I was walking out the door a few hours before the start of Mirrors when my back went. It is a chronic injury that flares up once a year but the timing was hard to ignore. Little did I know that three weeks later, not the typical three days for me to recover, that my back would still be in a weakened state.
Since our work was to surface our ego's, one of mine was predominant. Meet Justin Fine. Justin was often heard throughtout the workshop to be saying, "I am just fine." In reality, I was not fine...still am not.
To acknowledge that took humbling...a process that took 8 days when I finally could not make it to the workshop even after having a day off the day before. One of the learnings was how does one move in a movement workshop with an injured back, which I was trying to do? In my days as an EMT, 20 years ago, coming up on a back injury meant immediate immobility, unless of course, there were a life threatening situation present. Well, duh, the answer was not to move!
I upon discovering that, I actually experienced one person who was tending to me trying to get me to move and walked away when I said "no" when asked, "Don't you want to move it?"
Still, I knew there was locked up energy and ready to be moved! I knew I needed to let it out and the only thing I could do in the moment was feel it, not knowing how the energy would move but trusting my body would find a way. As chaos unfolded, my frustration at not being able to dance one of my favorite rhythms began expressing itself. I also began feeling the pain of my back. I was immobile on the outside but internally my body was seizing and sending waves of energy inside me toward my mouth.
And something beautiful came shortly after I had said "no" to moving. One of my close male friends placed himself beside me. He had told me earlier that day I was avoiding him. And I realized I was, not wanting to show my pain near him or others for fear of being weak. I asked him then to come to me if he saw I was loosing it and he did.
