May 20
Lisa Michaels, VP of Sacred Dance Guild interviews Dunya May 19, 2011.
The Sacred Dance Guild and Natural Rhythms offers an exciting tele-interview series focused on exploring the many ways people express spirituality in dance, hosted by life long dancer and current SDG Vice-President Lisa Michaels.
Aug 17
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.
by DDMcPherson (excerpt from new novel)
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.
Jul 7
I was raising my front window, the sort that opens down so you can wash the outside easily, which has a faulty latch. It swung down and bonked me on the head. It’s heavy. I felt my neck crunch.
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?
Jan 11
In the land of false flowers, there is a mirror.
Stop gaping there.
Turns your eyes in,
where Gaze has heat running under the skin,
and marbles of pulses roll
along the canals between the eyeballs and toes.
Sensation is the first way of Knowing who we are.
This Dance is not what you think.
This Dance is what you don’t think.
We are incarnated, blood everywhere,
in and out.
Don’t turn from these flowers,
these carnations.
On Earth, hearts forever pray such blooms,
gratitude for what’s Real.
Nov 21
My recent practice has been silky. Not the muscles and bones so much. In fact they have been balking, heavy or weary or sluggish. But despite my lack of physical vitality, connection to my body and movement has been richer than ever. I find it easy to watch the inside of my forehead as I move. I have no resistance, and that inner gaze quickly transports the initial recalcitrance in my limbs. Moving inside the meditative state is, currently, an imperative for me. Inside this deeper state, my perceptions are clean, precise, unhurried, surprisingly content — all qualities that have always been so difficult for me. Now it seems I begin there.
But this is coming about because I turned inside myself this fall. I turned toward my Path in my heart. Instead of leaving everything, I wanted to take this turn right in my own world, in my apartment, in my family, in my city, and in my teachings. It was an imperceptible inner motion which has very likely made no difference to those outside me. I haven’t had to abandon anything or to radically alter anything. But it is radically altering me.
During the NYC Intensive, someone made a comment about about feeling safe in my workshop. What came to me, and I spoke about it, was that Dancemeditation at its greatest depth reaches below personality, below early formations of ‘self’, and settles in the Unified Plane. This is where we all belong, where we are safe because we are not separate, and therefor cannot be obliterated or opposed. This is one of the qualities of One-ness. Of Unity. We are safe.
My daily practice doesn’t take me that deep, but the depth where I silkily move touches the edge of that black velvet. Brushes against it. Softly.
Overwhelmed by spam, I left off posting for longer than usual. But after Angel Bill did a spam-be-gone treatment, I have a fresh clean blog again.
And this brings me to getting to practice. There is usually so much spam in the way. Even when I actually get onto the mat, I let the details of life batter me. I spend quite a while fighting the assault before respite reaches me. This has always been true for the Seeker. Life is busy. Life is full. No Path is free of being overwhelmed by both real and questionable obligations. We all suffer these. But we have to get beyond them.
I taught on my beloved Cape Cod this weekend. Ann Miller spoke beautifully, with an edge in her voice, of just this wall in her Dancemeditation that day, of her fatigue, of dancing that morning and wanting to lie down and sleep for ever, of wanting oblivion. This inspired a period of conversation in the group. Many people recounted a similar impulse. For some, the wall was true fatigue. For others, it was woven with confusions, or lethargy, or escapism.
When I feel the urge for oblivion it is not escape from life’s responsibilities. It is a desire––no, a need, a deep longing, a craving––for unity with the All-Pervasive Subtle. Sufis call this sort of oblivion fana, These days my reaching in practice and in workshops is more urgent. I am impatient with the amount of time and energy I spend on the meaninglessness of spam and all that the metaphor implies. I know quite well what, in my overfull life, I truly value. Spiritual path makes me make choices towards spiritual growth. I recognize that just because a thing is hard, painful, or monotonous it is not necessarily spiritual growth; the latter may be maturing but, for me, it does not usher in the bliss of Surrender. I need my practice for that.
In mysticism, development is marked by surrender. Surrender into the moment is one idea. Surrender to the Unified Subtlety is another idea. Surrender to my movement as I dance is another. So in my practice, I practice surrendering to my body’s motion. She moves and I am with her, listening. I trust her. I trust that, like a guide dog, she knows the quickest way towards the bright scent of Communion. And it is the Communion I seek.
I crave the Divine as I never have before. Bliss and ease. From there my return to a world of details comes with breath and spaciousness, with perspective. Wall Street is up. Wall Street is down. I wash my dishes. I call my mother. I kiss Ric. All the while my heart spins like a tiny top, a speck of stardust, a pure pinpoint.
May 18
My practice goes along, mostly daily. This is really easy, now that I have it rolling. I am a happy creature of habit. In a world of desparate hyper-stimulation, habitual-ness & repetition give me space.
I went to my neighbor Andrea Evan’s studio yesterday and was astonished–an exquisite world of color. Evans makes wall-sized sequences of grid-based paintings; the components’ progression was orderly and well-rooted in gradual repetition. These were visual chants, visual mantras. They were daily practice caught on the wall. I felt peace. Joy.
photo by Janet Morgan of Dunya dancing at St. Bart’s
I’ve been thinking about doing intensive work at Kripalu in comparison to doing it at the Summer Movement Monastery. Kripalu is such a cushy place, wonderfully supportive, with all the cooking and cleaning being done for us. The day-to-day living never brings people into conflict. It is by nature a much easier place to be.
The Movement Monasteries are hard core. Like a blast of convent life. It was good to remember how much more goes into our relationships at Movement Monastery retreat. We cook, wash pots & pans, sweep the floors as well as share intensive Dancemeditation practice. This is a good place to develop clear boundaries, express oneself with kindness, mind one’s own business while receiving high quality connection with others and with oneself. And we are all in very rich communion with Self and the Now.
This year I so needed Kripalu’s nurture; I’m a little worried about SMM. But I also look forward to doing the work for two weeks. Two weeks! Yay!
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. Who can’t relate to their differences? We all have them, are are trained into them.
Its charms and powers grow in me as I explore my body through it. Read more
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