Spilling

Once a month, a group of my girlfriends meets for an evening of conversation, writing and reflecting. It's called Spilling. I miss the occasion far more often than I make it, but when I am there, it is grounding and refreshing and all things my soul needs.

Last Tuesday night it was bitter cold, but I threw on my sleeping bag coat and carefully drove on the icy roads and met with the girls at a wine bar/coffee shop and we spilled about 2010. My dear friend Betsy, the "mother" of Spilling, supplies us with writing prompts - and this month she brought the prompts from Reverb 10. If you haven't heard of this - it's amazing. As the site explains, "Reverb 10 is an annual event and online initiative to reflect on your year and manifest what's next." Amazing. So reflect we did. And this is the prompt I pulled out...

Body Integration This Year: When did you feel the most integrated with your body? Did you have a moment where there wasn't mind and body, but simply a cohesive YOU, alive and present? (author: Patrick Reynolds)

Shazzzzam. Brilliance. And so spill I did, and upon finishing and reflecting I was so overwhelmed by 2010 and the topic of body integration. I thought about teaching movement analysis and intro to modern and watching college co-eds seek integration under my leadership (frightening!), I thought about the clients that I moved with and laughed with and once in a while cried over in a quiet empty studio following a session, and I thought mostly about pregnancy, and birth, and nourishing an amazing little human being named Adah. And how that experience in itself completely blew my previous understanding of body integration out of the water, how it shattered my concepts and rearranged my knowledge of the subject in ways I'll be trying to comprehend for years to come, and how no graduate training or clinical experience or life moments could prepare me for the journey of making, growing and nurturing a human being. And so I wrote, and I continue to reflect...

body integration in 2010

inner connectivity breeds outer expressivity. the mantra of irgmard bartenieff.

playing in the reels of my mind again

and again

inner connectivity. sinewy muscles. expanding. contracting. blood rushing, heart pounding, life living.

wide eyed, able bodied, eager and willing learners. searching for their own path, story, movement. their own way. breathing. exploring. moving. interacting with the space.

the space in our bodies and and in our minds and all around us. an affinity for space.

it was frightening and wonderful and beautiful and overwhelming. it was full in a way i had never before known, but stifled and hindered and frustrating. i couldn't express myself outwardly, no matter how connected i felt inwardly. my body was awkward and foreign and frustrating.

but born out of that physical frustration and perceived ineptitude...growing in the unknown caverns of a miraculous body previously so abused, underestimated. a living, breathing, pulsating, thriving being. keeping me from all that i know to integrate me - sweating, moving, pushing - but somehow reintegrating me in ways never before imagined.

integrating me in a way beyond my wildest imaginations. so strong, so unknown, that my doubt took a backseat to the miraculous wonder that indeed only God could do this

and it all seemed false. all my previous attempts at integration.

false and futile

in comparison.

in comparison to the sweating, screaming, wild, lovely, pain filled, horrible joy of that sweet little life emerging from me

i realized there. i have sought for bodily integration the better part of my life. and in one very, unexpected moment in a generally aesthetically uninspiring, sterile hospital room that had become the dance studio for my life, i found it.

the power of my body.

and, inherently, entertwined, embracing the power of me

for the first time. the first time. first time. a true appreciation. not wrapped in the size of my arm or the height of my leg or the strength of my core. but, instead, in a sputtering, breathing, living, emerging little life.

integrated.

and so i felt it. lived in it. emerged from it. and, now, on the other side, found myself in my tears. of joy. of frustration. of desire to do more, be better, love truer. tears of gratitude. for power from within, for the outpouring of love from others, for faith.

despair. attempting to embrace the body that now is. missing the body that once was. angry at myself for missing it. angrier still that i can't help it.

amazed still that my own body was and is the source of life for another. my body feeding your body, allowing it to thrive.

if that's not integration, what is?

2010.