feeling moving
(some thoughts as we enter 2020)
Whew. It’s intense out there folks. Our collective personal lives are filled with upheaval and trauma, illness, life, death, coping, and presencing. I am humbled by the hard times because they teach me to live with meaning, and to remember the wonder of this fragile yet tenacious experience we share. Access to global events and information means we experience more than ever before — our nervous systems may be a riot of stress reactions and our lives a near-constant process of dulling and numbing just to make it through the day. Fire, fear, failure, violence, storm… how do I be legitimate in this age of intensity and boredom? How do I feel? How do I love? How do I support and set free? This morning I caught myself going to movement practice with the satisfaction that for that 2 hour period of time, I would have a chance to feel what I was feeling, and move with it. And I did. But what a farce! I am feeling all the time!! When I give in to the kind of thinking that compartmentalizes emotion into time, I push life down, away. I deny it. And while I believe myself to be too busy to feel what I’m feeling, it becomes other — estranged — like it’s some one other’s problem. And I make myself numb. Limited. I often feel the shade of overwhelm threatening from above, and the abyss of despair beaconing from below. What is the point of dancing in this expanse?
There are many. One is the truth that I can feel what I feel in the time given to movement practice. It is a time of self-care I carve out for myself every week. Unless I’m looking after myself, I’m useless at looking after others. I put the oxygen mask on and breathe in order to be of service. Building compassion and capacity are two other keys for why I dance. I would be filled with panic and pills if it weren’t for embodiment practice; it reminds me that refuge is arrived at through the senses. Not only am I feeling all the time, I am also moving all the time, whether standing still or walking down the street. I don’t have to wait to do it.
I’ve been listening to Tara Brach’s “Refuge in the Wilderness” again. To paraphrase her: This is it. This is how it is right now. Not reaching for better or preparing for what can go wrong. … Stay with the anxiety and discover the presence that is deeper. Use the language “this belongs.” Don’t make it wrong. Often when we come back to embodied presence, we meet the anxiety that has been driving the trance — the incessant mind that divides us from sensate presence. Come right into the moment. This breath, this body, this moment. The senses are a true refuge (https://youtu.be/FDzoCEnCKBA).
Fortunately, I know, from bones to bits, that for me, movement practice continues to establish itself as a direct passage to sensate presence, and the alignment that emerges in this infinite moment of refuge.
As panic encroaches, I practice on the bus: a micro-movement dance deep in the gut that reaches and spreads, up spine, riding breath, rising chest, dropping weight like a dowsing rod, feet on the ground, circling hips — a tree in the wind, a subway surfer. Here. Now. No reaching. Just this. And the panic finds space to settle. This too. When I don’t clamp it shut, or hold it back, or pretend I can be rid of it till I have time for it, but instead, connect with sensate presence to make space for meeting and including the panic, then there is potency in place of closing in. This belongs. The sick, the hurt, the fear, they are part of this dance. In this way, they are neither all of it, nor all of me.
I do not dance this dance alone. I am in a web. We are in a web. I can not dance this dance alone. Community. Not concealment. Movement of this kind is so vulnerable. Shared vulnerability creates a strong web. We are in this together.
in love
