“Being passionately at home in our bodies and honest in our emotions makes us desirable and intruiging. People with rich, rooted emotional lives are magnetic.” Gabrielle Roth
Tonight I want to write about fear. The fear that is right here, so much of the time. Maybe even all the time. I hope so actually, as in its essential power it is my best ally, that one friend that will keep my eyes open and remind me of my instinctual self. I was recently at a concert, and we were one of the first people who arrived. As others were joining in, I noticed how all of us found our place close to the walls, and left the whole open area in front of the stage empty. It was scary to go there, and the wall behind our backs gave us the support, something safe to hold on. Once the concert started the energy changed a little, it was as if because the musicians on the stage were brave enough to stand out there and share their gifts, we were invited to come closer. This is something I notice often on the dance floor. At the beginning of the class, fear holds us close to the walls, in the parts of the room close to the exit door where there is less light and for sure further away from the teacher’s table. And then just like magic, one by one we start with our flow, with finding our feet and we let our feet find our courage to go for empty space and slowly step by step, your step, my step, most of the room is moving and wherever we step in the room with our awake embodiment is our safe space. We can find the roots of our freedom in our feet following each other.
Tonight I want to write about anger. I thought anger was this heartless unpredictable over the edge punishing lashing out energy. Oh yes there was also this constant complaining verbal putting down and bitching and holding back. And yes, I learned about it from the first row, when directed to me.
I learned it so well through imitation that I started to believe this is who I am. This is what anger is. So no wonder I feel guilty and ashamed of this truth warrior living in me, the lie and bullshit detector that never fails me, the protective mama cat ready to defend not only her kids but all the innocents. It is taking me a long time, many anger dances where I keep re-defining and re-aligning this anger energy, to find its pure wisdom of a heartfelt yes and no. The part of me that feels like I could go through the walls and move any mountain, the part of me that is a rebel with the cause, the part of me that feels the passion to be real and alive.
Tonight I want to write about sadness. I see sometimes parts of us that are avoiding other’s people grief like it is contagious and in a way it is. It is like swimming in the same water, and we try so much to walk on water rather then surrender to it. Surrender to the waves of this cleansing releasing liberating energy. It feels sometimes like my sadness is a river that just wants to go back home to the ocean where it came from, where it belongs, and I need to stop holding onto it like it is only mine and like I would be lost without it. Sometimes I need to be a sadness whisperer, as my sadness is more solid then flowing, in some places of my heart and body it even feels it is calcified. So I whisper to it, and she says “but I don’t know why I feel this way, I don’t know what this is about, I don’t know why I am sad, I don’t know how deep this goes, I don’t know how long I will cry” and I keep whispering and giving space and rocking myself and allowing myself to have strange sounds to leave my mouth, my heart, my soul. I allow myself to grieve about things I never even had at the first place, not just those that I lost.
Tonight I want to write about joy. There is this part of me that is going for happiness and it wants to be entertained, it wants to be invited to the school dance, it wants to be picked out from all the other flowers. And it waits and it gets lazy, and becomes really miserable about missing all the joy out of life. This part loves to think everybody else is happy but me, and if it is not their fault that I am not happy then it must be mine. Or it is the weather or the football or the government. I realize more and more that this is one of the reasons why I love the dance so much, as it has always been such a simple accessible gateway into pure joy for me. The kind of joy that is hard to pin down and box, even name it. It is such a shape-shifter. It is always here somewhere. It doesn’t always have a smile on its face. It doesn’t always skip and jumps around. It is not always in bright colors. Sometimes it is actually like a striptease of all the things that I am, not to find the joy I came here to share with you.
Tonight I want to talk about compassion. The one that we are born with. The one that comes from simply seeing each other. The one the bypasses thinking and goes straight into action and many times the action that is needed is to do nothing, just to let it be. To breathe. Compassion that comes from knowing our own heart so well and from living it over and over again. Compassion that happens when we all move and breathe like one, no matter what movement it is. No matter who is this “we”.
With love, Silvija