
What Warmth Can Do
Dearest Dancers,
How does this moment find you? What’s your body telling you? How does it feel to be the inhabitant of your body right now? What are you holding and where (in the body)? What assists in your softening? What brings a sense of energy and vitality? Where does joy reside in the body? And ease? Well-being? When it’s rough outside, how do you self-soothe? The body is such a marvelously exquisite thing. Do we honor it? Do we listen to it? To what extent are we attuned to all the wisdom within the body? How do we tap into that?
I only have questions. No answers. But can I tell you something silly and astounding? My acupuncturist has me eating only warm foods. According to Traditional Chinese Medicine I need to do this in order to heal my digestive system. I’ve carefully consumed only warm foods and beverages for several weeks now, but yesterday I ate half a peach that I found in the refrigerator. It hurt. No, that’s a bit of an overstatement. It was uncomfortable. Yes, that’s it. I’ve come to the point of sensitivity where consuming cold foods or beverages feels lousy in my body. Isn’t that odd and yet also wonderful? I’ve been numb to the subtle but lasting damage done to my stomach and spleen by cold food for years. What else am I numb to? What else might this glorious body be trying to tell me? To move more? To rest more? To be still and relaxed? To touch more? To connect more? To laugh more? To dance more? Yes! I feel this to be true at the very core of my being: I must dance more! And that, my friend, is precisely what we’re here for. . . . .to attune to these beautiful bodies we’ve been given, to celebrate them with conscious movement. Joy of joys, come dance with us!
It tickles me to report that our beloved Kathy Altman is back and will be holding the space for us tomorrow as only she can do; with love, with curiosity, with wisdom, with a sense of purpose. And, of course, she’ll bring a fabulous array of music to loosen up the body and help it find some freedom, some ease.
I wish you all a good dance!
Here’s the link: Community Dances | Open Floor Dance
We begin at 9:45am Pacific
Here’s a lovely poem for you by David Whyte:
The Bell Ringer
Consider the bell
ringer as an image
of the human soul,
he stands foursquare
on the stone flagged
ground, and surrounded
by a circle of communal
concentration
searches in his fixed
aloneness
for a world
beyond straight,
human,
eye to eye
discourse,
in this case
above him,
the collision of metal
worlds chiming
to each bend and lift
of the knees,
letting his weight bear down
on the rope,
creating out of the heave
and upward pull,
a hollowed out
brass utterance,
a resonant
on-going argument
for his continued presence,
independent
of daily mood
or the necessities
for a verbal
proclamation.
***
Let him stand there
then
for the human soul,
let his weight
come true on the rope,
the way we want to lean
into the center of things,
the way we want to
fall with the gravity
of the situation
and then afterwards
laugh and
defy it
with an upward
ultimately untraceable
flight,
a great ungovernable
ringing
announcement
to the world
that something, somewhere,
has changed.
Consider
the bell ringer
as one of us,
attempting some
unachieved,
magnificent
difference in the world,
far above
and far beyond
the stone-closed
space we seem
to occupy.
Below
we're all
effort, listening
and willful concentration,
above,
like a moving sea,
another power
shoulders
just
for a moment
the whole burden,
lifts us
against our will,
lets us find
in the skyward pull
a needed antidote
to surface noise,
a gravity against gravity,
another way to hear
amid
the clamor of the heavens.
~ David Whyte ~
Something, somewhere has changed, my Loves.
Let’s dance to change.
Sending love,
KB