by Julie Forsey
It was from Deborah Jay-Lewin, the 5Rhythms teacher from Findhorn that I heard the phrase ‘Flowing elbows’, and my dance completely changed. Part of my brain struggled with this, it stuttered and stammered ‘b-b-but my elbows belong in Staccato!’. My body knew what to do with the information – it let my elbows lead my flowing dance and showed me a whole delicious new way of moving.
This intrigues me, that in 5Rhythms we have the chance to unravel our ideas about how the body should move.
Our ideas might have arisen from a physical trauma in our past, for example ‘when I moved like that, the dog bit me’, or from an emotional trauma such as being shamed by an adult as we were growing up – ‘nice girls don’t walk like that!’.
Or it might be something our mind has latched onto in a 5Rhythms class like my idea that elbows were for dancing Staccato.
Throughout our lives we learn from these experiences and pick up ideas from the society we grow up in. These ideas become embedded in our bodies below the level of conscious awareness, and show as changes in our posture or habitual ways of moving. In 5Rhythms we can let in new ideas, which teach us a fresh, unexpected way of moving. We will sometimes feel resistance to this change when part of our body releases the old ideas: this might show itself as a physical discomfort, or perhaps an unexpected emotion. Or our mind might have a field-day and come up with all kinds of objections to the invitation to move in an new and unfamiliar way.
With 5Rhythms we let information in to our body, and allow it to illuminate those places that we have neglected or ignored, bringing them back to aliveness. With kindness to ourselves and with awareness, acceptance and permission, we welcome back into movement, those parts of us that are lacking in energy or are tense and stiff, thus allowing our whole dance to become enlivened, freer, more expressive.
As we continue our practice, we have the unexpected delight of finding that more and more parts of ourselves are coming back to life, a process of releasing the ideas and traumas that hold us back in our lives, a process of re-membering the Body, of creating a haven for our Soul and opening ourselves to Spirit.
For those of you who like to live in the moment and follow your flow, there are still some last minute places left on my weekend workshop ‘Body’, May 7/8. Come and join us for a weekend of softening, releasing and re-membering on the beautiful Kapiti Coast, just 40 minutes from Wellington. (check out cheap flights from Auckland at webjet.co.nz )
