Taking up the Journey of Acceptance

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acceptance, admiration, allowing, becoming, beleif, Believing, bliss, body, choice, compassion, courage, heart, human condition, humanity, inspiration, Kindness, love, Support

I write today from a place of admiration and pride about my experience yesterday getting coffee at a Starbucks near my gym. I just finished a wonderful swim and was heading on to my next appointment and desired a little afternoon iced coffee before venturing forward on my to do list. A regular occurrence for most of us during our regular routines and daily experiences.

Today however shifted my perspective. Today I walked up to the counter and quickly realized, after the assumption that there was a young female behind the register, that in fact, it was a transgendered person. Upon that moment my heart just ripped out of my chest with joy simply because of the courage of this person to be standing in their glory at work and in such a public and vulnerable place. Immediately my admiration for this person and my pride in who they are went through the roof.

We exchanged our business; me placing my order and them taking my money and sharing it with the barista. In this moment I began to have admiration for the entire group of people who were working at the time and my heart applaud the fact that we were there in a store with all kinds of people who supported and worked side by side with this person helping to give strength and lift up the courage of a group of people to be proud of all that they all are. At this moment I could not send out loving energy to them all and whisper in from my heart how inspired I was by them all.

Writing this today I am congratulating the transgendered person for their courage and their strength to be who they are in the midst of their everyday life. Being strong enough and proud enough to be who they are. You inspired me with your acceptance of yourself and in turn allow those around you to accept you as a human being full of love and light. Nothing more. Nothing less. You inspired me to have the courage to take up the journey of acceptance for all of those around me at all times.

I honor those colleagues and that store and company for having the courage to raise up the human condition and lift it up to a community during a time of great tension. I applaud this small yet significant success and see it as an example to do the same with all of those around me as well. How might I do this for my students, my friends, my colleagues and even strangers. How might I have the courage to accept more and see everyone as loving energy? How might I weave this powerful and inspiring moment into my everyday life?

And then I wonder, how is it we all can do this? Is it possible for us to see everyone around us with the energy of love and accept them as a fellow and equal human being? Is it possible to accept one another through love? I think so. In this way I see no good or bad, right or wrong or better or worse. We are equal. We are the same. We are love. And if we do this, perhaps we are building the kind of world where all of us will prosper, love and become all that we could and are meant to be.

As I move forward in my day today, may I carry this inspiration with me. May I share it in my actions and in my heart with everyone I encounter. May I honor everyone simply by seeing them as who they are. May I accept all things through love as I take up the challenge and this journey of acceptance. May I be a warrior for the human condition seeing it with my heart and allowing it with love.

Takeing Time for Technique

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Ballet, Believing, choreography, Conscious Living, contemporary dance, Courageous Vulnerability, Creativity, Dance, EBAS, Fierce, hope, joy, Kindness, Modern, Movement, Musculature, patience, peace, Support, Teaching, Technique, training, Vulnerable, well being

The Elemental Body Alignment System was designed to help the learner activate the intrinsic musculature allowing them to immediately connect with firing them and overriding the natural impulse to immediately fire the gross musculature which inhibiting range of motion and promoting an imbalance in muscular engagemen. In EBAS and both ballet and modern techniques in which I teach, this deep activation of musculature necessary for articulating and supporting movement from the appropriate place is crucial in ones ability to successfully achieve the technical concepts given.

Students of all levels are able to access this musculature if in fact they are given the time to feel particular activations and allow the mechanics of the movement to assist them in doing the work or task given. All to often, when I take class or observe classes being taught, there is this push to do everything fast. It is almost as if speed is the benchmark for excellence. Do not get me wrong, speed us crucial for dancers and we should all be able to move well on a large spectrum through various speeds indeed.  However, we do need to be sure we are doing it technically and holistically correct.

When beginning to train and well into the training of advanced dancers, we must remember to allow the body time to fully experience technical concepts. If we don’t allow this gentling of space and time, gross musculature engagement will override the balance and equality necessary for healthy technical principles thus slowing down technical progress and the healthy development of a dancers training and therefore their elongated career.

I for one would prefer a dancer to take more time in the beginning rather learning how to activate appropriate technique with the right balance and promoting the momentum of success for them, rather than beating them over the head with speed causing frustration and in many ways, humiliation. There are better ways of building speed and using momentum and the building of positive muscular feedback loops is the way to go.

You see if the student knows how to activate deeply from the muscles closest to the bone, they will be able to access the fine-tuning muscles necessary for the articulation of all forms of technique. They will successfully be able to repeat those sensations while building confidence and courage identifying what is necessary and how to accomplish the task of speed efficiently.

I often feel as if teachers who give material to students excessively prematurely are simply masking the fact that they themselves have no idea how to teach fundamental principles. I feel they are simply trying to fool the student into thinking they know what they are doing by making the student feel as if they could never do things properly or fast enough to ever make it as a dancer. This certainly does not allow students the opportunity to succeed in our art form not does it promote appropriate and healthy technique.

We need to take the time to slow down learning how to stand and be. We need to allow our students the luxury of time now so they can save time and frustration later. We need to encourage the student to feel technique from the inside out rather than promote training the façade of the body. We need to train dancers who can feel themselves deeply and therefore deeply feel. These are the kind of dancers who speak the magic of the art form to the audience. These are the physical storytellers so desperately missing in today’s work.