Warming up, gentle music carrying me…in…into my body, into the space, into the dance. I get curious, checking in with this body today. Following nurturing breath and beat into joints, muscles, aches and pains, stiff and crunchy places… into the question…what is here now?
My heart swells, full of how deeply the dance is my home, my entire life, movement has been a comforting constant. Twenty years alone have been devoted to 5Rhythms and ecstatic forms of dance. As I move with this emotion my body and heart soften, my movements get round and full, slow and yummy.
This carries me into a full and joyful dance…moving from my center and into the space, between other bodies, eventually connecting with other’s movements…feet, hips, spines…in our unique dialogue together. “Hello! Oh…I see….yes, and this is me today…yes…thank you, yes!” Through the room the dance takes us. I go and go and go, connecting and letting go, freeing my body and mind, and my heart…opening, filling, expanding.
Eventually my body quiets, movements slow, I come to quiet, restful movements, gentle, expanded…capacity for embodied presence right now, more than it was when I walked in.
Then I see it…a group of bodies rolling and twisting, hips open and fluid, no limitations in physical form. Beautiful youthful strength, wide-open expression of connection – core flow, body to body, grace, ease, joy. I smile, my brain body loves this, she knows this…it is familiar. I know these moves, I know what they feel like from the inside…rolling hips against the floor, against other bodies, fluid, easy, satisfying connections…and in this moment of joyful knowing it comes. My heart aches, this strange mixture of tremendous expanded gratitude at knowing, in my bones… and heart wrenching grief…the awareness strikes me… this is no longer my dance.
I will not be moving like that, in those ways again. These hips will not abide. The tears stream, I watch these movers as I rock myself gently. Being with this richness…expanded gratitude and grief…at the same moment. This heart of mine has been through many openings, cracking, breaking, shattering, and this one is different. This one is different. Poignant. Paradoxical. Quietly creeping in, it comes.
As I write this now, I see it. I see my expanding capacity. Even with a body that is coming to terms with it’s capacity now and a spirit that far exceeds the limitations of this body, I am expanding. I am softening, my heartful presence is deepening with the nuances that come knocking at my door, bidding me to pay attention. Pay attention, pay attention. Right here. Right now.
I see, the way we grow capacity changes through our life cycle and yet remains the same. In youth, expanding our capacity often comes with building courage to discover and express our Self, often ‘against’ our parents or culture. As we age, we expand our capacity by staying present to what we are simultaneously ‘loosing’ and gaining. The freedoms we ‘loose’ with grown up jobs, marriages, parenting and the joys we gain in exchange. And then…eventually, the ease we ‘loose’ in the body and the invitation into tenderness with ourselves, with our bodies, our elders, loved ones and companions. The sameness along the continuum of life is into the embodied heart, into the present moment, into our vulnerability and the remedy this brings. Eventually we find our way into a new story…and if we are lucky and practiced, we live into mastery. Until we bump into the next stage, the next steps in our ever evolving journey and we begin again…and I hear, “Notice, notice, notice…notice all of it. Don’t miss a thing.”
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