I gotta feeling…
The year was 2003. A return to Esalen exactly a year after my random 5Rhythms experience there at Huxley. An hour that flung me head on to a year of Tuesday night practice here in Sacramento. And so I went back to Esalen for Heartbeat with Kathy Altman. Courageously dove into a map exploring the emotions. After 5 dancing days two things became way too clear:
1. The prickly wall of defense around my tender heart was immense, historically and methodically constructed. At the ripe age of 53 I despaired. At workshop’s end, I told the teacher there would never be enough time to deconstruct what I discovered. She asked, “What else are you doing?”
2. And this: after a dancing year, it was super obvious that staccato was my natural rhythm. The clear lines and angles, the 4/4 tempo, the clarity of expression…this was where I felt totally at home. That same first year I devoured Maps to Ecstasy. The staccato chapter, entitled “expressing the heart”, dissected the emotional landscape. It was like some weird Zen koan: how could my body know what me heart had yet to learn?
And so it began. Years that turned into decades. Brick by painful brick, dismantling the wall. Sometimes huge chunks fell away in a flash. Mostly a fine-tuned chisel chipped away bit by painstaking bit. And this week a three-in-a-row teaching opportunity gently carved away another eroding layer.
Since January, our community has been reading Maps to Ecstasy. Once a month we investigate succeeding chapters. On Wednesday night I taught an embodied practice based on the expressing the heart chapter. We scrunched fearful shoulders, furrowed angry eyes, dragged grief-ridden feet, raised joyful hands and softened in compassion. Five basic emotions. I’m so not the only one raised in a household where feelings were unevenly and unskillfully modeled. Back then, it was simply safer to not feel at all.
On Thursday night Book Club met. In rotating dyads we verbally, mindfully explored the same five emotions. Witnessed each other completing sentences like “it scares me when…” or “describe a time your personal boundaries were crossed…” As I held the space that evening, I could feel the room tone utterly shift for each emotion. It was so very touchingly tender.
On Sunday morning I led the Sweat in Grass Valley. How to tenderly articulate such complexity in the five alloted minutes between two waves? The hand mudras. I just offered them up and, if you want you could do them right here with me. Three times each. Cross arms over chest and whisper “fear protects me”. Thrust palms forward with a firm declaration: “anger defends me”. Place palms over face, sweep then downward, cry “grief releases me”. Lift hands skyward, proclaim “joy opens me”. And finally, extend palms sidewards, softly offer “compassion unites us”. The carefully crafted musical set that followed on Sunday was evocative enough to bring the teaching home.
I am so grateful to coach this practice. The benefit of teaching works just like dancing the rhythms, just a different flavor. And, of course, I’m still out there dancing whenever I’m able. Totally looking forward to April 25-27 when Sylvie Minot brings Heartbeat to Sacramento. Come join us. There is always so much to feel and life is just richer when we open to our felt experience. It is never too late. What else are you doing anyway?
❤️Bella