Floating Free

The ship of my life foundered on the rocks

The heavy timbers groaned and gave way

Wreakage flowing to the sea

I float free, a leaf swirling, dancing in the current.

Again, Rebecca took the words and this time not only responded with a drawing, but with several.  The first tries were vivid bright colors, reflective of excitement and joy and while freedom can be that, they somehow felt too bright, too shiny.  When she sent me this one I knew she had understood perfectly and had captured the subtle sense that I hadn't quite acknowledged.  Seeing her drawing I understood that this freedom is very tender yet, the dance is only a slow swirl and depends on the water for movement.  My body has much healing to do and I must flow as I am taken.  How lovely to have a friend who can reveal my truth to me beyond what I can see myself.

Raining Poems

Words raining down
Echoing the essence of the moment,
Flowing on.

Rebecca Stauffer and I seem to have invented a new form of dance improvisation, I share words, she replies in images.

So Beautiful, it Hurts

Life is slow, luxuriously satisfying and easy.  I am blissful, content and joyful.  I am also in intense pain as my body tries to turn itself inside out with intense muscle spasms.  I find it impossibly funny that when everything in my life looks like it should be horrible, I’m finding delight in the fact that my new wheelchair can zoom and I haven’t moved this fast in years.  I hardly ever leave the house because I hurt too much.  I can barely carry on a conversation without writhing in pain and needing to take breaks to disappear into the ever soothing silence and yet I am at peace.  I have food, shelter, care, beauty and a fantastic love life.  There is immediacy, an invitation to stay present even more compelling than a great vacation.   There is a simplicity and beauty I would love to capture and share, like capturing a beautiful sunrise in a painting, but this beauty must be tasted, known from the inside out.  I can’t capture it in words or pictures and hand it to someone and expect them to understand.  We all have the capacity to taste an orange, but no amount of words or pictures can actually convey the experience of eating an orange, the burst of sweetness and tartness. 

One of the hardest things right now is being so happy and seeing so many others discontent and unhappy.   I have lots of time to surf the net and see how much the world revolves around fear.  Economics, entertainment and health care all revolve around fear.   It doesn't have to be this way.  It is not the truth, it is merely the distorted way we view the world.  We have the ability to creatively meet each moment with joy.  We can drop all the impediments to seeing and knowing that we worked so hard to build when we were utterly convinced our lives depended on the strength and attractiveness of the walls we meet the world with.  Inside we know, we just don’t believe we know and we don’t take the time to listen.  We believe what we need is outside of us and we must struggle to get it if it’s good and fight it off if it’s bad, but it is much more mysterious than that.  Is there another way?  Is it true that you actually do know?  It is only the curiosity to look that can take you there.  Can you face the truth of how you really feel and drop the real questions deep into your being and be still enough to hear the answers and brave enough to listen?

The Paradox of Presence

My life has simplified enormously.  As nearly all of the “normal” ways that people occupy their time become impossible for me to do, I have been left to explore a simpler range of options.  I’m not sure what I expected life to be like when I stopped working but the reality feels surprising.  It is not uncommon for damage to the central nervous system to produce severe muscle spasms and the options are exercise, drugs, or even surgery to sever the nerves.  But living that reality, figuring out what it means to navigate life’s simplest tasks like walking to the bathroom or making a cup of tea get a lot more complicated and require a surprising degree of creativity.   I can’t pretend it’s all bliss and ease, but it’s a lot more of that than I would have expected.  I actually feel a little guilty that I have this amazing freedom to do anything I want – no one is expecting me to do anything. 

I am completely free to do whatever the moment suggests.  I don’t have to struggle with what I should do; I just do what calls to be done.   Some of what calls are great books, movies, conversations with friends, sitting in Silence.  I also find myself becoming ever more curious to play with ways to ease my struggling body – what happens when I lean into the spasms, feel the movement and where it wants to go.  The idea of “exercising” in the sense of finding a “plan” of appropriate exercises and following it feels disconnected and abusive.  Instead a sense of dance arises and it makes more sense to respond with love and attention to each physical disturbance, feeling into what it is asking for, responding with respect and curiosity.   That could be anything from screaming in pain to struggling to figure out how to move my body from the bed to the bathroom when the muscles are so painfully locked that it is impossible to stand up.  It could also be playfully exploring the strength and persistence, the intense sensation of my body trying to unwind.  It feels good to explore the spaciousness surrounding the intensity, experimenting with unconventional movements that stretch a muscle contraction so that it moves out of constriction if only for a moment.  There isn't a need to “think” about what to do, all the actions arise out of the intense movement flowing through my body in unpredictable and ever changing patterns.

This immersion in pure presence, just being where I am is peaceful, easy and more loving than I could have imagined and I feel a flood of gratitude that I have been given the opportunity to explore this mysterious landscape.  Everything that I formerly worried about and spent my life working to take care of, like paying the bills, taking care of the house, running errands , working, are now being magically taken care of.  There is enough money; there are wonderful people who help me, most especially Don.  I could spend time worrying that I am causing trouble to them, but the reality is that there is such a sense of love and sharing that I can’t keep up the story of helpless victim imposing on others.  

There is a lot of mystery in this because I sense that I always had this choice.  Has there really ever been a moment when I was not just living in the present moment and doing what the moment called for?  Why should working with excruciatingly painful muscle spasms be easier than meeting the daily tasks that used to show up in my life?  Why does it seem easier instead of harder?  This is a very interesting question and I know that the relationship I have now with my life was always available to me but I didn't understand how to accept it.   I was busy being “responsible”, which is just a word that disguises a whole catalog of ways that I needed to prove that I was worthy, that I was right, that I could do all the things I was supposed to do so that I didn't need to depend on anyone else or impinge on them.  It was always a question of defending my right to be a separate person taking up space, making impacts that I struggled to keep beneficial or at least benign. 

Now when I can no longer do much for anyone, not even myself, and I regularly rely on others to help me, the joke is that all that trouble was deluded.  I am not separate.  I could no more choose not to impact those around me than I could choose not to breathe.  I have always relied on the benevolent actions of all the people in my life, but because I was so focused on my own capability, I had not the humility to recognize the extent of the gratitude that I owed to the wondrous munificence all around me.   I don’t need to prove myself anymore; I can cede the effort to the love that is the fundamental energy moving life.  It is in love that I meet the pain; it is in love that my needs are met and it is in love that I’m finally able to feel gratitude that I am truly free to feel at ease. 

Afternoon in the Hammock

As the reality of letting go of my business sinks in, I realize I am changing.  I knew my body needed something different and I’ve been doing that, typing from the keyboard on my lap in a hammock while I look at my hammock height screen on the table next to me, a truly unique arrangement.  I’ve been starting over, getting to know my physical body in the way I knew it as a very young child.  Instead of just working in spite of the pain, I’m now playing with it, seeing what happens when I move in a certain way, playing with different ways to sit, different pillows, different positions, the hammock!  My “office” now looks more like a five year old’s playroom.  Yoga props litter the floor and it has a very random feel.  But even more surprising than the physical shifts are the profound psychological shifts accompanying them.  

 

As I relax physically, I find myself releasing a sense of what I thought it meant to be responsible and beginning to see a new kind of responsibility emerging.  I helped people but as my physical difficulties increased, I stopped innovating and stuck to what I knew I could do well.  I felt useful, made money and had a chance to talk to a lot of wonderful people on a regular basis.   When it went away there was at first a sense of collapse,  just letting myself recognize how hard I had been “trying” to work “in spite of” the pain.  Until I let it go I couldn’t see how rigid I had to hold myself to do this.  The escalating pain made it clear that I must stop.  I’ve spent years watching what I could do in the world shrink and narrow.  Walking, cooking, cleaning, driving, and sleeping have all diminished.  But the odd thing about coming to the place where everything leaves is the bizarre sense of freedom and curiosity that arise out of that still point.  There is nothing that I have to do, so that means the only question is “what can I do?” 

Wild bursts of creativity begin to leap up, I feel an intense interest in all sorts of random topics and find absolute delight in watching late sunbeams while sipping tea and feel a pull to explore each moment to its fullest.   I find the list of things I could do filling up with different possibilities in every direction, even with my limitations.  But I am  no longer trying to live that diminished life, I am trying to live this one and in this one, there is only what I have, not what I don’t have.  I am no longer “trying.”   I am doing and delighting in, thankful for every wondrous opportunity that invades my day.  I am reading five different books, studying German online, doing yoga, meditating and being more profoundly aware of the world than I have ever been.

    

I also watched this lovely video that my friend Kathy O’Leary drew my attention to, it echoes the magnitude of the shift.

Anita Moorjani 'Dying To Be Me' Interview by Renate McNay.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jFN9XQeEn4

Solo Contact Improv

I have been navigating living with intense neurological pain for four years.  The journey has taken many turns and my relationship to the pain has slowly but profoundly shifted.  My first response was double strength Vicodin for a month when my doctor and I both thought the pain was a temporary response to antibiotics clearing a Lyme infection.  When the pain persisted and continued to escalate we did a few more tests to see if the pain was related to any skeletal problems.  I finally accepted that while the infection may have decreased, the gradual 20 year nerve damage was not to be dismissed so easily.  At first I did what any normal person would do, I let my mind run wild with visions of living for decades with intense pain that no one could substantially change.   I tried more neurologically appropriate pain medications, but they made me feel weird and had only a minimal impact on the pain.  At this point I was forced to accept the unacceptable, a miracle that only became possible when I disconnected from the fear tapes and relied on the deeper wiser place that 35 years of meditation had introduced me to.   I could at least love, laugh and enjoy the rest of my life, even when it hurt.  I became immensely grateful for every nuance of beauty and wonder.

Gradually I was able to be present with the pain.  I could stay in the room with it, listen to its story, and marvel at how deep in time the roots were buried.  I could feel the myriad people who shared the deep fear at the root of it, most powerfully my mother.   I could sit beside it and listen.   I could allow the pain to be there and I could function, not physically, but emotionally and intellectually.  I figured out how to continue my consulting business at home, and my husband gradually took over cooking, cleaning, shopping and everything else it takes to run a house.  I just struggled to do as much as I could without biting anyone's head off or messing anything up.  I was with the pain, yet still separate from it, not fully interacting with it, holding it gingerly, a bit afraid of moving because it made it hurt even more.  It was easier to hide out at my desk and be "useful."

More pain, accompanied by violent and persistent muscle spasms, began making it even harder to work and cope.   Muscles that have been atrophied for years were regaining muscle tone and the ability to move, but only in violent painful spasms.  Perhaps this escalation is a good thing, or at least could be.  After my mother died unexpectedly, something shifted.  She too had suffered physical pain and difficulty functioning and we shared many of the same issues, but she was not easily able to release the fear and needed to rely on pain medication to make her life endurable.   At last she is fearless and pain free and her love and support seem to reach out to me in a flood of momentum that encourages wading in deeper.

Separate is no longer good enough.  It suddenly feels imperative that I stop working and release the strong competent watcher who could continue to answer everyone's questions while my body bravely struggled on.  I need full access to my power and creativity instead of just plugging into what I know how to do.   I long to surrender to not knowing and give myself space to explore.    Now in the midst of the rapid dismantling of my 20 year consulting business a new relationship to my body is just beginning to emerge.  It seems to be an odd blend of yoga and solo contact improv. 

My daughter, Lauren, is a dancer and for the last several years she has been exploring contact improv.  When I sent her a draft of this piece with my fuzzy way to think about contact improv, she sent me a fantastic description, which is so good I’m adding it as an addendum for anyone curious about really understanding improv.  Her  description echoes my experience:   “…, the subtleties can become very loud--the slightest shift of weight or muscle tensing in one's dancing peers can inspire a whole, impulsive new spin of movement.  In this way, our 'state of being' can be broadcast into life, something bigger, evolving, and constantly feeding the next moment.  And then sometimes stillness settles.  It just does.  One can think about it and search for it, but it is most satisfying when you relinquish control and let the dance decide for itself. “

My body is calling my awareness into this sort of dance.  If I begin a yoga movement and encounter pain and resistance and stay fully present I can detect tiny openings, a slight pull to move in some direction.  The movement expands and picks up momentum, moves until it reaches its limit and settles back into stillness.   If I rest in the stillness, the sensation slowly builds into another movement which I follow.  Lauren’s clear descriptions sift in and expand my capacity to trust the movement and I marvel that both my mother and my daughter seem able to send me clarity and encouragement.  After an hour or so I' m profoundly tired and sore and head off to a hot bath with Epsom salts followed by a long period of deep silence.

I still hurt but I feel a flood of curiosity and excitement.  I am in my body, an amazing feeling like when I first learned to swim and could keep afloat and move.  I don't know where it's going,  I no longer remember what it's like to be without pain, but as I explore the burning fire I can perceive subtle differences where a movement has a flowing quality that is pleasing in comparison to the stuck contraction.    I begin to think that my brain and my muscles are struggling to reconnect to each other and need my conscious cooperation to rebuild the lost connections.  This may be a figment of my imagination, yet I am enveloped in a flood of enthusiasm that gives me momentum to get up and work with it again and again.  I am reminded of the earnest persistence my children showed when they learned to walk.  I am experimenting; I have nothing to lose, but I sense the possibility that I may have something to gain - another chance to walk again.

Contact Improvisation 

Lauren Ehnebuske Day sent me this fantastic description to help me in writing this, but it is also helping me trust the knowing inside myself that is capable of “following the flow.” 

Usually, CI happens with multiple people beginning to dance together with an awareness of one another and some kind of physical contact.  It is beautiful in that the more each dancer is centered and inspired in and of themselves, the easier and better the connection between the dancers becomes.  Ideally, each dancer could, theoretically, just be dancing by themselves--it is that fluid and easy.  If one dancer is just in a 'support role' mentality, there is a lot less for his or her partners to engage, and the partnership tends to fall off or take a lot of work.  That said, if one or more dancers is overly focused on themselves and not being present with his or her partners, the partnership is equally doomed.  The power is in simultaneous presence with oneself and the peers and/or world around one--the whole becoming something more powerful than any of the pieces.  Since it is improvisation, you never know where it is going.  You have to be fully present, able to respond with nearly no delay, yet also temper things with common sense about not hurting anyone or anything in the process or remembering choreographic intent.

To dance fully in CI takes all one’s faculties, mental/spiritual/physical.  Even a small shared rolling-point-of-contact* can be deeply engaging if one really pays attention.  (*Remember how in gymnastics I used to practice rolling a ball along my arms from one hand to the other?  Well, imagine that with another body instead of the ball, and that's an example of rolling-point-of-contact, though it can happen with any body surface).

There are multiple "camps" of CI.  Some say you can't use your hands, hoping to help people relate to one another in less familiar ways.  Some disciplines focus on a point of shared weight, which people can roll around between them (elbow to hip can roll into shoulder to thigh, for example) and idealize a dance where that point of contact is never broken, it just moves around.  The side of contact that I like to immerse myself in is more closely related to modern dance.  Literal touching is not necessarily constant as it is with the rolling-point-of-contact: the momentum of movement trumps it. The dancers are aware of one another's trajectories as well as their mass, and they can actually respond to the velocity as if touching, without touching.  They can carry it along, spin against it, go with it, and even bounce it back--all things that are more easily understood with a physical connection, but that can be quite tangible regardless of spatial contact among in-tune dancers.  Both main camps, rolling-point-of-contact and the dancier versions, rely on rotation to facilitate coming in and out of connection.  To come together, two dancers can spin like two gears, and when their paths are tangent, they have effectively eased together without going against either dancer's trajectory.  Also, all camps of contact rely to greater or lesser extents on improvisation--even a choreographed ballroom dance will likely involve in-the-moment responses to a partner's unanticipated weight shift.

After practicing CI a while, the subtleties can become very loud--the slightest shift of weight or muscle tensing in one's dancing peers can inspire a whole, impulsive new spin of movement.  In this way, our 'state of being' can be broadcast into life, something bigger, evolving, constantly feeding the next moment.  And then sometimes stillness settles.  It just does.  One can think about it and search for it, but it is most satisfying when you relinquish control and let the dance decide for itself.  When everyone in a group of dancers is tuned in, the "oiji board effect" can be incredibly powerful.  There is something in muscles and movement that seems to have a mind of its own

An intermediary to contact improv is dancing with the surfaces of the built environment around us.  All dance has to interact with whatever surface is taking the gravity of the dancers (usually just the floor), but this relationship can definitely be exaggerated.  Sometimes it's fun to roll my back along the wall, for instance, or go upside down and walk my feet along the wall, or push off the back of the couch with my arms.  Although the opportunity to be present with our "partners" in this case does not seem to have the richness of engaging other animate objects, it can still involve a way of 'experiencing' I associate with CI: open, playful, accepting, responsive.

A lot of our lives are caught up in the mental constructs of "not hurting anyone" and "remembering our choreography."  The more these thought patterns dominate our brains, the less successful contact improvisation usually is and the less we can let in the powerful creative, "being" powers inside and among us.  When we have trained ourselves to instinctually not land on one another's knees or heads using what seems like muscle memory or brain stem thinking, then we are freer from the frontal lobe constructs (in which we live from day to day) while still being able to get along alright practically, and that's nice.  I am pretty sure that we can get further out of our minds as we usually know them by delving deeper into our presence with our partner(s).  When the flow is really happening, people don't get hurt.  If the flow is happening strongly and then one or more partners gets distracted and stops being present with the moment, bad things can happen instantly.  At the very least your partners will feel your loss and usually respond by being less creative.

At this point, you are already dancing.  You can mentally pull out, but you'll get hurt.  Follow the dance in its natural trajectory, whatever that may be, and you might be safer, more whole, and have more to offer the
world.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDOMzj3MqL0&feature=related

The Pursuit of Passion

Months ago, in posting a response to an article by Chris Dierkes in Beams and Struts, he suggested that I try writing about my experience with Savitri.  My love affair with this poem is somewhat mysterious and it had never occurred to me to attempt to articulate it.  I was surprised when I found words showing up.  Judging from the responses I've received from friends, it is not an easily accessible article.  While not intellectually complicated, it points to a way of viewing reality that is unfamiliar and rarely articulated.  The real power is in a place beyond words, so writing can only hint and if you don't recognize the experience it won't make sense.  But I would encourage anyone attempting to read it, to hold it loosely, to let it speak to something deeper and more mysterious, yet fundamentally accessible to all of us and don't worry if your mind understands.  My special thank you to Joyce Jonte for giving me permission to use her images.

http://www.beamsandstruts.com/articles/item/1020-the-pursuit-of-passion