I witness it in nearly every solo dance. Taste and feel it's palpability and presence on select communal floors. It can be fragile and fleeting, thick or weighted...this liminal space where ineffable mysteries rise and fall in a soulful dance of sensation, feeling, vision and sound.
Over the years I have observed countless movers unwind and release. Remember and reclaim. Dance by soulful dance, emerging from the depths, subtly yet perceptively changed by their experience. This in no way means they have reached a state of perfection or are untroubled or without challenge. Soul demands our full participation with ALL of Life...initiates through beauty AND pain...traverses the glorious, messy, wild and difficult...sometimes all within one dance. If we can stay with our present tense experience and offer our breath, gesture, and sound to the landscape emerging, we can weave each thread of our experience into the great tapestry of wholeness. Soul longs for this...for wholeness, not perfection.
"I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light. It is what I was born for - to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world - to instruct myself over and over in...daily presentations." - Mary Oliver
We can nourish our sense of Soul by surrendering to our dance or paying attention to our visions and dreams. We can sense it's texture in the realm of deep emotion and intuition...commune with it's depth in the outer landscape of nature or the inner landscapes of metaphor, active imagination, free form writing and art. Soul is ever present...at times elusive, but always waiting. Often within the liminal space(s) of the unknown.
The ability to STAY in the unknown is a resource we can cultivate in our dance. As we follow the rhythms of our bodies and listen to the wisdom being revealed, we may think we know what we're moving with, and yet, the dance may take us in other directions. The next time you enter your dance, explore staying open to mystery. Change your direction, follow a sensation, wonder and watch where your movement is leading you. Lean into your vulnerability, enlivenment or discomfort with curiosity to see what arises. Allow your body and movement to lead, trusting the process without willing, redirecting or even understanding what's unfolding in the moment. Dancing with Soul is less about DO-ing and more about BE-ing...open and receptive to the ever changing mystery on the dance floor and in life. This is my practice...will you join me?
Love, Teresa