Near the shores of Lake Erie a couple weeks ago, I had a dance that reminded me why I love to dance. Bundled up with flannel lined pants, a borrowed fleece, and my favorite boots, I say yes to a dance between light rain and muddy earth. I’m with Brian, dear friend and collaborator, in a spot that’s familiar to me, new to him. It’s been a few months since we’ve danced together, so we ease into the ritual. Jogging, jumping jacks, preambulating,1 arriving into the grassy field and our senses.
Unworried about dirt and water, we embrace the elements. Mud squishes beneath boots. The softened earth receives knees. Our bodies warm up, belly-radiating to finger tips, cheeks flush. I sense my shifting awareness of our surroundings and my body - the sound of the highway nearby, a hawk swooping down, proximity to Brian, wet hands, hair in my face, the sun shifting towards dusk.
A few hikers nearby pause in the distance, watching our dance. How startling it can be to see bodies moving differently. A glitch in expected rhythms of behavior. Feeling myself being witnessed, I am so glad I am a dancing body. My body is moved by an unseen purpose, embodying freedom in this moment.
I’ve been dancing so much! And have found many juicy, satisfying, new, and familiar ways of moving. And sometimes I’m like wait why do I doing this? Sometimes I feel stuck and stiff and in my head. Sometimes it shifts and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes I feel like a phony2 for whom dancing does not work its magic on me. Sometimes I just want to be still and do very little.
My movement practice, I am realizing, is so often a practice of awakening to the sacredness of this time, this land, this body. It’s a process of reanimating the world and becoming more fully alive. I become a super sensitive thought-body, as one of my professors says, becoming more porous and responsive to the energies I’m surrounded by. My resistance to moving or connecting with myself and others is heightened when the world feels loud or I feel inadequate to receive.
The practice of returning to my dance is a return to relationship with myself and the world.
During my first semester of graduate school, a persnickety cloud of depression and buzz of anxiety crept in, self doubt got loud and some parts of me felt really scared. It’s not surprising as I move and take a big leap into the often intimidating waters of academia and commit to myself and creative inquiry. It never feels on time, but enough of me knows that it’s another opportunity to accept myself, to be vulnerable, to be that much more tender to myself and you and us, to keep going anyways, to dig a bit deeper, to ask for help, and to marvel at the wild weather of being a human right now. I feel a bit more wide-ness, a little less fear, and a tad more patience with the cycles. I am so grateful for tender friends, family visits, for poets and cats, strangers at the cafe, outdoor dances, eye contact and smiles. They all keep me going daily.
Spending a couple weeks back on the shores of Lake Erie, I feel parts of myself returning. Parts of me that floated into the ether even before I moved and started graduate school. Reunited with family, friends, and collaborators, I am immersed in shared language and parts of the constellation that make up Emily. I’m a verbal processor, talking about what I’m learning helps it sink in. Noticing what is sticking and what I’m still chewing on. I love sharing what I’m learning, and while I am pursuing a formal degree, I like to visualize and practice a spilling of the knowledge from my body-mind to yours and anyone I am in conversation with. This is how we share worlds. This is how realities are created and nurtured.
“Notice the sacredness of where you are, the mysteriousness of where you are. Where you are is already sacred, There is no realm to access, no subterranean secret to be divulged, no ‘inside’ to gain.” - Bayo Akomolefe
Something we discussed in our class on ritual theory this past semester is modern society’s disenchantment with the world. It’s the poison of abstraction that might look like depression on an individual level and collectively creates unjust economic systems and justifies genocide right in front of our eyes. It siphons the sacred into chapels and assigns it certain people, certain times, certain places.
Oh but it is our attention that makes anything sacred! Our attention shifts a space or activity from mundane to deeply interesting. Flat to textured. Profane to sacred.
I offer my dance above, at new favorite spot in my home here in North Carolina, as a drop in the ocean of enchantment. A prayer for sanctity and solidarity with life affirming movement. May the power of the subtle shifts reverberate widely.
Beaming out gratitude for your presence and attention. Wishing you gentle, warm, and sensory-rich beginnings.
peace,
emily
From Nancy Stark Smith- preambulation is to “take the body through the space, take in the people, sounds and mood around you”
A nudge to lean into the phony feelings:
Thank you Emily, for sharing yourself and your mental, emotional, geographic, and spiritual journeys. Reading this piece gave me a break out of the practical to the ethereal. Thank you, thank you!