I'm swung over the edge. I fear writing this blog post, because I can imagine the scepticism from all my east coast friends and peoples. I went to work with Brenda yesterday on posture. At Camp Blues, I was realizing that I push my hips forward when I relax and often when I dance. This strains my lower back. And as always, my legs are in varying amounts of pain and discomfort.
So we worked on feeling how to properly use the legs and pelvis. The way we work on this stuff is getting more and more esoteric. She stood back so that she could see the energy flowing in my body. And when I work on my body, the only thing I can really tell you that I feel is that weight of my body sinking through my skeletal system and into the floor. The equates to energy in my mind. We worked and worked on the legs, feet, pelvis, chest, shoulders, and neck. We were getting each in the right position as I went into a pliet in parallel. Finally Brenda started talking about grounding cords. A line of energy drawn from your base chakra into the ground and into the center of the earth. She practiced doing a few pliets with and without a grounding cord, and what do you know, I could see the difference. It is in fact quite clear to my eyes. It's not that I saw the energy flowing, per se, but rather that the quality of movement changed drastically. I could see the groundedness, power and strength when she used this method to ground.
It suddenly became clear to me that this is what postural and dance imagery is attaining. It is having you move energy. The imagery always contains something moving or falling or going somewhere, and it correlates perfectly with the way I think about the energy in my body. There is an image that correlates to the image I use with my pelvis. One should imagine a plum line falling from the base chakra (the area between the anus and genitals). There should be an invisible weight falling to the ground, so that the pelvis stays heavy and in a neutral position. This was my realization last night. This position allows me to engage my inner thighs and hamstrings, taking the strain off of my knees.
So I'm sold. I've been dabbling in this energy stuff halfheartedly. I did it through imagery for the past two years. I played with it in meditation. I unconsciously used intention and preparing my mental state for achievements like getting a job cooking in a restaurant and getting into Yale. But the time has come where I completely accept it. I admit now that I see the world as a large energetic system. Everything seems to be in flux - trees, plants, tables, people - and each thing interacts with each other. It turns out that the world finally makes sense to me viewing it through this lens. To understand people's behavior, how people convince others of things, what makes quality movement is all describable in terms of the energy we use and expend.
In all my studies, it seems universally true that to hold onto energy is counter-productive. To try to keep it for yourself achieves nothing, but to let it flow through you - giving as much as you receive - turns the world around. Suddenly there is nothing to fear. Nothing can harm you. It makes sense that Socrates did not fear the hemlock, although I'm certainly not there yet.
The other amazing thing about this is that my teachers can be anything. I can learn from simply watching the energetic flow in the world. I understand when Isadora Duncan says she learned her hand movements from the fluttering of palm leaves, or when Musashi claims his teachers were the rocks and streams, or how O-Sensei could "see" the paths of bullets. I know many of you probably don't understand. But at the end of the day, I think my way of looking at the world is very similar to any other way; it's just that I'm giving words and imagery to things that most of us feel and act on without consciously thinking about it.
BOOM.
