Category Archives: improvisation life

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.

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Aug30

Stormy Weather

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Into the Vortex by Pam White

The other day I took my horse Amadeo out on a lead line to do some ground work.  We got into the arena, and suddenly he was arching his neck, blowing like a stallion, tail flagging, spooking, little rears.  Sweat poured down my neck.  I wanted to run.  The last time this happened, five years ago, I was walking him at a new farm and he spooked, pivoted and kicked out, catching my thigh full force with his hoof.  I went down.  I had a shoe print, a big lump and a colorful leg for about a year.When that happened,I felt caught in a storm – fearful, helpless.  It felt personal.

Hurricane Irene, on the other hand, catapulted us into an odd kind of stillness.  After putting away and securing  all potential projectiles, including dogs, cats, plants, we fell into obsessive storm watching.  On the television and out the windows.  Trees waving, rain whipping in sheets, images of the sea wild, surging.  On the farm, the horses safe inside, chewing hay, breathing, shuffling in the straw. The Irene storm felt impersonal – something that happened with all of us – a kind of communal event – something to share.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aug22

Beige or Light Brown?

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Yesterday I read an article in the New York Times about decision making and how our endless cascade of choices basically overwhelms our limited bandwidth, wreaking havoc with our emotional and physical selves.  The way I experience it is as a surfeit of essentially meaningless choices (Coffee or tea?  Pants or shorts?  Write the blog or go for a walk? etc. etc. etc.)  It feels like dithering.  Another symptom of an unquiet mind.  Time to breathe and get quiet.  (Meditate or walk?  Breathe or stretch? . . . oops, there I go again).

Horses don’t dither.  They are not overwhelmed by their choices.  Hay or grass?  This place or that?  Doze or graze?  Lick the salt or wait until later?  They just move in a smooth flow from one thing to the next.  I imagine that to be vastly refreshing, more immediate, sensual and delicious.  I notice that when I am at the barn, in the presence of the horses, the choices dissolve.  I fall into horse time – expanded, open-ended, present.

Aug14

Improvisation Life

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Ingrid Schatz, who has danced with me for the past 15 years, told me of a recent study showing that movement improvisation has been shown to be the greatest antidote to dementia!  Nearly four years ago I lost my mother to Alzheimer’s disease, after eight years of losing her piece by piece in excruciating increments.  I wonder what might have been different had I engaged her in some kind of movement play.  Improvising turns on the brain’s circuitry, creating new pathways and connections.  Improvising, we don’t now where we are going, we are traveling through time and space without a map, following the wild and ragged heart of the body.  Horse Dancing at its best, really.  The continual, present-centered, unfolding bodily conversation with yourself, a horse, a lover.  A way to get unstuck from the rote, the habitual, the usual.  Try this:  take five minutes sometime today and lie down in a quiet spot and just let your body move in any way that it wants.  Little, big, fast, slow – doesn’t matter.  No editor, no instructor, no judge.  Listen to the body.  Let it speak.