Her Beautiful Old Story

The dance was freeing, it was a celebration. Yesterday first time I returned to 5 Rhythms  with Lucia. I was dancing with Lucia every week in Brooklyn, where she and her partner started to have their own themed version of the dance that her half brother's mom Gabrielle Roth invented couple of decades ago.

The dance felt like home, like New York City, like vitality, joy and community years ago. Same Lucia, same lightness, same freedom and heart opening. Sweat was dripping from my forehead just like before. My tank top, my skirt, my bra and my panties - all familiar wet. I don’t remember I ever sweat anywhere else so profusely. The breeze from the open door touching the wet skin, the almost giving up feet travel through the dance floor, wet hair sticking  to my face, long silk skirt in the constant circular movement, and the overflowing joy in the whole being...wow...I am not sure where I am really...I am traveling through time... and space... I am spaciousness itself.

Stillness. The last of the 5 Rhythms. I slow down. I open my eyes. There is a framed picture of dancing Gabrielle and her simple chain necklace lay there. Suddenly I feel overwhelming sadness and I stop, fixed on that necklace, tears rolling down already wet face. I feel drowning. The feeling came down on me like a waive crashing the shore. The body totally open to receive slides down to the floor and melt. I am floating in the pool of my own tears. Very quietly I make it outside and in the darkness of the night, feeling safe and held by the land, I wail. The sound of deep grief merges with the sound of the ocean.

I bow to the ability and willingness of the human being to dive deep into the raw feeling to allow complete alchemy.

Last time I was dancing with Gabrielle I was with my husband, in my city, living in my house, with my son, my cat, my creek, my backyard. Walking in the darkness of Big Sur I wailed in grief and loss for my life. My house and my cat gone to the fire, my husband gone to the other woman, my city and my son I had to leave, my friends, my family as I knew it - all gone.

Life is a cinema. The movie has ended and the new one continues: a sensing woman in her late 40th in a long silk skirt walking in the darkness of the Esalen land, in freedom and clarity of the ground of her being, leaving behind her beautiful old story.

Photo from Esalen by Denae Thibault