meghanleborious | Dec 24, 2014 | Notes on Practice
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and are not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.
I arrived a few minutes late to Tammy’s class on Friday, once again, although this time I was legitimately entangled—attending a holiday party at my son’s afterschool program with his many small friends and their parents. My son stayed until the end with his father, but when I told him I had to go, he pouted for a moment and begged me to stay, also. “This is what it means to have a practice,” I told myself as I got my things together to go, but I wish I had stayed with him just a little bit longer. It is always hard for me to find the line between commitment and rigid adherence.
Although I didn’t step into the room until the transition from Flowing into Staccato, I still felt that I was able to practice Flowing. Tammy made a suggestion about moving into the empty spaces—an exercise that I associate with Flowing—which allowed me to find myself in fluid motion before progressing on to Staccato.
As the class unfolded, Tammy talked about how good it is to experiment with being in your comfort zone; and, in addition, how good it is to experiment with things that make you uncomfortable—your discomfort zone, if you will. Over the years, I have, at times, made a choice to let myself move with what feels comfortable, good and intuitive. An example of this would be moving away from people I don’t want to dance with. At other times, I have made a choice to investigate my edges and to work with situations that are uncomfortable or downright aversive—for example staying in a dance with someone who triggers anger, irritation or defensiveness.
In one pair dance, Tammy asked us to take turns with one partner giving and one partner receiving. My partner and I paused, unsure of how to relate to the instructions. We settled on one being active (which I thought of as the giving) with the other more or less observing (which I thought of as the receiving). For all I know, my partner may have thought the opposite. I have danced exuberantly with this partner many times, but in this instance we had a hard time connecting. I was similarly confused as I moved on to dance with other partners, eventually letting the instructions go completely.
There was one woman sort of slowly parading around the room, totally out of sync with the rhythm everyone else was in. I had been open to dancing with her on several occasions, and we initiated some dances together. However, as soon as an attractive man came by she would blatantly turn her back to me and move to dance with him. Eventually, I stopped inviting her to dance, and even stopped making eye contact with her. On Friday, I noticed that I ignore her. I guess I feel a little angry toward her. I wonder if I don’t want to risk being rejected, don’t want to waste the energy, or even if some part of me wants to punish her. At any rate, she seemed isolated on Friday. I wonder if she acts toward others how she did toward me. I wonder if she feels left out and can’t figure out why.
In addition to noticing what feels comfortable and what feels uncomfortable, and deciding to work with or against it, there is the question of how we relate to each entire rhythm (a topic I considered at length in the last post and have touched on in many previous writings). Typically, each of us has a favorite rhythm, and at least one rhythm that is definitely not our favorite.
Perhaps considering the Winter Solstice, Tammy encouraged to close our eyes and be in the darkness that is inside us, and to look at all the light inside us. This was convenient timing, as I had been doing just that. I love to go into a trance and move light around inside my body during Stillness. Often, light comes from the ground up; or it starts in my hands and moves from there. In this case, the light originated in my heart and was blue-white as it moved throughout my body in rapidly squiggling lines.
During the interim teaching between the first and second waves of the class, Tammy reminded us of the “rules” in a 5Rhythms room. She glancingly mentioned the “no talking” rule, and went on to elaborate that “no talking” also implies “no texting.” She explained that when we come to practice, we give ourselves a rest from all of the spinning activity of speech, and commit to spending two hours just being embodied. “We come in here,” she explained as she pointed to her heart and drew the gesture down her thorax, with a halting, emphatic forward bow.
Before I did my first silent mediation retreat, silence frightened me. My partner at the time would frequently go into a phase of resentful silence before some kind of explosion, so I would fill the space between us with small talk in an attempt to force things to be ok. I would say that my lifestyle at the time was anything but silent, as well. On retreat, I took on the idea that embracing silence for a period of time is a gift for yourself—a chance to take a break from dispersing yourself and spinning your wheels in constant relation to others. I came to love the early morning vespers—when the filled meditation hall would slowly begin to glow with the pink light of dawn. Within two days, I settled into silent, textured bliss.
Tammy mentioned that not many of us relate easily with Stillness—no great surprise given our cultural tendencies. I connected this idea to working with discomfort, with silence, and with taking a break from communicating with words for the brief duration of class.
Building on the teaching of comfort/discomfort, Tammy asked us to share our favorite rhythm. My hand went up quickly, and I said, “Chaos” with enthusiasm. Immediately after, I equivocated inside my own head, thinking of a long period in the beginning of my 5Rhythms experiences when I felt very connected to Staccato, and of another long period when I engaged in a deep exploration of Stillness. I thought, too, of one class Jilsarah taught on a Spring Solstice when I briefly entertained the idea that I might secretly have a Lyrical nature.
Tammy had us create a dance with everyone simultaneously in the rhythm we indicated as our preferred rhythm. I found that it was difficult to for me to stay in Chaos. Not surprisingly, my experience of Chaos went a bit flat in the second wave, as well. Identifying strongly with anything can be dangerous, I think. The last thing I want to do is trick myself into performing to support how I see myself.
Toward the end of the second wave, I danced with one man who I rarely partner with. We created a lilting, playful ring with baby steps and tiny jumps, backing away from each other eventually with deep bows and beaming smiles.
On this Winter Solstice, I find myself thankful for silence, the ground of all sound; and thankful, too, for darkness, the ground of all light.
December 21, 2014, NYC
by meghanleborious | Dec 18, 2014 | Notes on Practice
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and are not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.
Somehow on Friday I managed to arrive a little late to Tammy’s Night Waves class, although I arrived in front of the Joffrey building thirty minutes before the start of class. I would not say that I am chronically late, but I do note a pattern. Class nearly always begins with the rhythm of Flowing—the rhythm that is the most opposite to how I see myself. I have written extensively about how important and challenging the teachings of Flowing have been to me; and wonder if this might not have something to do with my occasional late entrances.
Tammy had several beautiful teaching points. One was to note that there is often a particular rhythm that people distance themselves from. This could show up as just not being into it, stopping movement completely, telling yourself a story about how misguided everyone else is and how on point you are, literally leaving the room (or, perhaps in my case, showing up just a bit late, leaning the tiniest bit away from the teacher of Flowing.)
I reflected on a period lasting a year or more when I noticed that I would go wild with the joy of Chaos, then, the moment the music transitioned us into Lyrical, instead of carrying that joy into levity, I would panic. For months, I could not resist going to check my phone, certain there had been some sort of emergency with my small son. I knew it was just a function of my triggered mind, but I had to go through with checking nonetheless. It was as though the kind of joy that arises for me during Lyrical was too much–harder to face, for example, than grief, guilt or aggression.
On Friday, the room seemed emptier than usual. I wandered for some time before I found a spot to sink down temporary roots to unfurl and stretch. Tammy began the wave subtlely, suggesting that we focus on different parts of the body, leading me to a contemplative, interior mood.
I’ve been reading a book called “Mindset” by a renowned educational psychologist. The researcher’s position is that most people align with either a “fixed” or a “growth” mindset. People with a fixed mindset tend to believe that you are born with certain abilities that inevitably express as talent. People with a growth mindset tend to believe that you are born with a range of capacities and that hard work and the ability to incorporate feedback are the keys to success. The interesting thing (and important for my own insight) is that even seeing yourself as smart, competent, creative and capable can be problematic. In this case, research shows that people will defend their smartness, creativeness or capableness—even shying away from working hard because hard work might somehow disprove their inherent talent, especially if they were to work hard and fail.
People with a growth mindset tend to see failure as a challenge, or as information they can use to grow. This brings me to Tammy’s remarks about people who check out—or even literally leave the room—during a particular rhythm. The growth-minded amongst us are willing to hang with discomfort and challenge, and are willing to at least try to stay in the room even when all our sensors tell us to run screaming. It seems like the rhythms that are least comfortable might offer the greatest possibilities for challenge and growth.
As has been true lately, I found all kinds of new ways to move. In Chaos, there was a marching, driving, military song. Tammy made a suggestion about moving with resistance. I balled my fists, drew my elbows back taut, and marched away—then released again into boundless, unrestrained Chaos.
As the first wave ended I found myself in a shamanic-like trance. Tammy said something about experiencing multi-dimensional breath. I first took this to mean space in all directions, and expanded the ways I was moving to include all possible heights and orientations. Then, I took it to mean all times and spaces that have existed, moving into different territory entirely. During the period of Stillness, I experienced compelling visions.
The fixed mindset/growth mindset information, along with Tammy’s suggestion about staying with it even when you want to check out, led me to think about how I, myself, have been affected by fixed mindset. As a child, I could sense two things about myself. The first is that I had an iron-hard core of strength that ran right through the middle of me. All I had to do was pause and turn inward to sense it. The second is that I was smart. I grew up believing I was smart (I can even remember the moment it first formed as a construct), and being told that I was smart all the time by well-meaning parents, teachers and relatives.
When I was 7 or 8 my Dad was slightly contemptuous when he believed I mispronounced a word. Around the same time, my uncle told me my favorite author, Stephen King, was “a fountain of trash literature.” I took both of these incidents as an affront to my smartness and began to set up architecture to support my vision of myself.
As I was considering the idea of fixed mindset, I also thought about all the energy I wasted wondering if I was a “good” artist. It wasn’t until after I had my son (and no longer had time to waste on neurotic internal dialogues) that I realized the question is completely un-important. Since I don’t believe there is any inherent meaning or any inherent self, there is no point whatsoever in considering this question. What matters more is making, process, progress, challenge and growth.
I went through a period when I realized that I was actually quite arrogant, and that I had developed kind of false meekness in an attempt to hide the arrogance. I had no choice but to express the arrogance for a time, in an effort to find some kind of authenticity. After a recent conflict with my son’s father, my mother told me that I can be kind of “rigid, sometimes” when it comes to things that concern my small son. She also told me it can come across as haughty. Ouch. The same week, I asked my boss to mediate a dispute with a colleague (hoping she would take my side); and she told me if I wanted to make any real progress—right or wrong—I would have to find some humility (implying, therefore, that she thought I lacked humility, at least in this instance). Ouch.
When I get similar feedback from more than one source, I have to at least entertain it as a serious possibility. Do I lack humility? Have I developed a kind of arrogance, perhaps to defend my self-perception as smart? OUCH. (Did I just write that?)
Thankfully, I am willing, even when I want to disconnect from the rhythm at hand, to at least stay in the room. Through practice (both 5Rhythms and in a meditation tradition) I have attempted to root out what the educational psychologist calls “fixed mindset,” yet I keep finding hidden reserves that surprise me.
On Friday, I danced with a friend I love to dance with and was sad when our dance dissolved. One of the last songs of the wave kept switching back and forth between a driving chaos track and a bounding Irish jig and I found myself in every different part of the room, moving quickly through both high and low spaces.
Often writing about my experience of 5Rhythms practice leads me to cathartic insight, poetic awareness or profound gratitude. Sometimes it ties itself into a neat bow by the last paragraph. On this occasion, it gives me more information to consider as I go about making my life, and, hopefully, to use to inform my practice both on and off the dance floor.
December 14, 2014, NYC
