by meghanleborious | Jul 7, 2021 | Notes on Practice
“What just happened?” my entire nervous system seems to be asking. My son, Simon, just completed elementary school, I just finished up the school teaching year, and we just moved homes.
Moving day was in the high 90’s and extremely humid, and by early afternoon I had heat exhaustion. My eyes were strained to the point that it hurt to look sideways. I pushed on regardless, telling myself that somehow it simply had to happen. By evening I felt like I was spinning off the surface of the earth.
I managed to get a small air conditioner from the old apartment to the new one and up the stairs to the third floor, then shut the door to one of the bedrooms and cranked it up. I stripped down and stretched out on a bare mattress, hoping a rest would re-set my system. My skin felt hot to the touch; and I was trembling and throwing up. Logically, it seemed likely to be a combination of de-hydration, heat exhaustion, and anxiety, but I felt like I was dying. I wondered if I might have a brain tumor, a stroke, or some other terminal malady; and went on long thought trains trying to decide if I should go to the emergency room.
I woke up the next day feeling better but still shaky. I walked into Home Depot in Bed Sty and realized that it was hard to see anything at a distance. This is most likely because my eyes are going downhill, but I got scared again. I could feel adrenaline spiking and flooding my body’s systems. I managed to calm down and get what I needed, but I still felt vulnerable. I spent the day building closets out in the new apartment and drinking liter after liter of water. Despite my precautions, I started to feel extremely weird again by late afternoon.
My sister, a marathoner and iron man athlete, has been heat exhausted countless times, and has also suffered from at-times crippling anxiety. “I’m really sure you’re ok. This is what anxiety does. You think you’re dying. Even if you logically know you aren’t. It’s fight or flight.” I found this reassurance immensely helpful. I also spent some time slowly breathing out for longer than I was breathing in, which helped to calm my overstimulated nervous system.
Simon was with my parents so he could be shielded from the chaos of the move and I could be freed up to work efficiently. We moved into the apartment we are just leaving as he was taking his first steps; and now, ten years later, we are leaving as he gets ready for middle school. My priority was to arrange his room so it would be inviting for him when he first walked in and this kept me going even as stress hormones continued to flood me.
On the fourth day, I decided to do one more trip to the old apartment to rescue a box of drawings I had decided against; and I found that I had also forgotten my checkbooks and the hardware for Simon’s bed frame.
I had the odd feeling that we were a receding tide in this place. In the front of the building, I said good bye to my favorite tree. As tears heaved up, I circled its trunk with my arms, thanking it for watching over us all these years (and very much hoping no one was noticing this display of emotion).
I did not practice the 5Rhythms for these four active days, or the two days previous – an unusually long break in practice.
On the afternoon of the fourth day I left to travel to my parents’ house in northern Connecticut and re-unite with Simon.
Last year during the first stretch of the pandemic, Simon and I stayed with my parents for 6 months. During that time, I made it to the woods and to the Scantic River most days, and often danced in nature, in solitude, and in relative silence. In winter, the river flowed along with only the bare trees as witnesses. In early spring, the water level was high and the water flowed rapidly. By late summer, the banks had widened and the river had shrunk down to a small stream.
Last summer was the first of many years that Simon and I didn’t travel; and it turned out that this opened an unexpected door.
To my immense surprise given many years of poor credit, I was able to buy a place in Brooklyn – something that had never seemed like even a remote possibility. This was because of a brief buyer’s market when many flocked away from New York City, the fact that I didn’t spend thousands of dollars on summer travel, and the support of many friends and family members.
Today, following a torrential rainfall, the river was swollen, fast, and muddy. I ran on a loop trail, then decided to do a 5Rhythms wave – that is, I decided to dance through each stage of the 5Rhythms practice: Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical, and Stillness. The ongoing light rain intensified, but I found a spot on the trail that was sheltered by tree cover.
I thought I would just dance a two minute wave, but it opened up once I started moving. There was a slight incline, and I used the feeling of gravity pulling my body downhill to find my way in. I noted the sensations of the moving feet, and took deep breath after deep breath. The rush of thoughts settled much more readily than I had anticipated that it would.
My experiences from the previous year when I had danced by this same river almost every day came back to support me.
Today Staccato arrived with ease and precision. I had no problem moving with decisive, clear gestures. The sound of the rain on the tree canopy increased; but I was still shielded and the ground stayed soft rather than muddy.
Chaos disorganized me. “Faster than you can think,” ran through my head, something Gabrielle Roth, the creator of the 5Rhythms, would say. It occurred to me that moving faster than the brain can process proprioception might indeed allow us the opportunity to short circuit our habitual patterns – the things we do again and again to escape discomfort, avoid pain, and reassure ourselves that we exist, that we are separate, and that we will never die.
I thought about how territorial I had been during the weeks leading up the move – no doubt an attempt by my mind to reassert what it knows and relies on.
The rain got lighter again as Lyrical arrived, and I rose, extending as I stretched my arms upward, casting and arcing around my small dance circle.
Stillness always calls me strongly in this place, and I moved with quiet absorption.
I left the woods and ran back home in steady rain, barely noticing the steep uphill climb, just taking it one single footfall at a time.
July 2, 2021, 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.
by meghanleborious | Mar 23, 2021 | Notes on Practice
I had to pull over to take pictures. The entire hillside outside the rear fence of the Brooklyn Botanical Garden was covered with tiny purple crocuses, almost blurring completely together.
Spring is actually happening. It’s like how I feel about singing. For so long, I couldn’t sing at all. It was clipped, awkward, soundless. But now this miracle happens. I open my mouth and sound comes out and it’s a song. It might not be perfect, but it’s alive. In much the same way, spring trots out, inevitable and miraculous at once.
I feel like the entire past year has been winter.
The pandemic isn’t over, and in fact the more virulent new strains of coronavirus are extremely concerning, and may even be impacting people who have already been vaccinated. People who are close to me have recently tested positive, and I’m praying hard for their swift and complete recovery.
And yet, the earth is coming back to life, irrepressible ebullience in every corner and urban hillside.
Yesterday I went running and paused not far from home. Drums. I danced on the sidewalk, then decided to follow the sound. It was a latin collective, with a drummer and standup bass, throwing down on the sidewalk. Scores of people were smiling, eating, and dancing. I sidled close to the band and danced too, stepping back hard and sinking into the hips. Their set ended and I continued on my run, feeling grateful to be alive, grateful for spring, and grateful for my home, Brooklyn, New York, where you can go for a run and find drumming and dancing, and be right at home, dancing amongst total strangers.
Today I danced with the sea.
For months, I’ve bundled up in parka coat, snow pants, ski gloves, balaclava, boots, and thermal underwear to dance with the sea at Jacob Riis Park. Today, I needed only a few layers.
Given the lovely March day, the beach was crowded.
Instead of crossing the wide beach directly to water, I made my way down the wide paved boardwalk, hoping to find a little more solitude. Instead, there were people as far as I could see, so being alone, like I was during the the frigid temperatures of deep winter when the parking lot was in deep snow and snow even covered the beach, was simply not available.
The tide was maximum high, leaving me a relatively small dance floor of packed sand. I put my bag and coat down where it was safe from the waves, took off my shoes, and moved into Flowing. I started by rocking side to side, syncing breath and movement, letting the divine smell of the ocean in, letting more and more breath in, and finding weight and momentum. Before long, my rocking found a curve and I began to move in circles. At times, the soles of my feet were cold. I let the swaying pull of the ocean lead me, and found myself pushed and pulled, casting downhill, dropping and turning, attentive to the sea’s magnetic forces.
This went on for so long, this attentiveness to pushing and pulling, to curving and dropping, to forces shifting direction. I used to think I would maybe stay in Flowing all day and never move into Staccato, but now I know the wave just unfolds in its own time.
As anyone who dances the 5Rhythms well knows, once Flowing is well founded, Staccato is likely to naturally arise. And soon, I was breathless, dropping and cutting, finding direction and expression. The packed sand I could move easily on was relatively narrow, so I was closer to the waves than usual, sometimes dancing at the very edge, moving along it diagonally, dancing back into my hips, then dropping, changing direction and moving forward.
I noticed a new detail – the saturation line. There was the edge of the ended wave being pulled back into the sea, and right behind it this saturation line, where the sun still reflects on the wet sand before the water is fully absorbed. When I stepped below the saturation line, it felt cold. Above it was totally bearable. In Staccato, I paid careful attention to this jagged saturation line, sometimes below it and sometime above it, noticing the vast difference in temperature on the soles of my bare feet.
When Staccato emerged the energy of movement grew more lively. A staccato song I love replayed in my mind, and before long I was leaping and pausing, leading with my knees and elbows, and finding new ways to express spring’s enlivened vigor, still very engaged with the sea’s edges, sometimes casting down and backward, uphill, stepping across, then moving up and into open gestures with legs extended and hands outstretched.
When Chaos finally started to emerge, it felt like relief. I had long given up on the baseball hat and now released my head further, tossing it at the end of a big gesture starting in the hips and curving, folding front and back and side to side, coiling and twisting through the spine and throughout my entire body.
I didn’t growl or scream-cry as much as I did in the dead of winter when I was often a lone dancer on a frozen beach, but the mild weather and bare feet made up for the lack of privacy.
In Lyrical, the section of packed sand that made up my dance floor opened into endless space, the sky, the horizon, the seabirds soaring over with great racing shadows, and the wide open beach. I moved with all of it, slowly transitioning into the whispering feeling of Stillness, where all sound meets and drops out together as no sound, one great booming tone from deep in the belly of the sea.
It feels like it’s been winter for over a year – a time of turning in, introspection, reflection, adversity, and challenge. And although COVID is still wreaking havoc, the emergence of spring this year brings me some sense of optimism and motivation.
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and is not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.
by meghanleborious | Jan 24, 2021 | Notes on Practice
Today I danced a clean wave.
A wave – in the 5Rhythms dance and movement meditation practice, that’s when we move through each of the five rhythms: Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical, and Stillness – might feel heavy, spastic, reluctant, spacious, inspired, cathartic, precise, or any other way.
Today it felt clean.
The heat stopped working in my car yesterday, and I debated if I wanted to go to the beach to dance – a personal practice that has emerged in recent months – in such frigid temperatures. I was afraid I would be uncomfortably cold when I arrived, cold on the beach, and cold when I got back into the car to drive home.
Since the start of the pandemic, many of us have gotten a lot heartier about cold. All over Brooklyn, friends are posted up dining at plein air restaurants, kids are playing outdoor soccer in January, and people are meeting up on park benches to laugh and commiserate together.
I put on my son Simon’s bib snowpants, a heavy coat, balaclava, winter hat, wool socks, and ski gloves and made my way.
Arriving at Riis Park Beach, the wind was strong at my back as I headed across the vast beach to the water. The tide was extremely low, and the water was unusually calm, with the waves moving almost parallel to the beach. I was delighted that this revealed a huge section of packed sand – a much larger dance floor than usual.
Beginning to move in Flowing, I noticed that it was easier than usual to let go of thoughts as they arose and drop my weight down, settling the body as the slope toward the water pulled me into circling. I felt dragged by the ending waves, as they too were pulled by gravity, and I dipped and curved with the waves’ contours. In my heavy coat, my arms looked stiff in the shadow cast on the sand, so I unzipped the coat and softened my shoulders, allowing the arms to rise, fall, and circle along with the rest of me.
Often when I dance with the sea, it takes a really long time for Staccato to spark, if it comes at all, but not so today. A staccato song I love came to my head and I played with the energy of it, though the only soundtrack was my own breath and the gently lapping waves. A seagull came close, standing on the strong wind with her wings up, probably hoping I would toss out some Taquis or french fries or something. Birds don’t usually bring Staccato to my mind, but this one was literally suspended in a pause ten feet from me, eying me directly, in my mind wanting to connect. I dropped into my hips and played with her, moving my own elbows and shoulder blades, open to her message, willing to share mine.
After this spike of Staccato, I sank back into Flowing again – the river under every rhythm – with a deeper ability to luxuriate in circling.
I took off the heavy coat and put it down on sand. The wind kicked it over, also picking up little rivers of sand, looking like the ancient spirits who were accidentally released in the 80’s adventure movie Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Before long Staccato came back and I beamed, playing with small, tight movements then bursting overtures, before long adding crossovers, stepping one leg back across the other and leaping into spin, crossing one arm over the other and finding a descending angle with a hip sharply to the side. As I turned the planes of my body, there was a precise fulcrum when the wind faced one side of me, then shifted onto the other side of me as I turned.
I noted a man walking two big furry dogs a short distance away, and a family with two kids on top of the sand hills that the beach rangers erect in winter to protect the park buildings from being battered.
This distant potential audience gave me a tiny push to get bigger, and I shifted into a relaxed Chaos. I expanded to a wider radius, noticing rolls of Lyrical, drops back into Staccato, and the easy, sustainable momentum of a patient Chaos that’s fueled by both the underground river of Flowing and the heat of Staccato.
Chaos with a flavor of Stillness visited, as I raised my eyes to the horizon and followed a soaring bird with my gaze and gesture.
By now I was sweating and breathing heavily, but there was no sense of exertion.
Lyrical emerged right on cue, taking me to an even wider radius, casting me down and up again. A tiny bird scurried by and I followed her, sinking low and shimmying my hips along the edge of the water, then leaping up into the fingertips and stretching my chest with each soaring opening of the arms, one at a time, then both, casting down and rising up, extending into the farthest reaches of me without dropping my weight, relying on a different kind of balance.
Stillness called me; and I felt the sea’s depths and the wide horizon. I closed my eyes and moved with wind and breath. I emerged on the other side of this wave feeling cleaned out, and ready for the next wave.
January 24, 2021, Brooklyn, NY
(Image from bridgeandtunnelclub.com)
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms dancing path, and is not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.
by meghanleborious | Dec 30, 2020 | Notes on Practice
Dancing near the humble Scantic River today, language rolled through me.
Out on a run, I was drawn to a smooth beach, its surface wrinkled with recent currents. It had poured on Christmas and nearly a foot of snow had melted in a single day of warm temperatures, and the river had overwhelmed its usual path. The water had since receded significantly, leaving me this perfect dance floor. 
I began to move in the rhythm of Flowing, using the shore’s incline to pull me into circles. At the edge of the water, the frozen mud gave slightly, making a subtle crackling sound.
My ten-year-old son, Simon, and I are staying with my parents for two weeks over the holidays, on a short hiatus from our lives in Brooklyn, where fears about COVID continue to impact our lives significantly.
Being pulled along in the direction of the river, I rose up onto a walking path where it was easier to see the surface of the water. I observed that although the main gesture of the water is pressing in a curving line toward the sea, there are infinite sub-gestures. The closer to the edges, the more coils and eddies and interruptions.
I let this be my musical score, dropping my hips low to spin and loop back, catching the drift of a different current, slowly making my way by curving around fallen trees to greater space on the other side, then getting caught inside another eddy where I whirled for who-knows-how-long before a floating branch came by and shifted me out of my spin.
I reflected on the passing year. On the slow crushing roll of the pandemic and the toll it has taken, on families, on communities, and on the fact that it has killed nearly twice as many people of color as white people. I reflected too on the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Aubery and so many others, and on the protest movements these events have catalyzed. I thought about Simon and his learning pod, a group of four students who meet every day to learn and connect, and of the many challenges of establishing and sustaining this construct. I thought about the six months Simon and I spent living with my parents, of our thriving vegetable garden, of dancing every day in the woods or the yard, and of our nightly dinners, where all four of us lingered long after the food was eaten, talking about social justice and its despicable enemies and challenging each other’s assumptions. I thought about washing floors every day, opening boxes with gloves, masks, alcohol pads, facial shields, and hand sanitizer. I thought about teaching remotely and the challenges and insights it has brought. I thought about sleepless nights and then the explosion when Joe Biden was declared the winner of the US presidential election, when I personally went bananas, and New York City exploded with a brief interlude of unbridled, uncaged, untethered joy.
Flowing, I knew that whatever language came I could watch with curiosity as it passed through my mindstream. That there was no need to write it then or to try to capture it, that whatever arose that was needed would still be there later, when it was time to write.
I smiled, remembering a canoe trip during summer 2020 on this same river with Simon and my father, where we encountered obstacle after obstacle, but were able to work through them, a relief after so many grueling months of daunting uncertainty and countless challenges.
Staccato touched me between the river’s undulating coils, decisive expression arising periodically, then settling me back into circling. It took some time to notice that I was in Chaos, coming so quietly today as it did. I spun and dipped with bits of stories, a softly released head, fragments to write later like bits of broken mirror, watching bits of psyche flash by in the process.
A creative project that knocked at my door for years has found its voice in me, and I’ve been swimming in it for the last several days, in the process of giving birth despite periodic, crippling self doubt and anxiety.
Lyrical had me rising up onto a slight incline, arms raised high and moving around a bigger radius.
Stillness brought me back to the river, and to every river, feeling its currents pass all the way through my body. I remembered another time when I danced with the majestic Hudson River near Garrison, New York. I was on a meditation retreat, and still made time to practice the 5Rhythms every day. On this day, I was going through the motions, uninspired, until something in the river beckoned me, moved me into a different space entirely, dancing with the cool, black density of the river’s deepest channels.
May you thrive in 2021 and always.
May you give and receive many gifts.
And may your river carry you to freedom,
In every way imaginable.
December 30, 2020, Broad Brook, Connecticut
by meghanleborious | Nov 10, 2020 | Notes on Practice
I was meditating when I heard horns honking and loud yelling. At first I thought it was teenagers playing around. But it wasn’t just coming from just one place, but from all over.
I picked up the phone and searched “election results 2020” and blinked. I had checked hundreds if not thousands of times between Tuesday and Saturday. On Tuesday, as results rolled in, my body grew tense, and I curled up into a ball on the couch, struggling even to respond to the questions of my ten-year-old son, Simon. Waking on Wednesday, I took a deep breath as I picked up the phone, terrified of a repeat of 2016 when I woke to a surprise election upset and a national nightmare for many, myself included. This time, votes in several key states were still being counted, and a nation bit its nails and tossed in its sleep for days.
But now Biden was finally over the needed 270 electoral votes to win the presidency! I ran to the living room, where Simon was playing a video game with his friend. “It’s over! Biden won! Biden is the next president!” Both kids jumped up and joined me in dancing and jumping around the room.
We set out shortly after to meet friends in Prospect Park. I stopped at a corner liquor store, “Do you have any champagne left in this place?” I joked. “It’s a good day today,” the shopkeeper answered, beaming.
We drove down Washington Avenue, beeping enthusiastically at every car and passerby. Every time someone beeped, a host of horns responded, and a cheer went up. I caught the eye of a woman at a stoplight in the opposite direction, and we both started beeping, cheering, smiling, giving the thumbs up sign, and bouncing up and down. Someone zoomed by on a bike, rattling a cow bell.
I kept thinking how powerful it was that Simon and his friend were experiencing all of this.
Traffic was heavy and there were street closures, but for once I didn’t care at all.
We found a parking spot near Grand Army Plaza. A band was playing and a huge crowd had assembled. We paused to dance before moving on to meet our friends in Prospect Park.
The main lawn in the center of Prospect Park was more crowded than I have ever seen it. The weather was warm and the sky was clear. People were dressed joyfully, some in glitter and bright colors. An Uncle Sam wandered by, and a Statue of Liberty. There were open champagne bottles on many picnic blankets.
We found our friends before long and immediately opened the champagne (and kid-friendly fake wine) and shared a toast. It was too crowded for soccer or other sports, but the kids began to rove and wrestle.
Joy swept the park in waves. A cheer would start and then swoop across the entire big lawn. When a new friend arrived I ran to them, threw my hands up into the air, yelled with joy, and in some cases threw pandemic-caution to the wind and hugged them. I kept filling people’s cups with champagne, and often it bubbled over the top of the small plastic cup.
Someone wheeled a speaker into the middle of the park and started a dance party. I moved toward it along with another parent friend, throwing my arms up and dropping my hips low. A small child started breakdancing, so we opened a dance circle in the middle of the action and clapped and cheered for him. I couldn’t resist, and jumped into the center after he got tired, taking the opportunity to express effusive, uncontainable joy. Others stepped in after, and I cheered and jumped and held space for each of them.
A Black man I’m very close with shared a glimmer of hope, then bitter disillusionment, believing that a new leader would likely mean more of the same broken promises and hollow politicking.
I watched the video of Black Emmy Award winner and CNN contributor Van Jones fighting back tears and speaking with heaving words, of how much this election means, of what it means for so many people. “Well it’s easier to be a parent today,” he sobbed. “It’s easier to be a Dad. It’s easier to tell your kids character matters,” he said, wiping tears with a tissue from under his glasses. “It’s vindication for a lot of people who have really suffered,” he managed to get out, with considerable pauses, attempting to control his powerful emotions.
The next day, Sunday, I danced again.
This time it was at Henya Emmer’s 5Rhythms dance and movement meditation class outside in Battery Park.
I arrived early, eager to move with new possibilities, and to release the toxins of four painful years.
I had attended Henya’s class in Battery Park three times already, so I knew exactly where to go, just to the East of Castle Clinton, and West of the Staten Island Ferry terminal. The site is a round, paved area in view of the harbor and Statue of Liberty, with trees curving overhead, and the tall buildings of lower Manhattan not far behind the trees.
As with the previous day, the weather was unseasonably warm and pleasant.
The class is silent-disco-style, which means each person wears a pair of headphones that pick up the teacher’s music and microphone. Before I even picked up headphones to tune into Henya’s music and teachings, I began a wild, joyful jig with a friend, to the music of some street performers who were installed nearby.
A friend I hadn’t seen since before the pandemic appeared. She had battled a serious illness but is now recovering. “Are you ok with a hug?” She asked and a sob ripped my throat as we embraced tightly.
Putting on the official headphones, I found Henya’s music subdued at first. I really wanted to let the bubbles overflow, and periodically removed the headphones to dance to the music of the street performers. I recognized the importance of slowing down and finding ground, though, and reflected that I was lucky I hadn’t hurt myself or anyone else, that for the last 24 hours I had been in Chaos-Lyrical without much sense of ground.
I continued to move in and out of dancing to the street performers’ music, and moving with the group.
I spent some time stretching, hesitant to put my hands on the ground in this era of Covid, but finally settling in, sinking low inside my hips and finding weighted balances as I moved my biggest muscles into stress to protect them from later injury.
I was a little concerned about my knees on the concrete surface, so moved beyond the edge of the circle to a soft gravel surface, where I could move with more abandon.
I went into the circle again, and joined with one friend who was visibly moved. We both vocalized, moving with grief, rage, and joy. I briefly wondered what it seemed like to Henya and passersby, but did my best to put it out of my head. In the past, I had been hesitant about vocally expressing the depth of emotions, but today that was not the case.
I thought about what it was like when President Obama was elected. When the streets in Brooklyn were streams of dancing bodies, when I cried for days. When we danced in a 5Rhythms class a few days after his election, the entire room was three feet from the ground. It was the most powerful collective joy I had ever experienced. I wasn’t even sure I could stay with it. It was almost too much for me.
This weekend had the same quality of shared, wild, uncaged, roving joy, of release, of relief, of surrender.
For now, though, I worked against my ebullience, and settled into the attenuated, low grooves that Henya served up. As she moved us through attention to various body parts, I lost self-awareness and time, sometimes nearly closing my eyes. A chemical release seemed to be taking place, filling my senses with an odd electrical feeling, and I just kept moving.
I spent the majority of the class on the soft, gravel surface, but moved repeatedly into the paved circle and the larger group, connecting joyfully with everyone who would meet my eye.
After this low, slow start, Henya shifted us gently into Staccato. I played with my knees, the weight of my shoulders and diagonally-arranged upper body, my elbows.
Many passersby stopped to watch or take pictures of the group, to the point that the street performers had to work hard to bring attention back to themselves. “It’s ok to show off your moves,” Henya said into the mic and into our headphones with a tone of humor. One dancer offered his headset to a woman who was sitting on a bench and she jumped in and threw down.
Staccato came and went for me between 2016-2020. It was incredibly variable. Today, I felt energized and competent. My little gravel patch made me very visible to onlookers, and it gave me just a tiny extra edge of energy and creativity. I ranged back and forth, side to side, finding many different ways to step on the beat, and using pauses and suspensions for maximum impact.
In Chaos, I went all out. I moved in a snarling matrix at times, at times moving with aerial changes, finding beat shifts with my knees, ankles, and feet in the air while soaring in an overarching, directional gesture. Sinking low, I took off the headset and flung my head–the end of a train that started with my coiling feet, sacrum, and spine.
Grief and joy ripped through my throat throughout the class, but especially in Lyrical. I left my little patch and joined the larger group. I danced with the recovering friend who I hadn’t seen since before the pandemic, then leaned toward her, pointed to myself, then to her, nodding, silently saying, “I follow you!” She understood and playfully led me throughout the dance floor. After a while, I pointed to me then to her, saying “You follow me!” and she knew exactly the game, her eyes glittering as she chased me around bodies, keeping her eyes on me as I dipped and turned, playfully eluding her then falling within her reach.
Henya played the Leonard Cohen’s gravelly version of Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah,” and many of us sang the Hallelujahs out loud. I moved through, feeling energetically porous, not separate from any other person.
Sunset turned New York Harbor orange and pink.
Henya called our attention to the glowing Statue of Liberty across the harbor; and despite the sacred, tapered ending the music offered, we began to whoop, clap, and cheer–perhaps knowing that our freedom is both incomplete and is fragile, incomplete in that it does not yet apply equally to all, and fragile in that it is bolstered only by our collective beliefs and actions.
In the words of the late congressman and civil rights activist John Lewis, quoted by Vice President-elect Kamala Harris in her acceptance speech on Saturday night,
“Freedom is not a state. It is an act.”
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and is not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.
***Photo by Clarissa Best (from Pinterest)
