Category Archives: the body

Mar21

back on the island

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This is my grand daughter Laila’s first boat ride.  Her Mom Bimala, her auntie Chandrika and I are on the ferry from Wood’s Hole to Martha’s Vineyard. We are going to visit their godparents, Jo-Ann and Derrill, and I will be working with their autistic son, Jacob.

This is my daughter Chandrika playing with Jacob on Thursday morning.  Jacob is a climber, and can find the most elaborate and winding ways of descending.  My goal this week is to wake up some of the development patterns that are not fully present in Jacob, and to play with him, enjoy him, love him.  With touch, with movement, with stillness, with sound.  Jacob has my heart, and being with him is a great gift.

To top it all off, I get to be on my favorite place on earth with the funnest person I know, my daughter Chandrika, her sister Bimala, and all of this tenderness.  Lucky me!

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Mar19

tested

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http://sangbleu.com/2009/12/14/painted-knees-of-a-moulin-rouge-dancer/

Sometime during the rehearsal I felt it happen.  I did a sudden snapping movement with my leg and my knee hyperextended.  I stopped and looked at it.  “That’s not good,” I thought.  It didn’t hurt, so I kept going.

It wasnt good.  I ripped both the lateral and medial meniscus and popped a big cyst out the back of the joint capsule.  My knee doesn’t bend. I can’t climb stairs.  One of my dancers watched the performance of my solo and said she wished I had included some movement on the floor.  I said that I would do that as soon as I could bend my knee.

My osteopath looked at me yesterday and said, “You are being tested.”  What is being tested?  My patience, my endurance, my resourcefulness, my tolerance.  And more.

In my studio, I tried doing some of the movement.  I noticed that I initiate much of my movement with quickness, which at the moment is unsafe for my poor knee.  Quickness is my “lane,” my “wheelhouse” in the language of American idol.  It is how I get my body places that it otherwise doesn’t know how to go.

The point of all this is that I have to find some new ways of moving while I am healing.  Linda Tellington-Jones always says “isn’t that interesting” when she encounters something problematic in a horse she is working with.  I am looking for that attitude – curiosity instead of frustration, willingness instead of fear.  Learning to try new things, looking for other ways of seeing and doing.  Being improvisational. Not waiting for the end point, but being in the journey, one step at a time.

In the meantime:

http://www.sonotaprincess.com.au/journal/2011/3/26/put-to-the-blush.html

Mar12

yield, baby

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Laila  (& Precious) yielding

Another of the gifts of having a long visit with my grand daughter Laila Rose is the opportunity to do some hands on revisiting of Body-Mind Centering, the groundbreaking work of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen.  According to Bonnie, all of our movement is built upon these five fundamental actions (1) yielding, (2) pushing, (3) reaching, (4) holding, and (5) pulling. Any movement can be seen as a variation or combination of these basic actions.

I am especially interested in the yielding, as that is the action that I find personally the most challenging.  I don’t yield a lot.  So besides playing with Laila using yielding, I have been using yielding in my riding.  Yielding my hips into the saddle and then into the horse’s back and then yielding my legs down to the ground, and practicing a yielding contact on the reins.  That is different from “giving the reins away.”  It has to do with the Aikido principle that Mark Rashid taught us about softening toward the horse’s mouth without actually moving the hands. When I yield my hips into the horse, there is a corresponding (subtle) push and then a reach through the head that creates a beautiful balancing counter-tension.  Naturally, breathing has to support the yielding (and everything else).

Interestingly, Bonnie’s husband Len is a longtime practitioner of Aikido.  Connections everywhere!

For those of you who want to know more, dance therapist and BMC practitioner Susan Aposhyan describes these fundamentals this way:

Yielding is a quality of resting in contact with the environment and underlies our basic relationship to the world. It is about the state of being versus doing, and forms the basis for the ability to act effectively in the world. In being in contact with the environment, discernment can be developed as to whether push, reach, or pull is desired or appropriate.

Pushing separates oneself from the immediate environment. The action contracts (shortens) all the musculature around the pushing limb resulting in the body becoming denser and more substantial. This action supports the capacity to psychologically feel, establish, and maintain boundaries, thus promoting an internal sense of support. It also supports the process of individuation and confidence building.

Reaching is an action that supports going beyond the sense of self. It is a way of extending out towards others or towards objects. Psychologically, reaching manifests curiosity, desire, longing, and compassion. This action may, however, expose one to risk taking and a sense of vulnerability.

Holding and Pulling allows for reaching out into the environment towards something/someone desirable and bringing it closer to oneself. Psychologically, the ability to hold and pull depends on the capacity to yield, push and reach. These actions provide the opportunity to reach out and take in from the external space.