2009 05 24
Brothers and Sisters,
The Sunday Morning Church of ATTENTION
I recently attended a seminar on body mind integration. I had to fill out an application and be chosen in order to attend. I was unsure of the intention of the seminar, but I wanted to meet the leader, an innovator in conscious dance, and the questions were fascinating.
Have you had experiences with awareness based movement?
- What were your experiences with those body-based approaches?
- Do you have a regular movement practice?
- Assess your level of being “in your body”
- What does it mean to be “in the body” to you?
- What feelings are you most uncomfortable with?
- What feelings are hardest for you to access?
- Have you experienced significant loss recently?
The theme was experiencing emotions, with an emphasis on loss. We used a poem and deeply spiritual music to experience grief, and used our bodies to recreate the state in a dance. We then created a drawing expressing our feelings.
This was an exploration in how the body fixes attention.
Was there a specific place where the grief resided?
What happens in your body as you recreate or re-experience the grief?
We were encouraged to dance, to move, to use our voices to express ourselves. All day we were in silent mediation toward each other, no side talking.
I have lost close friends, some of whom have died, both parents are dead, favorite pets lost or died, money (a type of security) lost, but my attention turned toward what I have lost of me.
I like my emotions. I actually said to the group when asked about how I feel about emotions said, “I love emotions.” Well after we re-experienced Fear, the step after Grief, I recanted at the final sharing “I accept emotions.” And it was here that I recognized that my losses were not all of others, but of my aging. The gradual hearing losses, hair losses, needing reading glass, the games I no longer compete in, and the friends I wish I could share this process of aging.
I know it’s all where I put my attention, and not where the attention fixes.
It’s all in appreciating the changes.
It’s a learning experience to find where grief and fear reside, because beside them resides joy and love.
We may lose youth on the exterior, but I hope none of us lose our youth on the inside.
Namaste from an alive alert enthusiastic Gary C.
