This Instrument Wants to Be Played

Answer of November

I notice my strong internal protest when spiritual traditions talk about transcending the body to reach enlightenment. I get it. We are more than a body. It isn’t our forever home. It goes back to dust. Perhaps, one day, human will even evolve to be light orbs. Okay. Possible. Even so, I am and will remain devoted to the body. How can anyone say it doesn’t matter? Especially this last month.

The body is one of the most profound ways we know ourselves and each other. It’s how we love and relate and develop closeness. Only 7% of our communication is done through words: the rest is tonality and body language. My mammal body = my teacher. Always. For me, it is never a distraction or less elevated/elegant than the mind. It is the way. Have you noticed that most (not all) of the ancient and modern teachers who’ve talked about the burden or ‘lower-class’ ranking of the body happen to be in male bodies or happen to not have any tactile responsibilities to a body other than their own? Just saying. I honestly don’t want to be meditating solo in a cave or even learning from someone who is that separate from community; I want to be (and am) a “householder,” deeply woven into the fabric of others’ lives and plights and joys. That doesn’t mean I don’t desire pauses or breaks or quiet. But isolation? No. Go tell a mother that the body is erroneous and she will clutch her child and bare her teeth at you. Ask a menstruating woman to ignore the body and she might laugh. Many female saints (Teresa, for example) spoke up for the body as The Path To God, full of ecstasy, pain and possibility. I want to be a volcano who knows how to both settle and spit, a rainstorm who swirls and cleanses, a swamp who transforms into a flowing marshland (thank you for that image Rebecca C.), a giant frothing wave who crests and falls over and over and over again, a hawk spreading wings, a fox digging down, a calm mountain lake at sunrise, a tornado spinning and destroying, a crescent moon shining in and for the dark and a wind passing on the message. Highest five to all movement.

A view of my living room. We have silks, a hammock and swings on rotation. Truly the best and only “toys” we’ve ever had. For all the beauty in this photo, please remember that our family has equal parts fighting, crying, be-moaning, along with mother-me feeling like I’m making mistakes every step of the way. Both/and always.

Earlier this month, I asked “How do we resist a sitting culture?” My explorations took me many places. Currently: My first born is teaching me a complicated dance I’m supposed to do on stage with her and others (!!) for the December play at her school. Eek! My second born is teaching me to play the piano. In both cases, my brain is working. I can actually feel the wheels turning differently. Hello left hand! It feels good and stretchy to learn, much like when I used to road bike in New York City and became so attuned to small sticks and debris on the road side that my car driving eyes changed. A friend recently joined an adult professional choir and it’s lighting her up from the inside out. These are all movements and expressions of the body.

This instrument—YOUR BODY—wants to express and move.

How do you want to play your instrument?

Guaranteed that most bodies don’t answer with, “Well, let me sit and stare in one direction at one object all day long.” :) We all have ancestral history of movement. We are made of people who relied deeply on the wisdom of the body in order to survive on all the levels. Yes, procuring food. Yes also, connecting to other dimensions and self and community through collective movement. The epidemic of non-movement is another way the systems have robbed us of our humanity.

It helps to ask myself WHY and HOW. Why do I want to move? How do I want to move? It isn’t a one-month challenge kind of question. It’s a life-long navigation.

It’s easy to feel like movement is extraneous or could be placed on the back-burner, and certainly behind more urgent causes. But the more flow within my body, the better I am for my world. My instrument is then tuned and able to listen and show up—as opposed to fizzling. I learn that over and over again.

Some resources. I was exploring sitting vs. movement in particular, so:

• Katy Bowman. Four of you reached out to say, “Do you know Katy Bowman’s work?” Yes, I do! Love her work and approach. I’m very inspired by how she normalizes movement, stacks it and makes it folded into every day and every moment, as opposed to blocked out “movement times.” Check her out. Super accessible. Sitting, to the degree most of us do it, is a slow slow destruction for everyone. We can find other ways.

• Wheel of Consent. I’ve rediscovered this work recently after learning about it 8 years ago (thank you Kimberly). It’s about tracking your own impulses and developing capacity to receive, give, take and accept. Very fine-tuned. Different quality of touch based on intention. Full of profound ripple effect in all parts of your life—not only in sex or plutonic touch. We all want to move differently and I believe this work can help you suss that out for yourself.

• Walking Recording. Thanks to those who wrote in with their recommendations. Many use the Notes Section of your iPhone: microphone next to space bar and you end up with transcription. Some people use the Voice Memos in iPhone, which doesn’t transcribe but captures the recording. One person wrote: “I also record my thoughts into the Clips and Bookmark section of an Audible book when I want to have a spot marked and highlighted for later.  I hit “clip”, add note, click on microphone, record and save.” *I don’t read/listen on Audible. Tried it and didn’t work for me (found it aurally overwhelming), but wanted to share for those who do. Many like Otter.ai. People like that you can send audio and transcription to yourself in many formats. Some of you like the app Noted via Apple.

I played this month with the simplest version: Notes on my iPhone. I feel weary of AI in general, especially after someone at a wedding recently used it to “Write about wedding gifts in the voice of Molly Caro May from Body Full of Stars” and, the robot came up with a tone so accurate, I cringed. So there’s that.

Here’s my unedited first explore:

Experimenting with voice texting while walking my dogs. I notice I don’t want to speak in complete sentences. I want to write poetry, walking, talking, deep breath, shadows lights, stubs on trees, little mushrooms what F it could be easy I might be attached to it being hard, are you attached to be at being hard I’m wondering about that spiderweb in my face again it’s so bizarre to have something receiving my words and marking them down. I’m used to walking or driving and speaking aloud a lot but never with anything capturing those words and so I notice a robotic quality in me and part because I am annunciating so that they’re spelled correctly and also, it’s just a new format and That is different. However, I have a text chain with five friends. Were we voice texts and I do this a lot there’s something though about it being transformed into a written word that feels different can feel my brain imagining the words on the page wanting to move them around, so I need to edit them as I do when I rates and hear this process, doesn’t you don’t rearrange words they come out of your mouth and they land and they’re there that is different and requires slowness. I’m not foreign to slowness, but I’m noticing I have less capacity for it. This is wild. I am so used to a quick out of the brain. I am so used to a quick brain and the pleasure of taking an entire paragraph or a portion of it and moving it around and mixing and matching and seeing how words rub against each other I like that I’d like it visually I’ve trained myself to do it and this oral sharing, but then gets translated onto a page. I’m starting to wonder is oral sharing even supposed to be on a page, that’s what I’m feeling right now or is it supposed to simply find the wind find the ears and then evaporate I don’t know this is part of my inquiry but I will tell you this I do enjoy walking, feeling the fresh air in my my lungs clear, my throat and mouth breathing because I didn’t sick and I am sick what does it mean to share something orally and have it not be written that this is the friction point for me writing with my voice, but I want to explore it

Translation: Does oral sharing want to be captured in black ink on a white page?

I wasn’t expecting that to surface and I’m continuing to walk with it.

Wild.

Did I tell you that Eula, Bo Neve and I drove up one dark night to find a mountain lion on the edge of our porch? Powerful sleek body. We sat in the car transfixed and, once it had run up the hill, we walked holding hands under the stars through the blackness over its paw prints into our home. We let our neighbors know the next morning and then they sent this photo from their game camera. Those ears! Shivers and awe.

Bodies feeling other bodies

feeling animal bodies feeling

animal bodies feeling

animal bodies

feeling animal bodies.

Feeling my own edges as I center the body over and over again,