Picking up on a recent theme of synchronicity, another of the games Moss invited us to play was what he calls Sidewalk Tarot (or translated for the Brits: Street-corner Tarot). Much like a card reading, it involves holding a question in your mind and waiting to see what the 'cards' reveal – only when you use the sidewalk / street-corner as your tarot deck, rather than looking at the cards you are looking at whatever there is. It might be an advertising hoarding or a car number plate. Depending where you walk it might be an inscription on a gravestone or a monument. It might be a piece of litter. It might be words; it might be pictures. It might be subtle; it probably won't be.
I accepted the invitation. I don't have any burning issues at the moment, so I simply went out with the open question: tell me what I need to know.
What came back was essentially reassurance of the path I'm already on. It came at the roundabout, where I was waiting for traffic to clear so I could cross the road. It came as two separate advertising phrases on two trucks who had no relationship to each other beyond that they were queued one behind the other in traffic. One read "energy in motion". The other read "you will find more than just a door".
One of my key focus points at the moment is Tai chi. If ever there was a definition of energy in motion, surely the various forms of Tai chi are it. When I wrote my wish-list earlier in the year, what I said on this particular angle was "I want to learn…I want to find the door into Tai chi which still feels as though it is only half open."
Elsewhere on that list, I wrote: "I want to play, to have fun, to dance."
And so, in the nature of things, I came to 5 Rhythms Dance. When I say I came to it, I mean that I was led to it by my Tai chi teacher– but of course he already knew about my love of moving to music. When he introduced me Rope Flow, I struggled with it until I allowed the music in my head to match the movements and then decided to go with that idea and actually play the music loud and long, while rolling rope. That worked for me…and I'm loving it.
He was already being nudged towards 5 Rhythms by his own friends, but resisting. I took no encouragement. And he came along to my first session. Dipped out of the second – but then maybe it's not for him, maybe his role was purely to lead me onto the dance floor –where I belong – and leave me there. Or maybe he'll be back.
For those who haven't heard me say it before: I can't dance. But that isn't going to stop me leaping about on a dance floor. I did a few terms of ballroom as a very young child, back in the days when silver sandals were de rigueur and something to be proud of. Well, I was probably more proud of the shoes than anything I managed in terms of waltz, cha-cha or whatever else I was supposed to be learning. Like most people my age, I came back to the floor in the disco era, when you didn't need a partner, or to learn more than a few basic moves and you could hold your own in anything from Motown through Northern Soul to Glam Rock and back again. Then, I grew into other forms of rock music, and country, and old-fashioned jazz, and reggae – and decided I couldn't sit still to any of them. I still couldn't dance, but I didn't care, because I would anyway.
Then you grow up, grow old, and somehow find you've stopped clubbing and the gigs are fewer and further between – and you miss the dance. You dance in the kitchen, in the living room, at the office Christmas party, but it's not the same.
I didn't know just how much I missed it, until I got back out on the floor.
Before going to my first…I don't know what to call it…class? Workshop? Event? In these times such things are being run on a more gentle, open, less instructive basis, to keep us safe, keep us connected, keep us dancing in a way that we are happy to do. This is another of the lock-down gifts for me. I feel I am getting a gentle introduction to what is essentially intended to be a ritual, a prayer, a discipline, a practice…or something woven from aspects of all of those things.
Before I attended my first dance I read Gabrielle Roth's original work on the subject: Sweat Your Prayers. I found it complicated. I started taking notes. I'm re-reading, and am still taking notes. But I think she'd be happy to know that I didn't wait to understand before jumping in…because the book doesn't make sense until you start to move…
…it's the movement that allows you to express the energy, to feel it, live it, and – if that's what you want – to change it.
There are no moves to learn. No steps. No choreography. If it weren't gender-stereotyping I would describe it as wild-woman-dancing. Or maybe that's just me!
And it isn't just women – though my local workshop does seem to be largely female. Maybe we're just more willing to be vulnerable. There is something vulnerable about walking out onto a dance floor – to music you have no prior knowledge of – and being asked to just follow your body. Let your feet lead. Let your hips lead. Let your brain take the night off, allow the music to by-pass the mind and just go with it.
Roth's book isn't so much an instruction manual as an explanation of what might be happening if you give yourself up to 5 Rhythms. She equates each of the rhythms with aspects of personality, and combinations of those aspects. Although she calls them archetypes she's clear to say that they are not single personality types, rather they are aspects that we all have in differing ratios at different times.
This isn't a book review – so I'll let you check out the full explanations for yourself.
For me it was just the absolute epiphany of being back on the floor. At my first event the music was a mixture of lots of stuff that I mostly didn’t know...I recognised some Bob Marley and a bit of old fashioned rock’n’roll... there was lots of drifty Indian music, some African drumming...the “chaos” section was well outside my preference zone, a bit trance as in the kind of thing folk tripping on ecstasy were probably listening to long after my time.
What I knew what that it had been too long a time since I had spent two solid hours (barring 2-minute breaks to slurp, in this case, water) leaping about, writhing about, what-ever-ing about on a dance floor – and it did so much good.
Journalling the following morning, I wrote: I felt empty. And then decided that cleared was a much better word.
Walking back with my friend, he tried to talk to me about what I made of it and it was like... (sounds at this point as though I’ve been tripping, let me just say no drugs at all were involved!)...it was like I understood the words but the sentences made no sense. I worked out afterwards that I had said it all on the floor. I’m told that one of the first questions a native American shaman will ask when a person seeks healing is “When did you stop dancing?’ I knew when I stopped dancing, and why, and I had recently started again – but then I worked out that the last time I was actually up on a dance floor in a room full of other people was Xmas 2016 and that is way too long!
I left (and re-found) a lot of stuff on the floor during that first session.
My second attendance was yesterday. Two friends had said that they would come along and for different reasons didn't do so. Blessings come in all guises. I want to dance with each of these people and know that I will, but yesterday was an opportunity for me to take to the music knowing that there was no-one in the room whose opinion mattered to me. It was a room full of open connection and self-contained free-expression. That sounds like a contradiction in terms but isn't really…we are our most free when we allow our self to be the only limit, the only container, when we ignore the expectations of others.
One friend who couldn't make it had said that she wanted to see that side of me.
Last night the rhythms were what they always are: Flow, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical and Stillness. This time chaos was more jazz-improv than trance and spoke more to my sensibility. Interesting that even our chaos is personal. And in the coming together after the stillness the words spoken most often were gratitude and 'thank you'. The closing thoughts, I hesitate to call it a prayer, but of course the whole thing is a prayer, were about accepting our gentleness and our vulnerability.
And I'll say it again: there is nothing more vulnerable – or more freeing, exhilarating, joyful – than forgetting your inhibition and inability and just stomping, floating, meandering about on a dance floor with a bunch of beautiful people who are also only there to dance.
~ / ~
There is a coda to all of this. A little side-step, if you will. I'm currently reading a book which sets out to debunk the myths of the Law of Attraction. Not the Law itself, just the myths about it. One of the things the authors say, is that the Law of Attraction, can only work in conjunction with a few other laws – one of which is the Law of Allowing. We have to allow things to happen. If we're not allowing then we're resisting and, in my way of thinking, Spirit just says 'oh,ok…you weren't serious about it' and wanders off to helps others who are serious about their desires. I mention this because it relates to my own allowing / resisting tendencies.
As I've hinted above, there being no-one in the room I knew, freed me to be more of me. I could allow my dance to be what it wanted to be. I found that I allowed aspects of Tai chi, in particular aspects that I need to work on, into the dance. Having done that, I'm thinking that maybe now I can allow aspects of the dance into my Tai chi.
Energy in motion – you will find more than just a door.
~ / ~
My local 5Rhythms classes are run by Mary Hedger. 5RHYTHMS® (maryhedger.com) Or web search "5 Rhythms" to find local to you.
Books:- Sweat Your Prayers, by Gabrielle Roth // 16 Seconds, by Pam Lidford & Sandra Stocks
