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Archive for February, 2009

Feb 14

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Spiritual Bellydance at Kripalu

“Art is not an end in itself. It is a medium in service of sacred understanding.”
–Rasa, Rene Daumal

I just returned from presenting this year’s 5-day Program at Kripalu. We are a mixed-level group of 20. Many were beginner dancers, or new to bellydance, and were unfamiliar with my methods, yet by the end everyone was doing gorgeous, integrated, deeply felt, detailed, sumptuous undulations and shimmies — the kind of movement that usually requires 3 or 4 years to master. Several advanced dancer/teachers attending, who understood how long ‘natural-ness’ and somatic authenticity usually take, remarked on this. I was a little stunned as well. How could they all learn so fast, so deeply?

But the observable movement in itself wasn’t my greatest joy by any means. The movement indicated more — the Apparent is the Bridge to the Real.  I loved the softening within each person, and between people. An experience has made life better. It has helped us all feel more human. We are more connected to our embodiment. We are more connected to our spirituality. We are more connected to Source, to Unity beyond self. As a teacher, my greatest happiness comes from carving time for the unwinding of anxiety, for the mending of interior tears, for the listening to whispers of self, for discovery, and for the shedding of what prevents intimacy with the Beloved. This is putting art in “…service of sacred understanding.” Grand objectives. Yet not so much. They are closest to my heart. And I am blessed with people who welcome this opportunity. We find one another. Magnetism. And then happiness.

Once home, crossing the street to the post office, my legs flowed from my pelvis. Flowed. During the retreat, I couldn’t yet feel how the attentive inner gaze at fascia, at deep layers of hidden muscles, at organs, the sensing through to these diligent, mysterious rivers of my motion, at submersion in increasingly varied shapes of breathing would later deliver me across the street with such ease. My pelvis purrs over the land, spine rolling like water. The salubrious effect of Dancemeditation™ practices proves itself over and over to me.

Feb 6

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Beginning

When you are at the beginning,
Begin at the beginning.

We are never born in the middle of our life; we are all born babies. It is the same with doing our practice or with teaching a class — the beginning of a session is always the beginning. The beginning is not a warm up; it is locating the doorway to Innerness, the direct route to Center for oneself or, when teaching, for the whole group. Like Harry Potter at the train station, the door is never quite in the same spot. Go to the breath, to relaxation, to simplicity. Never imagine you can skip over the start, hoping to have the juice of the middle or the fruit of the end without the dry crust of the beginning. The seed for juice and fruit are planted in the soil of the start.

Every day of practice, begin at the beginning.

“Beginnings are the place where endings are revealed, so that whoever begins with the Beloved ends with the Beloved. Go there, restless to be there until coming to bask in the Presence of the Divine Eternal, on the carpet of intimacy, the place of reciprocal disclosure, confrontation, companionship, discussion, contemplation, and viewing.”
–Ibn ‘Ata’Illah, 14th century Sufi from first Treatise of Kitab al-Hikam

Feb 4

Women’s Heart Attack

This is beautiful description of what one woman’s heart attack felt like. It belongs in this blog because it is so somatically connected. A woman’s heart attack may not resemble a man’s.

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NURSE’S HEART ATTACK EXPERIENCE

Women and heart attacks (Myocardial infarction). Did you know that women rarely have the same dramatic symptoms that men have when experiencing heart attack. You know, the sudden stabbing pain in the chest, the cold sweat, grabbing the chest & dropping to the floor that we see in the movies. Here is the story of one woman’s experience with a heart attack.

‘I had a heart attack at about 10:30 PM with NO prior exertion, NO prior
emotional trauma that one would suspect might have brought it on. I was sitting
all snugly & warm on a cold evening, with my purring cat in my lap, reading
an interesting story my friend had sent me, and actually thinking, ‘A-A-h,
this is the life, all cozy and warm in my soft, cushy Lazy Boy with my feet
propped up.

A moment later, I felt that awful sensation of indigestion, when you’ve
been in a hurry and grabbed a bite of sandwich and washed it down with a dash of
water, and that hurried bite seems to feel like you’ve swallowed a golf ball
going down the esophagus in slow motion and it is most uncomfortable. You
realize you shouldn’t have gulped it down so fast and needed to chew it more
thoroughly and this time drink a glass of water to hasten its progress down to
the stomach. This was my initial sensation—the only trouble was that I
hadn’t taken a bite of anything since about 5:00p.m.

After it seemed to subside, the next sensation was like little squeezing
motions that seemed to be racing up my SPINE (hind-sight, it was probably my
aorta spasms), gaining speed as they continued racing up and under my sternum
(breast bone, where one presses rhythmically when administering CPR).

This fascinating process continued on into my throat and branched out into both
jaws. ‘AHA!! NOW I stopped puzzling about what was happening — we all have
read and/or heard about pain in the jaws being one of the signals of an MI
happening, haven’t we? I said aloud to myself and the cat, Dear God, I think
I’m having a heart attack!

I lowered the foot rest dumping the cat from my lap, started to take a step and
fell on the floor instead. I thought to myself, If this is a heart attack, I
shouldn’t be walking into the next room where the phone is or anywhere else
… But, on the other hand, if I don’t, nobody will know that I need help,
and if I wait any longer I may not be able to get up in a moment.

I pulled myself up with the arms of the chair, walked slowly into the next room
and dialed the Paramedics … I told her I thought I was having a heart attack
due to the pressure building under the sternum and radiating into my jaws. I
didn’t feel hysterical or afraid, just stating the facts. She said she was
sending the Paramedics over immediately, asked if the front door was near to me,
and if so, to unbolt the door and then lie down on the floor where they could
see me when they came in.
I unlocked the door and then laid down on the floor as instructed and lost
consciousness, as I don’t remember the medics coming in, their examination,
lifting me onto a gurney or getting me into their ambulance, or hearing the call
they made to St. Jude ER on the way, but I did briefly awaken when we arrived
and saw that the radiologist was already there in his surgical blues and cap,
helping the medics pull my stretcher out of the ambulance. He was bending over
me asking questions (probably something like ‘Have you taken any
medications?’) but I couldn’t make my mind interpret what he was saying,
or form an answer, and nodded off again, not waking up until the
cardiologist and  partner had already threaded the teeny angiogram balloon up
my femoral artery into the aorta and into my heart where they installed 2 side
by side stents to hold open my right coronary artery.’I know it sounds like
all my thinking and actions at home must have taken at least 20-30 minutes
before calling the paramedics, but actually it took perhaps 4-5 minutes before
the call, and both the fire station and St. Jude are only minutes away from my
home, and my cardiologist was already to go to the OR in his scrubs and get
going on restarting my heart (which had stopped somewhere between my arrival and
the procedure) and installing the stents.

1. Be aware that something very different is happening in your body not the
usual men’s symptoms but inexplicable things happening (until my sternum and
jaws got into the act). It is said that many more women than men die of their
first (and last) MI because they didn’t know they were having one and
commonly mistake it as indigestion, take some Maalox or other anti-heartburn
preparation and go to bed, hoping they’ll feel better in the morning
whenthey wake up … which doesn’t happen. My female friends, your symptoms
might not be exactly like mine, so I advise you to call the Paramedics if
ANYTHING is unpleasantly happening that you’ve not felt before.  It is
better to have a ‘false alarm’ visitation than to risk your life
guessing what it might be!

2. Note that I said ‘Call the Paramedics.’ And if you can take an
aspirin. Ladies, TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE! Do NOT try to drive yourself to the ER
- you are a hazard to others on the road.
Do NOT have your panicked husband who will be speeding and looking anxiously at
what’s happening with you instead of the road.
Do NOT call your doctor — he doesn’t know where you live and if it’s
at night you won’t reach him anyway, and if it’s daytime, his assistants
(or answering service) will tell you to call the Paramedics. He doesn’t
carry the equipment in his car that you need to be saved! The Paramedics do,
principally OXYGEN that you need ASAP. Your Dr. will be notified later.

3. Don’t assume it couldn’t be a heart attack because you have a normal
cholesterol count. Research has discovered that a cholesterol elevated
reading is rarely the cause of an MI (unless it’s unbelievably high and/or
accompanied by high blood pressure). MIs are usually caused by long-term stress
and inflammation in the body, which dumps all sorts of deadly hormones into your
system to sludge things up in there.  Pain in the jaw can wake you from a sound
sleep. Let’s be careful and be aware. The more we know the better chance we
could survive.’