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.

The physics of getting going might mean,  for an early morning practice, being tired or sleepy. Launching out of bed for me is a bit of a foggy period.  My body has been in another condition: sleep. If I dance and breath a song first thing, I feel sluggish, but that’s okay. Just an observation. If I dance and breathe a song in late afternoon my body has been through various unconsious experiences of sitting and walking. Getting going into awareness of sensation and gravity takes a moment or two, or ten or fifteen. Fifteen minutes to really wake up inside my body. So there is more than will or attentiveness involved here. We have the physics of the body.

Wake Up Inside my Body. I might be awake in my breath, or my mind, but to be awake in my body takes a little longer. How interesting to be in a body all the time and to be so unaware of this obvious fact. Even those of us who practice conscious embodiment regularly find this reality challenging to maintain. Yet is a reality, and reality returns us to sanity. Whenever I feel ungrounded, I simply put my attention into my breath and feel where my body is touching a surface, be it floor or furniture.

Right there I encounter The Crust. It takes a a period of time to switch from wherever I was—caught in anxiety and disconnected from my embodiment, for instance—to being awake inside my body. When I am in my body, I can then go on to listening and being in my body, reading and being in my body, writing and being in my body, thinking and being in my body. The Crust is that rim of surface tension, like water just before it boils. Pop, and we’re through.

Being awake inside the body entails getting through The Crust. It is easy, but it takes a little patience. I remind myself of this. I give it a chance to happen.

In this little video Mary Bond has shared with me, you’ll see how to build a Personal Sepulchre with Inaction.
Or not.
The Fuzz Speech by anatomist Gil Hedly will remove any  resistances whatsoever to daily movement practice.

FUZZ with Gil
watch?v=_FtSP-tkSug

A practice is a process of bearing witness to all of the self, not just certain moods.
A Dancemeditation practice is dancing/moving regularly, with awareness, patience, respect, and appreciation. We go beyond habitual impulsiveness to a mature, sustaining relationship to our embodied consciousness.

Developing a practice takes years and years. I don’t know anyone who hit on it right away then kept it going forever after without cessation or resistance. I don’t know anyone who fell in love with the toil of regular practice. But I know many people who have fallen in deep love with the  totality of their practice over time.
We appreciate the insights.
We savor learning about who we are.
We treasure the safe haven for de-bugging ourselves.
We have no words for the preciousness of our Intimate corner with Eternity.

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