Climbing a Mountain: Day 7

Tags

Believing, Conscious Living, courage, Courageous Vulnerability, Creative Flow, faith, heart, Mindful Action, Soul to Soul, spirit, Stepping, universal consciousness, universal heart, well being

A mountain of books surrounds me. I climb in so as to climb out of myself. I ascend the many precipices of my unknown potential. I boulder now, ascending if you will, without the safety of my ropes of fear; those very same ropes that have always ended up hanging me. I move along scaling my dreams sometimes leveraging my greatest thrusts only by a small sliver of hope. I propel with the body of my entire being knowing that at some point, some moment, I will look out to see ever more mountains to read.

Accepting My Path

Tags

Ballet, Believing, Conscious Living, Courageous Vulnerability, Creative Flow, Dance, EBAS, Energy, gay, health, journey, Magic, Soul to Soul, Stepping, Teaching, universal consciousness, universal heart, Vulnerable, well being

I have been sharing EBAS with more and more people over the past year and a half as I have embarked on creating the manuals, DVD and certification program. What I have come to realize in this act of sharing has been the magical transformation of the human body as well as the activation of the healing spirit. What I have felt to be true for myself and my own transformation is now being experienced by others when they walk themselves through the form deepening themselves in the consciousness of the system.

 

Let me first share how grateful I am for being allowed to be the facilitator of this incredible system. I cannot express enough gratitude for being able to be a part of this experience while sharing its beauty, body of knowledge and all of the transformative healing embedded inside each exercise.

 

What I am realizing more deeply with each workshop, intensive, camp, festival or semester is the miraculous ability of the system and the ways in which the human body so easily absorbs the work and imprinting its concepts and healing inside the physical being while simultaneously transforming the spirit of the learner.

 

No, I am not a doctor. Nor am I a therapist or anything else a western culture deems credible, important or recognizes as significant to be acknowledged as valid. I am however a listener. I listen to the human body with my hands, eyes and heart. In doing so I have become a healer, facilitator and mechanic of the human body. This listening allows me to hear what the student is crying out for through the blocks and breaks of energy lines in the body. If our ears have become deaf to the cries of our own physical and emotional lives, perhaps what it is I am sharing will help for you to regain your hearing.

 

Because of the things that I am not, I have limited myself in becoming all of who I am. I have allowed the fears and skepticism of others plague my own life with fear and doubt. After all, who I am to be able to listen as I do and have the information that I have? What accrediting body has acknowledged what I know and endorses it and recognizes it as valid? How dare I challenge what is “known” or find a new pathway of experience that is not the same path others have taken? How dare I presume that I know anything at all?

 

Well, let me share this; I know very little. But the one thing I do know is the system works. What I do see time and time again is the remarkable success the system is able to implement almost immediately. What I have seen, even if not empirical, is the anecdotal results of people and their transformations. And in all honesty, I am not interested in the path of others. What I am interested is in following the truth that has been shared and laid out for me to follow at whatever the cost.

 

I have allowed my fear to hold me back from coming out once again. My feelings of inadequacy as a writer, researcher and academic have held me back from sharing and expressing what all it is I know to be true. Ironic that it was far easier for me to come out in my sexuality than it has been to come out than coming out as I fully am now.

 

So I write today sharing with you that I am coming out again. This time I am revealing what I have been so blessed to be a part of and share with you. I embark on a journey of transparency through the act of healing of the physical and spiritual. Now is the time for transformation; a time of health and well-being.

 

I expect nothing of the system but for what it desires itself to be. I expect of myself all that is required to allow the work to be shared and absorbed by others. I would not have been given this opportunity if I did not have the ability to do what is needed or required of me. Perhaps this is a part of my own deeper transformation as well. Perhaps there is an even larger context that I could not possibly begin to imagine available for me.

 

I am finally accepting this path. This is my path. Not the path I had thought for myself but most likely an even brighter more unimaginable path that I could not even had dreamed possible for myself. So I accept my challenge. I accept the work and acknowledge that it is with great courage and faith that I must take every conscious step toward this experience of sharing. May I breathe through my feet as I exhale and dive into the magical waters of healing energy and life.

Letting Go of the Facade to See What Is

Tags

Ballet, Believing, Courageous Vulnerability, Creativity, Dance, Energy, Magic, Modern, Seeing, Stepping, Teaching, Technique

So much gets lost in translation when we process movement during the training experience. What our eyes see is not really the reality of what is happening during the activation of technique or the expression of any of our dance forms. It is curial that we see the blue print but in the building of the sensations for activation it is essential we remember the effort used to create movement is very different than what the facade might look like.

 

This is also very true when we move to teach dance. Training by façade does not necessarily train functionality. How the body actually works to express technique is very different than how the body functions in an isolated joint action or muscular contraction. We have to remember we are an integrated facility that functions only when we are able to find anchors that balance our energies throughout our entire body and understand our physical relationship to space.

 

Undoubtedly, when I find myself not having success with a certain technical experience it usually reminds me that there is some part of the energetic equation that is not adding up allowing me a grounding anchor for the proper expression of that technical moment. I have to pause for a moment and remind myself that not only is there what I see happening, but there is also the work going on underneath the surface of the movement that is far more important than the actual gesture.

 

In identifying the grounding elements, which very often is the standing leg as well as the expansion of the spine and directed energy of the arms, I find myself understanding how the movements are truly supposed to feel and then in comprehending that, how they reflect to the observer seeing the movement. Often, as in almost always, it is never what my mind translated when I first absorbed the movement with my eyes.

 

So how do we begin the process of understanding movement through sensation? One of the primary ways is to stop looking at the movement as a picture, position or map with a destination point. If we can see the pathways of movement and how movement transitions, we will more readily see our bodies begin to fall through space expressing the desired movement rather than trying to manufacture a static moment that is more honestly like a motion picture full of tiny moments strung together via a body falling through space.

 

Secondly, if we do not concern ourselves with how things should look from the moment we begin to play but rather how they feel, we will find that the form will most certainly follow the functionality of the movement or the technique. This is also why when learning movement it is crucial that you simply move rather than trying to achieve perfection of form before you have even experienced the type of energy needed to do said movement. Most learners hold themselves back from the visceral experience not allowing them to trust in the wisdom of the body. The mind thinks to much holding the body hostage during the learning process.

 

Lastly, if we are to let go of our ego while learning we might see the material for what it is and not for what we want it to be or think it should be. Many times in activating the proper movement for understanding technique we must do it as is rather than thinking we need to do 6 turns or legs must be a certain height. All too often we are searching for validity in how high or how much rather than valuing things for what they are.

 

And would that not be the same for us in our own lives if we could stop, see what it really is and the experience it with the feelings that it will allow? If only we could let go to listen to what is really being said so as not to lose the information during our translation. Perhaps ultimately what we really need to do is stop trying to translate at all and just simply accept and absorb what is.

Mindful Stepping

Tags

Ballet, Conscious Living, Dance, EBAS, Energy, Mindful Action, Modern, Stepping, Technique, Weight

We underestimate our step. We forget that the way the foot falls to the ground and the way our body weight shifts throughout the bones of the feet is truly the first and foremost consciousness of the dance. We have become so busy with the pictures and “results” that we have bypassed one of the most crucial elements of movement; weight shift.

There is a mindfulness that must be attended to in the step, a graciousness of body that must be sensed as we engage our tactile beings with the floor. This very sensibility is what helps to keep our connection to the earth strong as we move about space. The premature push for elevation pushes a body closer and faster to the crumbling of the very foundation and grounding that we as dancers seek.

I believe we need to encourage taking time to sensationalize the step. To foster the importance and necessity of the integrated active lines of energy that is engaged when the right transference of weight and balance point is achieved through taking a mindful step.

Vision the body feeling the floor through the feet while drawing the earth energy up through the bones opening the channels of the body. Feel that energy enliven the systems and expand the spaces within. Activating channels and freeing highways of breaks or blocks will increase efficient central nervous system communication greatly enhancing the body’s ability to fire the right intrinsic musculature rather than the extrinsic groupings that prohibit efficient integrated kinetics.

Step with consciousness and understanding. Live with a lighter carbon footprint but dance with the weight of the world.