Start with the Truth.

When you are trying to do something new in dance (or in anything) you always start with what you can do, right now.  For example, if you want to learn to do a basic turn, you start slowly.  You can walk through it a couple of times and when you get comfortable, you can speed it up.  Once you can do one turn, you know that you can replace that one turn with two or possibly three.  But you always start with what you know you can do right now.

Last week a friend (okay, it was really my therapist) said to me that when you have a problem, you don’t start by trying to fix the problem.  Instead, you start with what you know to be true.  Coincidentally, a couple of days later, I was watching a movie and one of the characters, who was a mathematics professor, said to his student, who had a personal problem,  “When solving a math problem you know that you never start with the unknown.  You don’t start with x.  You always begin with what you know to be true.”

 

I have a friend whose young adult son has completely rejected him.  For a while, he would try to regain contact, only to be rebuffed again and again.  For years, he obsessed about what he might have done differently and how on earth he managed to alienate his child.  But there is no cheese at the end of that maze.  It is another exercise in self-flagellation.  Even if he could go back in time, would he, could he do anything differently? My friend could not “fix” this estrangement by focusing on the problem.

So finally, instead of focusing on what he did “wrong” as a parent, he thinks about what he knows is true:  He raised his son with love and kindness. No one is a perfect parent, but everything he did was with his son’s best interests at heart.  He loves his son.  Between him and his son there is love underneath it all.  Love is what connects them and will always connect them.  That’s what’s true. 

If we can believe the idea that love is the only truth, that anything that is not love is not true, we can start to calm down a little.  We can stop trying to fix everything by looking back at what we think we should have done.  We can start with what we know to be true.

What’s your truth?  Begin there. 

Well, Yes, You Really Screwed That Up. But I Really Like Your Hair!

The other day in class, the stereo was acting up. The sound wasn’t working right.  Suddenly it would get loud and then get very quiet.  Also, within songs, it would drop a few tracks.  I got very confused and distracted because of this.  What I realize is that there are places in the music, “rocks in the road,” that guide me when I need to change the movement.  I didn’t realize that I use some of these tracks unconsciously.  Until they were gone. 

My clients are actually used to my confused behavior at times.  Luckily they have a sense of humor.  A friend of mine who was in the class thought I was laughing at a bad hair day---I guess I was pointing to my head to indicate actually a bad brain day.  Anyway, she said to me from across the room, “I really like your hair!”  I said, “Thank you!”  But I love this because it reminds me that our friends will always find something good to say.  “Yes, you screwed up, but I really like your hair!”  It is a mixture of honesty and love that I am so happy to have in my life. 

Just like the tracks in the familiar song, your friends and loved ones are “rocks in the road” that guide you to yourself and your truth.   Let’s be conscious of and grateful to these angels.  What would we do if they were gone?

Lalalala, I Can't Hear You!

Remember when you used to do that to your siblings?  Your fingers in your ears, “Lalalala, I can’t hear you!”  Sometimes that’s not a bad thing.  Sometimes others can say really damaging things to you that you internalize.  This can be unintentional for the person giving the message and the person absorbing the message. But there are myths that we have accepted as true.  One of the biggest misconceptions is that we must decline as we age.

You can only do what you can imagine is possible. If you can’t imagine yourself doing a leap or a turn in dance, then you will never achieve it.  Your body believes what you say.

Sometimes people will ask me, referring to my job, “How long do you think you can keep doing this?”  This is my answer: FOREVER.

I believe in my health more than I believe in any illness.  I believe that getting older does NOT mean decline—unless I believe it does.  And I don’t.

When I get a cut, my body automatically heals it.  All of the cells in our bodies regenerate constantly.  When I dance, I am rehearsing.  When you rehearse anything you get better at doing it. As we get older, we learn from our experiences, making us more able to cope with life.

Why don’t we just decide to believe that there are no limits around the self and see what happens?  If you continually put limits on yourself, you will surely experience limits.

We have friends, Don and Marcia, whom I always think of as our contemporaries.  They have more life and vigor than most people (of any age).  In their 6^th decade they were doing things like: climbing Mt. Everest, dog sledding in Antarctica, horseback riding and camping across Mongolia, camping in the Australian Outback, to name a few.  They recently decided to just change their lives and move to Colorado.  They were married the year I was born: 1957.  And they don’t look anywhere near their chronological age.  They have not bought into the concept of decline, so it is not in their experience.

You are what you tell yourself you are. Buddha said, “All that we are is the result of what we have thought.  The mind is everything.  What we think, we become.”

If you are a dancer, skier, professor, doctor or any profession, that will not change unless you decide to change it.  I don’t like to hear people saying that they can’t do something because of their age.  That makes me think that maybe the lie about inevitably declining with age might be real.

Well, I refuse to believe it. 

And if you try to dissuade me, then: “Lalalalalala, I can’t hear you!”

Drop the Weights.

I was having some emotional trouble.  I was so worried and upset, I couldn’t sleep (NOTHING looks good at 2 in the morning) and was having trouble functioning.  My worry was only causing me turmoil. I was aware of that, but couldn’t seem to stop fretting.

I was attached to what I imagined was going to happen next in the lives of people I love.  And I felt guilt that maybe there was some way I could “fix” it and didn’t know how.  Somehow I thought I should know. 

My therapist would say to me, “What would happen if you just dropped those ‘weights’?”  I couldn’t imagine doing that. 

Years ago, I had a client who said, “I’m working on being attached to nothing and connected to everything.”  I never forgot that but I hadn’t really internalized what it meant:  attachment is based on fear and connection is based on love.

Attachment is when we are trying to control an outcome, as if we know what’s best for anyone.  (Do we even know what’s best for ourselves?) Connection represents what’s true: that we can love, but not control others.  We only have control over our own behavior.    

If I tried to dance with a weight belt around my waist, like they wear in scuba diving, I wouldn’t be able to move very well.  Trying to live with the weight of self-imposed guilt and anxiety around my shoulders was making me crazy. 

If you are attached to how you look when you are dancing, you cannot enjoy the experience as much as if you let go of the attachment and feel your connection instead. Feeling your connection to your body and the music gives you a deeper experience that is not infused with fear, but rather, with love.

For example, if you are worried that you don’t look good when you’re dancing, that is attachment and is based on fear of (my personal favorite) “not being good enough.” 

On the other hand, there is nothing wrong with wanting to improve your form.  Enhancing your skill is not based on fear, but on your connection to your body and dance.

I decided to let go of my attachment to how my loved ones were faring and trust that they could take care of themselves.  I dropped the weights of guilt, fear and attachment to what I imagined could happen.  This doesn’t mean I abandoned them or stopped caring.  I replaced that attachment with the knowledge and feeling of my connection to them.  The connection I have with them is love, which is eternal and real. 

This shift didn’t happen overnight.  It came to me gradually. And even now I still have to stop myself from picking the weights up again.  I have to remind myself what crazy felt like.  Then I can let go, again….and again.  It is a process.

If we can let go of attachment, we can find what’s real in by recognizing our connection to everything.  It is the same as choosing love over fear. 

Dance and live in connection, not attachment, and the weights will fall away.

The Mirror

When I was beginning my business, I had a woman come to the studio who very challengingly said to me, “I’ve been dancing since I was three.  Am I going to like this class?  What’s your background?”  OK, background?  Um, nothing, zero, I have no background.  I was an Avonette in high school—that’s my “background.” 

My “not-good-enough” thing came screaming to the surface causing me to immediately feel intimidated and thought, “She’s going to absolutely hate this class, because it’ll never be good enough for someone who’s danced her whole life.”  

I was nervous beginning that class and then I realized something.  This woman really wasn’t a great dancer.  I don’t say that to insult her, but to illustrate what I started to understand.

She was my mirror.  She was insecure about her own ability and reflected that onto me.  I let myself be put on the defensive, too, reflecting back to her my own insecurity. 

If I were a secure, confident person, this woman’s attitude wouldn’t have bothered me for an instant.  And if she hated my class, I would understand that the class just wasn’t for her, instead of taking it personally. And if I were really an evolved person, I might have realized she was feeling insecure and taken steps to assuage her fear. 

Shrinks call this “projection.”  In life, it means that someone who really bothers you, I mean really bothers you, is exhibiting qualities that you possess yourself and don’t consciously recognize.  If you can understand that your strong feelings are indicative of something you don’t like in yourself, you can take steps toward your own emotional growth.    

Instead of getting stuck in defensiveness, we can recognize those strong feelings for what they are.  This person is your mirror and your teacher. Further, we are all mirrors for each other. 

We are all pretty much struggling with similar issues. If we choose to look beyond our initial upset, we can dance alongside each other appreciating and celebrating our similarities and differences.

When we can understand this, we can cut others some slack and, in doing this, we also give ourselves a break. 

Ooooooh! Look at the Shiny Object!

Look at this shiny thing over there, so you don’t notice this other thing over here!

That works with our small children, significant others, bosses, and sometimes, even ourselves.

It works in dance, too.

I was nursing an inflamed Achilles tendon.  So, I was not able to leap using my right foot.  (I hate that.) Because the teacher is in front of the class, everyone (consciously and unconsciously) agrees that the teacher is the leader.  If I am less energetic, it can spread to the class.  Since there is that give and take in dance class, I don’t like to slow it down; not only for the clients, but for me, too.

When I am supposed to leap using my right foot, I find something to substitute for the fact that I cannot leap.  Instead of focusing on what’s wrong (sore tendon), I focus on what’s right.

When I “faux” leap I can:

Lift my arms in a different way.

Try to open my chest and shoulders more.

Open my left hip more.

Try (try) to decrease the distance between the back of my head and my left foot.

Doing these things distracts me from not being able to come off the floor but also leads me to new discoveries. It makes me come at the movement from a different perspective and that helps me to find new avenues of creativity within the dance.  And I can continue with these new discoveries even when my tendon has healed.

If you are frustrated by something over which you have no control, you can try to focus on something over which you do have control.  You can try to find the joy somewhere. In finding something that is positive, you can often find new ways of being.  Admittedly, sometimes life throws us devastating blows and we really have to lower the bar to define what, in fact, is the “joy”.  But even “I’m not dead” is a start toward focusing on what’s good.  

So go ahead---look at the shiny object.  It may lead you to an exciting, unexpected destination or even a discovery about yourself.

It's Not about You

On Saturday, I had an unusually large class.  I got really rattled by this for some reason and started messing up the choreography.  Fortunately, my clients have a great sense of humor and know we are dancing for fun, not to judge one another.  I had to mentally slap myself around and thought, “This is not about me!”  After that, I was fine.  And it isn’t about me.  I am just presenting a dance class that can be interpreted by anyone who is participating in any way that works for them.  I am inviting people to “come along.” 

I get worried when there are a lot of new people, and can’t help fretting.  Will they like it?  Will they come back?  I try to remind myself that not everyone, after all, is going to like my class. A client’s reaction is based on individual factors.  There’s only so much I can do.  

This reminds me of times when I mistakenly thought something was about me.  I was in a serious relationship with a man who seemed to have real problems with anyone I had a relationship with “apart” from him.  In other words, if he was not an original participant in the relationship, he didn’t like it. 

He acted out with surly, pouty behavior if, for instance, my family was visiting.  It was mortifying.  We were camping on a mountain with my relatives and I was seriously considering either jumping myself or pushing him off of it.  It was one of those “How-can-I-fake-my-own death- and-get-out-of-this-easily” kind of feelings.

I was angry, but thought I could “fix” it.  So I tried everything I could think of: talking about the situation; trying to bring him into the conversation more; ignoring him completely; getting really angry; showering him with attention.

NOTHING “worked.”  I finally realized that this behavior by my boyfriend had absolutely nothing to do with me!  I had no power over anyone.  I only had power over my own behavior.  Obviously, the relationship did not survive.  And I didn’t have to change my identity.

The point is: we are who we are.  When we present a dance class, a report at work, a piece of art, we have put our truth into it.  We can only do our best.  We are responsible for how we give a message, but we are not responsible and have no control over how a person reacts to our message.

The good news is: it is not always your responsibility or your fault.  In fact, it is probably not really about you at all.