Practice: Shadow & Light
Stand, sit, or lie down.
Close your eyes.
Imagine a line down the center of your body.
Put one side of the body into shadow and the other in light.
Move the lit side of the body watching, with your inner gaze, the lit side.

I’ve repeatedly taught several practices this past month that I find myself running through, like a laundry list, as I do my own work. Shadow & Light is one of these. This practice––who can’t relate to their differences? We all have them, are are trained into them––is easily-grasped territory. It was a pleasure to see students fall quickly into absorbing personal work.

Its charms and powers grow in me as I explore my body through it. My right side is so battered: paralysis, organ removal, repetitive injury––all on the right side. When I close my eyes to feel and inwardly see this side, she is murky and monstrous. Yet she has power. Perhaps rage, really. I’m just starting to pay closer attention. Her time is now. I think her pain-body (She has one all to herself?) can be healed. My bilateral contrast is interesting––the left is quite content. She is pleased, fluid, connected.

Now, I know that all my tissues intertwine; bilateral movement focus is arbitrary, not how I’m actually stitched together. But the imaginary line down the middle produces two diferently perceived interior people. So when I say that my ‘pain body’ is mostly on the right side and not on the left (no political pun intended, though actually…), it sounds bizarre.

On page 116 in Skin of Glass I write about discovering that the latter stages of in-utero fetal assymetry (from being increasingly crowded inside the womb) have set spiraling spine patterns in place before birth. This is one possible root of my bilateral imbalance. Then pile up the scar tissue and revised neural networking from collection injuries and surgeries and, voila, a Frankensteinetta is made! My lovely Frankensteinetta.

I prepared new visual film poem for my book‘s premier party. The film titled ‘Collections’ is a series of still life images. And I thought how odd it was to use still images in a video when the whole point of video is motion. As I edited, I saw the attraction––stopped time. Still life. Then, even better, I could surge time, sforzando, then stretch or chop it by how I transitioned from one image to another. Such pleasurable control. And the final joy was seeing the structure of the whole piece express classical lineaments. Themes returning. Themes developing. Beauty. Eternity. This sort of time.

Here are a few images from Collections.

Amidst a bombardment of desire-mongering , making time to practice seems faintly absurd. Practice is slowing. It is simplifying the monkey mind, watching as neurotransmitters turn edginess to silk. Naturally this sounds appealing, but it is dissonant with modern life. Desire-mongering is the culprit. That’s the spot where I grab myself…Do I really want all the things? The interactions, the clothes, the food, the gizmos, the ambitions, the specious obligations, the perfections? No. I mostly don’t. I need a few things. A very few things. Mostly I need time, which means removing the clutter of acquisition. I need time for timeless-ness.

Here’s what Casita (Negron Wild) wrote me after the 2008 Cape Cod Winter Weekend:
“There are times when god stops the clock and I am suspended––frozen in time. There is something about the suspension that provides a neccessary contrast to the relentless motion of everyday life. Thank you for helping me be in stillness in motion, and watching the body’s intelligence emerge and communicate through the mind. These times are golden, as they are so hard to find, yet they tower over the details of everyday life––large and expansive.”

In the past I’ve liked setting aside time to practice in a sanctuary environment. It’s more solitary than at retreat, but I can replicate most of the circumstances (music, privacy, resting.) Recently I’m enjoying practice ‘in the marketplace’. Simple and unobtrusive practices–-breathing with awareness of different aspects of posture or motion is a good one––integrate well into workplace mechanics. The computer becomes a place of daily practice, and walking to the subway, shopping in Whole Foods, or sitting at a social dinner. I may have honed the skill in a vaulted room, bamboo swaying out the window as classical Persian music played, but awareness on breathing and embodiment fit in any room anywhere.