Cross-Training Body Mind Emotions Spirit | Rachael R. Resch

April is National Poetry Month, and today, April 29th, is Poem In Your Pocket Day.  In honor of this, each student chose a poem at random from the basket.  Our focus for class was the cross-pollination of the first line of each person’s poem, read aloud:

Wage peace with your breath.
The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day
runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.

He who binds to himself a joy . . .
When my friend is away from me, I am depressed.
Nothing in the day light delights me.

Before this longing,
If you don’t know the kind of person I am,
Sigh deeply!  Remember how great this is!  Go on a wild date!
Be instantly on a fabulous adventure.

If you don’t know the kind of person I am,
It’s time to put up a love-swing.
Fall-madly-in-love day.
Sigh deeply!  Remember how great this is!  Go on a wild date!

Thank you to our poets, Judyth Hill, Rabindranath Tagore, William Blake, Kabir, Theodore Roethke and William Stafford.

You can read each poem in it’s entirety — as well the poems no one ended up choosing today by Rainer Maria Rilke, Naomi Shihab Nye, David White, Mary Oliver, Kabir, David Wagoner and Nanao Sakaki — at Poem of The Week.

Feel the poem  of your body, all 75 trillion cells a mysterious, hybrid, multi-lingual, amalgamated poetry jam.  Each cell speaks its own line, its own word, its own sound, its own vibration, its own name.  Listen to the poem of your body, the poem given to you by the holy which is your life.  Be that poem.

The Tzutzujil Maya people say that the spirits are constantly speaking this world into being.  Every blade of grass, every floor board, every piece of plastic, every bird, wind and our lunch is being sung and spoken into life by the holy.  The Torah says the same thing: there’s an angel that speaks each being into life.

So this world is really one great cacaphonous poem, a strange and beautiful hybrid poem, or perhaps the world is an infinite multitude of poems all being said simultaneously like a great gaggle of geese all talking at once.

For the last two weeks, we have been engaged in “Passion: The Practice of Form and Freedom.”

During week one — The Practice of Freedom — we have danced to the music of the Nia routine Passion, using Nia’s eight stages of FreeDance.

During week two — The Practice of Form , starting on Thursday, February 4 – we dance the original choreography of Passion that Nia co-founders Debbie Rosas and Carlos AyaRosas created to the same music.

(You can listen to the music of Passion free at  http://nianow.com/niasounds/passion-cd )

The intent of “Passion: The Practice of Form and Freedom” is to first experience the freedom of your own body’s way, moment by moment, in relationship to the music, the self and the mystery.  And then, after that, to experience your body’s relationship with the form of choreography.

Form and freedom are like yin and yang, like inhale and exhale, like sound and silence. Each gives birth to the other.  Each depends on the other to reveal its true nature.  Each contains the seed of the other in its belly.

I can bring a full experience of the sensation of freedom right into any form.  I can discover that freedom itself actually has an anatomy.

FREEDOM

FreeDance is Nia White Belt Principle #4.  FreeDance is how Nia teachers organically create and learn Nia routines.

The practice of FreeDance is a foundation for sensory awareness and creativity.  Through its eight stages, FreeDance offers a way to get out of the mind and drop into sensation — the sensation of the physical body, the sensation of the music, the sensation of the emotional body and the sensation of intuition.

FreeDance offers the physical body “an alchemical process to physically respond to change moment by moment.”  FreeDance offers the mind, “a way into the creative void of conciousness.”  FreeDance offers the emotional body a way to express all feelings freely.  FreeDance offers the spirit play, and a journey to “the playground of all playgrounds — the unexplored moment.”*

FORM

When they were on the path of creating Nia, Debbie and Carlos studied various movement forms, nine of which become the elements of Nia.  They did this in order to “balance the feminine with the masculine, the precise with liquid fluidity and the powerful with the yielding.”

Debbie and Carlos took the freedom inherent in their two bodies, minds, hearts and spirits and essentially FreeDanced the nine movement forms into something new, what we know now as Nia.

Each of the nine movement forms has a unique sensation and energy signature:  From the healing arts, Alexander Technique, the Feldenkrais Method and Yoga; From dance arts, modern dance, jazz dance and Duncan dance; and from Martial arts, Tai Chi, Aikido, and Taekwondo.

Each form stimulates different breathing responses, different emotional responses.  They cross train body, mind emotions and spirit .  They offer a way to speak many languages.

Look how each person in these photographs is doing the choreography differently.

Each person brings to the form of the movement their own uniqueness —  physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.  A different angle of the hand, a different feeling in the face, a different gaze of  the eyes, a different intent.  Each person finds their own unique freedom of expression within the form.

Form is the vessel of freedom.  Freedom is the vitality of form.

This is Nia’s practice of form and freedom:  Bring the freedom of your uniqueness and the form of your body into the temple of the moment where the mudras created are both traditional and never-before-seen.

Nia, like life, is the practice of form and freedom.

FORM & FREEDOM: A CONVERSATION

If you have been to any of the “Passion: The Practice of Form and Freedom” classes, please comment below.  I would love to hear from you about your experience FreeDancing, doing the choreography of Passion or both.

What did you discover?  What did you feel?  What did you sense?

*All quotes from the Nia White Belt Manual, 2001,  by Debbie Rosas and Carlos AyaRosas.

The focus of today’s Nia practice, chosen at random from the basket of cards, was “Loving Movement.”

Loving movement – as in “I love to move!”

Loving movement – as in a gesture of love or an offering to a person or to the Holy.

Loving movement – as in a chapter, an episode, a section of music or life.

Loving movement – as in a revolution, like the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the men’s movement, and now, the loving movement of collective consciousness toward more loving.

The motion of love comes in all sizes, shapes, layers and dimensions.

The body itself has a natural affinity for loving movement, as does the mind, the heart, the spirit and the energy body.  We could actually say loving movement is a definition of life.

All life is movement, even if it’s dead or so-called inanimate.  Atoms and molecules moving, gravity and electricity moving, the imagination and the spirit spiraling, contracting and expanding.  All 75 trillion cells of the body are in constant, loving movement.

All life is love.  The movement of heaven’s energy pours down into the flesh.  The movement of the Earth’s energy rises up through the feet.  These are movements of love.  And moving in between heaven and Earth is the mystical third thing, known as life, known as now, known as the human being, known as the love child of heaven and Earth, moving, wriggling, dancing, crawling, reaching, shimmering, intending.

How do I recognize the sensation of loving movement?

I ask my body, “Body, precious body, are you experiencing the sensation of loving movement?”  The asking itself is a loving movement.  Listening for my body’s reply is loving movement.

Loving movement is a practice.  Like Nia’s practice of the joy of movement, loving movement is a practice that can sit right next to any emotion, any thought and any intent.  The practice of martial arts is loving movement when we understand the martial arts is the practice of just enough – using just enough force, not too much, not too little, just right.

A path, such as Nia or the martial arts or music, is itself a loving movement.  And our response as we move along and toward that path is a loving movement.

Breathe in the loving movement of the breath, in and out, like the ocean tide, and ride the waves of loving movement in the belly.  Let the movements of love soar through the body.

Be held by the moving fields of love, moving and being moved.  Let the waves of breath carry the body.  Let the waves of love carry the body.  Rock yourself in your own arms and let the loving movement of the Earth hold the loving movement of who you are from underneath.

The focus of our Nia practice today, chosen at random from the cards for 2010, was “commitment.”

Whenever we see a word with the prefix, “com-” we know we’re in the field of relationship.  ”Com-” is from the Latin, cum, meaning “with.”  We are in relationship with . . . everything.

The suffix of “commitment” is from the Latin, mittere, “to send,” “to place,” “to put,” “to throw,” “to release.”  This tells us commitment involves some kind of motion with another, be it with oneself, another being or a state of being.

We could say that commitment is to be with what is placed before us.  We could say that commitment is the state of being thrown together with another, blown by the winds of chance into this very moment.  Or that commitment is the motion of releasing one’s heart with another.

Commitment says I am moving in relationship.  I’m being sent, placed, tossed or released in relationship.  Maybe the motion of my commitment is with a friend, a partner, a path.  Maybe the motion of my commitment is with my body, the Earth, the Holy.

In the Nia practice, we call the ring finger the “commitment finger.”  Each finger carries a unique energy.  The energy of commitment moves along the shoulder blade, up and down the back of the arm and the ring finger.  This meridian, the Triple Warmer, guides the motions of chi and fluids through the body.

Placing the commitment finger and the thumb — the nurturing finger — together with each other creates the prithvi mudra. It’s a practice for cultivating patience and tolerance, both of which are useful in relationship.

What is the sensation of commitment?  What is the sensation of moving in relationship?

Gravity shows that the Earth is committed with us, and we with the Earth.  The Earth and my body are thrown together in relationship by gravity, the attraction of two masses for each other.  I can feel the Earth’s commitment, her motion toward me, and with every movement, every step, and every time I make contact with the ground, I can feel the motion of my commitment with the Earth.

“I accept my brilliance.”

This was the focus of our Nia practice today, the first class of 2010.

Your mission — should you choose to accept it — is your brilliance.

Accept the wild brilliance of  your body — with all its 75 trillion cells shimmering like stars, metabolizing and burning bright in the universe of your flesh and bones, like so many busy hummingbirds, keeping the home fires burning in the hearth of the temple of your precious body.

Accept the wild brilliance your mind, just as it is — left brain, right brain, corpus collosum, cerebellum, brain stem and spinal cord, all neurons shimmering their messages like miniature lightnings, like fire flies — and that greater aspect of mind that includes but is beyond the nervous system.

Accept the wild brilliance of your own heart — beating inside your chest, drumming out its rhythmic song of life to which we stomp and dance, its heart flame brilliant, whether shy or gregarious, grief stricken or joyful, playful or contemplative.

Accept the brilliance of your wild spirit — your uniqueness, your energy field that shimmers and shines, that sways and gallops, that sparkles and glides its way through the steppes of the Mystery.

Accept and receive from the holy the gift of your brilliance.

Your mission — should you choose to accept it — is to glisten, luminesce, radiate and beam forth the shine of your natural soul, and to rest within and be nourished by its wild shimmering brilliance, as the moon is by the sun and, as well, the very ground of our own Earth-body-soul-home.

Do you accept?

Just say Yes!

Happy New Year!

. . . Whatever that means.

It might mean another holy every day opportunity to be here now and celebrate together the preciousness of what is happening.  ”Happy” and “happen” are from  Middle English hap, meaning “happen,” as well as “good luck.”  So “happiness” means “happen-ness” and “lucky.”  It’s the fortunate state of being present with what is happening.

This season, we could great each other warmly and say, “Happen New Year!”

Blessings on all that is happening.  Blessings on all that has happened, making it possible for us to be happening now.  Blessings on all that will and might some day possibly happen.  Blessings on our vision as we look forward into life.

At the end of the Nia New Year’s Eve event, Vision 2010, I asked my mother to choose the focus from a basket of over 375 cards which had just been created as foci for the new year.

Every Nia practice begins with a focus.  The practice of the Nia focus is to consciously embody and sustain where we put our attention and intent.

All thirty-plus people in the room had just participated in an hour of Nia, followed by a body-based inquiry process.

They had asked their bodies questions like, “Body, what do you love?”  ”Body, what brings you the sensation of stability?”  ”Body, what brings you the sensation of peace?”  ”Body, for your spiritual transformation, what do you desire?”

Each person then wrote the essence of  their body’s answers onto the backs of cards hand-stamped with the Nia swoosh.

My mother chose at random from the basket the focus for Nia Southern Oregon for 2010:  Be In Nature, Feel Nature.

Be in nature.  Feel nature.

What could be better than the loving reminder not only to uproot myself from the computer and daily busyness to touch, smell, see and hear the natural world, but to also touch smell, see and hear my very own nature, and the natural world all around me every moment that has been conscripted into houses, desks, refrigerators, pots and pans, running water, clothing, vitamins, pens, cell phones, cars, asphalt, glass.

So this morning, my husband, Richard, took me on a walk in the park.  It was rainy and the world smelled moist and fresh.  The sound of Ashland Creek cleared my head and my heart.

Be in nature.  Be nature.

Happy New Year.

This is one of my favorite poems to say, to hear, to feel the echo of spiraling through the past and the future and the present.  We heard it at the end of the Nia New Year’s class this morning.

I Live My Life

I live my life in growing orbits,
which move out over the things of the world.
Perhaps I can never acheive the last,
but that will be my attempt.

I am circling around God, around the ancient tower, 
and I have been circling for a thousand years.
And I still don’t know if I am a falcon,
Or a storm, or a great song.

– Rainer Maria Rilke / 1899

from Book for the Hours of Prayer
translated by Robert Bly

Here’s the poem I read on New Year’s Day 2009, inspired by the beautiful song created by Garry Schyman for the video, Where The Hell Is Matt?

Stream of Life

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day
runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.

It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth
in numberless blades of grass
and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth
and of death, in ebb and in flow.

I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life.
And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.

– Rabindranath Tagore / 1913
from Gitaljali
translated by Rabindranath Tagore

On this day, that we call the last day of the year, I bow to the Holy that makes life live by spiraling and sprouting up through each one of us, grasses, muscles, milk, stars, air and deep water fish, day in and day out, year in and year out, breath in and breath out, ending again and beginning again and always in motion, dancing the worlds into being and spiraling and sprouting from and to a time beyond our own.

Happy New Year, my dearest friends.

Today we chose the focus from the basket of 2009 focus cards for almost the last time this year.

The focus of our Nia practice today was “moving forward.”

As we move forward toward 2010, we find ourselves in the seven day period between what we call Christmas and what we call the New Year.  This is a liminal time, a threshold between one time and the next.  Some say the veils between the worlds are thin now, and anything can happen.  These are also the seven days of Kwanzaa.

Today’s practice was the routine “Sanctuary,” choreographed by Nia co-founder Debbie Rosas to the beautiful music of Adiemus, “Songs of Sanctuary.”

As we move forward into the new year, as we move forward into the moment, we can take our own sanctuary with us.  How do we do this?

Every Nia class begins with the practice of “Stepping In.”  The purpose of stepping in is to leave behind distractions.  It’s a technique that Debbie and Carlos borrowed from martial arts.  When the martial artist steps out onto the floor to fight, she leaves behind all distractions.

In Nia when we step in, we are stepping in to the present.  We step in with all four realms — body, mind, emotions and spirit.  We step into sensory awareness of the body.  We step into an open mind.  We step into emotional presence.  And we step into spiritual readiness — that is, we step into our connection with everything.

Presence is our sanctuary.  When I’m present I take sanctuary in myself, and I take my sanctuary with me as I cross the threshold into now, as I move forward and step into the moment.

In sanctuary, I can move straight forward or I can move forward in apparent retrograde motion.  I can move forward mentally, physically, emotionally and energetically.  I can move forward in the wild and natural spiral motion of all migrating animals, of plants, galaxies, waters and winds.

It’s a paradox that to be present, I step in.  It’s a paradox that to move forward, I need to be present.  As story teller Gioia Timpanelli says, when we find ourselves in the place of paradox, we are in the presence of truth.

When I’m not present, I’m not really moving forward at all.  I’m actually fleeing the moment, trying to jump over it and into the future.  This creates the sensation of going fast — we see it all around us in our culture — but it’s only the illusion of moving forward.  It’s what astrologer Caroline Casey would call the “toxic mimic” of moving forward.

I find myself is this situation often.  This is why Nia is my practice.

Nia invites us to connect with sensation, and sensation is someting we can only experience in the present moment.

By stepping into the presence sensation again and again, I create for myself a sanctuary, an energetic state of being that is both a shelter to rest in and a vessel in which I am carried and moved forward each moment into the present.

Nia invites us to move forward again and again into the sanctuary of the moment, to move forward again and again into the sanctuary of the joy of movement, and to move forward again and again into the sanctuary of the body’s way.

Come, return again to the sanctuary of your holy, whole self — here, now — and from this very moment, this very body, move forward and step into the precious life awaiting you.

*       *       *

Come dance with us this New Year’s Eve morning and through body-based inquiry set your intent for moving forward and stepping into the new year and help create the class foci cards for 2010.  Thursday, December 31, 9:30-11:00 am, $12, at The DanceSpace in Ashland, Oregon.

I’m not ready for Hanukah

I imagine the Jews of the second century BCE weren’t ready either.  Just like now, it was the darkest time of the year — the new moon closest to winter solstice.  It was the darkest time spiritually, too, for the eternal flame in the temple was about to go out.

What does that mean to believe the eternal flame is about to go out?

It means that there are times when the precious temple of the body, the holy temple of the psyche, the beating temple of the heart, the winged temple of the spirit are sputtering, afraid, under-nourished, trapped in scarcity — and that the body, mind, heart and spirit are, like those old time Jews and like all our ancestors at some point, fighting a civil war among themselves, lost in that which we call darkness, searching for home.

But the light came in, whatever that means, and it came in during the darkest times, and the light kept expanding.  And so the temple, whatever that is, was rededicated.

This Hanukah, as I light the candles, first one, then two, and so on, I illuminate the intent to receive during this dark time the expanding light within the holy temple of my being and within the holy temple of the whole world, and to rededicate myself to life and to the mystery — whether or not I am ready.

Suppleness was the focus of class today.

“Supple” is from the Latin sub + plicare, meaning “to fold under.”  It’s related to ”pliable,”  as in the ballet movement, plié, which in French literally  means “folded”or “bending” to describe how the knees bend.

The word “suppleness” even sounds supple.  The sound of lippy “p”s rolling into the tongue-y “l” and ending with a soft “ess.”

Suppleness is a desirable quality in the body.

The structure of the entire body, every cell, every organ, every muscle, every bone, is held together by a tough but elastic fiber called connective tissue — think gristle in a steak or strands of gluten in bread dough.  Connective tissue (also called fascia) is comprised mostly of water, which we call the fluid matrix.  It’s the same fluid as as our cerebrospinal fluid and as the interstitial fluid that bathes all our 75 trillion cells.

The fluid matrix gives connective tissue its fluidity, and collagen protein fibers give it its shape, allowing structures in the body to have form yet be free to move.  Everything in the body is moving,

Connective tissue gets stiff after an injury, or after surgery when the body makes scar tissue.  This is how the body protects itself.  The fluid matrix becomes viscous, like water becomes ice or like jello sets.  We get body work when we need help loosening up the tight places.

We want our connective tissue to be supple, with just the right balance of form and fluidity, with just the right balance of yang and yin, or, as we say in Nia, tight but loose.

Suppleness is a desirable quality in the mind.

A fluid mind helps me see things from different points of view, release attachments, ideas and stories that no longer serve and learn new things.  Flexibility of thought and intent help the brain and nervous system stay strong, smart and youthful.  As Nia co-founder Debbie Rosas says, “The nervous system loves variety.”

The more variety there is in the pathways the brain uses, the more adaptable and resilient the brain becomes.  We now know the brain is much more adaptable than previously thought.  Parts of the brain are able to take over function for other parts that are injured.  The brain can even grow new neurons.  This new understanding is called neuroplasticity.  ”Plastic” comes form the Greek plassein, “to mold or to form.”

Suppleness is a desirable quality in the heart.

Just as the physical heart and the blood it pumps are in constant motion, so my emotional body benefits from suppleness, allowing emotions to move in freely and be experienced, and then to move out freely when the experience is complete.  When I resist an emotion or hang onto a feeling, I become rigid and have lost my heart’s suppleness.

Suppleness is a desirable quality in in the spirit.

Suppleness of spirit offers me a world to live in where my uniqueness can come through, whatever that might mean at any given moment.  Suppleness of spirit offers me a world to live in where my local self easily bathes in the waters of the greater Self, and the greater Self easily pours in to the form of my local self.  Local self inhales and exhales greater Self.  Greater Self inhales and exhales local self.

Suppleness is a kind of compassion.