This is kind of long, but I'm grateful to share this experience with you.
I bought an entire album from iTunes a couple of weeks ago. A teacher/friend shared this music with me and my body loved it right away.
When I started working with it, nothing clicked. Not new. I felt like I was dancing someone else's body. I left it alone for awhile, but my body kept asking me to move to it. Last week I free danced to this and again fell in love.
I'll come back to this.
Whatever my mood, whatever may be going on in the moment, I always want to dance. Sometimes I dance to escape. Sometimes I dance to blow off steam. Sometimes I dance to learn something new. I dance to refine. I dance to be a student. I dance to be a better Nia teacher. I dance to be a better human. These days, I realized this morning, I am dancing to shift.
I knew something was wrong.
A couple of weeks ago I noticed that my four realms were so restless that I desperately needed to dance, but I couldn't settle on what was being asked for. Not one Nia routine felt 'right', free dance found me wandering lethargic and unfocused, around the room - ah ha. This visceral coiling of restlessness reflected my life in turmoil.
It was my body's turn to process the tremendous amount of information my mind and heart have been floundering to make sense of. The epiphanies and the opportunities-for-growth (you can insert a sarcastic tone here if you like!) have been rolling in so hard and so fast, I can hardly look inside and see myself.
It had finally reached my dance - my body.
Monday, during my practice with Cadence, my body asked for something older. I went to Agolo. Mmm, on the right track.
Tuesday, Mood Food and The Dance, oh yea. The restlessness was
This morning my body asked for my new music. The soft, subtle stirrings of sound began and I stood, waiting. Nothing. I began to move in my usual warmup way. Nope.
Go To The Floor.
That was what I had been waiting for.
For 7 minutes and 20 seconds my body explored the first stage of the Nia 5 Stages process, Embryonic. What my body took me through was very different from Stage 1 I usually talk myself through. This Embryonic was physically engulfing. My mind, spirit and emotions were in stillness. No words belonged here.
Somewhere into the second song, my body shifted into Creeping, the 2nd stage. Again, nothing resembling the Creeping I'd felt in the past. I was acutely aware of my bones. Movement brought pain and my mind shrugged. Some internal struggle ensued; "not this time" my body decided and I let go of tendency. Pain diminished.
For the next 7 or so minutes, I explored the 2nd stage with little more than breaths and tweaks. With my mind having relinquished what it thought it knew, my body had the opportunity to be in Creeping in a new way - for the sake of relief. For healing.
The 3rd song, also around 7 minutes, still found me in Creeping, with not only pain relief but a more settled heart.
(Looking back on this I wonder if I was truly ready to shift into Crawling when I did.) This shift was definitely not the way I shift from Creeping to Crawling in the classes I teach or even in my personal practice. This was not pretty. It may have been beautiful. It may have been touching. It may have been painful to watch. But it was not pretty. It was beyond functional. It was Primal. In physical terms it was a fall from grace.
(I like grace. I love feeling graceful. In my body it takes strength to express grace. At its most interesting, dancing through grace is literally a second to second experience of connecting movement dots. Complete focus. And often physical pain is present as I find ways to express emotional and mental pain. On a physical level, when I dance, I am about grace.)
Crawling brought me a physical epiphany - those I love. Physical communication I get! I usually understand right away what to do with those!!
While Crawling, I noticed that the movement that was occurring in my hip joints to swing my thighbone forward was not a straight motion. I looked down and witnessed each knee swinging out and away from my body before landing on the floor to accept my weight.
I may even have stopped breathing for a second. I love these moments.
I continued to watch and then I made a change. I asked my hip joints to, please, swing my knees foward in a straighter line. There was aggreement and this dance continued. As I stayed connected to this new way of moving, I noticed that my neck was getting tight and my wrists were beginning to squeak. I had not experienced either, ever before in my 5 Stages practice.
Shifting from Crawling to Standing was about as glamorous as the shift from Creeping to Crawling. By this point I had released my physical need for control and my emotional need for grace (no, it's not backwards). I deeply appreciated this shift. Walking felt smooth and connected - connected to what? Everything. In that moment, I sensed all of my realms in a place of Relaxed, Alert and Waiting.
In my bones, sans the visceral squirming and with this new awareness in my hip joints, freedance was a new experience. I sensed my body's desire for effortlessness. Moving from my bones brought this brand new sensation; not just relaxation (this I knew) but honest effortlessness.
After an hour of moving through the 5 Stages, I decided to dance Mood Food.
I danced from quiet. I danced from my bones. I danced the new revelation in my hip joints.
I have always loved Mood Food and I've taught it often. It kicks my ass every time - much-much base work and many opportunities to work through my low plane at level 3. I end up completely drenched, hair and clothes dripping. I have always pushed my anaerobic threshold with this one.
Today I explored my low planes with ease I have never felt before. I did not work harder to execute sinking more deeply.
I sensed that my muscles were responding to the fact that I was moving in my bones and the difference was a framework of ease.
I literally felt my body as my frame, my bones the structural foundation to support all that is me and I danced this routine in a body that had released pain and struggle, control and habit
and re-defined grace.
After sitting to write this - about 2+ hours, I feel the sensation of change in my hips and my back. Not the same relentless, knife-sharp reminder of history and physical imperfection, but a gentle ache that asks I not forget that even moving forward can be uncomfortable.
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