by meghanleborious | Sep 15, 2015 | Notes on Practice
Tammy’s Friday Night Waves class fell on the fourteenth anniversary of September 11th, 2001; and she decided to mark the occasion with a ritual. After what, for me, was a very engaging wave, Tammy asked us to form a large circle and join hands. She then asked people who were affected in various ways by the events of September 11th to step forward. I forget the order of her questions, but she said, “Step forward if you had to move your home that day.” They stepped back and a new group–including me–stepped forward after she said, “Step forward if you were there, Downtown, on September 11.” Finally she said, “Step forward if you know someone who died that day.”
I realize, in glimpses, that I am writing a kind of autobiography through these many brief texts, if obliquely; and I am, as ever, grateful for your patient audience.
On the morning of September 11th, I rollerbladed, as usual, to work at an artist’s studio in Downtown Manhattan. The first thing that was odd was the fire. I was on the bike path along the East River; and it was impossible not to notice it. Initially, I thought the Bell Atlantic building was on fire. Even this early in the narrative, people stood paralyzed, watching. I paused briefly, and took a moment to draw the scene before me in my sketchbook. I was nervous about being late, and continued on. As I got closer, it got weirder and weirder. People were frozen. There was fire. I couldn’t process it. When I was close to City Hall, a man yelled, “It’s terrorists! Get out! You have to get out of the city! They don’t want you to know, but it’s terrorists!” That shook me awake a little, though I was still concerned about getting to work on time. I moved in fits and starts, unsure about what to do. Finally, I returned to the bike path. By now, people were streaming down it, completely silent. There was no hysteria whatsoever, just shocked silence. Many of the people walking north with glazed eyes had flakes of ash from the fires on their hair. I skated at a walking pace, slowly, slowly, by the side of a woman who was exceptionally out of sorts.
Tammy asked us to please move one step to the left, so we could stand in someone else’s footsteps. We moved twice to the left, then she asked us to continue to move until we completed a circle of the entire room, having a chance to stand in every person’s footsteps. It didn’t work at all. We were very crowded, for one. And no one could take the lead since it was just a big circle. We lingered, unable to coordinate our movement.
This was a perfect representation of what September 11th was for me. Quiet, vague shock, and a totally anti-climactic afternoon. Nothing seemed to move. After trying unsuccessfully to reach my then-girlfriend by pay phone, I lingered on the East Side. No voices were to be heard, except that TV’s and radios were on everywhere. Many stood next to open cars listening to car radios. Everyone lingered vaguely in silent disbelief, not making eye contact. I eventually made my way back over the Williamsburg Bridge. It was filled with silent walkers. I stopped at length on the Williamsburg side of the bridge where a throng of people watched the burning buildings in silence through the bridge’s red fence. My next stop was Woodhull Hospital, where I intended to volunteer. I found several parked ambulances, and a group of paramedics standing around with their arms crossed. They did not need my help. So far, there were no survivors.
In many of the meditation retreats I have attended, sitting meditation is interspersed with periods of group walking meditation. Many times, this was torture for me. There was always someone who moved maddeningly slowly, and, of course, the slowest person sets the pace. I often thought of making some kind of announcement or asking that the teacher dictate the pace, but over the years I settled into it, being simply part of the group field, moving as the group moved. At some point, I realized that walking meditation in a group did not bother me at all.
I confess that I am conflicted about how to think about remembering September 11th. On one hand, a dramatic event de-stabilized my world. Many people who were not far removed from me died. Many people died, leaving grief-stricken families. On the other hand, the United States doesn’t even make the list of terrorist-addled countries. All life is sacred, undoubtedly, but the nationalist tone of the media, especially in the first few days after, made me very uncomfortable. I finally shook myself awake three days after September 11th when President George W. Bush stood in the pulpit of the United States National Cathedral vowing revenge, though it still wasn’t clear who was responsible for the attack.
I wandered aimlessly. I skated to Prospect Park and did laps, smelling the acrid fires, hearing the soaring fighter jets and watching the smoke from across the river. Back in Williamsburg, I went to my accustomed places. Everywhere, there was a TV with images of the burning buildings.
My mother’s hair turned white that day. Back home, I climbed to the roof and watched the buildings burn, still in disbelief. I was on the roof along with one neighbor when the first building collapsed. What I was seeing could not be real. I sobbed, “Hundreds of people just died in that moment!” Hundreds was the largest number I could conceive of. That huge building that had loomed over downtown just turned into dust, caving sideways in a long-waisted swoon. It finally occurred to me to call my parents, and, thankfully, I was able to get service and let them know that I was alive.
At the end of the night, Tammy said, “The dance is about being fully alive, about expressing that.” She mentioned the upcoming Lyrical workshop, and invited Meaghan Williams, the teacher, to speak about it. She invited everyone to attend, saying, “Lyrical is not just about joy and lift, but is also about all the things that block that. Lyrical is underneath everything already, wanting to come out.” At another time, she also said, “It is also about creating art, participation and community.”
One of the things Tammy asked us to step forward for when we were in the big circle was “if you felt like you lost your ground.” More than half of the people in the room, including me, stepped forward.
When the music of the second wave emptied us into Lyrical, I crashed into it with enthusiasm and specificity, then faded. After a short lapse, my engagement sparked again. I have an imaginary dance friend—a dragon—who came to visit me after a pointed, lilting experiment. I moved with the dragon throughout the room, coiling, rising, rushing, pausing—though most dancers were rooted in a given spot at this point in the wave. I note that my dragon only comes during Lyrical—the rhythm of the sky.
As I stood on my roof, gazing in frozen disbelief as the first of the two towers collapsed, a group of Catholic nuns in blue habits stood on the rooftop across the lot. They, too, stood frozen, gazing, their habits fluttering around them in the strong wind that blew from the East River.
Bruised sky
The late day sky is bruised and luminous.
Rushing with new souls—
Toil turned spacious.
Unlit mountains
Scraped with icy teeth
A delicate love for the
Whispers of spirit.
-poem from September 13, 2001
September 13, 2015, Brooklyn, NYC
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 | Sep 13, 2015 | Notes on Practice
When practicing alone, I tend gloss over Lyrical, technically attending to it, but rarely taking it on fully. Which is why I am delighted, in this languorous late summer air, to find Lyrical a persistent partner.
In the afternoon before Tammy’s Friday Night Waves class I went swimming with my five-year-old son, Simon, and his father. Later, we had a picnic in the park and went on the swings. My stomach flipped rhythmically again and again as I lapped higher on the swing. Simon leaned his entire weight back with abandon, smiling, holding the swing’s chains confidently. At first, I was afraid to fall, to be upside down, but Simon taught me patiently; and I was eventually able to try on his playful gesture.
I arrived at the Friday Night Waves class and sank happily to the floor. I began to move gently—porous, smiling, free—released and receiving the perfect amount of energy for the moving I wanted to do—letting the wave of my spine complete its gestures in all directions. As I was stretching and moving in big arcing circles on the floor, my dance quickly acquired fire and definition.
Class on Friday was like a survey course. Before class, Tammy posted on facebook, “… the ocean connects every wave to every other wave, dissolving isolation …’ Dean Sluyter, The Zen Commandments.” She spoke at length in the pause between the first and second waves of the class, casting her eyes downward toward her heart as she inhaled, seeming to wait for words to arise.
She began with a story about Gabrielle Roth, the creator of the 5Rhythms practice. Tammy shared that once at a public talk someone posed a question and several 5Rhythms teachers offered beautiful, profound, articulate responses. The last to respond was Gabrielle and she just said, (smiling and shrugging, I imagine) “Or not!” Tammy talked about how as much as we would learn and understand, Gabrielle would always find a way to turn it on its head, allowing us to continue to enter into the mysterious darkness of experience, pushing us to push ourselves beyond our edges, beyond what is comfortable, beyond what we think we know, like, understand or perceive.
Tammy led us through the litany of the rhythms. Flowing, the most receptive rhythm, might be a personal investigation inward. Staccato, the second of the rhythms, could be more expansive, more expressive, and more connected with the people in our immediate sphere. Tammy modeled a possibility for moving through the room with bold clarity, “I have a right to be here. I have a reason to be here; and I am going to be here.”
This relates to an investigation I have considered at length. I accept that I can be immense—gathering and whirling huge swaths of energy—with massive emotions, huge (sometimes unrealistic) ideas, intense, unrelenting, gigantic. I am both proud and ashamed of this part of me. For many years, the more I let this show, the more I seemed to draw fire from someone very close to me. I tried to make myself small, discreet, bundled into separate physical sections to avoid upsetting this person and to avoid setting this person off. To avoid being declared selfish. To avoid being attacked. It hurt my muscles, my posture. “I have a right to be here. I have a reason to be here; and I am going to be here,” is medicine, for this still-not-fully-healed me. At that moment, I reflected that I don’t have to apologize to anyone for existing, not even to the person who sometimes seems to wish that I didn’t.
In today’s Sweat Your Prayers class, taught by Meaghan Williams, I accidentally bumped a friend. Instead of making myself more porous and more small, I stayed neutrally with the collision; and he, too, held up to me, moving backward with the momentum as I moved toward him, then physically pushing back against me—moving forward as I receded; and we folded briefly into coupled, chaotic whirling.
Tammy repeatedly challenged us to look for “our edge” and acknowledged that the “edge” is different for everyone. For example, for some, the edge is staying in partnership. For others, the edge is dancing alone. For some, the edge is moving with energy in the middle of the room, for others, the edge is lingering toward the wall or mirrors, outside of the dynamic center. Chaos, perhaps, contains this implication, this experimentation with simultaneous opposites, with paradoxical systems.
Tammy also spoke with great feeling of the recent press image of a drowned three-year-old Syrian boy and of the Syrian exodus and refugee crisis. She has, on many occasions, grounded the 5Rhythms in heartful social justice—including awareness of both the pain and of the joy of the world in her teaching. On many occasions, I have heard her say that what really matters is not what you do during class, but what you do in your life, on the street and in the world.
For me, the class was characterized by long, slow grooves. I found an extraordinary dance with a friend in the second wave’s Staccato and Chaos phases. Tammy kept offering the instruction to move to a new partner, but I stayed locked in partnership, instead—smiling and laughing, rising and falling, spinning and coiling until at last my friend indicated that he needed to get water and moved away.
A totally new, totally unexpected dance snapped into me, jerking me diagonally sideways as I passed Tammy’s table, rhythm finding every one of my joints. As the music carried me along, I tapped on the bendings of me—wrists, fronts of elbows, backs of knees—and light began to leak out. After a while I realized that what I was perceiving was not light leaking out, but rather cracks in the opaque fired clay of me, coming away in body-mold-shaped pieces. I entered a deep, fluttering spin, finding an entire light body underneath all this dense, crumbling gray—extending beyond the limits of my small self. The light body—the body of joy—was peeking out, testing the waters.
I entered today’s Sweat Your Prayers today class with the expectation that the rhythm of Lyrical would predominate. This is because today’s teacher, Meaghan Williams, is renowned for her lyrical nature. I also expected Lyrical to present strongly because lately I am in the middle of the first sustained engagement I have ever knowingly had with the rhythm of Lyrical.
I think a major factor is that I have had a beautiful summer—the most lyrical of seasons—when I have had plenty of time and space to connect with my own experience. Also, I have re-connected with someone I love and considered the possibility of falling in love with him again. Because of opening up to him, the world has rushed in, too, and I see love everywhere I look. I am afraid even to notice it, to name it, since I fear that Lyrical will flee again. I also fear that everything will fall apart and that all of my habitual ways of seeing myself will collapse if I really let Lyrical—and the joy that seems to accompany Lyrical—in.
When I noticed that I had this expectation about Lyrical being the strongest charge for today’s class, I then expected that I would not move in Lyrical, since I had clearly formed the expectation that I would move in Lyrical. Remarkably, since I then had the expectation of not being in Lyrical as a result of having my expectation of yes being in Lyrical, the expectation reverse-psychologized itself and I did, in fact, find a strong connection to Lyrical. (Yes, I am that mental!)
Meaghan’s musical choices were not simple. Lilting scores were underpinned with grating resistance, and I moved back and forth to the extremes of a certain continuum, pulling through my edges, scraping the tops of my newly-painted toenails in long, painful arcs; then finding edgeless, breathy, dynamic release; again and again re-discovered. As I moved, I continued to find novel movements, delighting in both extremes.
I absolutely love to delve into my most caustic edges—the little catches that jerk me and fling me into a different direction—perhaps in mid-air, in mid-movement, perhaps with the resistance of the floor, perhaps even as I am affected by the movements of another. Today the front edges of my knees felt vulnerable. My back was slightly tender, too. I used to love this edge just above my hips in my lower back, but over time I have backed out of it and lightened up in the interest of longevity. I realize that eventually I will have to give up the emphasis on my edges or my body will wear out. This summer, I have had a little renaissance of youth, but I am not so deluded to believe that I can escape the decline of age.
These physical edges are related though not analogous to the edges Tammy considered at length in Friday’s class. Pushing beyond our edges can be about moving into areas of discomfort, and I think can also be about working with our inner complexities, as they rub against each other in the fabric of our muscles—another kind of discomfort entirely.
This summer when I received a Reiki treatment and initial Reiki empowerment, my teacher kept telling me to “remember to look up.” I thought about a meditation retreat when I had a vivid experience of looking up. I had spent several previous meditation retreats with a close, controlled gaze, carefully following my breath with mindfulness. Gradually, the teachings had guided us to take in more and more space, until in the last stage we were instructed to raise our eyes upward during formal practice. We took a field trip to a city park and practiced in silence there. I sat smiling, cross-legged on a park bench, swaying, enraptured. I raised my eyes and drew breath sharply, as in an instant the park had come to life in many dimensions, including the dimension of the spirit world.
Somehow I have gotten the impression that Tammy is not a fan of raised arms. Probably it is just that she is not a fan of raised, flailing, out-of-control arms, but somehow this has worked its way into my understanding. Raising my arms in class has always felt a bit rebellious. One extremely dynamic friend inspired me to copy her and spin my shoulder completely open, dramatically rising up in a gesture of charismatic presence; and I have often incorporated her gesture into my own experiments. Another very tall, gentle friend has inspired me to roll out into the edges of my fingers, sometimes raising my arms in the process. Meagan, today, held her arms up in a completely different way. They were not simply rising as result of momentum. Neither were they at maximum altitude, but instead around the height of her shoulders, upright, palms toward her own face, moving symmetrically, supporting her in spinning. She almost moved like she had on a hoop skirt. I tried her gesture on for myself, delighted.
Since I am not convinced that I deserve joy, receiving it can seem exceptionally dangerous. When Simon was very small, I was seized by panic every time the rhythm of Lyrical arose in class. Although I knew that my mind was messing with me, and that it was simply the joy of Lyrical causing me to freak out, I had to pause and check the cel phone, to make sure I didn’t have any emergency messages. Eventually, I forced myself not to disengage with what was presenting, and slowly, slowly, Lyrical has come to dance with me. I can jump instantly into Flowing, Staccato or (most certainly) Chaos if that is what is called for, but Lyrical comes only when I am gazing obliquely, never on command, and very rarely comes without significant time in each of the preceding rhythms—Flowing, Staccato and Chaos.
I danced very hard from the very beginning of class, and my energy flagged halfway through. I decided to get back down on the floor to see if I could call up some vigor. I put shorts on under my skirt (since even though I tell myself it doesn’t matter and no one cares, I am inhibited if I don’t have shorts or tights on under a skirt). I thought that, again, since I had the expectation that being on the ground would change the experience I was having for the better, most likely my plan would not work and I would remain tired. Again, as with the appearance of Lyrical, the expectations cancelled each other out, and I found fire and engagement very quickly, pulling myself again to my feet with great, soaring conviction.
In the second wave of Sunday’s Sweat Your Prayers class, I found Lyrical again. I kept all of my edges but worked in and out of them, high on my toe tips, moving on an invisible tight wire, burnishing the back of my breastbone. I noticed that part of my difficulty with Lyrical—my resistance, perhaps—is because I fear that Lyrical is somehow disrespectful to the world’s unrelenting pain. Part of me wonders how I can possibly be joyful when there is so much suffering. Some part of me seems to think my joy is an affront to suffering people everywhere.
Robert Thurman, a Sanskrit scholar and the first American to be ordained a monk by the Dalai Lama, talks about the Dalai Lama’s cheerful outlook, “Everybody has the wrong idea. They think Buddha was so boring, and they’re so surprised when they meet Dalai Lama and he’s fairly jolly. Even though his people are being genocided — and believe me, he feels every blow on every old nun’s head, in every Chinese prison. He feels it. He feels the way they are harvesting yaks nowadays. I won’t even say what they do. But he feels it. And yet he’s very jolly. He’s extremely jolly.”
As I read this over, I realize that my current relationship with Lyrical is anything but happy little clouds and butterflies. I look forward to continuing to investigate this aspect of my practice; and I am curious to see if some hint of Lyrical will linger as I move into the press of fall.
(The image shows visuals I created for Tammy’s class on September 4–an homage to summer and to Lyrical)
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and is not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.
September 7, 2015, Brooklyn, NYC
by meghanleborious | Aug 24, 2015 | Notes on Practice
August 16, 2015: Yesterday I went to Riis Park beach with my five-year old son, Simon, my sister, and her soon-husband. Right after we parked our belongings on the sand, we played in the water for a long time. Simon was not a swimmer just a short time ago, but he has at last crossed the threshold of buoyancy. Last summer, he barely wanted to be in the water. This year, after a month in Costa Rica and a week playing in the water for many-hour stretches with family in Cape Cod, he has come to love the water as much as I do.
When we arrived, the sea seemed relatively calm, but as the tide came in, dangerous currents began to present. Right in front of us, a man nearly drowned when he panicked in a rip tide. A relative swimming next to him was a lifeguard, but he had no flotation equipment. He signaled the lifeguards frantically. They dashed into the sea with their red buoys and rescued them. Shortly after this, Simon said he was cold and I snuggled him on my lap, wrapped in a towel. I was very happy to hold him like I did when he was small, and marveled at his beautiful aliveness, crying softly because I was so grateful for the precious moment.
Just moments later, one of the same lifeguards who saved the drowning man went crashing by us, her heels nearly kicking her back as she ran. Someone was missing. My sister bolted toward the scene, wanting to help. I saw a line of people in the water and thought they were making a chain, holding someone in a rip current, connecting to the land. We ran, Simon in tow. We learned that the people in the sea searching were lifeguards only. Everyone else had been ordered out of the water; and we could not help. The lifeguards were all in a line perpendicular to the shore. They would all hold up a right arm, then all dive, searching for the missing person. It unfolded like a nightmare. A huge crowd had gathered, waiting. I decided to walk away with Simon—thankfully, thankfully—because just minutes after we walked away from the scene they pulled a lifeless five-year-old boy out of the water. My sister found us shortly, as her husband told her to run away, staying behind in case he was needed as a paramedic. My sister sobbed and clung to Simon, then to her husband when he, too, appeared. It was only after some time that my sister told me that the victim was a small boy. She said he was floppy when they pulled him out, white spittle at his lips. We learned later that night that they could not revive the little boy. We also learned that his name was Ezekiel Gray and that he lived in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. I can’t stop thinking about it today. I hugged Simon and rubbed his back and snuggled him for ages this morning—grateful, grief-stricken, afraid, tender.
That is what I stepped in with to this morning’s Sweat Your Prayers 5Rhythms class, which was taught today by Daniela Peltekova. I stepped mindfully across the threshold, bowed deeply, then found the floor. I was still only briefly, feeling my pelvis spread gently as I lay on my back, then moved into attenuated stretching, both circular and resisted. The first lyric I keyed into was something about “being pulled out to sea” and several jagged sobs escaped me. Before long, I was on my feet, moving in weighted and weightless circles, totally released. I began to move around the room with tears still presenting, looking into people’s eyes, neither hiding nor displaying the tears that continued for some time.
I also spoke with my mother this morning. I learned that a friend’s sixteen-year-old son died yesterday after many years of battling liver cancer. This was just too much. I couldn’t really take it in. My mom sensed it and changed the subject, talking instead about Simon’s outfit for my brother’s upcoming wedding.
Sometimes (and this only ever happens on Sundays) I flirt with the idea that my basic nature might actually be aligned with lyrical, instead of chaos as I have generally held it to be. Today, I found total freedom and tenderness, despite the unending pain of the world.
In Tammy’s Friday Night Waves class (my first 5Rhythms class in over six weeks, since I went away to Costa Rica) I was also unusually receptive. I arrived late as I was (then, too) at Riis Park beach until late in the day; and stepped instantly into a massive, back stepping, winged, weighted Staccato storm with a friend I love to dance with. I traveled around the room, the universe delivering the perfect amount of energy as I moved, carefully noticing everyone in attendance. Tammy instructed us to partner with the person closest to us saying, “Let them in.” Then, she added something to the effect of, “Let in. And let out,” as she continually told us to change partners. Although she did not say it this way, I heard, “Let them in. Then let yourself be let in.” This is when practice is sharp. Is precise. Is a light-glinting sword cutting the dross away from the tissues of the heart. It is nothing less than a warrior’s call to battle, carried over hills and mountains and into vast space.
I danced with a man I have often taken lightly. He can be intense with eye contact, which I find a bit intrusive. He always wants to connect, but seems to have a slight smirk as he approaches. He is probably just expressing playfulness, but sometimes I feel like he is making fun of me—of everyone, not just me. I often have a turn with him, but usually move away before sinking deeply inside. Even when I have engaged for longer, I haven’t ever let him in fully. On Friday, I told myself that I might as well be receptive to everyone. Why not be receptive to him? He is just as likely as anyone else to enter my heart. We danced together at length. I experimented with letting myself be lead, without going slack or losing my power. He spun and released me, perhaps to see what would happen. We clasped hands and passed each other in spinning, briefly entwining. Poised high on my toes, I bravely touched his back, encouraging a certain direction as I moved by him, then let myself follow again, going soft. He was tall enough for me to spin while keeping eye contact, bending my neck backward. I smiled as I danced upright again, shyly meeting his unwavering gaze.
This took me by surprise. I realized that although I have shared many very intimate dances, I had never really explored what it is like to be lead. In a subsequent class, Tammy spoke extensively about coming to the point in practice when we are lead by the rhythms, themselves.
The man I spent eight years with, Simon’s father, joined us on our family vacation in Cape Cod during the first week of August. It was touching to have him there, the site of many beautiful shared memories. On his first night, we went to the beach and flew a kite as sunset lit the sky. I sat comfortably on the sand, gazing at the kite, tears coming easily.
At the end of today’s class, I paused to speak with two friends. When I thanked one of them for a beautiful dance, she said, “Our dance was the most energized I felt during the whole class. At other times I was really just feeling tired.” The other friend, with whom I once shared one of the most beautiful gestures of my 5Rhythms career said, “How could you not be energized, dancing with Meghan?” I loved this compliment. I lingered in it. I could see and hear and feel that they both like me, and that made me happy. Even more, that I could somehow contribute to another person’s individual investigation, could offer something in partnership, that someone could feel better during or after dancing with me. Well, that is just beyond.
After so much individual practice on my own in Costa Rica, I wanted more of this dance experiment with the man I decided to be receptive to, but as I moved toward him other currents kept gathering me in. At the end of the second wave, in a long, swooning, downward-gazing step, my shoulder grazed the shoulder of a woman I barely know. Instantly full-on, it was almost like a continuation of my dance with the earlier man, but now I danced with her instead, letting myself be lead, swept away. Drawn inside a coupled spin, our eyes meeting playfully, the rest of the room fell away. Looking me in the eye, she firmly circled my waist with her arm, just as my dance partner in the Dominican Republic years ago grabbed me in the throes of a lively merengue, and I rested my hand on her other raised arm, being lead, being guided.
In today’s Sweat Your Prayers class, I found a dance with a 5Rhythms teacher who I love dearly. I asked myself, if I were enlightened, right now, right in this moment, how would I be? My heart answered that I would be total presence, just like her, just like the friend I was in that moment dancing with. Winds swept through me, coiling around my spine, entering it, making all of me porous.
In Chaos, I danced for the mother of the drowned little boy. I danced, too, for all mothers who lost a five-year-old boy yesterday, and, indeed, danced with my own fear of losing my own son. I let the prayer dissolve, spinning and leaping, gazing up, my fingertips casting upward. I recalled, perhaps, a memory of a past life that has presented many times over the years, that I once lost a child, drowned in a pond on my own land.
Halfway through the class, I connected with another dancer I have a long history with; and who I trust absolutely. We moved unselfconsciously; breathing each other in, our spines undulating patiently, profoundly in Flowing, unable to stop moving even as Daniela paused the music and offered brief instruction in the middle of the class.
We found each other again at the very end, and connected in creative emptiness, the ceaseless activities of my self-making mind pausing briefly, moving in sublime silence, even with all of the world’s activity around us, even with the street noise of the West Village on a hot summer Sunday in the thick of August.
August 16, 2015, Brooklyn, NYC
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 | Aug 16, 2015 | Notes on Practice, Uncategorized
One day during my last week in Nosara, Costa Rica, I danced from low tide at 5:30 in the morning until the next low tide over twelve hours later—from 5:30AM to nearly 5:30PM. This was not 5Rhythms practice, but rather an artwork performance, a ritual, and, indeed, an endurance event. It was beautiful to witness the site—a place I have grown to love at the farthest reach of Playa Pelada—go from the first light of day when the cliff island in front of me was completely in shadow and a group of buzzards slept perched on a tree, to morning, when the shadow slipped down the island’s cliffs, then mid-morning when the shadow edge moved to the sand and slipped across it, finally overtaking me and thrusting me into the full light of sun. The night before the performance, as I compiled the things I would need to survive it, my uncle said, “This isn’t just a performance artwork. It’s a vision quest!”
I left home and walked to the beach when light was just breaking. I had several bags of colored salt with me to use somehow, and realized right away exactly what I should do. I created a large, rainbow-colored spiral on the morning low-tide beach. For the duration of the first low tide, I interacted with this creation as my centerpiece; and an interesting construction arose. I moved again and again between the relative and the absolute—I would walk through the spiral into its middle and dance in absolute space, where it was crowded with spirits and guides; then, when I wanted to be in relative reality, I would coil back out of the spiral, and there consider my own psychology, things of the world, and the phenomena of the senses.
I had been very concerned about hiring a helper for the performance, since I was nervous about being alone on the beach throughout the entire day. I called a friend and asked if she knew anyone who might be interested in a day’s work. She said she would ask her boyfriend. I never heard back from her, so I assumed he was not available. Once I got to the beach and started to work, I was grateful that I didn’t have a helper after all; but, to my surprise, my friend’s boyfriend appeared, trotting good-naturedly down the beach. I explained how he could help, then returned to dancing. Not long after, I told him I realized that I could absolutely handle doing the piece by myself, but that he could keep some of the fee I had offered initially. We had a beautiful conversation during which he asked if I was doing a ritual of some sort. He also told me that it seemed very much like a Mayan dance, as they, too, had danced into spirals—a valuable connection that gave rise to many ideas. “Is this curative?” he asked. “Yes, absolutely,” I answered. “Quien quieres curar?” “Who are you trying to cure?” he asked next.
Moving into the middle of the large spiral was like moving into the middle of the earth. This image connected with something that arose during a long, intensive session with a Reiki master the previous week. In the Reiki master’s very capable hands, I was invited to “journey” and some of the images from my journey found their way into my dance. For example, I imagined that I accompanied a dragon through a volcano into the earth’s hot core. In the dance, I went inside the volcano of my vision, where the lava purified and cleansed me of obscurations. In the dance, I became large in the space of the earth’s core, almost like I was a baby pressing inside a mother’s womb. At the end of the session with the Reiki master, she offered to empower me with a Level I Reiki transmission; and I gratefully accepted her offer.
I was deeply affected by this experience with Reiki. Reiki is an energy-healing lineage wherein the Reiki practitioner channels and directs universal energy to invite positive transformation. In my case, transformation on many different levels took place at once. The teacher called on the Reiki spirits repeatedly, asking them to help when she gets “in the way.” She emphasized again and again turning toward light, and doing everything in service to light and love as she channeled the energy of the universe to help me to heal and to thrive.
At the beach, I stayed in Flowing for ages. Even with the excitement of the Reiki-influenced vision, I grew languid and was captured by the weight of inertia for some of the long period of the first low tide.
The very same day as the Reiki empowerment, my five-year-old son, Simon, and I were joined by my uncle and cousin, who would share our final week in Costa Rica. This was a slightly jarring transition, and I found myself irritable, trying my best to be loving and grounded, but not always succeeding. My uncle and cousin are very easy to love, but I noted the depth of the work I had done so far in the month and my aversion to abandoning my own deep engagement. Too, I noted the change in our relationship to the place. It felt like we shifted from being members of the community to being tourists. To make it more challenging, Simon started to act up—absolutely crowding my cousin’s space again and again. The two of them vied to be first, to get the biggest, to be the best, to unlock the door—anything and everything seemed to lead to bickering. My uncle and I have similar parenting styles, but when you are together every minute of every day for several days in a row, even small differences seem huge.
For the day of this long dance, my uncle had Simon and my cousin—his daughter—for the entire day, from sunrise to sunset. They came to see the performance at around 11AM, after I had already been dancing for five and a half hours. By then, one great wave had rolled up and erased the entire rainbow spiral design.
The swells of high tide crashing, swirling and colliding around the cliff island gave me a lot to respond to during the entire phase of high tide; and, despite feeling tired at moments, I became engaged and inspired. Rolling, turning, following the waves, walking the edges: I immersed myself in participating in the dynamic activity around me. At times, the waves coming from the two different sides of the cliff island faced off, crashing into each other, vying for dominance, pulling, pushing, twisting and receding—the soft plane of white salt bubbles moving calmly back beneath a newly presenting wave.
The woman who owns the (spectacular, beautiful) place we were staying, Nosara B&B Retreat Center, appeared during the early stages of high tide. She advised me that a friend and her sister were waiting at the Retreat Center to assist me with the piece. I was, as when my friend’s boyfriend appeared, confused. I had asked my friend if she knew anyone who might assist me with the performance, but since I hadn’t heard back from her, I assumed she hadn’t found anyone. I told the owner to please let my friend and her sister know that I worked it out, and no longer needed help. This was not without torn guts and stooped posture, however. I reflected that every action in the world involves a terribly high risk of causing harm. Self-dislike sparked, as I feared that I had taken people’s time lightly and failed to communicate. Though I realized no one was devastated, it still made me want to repair to a dark cave and live in seclusion.
My contemplation for the month was “Everything is perfect.” Many different takes on the phrase came to mind, but I especially considered the belief that absolutely everything that arises, including very uncomfortable or even painful feelings and events, are part of the exact material that we can use to wake up to our lives. Twelve hours of dancing gave me plenty of time to experience both sacred beauty and afflictive emotions, including self-dislike and the belief that I had caused harm.
My uncle was supportive when I shared this reflection during their visit to the performance. As they were leaving, he said, “I hope you find what you are looking for.” This wish touched me deeply. He also said, “It is great that you are willing to project this out. Not everyone is willing to do that.”
Owing in part to the blazing sun, the dance was more subtle than I had anticipated. I was grateful that I had not promoted it widely. Somehow, even the friends who were determined to come out and support could not find the site and did not, in the end, make it. Overall, the day evolved patiently. At around 2.30, I realized that if I did not sit down in the shade for a little while, I might faint or vomit. My uncle had the keys to the casita, or, to be completely honest, I might have called it a day and gone home. I found a small piece of broken surfboard and used it as a meditation cushion, settling into sitting meditation for over an hour in a tiny wedge of shade cast by a tall cliff. The landscape crawled, alive with hermit crabs, insects and lizards.
Gradually, the sun moved west and flared, illuminating the patient, gliding flights of the vultures—their shadows dancing over the sand. After this rest from exertion, I found another small burst of energy, dancing on the soft sand revealed again by the second low tide, dipping and casting a reverent arm toward the sea. I recalled my uncle’s wish of many hours before, “I hope you find what you are looking for.” Slowly, I brought the images of the many people in my life to mind and said to them, “I hope you find what you are looking for.” This was the only time during the day that tears erupted, as I moved softly, fascinated.
July 29, Nosara, Costa Rica
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 | Jul 30, 2015 | Notes on Practice, Uncategorized
Pura vida literally means “pure life.” In Costa Rica, you hear it many times a day. I was trying to explain “pura vida” to my five-year-old son, Simon, yesterday. It means “life is extremely beautiful.” It can also mean “you are welcome, I offer this thing to you with grace and generosity.” Too, it can mean, “Yes, I totally agree with you,” or “We are so lucky to be alive.” It is often used as the closing for a note or for the end of a satisfying conversation. It implies a kind of presence, joy and wholeheartedness; and, when uttered, acts as a reminder to take note of the spectacular moment that is unfolding.
The contemplation “Everything is Perfect” at first seemed too obvious. In so many ways, everything is perfect here. Costa Rica is the closest I have been to paradise. For the last few days, however, the complex meaning of the phrase has been apparent—that absolutely everything that arises in our path is part of the material we use to wake up, even (and especially) the afflictive emotions—such as grief, anxiety, jealousy, anger, self-hate, blame and guilt.
On the way to Simon’s school, a large, black dog barked viciously and chased us. We can only drive about 10 mph in the golf cart we are getting around town in; and I floored it, afraid that the dog might actually try to attack us. This was the 5th or 6th time this happened, and I found myself imaging how I would kill the dog if it tried to attack Simon. Adrenalin lingered in my legs for a long time after.
On the way back to the beach after dropping Simon off, I crossed paths with a woman who makes my blood boil. Two nights before, she had attacked Simon and his slightly-younger friend, claiming that Simon’s friend was unkind to a smaller child, and complaining that they were being destructive in the restaurant. I was flooded. I didn’t know what to make of it! I had lagged behind by just a minute or two, and I didn’t have any idea what she was talking about. When I arrived she was speaking with anger and contempt to the two children. The woman was accompanied by an acquaintance—a woman I know because she is lodged, along with her small son, at our previous hotel. Simon met her son on his own, and went to great lengths to share a prized toy he thought the little boy might like. I went to call him back to our room, and found him speaking with the toddler in the gentlest possible tone—explaining something from a big boy perspective.
I was totally thrown off by the woman’s aggression. After I got the boys settled, I went to speak with my acquaintance to gather information. She expressed that on other occasions, my friend’s son had been “mean” to her small son—that when the baby said “I’m Spiderman!” my friend’s son said, “No, you’re not!” repeatedly, causing the child to cry. I asked where, when? She said it had happened at various restaurants, recently. She also claimed that other parents had agreed with her and shared similar stories. I was still very thrown off. I said, “I can see how that would be upsetting. He is just four years old, you know! He looks much older, but he is just four. We will work with it! He is just a little kid.” I told my friend something upsetting had happened, and sketched only the vaguest details, planning to have a conversation with her at another time. Though I dance at a remote edge of the beach, this woman has crossed my dancing path there three times since this incident, forcing me to look at my reaction to her and to attend to its insights.
In addition to these challenges, there are problems at home. For one, I am having a serious problem with a roommate in Brooklyn. She had a lawyer send a threatening letter and I feel bullied and disempowered. Also, I just found out that, although I wore a robe and attended graduation, I did not graduate from my most recent program of study. It seems that I failed to fill out some kind of form. Which could pose problems for my employment. In the idiosyncratic recesses of my mind, both events were causes for self-abuse.
I parked at Playa Pelada, and set out for the farthest reach of the beach, carrying all of this with me. There was so much to move! I consciously set out to move it, settling into a long Flowing dance. I moved with incredible patience, imaging that I could dance for hours and hours if need be.
Simon had been all over me the day before—clingy, impatient, demanding. We had planned to have dinner with friends, but a torrential rainstorm kept them home. I didn’t have any way to contact them, so we went anyway and waited. In Flowing, I realized that Simon is lonely here in Costa Rica at times. We have been here for just three weeks, really. He doesn’t have the same kind of networks that he has at home. The other day he told me, “Everyone else at school has a sister or brother to help them, but I don’t have anyone.” Dancing, I wished (as so often happens) that I had been more patient and supportive of him. The truth of it struck me and I cried as I moved. I thought of a time when he said, his face crumpled and crying uncontrollably, “Mommy, you are being mean!”
Despite the fact that we had a beautiful day together, including playing happily in the waves at length, I held the discordant part of the experience most tightly. My self-talk was appalling as I began to move.
I had sent my friend an email about what happened at the restaurant with our sons. But I also decided to add that I had seen a little meanness in her son, too, especially when I had both boys for the afternoon the previous week, and again a few days later. I even said that she gives her son a lot of freedom and could, possibly, be missing some of the behaviors that are coming up.
As I moved into Staccato, I gave up on staying in the shade, and used up as much space as I needed. I grew sharp, expanding to my maximum volume and contracting again, moving fast and covering vast ground. On Saturday, I went dancing with the same friend. We went first to a swank, new club, where an indie-rock band from Guatemala called Easy Easy and a sexy female hipster MC from Mexico unleashed a dancing storm. I couldn’t stop moving. Though the crowd stayed mostly in a happy groove, I found a huge range, expressing edges, deep hips—freedom, specificity, sexuality. The party shifted to Cumbia and Regaton and still this vibrant inspiration sustained itself. Later, we went to Tropicana—the only discotequa in Nosara. Still, I couldn’t stop moving, even as we walked out to head home, even in the parking lot. I was reminded that I was born a dancer. We are all born dancers!
My friend told me, “It was so great to dance with you! You are such a good dancer! You are such a free spirit, especially when you dance!” On the beach yesterday, as I started to move, I felt like the exact opposite. I was conflicted, self-abusive, small, hesitant, doubting. Anything but free.
Gabrielle Roth, the creator of the 5Rhythms practice, would say famously, “5Rhythms is not free dance. It is dance that frees.” My friend asked if I was a 5Rhythms teacher and I said, “No, I wish! My circumstances make it hard for me to complete the pre-requisites to apply and to undergo the training even if I was accepted.” She asked if I could just do a sort-of-like 5Rhyhms-y thing and start teaching kids. I said, “There is no way to do that. All of the teachers—every single one of them—is fucking amazing. They have to undergo thousands and thousands of hours of very targeted training. It is no small thing. It is not like yoga where you can do a 200-hour training, then start calling yourself an expert. There is also a lot of oversight, intended to keep the tradition from becoming corrupted.”
Although you don’t need to know anything about the system to benefit from practicing 5Rhythms, there is actually a very precise system that reveals itself in stages, only as we are ready to receive it. It is important to note that the independent journey I have embarked on this month is technically not 5Rhythms, since there is no certified teacher guiding the practice. That being said, ultimately, I think 5Rhythms leads us back to ourselves, and that if we practice with deep commitment and integrity, we can recover our birthright—to dance with complete, undefiled freedom—which, in the end, transcends even the 5Rhythms system.
As Staccato started to take me over, my body returned to the movements I found at the dance clubs on Saturday; and I sang the chorus of one song again and again. I started to leave the small, damaged self behind and to inhabit my power—explosive, expressive, precise, clear. I could really stamp my feet on the soft sand without fear of injury, and I lept—crouching and rising, circling, advancing, retreating—landing repeatedly in a deep, square-kneed squat with my arms, also, squared and raised.
On the beach with Simon on Saturday, a little yoga movement pulled me into a gigantic dance. Simon buried my foot with sand, and I told him it reminded me of when he was little and he would cling to my ankle in class while I danced. With this one constraint, I found powerful expression that I never would have found without the element of resistance that he provided. He tried to get sand on my feet and I danced away, changing direction fast, following my own high kicks, looping toward him and away. He laughed and started to throw more sand at me—all part of our game. Despite the challenges I have experienced lately, dance has been incredibly available, in everything, in every moment.
Chaos found me again, crying, released. The waves, the broad-leaved green trees, the cliffs, the vultures soaring overheard, the sand, all flashed together as I spun, dipped and whirled. Group 5Rhythms practice offers many opportunities for insight and healing, but individual practice leaves me mercilessly alone with myself and wears me away in bits. I can’t pretend that anything that arises comes from anyone but myself. I had the idea that the meanness I was afraid of with my son’s friend might really be my own fear of meanness in myself, and by extension and projection—in my own son. The thought was painful, difficult. I let it go again, subsumed in the casting circles of Chaos.
Often, Lyrical and Stillness are almost afterthoughts when I practice individually, but that wasn’t the case this time. Lyrical found me soaring, touching the yielding sand, drifting to the sky. A large group of vultures circled overhead. One vulture alone is not very interesting—just a long gliding arc, but in this case, an entire matrix of the huge, black birds, with two groups at different altitudes moved soundlessly above me. I curved and moved with them, gently, my body a matrix, too, crossing over myself as the birds crossed each other in the air. I continued to move gently—feeling the wind drying the sweat on my exposed skin, turning me slowly, toward or away from it. A tiny, yellow butterfly gasped along—clear on the other side of the cove; and I followed it with my motions, adding a tiny flutter to my slow, wind-carved gesture.
My friend wrote about the restaurant incident, “Don’t get pulled into currents that aren’t yours. I’m surprised you were so affected by it and actually believed them or began looking at (child’s name) through their perspective, which of course will influence your reception.”
The vultures—with such a reputation for bullying and meanness—when held in the vast blue space of the sky were no less than sublime. After all of this moving, I sat quietly in a clear tide pool in full sun. My half-closed eyes perceived golden reflected light ripples on the underside of my hat. Tiny fish lingered around me. A bright sunspot dazzled the corner of my vision.
July 20, 2015, Nosara, Costa Rica
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and is not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.
