“Ouch!”

“Ouch!” one teenager cried out as another slammed her into the hallway wall, smiling not kindly, her arm shooting straight out from her shoulder as she passed, not even looking as she struck.  The teen who got slammed walked not ten paces, then slammed another girl into the wall as she passed, using the same gesture she had been slammed with.  Aggression seemed to be ricocheting around in rip currents.

On September 11, Daniela Peltekova taught the Sunday Sweat Your Prayers 5Rhythms class at the Joffrey Ballet in the West Village.  Loving the extra space of Sunday’s class, I stretched out on the ground, rising and falling in the shape of a moving starfish.  Daniela lead us through a very fast wave at the beginning of the class, wasting no time.  Traveling around the room, I noted a little tourist tchotchke of the World Trade Center—part of the visuals for the class that a member of the crew had created—and remembered with remarkably little emotional charge that it was September 11th.

The music faded and Daniela began to speak, stepping into the middle of the room with all of us surrounding her, still standing.  She expressed that the events of September 11 are unavoidably heavy—something that lives in our collective memory as New Yorkers whether we were actually there or not.  Although I don’t recall her exact words, she also expressed that there was some aspect of beauty in it, too, something about pain and struggle that gives us grit—the inspiration to push deeper.

My own experience of September 11th feels remote by now, but it definitely marked my life indelibly.  At the time, I was working in downtown Manhattan.  I rollerbladed to work, as was my habit, and paused on the way to look at what I thought was a fire at the Bell Atlantic building.  I even took out my sketchbook and did a few drawings, standing in the middle of the bike path that parallels the East River.  Concerned I might arrive late to work, I continued on my way.  It slowly began to dawn on me that things were not right.  People seemed to be walking slowly in many different directions, some with white stuff (which I later realized was ash) on their hair and shoulders.  Skating up Chambers Street behind City Hall, a man was yelling at the top of his lungs, “Get out! They’re lying to you!  It’s terrorists!  Get out! Save yourselves!”  I moved more and more slowly, not processing the information fully.  A few minutes after I heard the man yelling, I finally realized that I wouldn’t be going to work.  I began to retreat and make my way north.  Streams of people now seemed to have direction—they were also moving north, away from the World Trade Center.  No one ran, no one screamed.  Almost no one made eye contact.  The scene devolved into silent slow motion.

I skated north, more or less.  I had just given up my cel phone, believing it a passing fad that was having a negative impact on my consciousness, so I tried to use a payphone to call a girlfriend, my sister and my parents.  The payphone just buzzed angrily—tied up with system overload.  Skating in the East Village and on the Lower East Side while searching vaguely for a working payphone, radios were on everywhere.  Many people stood beside their cars with the radio on, staring into space.  Everywhere I went, people gathered in silence or walked north in droves.

Eventually, I made my way home to Brooklyn across the Williamsburg Bridge, skating slowly.  Stranded and shell-shocked commuters made their way across the bridge on foot.  A group of people stood silently on a section of the bridge just before the descent into Brooklyn where they could watch the two burning skyscrapers.  Many hooked their fingers on the caged safety wire as they overlooked.  I don’t remember anyone speaking.  I went to my favorite café.  There was a TV on the counter.  No one was speaking.  I went to the health food store on Bedford Avenue.  There was a TV on the counter.  No one was speaking.

I went home and climbed up to the roof.  I had a full view of the burning towers from there, and stood watching as the first tower turned to toxic dust and crumpled, buckling sideways, then down.  Nuns from a church on the next block stood on their own roof, also watching the building fall, their royal blue, full nun’s habits flapping in the wind, emphasizing their frozen gestures.

My mother’s hair turned white that day.

In the first wave, I had stepped cheerfully into partnership with a tall, white man.  We began to dance together again just as Daniela began to speak.  In concluding her remarks, Daniela invited us to turn to whoever was closest and join them.  I smiled unshyly and stepped my foot next to his, by way of introduction.  He stepped his foot in relation to mine.  I stepped again, turning my foot and noticing how much darker my skin was than his—tanned from a summer spent outside.  In this case, we moved in Stillness first, gently around each other, back to back, side to side, rising and falling in response to silent currents in and around us.  Then, we moved together into Flowing and into Staccato, receding and advancing, smiling and looking into each other’s eyes.

A friend cut in then.  Bereft, she clung to me, sobbing.  I held her tightly and rocked with her side to side, wondering if she was feeling the post-trauma of September 11th.

The music got heavy, resistant, hard with only short bits of rest.  One song lead me back and forth between dragging, clawing, harsh gestures to brief, uncompressed, spacious movement.  I was deep in the hips, gyrating and jiggling.  I thought of the song, “My Name is NO!” that I had spent the week dancing to along with my six-year-old son, who has developed an entire choreographed staccato routine to the tune, including a dramatic spin with a hard end-stop.

Chaos was a collective exorcism; and on this day there was no way around it but through.  It went on and on and on, sometimes spiking in intensity, but holding back from Lyrical.  An idea for a project I have been wanting to make burst through; and I got excited about new possibilities.

I very much wanted to dance with a friend I had met several times in an interesting pocket a few months before—a tiny, contained dance of precision and restraint.  He did not seem available, and I stepped into another partnership, realizing that the same unique, quirky dance I was sharing with him came into my partnership with the woman I was then dancing with, as he continued to dance nearby.  I thought about how much energy slips around, how mercurial it is, how much we are subject to the currents that race through us.

 

On September 11th after I watched the first tower fall, I skated to Woodhull Hospital to volunteer.  There, I found empty, parked ambulances and paramedics leaning on them with crossed arms.  No volunteers were needed, as there were so few survivors.  I lingered for awhile, then skated to Prospect Park and looped it again and again on the bike path, watching the smoke rise across the river and hearing the rush of military fighter jets racing overhead.

When Daniela finally lead us to Lyrical, we tipped right over the edge of Chaos and found flight.  It contained the beauty that can only arise from maturity, from the clarification of intense pain and perhaps from opening—instead of closing down—to grief, sadness, fear and insecurity.

September 18, 2016, 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.

Sweat Your Prayers, Dance Your Pain & Move On

“Take a minute to notice what you’re arriving with,” said 5Rhythms teacher Amber Ryan as she started the Sweat Your Prayers class today with a long, attenuated period of tonal music.  I found a spot on the floor in the northeast corner of the studio, nearest to the home of the late Gabrielle Roth—the founder of the 5Rhythms practice.  As the music unfolded, Amber also encouraged us to set an intention for our dance today, and to offer as many prayers as occurred to us during the dance.  Instantly, a flurry of prayers arose, ending with the simplest and most complex of prayers—a wish for self love.

I lay on back, and drew my legs gently in to my torso, noting a sore back, and resolving to move gently to avoid injuring it further.  On Friday, before Tammy’s Friday Night Waves class I had made the same resolution. That day, I had carried a heavy backpack all day, assisting with a field trip for my six-year-old son, Simon’s, camp, then traipsed around with him after. On the way home, he crashed his bike into the sidewalk and I had flung myself off my bike to run to his aid.  My neck hurt, my back hurt.

Shortly after I began to move in Friday’s class, the pain disappeared completely.  In fact, the neck pain was totally gone until yesterday afternoon when I got a $175 parking ticket—at which point the pain returned with a vengeance.  The back pain stayed disappeared until a giant wave knocked Simon and me over at the beach, after we had been playing and diving over and through the waves for nearly an hour.  Alone, I would just release and let the wave toss me around until I found which way was up, but Simon is an emerging swimmer; and (despite his protestations) I clung to his swim shirt, holding on as the wave overtook us, moving heavily into my back again during this maneuver (though we ended with tumbling smiles).

Today for the Sweat Your Prayers class I shared the elevator to the 5th floor dance studio with a friend.  “How are you?” I asked.  She said, “Well, I can finally make eye contact,” and explained that she’d been very sad recently.  “I did wonder when I saw you on Friday if there might be something going on.”  I had danced up to her, usually a joyful encounter, but she kept her eyes down, her head tilted forward.  I got the message immediately that she wanted privacy and moved to give her the space she seemed to need.

There is so much information in the way we use our eyes.  Early in my dance career, I thought it would be rude to make direct eye contact with other dancers, like it would be an intrusion, and might break the aesthetic trance they were immersed in.  Now, it is when I feel like I need to keep to myself that I avert my eyes.  Or if for some reason I can’t or don’t want to invite someone in.  Or if I am listening carefully to something that is going on inside.  I note with interest that the people who partner the most seem also to be the people who make the most eye contact.  Lately, I make gentle eye contact with everyone I encounter, even people I pass on the street.  Some days, I feel like everyone in New York and I are in on a private joke, our eyes glittering with the juiciness of it.

After considerable time stretching in gentle circles, I attained my feet and began to move slowly through the room, staying out of my edges completely, especially the edges in my back.  I set the intention to see everyone, saying silently, “I see you there; and I am grateful for it.”  (A meditation adapted from a practice taught by the Zen master, Thich Nhat Hahn.)  I looked up from my looping circles, meeting some eyes and not meeting others, but taking the time to notice each person.  The point was not eye contact, but seeing, noticing and acknowledging the presences of the people in the room.  The slow, thick music continued for some time as each of us found our individual ground, and as we established a ground as a class.

Pain did not disappear so much as fade from the front of my experience.  I still felt a bit of tenderness in the back, but as I released into the wave it was a far-off echo.  I marveled at this.  Once, I was barely able to walk I was so gimped from dancing ferociously on the first day of a three-day workshop.  Somehow I hobbled into the studio on day two, unable to imagine how I could possibly move.  Miraculously, as soon as the music started, the experience of physical pain completely reversed.  I spent the remaining two days alternating between soaring and flying; and the pain never returned. The biographer of Dipa Ma, a highly realized teacher in the Buddhist Vipassana tradition who did not begin meditation practice until after the age of 40, wrote that before learning to meditate, Dipa Ma experienced such intense physical and emotional pain—including a severe heart problem—that she could only drag herself to the monastery temple where she would practice meditation by crawling up the stairs.  After learning meditation, she walked upright, free of pain.

This is not to stay that 5Rhythms practice always makes pain disappear, certainly the opposite has happened to me, too; but I am grateful and amazed for the times that pain has suddenly left me, and wonder about the mechanisms of pain’s disappearance.

Another related example occurs to me.  I have had the experience on many occasions that I have been on a chilly beach or other inspiring outdoor site practicing sitting meditation.  I might meditate for an hour or more in these cases.  Immediately after I decide that I am “done” meditating, the cold rushes in, the wind starts to bite, and I can no longer bear to be subject to the elements.  What would it be like if, like Dipa Ma, I could sustain whatever was happening during the “official” period of meditation and generalize it to other areas of my life?  And, significant to our consideration here, what are the internal and external factors at play when pain totally disappears as soon as I step in to the dance?  (In other words, how can I get me some more of that!)

Once the long, slow arriving began to transform, the class picked up like a windstorm.  As Amber told us at the end, she led us through four consecutive mini-waves in the two-hour class.  (In contrast, most two-hour waves classes feature just two waves, separated by a break between the two.)

I noticed that I often decide to hold myself back in a given rhythm before charging on to the next one, especially with Flowing.  Today, I wasn’t always aware of which rhythm we were in.  I thought I really needed to work on something in Staccato; and when I finally let myself leave Flowing and move into Staccato, it seemed like I barely registered Staccato as Staccato before we were moving into Chaos.

The big, nasty parking ticket the day before gave me some insight into aspects of Staccato that I need to repair.  I was on a beach trip to celebrate my friend’s birthday and she suggested her favorite beach. We saw a line of cars parked on the side of the road.  Also, farther down, a red sign that said, “No Standing.”  My friend went to ask the people in a car ahead of us if they knew it was a legal place to park.  “We’ve never been here before actually.  But they can’t tow all of us!” was their jocular response.  Though squeamish, I wanted to honor my friend’s birthday wish; and we gathered our things for the long walk to Fort Tilden Beach. Returning a few hours later, though I was happy to find that the car had not been towed, my smile faded seconds later when I found a prison-orange parking ticket crammed under the driver’s side windshield wiper.  Two separate violations were checked—totaling $175.

I knew it was a bad idea.  I got the message from my body.  My friend would not have cared at all if I said, “This is not a good idea.  Let’s go to the other beach instead.”  Instead, perhaps influenced by an internalized voice of someone who was close to me for a long time, I wanted so much to be NOT controlling that I overdid it.  I knew the best course of action, but I swallowed it.  The problem was not so much about having the confidence to speak, as it was about having the confidence to own my knowledge and intuition, instead of talking myself out of it for some stupid identity reason.  Not just getting the message, but clearing the channel into proper expression—the skillful application of Staccato.

Lately, I have been considering the continuum between following what feels like intuition and fully taking on each rhythm as it comes, even when it seems counter-intuitive.  Since today I often didn’t know which rhythm we were in, the only thing I could do was move with what felt right.

Although I have fallen in love with Flowing and with the ground in recent years, sometimes the mandate of finding the ground feels like a heavy responsibility.  I know that if I don’t take the time to really find the ground—what is a better way to put this?  I know if I don’t take the time to fully arrive in my body and in my senses, and take the time to slow down and open my awareness to how my own body relates with the environment I exist in—that it is not responsible to move on to another rhythm.  That would be to risk causing harm.  The ground—and I mean ground in this broad sense—is what protects you and the people around you.  Until you find the ground, as Jonathan Horan, Gabrielle Roth’s son and the current holder of the 5Rhythms lineage said, “There is no point in moving on.” I’m not sure why, for me, sometimes, I make it into a “should,” rather than just receiving it as a blessing.  It’s kind of like being in a conversation and just waiting to get your point in, rather than patiently listening to the other person’s words.  Committing to finding the ground first even when I want to charge ahead to Staccato and to Chaos is an example of taking on the rhythms and experimenting with resisting my automatic responses, rather than always going with what feels comfortable.  I think the trick is to distinguish between the pull of conditioned responses and the wisdom of intuition—a key distinction that will be different in every new set of circumstances.

Chaos—off and on—as it came, was delightful today.  Continuing to stay out of my edges, I was as totally released as I can be at this time.  We are often taught that Chaos is a fusion of Flowing and Staccato; and today my version of Chaos was much closer to Flowing, though without any of its weight.  As we moved into Lyrical, I noticed not only the friend I had seen in the elevator crying, but many others crying, too.  Though I avoided the deep arcing bows into the ground that I so love, I found glorious flight, high onto my toes, twittering and soaring, at once quirky and extended, aloft, majestic.

I stepped into a smiling dancer who is new to me and started to cry myself, like so many in today’s class.  The fronts of her shoulders were exceptionally open.  I tried on her gesture, and realized how much you have to open the front shoulders to release the heart.  I continued to experiment with the generous arm and shoulder gestures that were inspired by this brief dance for the rest of the class.  I also noticed that my diaphragm, which is a part of my body where I typically hold stuck energy, was released today.  That spot has not fully let in air for a very long time, but today it was open, clean.

There was something of a pause after one of the Stillnesses; and I began to move in circles with a friend.  Amber marked the start of this wave, beginning an instruction with, “As the end becomes the beginning again…”  Both of us spun, moving more quickly than much of the honey-slow room.  Her spine undulated, released in all directions.  Collectively, the exchange went up several notches and we both broke into open-mouthed smiles as our spins began to find weight and we stepped in and out, behind and around, still moving in unending circles.  As the song shifted toward Staccato, my friend moved to the other side of the room.  Smiling, I followed her for one more pass.  As Flowing transitioned to Staccato, I stepped into the field of another friend, very close, extremely gently.  We found a tiny, timeless pocket of Stillness, breathing so fully it seemed breathless, sharing a minute portal; then we each spun back into the collective field.

Amber invited us to return to the intention that we set at the beginning as the class drew to a close, the room joyful, moving out of a drum-heavy Hindu chant.  In the final phase of Stillness, I moved unselfconsciously, silently enacting an energetic Buddhist practice that feels like home for me.

Amber concluded the class with a ritual (one of her great strengths as a teacher).  We sat in a large circle, then Amber asked us to notice the person to our left and the person to our right.  We then were told to hold our left hand facing up and our right hand facing down, so they lined up with our neighbors’ hands, without actually touching.  We sat there, receiving and offering, generating energy and filtering everything through the heart, for a few minutes.

Self love seemed more available.  Pain seemed unimportant.  The world seemed workable.  My heart felt full.  The circle dissolved, the class dissolved.

In the hall, I saw the friend I had taken the elevator with before class who shared that she had been terribly sad.  She was smiling even as she pulled a clean shirt over her head, shining, apparently pain free, or at least having a break from it.

“Sweat your prayers, dance your pain and move on.” –Gabrielle Roth

August 22, 2016, NYC

This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and is not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.

Things to Climb & Games of Invention

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I was overly optimistic in putting on a bathing suit.  During a brief glimpse of blue, we rushed to get to the sea, hoping for at least a few moments of beach fun.  As it was, the blue was enclosed again by white sky long before we made it to the beach, but we decided to explore anyway.  We found a place to park near Bonmahon Beach in Co. Waterford, Ireland and set up the sandy path to the sea.  I shivered with a three-quarter sleeve sweater and my six-year-old son, Simon, complained—between designing games with sticks, investigating the tidal river, running toward the roaring waves, and creating performances for an imagined audience modeled on a show we had seen in Galway the week prior—that his hands were cold in the wind.

Monday, I finally got to practice formally as Simon attended his first day of camp in Dunhill.

I dropped Simon off at camp, lingering while he acclimated.  Most of the other children were part of large family contingents, and I wondered how he would fare.  I had been awake the night before, anxious about entrusting him to new people.  I also kept reviewing an incident of a few days before, when he and I climbed to the highest point of a castle ruin.  I regretted my decision as soon as we climbed up, and had a moment of intense fear as I gathered the strength and focus needed to get us back down.  When I was checking out the climb before I ok’d it for Simon, he stood for a moment with his back to an extremely steep, crumbling stone staircase.  I gasped and drew him to me, reminding him to never turn his back to a ledge or a staircase.  I kept re-playing it and re-playing it, realizing that no matter how many times you say it, a six-year-old is unlikely to have the mindfulness needed to manage things like climbing up dangerous rocks.  With camp looming, this episode that had felt like an adventure a few days prior now felt like terror.  Our trip has been filled with challenges; and I realize that fear has begun to encroach on my peace of mind.  As it was, the camp seemed safe, spacious, uplifted and cheerful; and he quickly joined a group of his peers.

I was very eager to practice and to venture on my own.  I returned to my friend’s lovely thatch cottage that is our temporary home and gathered what I thought I might need.  I walked across the street and down a little overgrown path to the Annestown beach.  I wandered to the east end, investigating the attributes of high tide, then made my way along over piled, large, round stones to the west end of the beach where I knew there was an unprotected cliff path.  I had embarked on the path a few days before with Simon, but quickly realized that it was too dangerous, especially given his punchy mood at that moment, and turned back.  Stepping onto it again, I couldn’t believe I even considered it with him.  On one side there was an electrified fence protecting an open meadow of grazing cattle. On the other, high cliffs dropping down to open sea.  I moved along the path slowly, choosing my steps. Once, I stumbled on the small, loose rocks that littered the path and was very grateful that I hadn’t stumbled on one of the most dangerous sections directly above sheer ocean cliffs with no buffer of grass between.

I followed the path as far as I could, until I wasn’t sure at if it was just a run-off ditch for water or an actual path, then picked the most beautiful spot to practice.  I returned half-way back along the cliffs then turned left onto a path that lead to the end of soaring bluff.  It was totally flat, and featured a lush meadow of perhaps fifteen feet across.  I crawled out on my belly to look over the edge, but as the tip of my nose reached the tiny red flowers growing in the side of the cliff, I decided it was too dangerous and squirmed back, fearing that the rock at the edge might crumble.  Below, the sea churned and two small, rising, green-covered islands sustained the pummeling waves.  I placed my flip flops and bag three or four feet in from the ledge to remind me to stay away from it, even as I started to dance.

I tend to be intrepid and to love the sharp edge of mild danger, but this time, practice was restrained.   In Flowing, I was reluctant to move my feet.  This was partly because of the liberal amount of rabbit shit in the thick, green grass, partly because of some tiny, sharp sticks that hurt to step on, partly because of the real possibility of falling to my death, and (surely) partly because I have had a recent spike in fear, resulting from a series of confidence-shaking experiences since the beginning of this trip.

At once, it was exquisite.  A vast, moody sky stretched for endless miles.  I could feel the sugar in the bright grass and had a powerful felt sense of the carved cliff beneath me.  The waves crashed below and moved around the islands in dynamic, unpredictable patterns.  Winds presented strongly, too, filling my ears and applying their own force.  My senses were full of the elements and I let them fill me and pass through.

I felt pulled quickly to Staccato, but resisted, hoping to dance for at least an hour and thinking I should spend more time in Flowing.  I also hoped that Flowing might open up more, and that I might find more flexibility and ease.  After some time of moving in Flowing—sometimes with subtle inspiration and sometimes vaguely—I moved into Staccato.

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Each rhythm manifested subtly.  Though I went dutifully through the entire wave, I only practiced for a half hour or so.  Last summer when I was practicing independently like this—also without a teacher and without music and with the sea—my first few dances seemed lackluster, too; and I assumed that if I continued to set the intention, the practice would open up in its own time.  I spread out a towel and sat in meditation following this short 5Rhythms wave, then made my way very, very carefully back down the cliff path.

I hoped that dancing would raise a sweat, but it never reached that level of exertion.  I have not been getting enough exercise since I have been in Ireland; and I have craved the endorphins.  Although I can usually count on practice for a workout (Gabrielle Roth—the visionary polymath who created the 5Rhythms practice even occasionally touted this benefit), I don’t like to put that much pressure on it, so I went for a vigorous run later in the afternoon, again (as mentioned in my last text) visiting the local castle ruin.

I picked Simon up from camp at 3.30.  He complained mildly about his day, saying that pretty much everyone there had lots of brothers and sisters, and that he wished he had brothers and sisters, too.  We stopped at a much-talked-about local playground on the way home.  It had a giant, net-like rope structure to climb, a zip line, swings, slides, see-saws, and many iterations of things to climb.

Simon was playing happily with two other kids on a large spinning disk merry-go-round when he had an accident. He had been rolling off the spinning edge and tumbling away quite skillfully.  I told him to roll off the other side, rather than into me and the woman who was standing next to me with a four-month-old baby strapped to her chest.  The first few tumbles went fine, but the third was calamitous.  Simon rolled down a hill and right into a stone wall, hitting the back of his head on a big rock with a loud “whack” sound.  He started to cry right away and stood up.  I ran to him and realized that the back of his head was spurting blood.  I was terrified.  Thankfully, the woman with the four-month-old baby sprang into action.  “I need to take him to the emergency room, right?” I said breathlessly.  “I think so,” she said back quickly.  She tried to calm Simon down in the most cheerful, reassuring voice, while also trying to get a look at the cut.  Thank Gods, Simon had no signs of concussion, but I was extremely worried.  The woman helped us get to our car, bantering kindly all the while and offering to help in any way she could.  I was tight with fear and kicking myself for not realizing this possible danger, and I spent the drive tight with anxiety, unable to fully address Simon’s questions about stitches and the emergency room.

Somehow I managed to get us home.  Once the house was in sight, I felt like I was going to fall off the earth.  I was so afraid Simon’s wound might be very bad—perhaps a puncture or a cracked skull. I imagined the worst.  The bleeding had mostly stopped, but there had been so much blood for a minute or so.  I was fiercely hot and ripped off my sweater.  I sank to the kitchen floor, saying, “Simon, come snuggle with Mommy on the floor for a second.” The world spun and I was very close to fainting, but I told myself I had to get it together.  I got Simon settled in front of some cartoons, then ran to get a bowl of water and a facecloth to wash the wound and have a look at it.  I grabbed socks and a sweater, also, as I had begun to shiver and my teeth were chattering.  The wound didn’t look too bad, but I couldn’t tell for sure.  He still had no symptoms of concussion, but after several hours home, I decided to take him to the local hospital.  Sitting in the emergency room waiting area, Simon put his little head in my lap and went to sleep.  I was so worried I couldn’t even be bored.  Thankfully, we were seen quickly and the doctor was confident that Simon had only a superficial wound.  We set out for home shortly after midnight.

The next day, he stayed home from camp and we explored a local town all day, including the toy shop.

As we woke up the next day to prepare for camp, Simon shared that he was very nervous about something.  “Mommy, what if you die while we are in Ireland and I am all alone?”  I did my best to reassure him, again, but part of me was very fearful, too.  Things had been going extraordinarily not-well.  My mantra for the day became, “Stay alive.  Stay alive.  Stay alive.”

After dropping Simon off at camp, I searched at length for a car mechanic my friend had recommended.  I have a big squish in the side of the rental car, and face a 1500 dollar deductible if I can’t get it repaired before I return it.  (I parked next to a stone wall, where one big stone protruding outward was hidden by some greenery.  The rest is history, as they say.)  I finally resorted to calling the number she had given me.  “Hello?” “Yes, hello, is this Maurice from Lenihan’s Garage?” “Yeah.”  “My friend highly recommended you to me.  I have a bad car problem and I’m trying to find you.”  He asked where I was and I tried in vain to explain.  He said he was next to a school.  I hoped the school might come up on the GPS and asked, “What school?”  “It doesn’t have a name,” he said, “We don’t really want to be found here.”  That made me feel sort of unwelcome, but I did manage to find it eventually.  When I arrived, Maurice scarcely looked at me, turning me over immediately to an associate who told me the job would probably cost at least 1000 euro.  On the way home from there, I nearly took a casual right turn into a speeding truck, accustomed, as I am, to easy right turns, and forgetting for a moment that I am driving on the opposite side of the road.  I inhaled sharply and returned to my mantra, “Stay alive.  Stay alive.  Stay alive.”

After, I went to a beautiful local beach.  Parking, I felt constrained.  Fear was wearing me out.  I had not slept well, again.  I was trying to talk myself out of this fear of dying that had persisted now for several days—perhaps a result of so many mishaps and mis-steps in recent days and weeks.  I had to keep dragging myself back from a trance of anxiety again and again.

I intended to investigate the west end of the beach near a small surf station, then go to the beach’s east end to find a quiet place to practice, but a spot near the surf station called me.  It was at sea level, not high on a sheer cliff, and not the most dramatic site in the area.  The tide was very low and there was almost no surf.  The west end of the beach was hemmed by a tall cliff and another tall cliff rose on the north side.  The spot I chose was a little circle—perhaps eight feet across—protected by some fallen boulders.

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I danced a very classic 5Rhythms wave. It was classic in the sense that each of the five rhythms was fully attended to; and each rhythm had nearly equal time and weight.  I began to move right away, finding Flowing easily.  I was grateful to be at sea level, feeling my feet in the sand and not worrying about cliff edges.  “I could stay here for hours,” I said internally, taking off my jacket as I began to warm up.  The first thing that came was tears.  I wanted to be taken care of—and I craved the people in my life who have been kind enough to take care of me.  I cried for the expensive car issue, for the many hours I had spent lost and driving down skinny country lanes that all looked alike, and for the many moments of disempowerment, fear and frustration I have experienced.  I also re-lived Simon’s accident in the playground, finding a gasp of horror (along with guilt and primal fear) that temporarily stopped the flowing, circular movements my body was finding as my feet revolved on the packed, wet sand.  I found another gasp, the same one that escapes me every time I come around a harrowing blind curve in one of the skinny lanes hemmed by stone walls and thick hedges and encounter a vehicle barreling toward me from the opposite direction.

In Flowing, I let in primal fear and anxiety.  Though I couldn’t fully embrace it, the idea that I could fundamentally trust the universe presented.  I had been tightening, hoping if I try very hard to pay attention, I could keep us safe.  Rather, I remembered that the best way to stay safe is relaxed awareness—attending to the senses and responding appropriately as things arise.  The glaze of anxiety that comes from tightening against experience does the exact opposite, and leads to more errors in judgment.  My heart became external and I danced with it, caring for it like a child that needs extra love and patience in the throes of a sickness.  I thought about the many people I have encountered who bear so much fear and anxiety that they don’t have the energy to be pleasant or artful or inspired; and in that moment felt similarly bedraggled.

Unlike two days ago when I thought I should keep myself in Flowing, I let the rhythms change as they wanted to, this time not insisting that I stay in Flowing when my body wanted to move into Staccato.  Part of deepening practice is, I think, knowing when “instinct” is really conditioned response, a way to escape something unpleasant.  At these times, skillful resistance is called for.  At other times, what feels like “instinct” is intuition, and, as such should be acknowledged and attended to.  I realized, as Staccato arrived, that I had not served myself in slowing my entrance to Staccato the previous day.  I needed to be very clear about my boundaries on the cliff.  Later the same day, I also needed to step directly into Staccato when Simon had the accident in the park.

Staccato arrived.  Firm.  Clean.  Sharp breaths powered my movements.  I let myself be seen—heart and all, as I moved in and around my little rock circle—an energetically safe spot that allowed me to relax into the moment.  Even vigorous Staccato did not raise a sweat as the day was still chilly, but blue sky peeked through the low clouds and warmed me; and I was able to take off my sweater.

There was so much happening inside me during this wave that I only danced for a fraction of each rhythm with the sea.  Chaos was shy—not huge, but honest, real.  Lyrical came and I wanted to fly, to soar with the birds overhead.  As there was little wind, the birds were not soaring in great arcing gestures, but were instead fluttering and flitting, and I followed them in this, too.  I did not gloss over Stillness, as I have tended to do when practicing independently in the past, but found wind, clouds and long, slow gestures.

I considered moving to a different part of the beach to do another wave, thinking I would take a moment to practice Reiki then move on, but another wave started up spontaneously.  In Reiki there is a strong emphasis on healing energy in the hands; and in this case, I was once again holding my heart in my hands, and dancing with it.  My movements found weight as the heart was large and heavy.  I danced in and through it, at once, with weighted inertia.  Staccato broke through, again, without the energy of confrontation, but clear, with a simple willingness to be seen.  Succumbing to a familiar habit, right before Lyrical arrived, I had to check the phone to make sure Simon’s camp hadn’t called with any emergencies.  In Lyrical in this second wave, I found a little more grace, a little more flight.  I sailed up, too, in a set resembling traditional Irish step dancing, enjoying jauntiness and verticality.

Finally, I found my way back to Stillness, and back to my original Reiki intention.  I saw Gabrielle, above and to my right, and drew her into my heart.  Then, I experimented with expanding and contracting my energy field and with how far I could be to feel the energy of the large rocks in my circle.  First, swelling to fill the whole rock circle, then contracting again to a tiny field close to my body (a layer I’ve been exploring with a friend back in New York).  Using Reiki, I looked at the pain body and cleared spots of blocked energy in the diaphragm, hips, lower belly, and right back heart.  At the end of the wave I practiced sitting meditation for a little while before gathering my things and leaving the beach.

When I picked him up, Simon told me he had fun at camp.  The evening was relatively warm; and we went to the beach together, playing tag and several other games of Simon’s invention.

July 14, 2016, Annestown, Co. Waterford, Ireland

This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and is not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.

You Can’t Crash Into Anyone!

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Today’s Sweat Your Prayers class at the Joffrey in the West Village was taught by Kierra Foster-Ba; and I was joined by my 6-year-old son, Simon, our 10-year-old cousin, Maya, and our Uncle Larry. My cousin and uncle had come to town to attend Simon’s recital the day before—an event preceded by weeks of anxious stage fright. A few days before, Simon told me, “Mommy, I don’t think I’m going to be able to go to the recital. I’m pretty sure I’m going to be sick that day.” As it was, he was spectacular—dancing with heart and even performing two “solos”. He told us that in the end he didn’t have any stage fright at all. When we met him after, he almost knocked his cousin over with the ardency of his affection and excitement to see her. It is hard to know when to push and when to back off—this time I am glad I pushed him to move past his fear, and that he had so much support for his risks.

In the car on the way to class today, I explained the expectations. “There aren’t too many rules,” I said, “But we can’t talk inside the dance room; and also you have to keep moving—at least a little. Even if you get tired, then you still just find a way to move a little something.” I asked Simon if he had anything to add. “You can’t crash into anyone,” he said—a rule he has heard many times repeated. I added an extra rule for the sake of my excitable little close-talker: “And you can only give your family member three hugs for the duration of the class. The other times you have to give them their personal space!”

I held both kids’ hands; and, taking a deep breath, jumped in to what we call “The Magic Dance Room.” The two settled into a spot at the edge of the dance floor and played with some tiny toys they had smuggled in. Before long they moved to the middle of the room, still playing with their toys, sticking close to a column. My uncle had entered before us, and seemed right at home, falling into movement right away.

I had a delightful dance, myself, beginning on the floor with energetic circles that took over my whole body and also served the purpose of stretching. Kierra’s gentle grooves tugged me along like I was drafting behind a powerful swimmer in the lap pool—toted along in totally effortless flow. One of my all-time favorite dance partners entered the studio and we jumped right into a high-energy dance of joyful abandon. My cousin watched this unbridled engagement with hesitant interest, but the two continued to play on the floor for some time. I danced near them several times, gently prompting movement, then drifting away again, leaving them to their play. At one point I looked over and both were on their bellies, holding their ankles, laughing and rocking.

It wasn’t until the second wave that they started to enter into the dance, themselves. Remarkably, they got up the courage to move just as we entered into Chaos. I cheered them on with my gestures, smiling as they jittered and jumped, getting into the music.

Sweat Your Prayers is by definition lightly instructed, and the only verbal teaching that Kierra offered during the class was to occasionally prompt us as we crossed into a new rhythm.

I smiled and rolled around the room, happily engaging with many different partners, especially loving the rhythm of Lyrical.

At the end of the class, Kierra shared a quote by Gabrielle Roth, the creator of the 5Rhythms practice. She said, “Do you have the discipline to be a free spirit?” She let the quote sink in for a few moments. Then, she encouraged us to fully embrace each of the 5Rhythms as they arise, and to observe the few rules that we take on when we step into a 5Rhythms room, such as refraining from talking.

I felt immense gratitude to my family members for being willing to step in, and to Kierra and the 5Rhythms community for making space for all of us. The most important things I hope my small son takes away from his experiences in 5Rhythms rooms are that movement is medicine, that life is exquisitely workable, and that even as he becomes a grown-up—a process that closes all too many of us down—life can keep opening and opening, expanding the possibilities of what it means to be alive.

Sunday, April 3, 2016, Brooklyn, NY

This blog consists of my own subjective experiences on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and is not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.