I’ve been thinking about the Dancemeditation principal ‘Ingest, Digest’ in relation to our mind/body split. I, and we, over-appreciate mind, under-appreciate body, and believe that it is fine, even noble to criticize, repress, correct, and demean the body. (This goes on consciously or unconsciously. Mind’s hegemony is always humanity’s issue.) In Dancemeditation, this all comes to light quickly and we are changed fundamentally, irrevocably by this awareness. A new interior script allows us to heal imbalance. How?

We go to Dancemeditation session and follow a teacher or a fellow participant. Body follows body without words. Follow. Follow. Following someone else’s movement is my body ingesting the ways of another body; it takes the place of my mind telling my body being told what to do. Mind gets into the swing of this.

We toodle along. Mind relaxes a bit. Body expands a bit. As following another body continues, Mind relaxes its leadership grip. Then the instruction comes, words for the body: “Close your eyes and move how you feel.” Move how you feel, Body. Body is allowed to move as she feels, and the mind, lulled by 20 minutes of following, sinks back, goes along for the ride. Mind keeps track without trying to take over. It is hypnotized by Body’s doings. As Body wakes, moving her own way, Mind is fascinated. Mind was considering abandonment—going out the window for a bit, going down to the Thought Bar for a drink of the same old same old, but Body is so luscious now, doing something Mind hadn’t thought of. Mind stays in the room. Watches. Mind comes beside, alongside, with. I am with you.

Mind gets a new feeling here, beginning to see that every day Body does a great deal, handles a great deal. Heat, cold, food, gravity, dirt, light, darkness. A miracle. A lot of energy there. True “I”-ness begins to take shape. Mind sees something about itself. Just this: Take away those whips. No Whip. No roar. Whips make an enemy. Listening makes a friend.

Mind now sees the situation. Mind sees that we are mostly body. Mind see that we are our bodies. Every breath is the body in motion. Every blink and wink and nod and trot is the body. Every laugh and cry is the diaphragm and the throat, body. Every bend and twist is the body. Every kiss and hug is the body. Every tongue and lip, keyboard finger tick and ear prick is the body. Every heart beat is the body.

Mind learning to observe Body is our world changing completely.

Letter to Mind:
Dear Mind, become reverent. Take your whispery place in the Appreciation Choir. How lucky you are, Dear Mind, to have such a home. Now, Dear mind, let Body move as she loves. That is all you need to suggest. Watch as she finds her way, her pleasure and play and anguish, uncoiling the many packets of concern that she has carried these past days and weeks.

Mind, be soft. Become Body. Because, Mind, you are Body.

Let Body know that all the things you think about are not so important. Let her know that you aren’t as big as you’ve been making out. Okay, let her know you are just a piece of it all. Let her know that you know this. Now let her swallow you, absorb you…

Mind replies:
Dear Body, I have always known that you are Thought. You are Intelligence.

Mind becoming Body is our world changing completely.

How about your mind? Your body? Their relationship? Let your body write a letter to your mind…

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English bone china teacup & orange peels

* ‘Next to Me‘ by Parov Stelar & The Wolf Myer Orchestra with Hubert Tubbs original  (iTunes).

Lie on your back on a comfortable mat, knees bent, feet flat on the floor. You can rest your arms alongside you or rest your hands on your belly. Close your eyes. Be at ease. Connect your attention to your breathing. As you breathe, let your bones, your muscles, your organs, your fluids sink more and more heavily into gravity. Let you skin become tender. Let your skin breathe.

After a while, draw your attention to your breathing. On the inhale, inwardly hear the sound ‘shaaaaaaaa….’ Let this sound slide softly into you. On the exhale, inwardly hear the sound ‘fi’ (pronounced ‘fee’). Let the sound ease out. (If you are unsure about the actual sound of the chant, do the breathing and sinking into gravity without the sound. It is important that you hear internally the correct sound.) Inhale ‘sha’. Exhale ‘fi’. Draw your wandering mind to what you are doing. Nothing else matters right now. Just this sound and breath, just this feeling in the body. Just the simmering of energy within. You’ll see that as you continue your breathing will shift. And your energy will shift. Inhale, letting the sound and breath gently lengthen. Exhale, letting the out breath take you more fully into gravity. Again and again bring your focus to the inner chant, the breathing, the awareness of your body softening, the inner state developing.

If this is the only practice you are doing, continue for 20 minutes. Or do breath & movement for 10 minutes then do 10 minutes of the ‘Shafi’ chant. Then relax your concentration and rest.

Once you have done this practice and rested, write in your journal from the experience or about the experience. Let your writing be relaxed. Stay with your breathing as you write.

Shafi is one of the Names of the Divine in the Sufi tradition. It is in Arabic.

Dee Powers, ITCert*
I silently chanted Shafi surrounded by white lights & my favorite animal friends. I was very quiet & very still for what seemed a very long time. Even though I could hear my grandson playing loudly in another part of the house, I was able to be in that beautiful & graceful place. This still place was so active in a very subtle way. I could feel the changes in my body happening so slowly & with such purpose. I remained in this state until I felt complete – probably not more than 25 mins.I felt so refreshed & energized with great joy bubbling up.

Alia Thabit
My 12/10 Shafi Practice (This is written right after, typed verbatim):
Rushed, as usual, my 10 minutes of movement and breathing did not feel as relaxing as it might–I went into the chanting disappointed with myself for not having made more time for the whole thing. But that is how I feel about everything right now. The chanting itself felt sweet and pure.. I noticed about halfway I had lost concentration, and reapplied the sinking and the focus on breath and “sound”–this time it took, and in the final few minutes, my entire space shifted into relaxed sweetness. I have just now remembered about keeping my breath while writing, so am. Maybe will remember to keep it throughout the day.

*ITCert Intensive Training Certification Program

Stay tuned for our next practice segment in two weeks. If you missed Part 1 of this Shafi chant series , click here, or Part 2 click here. Thank you to the Dancemeditation Practice Group for permission to use their words.
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The eyes peer out from darkness while the bridge of the nose catches light. I like the aperture slanting up while the gaze slants not just down but outward from the flat canvas. It all somehow evokes happiness.

Protection and vista.

What evokes happiness for you? In your body, in your mind, in your heart?

I think of her deciding to part with these precious items, wrapping them so they won’t break, carrying the package to the post office. Those actions are in the cup and saucer. It feels different than buying a lovely antique in a curio shop or purchasing one on eBay where the origins are fuzzy or thoroughly unknown. I feel her ‘handing’ it to me, alive with considered generosity across wide space. A lot of chi with my chai.

Tea history: In 1610, Dutch East India Company market tea as an exotic medicinal drink, but it’s so expensive only the aristocracy can afford the tea and its serving pieces.

I am wondering about something like what railroad tracks do:

• 6″x6″ wood set on leveled crushed stone at about 4′ apart, with crushed stone in between for stability, and to eliminate air space (and thus too many critters) Local earth material could be used if it is “well draining”
• then install 4″x4′ in the opposite direction over these, probably at 24″ on center (because of using 4′ sheets of plywood). The 4×4′s would have some resiliency, but sufficient stiffness, across 4′ span, Though a would be tested  this in some way before building it – we would want to right amount of resiliency.
• I would also acquire some neoprene (easy on the internet) and put a little neoprene pad under the 4×4′s where thet cross the 6×6 for added resiliency – that is easy to do, so I would say why not?
• I think there would be a piece of  wood all the way around the around perimeter (up against the posts of the barn) and thus would be leveled in installation and attached to the 6×6 and 4×4, but likely not attached to the barn posts.  I think there whole floor would want to be integral to itself, but be allowed to move up and down and be able to move relative to the barn post so as to allow for frost movement.
• The floor might work with one layer of ply wood but two would be better.
  

  Dana Bixby

• All timbers and the first layer of plywood would need to be “pressure treated.”
• Plywood can obtained with no formaldehyde and thus no off-gassing – though the average stuff from the local lumberyard may not be this. It typically can be ordered from a good lumberyard.
• The top layer if plywood could work nicely if cut into 4′x4′ sheets and then the pieces should be laid checkerboard at right angles to each other.  I would want to see a very regular screw pattern, with consistent setting of the screws heads just slight more than flush (the regularity creates an expression of our intentionality and care, even if people do not conscious think about it, they still get it.)
• I got so far as thinking that the edges of each panel should be beveled very slightly (this prevents a hard edge if the panels move a little e.g. expand an contract), stained an earth color, sanded, and finished with a clear natural finish (many are available  e.g. beeswax, tung oil. Tung oil can a little involved to use because of the need for several coats and intermediate.
  

Such a floor, if assembled all with screws could be taken apart and used in other ways if that were ever a part of the evolution of things. I think about a layer of insulation as a good idea. Cold on the feet is felt a lot. But all wood would not store the cold as much as masonry, earth or concrete. I think this floor would be pretty well grounded, yet resilient. Like railroad tracks.

top photo: Jennifer Sears by Paul B. Goode

I turn away from these and toward my current veil puddling luxuriantly on the sofa. She is long and beautiful—a sunset I haven’t yet seen—of lavender and pinks with a golden edge. I love her. I love that she can open the inside of me with her shades and tender touch. I take her in my hands. So soft. I breathe and stand. My wan legs don’t want to pace around the rug, which is what they will have to do if I want this veil to float.

I toss her gently up. She slithers down to the ground, exhaling very, very slowly. She finally settles. Wanting to watch all that again, I bend and gather her and toss her and watch her respire. Gorgeous. Again. And this time I want her to unfurl so I toss her but don’t drop her. I let her billow. I wrap a wide arc of space in her skin. Soon she has seduced me into her world. My legs and feet have forgotten their clay and I am in the small sky that inhabits my NYC apartment. Air is always a morsel of sky, yes? Breath is always a morsel of sky.

She hypnotizes me. I forget the restlessness outside the Moment. We move together. We are calm, hanging in timelessness, hanging in a Moment. The middle world, where I swirl with my veil, is romantic. The middle world. The middle of the world. The center of the world. We pass through a large invisible door into that movie clip of two lovers at a cafe table holding hands consumed in one another.  We Know about mysteries. Otherness. Unity. The conversation bumbles and peters out, a soupçon of thought and feeling spicing a full serving of Other.

I look up from the Lover’s Eyes and gaze out the window at my mind. I enjoy my mind—lots of architecture, thoughts that divide and separate and sort, chip away and reconstruct. BUT…once I enter the Moment the room is too full for a mind so full of itself and out of its depth. Mysticism is not of the mind. Mysticism uses the mind in order to discard the mind. How hard it must be for the mind to accept this servitude. Mind thought it was ruler. The Moment is that part of being awake that goes beyond thought. I can’t sleep my way into the Moment. I have to wake my way into the Moment.

Here I am with my veil, in the Moment. My lungs fill with sky. The veil fills with sky.

After a while I lie down, my veil a sylph sleeping on my chest. She grows warm as she sleeps. My organs relax under her. My skin melts into the cloth covering it. I am in the Garden again, innocent, protected, at One. Even my often-separated body is at One.

Thank you for reading. More on Veil coming soon. Also Gravity & Breath.

Please…tell me your story of dancing with your veil…

Top photo of Alia Thabit by Dunya McPherson
Photo of Dunya by Paul B. Goode

I think of Butoh dancer, Muteki-sha. She does one dance, ‘Niwa ‘ (the Garden)—a single life-long project expressing the continuity of a dancer’s life. She says, “Niwa is a forgotten garden, very tiny, very Japanese…I wanted to see my life from the perspective of a woman seated in a garden, watching it bloom and wither.” That one statement sustains me. I am not alone.

I’ve danced through many agendas, some culturally dictated, others self-set: to be beautiful, noticed, loved, respected; to be acknowledged, expert. I’ve danced through the desire to be thin, agile, strong or sensuous and through wanting to be free of aches. I’ve danced to blot out emotional pain, to avoid anxiety, to face anxiety, to calm myself, to excite myself, to amuse or bemuse myself. I’ve worn through using dance to be free of identity and self. Now, when I fulfill an agenda, I’m no longer distressed. I simply continue to dance though my reasons no longer exist.

I continued. I noticed at one point a slight impulse — actually a thin thought — about moving my left leg. My Witnessing Self knew that moving — really a slight fidget – would mean about 30″ to a minute of reconnecting to my deepening relaxation, so I decided not to move but instead to breathe more deeply into the area. Almost immediately afterward I had a brain tantrum — a loud, brash, 2-yr-old blaze of mind activity. There was no emotion, no anger or frustration, but just a mental pattern. My Witness Self recognized instantly that this was my habituated mind reacting to a choice to ignore its subliminal suggestion to fidget my left leg. I realize that fidgeting is my way of avoiding continuous focus and of learning.

This juncture passed and I sank deeper into gravity, into my breath. Over the course of 10 minutes I shifted inward a gear or two. Then I slid my legs down and rested.

On Reflection
Though this chant didn’t reach an expanded place, it was an excellent weight-lifting session. I have difficulty finding a kind way of being disciplined. In recent years in Dancemeditation, I’ve been adjusting harsh, punitive disciplinarian-ness of my professional dance years. I seek strength and clarity which require the cultivation of will, but that will mustn’t be a willfulness reeking of domination (which, oddly, might be a form of greed, yes? Want. want, want, my way, my way, my way, etc.) During the Shafi chant, I glimpsed my rebellious side as a two-year-old rebellion.

Insight
My battle has moved into the mental plane. (The emotional level seems settled.) Rebellion shows up as a mental pattern. This is potent information for me. I ‘feel’ my old emotions — their staleness and non-immediateness, but old mental templates are tough to apperceive. We have a cultural prejudice toward considering the mind as a fresh, fluid, objective territory, but in the Shafi chant I saw that it can be fixed in a rut without the sense of being able to tell, feeling-wise, that this is so.

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