getting unstuck…1-6-2020

Sometimes when I write, the volume and immediacy of response lets me know I touched into a tender nerve.  This time, instead of the newsletter, it was a Facebook post accompanying the picture up top:

“My heart is raw this morning: tender scared clear confused raging depressed hoping against hope. A hard time reconciling the beauty of these children with current reality of the world. How can peace such as this be possible? And how can we go on if it’s not? I simply just do not know and that has to be OK.”

We’re moving through a pretty loaded spell: Australian fire disaster, Middle East travesty, the shock of a new decade following on the heels of whatever the holiday season delivered…well, it’s a lot.  Reaction to the post coupled with conversations in this past week confirm all the feelings my raw heart expressed in that post.  There is comfort in knowing that I’m not alone.  The balm of community is soothing and potent.

I’ve just been out on the dance floor two Sundays in a row.  It’s risky to reckon what is going on out there in the group field, especially when I’m in the midst of my own moving meditation.  For that matter, it’s dangerous to assume I know what the group animal is up to even when I’m holding space up at the front.  We humans have a way of projecting all over each other.  I am not exempt.

But at the risk of being entirely wrong, what I grokked on the floor was an acute resistance to change and its near-brother, abject fear.  How does this actually look on a dance floor?  People barely breathing.  Eyes shut.  Mouths tightly closed.  Feet turned toward the center or front of the room and inextricably rooted in a single place.  Here’s the deal: resistance to being in motion is an ideal physical practice if you want to cultivate being rigid.  Not exactly the best quality to engender in a world where things are changing with unthinkable rapidity.  With “unthinkable” being a really key word. 

Rapid change requires well-honed instinct.  I’m right with you on the resistance to all this change and there are moments when I am scared to death about that.  But when I am on the dance floor, I have the opportunity to practice being fluid.  Mostly my eyes are in soft open gaze mode.  I’m fully focused on my breath and if I can’t hear it, I make it audible.  Which is easy to do with space between my lips.  And my feet?  It’s rare for me to be rooted to one place. 

Now, there’s absolutely no way to be on that dance floor and get it wrong.  All expressions of resistance are welcome. And there’s no way to get it right either.  This week I’m up front three times and because I grokked this energy, even if it’s off base, I’m inviting us to practice being on the instinctual move.  The whole time if we can.  Breathing.  Seeing.  Mouth open and relaxed.  Travelling.

Want to get unstuck?  Come practice: Tuesday morning, Wednesday evening, Sunday morning.  Let’s do it together.

Love, bella