I was in with the kangaroos, but the rest is bliss!  I think that I need to invite more of this into my own dancing.

What is your dance?

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Here is the next part of body dharma.

Randee Fox sent me this link.  Daniel Mollner is 47 years old and is making a film a week about being a dancer, something that he has only recently claimed.  It is a brilliant, generous idea.

I have just started making solos again. My friend Ryder hosts an open mike at Cafe Helsinki in Hudson, NY.    She said, “Why don’t you do something?”  And I thought, “Yeah.  Why not?”

I have not performed a solo for over ten years.  Here is what happened:  Over a period of twenty years, I lost my ability to move, even to walk.  My hips were GONE.  Everyone said, “But you are too young to have the surgery.”  Really I wasn’t, but I liked that they thought so.  By the end, I could not even walk across the street.  I felt a terrible sense of shame.  “I am a dancer.  I cannot move.”

The other thing that happened was 9/11.  Many of my artist friends were creatively derailed.  Mute.  Numb.  It went on for many months, even years.  I went into a creative deep-freeze that lasted about seven years.  I felt ashamed. “I am an artist. I cannot make art .”

It was finally the horses that brought me back, and a persistent, wonderful image of making a dance with horses and an aerial dancer, the beautiful Paola Styron.

The one thing I know about body dharma is that it is not one thing.  It is not a straight line.  It is a meandering river with backwaters and tributaries and terrible, ferocious class 5 rapids that will leave you washed up and rinsed out way downriver.  It is also the only place to be:  in the water, between the banks, flowing.

Sharing my experience and  passion in a way that helps and supports others is what I love.  I am always thinking about new ways to do that.

So here are three of my body dharma offerings:

• one-to-one:  coaching for engaging the artist within
• Breaking into Blossom:  the eBook
• Cookbook for the Bonehouse:  a workshop

I have other offerings.  You can check them out here.

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This morning when I was grooming Nelson, he rested his head on my shoulder and I could feel his soft breath on my cheek.  We stood like that for almost a minute in the cold January sun.

I have been working with Nelson on going away and coming back.  On being able to respond to hand signals to ask him to walk around me in a circle, change directions and then come back to me, turning toward me.

This may sound like no big deal, but it is.  He is saying “OK, I feel safe to come back to you.”  What I especially appreciate is that he is calm throughout.  Even when I asked him to move off more briskly (not on this clip), he was still not anxious.   How I can tell is that he settles immediately on a subtle hand signal.  He is more interested in reading my movement than getting upset. (I was not able to be so clear with my signals because of holding the camera.)

This is a yoga:  opening to more movement, more awareness, more attunement – one breath, one day at a time.  Laying down a path of trust and communication, in what feels like little improvisational dance phrases.

Did I mention that I love this horse?

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“In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth.”                                                                                                                                                                                                          

Patti Smith

My friend Suzanne sent me this quotation.  I love this because it feels like a koan to me.  A puzzle box that time and curiosity will keep opening.  A series of nested matrushkas.  I am especially interested in the ways that abandon, balance and stealth intersect and overlay; in how I am dancing the dance of those three.

This photograph that I took yesterday morning feels a bit like how I am stepping into the new year.  Spacious possibility and all that is unknown.  A blank tablet that carries the cuneiform of the previous year(s).

My charge to myself is to move from feeling, intuition and trust.  To find something new every day.  More than once a day.

What are you charged with?

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Riding is the hardest thing that I do.  Physically.  Mentally.  Spiritually.

I am a dancer.  Riding is harder.  The intricacy, the communication, the balance, the nuance, the subtlety required in the riding arena are beyond anything I have experienced in a dance studio.  Martha Graham said that it takes ten years to make a dancer.  One of my first trainers, Beach Bennett, said that it takes at least two lifetimes to become a rider. She is right.

I have had to accept that despite my physical skills, my training and my understanding, I am going to need that second lifetime to become all that I want as a rider.  It is humbling. I welcome it.

I wrote yesterday about touching horses, and the way that brings me to my knees.  How I love it.  Riding is that way too.  Sitting in the saddle (my zafu) and finding the first rhythmic harmonics with my horse’s walk is like breathing. Or like stepping into the water, readying for a swim.  Being challenged to seek harmony, softness, clarity and balance throughout a riding lesson is like sitting with a tough Zen master.  Or like my yoga classes with Patricia Walden.  No tuning out, not ever, not for a moment.

The horse, you see, deserves nothing less than my very best.

Rigor and ecstasy.  Could there be anything better?

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