In a society that champions action, productivity, and general overdrive, engaging in and teaching embodied contemplative practice lives in the realm of counter cultural engagement particularly in the Western context. The work declines to buy into the normative expectation of life in a hyper busy, disembodied, consumer oriented world. In this sense contemplative practice is a form of activism, challenging the status quo and inviting the practitioner to examine a different path and value system that invites them into embodied knowing.
As a dancer, I push against the limitations of Western cultural norms. I engage in embodied research for skill development, expression, and as an essential practice for grounding through the everyday. Praxis in movement keeps me nimble. It is nourishing, sustaining and ever exciting to this aging body. It has delivered me from a type of self- disparagement that had been eroding my confidence in dance, as I questioned my relevance and effectiveness in both performance and teaching the form.
In the spring of 2015, while at Naropa University as the recipient of the Lenz Residential Fellowship for Buddhist Practice and American Culture and Values, I began researching and teaching a burgeoning contemplative, movement practice, which I now call MEISA; movement- exploration– imagination– sensation– awareness. A lifetime in dance, somatic and contemplative movement practice informed the development, which arose out of a questing need to know, move and live more deeply in the authenticity of the body.
MEISA promotes the body as the site and source for subjective exploration acknowledging that the body’s wisdom will reveal itself through intentional focus and attentive presence. The practice cultivates sensory connection and the kinesthetic experience to unfold. Guided and sustained exploration is designed to enliven a practitioner’s individual physicality and creativity.
The development of MEISA is ongoing. Whether doing solo practice, facilitating classes for older women or college age students I now understand that the practice/form is malleable, variable depending upon who is participating, accessible space, allotted time frame and available resources. Regardless of its evolving nature, there are fundamental principles that endure, and they include the following:
- Individual agency is primary.
- I advocate that students/movers listen to what their body needs, and to be responsive to that.
- They are the final arbiters of the movement. I merely try to guide them through an experience as I commit myself to being present and attentive to, and for them.
- I do not presume to know beyond myself/my experience and in fact look to the movers as partners in discovery. They are my collaborators.
- I facilitate an experience but am continually informed by their responses in embodiment, actions, drawings, verbal and written reflections.
- Cultivating community between myself and the students/movers and between students/movers creates an optimal environment for learning including exploration, creativity, and honest sharing.
- There is power in the circle of inclusion, which addresses and connects everyone to the energetic intention of presence.
- I allow myself to be real and vulnerable with the participants to create an environment in which they too can be vulnerable and share.
- Vulnerability and the necessity for respectful engagement are key to creating a safe space for discovering what is authentic and true.
As a dancer in my late 60’s, it is my personal quest and responsibility to understand what aging means in terms of my physicality; range of motion, flexibility, stability, nuanced expression, and the ways in which my attitude and practice have evolved over 62 years of a life in dance. In a culture that prizes youth (particularly in the dance world), older dancers face being marginalized with respect to relevancy, validity, and acceptability.
This disparagement of value mentioned above, weighs heavily upon me as chronological age is often linked with aesthetic and physical deterioration. Since I am a product of Western culture surrounded by the media hype of youthful beauty, I can easily fall prey to that view, disparaging my crevassed, gravity prone skin and reduced physical capability. Yet at other times I feel a temperate resilience accompanied by a level of vibrancy unmatched in my youth, and a hunger to explore the micromovements of physicality that have brought me to a new understanding of expression and performance nuance. I continue to find endless pleasure and meaning in dance and while I have negotiated injury and thus, diminished range of physical risk taking, I am also available in ways unmatched in my youth and willing to risk differently. My identity has always been that of a dancer first, performer, and educator. While I am ready to evolve in my understanding of those identities, I am not willing to let go of them because of aging.
The Great Privilege of a Sabbatical:
During my tenure as a dance professor at a small liberal arts college, I was given the opportunity for a sabbatical to focus on two interrelated areas of ongoing interest; the first was to consider my body as a place of inquiry with respect to the aging process through practice in MEISA and meditation, and the second was to consider the intimate connection between my body and the landscape by spending time meditating, walking, moving/dancing outdoors…
I arrived in Port Townsend, Washington on the Olympic Peninsula for a 3-month contemplative practice retreat. My days involved walking in and around the beauty of Port Townsend, which included extraordinary views of the Straits of Juan de Fuca, Admiralty Inlet, Port Townsend Bay, Cascade and Olympic Mountains, Whidbey, Marrowstone and other islands, funky streets with quirky homes and deer run amok. My long walks to, from, and within Fort Worden State Park brought me into direct contact with forests, beaches, and bluffs, and proximity to deer, shore birds, seals, river otters and more.
My sabbatical was intended to be a time for revitalization, and it did not disappoint. In Port Townsend I took epic, daily walks, coupled with a shorter morning walk along the shore (a few blocks from where I was staying) to sink into the sand, breathe in the salt air and move to the sound/movement of the waves and birds. My embodied research in MEISA took place predominantly on the shore, where it deepened through intensive immersion, evolving in meaning and form. If this sounds like an idyllic and privileged opportunity, it absolutely was! I had time to deepen my contemplative practice in walking, moving, journaling, enabling my inner and outer worlds to become more fully integrated.
Initially, I wanted to go to a selected retreat center to ensure a structured environment that would keep me on task with a daily schedule, Buddhist teachings and community. However, I found that creating a flexible structure with room for self-imposed discipline was an important challenge to live into and ultimately uphold. That said, I did not waver in my commitment. The sabbatical experience also allowed me to generate choreographic material for two solo dances, teach a handful of MEISA classes to several community women in a glorious park over-looking the straits (furthering my research in adapting MEISA for older adults) and later realize a presentation at an international Somatics Festival (virtually).
Reflections (Walking, Moving/MEISA):
I walk as neither a needy body or utopian thinker. I walk as one with myself. My self is finally unified by the walk. Brain and body become mind. And in becoming mind, I am mindful; I walk mindfully. And in so doing, I walk as One with Nature. (Pujol 7) Walking Art Practice
As far back as I can remember I have been a walker; the way it rhythmically organizes and integrates my body/mind, lubricates my joints, circulates my blood, enhances my breathing, and connects me to place. Walking outside makes me feel alive, which is why I will often choose walking over a car ride when not constrained by time. It is my antidote to melancholy and my medicine for most of life’s challenges, a daily dose of which keeps me temperate in spirit. While walking is a functional activity, transporting each of us from point A to point B, it can also serve as a pursuit in and of itself, without an intentional destination. In recent years this kind of walking has held increased fascination for me as a form of secular/spiritual practice. Ernesto Pujol, a walking artist and environmental activist writes, “But walking can also be a form of worship beyond religion, beyond theologizing, for a secular mind for which life is about life. That is the mystery of life: the meaning of life consists in that life is about life, and walking can be its metaphor. Walking can be the purest act of worship in the cult of life.” (76).
My sabbatical contained a mixture of both destination walking and walking as the mode of intent. In either case, I made a commitment to practice without the use of phone, music, or other distracting time pieces. It was important to breathe into a sense of felt time, letting it become expansive rather than reducing it into hours, minutes, seconds. I hoped my sense of time would unfold in relation to the landscape (interior and exterior). Differentiation between walking as part of the landscape rather than separating myself from it meant that I took notice of things beyond the cursory, stopping to attentively listen, smell, touch, see and feel. It was liberating. Below is a short excerpt from my journal:
Slow, quiet pace, I walk to locate myself.
I need to walk to feel a place and sense myself in that place.
I walk to feel my rhythm in the context of place.
How does place affect my rhythm and sense of well-being as I walk and notice
Kelp bobbing
A seal emerging
Gull cries piercing
Heron in statuesque profile, still
A blue/grey ombre sky
I referred to the writing of Buddhist monk, activist and teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh as inspiration during my walks. In, Buddha Mind, Buddha Body he discusses walking meditation as a vehicle for healing in the connection of body to earth. He writes, “Walking meditation is really to enjoy the walking- walking not in order to arrive, just for walking, to be in the present moment, and to enjoy each step.” (21). In his walking practice called, Touching the Earth he says, “Touching the Earth is to return to the Earth, to our roots, to our ancestors, and to recognize that we are not alone but connected to a whole stream of spiritual and blood ancestors… We touch the earth to let go of the idea that we are separate and to remind us that we are the Earth and part of life.” (124).
I believe that Touching the Earth practice as Hanh describes above, allows for the transmission of bodily knowledge – earth body to person body through direct contact of foot to ground. Ernesto Pujol supports this idea when he writes, “A step gathers as if the foot were a hand.// Whether barefoot or shod, the foot absorbs and stores the land.// It knows the land long before the brain knows through thought.// The foot stores an ancient form of wise no- thought.” (80).
Returning to the words of Thich Nhat Hanh, Ernesto Pujol, Annie Dillard, John O’Donohue among others, sustained and inspired my practice in Port Townsend and beyond. I wrote detailed journal entries, describing moments in praxis walking/moving, attempting to reflect upon and capture elements of my embodied investigation. Below are two journal excerpts to invite the reader into a sense of my lived and felt experience.
Journal Entry:
I push into the souls of my feet, anchoring down, stretching the muscles, tendons, ligaments that support, stabilize, and mobilize. I listen to the sensations that feel like gentle rivulets of energy ebbing/flowing/coursing through the flood gates for my feet to become malleable and receptive to what is taking place underneath, on top, and to the sides. Heat begins to build as flexibility and balance become more available. How can I release into and receive the information (needed) to allow my legs to draw up the necessary energy that will support my weight shifting and find balance in between the gentle falling from one leg to another? How can I translate that flow of cellular information to let my hips know they too can find ease and peace in the transition from one leg to another? When touching the earth my head floats off my spine like a sail catching the wind leading and stretching to find directional cues, sensing the forces that will guide and sustain my trajectory through space. When touching the earth, I am alive with gratitude for my facile body, humbly discovering its path moment to moment, day to day.
Journal Entry:
Gorgeous morning, fog blanketing the water with small windows of sun. Foghorn echoing. A shadow of a great blue heron moves my eyes from ground to air, its massive, rippling wingspan causes me to marvel- the deep throat squawking it emits in such contrast to its physical grace. I watch for a long time as it flies dropping down, then moving place to place. I find a perfect spot to move, watching birds, water, and fog waft in and out. The top of Mt. Baker, majestic in the distance, magically appears, hovering above the band of fog. I close my eyes and breathe in the air. I open my eyes and Mt. Baker has disappeared. I look to the left and the entire beach is now visible- a circular rebirth of place. The mood has shifted dramatically from mysterious shroud to sparkling glint on the water and sight lines clear. Movement comes easily to me with bare feet planted in the sand that takes my weight and tickles my toes wiggling in between the grains. I feel loose and ready. Only my scapula protest. My eyes are open and then closed, softening somewhere in between. Why close my eyes when the view is so nourishing and inspiring? The inclination to close- a means to feeling and sensing without visual distractions. In this space, my ears become more alive and a bit more dominant as a sensual feature. Again, gratitude is overwhelming. My movement unfolds as a kind of prayer.
There were a handful of times during my sabbatical when I questioned the relevance of my movement research. I wondered if I was merely being self- indulgent and doubted the potential impact, if any, of transmitting my experience into something tangible for others. Would I be able to translate what I felt and the insights gained into meaningful pedagogy for others? A whispering voice arose from time to time that gave me pause. However, after an intensely satisfying session and reflective writing, I would feel released from those worries. With renewed trust in the process of contemplative practice walking, and moving, I carried on with my individual, counter cultural endeavor and stayed the course knowing that my chosen, contemplative way gives me strength, grounding, and a sense of place in the universe. In Maria Popova’s words taken from her series of cards titled, An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days (see the Toupet Tit), “the stream of the true/is formed by/drops of doubt.
Below is a journal entry specific to MEISA that demonstrates the imaginative and sensual aspects of the practice.
MEISA Journal Entry:
I draw the elbows up wide toward my shoulders, which drag my fingers along my vertical axis. In this gesture I am energetically pulling/drawing my life force through my center, up and out the top of my head. It is here I sense myself (borrowing Thich Nhat Hanh’s words) as the “conduit between heaven and earth”. When my fingers touch the front of my body, I am creating a tactile aid that helps me associate and integrate my interior space with the exterior surface. I imagine that my fingers have a magnetic pull/resonance that speaks to my central axis of spine and nervous system, the flow of nutrients traveling upwards through my torso (like the trunk of a tree). I am rooted down yet drawing up nourishment in tandem with gravity in one way and in defiance of it in another. Alternately, when I lead with my fingertips (palms away from each other) upward, I feel I am pushing more effortfully my energy, my fingers/hands become a bud about to bloom rotating and morphing as the arms unfold, fully extending above, giving birth to the shower of particles releasing to the upper sphere, falling/sprinkling every which way upon me.
Practicing MEISA outside in the elements, is at once expansive and grounding. There is nothing quite like feeling the bright heat of the sun, or alternately the cooling mist of the fog and the full throttle, force of wind on your skin, pushing and pulling against you, while witnessing huge Cedars and Spruce above do their own dance in the elements. Distraction is always a possibility at any time during contemplative practice (the intent is to notice and begin again), yet it’s amplified outside. At the same time, the inherent movement in the elements translates seamlessly into bodily action.
Having a 3 month sabbatical with open ended time offered me a rare, privileged and magical opportunity to deepen my commitment to and understanding of contemplative movement practice. I am more convinced now with the advent of AI, than ever before of the fundamental need for all of us to be connected to that which makes us human; breathing, walking, moving. Embodied practice invites us to examine a different path and value system from that which is most prevalent. I truly believe if we become more sensitive to ourselves, we will become more sensitive to each other and finally, we will become more sensitive to the Earth upon which we depend.
Works Cited
Hanh, Thich Nhat. Buddha Mind, Buddha Body, Parallax. 2003.
Pujol, Ernesto. Walking Art Practice. Triarchy. 2018
