Move and Be Moved

There is order in life. There is order in my life and that order exists at the center of my being. When I am centered I experience that sense of order. The problem is that 99% of the time I allow myself to be pulled off-center by outer circumstances. It doesn't matter what it is--worry about my body, a paper due this weekend, a jaw-clenching phone call from a relative, a problem at work, or even something so innocent as wondering what the person dancing next to me is thinking--any one of them can pull me into a state of concern or worry and I forget about my center. Suddenly these peripheral issues become all important and I have once again wandered into uncertainty, doubt, and stress.

When I live from my center, life works. I have access to wisdom, guidance, and creative ideas. And I have confidence that the decisions I make from that place are right ones; my course is clear.

In the dance I have the perfect opportunity to practice finding my center and to feel what it is like to operate from that place. I also have the perfect opportunity to experience falling off-center. If I dance from my mind I am concerned about how I look, about doing it "right," about what other people think, about whether or not I'm going to hurt myself. There are endless ways that I can be distracted. My movements are tentative, programmed, limited. But when I dance from my center I am free, at ease, and filled with the sheer joy of movement that is unjudged and totally mine. My body moves with ease and grace. My movements are spontaneous, bold, creative, and free. I dance with joy.

By all reasonable criteria I should have stayed in bed this morning. When I went to bed Saturday night after a day and a half of Body School, I felt pretty banged up. My feet and calves were sore, my knee had been aching for 2 days, and to top it off I got this monster hamstring cramp that refused to be stretched out for the longest time. No, there was no need to push it. Just sleep in.

But I woke up around 7 and found myself thinking about how wonderful it would feel to be gliding around on the dance floor to the gentler strains of Early Wave music--so free and so meditative. Then I found this phrase in my head, almost like the news blips that float across the bottom of the TV screen on CNN. It was "the music of the body in motion." It kept repeating itself.

So I decided I'd rather dance than sleep.

I went down to the studio and began to dance. And to my suprise and delight, I had no pain. I had tape on my feet, my calves were fine, and my knee didn't hurt at all! It was a great start to what turned out to be a fabulous day of dancing and connecting with so many beautiful people. I'm so glad I got that wake up call.