Category Archives: moving, breathing, feeling

Sep3

Cow Licks (an herbivore post)

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#4725 is licking my elbow – I am trying to keep him from licking the lens.  I stopped along a curving upstate New York road to admire at these cows and a huge flock of birds in a field.  The minute I stepped out of the car, they began to approach.  Curious cows.  First one, then two more, then a group.  I love cows, love their eyes, their softness, their nature.  For the last three years I have visited the cows at the Putney School in Vermont, and that is where I discovered the delights of cows.  How they love to have the bump on their head scratched, and how they investigate you with their long rough tongues, how herdish they are. Cows usually approach in bunches, gangs, bevies.

I had wanted to create a dance for cows and the dance students at Putney, but we could never quite pull it together.  My friend Ann Carlson did make a dance with cows.  Dancing with another species is a way to listen; to let go of telling and speaking, and shift into feeling and moving.  It is a significantly different  from petting, grooming, walking, milking, riding.  The questions are different, and the answers always changing.  By dancing I don’t mean formal balletic movement, but improvising, playing, investigating.  A great example of inter-species dancing:  playing ultimate frisbee with a dog!

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Sep1

The Dance: Nelson’s Tango

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Today I was working with Nelson, the Mustang.  My work with him is about helping him to get more comfortable with all the stuff around him, and more able to roll with new information, new challenges, like being able to have his feet trimmed, My relationship with Nelson is more than that, however. Over the months or working with him, I have come to love him, and to approach our dance with reverence and appreciation.  I  learn something new each time I am with him.  For the past few weeks, I have noticed that the texture of my body – the way I feel my cells are aligned and humming  has changed since I first started.  It feels like I have been homogenized – my body is expressing one thing, instead of a million little messages.  That makes things easier for Nelson.  Today he felt nervous, usually a sign that someone else has been in working with him – he was discombobulated and edgy.  I have learned not to react to any of that, just to stay in my basic, homogenized body and wait.  At one point, he started his dance of moving one way and then turning and moving off the other direction – a prelude to running.  Instead of trying to block him, I just blended my steps, so that I was matching him exactly, as if I were trying to learn his dance steps.  I could immediately feel the shift in him – he looked at me as if I had done something very interesting and then walked over to me for a pet.  Another lesson in horse dancing for me.  Thank you Nelson.

Aug31

Join Up

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Swimming this morning, the clouds were soft, fine,diaphanous.  My body in the water felt soft, fine, diaphanous – boneless, like the water, like the clouds and the sky.  No separation.  Monty Roberts calls the moment of connection between horse and human “join up.”  I am looking for join up all the time, with everything.  It’s like a sensual prayer, a bodily  invocation.  Like making an effortless wireless connection with the universe.

Aug26

Letting Go

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From Tilt Photo by Pam White

Yesterday we took one daughter to college.  Tomorrow daughter #2 goes off to college.   Two weeks ago, I made the decision to sell my gelding Amadeo.  I have come to see, painfully and over a long period of time, that I am not the best dance partner for this horse.  Holding on to him is clinging to an old dream.  Like trying to hold onto my girls as they launch into their new lives. There is something about these kinds of emptying changes that is uncomfortable, violent.  Hurricane Irene steaming up the East coast feels like this – inevitable, unpredictable.  What I can do is bring in the plants and the lawn furniture, gather the cats, make sure that the girls’ laundry is done and that they have what they need. Love them.  Look for a loving home for Deo, with someone who can dance his beautiful dance.  And most of all, hold myself gently through all these passing storms of change.