Can we trust that we can catch ourselves?
Can we forgive when others,
inadvertently and accidentally, drop us?
These were the guiding questions for our March Tumbler and they provided fertile ground with which to explore our edges, press our comfort zones and authentically show up.
Again, returning to the blindfolds, we re-birthed ourselves through movement. One participant, who had reservations about coming to our class and was not feeling immediately safe, quickly dropped into fear and discomfort. Crawling her way forward, she found solace underneath a table where she hid and cowered. Others were so joyfully engaged in their dances with the dark that they were shocked to discover someone in distress over the same exercise. Seeing the participant's tears and pain, a number of us felt responsible. "Should I do something to help her?" my mind wondered, feeling sheepish in the role of 'teacher.' Until I remembered that the best I can do is to allow her to have her own experience; everything that is coming up is just Perfect.
We then segued into partners where we practiced our verbal communication while we remembered how to let ourselves fall as well as be caught. Communal cheer lifted up from the studio and floated out on a Friday night breeze. We noticed how some of us tried to only fall with our upper torsos or how, for others, it was easy to trust another to catch us but not as easy to trust ourselves to catch our partner. We also noticed how difficult it seemed to just let ourselves fall to the ground, trusting that we could catch ourselves.
In our group game of 'Wind in the Willow,' one of our community members was eager to fall as he kept flinging his body weight into the hands of his peers. As a result, he - twice - found a gap in our circle through which he broke free and found himself laid out on the studio floor. Unnerved by having let one of our community members fall, we waded through the messiness of blame and finger pointing as well as of questioning 'What went wrong?' before we returned to the basics - our agreements for how are we supporting each other in this exercise.
In closing circle, we sat together and recounted all that came up for each of us - our pleasure and our pain; how our experience felt and where in our bodies we felt it; the places our minds went to and the stories it concocted for justifying our experience; and more. We laughed at the follies and tribulations of this being human while breathing a little deeper as a whole - unified by sound and movement, by metaphor and embodiment, and inspired to go out into the real world in order to try on our new sense of Selves.
Come join us in being tumbled in the Tumbler.
Every 4th Friday in San Diego County.
