Anatomy class the other day, so we all dragged our broken bodies into this smallish room with a green, spongy floor upon which we spread even spongier mats. For sprawling on. Somehow the teacher got the idea that the prevailing winds of our little group were gusting from areas of high-pressure exhaustion and defeat, which can happen when three of sixteen are injured and two others traveling. She was also exhausted, sleeping in the hospital with a baby who has been sick off and on for a year, so you can imagine.
We did breathing exercises with partners. You lay down and breathe, and the other person "walks with the hands on the back like a cat," relaxing all their weight down. As you get used to it the masseur role changes to forearms, then knuckles, then elbows, so it gets pretty intense. 15 minutes. It's a real workout for the myriad muscles involved in making air go in, deeper and deeper in, then out out and all the way out. It felt like time was slowing down. We moved to sitting on chairs. The sitting person relaxes their head backwards against the partner's torso, standing behind the chair, and they simply lay their hands on your chest, butt of the palm at the collar bone. The teacher's image suggestions were of the touch and the heat traveling all the way to the bottom of your lungs, picturing the lungs swelling with the touch and heat etc. After your partner left, you stayed, listening for a while. Then you started to move, as directed by the breath and the sensation of the lungs expanding.
It's rare that you get asked to picture things that are not musculature or bones when dealing with movement. And it was wildly liberating. I feel like part of the whole practice of "relaxation" in yoga and dance classes is not actually relaxing, being limp, but rather deactivating the muscle groups and support structures that function habitually in order to understand that there are alternative possibilities. Often, because of how we learn to present ourselves, because of the images of the body we are accustomed to viewing, the habitual muscles are superficial. So being told to relax is helpful in discovering something deeper, closer to the bone structure that can handle movement more efficiently. You don't have to fight for postures or movement, you don't have to make them, you just have to be in them, to listen to them and trust your body's knowledge.
I also want to comment shortly on something kind of bracing and large-feeling that happened in the room. The focus of listening to and following your partner's breath, of releasing your weight entirely into their body, watching their ribcage expand more and more, their lower back fill, was incredibly strong and shared between all the pairs. And there is tangible release of tension in opening lung space, diaphragmal and vertebral space also as breath is seized consciously and with force, only to settle back into unconsciousness with a new vigor and torso-cavity-filling power. Other tensions break also, and in the silence in this atmosphere of shared intent people's eyes were glassy or tear-filled and faces red, and it felt buoyant, not upsetting or sad. It's a tight little community we have here, wound tight and built tight and loved tight, and I'm glad to be a part of it not only for moments like this, when we all experience the same thing together and you've got no words for the significance, but also for those when we can't even stand to look at each other any more.
Seeing as I'm out of here in six weeks, can't help being a bit sentimental. I'm going to miss our deep breaths.
1 comment:
So, for some reason, the Post that, at Long last, I want to comment on doesn't seem to have that link. Ah well, I'll make do and post down here.
I love you're point, expressed through out this blog and some of our discussions, about making thing accessible, and labeling dance something that doesn't need to be esoteric and even Pedantic (can Dance be Pedantic? Or is it only talking about dance?) in its study to be worth while. While i fear this impulse might make you no good for the world of academia, I salute you none the less for it. And I think you do it (with a subject that I know little to nothing about) better then anyone I've ever read. Amazingly, a plebeian fool such as myself can relate, as you do not choose to hide behind in jargon or self referential terms.
However, the mystical harnessing of the body has more to do with belief then i think you give it credit for. I think the Placebo affect has reach to places you don't expect it to. I think that people who train you to dance, or to punch through walls with your fists, provide this one most important thing: belief that your body is capable of making the transformation into the vehicle that you want it to be. If they didn't believe, you wouldn't believe, and If you don't believe, you would never be able to leap and roll in ways that you're body thought was impossible a few years ago.
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