Got Flexibility?

Flexibility in the sense of “being ready and able to change to adapt to different circumstances.”  Of course, the flexibility of mind and spirit that eases our adaptability appears in tangible form in the body: as suppleness, pliability, pliancy.  The embodied and the intangible versions feed each other.  Here, I want to talk about the latter.

One of the most important life lessons I have learned did indeed come from the dance master I have been studying with.  Yet, it’s a lesson about the flexibility of mind and spirit that has fundamentally shifted my perspective.

Yesterday, I realized yet again how critical to our vitality a pliable approach is.  I am beginning a new performance project and am in the throes of arranging logistics.  There are not a lot of dancers involved, nor numerous dates for rehearsing and performing.

Even with only several dancers and a few dates under consideration, there are already a number of conflicts in people’s busy lives.  I started to throw my hands in the air, feeling the project slipping away in the tide of competing schedules.

But, wait!  Was the course I had set for us the only way to proceed? Of course not.

When I re-focused on how much I want to bring this project to life, I started exploring how else we might work together and came up with an alternate plan that will allow everyone to participate at different times and with different people if we can’t coordinate as originally planned.

Truth be told, I actually prefer the backup arrangement at this point.  It will give us more opportunities to work with the ideas and movement…and with varying dancers.  Exciting!

As I write this, the words I’ve memorized come back to me: “when one way doesn’t work, another will.”  The wisdom of heron spirit animal that is patient, resourceful, tenacious.

My dance mentor/teacher is indeed a master of flexibility.  Her main goal is to facilitate inclusion and the maximum amount of fierce dancing.  She bobs and weaves as needed to  achieve those two laudable aspirations.  Her sublime physical fluidity feeds and reflects her mental/soulful flexibility and vice versa.  A perpetual flow I am aspiring to.

In the meantime, when I encounter rigidity, I just keep asking myself: How can I be flexible here?

Photo credit: Middle-Courtesy of Nikki Carrara © 2016

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On Soaring

 

It probably started a week ago when this tiny, handmade bowl caught my eye on an unexpected detour to a shop on an errand.  The minute I saw the dish, I could feel a swelling of  my spirit, inspired by that serendipitous reminder to soar. Yes!

Then I read the wise, helpful column by gifted life coach, Martha Beck, in October’s “O, The Oprah Magazine” (p.48). Beck urges us to make a to-do list using what she calls “eagle view,” i.e. we are to imagine that we are at the peaceful end of our days looking back over our lifetimes and identifying what we want things to look like from that lofty retrospection.

What do we want both our legacy and our experiences to be?  We’re then encouraged to make daily choices based on how they align with our “eagle view.”

The next morning at breakfast, no sooner had my husband mentioned “eagle view” than a majestic bald eagle swooped by our backyard, soared around the marsh and perched high in a tree opposite our house, visible for all to see.  When we looked at the bird through our powerful scope, s/he turned and looked directly at us for a long time.

Ah, synchronicity!

I realize as I write this that my last post about expansiveness started stirring up and resurrecting my focus on soaring.  When we release ourselves from shackles that weigh us down, that inhibit us, we can move more freely, with ease.   We can let our souls “fly,”  transcending unneeded earthly limitations.

If I’ve learned nothing else from dancing, I now know how exhausting and usually impossible it is to do something we don’t believe we can do.  We don’t think we can jump/turn/fall/feel the music/make it bigger?  Then we won’t be able to.

Either our bodies won’t budge or our minds will present insurmountable obstacles to achieving the dancing in the way and the timing intended.  And with a whole lot of extra effort.

Yes, to “fly, glide, rise,” to embody all we envision and hope for our lives, we need to shed every unnecessary weight and chain–including the unnecessary ones fettering our beliefs and souls.

And then we can soar.

 

 

 

 

How Expansive Can You Be?

That was the challenge posed to us in dance class today.

Sure, it was directly in reference to performing the movement, which had such abundant possibility.  Just begging us to stretch our limits, or our perceived limits anyway.

Cover more space! Reach farther! Suspend longer!  Release more fully! Surprise yourself! The list went on and on in my mind as I accepted the challenge and trampled the constraints that I had unconsciously set for myself on the previous run-through.  It was a much fuller, more exciting and yes, fun, experience.

I so appreciate when this gifted and wise teacher shakes us out of our dusty assumptions, stale, rigid patterns, our “falling asleep” at the switch of examining unhelpful self-perceptions about what is possible.  So often, the possible is circumscribed by what’s been done before–by us or by others.

Yet, if we are truly alive to the moment, we can expand beyond the illusory safety, the illusory control, of the familiar and venture onto new frontiers.  This goes for dance class and every other physical activity, of course, but as you can readily appreciate, is also apt for living our lives.

So, with this gem of a teacher exhorting us once again to “never settle” I head out into the world, drenched in sweat, exhausted, exhilarated, inspired to take the practice of opening up to more possibility outside the studio. Wondering now: How expansive can I be?

Photos: Top and middle courtesy of Nikki Carrara © 2016, 2017

 

Bliss Is Our Compass

Taking stock of a summer of creative projects so that I can determine how to move forward, I flounder.

Falter.

Which step to take, in what direction?  It feels discouraging to scour the landscape for a path and find none.

Then, finally, thankfully, Joseph Campbell’s profound wisdom echoes over time and space to counsel again: “If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.” 

Right.

Whenever we delve deeply into what’s meaningful to us, seeking to create and share something uniquely, genuinely ours, there is no path.  It can be lonely, daunting.  An enormous struggle requiring buckets of courage and tenacity.  (I wrote about Brian Wilson’s inspiring quest here.) Which is why we so often give up on offering the vision, the gift of our true selves.

As the sun sets on the day, I still don’t know how to proceed, and for at least one endeavor, am running out of time to prepare–or pull out.  A glow suddenly catches my peripheral vision–I thought it was a flashlight. I look out the window to see the luminous moon rising.  Moonglow bathing the neighborhood.

The scene, the generous radiance remind me not to shrink, but to keep seeking to expand. As does Campbell’s unforgettable anthem of expansiveness:

Follow your bliss.
If you do follow your bliss,
you put yourself on a kind of track
that has been there all the while waiting for you,
and the life you ought to be living
is the one you are living…
I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid,
and doors will open
where you didn’t know they were going to be.
If you follow your bliss,
doors will open for you that wouldn’t have opened for anyone else.”

 

Photos courtesy of Nikki Carrara © 2017; Sculpture: Gil Boro

Dancing Is My Church: Life Lessons from Dancing

Dancing as prayer, as “a solemn request for help or expression of thanks addressed to God or an object of worship” or “as an earnest hope or wish.”

I’ve been offering my dancing as prayer for some time now, and have been keenly aware of this recently as I send the energy of my dancing to a friend who is in hospital with a serious health challenge. And, of course, to Houston. And to those I love…and those suffering or who need a boost. The list goes on.

So, today, I danced, and will keep on doing so, keep on worshipping in this way, for as long as I am able. Dancing is my church.

Photo: Sculpture-Gil Boro

Sirena Tales

When I read musician Sarah McLachlan’s words recently, that “music is my church…” I didn’t really need to read any further. I knew exactly what she meant. Because dancing is my church.

It took me awhile to realize fully what that means. For so long, dancing was viewed, and often dismissed, as a “hobby,” and worse, as “only a hobby.” Including by people I respected.

Photo credit: Rich Davis

My lifelong dance practice is still shrugged off as a mere “pastime” by some folks once they learn that I don’t have a regular teaching and performing gig.  Dancing is diminished in some eyes because it is pleasurable, physical and the opposite of lucrative.  For these people, the “fluff” of dancing is about as far from the gravitas of a place of worship as you can get.

I couldn’t help recalling this yesterday as I took class with many passionate…

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Everyday Magic: The Small Deeds of Ordinary Folk

“Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I’ve found.  It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay.”~J.R.R. Tolkien

Tolkien’s wise observation came to me this morning from the lovely Angie.

The first in the inexorable ripple of positive acts.  Or, perhaps the second, after Tolkien’s sharing his generous insight.

Or perhaps the third, fourth or thousandth, after the deeds that Tolkien observed, inspiring his words.

Or perhaps the zillionth, after countless individuals took it upon themselves to be kind, thoughtful, generous, patient, compassionate, self-sacrificing, loving.

Exhibiting all of the best and highest that humanity can be, and so often is.

Yesterday, at the stormy ocean, a surfer reached out a hand to a stranger caught in a riptide and carried her to shore, as lifeguards assisted a few others who were in danger of drifting out to sea.

Less heroically, perhaps, a man at the bottom of the stairs leading up from the beach sprang up from his seat to offer a hand in carrying heavy items to someone he didn’t know, but who was clearly struggling.  The kindness was in itself priceless…who’s to know if it may also have warded off an accident or other mishap?

Drivers on the hot, crowded road wave other travelers in, yielding to them rather than cutting them off.  The customer in front of me turns to hold the door and insists that I go before her when she sees me balancing items precariously.

The list goes on. And on…..

Even if scientific studies didn’t substantiate that kindnesses given to us boost our wellness, we can feel in our bodies and minds the relief or connection or warmth that flows through us when we have been treated with respect, courtesy, compassion.  We even feel  better when we witness kindness offered to others.

We know that we are more likely to pass on the positive juju if we have been its recipient.  And certainly more so than if we have been treated unkindly, thoughtlessly, cruelly.

What Tolkien’s paradigm does is place much responsibility for how things are in our world  squarely where it should be: right at our own feet and at those of our fellow humans.  Although the responsibility carries with it the requirement of effort, thought, and maybe sacrifice, that responsibility also carries with it much personal power.

And with that power, the amazing magic of inspiration, transformation…and hope.

In The Middle Of Things: Dance!

(Sculpture: Gil Boro)

“Dance, when you’re broken open. Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off.  Dance in the middle of the fighting.  Dance in your blood.  Dance when you’re perfectly free.”~Jalaluddin Rumi

“How cool and beautiful to have dance spring up in the middle of things!”  That was a comment of an audience member after we danced recently in a pop-up performance as part of a street event, amidst strollers and people dining outside and shopkeepers.

My sentiments, too.

After arranging and dancing in several such performances this summer, I am more convinced than ever of the magic and power of weaving dance and other art into everyday life.  Spreading creativity and beauty, especially in unexpected places, helps expand our perspective. And fire up those synapses that might be dulled by the mundane.

Whether dancing next to the Farmer’s Market or in a sculpture garden, on the sidewalks in front of to stores or on benches next to cafes and overlooking a stream, each performance has sparked something vibrant in viewers.  Surprise, delight, curiosity, humor, even their own spontaneous dancing–these reactions by viewers have illustrated the wisdom of Rumi’s exhortations.

Dance and art invite us to express our humanity in an infectiously constructive way.  Releasing grief or anger, sharing joy and excitement, amplifying expansiveness….and expressing the inimitable.  Channeling all of it in a flow of creativity, of positivity.

In each place where we’ve performed, dance energy nows resonates there…along with the exchanges we have had, golden threads we have woven with people we will never meet but with whom we have spun indestructible dialogues.

Who knows whence the threads will lead?  All I know is that they will lead to better, more radiant, more  vibrant things.   As Pina Bausch urged: “Dance, dance, otherwise we are lost.”