Baltering like a beginner

  

      Barely a week into the new year and there’s already a lot of new in my life. Most of the new began in the last couple months of 2014. New things for me are an exquisite mix of excitement, fear, creativity and flailing.

    In November I began attending a weekly 5Rhythms dance ritual. I went based on an experience I had with dancing in holotropic breathwork.  Some part of me got very insistent that I need to dance more. So after a few weeks of arguing with my introvert self about showing up in a group of people I didn’t know to do something I haven’t done before I got up one Sunday morning and just went.

    Other arguments with myself included a lot of “practical” bits like I’m short, round, have two bionic knees and am going to turn fifty in February….what the hell did I think I was doing? All arguments aside, the real fear was of learning to do something new in public where people would witness my flailing. Yikes…vulnerability.

   I’m pretty proud of myself for even showing up the first time. I had an amazing experience. The music took over. I didn’t think. I forgot myself. I just danced for an hour and a half. Afterwards I felt great. I was amazed at how clear I felt emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually and energetically.

    I loved it. I went back the next Sunday and met my beginner awkwardness. Not the first time I’ve had this experience. Often when I try something new my first experience with it is free of self-consciousness, filled with ease and wonderful. I’ve come to see this as the Universe giving me a little preview of what’s possible with this new thing if I stick with it.

     The first time I went to dance I had no idea what it’d be like or how I’d feel doing it. I had no preconceived ideas. I went in curious and open. Zen Buddhism calls this shoshin, beginner mind. The second time I went my brain had the previous week’s experience to chew on and make up stories about. So I went in kinda half in shoshin and half in what my brain thought was going to happen.

    I wanted a repeat of what I experienced the first time. I didn’t get it. Instead I got the opportunity to experience my version of beginner awkwardness. I was disappointed. It took a couple days for me to realize the initial nudge to dance more came with the sense that dancing was a new way to meet myself. And I am meeting myself in a new way, just not the parts of me I particularly wanted to connect with…but those pieces need my attention too.

   Each dance since my first experience has been a dance of connection, awkwardness and flailing.  My head empties, I sink into the music and here comes my ego. Am I doing this right? Do I look stupid? Wow, that person over there dances really well.  Wait…what are my feet doing?

    I catch myself being more in my mind than my body. I bring my awareness back to the music and my body. I sink into the music….and here comes my ego again. My hips feel tight. So does my right foot. I’m thirsty. Why am I doing that with my arms? That’s kinda strange. I hope nobody is looking at me.

    Bring my awareness back to the music, being present in the moment in my body. After a few minutes, here comes my brain again.  So within the larger dance I dance with my own self-consciousness. In that dance I’m seeing my self-consciousness in a new way.

     Traditional sitting still meditation doesn’t work for me. I learned a couple different ways to meditate in my twenties. When I didn’t get to that still mind place I thought I was doing it wrong. I simply couldn’t get that “see your thoughts as clouds moving across the sky and let them go” thing. As I got to know myself better I discovered that “put the conscious mind on hold and become the observer” state happens when my hands are busy with something I don’t have to think about.

     Dancing brings me to that place. When my self-consciousness comes up I’m able to simultaneously experience it and watch myself experiencing it. This is giving me a much clearer view of what goes on when I feel self-conscious. I’m surprised at how much of my internal dialogue around feeling awkward consists of things I don’t really believe.

     The piece that surprises me the most is how easily I slide into comparing myself to others when doing something new. I don’t often do that in the rest of my life. When I looked at what the comparing thing was attached to, it comes up in response to my feeling like I’m flailing.

     Internally I connect feeling awkward with something not being right. That triggers me to start looking at the people around me to see if they look awkward so I can try to do what they’re doing and then I’ll feel different. I know that doesn’t work. What I’m really doing is comparing how I feel to how someone else looks.

     The bigger question is: does feeling awkward really have anything to do with something not being right? Nope. That’s just my brains explanation for how I’m feeling. That’s what brains do. They offer an explanation for uncomfortable feelings that includes a way to fix the feeling.

     My feeling awkward needs to be met, not fixed. Meeting the awkward means showing up to dance and moving with the uncomfortable rather than letting it stop me. Despite my flailing, I still come away from dancing feeling clear and wonderfully empty. That feeling keeps me coming back.

   I’m still working my way through Sweat Your Prayers, Gabrielle Roth’s book on 5Rhythms. I can’t tell you anything about the rhythms themselves yet, but I love the fluidity of the practice…movement and sweat as forms of prayer. For now I’ve surrendered to baltering.