Tag Archives: meditation

Feb4

landscape, bodyscape

Posted on by

Laura Von Rosk

Tamara Lempicka

I have been writing about the landscape of the body and its relationship to the body of the earth and the bodies of other creatures.  About the sense of our own bodies as landscape, to be discovered, explored, savored.

These two paintings are by two of my most favorite painters.  I met Laura Von Rosk many years ago during a residency at Yaddo.  Her landscapes were the most sensuous I had ever seen.  I bought one she had done in Minnesota.  It had a perspective of gazing up the hilly thighs of a woman, across the fields of belly and breasts and into the sky beyond.   I recently reconnected with her work at a show in Hudson at the Carrie Haddad Gallery.

Lempicka’s work invites us into the contours, the hills, valleys, the hidden caves of the body.

If you lie on the floor and roll very slowly from back to side to front, how do you feel the landscape of your own body?  How effortless can you make that movement?  Continue on, rolling to your side and then ending on your back.

Imagine this as a little meditation, a way of calling the earth of your body into awareness.

If you are a rider, can you feel a deepening harmony of your body and your horse’s body as you ride?

SHARE & EMAIL
Dec23

softness inside, softness outside

Posted on by

Today was a strangely, deliciously balmy December day in the Hudson Valley.  I went to see Nelson (the formerly wild Mustang) with some holiday carrots. He was very cuddly from the beginning, seeming to echo the softness and quiet of the day. Have I mentioned that I love this horse?

I have been asking him to move around me in a small circle, while staying calm and responding to the “go” signal from my hand and the “whoa” signal from my movement and my voice.  Today he was flawless when circling to the right, still uncertain to the left.

So I played with that by asking him to stay with the hard side, to keep trying.  And here’s the lovely part:  he allowed me to improvise more freely with changes of direction and with different kinds of cues than ever before.  My hand, my body, the lead rope, the wand, nothing seemed to really phase him.  It was as if there had been a quantum shift in his tolerance for new information – his ability to take it in without being frightened.

Even after I opened the gate of his catch pen out into the six-acre field, he stayed with me – no halter, no lead rope – moving smoothly around me to the right, and doing his best in the other direction. No running off, no spooking.  He wanted to continue the dance.

Everything about my work with Nelson during the past eight months has been an improvisation.  But the movement vocabulary was very small, very careful.  Now, our language is suddenly expanding:  new options, different choices, greater flexibility. A reservoir of trust. This new softness is deepening, penetrating, lasting from week-to-week.

This expanding relationship reminds me of the comparison of meditating to dipping a cloth into dye. For the first 100 times, the color will rinse away, but slowly, surely, the color starts to take and deepen.

Dec18

riding, dancing

Posted on by

Photo:  Claire Glover;  Brandi Rivera riding Amadeo

Riding is the hardest thing that I do.  Physically.  Mentally.  Spiritually.

I am a dancer.  Riding is harder.  The intricacy, the communication, the balance, the nuance, the subtlety required in the riding arena are beyond anything I have experienced in a dance studio.  Martha Graham said that it takes ten years to make a dancer.  One of my first trainers, Beach Bennett, said that it takes at least two lifetimes to become a rider. She is right.

I have had to accept that despite my physical skills, my training and my understanding, I am going to need that second lifetime to become all that I want as a rider.  It is humbling. I welcome it.

I wrote yesterday about touching horses, and the way that brings me to my knees.  How I love it.  Riding is that way too.  Sitting in the saddle (my zafu) and finding the first rhythmic harmonics with my horse’s walk is like breathing. Or like stepping into the water, readying for a swim.  Being challenged to seek harmony, softness, clarity and balance throughout a riding lesson is like sitting with a tough Zen master.  Or like my yoga classes with Patricia Walden.  No tuning out, not ever, not for a moment.

The horse, you see, deserves nothing less than my very best.

Rigor and ecstasy.  Could there be anything better?

Nov14

horse yoga & a question

Posted on by

The horses are where I practice.  They are my yoga, my sitting.

I love them for their clarity, their honesty, their generosity.  I discover – again and again – what is elemental and essential through the horses.  It is something I want to share.

I wonder though, if because my blog is called Horse Dancing, people who don’t know or care about horses dismiss it automatically. Or does horse yoga resonate in a wider way?

Tell me what you think?  What would you like to see more of?