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
by meghanleborious | Dec 9, 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 didn’t think that I would be able to dance last night, but a babysitter came through at the last moment. I was relieved. A week like this should not go un-danced, and I doubted I would be able to make it to another class before next Friday’s. I arrived 15 minutes late and stepped into a room already in the thick of Staccato.
There is a scene in the 2007 film The Great Debaters that I find very moving. The film is a true story about a debate team from an all-black college. Set in 1935, the team surmounts incredible obstacles, wins again and again, and goes on to challenge Harvard’s debate team. In a debate with a white college about whether black students should be admitted to the state’s colleges, the character played by Jurnee Smollett-Bell responds to the opposing team’s position that American society is not yet ready for blacks to attend all-white colleges, and concludes her team’s argument with the impassioned assertion,
“Would you kindly tell me when is that day going to come? Is going to come tomorrow? Is it going to come next week? In a hundred years? Never? No! The time for justice, the time for freedom, and the time for equality is always, is always, right now!”
In the last year, I have written extensively about the rhythm of Flowing. Flowing is the least intuitive of the five rhythms for me, and as such has offered me endless teachings. The idea that everything around us in dynamic, constant flux is, in my mind, the first level of Flowing. Next, I connect with the idea that, despite the reality of constant change and movement, there is a ground, and we can find a way to relate to ground that can steady us through the wildest of circumstances. On another level, I have become empowered to watch for the empty spaces that open up even in a crowded room and move into them, rather than wait opaquely for space to open its formal doors and declare me worthy first.
I have, historically, held myself in Flowing as long as possible, even after I feel the pull to move into Staccato. I do this mostly because I feel I have a responsibility to the people around me. If I really find my ground—know my feet on the earth and know my place on it—it is unlikely that I will hurt anyone, physically, emotionally or energetically.
Sometimes, however, there is nothing to do but take a great, bold stride right into the heart of Staccato. Sometimes you are called out on the spot to speak your truth with full conviction; and if you miss it, you may never get another chance. Maybe (god I hope so) just maybe, if you have danced and danced until the bottoms of your feet know their place no matter what is happening, when the time comes for Staccato, you will know how to step into it with the full force of passion whether you feel like you are ready for it or not.
I am telling all of this to myself, of course, because no doubt it is old news to all of you.
Stepping right into Staccato last night (since I had no choice) I found a low, powerful stance, and began to move around the room, paying attention to my feet at first, then shifting awareness to my hips, knees and shoulders.
For the last two years I have been teaching 10th grade. On Thursday, I facilitated a discussion about the decision not to indict the (white) cop who killed Eric Garner (a black man) with an illegal choke hold. One often-reserved 16-year-old shared, “When I’m walking, if I see a police officer, I take my hands out of my pockets and I put my hood down right away.” The refrain about being stopped, questioned and suspected went on and on as the students shared their thoughts. I learned that many of my students make sure they are home before dark because they are afraid the police might hassle them, find a reason to arrest, or even shoot to kill.
During Tammy’s class, I was distracted because I kept thinking about the discussion, and how I might further it in the coming week. It occurred to me that instead of thinking about the writing assignment I sent him home with, and thinking about how to bring the full manifestation of his unique, spectacular brilliance to the world, my student was forced to waste his emotional energy wondering if he would be unfairly targeted by the police and thinking about strategies to avoid being killed or arrested.
I exploded into Chaos the moment the music suggested it. If I had been born in another century, I would have been pronounced possessed. Chaos, rather than arriving as a tender release, retained its edges and its uncontainable power. I realized that I, like many, carry rage that has been triggered once again by the facts of the Eric Garner case.
I shared notable dances with two close friends, but when Stillness arose at the end of each wave, I found myself still distracted, trying to plan or understand or process the events of recent days.
December 6, 2014, NYC
by meghanleborious | Nov 24, 2014 | Notes on Practice
November 24, 2014
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and are not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.
One of my favorite things to dance to is the flight of pigeon flocks, especially as they are directed by a keeper from a rooftop. They arc and swoop in great, epic, collective gestures. My arms and body swoop and arc and spin as they do. Four years ago this month, I was teaching then-infant Simon to dance to the flights of birds just as I got a call letting me know that my friend, Howard, had died.
Recently, I have been wondering about something within my practice. How willing am I to fully take on the rhythms and to try on whatever instruction comes to me under this category? At what point does following the instructions become an orthodoxy, and hinder progress instead of supporting it? Is there a point that I should ignore the instructions and follow an inner guide? Likely, this is a shifting continuum that changes over time, but it is something I consider often. It makes sense to take intuition as a guide, but (un-enlightened as I am) I wonder if I mistake my own complex conditioning for intuition. I have no time to lose, after all, and I want to adopt the most productive mindset so I don’t waste too much of this short, precious life I’ve been blessed with.
I have been studying the history of western civilization lately, where the Ancient Romans have a big role. It seems, the Romans had many different ways of divining the future, including analyzing the flights of birds.
On Friday, I stepped into Tammy’s class feeling slightly unsettled, and, as often happens, was quickly folded into the room, forgetting my ill-ease. There is not a theme that dominates my memory, and there doesn’t appear to be one emerging here, but I noticed that nothing hurt, that I had a perfect amount of energy, and that I was neither holding back nor overexerting.
A neighbor asked Simon if he was good. Being four, he said, “No!” laughing as he said it. The neighbor said, “Well, what’s bad? If nothing’s bad, then you’re good, right? That’s how it works!”
In a dance of partnership, Tammy instructed us to investigate what feels like too close and what feels like too far. I fell into a friend who was the perfect ally in this investigation. He is sharp, confident, very handsome, unflinching. It makes me nervous to dance very close with him, yet I always want to engage him. Perhaps he is just matching me, but I perceive that he has an exceptional capacity for precision—many razor sharp edges that are not aggressive–but vivid, articulated and wild in the most cosmic sense possible. We stepped sharply in and out of each others’ fields, spinning and stopping, behind, beside, around—stretching the space between us, then snapping back together and rolling away from each other like two grooved cogs.
I also continued a dance begun during Tammy’s Faint of Heart workshop with a friend who witnessed me as I moved and who I witnessed as she moved through a body parts meditation. We fell forward and back, rotating up and down like coins spinning and slowing, coiled softly around one another’s spines, holding each other’s eyes by arching backward even as we spun all the way around.
Looking for answers from the sky, my eyes soar upward, into vast space, and I realize, once again, that I am but a tiny little piece of this vast, poetic dance, and that my own little dance is one of an infinite number who collaborate in creating the world, moment by moment, gesture by gesture.
Note: There is a post that precedes this one that has yet to be published. It should be up within 2-3 days (once it is approved by everyone mentioned in it) and will shed additional light on some of the topics discussed in the current post.
