Inside Out

Spine

Longing (Part 3)

Longing.
      the final time,
to be that part of me lost at birth
longing.
       ringing over splendid chiseled houses,
echoing thoughts reminiscent of ...
longing.
        to fill your bottled youth
 with bony fingers and sunlit dawns
longing.
        where does my love take me?...
raging into silent troughs,
fixing a stare right through you,
reserving the right to be under missing toes
longing.
        your magic beauty stuck me together when I fell at midnight into the rolling mass
longing.
longing.
         would you marry me if I got it wrong?...

Somewhere in there...

Returning to that which knew me

A Picture for You and Me...

We have never stayed home long enough to experience the truth about ourselves - Erich Schiffmann

Following a week of fruitful exploration - full of challenges, surprises and creative inspiration, with the body fending off illness, I am constantly reminded of the need to slow down and find comfort in stillness. I love to start a movement practice simply tuning in to the sounds around me; the wind tumbling down the chimney, wailing trees, muffled sounds of strangers outside, lawnmowers firing in the distance…Can I listen to each sound without judgment, without projection? Can I sit in this space between sounds for just a fraction before moving on.. Can my body respond rather than react? How does the environment provide me with creative choices? I often find that moving from this place of deep listening and  awareness  serves to open the gates to deeper emotions and residues latent in the body. After a long period of slow sustained movement, a familiar pattern comes - my left arm delivers slow, wide circles, my right arm reaches towards my belly and the felt sense in my body is of being a child again as the words trickle out…“I remember running around the garden with abandonment, unconfined. To be who I wanted to be. I just wanted to dance…I denied it to myself…now I need to move in stillness”. What becomes clear in my movement practice is the need for assimilation and integration, of finding equilibrium and quietness in my body. Taken from a Tamalpa Life/Art perspective, I ask, how can I bring that stillness, quietude and deep grounding that I feel when I am dancing into my life? For me, it means responding rather than reacting to challenges and emotional turbulence, feeling centered within myself, seeking and finding interests in the small and beautiful parts that inform the whole and simply slowing down with integrity and awareness, honoring my physical, mental and emotional limits…walking slower, cycling slower, swimming slower, practicing asana slower - resisting the desire to become complacent and sloppy! Arriving at the end point in my movement, a subtle spiraling of the tailbone, I am reminded of a beautiful poem by Gary Snyder, “Marin - An”:

Sun breaks over the eucalyptus
grove below the wet pasture,
water’s about hot.
I sit in the open window
and roll a smoke.

distant dogs bark, a pair of
cawing crows; the twang
of a pygmy nuthatch high in the pine-
from behind the cypress window
the mare moves up, grazing.

a soft continuous roar
comes out of the valley
of the six-lane highway - thousands
and thousands of cars
driving men to work

Scribbles in my Shadows...

Do I Need to Understand?...

With my roots sinking further into the earth, the relationship between my left and right reaching a sweet compromise, these last few weeks have seen my focus shift from exploring the emotional body to working within a more creative sphere. What becomes obvious as I move is a need to give birth to the tightly woven words in my body waiting for their narrative, their protagonist to come forth and bring them to life. What fascinates me when working with language and movement is the free flowing repetition of words, sentences, images and patterns of response that can be highly tuned and used as creative tools within the exploration of personal mythology. Repetition provides a kind of layering effect, a synthesis or chiseling down of the therapeutic and creative process and becomes a way to de-center, inviting one to transcend deeper into the identified issue and explore, extrapolate, edit, re-edit….!! Aswell as allowing for refinement of movement, repetition grants access into a rather indeterminate space (again and again my body arrives in this space!) between words, images and the  origin of movement. I find myself consumed and fascinated by this space, that is, when the aesthetic experience has been broken down so profoundly, one is left with almost raw and somewhat intangible emotion and product. The abstraction and poeticism that punctuate these spaces provide reference points for exploring my own narrative, albeit it in syntactical confusion, and raise many important questions on the validity of the aesthetic experience in one’s exploration of the self: a subject that seems to keep coming back to me in new ways, shapes and forms  over the years. Writing from a movement therapy viewpoint rather than a performative one, I ask myself, do I have to understand the nature of my words? Does my witness have to understand them? Is there infact deeper meaning in seemingly translucent words pieced together in seemingly disparate ways, or do they arrive solely from the memory bank as records, snapshots of memories, traces of things past?…Can the body fill the gap between words and their meaning, subject / object, or further serve to layer them? Or can I trust that these words don’t need to be understood, that the wisdom of the body is enough in releasing them? And so I am reminded by a quote of Lao Tzu; 'Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is enlightenment'...yet right now I arrive at my own question, my own impetus for further explorations, do I need to really understand?…

A day like no other...

Working with narrative and movement, exercising the vocal cords, reaching in to find and untangle those complex,  beautiful and difficult words waiting to be born. Where do they come from? Where are they going? Can I find a pattern with my words and my body? Can I weave between these frayed edges, drawing my own pathway through a puzzle with disparate beginnings, indeterminate questions and gaps punctuated with silence. How I love those sweet and unnerving moments in movement! The confrontational places that ones body is invited into - the place where you cannot walk away from. Once upon a time I drew a simple line in my sketch book with the words, ‘today is like a day of no other’…. perhaps an obvious statement, but its sheer simplicity intrigues me each day I arise into my body. Surely today is really a day like no other! What happened today in my practice? I immersed myself in the ‘other’, the space between the familiar and the unfamiliar, the stretch in my body, the conflict and delicate poeticism between pushing, pulling, wrapping, unwrapping and clinging and pushing away. Always its comes back to finding the sweet mid point- the balance between extending and softening. Can I find strength in my body with a outer softness, a receptivity to what unfolds? Can I find balance between drive and rest? Often forfeiting the need to slow down to push myself to my physical edge, I drop deeply into a place of distance from my my path, from my creative impetus. Today was a day like no other…today I gently pulled back the reins, tweaking my awareness to deep listening. My body tells me its tired, its muscles are a little grumpy…what can my narrative tell me on a emotional level? Extending between left and right, rushing forwards and backwards, coming off centre I still feel largely in transition, longing for my tribe of dancers in California, missing my time on Lamma, re-adapting to finding my feet in the UK, keeping my focus on my creative projects, whilst filling the need to support myself.  To feel the emotions becomes an important part of the movement and healing process as it allows both objectivity with out letting an emotion ‘define’ one, and also allows for a patch of exploration to fully explore the feeling. Can I find a movement in my body, a stroke in my brush, a word on the page that ‘moves’ this feeling without losing sight of it? That allows for progression without regression? Lets see what unfolds these next few weeks!

There is a space underneath this...

Deep thanks to all you lovely peeps who avidly follow this blog, for your enthusiasm and positivity. Watch this space for upcoming creative projects currently in the working!

Extending into Space

My soul feels so nourished being back in Scotland - my eyes have the space to stretch out, my body feels lighter with the comfort and knowledge that I can extend without fear of being crushed, consumed by others in close proximity. The mystheticism of Scotland often captures me unaware as I find myself dancing  in distant memories from childhood, from a sense of freedom at being able to run around in nature unconfined. My lungs feel more open, my breath sinks deeper into the abdomen, away from the heavy pollution of Hong Kong. Returning to England was a decision my body made for me months ago in Canada, a decision that my ego fought against furiously, not quite knowing why, understanding why, but with the trust that I had to follow this leap of faith. I feel more rested and peaceful being on home soil, as if my legs needed this connection with my biological home, and yet why is this need so poignant? To be close to family and friends, to confront old shadows that were abandoned in hope of disintegrating with distance? A sense of not knowing fragments from my own personal history - my family roots? Or does it extend deeper than that - is it some kind of primeval need in the body, to return to the centre, the seed of existence - the mothers womb?  My own movement studies into the body provide signpost in this direction, working in close conjunction with the imaginable realm, abstract images of fetus’s, often painted with tenderness dance their way onto my page and a sense of retroversion encapsulates me. The theme of darkness and light - a fitting one with the arrival of the spring equinox, find their way into my own mythology, to the need of wading into the murky waters, the shadows and surrendering to those dark forces that are needed to help us grow and move into light. My time in Asia, albeit full of light and joy was a symbolic stepping into these dark forces that has shaped my past, my belief systems in so many different ways in my life. The trust in my body to guide me was my savor in  enabling me to surrender to that which was, to let go of people and places and allow myself to feel the light that exists deep underneath these shadows. Perhaps the need to return to my biological home has been a metaphorical conclusion of this journey through darkness and light - a stepping stone into this new space of clarity and indeed a wider, fresher, brighter space within myself and the knowledge that anything is possible!…

Stepping Inside

Rolling into my secret with a curious body, I feel even day that I am getting closer to uncovering some inner sourced memories in my body, unsure of where they come from, what they mean. Reaching a heightened state of awareness and sensitivity in the body can sometimes be both exhilarating and totally overwhelming, especially being outside the witness circle. For myself, it provides me with the leverage to move deeply into my own subtle body and explore the natural state that resides under muscle tension, resistance and indeed the emotional body. Working with the spine this week, wringing away tension, potent images have been fluidly emerging, words strung together in syntactical confusion, presenting signposts; spaces for me to fill in the gaps. Metaphysical questions of existence permeate my explorations…what direction is my body going, where did it come from, what has been past on from ‘previous’ lives? How can the body move when a memory emerges - when one senses an event without the color? What is one’s relationship between our memories and / or our lost reel of images and our sensing body and how do they interact? Important and equally confusing questions in need of further explorations. As Johanna Paungger states, ‘Everything in the universe is in motion, nothing is permanent, fixed, unchanging. From all the suns, right down to the smallest cell - everything is born, grows, passes over  into maturity and death, only to awake in another life form, another light’. A glimmer of my recent images:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Returning

Awakening at that hour of stillness and quietude before the sun has stretched, the air wringing itself of sleep, silence enshrouds me. Being back in the country, in my motherland, I have a yearning to write all day, to gather my feelings and synchronize rise them with my breath, to blow them into the air with abandonment and hope, to chisel the words my body aches to release. The dance of return, a beautiful metaphor for the carving of my path forward. Four years ago I did indeed return home, locking myself away in my words, I wrote my MA thesis about a boy yearning to reach the centre of his country - his heartland, his existence, the centre of language…The Heart of the Heart of the Country. I too yearned to reach the heart of….something, breaking down and reassembling the aesthetic experience as if this relationship with the text was somehow teaching me on a profound level, (only to become obvious years later) about the reversals and complexities of being.
    With movement and growth, I arrive once again at this heart point, journeying to the centre of my body to unravel the creative energy that painted these words on my page. I too yearn to find a place in the country - my roots, a meaning in that which unfolds in the magic space between movement and creative articulation. The synchronicities between art and life become poetic symbols for my own self-exploratory process. It seems natural then that my heart resonates with those words of four years ago, this time with the wisdom of the body. I wait with anticipation to see what comes to me, arriving at the heart, this place of ….

Finding Form in Lines...

Returning to Lamma Island, I find myself caught in a kind of indistinct space, fluxing between disparate feelings of detachment, of seeing my former home with new eyes - a new perspective, and alternately, a sense of awe at the beauty and serenity of this place. Having thrown myself into my practice this week, relishing the space outdoors immersed in nature and needing to integrate slowly and steadily, I feel the temptation to slip deeper and deeper into the web of narratives in my body. As I prepare to return to the UK, distant emotional residues seep through my muscles drawing my awareness to which body parts need love and attention - a sense of tenderness prevailing. I ask myself how am I able to apply confront, release, change and growth in challenge and what support is needed? As I set out to explore this through a movement score my attention quickly transgressed into a movement exploration focusing intensely on the concept of lines in the body and the relationship with the structure of words and images. Moving through the space in lines, experimenting with dynamic force invited me to explore how one can move in and out of structure with fluidly, precision and chaos. To what extent can I myself move in and out of structure in my life? How can I facilitate growth both inside and outside structure? Exploring movement on both a low and high level encouraged me to find a sense of balance between grounding and risk and welcomed the question, is there a shifting dynamic between my body and mind in structure?. Many questions in further need of exploration!
    The images delivered from this score mapped a new kind of territory in my art; one that is representational of figure and form rather than pure abstraction. Again I arrive at the question how does the body inform art and how does art inform the body and what is the interconnected relationship between symbols, the imagination and movement?…

Meaningful Co-incidences

Awakening on my last morning in California, I stretch my eyes out to the surrounding mountains consumed by mist, the sun seeking its entrance. A sense of movement in the air permeates, capturing memories, thoughts, reflections as they drift through the sky. Poetic symbols resonate my sketch book in the days leading up to missing my flight, inviting me to reflect on their metaphorical resonance and indeed, the fluid and cyclical relationship between art and life. The theme of letting go and dropping expectation has lead me to question how I can distinguish between gut feelings and desires? Exploring my own weighting on following my gut feelings, I have reached a beautiful point in my practice where my art informs my life as much as my life informs my art. 

 

 

And Then...

Reaching to the sky, arms extended, legs rooting firmly to the earth, my mind feels at peace today, resting neutrally in the space between what was and what is next. The question of longing has been seeping in and out of my body this last week…what am I longing for in my life?, in my art?, in love?, in carving my path? Am I longing for connection, for understanding, or am I simply longing for the need and right to BE-LONG? To be who I am becoming?...Each day welcomes a deeper unfolding of myself, my longing. As I feel the seeds of my path drift into the earth beneath me, I relinquish the need to hold on, clinging to ideas, expectation…If I simply let go and drop into my body, responding to sensation, what space do I arrive at? This morning I found myself fully immersed in this majestic ether, becoming part of the natural environment as I moved and responded to the birds, the chimes, the wind ruffling the leaves, the distant hum of cars, water rippling, cats crying in need of love…Becoming this space allows me to perceive my sense of longing with heightened awareness, to understand the seed of fear that lay rooted at its core. Opening to sensations gives me presence in this space of awareness, inviting me furthers still to drop it, surrender, just let go…
    Switching between the feeling body and the imaginational realm helps provide insight into our own internal process. Once again I find myself coming back to exploring the aesthetic concept of space in the creative process. Transitioning from the deconstruction of metaphor that fuelled my Masters Thesis, I arrive at the same ‘space’, only this time from a somatic viewpoint. Fascinated by the images and words that stem from movement exploration and the space that subsides between movement and the creative point of articulation, I have reached the crux of my own direction into this work; a study of the synthesis of language and the flux between movement, words and drawing.

Drop It!

As the cathartic releases of the last 24 hours ooze out of my cells I am reminded of the beautiful words of Melody Beattie in her book, The Language of Letting Go: 366 daily meditations: ‘God help me let go of yesterday so I can open my heart to the gifts of today. Help me let go of my expectation and accept the gifts that you give me each day, knowing that there is beauty and wonder in each act of life’ (Beattie, 2000; p.24).
    Awakening with the sun, I forfeit my practice to drink in the pleasures of an early morning walk beside the water, already glistening in the vibrant yellow light. My body, exhausted yet tender riding a wave of quietude that follows a night of deep, long sleep, punctuated by ethereal dreams; standing in my closet I was sorting all of my belongings into show boxes - those of value and those of no value - letting go of all that does not serve me in my life. My body had gained a profound understanding of my need to relinquish expectation in my life in order to become more embodied, at peace and a better human being. On a physical level, it manifests as a inherent need to slow down, finding a sweet balance between external strength and internal softness. Always favoring to exert myself physically and strive towards a goal, my muscles increasingly invite me to let go, surrender and simply rest! Today  with a tinkle more receptivity, I have become more conscious of every movement, of the walk from the kitchen to the bathroom, of the sensation of extending my arm to reach a mug… catching my mind - gently reigning it in whenever it becomes tempted by the desire to plan, to fantasize - skipping forward or backwards. Again, I come back to the art of letting go, of opening to the experience that awaits:

Sometimes losing our plans and dreams for our future can hurt as much as losing a tangible thing. Sometimes accepting and releasing our broken dreams is part of accepting a loss. Let go of your expectations. The universe will do what it will. Sometimes your dreams will come true. Sometimes they won’t. Sometimes when you let go of a broken dream, another one gently takes it place.

(Beattie, p.24)

Just DROP IT!

Just Dance...

A paradox  to my last entry title, ‘Finding my Seat’, today I found myself in a space needing to move, needing to dance constantly all day, exploring and shaking away the emotion that was eating away at me from awakening. Today my seat was nowhere in sight….What materialized in my body was utter sadness of leaving California, and a deep realization of a loss of certain expectations. It became obvious that I feel a sense of difficulty in being easy in my neutral mind, preferring to ride either between the positive or negative. Today I was fully engulfed in the negative mind and I discovered and explored a wicked part of myself that I do not allow to surface, perhaps my not so nice ‘shadow self’! On the deck I danced the dance of anger and fire, my body propelling me up and down, slamming with all my strength, screaming out the twisted shadows that consume me when I let my guards down and express my vulnerability. Rolling and rocking, ironing out the anger, I felt utter relief in owning this part of myself and moving it out of my body, feeling the shape it takes in words and images. T r e m o u r …Sinking….follow this line…

  

Finding my Seat

Sitting in stillness, stretching my eyes to the horizon, spindles of light passing through me, I feel a sense of ease, openness and receptivity being back in California. To feel the sunshine on my skin, the rhythmic sound of water and clinkering chimes, I imagine every cell being nourished in my body, brought alive by the beautiful gift of space and serenity. My last month in Vancouver has taken on the dream like quality of a mirage - fragments intertwined  together… I feel utter compassion for being given the space and time to reflect and feel where my heart and feet are taking me. Gratitude for the huge hearts of my dear friends for their empathy, patience and openness; trust in myself for listening and integrating, rather than reacting in haste.
    Nestled in Marin, I feel my whole pulse slow down, arising each morning to consume my practice on the beautiful sunlit deck overlooking the water with majestic Mt. Tam beaming in the background! Perhaps my love of California is rooted in its very physicality, an energetic vibration that reminds me of time spent amongst the pine and lemon trees of Northern Spain. A sacred space in my heart that I am connected to constantly here in California. Jumping into my body, images and words have been pouring out of my cells, inviting me deeper into my creative aura. The dance of uncertainty and pathways still permeates, only now a softness and acceptance reigns. I feel blessed to be spending creative days with a kindred spirit, moving, writing and drawing. A snippet of the work...
 

Duality: The Shadow Self

Day two begins in restorative pose and deep abdomen breathing. Today I am going to wait until my body moves me - I want to discover where it is heading. Slowly my head moves from left to right, feeling the cerebrospinal fluid flowing, I track the movement and sense where I am holding. My right side (as always) feels heavy, planted on the floor sluggish with tension. I feel myself holding in my hands and pelvis, resisting the urge to break free for now as an image appears. Floating orange dots swirling above my head, directing me how to move. Feelings of distrust and hurt flood through me into energy that needs to be released as my head surrenders to the image and sways around the room, drunkenly swimming through space. Suddenly a narrative appears and two distinct voices permeate my body:

I ran away once, hid, pretended no one saw me. Until that day, BANG, I  appeared again on the door step of my own love. I pleaded with myself, “Let me in, let me in”, but you disowned me and slammed the door in my face. “I want you out”. I didn’t know who she was …was she me? I could not tell. All I knew was that I liked her, I hated her, I cherished her, I resented her. “I want you out” said she to she, me to me. I turned to you. “I want  you out”, getting quieter and smaller….when will the words  f A L L off this page? Maybe I can write s d r a w k c a b to conceal, will that work? Will they fail me?…

Moving between alternate voices, I found myself in the indeterminate space between my conscious thinking mind and my sub-conscious knowing mind. How can this be useful in terms of the life/art bridge? Firstly, it enables one to become aware of a deeper sheath - a part of ourselves that is perhaps in conflict to how we ‘know’ or perceive ourselves. Jung refers to this as the Shadow Self, as that which contains the repressed and wounded recollection from childhood. In Daria Halprin’s words, ‘the personal shadow from which no person can escape contains the collection of qualities and feelings that were not allowed - the negative emotions, the not-so-nice characteristics, the disorderly and chaotic, or any other aspect of our person that might jeopardize the well-constructed façade of the ego’ (2003; The Expressive body in Life, Art and Therapy, p.177). Accessing alternate voices in movement allows us to be consciously aware of the Shadow Self and thus begin to work with it creatively. To use Halprin's words once again,‘Our wounds when worked with imaginatively and mindfully, can ultimately engender transformations in ourselves and lead to more meaningful relationships with others’ (Ibid, p.178). Today's movement exploration manifested as a strong emotion being released through utilizing two distinct voices speaking together. The next step; working deeper with the Shadow Self to continue the search for resolution and balance...

Transitioning

Sunrise sailing through the Gulf islands; an ethereal picture of calm and transience. Again I find my feet stepping in new directions, to a new place. I am dubious as to what awaits me here…I have no idea how long I will stay, I feel right now  I must be in this place of serenity and quietness to open my life to the book that is waiting for my pen. My intension: to find a sense of balance and resolution in my body, to explore and discover what this next year holds for me and where. With increasing hurdles blocking my Canadian Visa, I awoke knowing it was imperative to find some answers in my body, switching off the mind and its logic, planning and foreseeing and instead sensing. Locking myself away from the external world for three days, I set an intention for movement explorations; resolution and exploring the dance of fear and uncertainty. What materialized over the course of the next three days was my rock, my savor in opening myself up to what I was feeling in all my years of moving across the world. Day one: explore balance and imbalance in movement. What does it feel like to fall, to be unstable, out of balance, out of synch? Is there a disparity between the head and the heart (thus body)?. What happens on a emotional level? After much experimentation with toppling, decentering and returning home, a narrative appeared in my body and through my pen. Walking forward, my head extended - leading with the head, I feel rushed…eyes leading I tune out my senses, not feeling myself. Where are you body? I am leaving you behind…where did you go body - I need you?

DROP IT

Developing the movement…my head pulls back and I walk backwards slowly. I feel fear, nervousness, trepidation. Shifting, pausing, stopping. Re-aligning head with heart so I can feel it nestled firmly on my shoulders. I feel my entire body ... What does it feel like to dance the dance of balance and unity? Swirling and running, jutting from back to front, left to right, my body wants to find playfulness in coming off centre - finding balance and then tumbling. If only I can let myself simply fall, to drop to the ground and surrender to the dance of uncertainty. Where would it take me? Today I found so much freedom in my own imperfections, a space of acceptance in my feelings of displacement and a sense of wonder of where my higher self is taking me on this journey. Do I have to confine myself to place? Can I simply be at home in my body? As day one comes to a close I am reminded of the beautiful words of Carlos Castaneda; "Any path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you."

Surrender

Tugging, tensing, twisting; my body finds its dance, its form, surrendering to all that is coming…releasing, inch by inch all that keeps me encapsulated in my protective shell; the rejection and suppression of my creativity. Each day, with intention and awareness my body moves more and more from its heart, chipping away its path, seeking acceptance in where I am right now in my life and releasing the need to achieve, to ‘become’ what is expected. So many threads of my personal mythology have bleed through these last three months; memories, heartache, bliss….what has shined is my fiery impetus to reveal myself to the world, to carve my path as a mover and a writer and to live with trust fully in the present. Dear body, you gave me the space, the strength to breathe again in all your capacity. You opened the door to the mystery inside, and now it is dancing its way out for all to see. I surrender to you body, always knowing I would someday become my desires…

                                                            Ode to ‘I’


                                                            I exist.
                                                           With a breath, my image fogs
                                                           With a step
                                                            I metamorphose ‘I’
                                                           With a brush
                                                           ‘I’ dissolve
                                                            And the world becomes me
                                                            Finally,
                                                           ‘I’ become ‘I’…