Thank you for reading.
Thank you for writing.
Thank you
for taking the time
to sing, to dance.
Thank you for sharing
your hopes, your dreams.
Thank you for finding
new ways of loving,
and being.
Thank you.
Dec24
Monthly Archives: December 2012
Dec20
on moving and not moving
What I have noticed lately in myself is a strange stillness, an absence of movement. Once I noticed it, I began to feel it everywhere. At the computer, watching a movie, driving. It didn’t felt still, it felt frozen. I realized that certain activities take me into a state where even breathing is minimal, and the little postural shifts and breath related movement that Laban movement analysts identify as “shape flow” were not there.
Shape flow movements mean the body moving in relationship to the body itself. This could be amoebic movement or mundane habitual actions, like shrugging, shivering, rubbing an injured shoulder, little shifts and adjustments in a chair or standing etc. It includes breathing. It is a kind of baseline of aliveness, of life. Shape flow movements are also recuperative. They renew the body at the cellular level and keep us “in the flow” of life and liveliness. When shape flow is absent, the body has begun to atrophy. That is what I noticed.I was feeling a deadening, like cellular lockdown. Is that something that happens with aging, I wondered.
So I have started flowing, little movements, bigger breaths salted in with the smaller. Like a continual little improvisational dance with myself. Try it. See what happens.
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Dec16
mourning
My friend, the poet Carol Dine, sent me this poem.
Rock Me, Mercy: A Poem Written In Mourning
by Yusef Komunyakaa
The river stones are listening,
Because we have something to say.
The trees lean closer today.
The singing in the electrical woods has gone down.
It looks like rain, because it is too warm to snow.
Guardian angels, wherever you’re hiding,
We know you can’t be everywhere at once.
Have you corralled all the pretty, wild horses?
The memory of ants asleep,
And day lilies, roses, holly, and larkspur?
The magpies gaze at us,
Still waiting.
River stones are listening
But all we can say now is,
Mercy, please rock me.
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Dec15
rest
Photo: Pam White
Sometimes life enforces a big rest. I have the flu. I am having a big, unsolicited rest. But was it unsolicited, or had I managed to tune out sufficiently to invite a collapse instead of a recuperation.
Maybe, but godson Jacob had a very runny nose and perhaps I missed a few hand washes – or got to the soap too late. In any case, I am down.
But resting doesn’t have to always look like Pachi, above – all grace, softness and light, or me with the tornado sneezes and subterranean cough. There are the other, more subtle rests. Those are the ones I want to talk about.
Rudolf Laban, discovered that factory works engaged in repetitive motion labor were less efficient that when small recuperative moments were salted into those repeated movements. Through working specifically with the rhythm of movement in qualitative patterning, their approaches improved efficiency, reduced fatigue, and increased job satisfaction. (Janet Kaylo) In Laban Movement Analysis, that means looking at not just how much energy is being expended, but what are the specific qualities those movements – quick/sustained, light/strong, direct/indirect, free/bound in their flow.
When I was watching JoAnn, Jacob ‘s Mom, I noticed that she used her eyes in a strong, piercing direct way. She is used to watching Jacob this way – always on guard, always ready. There is no recuperation and that tension in the eyes makes it way into the whole body. I invited her to let her vision take in Jacob in a more peripheral, global way and also to intersperse moments of letting her focus meander in a soft and intentional way, instead of being focused, laser-like on Jacob. Both of those are little recuperations.
Getting up from writing to walk from room to room, or get a glass of water, or step outside and look around – even if only for a few moments – is recuperative. A breath with attention is a recuperation. We don’t have to get sick or go to the Caribbean to feel better (although I do enjoy the latter).
Experiment with little recuperations. Right now I am lying in bed with my cat Ivy snuggled by my right side. I just took a moment from typing to stroke her and pay attention to how that felt and I feel refreshed.That was less than 10 seconds.
Recuperate and tell me what you discover.