As I sit here wondering what to talk about my mind keeps thinking about dancing and how I haven’t been doing much at all lately. My body has this odd disconnected yearning when I tune into it and there is nothing that my mind is doing at this moment that makes any difference at all to this physical sensation. In fact the mind can help the body to relax by using it’s capacity for understanding but there are times when talk is cheap and the only thing to do is to dance! My Beloved and I are no longer running a monthly dance and our local musical co-op closed down at the start of the year so the possibilities for going out and dancing have been less in our town.
That of course is no excuse and barely makes it in as a valid reason even, dancing can happen anywhere including when we are at home all alone. A FB friend just had a dancing challenge where she danced for half an hour every morning with her kids, what a good idea I thought to myself as I clicked on ‘going’. You can guess where I am going with this, I did not do one formal dance session in the two week period. And I LOVE to dance, when I manage to have a really good movement session I feel AMAZING! This is starting to sound a lot like a recent post on meditation and how I wasn’t managing to get myself on the cushion in spite of how beneficial it is to my health. Well I have made it to at least a couple of meditation classes since then but as for a regular practice, forget it.
So what to do? The first thing that comes to mind is that it would be useful to talk to my Beloved about this issue and see if we can come up with a buddy system that supports regular movement for us both. I’m thinking dancing here, it’s usually sensible to do one thing at a time and as a deep lover of the transformational energies of dance I know that if I create the space my body will adore moving the energy in this way. The other idea I’ve had is to run a weekly dance class that goes for an hour and call it “Dance For Joy!” I can’t be the only person who has this problem and I love the vision of a room full of people laughing and dancing to an eclectic mix of tunes old and new. If you have a look there are often plenty of meditation classes for people to attend but dance classes where you get to do your own thing are not so common. So this will be my next focus for a class but in the meantime I will see what I can do about moving this gorgeous body of mine a little more often.
The spirit in motion heals, expands, circles in and out of the body, moving through the layers of consciousness from inertia to ecstasy. Open to the spirit, and you will be transformed.
Gabrielle Roth
And I will continue with my gratitude practice because that helps with pretty much anything and everything! I’m noticing as I feel gratitude and visualise my body in motion that my mood is lifting even as the body’s yearning becomes more pronounced. So what kind of incredible transformation might be possible when I actually dance in real time with an open heart and mind. I’m smiling and feeling very excited at the prospect!
On the edge of a cramp my belly craves chocolate and sugar which is surprisingly delivered at 8.30am in the glove box of my car as I return the driving sunglasses to their home. No breakfast at home and now artificial stimulation is glaringly there just as my willpower says “You’ve got to be kidding!” and promptly eats a row before I settle into five minutes of meditation. This is no clear space of light and clean with mindfulness sparkles gleaming out into the urban landscape. There has been no natural organic segue from sleepiness to waking alertness on my more traditional nine to five day. The trees and sunshine do their best to draw me back into the earthly realms as they wink and smile at me but part of me feels quite disconnected.
Part of this feeling is my reluctance to come back after a five day holiday that my Beloved and I took at the beginning of our house sit almost two weeks ago. So lovely to let go of the everyday world and especially the online one, a wonderful convenience but it does impact on our organic selves in ways that are not always helpful. The more sensitive I become in the world the more I notice when I’m not feeling connected to the natural world. It’s easy in modern society to sometimes forget that we are natural beings and that much of what creates happiness for us comes from inner resources. It isn’t so easy in front of a computer in an office to reconnect with that place so I tend to focus on my body as a doorway or bridge from one realm to another. When I arrive at the car park I consciously connect with the trees and the birds and if it’s too wet to sit for my meditation I at least spend a moment with my hand on the trunk of a tree.
The world is a very noisy place these days and silence something that many people actively avoid. I consider myself a reasonably conscious human being and yet I find myself doing the very same thing even though I know perfectly well that being silent is a great way of tuning in to deeper feelings and sensations. So what is so hard about simply sitting in silence? On my lunch break when I work a full day I usually go out to the balcony where I can breathe fresh air and see the sky and feel the wind on my face. And I know that once I’ve finished eating that the best way of spending the rest of my break time is to sit in meditation. Then the next thing I know I’m looking at Facebook on my phone and getting caught up in all of that stuff and I only manage a few minutes of actually sitting in stillness.
It’s worth a shot anyway, maybe even a gratitude diary where I write down all the things in my life that I am grateful for. As a lover of improvisation I will probably make it up as I go along ! And who knows what will happen as I spend more and more time in meditative spaces, many of the thorny issues I’m currently facing may turn into beautiful roses smelling sweet!
Hooray! At last I am properly organised to offer online and phone readings for those who are not able to come and see me in person. This has been one of those things my Beloved and I have been talking about for ages and ages and finally it is done. Do you sometimes have the experience of knowing what to do but somehow finding it impossible to do certain things however simple they may seem in practice? Well that’s how it’s been for me with this particular enterprise. I can’t give you a formula for how to achieve this but I do know that for some of us this sort of change can only come through a deep shedding.
It’s been a long journey of integration since we returned from Vipassana, and I have not felt like writing much. I’ve enjoyed doing some drawing and often with my Beloved, so nice to share a flowing, creative and spontaneous process with each other. I had a day in the flow as I shopped online for a blender and handed out some flyers, and felt the butterflies in my belly as the first “Buddha Meets Your Body” class here in our home town is on tomorrow. Our Facebook event link is: 
Well this is the day before I head off to a 10 day silent retreat, the one I was going to train for by meditating for at least 10 minutes a day. You probably can already guess that it didn’t quite work out that way after all. I have done some meditation though and more regular stretching so I have improved my capacity which will be very helpful. I have certainly done a lot of shedding and letting go of energies that were ready to leave, some not feeling very nice. So my training has been somewhat intuitive and for someone who loves to improvise this is probably the perfect preparation!
Through the Vortex 