Your Way

My class is not a technique class.  The only rules are to have fun, sweat and not hurt yourself or others.  Much like life.

Not everyone uses the same road to get to the same place.  And even if you’re in the “same place” as another person, your experiences (though similar in some ways) must be different just because you are you.  You have your own road to follow.

We all have our own path and can make our own way.  We have an affinity for the ways that are right for us and should trust that. 

I get in touch with my spirit through dance and meditation.  Dance is my church, the way I express my faith.

It’s not the church of my childhood, where I alternately had the fidgets or fell into a deep sleep, but the joyous church of my adulthood.   

I am not criticizing organized religion.  I know that many get peace and solace by going to a place to worship and feel a sense of community.  That’s truly wonderful – but I had to go to church when I was a kid.  I had no affinity for it.   I just wanted to keep my head down and not get into trouble.  In general, I’m not crazy about rules. 

Today, even when eastern modes of spirituality are rife, we still somehow have the idea that there are only a few legitimate ways to explore spirituality.  As I have explored my own beliefs about spirituality, my practice has changed.  At first, I didn’t think dance was a valid way to the spirit; that’s not what I’d been told.  I used to do sitting meditation on a cushion in front of a self-made altar with lit candles.  I felt that I had to sit there for a certain amount of time, or it wasn’t authentic.  If it was not at least a half hour, I thought, somehow I was cheating. 

I have changed and I don’t do that kind of meditation anymore.  My intention is to drop into the space between my thoughts to find the silence.  I don’t always get there.  But now, I’m okay with that.  If I can’t get to the silence, I just start thinking about what I know to be true.  Or I consciously acknowledge  my gratitude for my life, just as it is, right now.  

While dancing, I let myself feel the joy.  Sometimes, of course, it’s a challenge.

When I meditate, I can usually reach a place of peace and silence.  Often I can’t stay in that space for a long time.  But I no longer feel guilty if my meditation doesn’t go the way I think it ought to.  I just accept it.  It’s my way. 

There are no rules except to be totally accepting of my path.  

Trust your own way.

Your road. Your rules. Your dance.

Your life.

Bricks

After class one day last week, I made a comment about what I wanted to work on this year:  the dropping of old hurts and resentments.  I understand that holding onto to resentment is hurtful to me not to the object of my irritation.  Every grudge is like a brick I have to carry on my back.  And it’s tough to dance with a load of bricks on your back.  Whenever I’ve been able to let go of resentment, I really have felt lighter, freer and happier in every area of my life.  

So why is it so hard to do?

Five minutes after I announced my intention to drop resentment, I was referring to a relative as s***head.  Oh, and her husband, too.

I was already off the wagon.

I truly want to drop all the nonsense of holding grudges, so what stops me?  Why is my knee-jerk reaction to call someone a s***head? 

Yes, it’s very satisfying on a “lower-self” level, but it doesn’t serve me.  At all.

So now, I’m working on two things: to drop the bricks and be nice to myself while I’m changing my default switch.  I have been thinking about ways to do this:

 Look at a person from a different perspective – through a different lens. 

Remember that we all have our challenges and that you can never really know what’s going on inside another person and what lens she’s looking through.

However, I need something simpler than that if I’m going to make any progress.

Upon reflection, I think the best way to accomplish this is to just, in every moment, choose love.

Love helps us to be compassionate about the foibles of others and of ourselves.  Love allows us to give each other a break.  Love remembers to be kind.  Love remembers that our faults are really places where we’ve been wounded.  Love sees only the light in another and acknowledges the light in ourselves.

Love is the music; life is the dance.

Love lifts the bricks off our shoulders and sets us free.

What We Can Do

This week an unspeakable tragedy occurred in our state.  I have no words to express the grief and outrage all of us feel that such a thing could have happened – to children and to the public servants who are custodians of our children.

All of us are searching for what we can do to help.  We feel helpless.  What can we do?  Some say that prayer is useless.  I don’t agree.  I believe in the idea that we all spring from the same source; we are all connected at the deepest level.  If that is true, it follows that when we send our love and our wish for healing to those who have been shattered -- I have to believe -- it is not in vain.  And sometimes it is the only thing we can do.

When we are lost and don’t know how to help, we can at least do this.

I would like to use this blog today to, with all my heart, express my sympathy and compassion for all those who are suffering such horrible loss.  My deepest wish is for your healing. 

Somehow, together, we will find a way to better protect each other.  

President Obama said it best.

All of us can extend a hand to those in need to remind them that we are there for them, that we are praying for them, that the love they felt for those they lost endures not just in their memories, but also in ours.” ~ President Barack Obama 12/14/12

When You're Ready....

In dance, I always want to try something new.  Maybe I’ll attempt to do as many turns as I can without hurting myself (or others) or I’ll try a different kind of leap.  I always have to work my way up to what I am imagining in my head.  

Doing things differently requires strength.  You need core strength to do just about anything in dance.  If you don’t have that foundation, it is difficult to leap or turn.  Emotions drive the movement, but you have to have strength if you want to truly express yourself.

Sometimes, I’m just not ready to try something new.  Maybe I feel intimidated by experimenting in front of a big class, or I just feel like I can’t do it yet.  

In the end, I just have to trust that I am strong enough to let go and see how it works.  Often, it does and just as often, I still have work to do to make it look the way I want.

This reminds me of my relationship with a beloved relative.  I knew I was enabling him, but I couldn’t stop myself because I felt the stakes were so high.  I wasn’t strong enough emotionally to let go.  

So I would continue behavior that I understood was wrong, because I thought the consequences of not enabling were way too scary.  Underneath this was the realization that I had to start saying “no.”  And just like building up my core, I had to reinforce my inner strength.

What happens when you are an enabler is that you think, “OK, I’m really only doing x, so if I only do x, it’s not really that bad.”  That’s a lie I used to tell myself.  It was like thinking you could give an addict only one drink, or a single pill, and it will stay at one drink or one pill forever.

Enabling is like an addiction—you do more of it and the person needs more of it.  So you need to give more and more until the situation is even more dangerous and out of control.

What I now understand is that even though I knew I was wrong, what I did, I did for myself.  I was not ready to be tough and change my own behavior.  Then, when I was ready, I put up some boundaries that I could get behind and stick to.  Over time, I built a stronger core.  It was from this hard-won foundation that I was finally able to stop the enabling.

Looking back, I believe that I couldn’t stop my addictive behavior until I was ready.  I had to get to the place where I knew there was nothing more for me to do, realizing that I was hurting my loved one -- not helping.  In a way, it was a selfish thing.  I couldn’t tolerate my fear of what would happen if I stopped helping, so I “helped.”  I don’t believe that’s wrong.  I couldn’t let go.  And maybe my relative wasn’t ready for me to let go, either.

Who’s to say what might have happened had I awakened sooner?

The good news is that my story has a happy ending—miraculous, really.  Once I hit the wall and stopped “assisting,” the person began to express who he always was beneath the crazy.  And he did it himself.

I am grateful every day for this.  And I try to remember that letting go creates the space for miracles to occur.

When you’re ready.

Truth

Dance has been with us since the beginning of mankind.  There is archeological evidence of dance among humans dating thousands of years ago.   That people want to move their bodies to rhythms, internal or external, is as old as the human race.  Dance is used as ritual, as a call to mate, as an expression of joy, and in older days to make magic occur in the form of rain or making the sun shine.  

Movement is truth; it is part of who we are.  Whether you consider your movement to be dance doesn’t matter.  Movement is life and life is a dance. 

I was watching an excerpt from the movie Lincoln.  Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln was talking to two young men about abolition.  He said, “If two things are equal to the same thing, then they are equal to each other.”

This is a statement of truth, in math and in life. 

 

Any two people who dance, even if they’re using the same choreography, are expressing their individuality differently.  On a personal level, who can say that one’s deepest expression through movement is inferior or superior to another’s? 

Years ago I heard another teacher telling a new client that my class was not really a dance class.  As if there is some narrow definition of what dance really is that only a few can know and achieve.  

I don’t understand it when someone looks disparagingly at others because they don’t fit into a common mold. 

I don’t understand how a person can look at another and say, “This person should not have the same rights that I have.”  Often this denial of others’ rights is justified by saying that this opinion is God’s opinion.  

Really?

Is this a veiled statement of the royal we?  As in, “God and I think you are not as good or important as I am.”

Obviously, some people are better at certain tasks than others.  We all have our own talents and passions.  But we enter life on the same planet.  Everyone is human and an earthling.  We are equal to the same things.  We are all human. 

We all want to love and be loved.

We all have our own dance and the right to express who we are in that dance.

That’s the truth.