She let her breath sink oily and heavy into the bottom of her pelvis, then drew it up, hand-over-hand, along the center of her body. It made its quiet way into her head. where it spread, tickling the inside of her skull. Her breath touched its tendrils gingerly along this membrane, fine veiny lines of sensation, filaments or root hairs.

Her breath seeped out, drained down her neck and throat as if drinking itself. It whoosed down the tube of middle-ness, down, down and down into a deeper, dimmer space, behind the stomach, behind the fat, slick ropes and globs of guts, the underbrush of organs, those shades. She swam through snaky reeds, following her exhale that was emptier than common everyday breaths. It reached into a basement of itself. Empty. Beyond the urge to suck in.

She lay fallow. Hollow, dry. Then, not wanting to keep on endlessly breathing, she roused from stillness anyway. She lifted the gate a tad, let air ease in, like a secret, like an Unknown. It drew her embers from beneath ashes, took the tiny heat curled in her tailbone, tugged, tugged, as if digging up a resisting root, and swelled with sudden freedom upward, the warmth billowing on a rise of air.
Up the center, up and up the column, up into the winged lungs that fluttered, happy about breath returning sweetened with dark earth and volcanic fire,  thick with organ murmur. Breath scattered into alveoli like puppies running on the heath. The chest, from front to back, shouted, “Hello!”, a trumpet of sensation echoing from rim to rim. Finally came a fluting through the throat. Fine notes, swollen with oxygen.

This was a true breath, a felt breath, not a mechanism, but a poem, not survival, but a flourishing. Breath delights in this castle, she knew, in the ornaments, the halls of splendor, the trick wall in the library that opens to a dark back corridor. She followed that story, the spiraling stone stairs. We were breathing there together last night, laughing, trembling, turned in on ourselves. It was an uncountable place, unspeakable. I was lost for a long time. I loved it. I’ll love it again.

Gray-green skies erupted in pummeling rain, rolled with gunshot cracks & cannon booms.
At first my body didn’t touch the ground. I breathed. Gravity took me. My tissues unwound.
The storm raged. I inhaled the scent of electricity & fresh cut grass. Leaves flipped their silver underskirts. Flashes of light strobed & spit, and  the hot bony finger of lightening accused the bay.

I breathed & watched. This stayed with me and opened newly.

So there were three options:
~ Follow my body.
~ After checking Google to to learn that I should see if my pupils are unevenly sized (they weren’t — a good thing), I could  go to the hospital emergency room where I would sit for a few hours under fluorescent lights
~ I could ignore it, push on, then wonder days later, why I feel wonky-blinky

I did the first. I lay on the floor and — this is why I’m sharing this tale — my body did not want to rock. She went right into that slow roll we did one day in Summer Movement Monastery. My skull rolled very slowly along the floor into gravity, the cervical spine quietly extending  and realigning. From time to time my spine wanted to gently twist rather than extend and contract, the head blow having come at an angle. My spine unwound. My cerebrospinal fluid had a chance to distribute itself (I could actually feel this pulse underneath the top layer of sensation), and whatever chemistry was happening inside my cranium could stabilize.

Nausea subsided. The light-headedness and weirdness around my eye sockets muted. I sat up, gently. All those sensations rose then subsided as well. Mostly.

I move around delicately. Keeping an eye on things, I lie down from time to time and let my body do what she needs. It brings me immediately back to the acute level of awareness I cultivated during retreat. Why does it take a blow on the head to get there?

Our studio was gargantuan, with a lofty sky view over the lyric Columbia County surroundings. Birds stopped to sing or chant in rhythm with us and the old wood floor was bouncy and soft as suede underfoot.

The Dancemeditation work was deep and steady. So many beautiful, precious dances floated around the room. Dancers with fans, veils, silky pants and skirts, lycra tights, loose hair, shaved heads, castanets, zils. Breathing, looking quietly out and in.

A few things that happened:
~ We started up a zil choir!
~ Kate Temple-West took us on a brilliant weed-walk introducing delicious, healing wild greens growing everywhere.
~ Kate Russel opened up the gorgeous vista of veil-painting with her quiet mystic energy and deft suggestions.
~ Karleen Koen read spiritual poetry for us in her smoky tones.
~ Laurienne Singer, faculty at LACC, brought us a new quiet, way to listen to our partner’s body.
~ The Store in the Mansion’s front parlor was a continuous hot-spot.
~ Nathalie Molina helped produce an evening presentation about Dancemeditation’s past & future.
~ Nisaa Christie  & Liz Abbene made an amazing final feast the followed a dyamic performance evening that included  Kryss Statho, Carol Henning, Alia Thabit and Core Alembic (Dunya, Nisaa & Kate Russel.)
~ We closed with a Ceremony of completions for several Teacher Certifications, and  initiation of  those entering the TT Cert program as well as those entering into Advanced levels of our work and into our practicing community.

Thank you to everyone for making it such a remarkable journey.

I look forward now to our next 2011 Movement Monastery in New Mexico, as well as the exciting purchase of a property to be a dedicated home for Dancemeditation.

This is an exciting and happy time.

Sufis melt fragments into the sky sea,
rain them on a desert garden,
bloom them in the shape of every Other flower, forgetting the birthright fragrance.
Foreheads rest on a warm iron planetary hub
and toes wander near the nearing moon.

Upside down, you think.
Inside out. She said this time and time again.
The wet smoke and dry blood,
sprouts dancing backward into the seed.

When the Earth is oiled with her own feathers
and the sky tumbles here and there,
we can still write still poems
and watch them drift off in our bottle minds.

To the monastery!
To where cleaner lies think themselves,
& where, thinking gone walking,
we get at least one trustworthy breath.
And another.

– D. D. McPherson