Everyday Movement as Everyday Art

New Moon of November: Posture Prompt

Dear Newsletter Crew! I’m coming to you standing on my balance board doing hip circles at the start of an ultradian rhythm, in which I am choosing to focus on writing to you even though a number of surely delicious and wise voice texts have pinged in from my friends, even though our mudroom needs a tidy, even though I have 42 other work-related elements to tend to…. EVEN THOUGH. I am here and it always feels good to exist in the containment of this hour with you, this Monday, my writing day.

Laundry can be art—the folding of it and the visual product in the end.

I’m curious about plebeian (one of my fave words) movements—everyday ones, in concert with but wholly different from the intentional ones like a dance hour, hike, yoga class, strength building session, soccer game. These everyday movements are not the poster-children. They don’t get celebrated or glittered or brought on air. Last night, I opened our camping table and stayed up late folding laundry. An everyday movement. We are in the middle of a “deep clean, prepare for winter, re-organized the whole house” kind of moment. Usually, Eula and Bo also help us with laundry but everyone was fast asleep, my headphones were feeding me music and I had the urge to fold. Yes, to accomplish the task but also because I was enjoying the art of it! Colors, shapes, rolled pants, chaos into order, and the delightful end product that so clearly shows my daughters’ style preferences (as of now): minimalist Eula on the left, maximalist Bo on the right. P.S. I’m not a toxic positive laundry lady. I have plenty of days were it feels like a mountain I can’t climb, but I’m interesting in de-tangling from what society had told me to deem either important/valuable or nuisance.

Why does this matter?

I was paying attention to how I moved, to the pleasure of the micro-movements, the dance of this task, the breathing, the physical art of making this visual art from a pile of clothes. In my fantasy of older times (full acknowledgment that I sometimes glorify non-modern life), people hadn’t compartmentalized movement. They didn’t go to an 11am movement class. It was in-built into life—because, of course, most work involved physicality to some degree. I crave that more.

**Crowd-sourcing: I’m looking for a simple-to-use ‘voice to text or Word Doc’ recording program to use on my phone when walking or moving without eyes on a screen. Any tips? If so, please share in the chat or email me. Thank you, thank you. I want to experiment with writing by voice instead of by hand. We shall see. It utilizes a whole different part of the brain and harkens back to the oral storytelling traditions we all come from, so I’m curious.

Posture Prompt

Small scale and micro-shifts are the raw material of change. On this new moon week, can you find ONE hour this week to focus in on using your body as an art form during whatever simple everyday task you are engaged in? Can it feel good? Can it feel life-giving? Where do you encounter resistance? Where do you feel flow? What do you discover? How does your particular bod want to move?

Okay, everyone, go well into your days.

Love,