(No, friends, don’t get excited, we didn’t buy a shore house.)

But along with the suburban bungalow my husband and I own, there is another place—with smooth wooden floors and music constantly streaming from the speakers—that I’m beginning to find refuge in.

My second home is the dance floor, whether it be above an African restaurant in West Philadelphia, in a former warehouse alongside the Delaware River, or in the basement of a South Jersey yoga studio, whether for 5Rhythms, YogaDance, or Nia.

Once I remove my shoes in the entryway and my bare feet touch that floor, I am home safe. Not only do I feel physically supported by my environs, but a feeling of emotional security greets me in that moment as well. My fellow classmates and I may hug before the dance begins, and even if we do not, there is still a silent exchange of energy that is the catalyst for movement, for magic.

This past Friday night, I was “home,” in a Let Your Yoga Dance class at Yoga for Living. Teaching the class was Nikki, who had to jump some medical hurdles between late last year and now to return to teaching. I was thrilled for her return and was glad to see she had not lost any of her charming ‘tude while recovering. When her playlist clicked to Florence and the Machine’s “Shake it Out” as a workout for our solar plexus chakra, I loved her even more. Classmate Suzie and I just couldn’t resist that opening church organ music and began shaking the devil off our backs before Nikki even gave us the directions.

By the time we worked our way to the upper chakras, that feeling of safety and openness was strong—very strong. Nikki had us get in pairs and showed us some simple choreography to dance with our partner to a heart-stirring gospel song. I didn’t know half of the people I danced with, but I could feel my anahata chakra swirling in all its vibrant greenness, a flourishing vine wanting to intertwine with everything it connected to.

One of the last people I partnered with was the owner of the studio in which we were standing in. With her yoga studio as my home, she is its mother. Our dance was profound and heartfelt, and it brought us to tears. We connected foreheads during a move in which we leaned forward like arching swans, a physical gesture that reminded me of the preciousness of this second home.

During a final private dance prayer, my dance turned into one of incredible appreciation of this safe space, this home. It started as a reflection on the physical space, the floor that has supported my feet, the Sanskrit on the walls that has mesmerized me during my chaotic 5Rhythms trances. This studio is where I first discovered 5Rhythms; its physical foundation is my emotional bedrock. Oh, the places I’ve gone while dancing within these walls.

But then the prayer expanded into appreciation for a greater sense of home, the feelings of comfort and belonging that dance and movement brings to me. The feeling of leaving behind a long day of work and stepping inside the doorway—coming home—relaxing with and giving in to that which greets me.

Living here in this brand new world might be a fantasy
But it’s taught me to love….so it’s real, real to me
And I’ve learned that we must look inside our hearts to find
A world full of love—like yours and mine—
Like home
~ “Home,” The Wiz

However, the dance piece I saw this weekend moved me, not just visually but viscerally. It was a 25-minute long painting come to life, every step stroking my soul to the point where what I was seeing on stage translated to a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes.

The piece, Out of the Mist, Above the Real (a video excerpt is available here), was part of the penultimate performance of the Philadelphia-based Jeanne Ruddy Dance company, founded in 1999 and discontinuing this year. The work was first performed in 2004 but was obviously so well received that it was selected to be a part of the final season.

In short, the piece is a moving representation of artist Thomas Cole’s series of paintings, The Voyage of Life, which depict the four stages of life: childhood, youth, middle age, and old age. The score commissioned for the work was a combination of choral and Irish chamber orchestra music, both joyous and haunting.

The dance begins so colorful, a chorus of dancers guiding a beautiful blond 3-year-old as she leaps, runs, and skips across the stage. The scene is absolute innocence, this fair-cheeked cherub audibly laughing and giggling as she is guided from dancer to dancer. The ensemble is her support system, and they carefully watch over her, lifting her when she needs to be lifted, directing her where she needs to go. The little girl is dependent on these dancers but follows the voice of her heart. A woman dressed all in white—the girl’s guardian angel—stays close by the child’s side, a heavenly maternal figure keeping a constant, loving watch over the child.

In the second stage of the piece, the child has now developed into a 10-year-old girl. She has still retained much innocence, but her movement is now more refined; she is trying to find her place in the world and uses her support system for guidance. She dances with the ensemble, copies their moves, but is now able find her own dance as well. It is her time to seek out autonomy, testing the waters between being led and being a leader. The woman in white remains present.

There is a marked shift in energy between youth and middle age. Company namesake Jeanne Ruddy performs the role of Middle Age, and she is absolutely striking. There is no doubt the woman has become independent; she is a leader, and she is captivating. She commands the stage like a balletic bull fighter, a motherly matador with a subtle sense of sorrow imbued in her movement. Much of her dance is performed as a solo, but the colorful ensemble still emerges to dance by her side, and the guardian angel is never too far away.

Jeanne Ruddy photographed by Bob Emmott

When the woman of Old Age takes the stage, there is a profound difference between Middle Age’s dance of independence and Old Age’s soliloquy of alone-ness. With her long gray hair and thinning arms, the woman dances in front of a black backdrop, nothing but stars to guide her movement, the lack of others—the support system—so loud in the silence. Her dance is so much more subtle than the earlier movements of youth and middle age but is so emotionally heavy and laden with wisdom. When the chorus finally enters the stage, their brightly colored clothes are now draped in black. Instead of nurturing the dancer, their role is now to guide her into the end of existence. The woman in white—the guardian angel—offers her loving presence one last time, a reminder that during a time of great loss—family, friends, independence, home—the spirit is always there.

Photo by Joe Labolito / Philly.com

***

Why was I so moved?

A longing for that youthful innocence that never dictates movement, being able to prance freely in the park or wildly on the beach and being encouraged rather than scorned.

A recognition that the journey between age 10 and middle age is a long one, and at times I am still so very much a little girl trying to find her place in the big world.

A reinforcement that one day my dance will rise to its pinnacle, knowing it has only reached that magnitude through lessons learned, lives lost, and experiences treasured.

A reminder that we are infinite but not immortal, and although the spirit carries us throughout life, the dance will eventually slow into silence and stillness.

The dance reminded me of a 5Rhythms class I attended a while back, during which two new students showed up, two high school girls who looked about 15. Before class started, they stood in the center of the studio and practiced their kicks and extensions and straddle jumps and pirouettes in front of the mirror. I was nervous, because clearly these girls had no idea what this class was about. They were concerned with their form, and even when class commenced and we were all slinking over the entire studio floor, eyes closed, back, forth, up, down, right, left, the girls remained fixed in the “front,” eyes on the mirror, moving only the way they were taught in class and making sure it looked correct in the reflection. I think they got a little freaked out during Chaos, when myself and the other students have a tendency to go kind of trancey and spin around like whirling dervishes. They sat out for a while, then joined back in, only to stand in the back and do a silly line dance.

My first instinct was to be really annoyed with these girls: They clearly didn’t get it. They were too young to understand. I had a bit of this holier-than-thou attitude, like I was Queen of 5Rhythms, and they should be abolished from my kingdom.

But after I had more time to reflect, I realized that, 15 years ago, I was them. I came from a dance studio background, where jumps and turns and splits and extensions were only as good as they appeared in the mirror. When I first got to college and had time alone in the dance studio, I didn’t close my eyes and lose myself in the music: I stood in front of the mirror and watched myself jete across the room, making sure my back leg was in line with the front. That my penchee arabesques sunk low enough, that my back was straight and leg was aiming toward the ceiling.

And still, I realize I’m not even halfway there in discovering my true dance. Certainly, what I feel now feels authentic, the same way whatever those girls were doing during class felt authentic to them. However, what do I look like to the 60-year-old 5Rhythms instructor? Is it possible that to him, I am just as naive as those 15-year-old girls are to me?

Life experiences, challenges, wisdom are the foundation of any form of artistic self-expression, and it would be silly for me to expect those 15-year-olds to have some profound sense of self that is comfortable expressing itself through dance. Heck, even though I was one hell of a contemplative teenager, I didn’t express my emotions through frenetic ecstatic dance at the time. And what will my dance be 20 years from now? 40?

As I wrote earlier in this post, “It’s a bit cruel that by the time we reach an age of such wisdom and experience—a time when our dancing would reflect decades of memories—our bodies are breaking down. If only an 80-year-old could dance in an 18-year-old’s body!”

One of the beautiful things about practicing 5Rhythms is that I get to witness so many stages of life, as expressed through dance. On the floor are fresh-faced 20-somethings with clear skin and luscious locks, 70-somethings for whom each wrinkle and gray hair represents a story.

Individually, each of us is the main character in Out of the Mist, Above the Real, whether we are young, middle-aged, or old.

Collectively, we are the ensemble, the support system that encourages the dance and watches each other’s back.

The energy generated during this time together is the nurturing Spirit, and that is what remains in our flesh and bones even after class is dismissed.

During intermission of a dance concert I attended Friday night, I was asked when I started dancing. I responded that I was 3 years old, but that I did the standard ballet-tap-jazz combo that all little kids do when they first start dancing, as if dismissing my early involvement in the art. Small-town dance studio, nothing too intense. More concerned about what costume you’re going to wear for the summer recital, what cool jazz song your teacher is going to choose for your routine. Turns, splits, smiles, sequins. Ta-da! Jazz hands. Curtain call. Take a bow.

It was just my thing, I said. Some people played rec soccer. Some took piano lessons. I danced. Whatever. It was just an extracurricular to keep me occupied.

That’s what I thought Friday night, that dance was just “a thing.” I mean, it has obviously grown since then from “a thing” to “THE thing,” but why was I so quick to downplay my foundations?

As if guided by some spiritual guardian, yesterday morning—as I went into my closet to retrieve a shirt to wear for a 5Rhythms class later in the day—I noticed the program from my college graduation sitting on the closet floor; must have fallen when I was retrieving some old yearbooks last week. I picked up the piece of paper, thumbed through it quickly, surprised to see my name. Totally forgot that I had won a creative writing award my senior year. Hmph.

I opened a random box in the closet to return the program, but it was the wrong box. Instead, this one had a portfolio of writings from my past, essays and short stories and poetry from my youth, things I don’t even remember writing or items that I had thought went out with the recycling long ago. I found a myth I wrote in high school, a charming story about the origin of stars that my teacher said had potential as a children’s story. A horror “book” (15 loose-leaf pages stapled together) about a group of teens vacationing on a beach with a homicidal maniac on the loose. Stories I wrote when I wasn’t even an official adult yet that still speak to my 31-year-old self.

But, most important of all, was the handwritten poem I found. It was written when I was in 8th grade, 14 years old, braces on my crooked teeth and awkwardness in my gangly limbs. I may not have been the most graceful or elegant dancer at that stage of life, but—contrary to what I had just expressed last night about not considering my early dance a “passion”—dance meant a lot to me.

This has been tucked in a closet for the past 18 years; today is the day “My Passion” emerges from the dark.

Take me on a wooden floor,
Where I’m not human anymore.
My mind is far away, a distant place,
While my body is dancing in the same space.
My legs are moving; no thinking is involved,
I just keep moving; it helps my problems get solved.
The music is playing, the music I can see,
No one is around; just let me be.
I do all my turns, I stand on my toes,
I am lost in the Land of Sweets, but nobody knows.
Now I’m Odette, flowing along in a river,
And then I’m Aurora (who almost dies); I give a shiver.
My mind is not here, it is far away.
But my passion for dancing will always stay.

Source: Allie Brosh (hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com)

Right about this time 5 years ago, I was grappling with the decision to “retire” from teaching yoga after doing it for only half a year, as documented in my old journal:

“My personal practice has suffered greatly because of this new role I’ve placed upon myself. Before I was ‘teacher,’ I was a sponge. I voluntarily soaked up every ounce of yoga knowledge I could find, and I loved it. I loved reading Yoga Journal, I loved reading Iyengar’s books, I loved taking class from master teachers and learning just to learn. But now that I’m ‘teacher,’ doing all of those things feel like work, like I’m preparing from some huge exam.

“I can’t sit back and read Yoga Journal just because…. I read it like I have to download every article into my brain and remember the key points so I can recall them back to future students. It’s like required reading in high school. Remember all those great books we were forced to read that weren’t so ‘great’ at the time because it was required? And then in college, maybe you picked up The Scarlet Letter just for the heck of it, read it at leisure, and then were like, ‘WOW! What a great book! I didn’t want to put it down!’ The practice of reading is wholly different when there are expectations vs. no expectations. And that’s kind of how I feel, in a nutshell.

“Yoga is very complicated… it’s not just about teaching down dog and savasana. There are so many facets of yoga, very deep concepts that even I can’t into words sometimes. I just feel it. I can’t recite it back to anyone. And I had only been practicing yoga for about two years—seriously practicing it—before becoming a teacher. When I signed up for the teacher training, I thought two years was enough. Yoga had changed my life in two years, so obviously I got it and was ready to spread the love. But…I don’t think it’s turning out how I expected.

“I feel so inexperienced, not just compared with other teachers, but I feel like I’m a little girl trying flop around the house in daddy’s huge work boots. I haven’t grown into this role yet.”

However, just days after I declared that I was done with teaching and requested my name be taken off the teacher list at the studio where I worked, I taught one final, last-hurrah Friday night “happy hour” class. It is the class that has haunted me since, not because it marked the poignant end of an era or that it flat-out sucked.

No, quite the contrary. It haunts me because it was possibly one of the best classes I ever taught, and one in which—possibly because I knew it was my last one and all pressure was off—I stood at the front of the room as Me, Jennifer, Lover of Yoga/Movement/Dance, and not a lofty mental fabrication of what I thought a yoga teacher should be. I took what I loved about Kripalu yoga, blended in some of the things I learned during all the DansKinetics classes I took during my month at Kripalu, and topped it off with my own personal touch.

For once, the shoes on my feet were no longer “daddy’s huge work boots”; I was wearing Cinderella’s glass slippers.

Here’s what I wrote after the class:

“I led a really great yoga class tonight for Yoga Happy Hour. It’s after classes like this when I wonder why I ever doubted my abilities and passion. I planned the class last night as I was listening to some tribal drumming music. I was all set to teach one of my regular gentle classes, but then I thought, Hmm, this is Happy Hour yoga! I need to develop something upbeat, incredibly fun, and rockin’!

“So I based my class around specific songs and music styles, using the tribal drumming, of course (KDZ for all you Kripalu folks out there), trippy Peter Gabriel music from Birdy, and hula songs by Iz. I even managed to incorporate some Stage 3 Meditation in Motion elements in there. I found a really hypnotic song, led everyone through some basic sun salutes, and then opened the floor for some prana response. Man, what fun to watch! They did it!

“I think my plan of integrating several dance elements throughout the practice really helped, too, because I work really well with good music. I had everyone rolling their shoulders and hips and doing some intense hara moves like Breath of Joy and Pulling Prana. I even threw in a few minutes of walking meditation! I was on a roll!

“The best was hearing some feedback from Joe, a guy from Tuesday night Kundalini, who said the class snapped him out of the depressed/withdrawn funk he’s been in for the past week. And he really appreciated the chance to just sway to the music and hop around to the tribal drums and just get in tune with himself. Dude! That’s my main objective. I just want people to feel free.”

I guess what I’m getting at is that these feelings of “wanting people to feel free” are creeping up on me again, becoming especially intense nowadays since all I do in my spare time is dance. I dance before work, after work, every weekend, even in my dreams. I hardly go to the gym anymore; I wear myself out enough doing a self-led 5Rhythms practice in my living room.

The question is: Does this passion need to be a career? How formal do we need to be about something we love for it to feel validated? I remember back in 2007, I was all set to attend a YogaDance program at Kripalu, but I ended up having to cancel due to my husband’s 10-year high school reunion being the same weekend. At first, I was utterly devastated to miss out on this Very Important Dance Program, but as it turned out, going to the reunion gave me the opportunity to be a dance teacher in a different, real-world context:

“What I loved about this event is that I actually DID, truly, let my yoga dance. The music was pulsing all night and stirring the dancer inside to get up and move. Absolutely no one else, though, was on the dance floor, and I withheld. But the second I saw some random guy approach the floor, bopping with a beer in his hand, I leaped on the opportunity and bounded up there to draw him on the dance floor. It worked, and soon D., D., and I were dancing like crazybirds, just the three of us, in front of a group of classmates.

“It was fabulous music, the stuff I love, so I was totally into the flow. Before I knew it, I really was kicking off my shoes and letting my hair down. The wife of one of Bryan’s friends said that I looked like I was having so much fun that she couldn’t help joining me on the dance floor. She looked like an otherwise stiff person, and I was happy to see her moving and flailing and sweating and shaking. At one point we were even slow dancing together to some R&B song, because everyone else had left the floor. We twirled each other, tangoed, waltzed, me guiding her along the entire time.

“It dawned on me then that what I was doing there was what I would have been doing at Kripalu: dancing with others, being free, helping others let go and let their bodies take over. I didn’t have to be 5 hours away in a Massachusetts yoga ashram to let my yoga dance. I had brought Kripalu here, in the real world. I was exhausted, sweaty, smelly, and had incredibly dirty feet, but I felt so content and happy for following the call of music and dancing. Just dancing.“

One of my favorite “in the moment” dance floor photos.

Last week was my first Nia class in nearly two years, and—as I described here—it.was.GREAT! I overcame a mental barrier to get there and gave myself fully into the class, despite it not being 5Rhythms. Yes, it was different than what I am used to, but the bottom line was that I had fun. I couldn’t wait to return.

What I wasn’t expecting this past Friday was how open my heart would be. But there was a lot going on: I had just come from dinner with the widow of my former middle school principal, whose anguish over her husband’s death was still very evident; the “supermoon” was hours away from its monthly fullness; and a lightning storm was buzzing through the clouds. It was the perfect backdrop for an evening of raw, uninhibited movement.

Suzanne, the instructor, structures each class around a theme; this time, the focus was resistance, the dance of fear between holding on and letting go. To demonstrate, she had us clasp our hands together, fingers clutching onto fingers, pulling, grabbing, tension. Then, she told us, “let it go.” Feel the freedom in your hands and arms. What are you holding onto that doesn’t serve you anymore? she asked. Suzanne invited us to think simply, maybe in terms of your kitchen junk drawer. If you keep holding onto something you don’t use, there will never be any space for new, more functional items.

In a very staccato fashion, we executed chopping motions with our hands, banged on drums near our heart center, made punching motions with our arms. As we thrust our legs forward in martial arts-like kicks, I realized I haven’t kicked like that in a while, maybe because I’ve feared hurting my hip or because nothing like that has come up in 5Rhythms. I felt the motion coming from my core, my powerhouse. I felt like a warrior: Grounded, focused, steady. I was onto something.

Photograph provided by Nia Technique (www.nianow.com).

What I think I was doing was letting go, breaking loose the rigidity that often surrounds my heart. I was giving into the moment, immersing myself fully, no commentary about my insecurities running through my mind. It was at this point I began to feel empowered, surrounded and supported by my fellow classmates, my sisters. It was an all-women class, something that doesn’t occur often in 5Rhythms (especially since my main teacher is male). As much as I love exploring masculine-feminine energies through dance, I think the moment a man enters the room, women slip into a bit of a caricature: shoulders back, chest out, come-hither eyes, no matter how subtle and perhaps even unconsciously. But there was none of that Friday night in Nia. I felt unabashedly female.

As the class winded down, we all stood in a circle, swooping down to the earth, gathering gratitude, then releasing it up the sky with a nurturing “Ahhh” sound. I was standing across from an older woman who, during the previous class, was dressed in a blue sweatsuit and mentally struggled with the movements, still profoundly affected by the death of her mother. This time, she wore a short-sleeved pink shirt with sparkling sequins, and every time she lifted her face to the sky, I saw more light entering her spirit. It was beautiful to witness. It made me think of the woman I had just met for dinner, how much she would’ve loved this class; she wanted to attend but was hindered by a knee injury. When I lifted my arms to the sky, I sent my love her way. All I felt at that moment was love, love, love. I wanted to take the yoga studio owner—also a 5Rhythms classmate—in my arms and swoop her around the floor.

Photograph provided by Nia Technique (www.nianow.com).

Before our final moment of stillness, Suzanne closed class by guiding us backward through the “5 stages” of human life: walking, standing, crawling, creeping, and embryonic. We stayed in our “embryos” for a while, invited to move as though we were suspended in time. There on my back, I sunk deep into my essence, floating down, down, down into my true self, my root, my beginning. It was only appropriate, then, that this was when the playlist switched to the final song: Sarah McLachlan’s “Rainbow Connection,” a song with deep personal meaning for me, the song played often during my yoga teacher training, the song that always made me wonder, “Why am I studying yoga when all I want to do is dance?”

Like that, the theme of the class hit me smack between the eyes: Why are you holding onto all that junk instead of making room for new things?

The class stirred up a lot, and the longer I hung around the studio, the more intense things got. The studio owner must’ve sensed this “stirring,” looking me in the eyes point blank and asking, “So, what are you going to do?” as though she knew I have been longing to fly but afraid to take down the runway. She reminded me that my presence is strong, that she felt me in the room during 5Rhythms class last week (even though I was dancing elsewhere), that my “spirit has touched so many people.” The woman in the pink shirt was there as well, and she looked at me closely, as though she were examining my aura. “You have good energy,” she assured me. “I can feel it. Whatever you do, whatever class or practice you conceive, the energy is there. It will work.” And that’s what she said, just like that. Just like that? Just like that.

And just like that, I walked outside into a lightning storm, electricity circuiting through the sky every 20 seconds, a glimpse of the full moon captured with each burst of light. I could smell the ozone, I could feel the storm, and when I finally reached home, the thunder began rumbling the earth beneath me.

That said, this week’s installment of The Friday 5 is one video of the 5Rhythms, because, yes, sometimes dancing is so much easier than sitting down to write.

What you see here is a “silent” Wave—the 5 Rhythms (Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical, and Stillness) being danced without music. I generally prefer dancing with music, but after our big group silent Wave during Lucia Horan’s workshop last month, I’ve become interested in learning to dance without the “crutch” of melodies and lyrics. And as you can hear in this video, the breath and voice gradually become a musical score on their own.

It was late when I filmed this, so I am a bit tired and not as intense as I am when I dance first thing in the morning. My Flowing is drawn out and longish by comparison. You can see Staccato kick in around 1:16; notice how my movement becomes sharper, more exact? Chaos breaks loose at 2:01, but it doesn’t last very long (again, the sleepiness), and I surprise myself by rocking into Lyrical at 2:40, which finally eases into Stillness at 4:20.

The other morning I did a non-silent Wave. Here’s the playlist I quickly cobbled together:

Flowing: “Jewel in the Lotus,” Maneesh De Moor
Staccato: “Breath of Life,” Florence + the Machine
Chaos: “Firecrackers,” Cryptex Marble
Lyrical: “Moth’s Wings,” Passion Pit
Stillness: “Time,” Hans Zimmer (Inception soundtrack)

I admit, I use “Time” for Stillness over and over again. It is so simple yet so intense, and sometimes it totally “gets” me; as in, I break out into tears while curled up on the floor. I will not be posting that on the blog, sorry!

What song is kicking off your weekend?

I had one hell of a routine when I last wrote, and—as usual—things have changed a bit. What is good for me in October isn’t necessarily going to do the same for me in May, so I’m becoming more comfortable adapting to the weather, my passions at the moment, what my body is asking for.

Morning is a very sacred time for me, and as difficult as it is some days to adhere to my alarm’s 5:15 call, I really do appreciate and value witnessing the world in its early-morning quiet and stillness, before the car engines fire, the school buses groan, and the chaos of the morning commute drowns out the underlying hum of the earth.

When my alarm goes off at 5:15, I head downstairs, turn on our living room lamp at its lowest setting (bright light first thing in the morning is too harsh!), use the bathroom, and brush my teeth, the buzz of my electric toothbrush rather loud in an otherwise quiet room. My next stop is the kitchen, where I fill a glass with warm water, squeeze into it a slice of lemon, and take long gulps while peering out the kitchen window, observing how quickly or slowly the tree branches and leaves are dancing (to gauge the wind), the color of the sky and the phase of the moon, and—when I hear the familiar roar coming from the east—the make and model of the airplanes that fly over our roof on their way into Philadelphia.

I move to the living room floor, allowing my sacrum the freedom to pop into place as I roll around on the carpet like a cat, pressing my muscles into my foam roller and relieving the tension built up from either swimming, dancing, or walking the night before. The spine gets attention first, my thoracic region releasing into the dense foam, my heart pressing toward the ceiling. Next I focus on the gluteal muscles, the iliotibial band, and finally my calves, which bear the brunt of all my dancing and prancing.

Time for some physical therapy exercises for my hip, usually pelvis drops (pressing my lower back into the ground as though squashing a grape) and the quadruped (on hands and knees, extending opposite arm and leg).

The next area of focus is the neck. Ever since reading this article from the Annals of Internal Medicine about how daily home exercises are more effective than medication for neck pain, I’ve been using the study’s home exercise protocol as a guide for my morning routine (available for free in the Supplement section). I’ve never had debilitating neck pain, but I am prone to stiffness and soreness whenever stress kicks in (who isn’t?). I’ve found that doing these exercises every morning has dramatically reduced such tension.

The neck exercises don’t take long, and from there I move down to my spine, doing the seated spinal exercises I described in this post.

Once my spinal column is open and ready for business, I’m ready to let in some oxygen. Still seated, I do a few rounds of alternate-nostril breathing. This particular pranayama is so soothing, and doing it consistently makes for an easy segue into meditation. After my last exhale, I breathe regularly, focusing on my third eye. Meditation begins. It never really extends beyond five minutes, but that’s enough for now. It gives me a sense of peace.

After sitting for some time, I now gently rise to my feet, staying bent over in a rag-doll forward bend, maybe doing a relaxed downdog, gradually rising vertebra by vertebra. Standing. Ahhhhhh.

Onto some quick standing exercises before practicing the tai chi moves learned from my 10-week series. I usually do the form (the portion I know, anyway) twice before challenging my brain and repeating it in the opposite direction (starting by stepping out to the right rather than the left).

At this point comes the fork in the road. I am feeling rather centered, balanced, and open. Do I take this feeling outdoors for a walk and share it with the trees, the sidewalk, the chirping birds, or do I contain it and use it for artistic expression, putting on some music and dancing myself into complete wakefulness?

If I walk, I never take my iPod. The natural soundtrack of the early morning is too entrancing to mask it with music or a podcast. In the winter, it is absolute silence, a dark contemplative quiet where the snap of a twig under my foot sounds like a firecracker and a lone FedEx cargo jet flying overhead sounds like the Space Shuttle preparing to land on the moon. At this time of year, spring, there are more sounds (birds chirping, mostly), but at the 6 a.m. hour not yet “noise.” Walking at this time of the day is like watching a painter apply the first brushstrokes to a canvas, a stroke here, a color there, still creating, still imagining, still in development. It is the beginning of a piece of art, and soon the canvas will fill up with intensity, but for now it is mostly white space with so much room for expansion.

If I choose instead to dance, I try to follow a 5Rhythms Wave, starting with flowing music and gradually increasing speed and tempo. Great things emerge when I start slowly, and even if I have the energy to immediately bust out into Chaos, the Chaos that develops after it has time to simmer in Flowing and Staccato is always richer (and less harsh on my body). One time I danced two songs as part of Flowing and then returned to those same songs later—after Staccato and Chaos—for Lyrical and Stillness. I danced them in an entirely new way, my body fully awake to their melodies and meanings. Dancing like this in the morning can be just as refreshing—if not more—as a vigorous walk outside among the rising sun, chirping birds, and cool breeze.

At this point, I am feeling juicy, alert, alive. With the help of some coffee, a shower, and a dose of reality (listening to NPR), I think I am finally done “waking up.”

Wake up time = 5:15. Out the door for work = 8:10 a.m.
Anyone out there have a morning routine longer than 3 hours?!

(1) Laugh!

Growing up, my sister always had a knack for saying funny things to ease the awkwardness at family gatherings, so after one too many “You’re so funny! You should be a comedian!”, my sister finally said, “OK!” She’s a marketing coordinator by day and stand-up comic on nights and weekends. She’s got at least one gig every week, plus she co-hosts a weekly open mic night in Philly and just got back from the Bridgetown Comedy Festival in Portland, Oregon. My lil’ sis is such an inspiration; she just gets out there and does it, even if that means starting at the bottom of the ladder (read: redneck beef ‘n’ beers; small-town coffee shops) and working bit by (comedy) bit through the muck.

(2) Cry!

With the 100-year anniversary of the Titanic’s sinking a few weeks ago, the Internet and radiowaves were buzzing with news about the epic disaster. One of the stories I happened to catch was that of Wallace Hartley, the conductor of the Titanic’s orchestra, who led his musicians in song as the ship sank. This quote from historian John Maxtone-Graham was particularly stirring: “He was taking care of [the musicians'] spiritual needs near the end of their lives by giving them a job they could do that would fill the time. My conviction is it gave as much comfort to the men who were playing as to the people who heard them.”

The movie Titanic has some cheese-factor moments, but the clip above is a tearjerker. Now I’m wondering, if my world was ending before my eyes, would I dance to the death?

(3) Move!

I’m still not sure what exactly this is, but TaKeTiNa looks pretty awesome. Come to the East Coast (read: Philly) soon, please!

(4) Dance Walk!

I get the cops called on me for dancing on the beach, but this guy turns into an Internet sensation for chasseing through the streets of Manhattan. I love the concept, though; I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been walking around town listening to my iPod and have wanted to dance walk along to the music. (Secret: Sometimes I sneak into the wooded trail area of the local park and do just this! Shhh!)

(5) Read!

Photograph provided by Nia Technique (www.nianow.com).

While doing some research for my post about Nia earlier this week, I came across this story by Nia teacher Amy Podolsky. She writes about recovering from surgery and being instructed by her doctor not to do aerobic activity for a month. This was devastating news to a dance teacher, and her story here is how this limitation actually brought her closer to her body and spirit.

It reminded me a lot of what I experienced during one of my early 5Rhythms classes, on a night my hip was acting up and I couldn’t move the way my mind envisioned. I still had an amazing experience, though, as I documented in my journal:

I did not move as much as I normally do, but I was very aware of every movement I did make. Every finger flick, head roll, and spinal flexion was done with intention, and I became immersed in my breath. In fact, the teacher lined us all up at the one end of the studio and told us to allow our breath to carry across to the other side. “Move as though you are your breath,” he said. That was one of the most intense experiences of the night, and when I reached the other side, turned around, and saw the other students breathing their way toward me, I felt this surge of energy wash over me, like everyone’s oncoming energy was meshing with mine and making me feel kind loopy. I felt a deep connection with everyone for the rest of the class, and I became more open in my movements, more welcoming to the other students.

That said, I can’t wait for my own Friday 5 (Rhythms) tonight! Have a great weekend!

As I briefly mentioned in my earlier post, the workshop was more about self-reflection, self-improvement, and interpersonal communication than it was percussion technique. Of course, it feels wonderful to let loose on a djembe and sink into the primal sound of the drumbeat, but the way we approach drumming and making music with others can also be a great tool for exploring our interactions with self and community.

Jim’s approach to drumming has changed dramatically over the past several years. While he still reviews the basic techniques of playing the djembe, his workshops revolve more now around personal transformation than percussion. “Drum circle”? More like a drumming circle of life. He titles his events revivals, “bringing back an awareness that once was.” He compared it to performing CPR on someone who is unconscious: Revival is resuscitating with the breath, breathing life back into the spirit.

Jim shared with us his favorite acronym: WWBD? What would Bob Marley do? MOVE! He encouraged us to get our body involved in the drumming, more than just the hands. Feel the music. Move the head, the torso. Tap the feet. That wasn’t hard for me, especially because at times it felt like the floor was shaking, an earthquake with an epicenter right here in little ol’ central Jersey. I was surrounded by sound, so powerful at times that I had to stop and just breathe it all in.

Jim is a powerful, inspiring leader, a kind of Wayne Dyer with more hair and perhaps a little more groove.

He knows when to make us laugh but then also when to give pause and allow us to reflect. Most important, his #1 rule is that if you “mess up,” SMILE! Stop, smile, breathe, and start again, beginning with the basic bass sound of the drum, the steady thump-thump-thump of the heart, the pulse of life.

We explored this primal sound at the beginning of class, simply hitting the top of our drum with a steady right-left-right-left, a continuous heartbeat lasting for what felt like forever (but was probably no more than 5 minutes). But I’m not complaining; the steady sound of everyone playing together as one beat, one pulse was soothing, meditative, reassuring. Afterward, Jim pointed out that it was a bit of an experiment in group dynamics, noting that we all kept in time with each other and no one felt the need to bust out in a solo and grandstand.

For those students who had never played music before, for anyone nervous about using music to learn and grow, Jim reminded us that music has been used for centuries and across the world in connection to life events. Since ancient times, song and dance is performed for births, the harvest, death, and coming-of-age celebrations. Most important, he noted, it is done by the community; it’s the fabric that holds us together. Music helps transform energy.

Transformation.

Pretending that a yoga mat in the center of the floor was a roaring fire, Jim spoke of how if we threw a piece of paper into the flames, the paper wouldn’t be destroyed, per se. It would be changed, transformed. The edges would curl and blacken, the paper would become ash. He pointed to his drum. What did this drum used to be? Before it was a drum, it was a tree. The tree is now a drum.

Thought + action = form.

With that, we moved into playing “Oja,” a song from West Africa meaning “fire.” Jim encouraged us to transform ourselves, to find a “self-improvement” word, a word and action we wanted to bring into our lives. Jim’s was “clear.” My friend Carrol shared afterward that hers was “gratitude.” I repeated the word “staccato” in my head as my mantra, a word tied to percussion, of course, but it’s also one of the forms of 5Rhythms.

Staccato, the rhythm proceeding Flowing, meaning focus, decision, clarity, exactness. I want to be direct in my life, to be more forthright, to get out of this loosey-goosey holding/flowing pattern. As I drummed, I felt staccato in my shoulders and neck, my head bopping with each tone. It was very sharp movement, a physical expression of how I strive to be personally.

When our group display of transformation ended, Jim explained that it was now time for our solo. After discussing as a group what it felt like to be faced with this challenge (Did we freak out? Did our egos get excited? Did we immediately think, “I don’t wanna!”), everyone began playing a steady, underlying beat as we went around the circle, each person taking a few moments to break out and “do their thing.”

Supported by the group atmosphere, Jim inspired us to be the change. We discussed how certain people in the room “went all out” with nothing but joy and 100% commitment, which inspired us to do the same. Make the person next to you, and next to him, and next to him, be inspired to “go all out” too, Jim said. Take that risk; go for it. Make it spread like wildfire, create the tipping point.

Closer to the end of the class, we practiced Tibetan sound healing as a way of introducing vocal vibrations into our transformation. We went through the five “warrior syllables” and their related body parts: A [head], OM [throat], HUNG [heart], RAM [navel], and DZA [root chakra]. It was a very powerful practice, and I felt myself grow deeper and deeper into a meditative state. Had Jim left the room and gone home, I still could have sat there for probably another hour, just enjoying the focus and relaxation brought about by those five sounds.

But Jim didn’t leave, and we ended the event with an invigorating rumble, using our hands and voices to speak out loud and clearly. We screamed, we pounded, we transformed energy.

I have nothing against Nia. My first class was in 2008, when I danced in a large room with a beautiful Black woman at the front, leading a group of various bodies and abilities through expressive movements ranging from yoga to dance to tai chi to tae kwon do. I danced with a woman who was 8.5 months pregnant, a man in a motorized wheelchair, a focused 12-year-old with the desire to dance in her blood, and an older woman in her 70s.

I danced Nia weekly that summer and the next, when the teacher was in town. I bought some of the Nia-issued CDs and Nia’ed in my living room.

Photograph provided by Nia Technique (www.nianow.com).

I loved Nia until 2010. I had signed up for another summer series, but then life threw me a curveball.

It was that summer—after months of hobbling around in pain—that I found out I had a cartilage tear in my hip joint. And not just that; x-rays that I had gotten as part of all my diagnostic tests had shown a mysterious “thing” in my femur. I’ll never forget the look on my sports medicine doctor’s face as he placed the black x-ray film against the lightbox.

“That’s not normal?” I asked, completely clueless about the streak of white shooting from mid-femur to my knee.

“No,” he replied, eyes wide. “I suggest you see an orthopedist as soon as possible.”

And like that, no amount of yoga or meditation or expressive dance could console me. My brain completely took over, convincing me that my leg was dying, that even though I had never experienced pain in that area before, I was now in pain. In my heart, I knew I was being brainwashed by my overactive neurons, the power of suggestion consuming me. I’d constantly fight with myself, telling me this was all in my head, but my memory kept returning to that x-ray, and just like that, I’d feel stiffness, aching, throbbing. I considered seeing a hypnotherapist to delete the thought from my mind or at least tone down my fears of my leg having to be amputated.

Convinced I was going to become Peg Leg Pete.

It would be months before the “thing” was deemed by a bone specialist as a harmless entity, but in the meantime, my dance suffered. Nia, the outlet that once brought me so much joy, began to become burdensome. Of course, the labral tear in my hip caused some pain, but with each plié and kick I did in class, I imagined my femur further breaking down, the alien inside on the verge of spreading outside the bone and inhabiting my blood and muscles.

I left class one evening crying to my teacher and then never returned for the remainder of the series. She’d e-mail me periodically to check in or to tell me about an upcoming series, but even after I got the all-clear by my doctor, I never wanted to see Nia again.

The power of association is just wild. I mean, I’ve been dancing 5Rhythms now for two years, but when I finally talked myself into attending this most recent Nia class, I felt sick to my stomach. It didn’t help that I had to look up something in an orthopedics journal for work, and that—coupled with the thought of having to go to Nia that night—made those 2-year-old feelings of soreness and discomfort bubble up in my leg again. So much for time healing all wounds. It is both frightening and fascinating just how much the body holds onto memories and traumas.

Fortunately, the Nia class this past week took place in my “homebase” 5Rhythms venue, the yoga studio in which I discovered, fell in love with, and was healed by 5Rhythms. The power of association worked in my favor this time, as it was just a few weeks ago I stood on the very same floor and danced one of the most soul-stirring dances my body has ever moved.

I saw that polished wooden floor, and my heart softened, relaxed, and opened to this return to Nia.

Once the music started, the only thing that became (slightly) uncomfortable was the notion of choreography, something that 5Rhythms does not have. For the past 2 years, I’ve been following the lead of my heart, not an instructor. However, that feeling quickly subsided as the teacher reminded us to make adjustments for our body, put our own feeling into the moves, to move the way our muscles craved to move. It was satisfying to have a foundation but also the freedom to build my vision on top of it. There were plenty of breaks for free dancing, and I sunk into familiar, delicious territory, my eyes closed, my arms spinning. (Later, after class, a woman described my movement as “distractingly graceful.” “You just looked so happy,” she complimented.)

In fact, I fell so in love with the movement that during a martial arts-like kick when the instructor encouraged us to shout “NO!” along with the choreography, I almost could not speak the word. I didn’t want to say “no”! I was having a good time; I was enjoying this. I wanted to shout “YES!” (Fortunately, that was the next part of the routine.)

Even when the kick-shout exercise ended, my body continued dancing “Yes!” throughout class.

I was back in business.

Photograph provided by Nia Technique (www.nianow.com).