DANCEMEDITATION

Do the Not Doing in order to Undo the Overdoing

Dunya — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 17:17:06 +0000

My fluids resonate with the bay’s fluids and the scent of brine cleans my blood. Three distances hold my view–near, the leafy glade; middle, the bracelet of blue water; and on the far horizon, a spiny sea monster of Outer Green Island–mix their visual melodies in my eyes’ understanding. I’m able to write this because I have finally calmed down. It has taken a month. A month of being aware and avoiding hoopla. It doesn’t just happen because of sea air.

Have to do the not doing in order to undo the overdoing. Yep! This is clearly my mantra.

Here’s Where the Dervish Constellation Celebrates!

Dunya — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 00:40:25 +0000

Equinox Celebration Here’s where some of our teachers & practitioners are celebrating on September 23 at 7:30 EDT. Join us in person (if the event is open to the public) or join us all at home!

~ New York, NY at Integral Yoga Institute, 227 West 13th Street with Dunya Dianne McPherson, Anita Teresa, Kate Russel & Kate Temple-West. Open to public & Free.

~ Eagan, MN at The Yoga Soul with Elizabeth Abbene. Open to the public.

~ Oklahoma City, OK at Windsong Innerspace, 2201 NW I-44 Svc Road with Celeste Roth. Open to public and free.

~ Queens, NY at Altar Studio, 111-48 167th St. with Nisaa Christie. Private but ask her.

~ Augusta ME with Carleen Bevans. gntlrhythms@gwi.net Open to the public.

~ Seattle, WA with Nathalie Molina at home

~ Austin, TX venue still TBD with Karuna Haber.

~ San Paolo, Brazil with Stephanie Rudloe

~ New Orleans, LA with Krys Statho. Open to the public.

~ Vermont with Alia Thabit.

~ Bay Area, CA with Anastacia Kaser.

~ Siesta Keyes, FL with Ann Paquin.

~ Santa Fe, NM with Deborah Newburg & Sultana Dancers. Breathing Veil dance celebration.

Not open to public but giving us lots of great energy!:

~ Los Angeles, CA with Laurienne Singer, Los Angeles Community College. Not open to public. Her jazz class dedicated to the Dervish Constellation birth.
~ Eugene, OR with Urvashi Dunyati-Long and Aijun Molloy. at Urvashi’s home. Not open to public.
~ North Rim Grand Canyon, AZ with Gayla M.D. Reilly.

Cross promotional support provided by Conscious Dancer Magazine.

Low Space, Middle Space, High Space

Dunya — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 21:23:32 +0000

Low Space, Middle Space, High Space: Three moving relationships to gravity
Low space is movement on the floor; middle space is any motion between standing and lying down, and high space is movement standing up. The words ‘level’ or ‘stratum’ work as well, but I prefer ‘space’ for cue-ing the body; it gives a spherical feeling to our explorations. (‘Level’ and ‘stratum’ might flavor our work with hierarchy and flatness. In these three spatial explorations, leave out horizontal locomotion initially and focus on relationship to gravity. In others words, do the whole practice in a 6 X 6 X 6 foot area.

Low Space
Low space, motion on the floor, can supine (on on your back) or prone (on your belly) or your side. Large swathes of body surface touch the ground. Gravity acts directly on arm or spine or foot, etc . We are more like a snake or a reptile–horizontal creatures. Our fluids flow easily back and forth like rivers. Our distant vision is limited but sensation is heightened.

Middle Space
Middle space is anything between standing and lying down. It can be sitting, or on hands and knees, hands and feet, or on the knees. Gravity is funneling through several systems. We experience complex counterbalances on all fours. Sitting we have a stacked spine. This is a stable plane with many options for balance and effort.

High Space
High space is anything standing up. Here we funnel gravity through spoon and hips and legs and feet. A lot depends on our feet. So much weight and balance is being handles by the tiny ankles and delicate bones of our feet. Our fluids are pump up and down. This verticality is hard work. We see far distances, and orient ourselves through hearing.

In any day, it is best to spend conscious time in each of these levels. Our tendency is to stand to move through space (walk around), sit for many hours to do work (i.e., computer or driving), and lie down to sleep. In order to break this habituated behavior, try the following simple focused ‘untanglers’. (You can think of untanglers as any sort of practice that gives your body an opportunity to explore pathways daily routines don’t engage.)

1. Take a half hour. Spend ten minutes letting the body move on each of the three spatial levels being aware of how it feels.

2. Take three days in a row. Spend a half hour each day letting the body move in just one of the spaces.

3. Take three days in a row. Spend a 20 minutes each day letting the body move in one of the space, then rest in another space.

Witnessing Expanded

Dunya — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 19:11:17 +0000

I lay belly down on the deck of my cabin, rolling my thighs on warming wood, smelling the day. I watched a small brown bird hop from blade to blade in the grass. All of sudden my breath opened deep. I felt my body melt into the wood, and my back absorb the blue sky peeling away the fog cover. All the days spent witness dancing in workshop in recent years, where I learned to watch people without ‘leaving my body’, suddenly clicked in. I’ve worked diligently over time to stay in my body and see, stay connected to my breath and see. This morning it blossomed naturally, unbidden and un-labored. I was seeing, breathing, feeling my body.

In the past, I’ve so often seen through a haze of my preoccupations. I’ve been afraid of letting time pass, of letting it slow, of letting it stop, sit beside me, and open the tight little packet in my chest.

Today the bees still toddled from dandelion to dandelion, but there were the front edges of autumn — choke cherries veined with burnt red, the sun leaning down at angle, and the first migrating ‘v’ of birds. Time so full. My body filling with it all.

Thoughts on the Suicide of a Friend

Dunya — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 20:59:22 +0000

She stopped by one evening last winter after boxing at Gold’s, for a cheery chat. She told me all about her beloved rescue dog, a pitbull. I must meet her new guy. She’d finally managed the NYC magic combo for happiness — good body, good apartment, good dog, good man. She’d searched for it for years.

She had been taking SSRI’s for more than a decade. I could hardly remember what she’d been like when the weather of her unmediated personality dipped into the subtle space between us. I knew she felt better, but her drug regimen blunted my senses. I realized I could never bridge that subtle gap, because her quiet tentacles, mangled by Prozac, couldn’t clasp mine. Being with her was almost as bad, or worse in some ways, than internet socializing. There she was, sitting in the room with me, but our subterranean connection was all cotton candy — looks big but disappears in a lick.

Yes, she felt better, but obviously not all of the time because she ‘took her own life’, as the phrase goes. She took it where?

For me, real life exists mostly in raw person. In that rich, sticky sauce of immediate flesh; the smells, sounds, tastes, touches, looks, invisibilities, inscrutibilities. I wonder when, exactly, she really left…