Dancing to Life's Rhythm
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| Veil I use for belly dance class - made by Jani K. Fisher |
I went to dance class after a day that didn't go particularly well. I wasn't in a good mood. Most of my day just hadn't gone to plan and that ended up affecting not only my day but my husband's adding stress to both of our days. I felt guilty for leaving him to clean up my mistake while I went to dance. I also thought I needed to be placing my attention on several other projects that needed work. My day got completely sidetracked by the aforementioned mistake that I tried to fix myself. I ended up almost in tears before asking for my husband's help with it. I was pushing against my life all day long instead of embracing it.
That just created more problems.
I wanted to be "better" than I was being. I wanted to accomplish what I wasn't accomplishing. I wanted my attention on too many things at once...
As I drove to belly dance class, I berated myself for all of the above. I went over a mental list of all the projects that needed my attention. I went over all the things that aren't as far along as I planned them to be at this point in time. I beat myself up for leaving my husband to deal with the mess I'd created. I thought about all the promises I've made that I just haven't quite gotten around to doing yet. I thought about all the things I want to do and need to do and felt overwhelmed. I thought about all the projects for this year that won't get completed by the end of the year. Then I asked myself what right I had to be going to a dance class - something I was doing for fun (well, research, too), but Tuesday night I felt like I didn't deserve to go. There were too many other things that needed my attention...
On top of that, I was running late and had skipped dinner because I had no appetite.
I sighed and shook off these thoughts. I reminded myself it was the last class and that I'd committed to the class. I decided to treat it like I do yoga. For the time I was there, dancing would have my full attention. I would go in, enjoy myself, and not even care if I screwed up the moves.
Class started with moves across the floor to warm up, as usual. I started moving and slowly began to feel my day drain away. Jani K. Fisher, the instructor, exuded strong, vibrant, positive energy. I began to feel it. My smile returned. I closed my eyes a few times and felt the music and the moves instead of watching her and mimicking her. I relaxed into it. My moves weren't perfect. They were far from it. But I had fun. My body responded by releasing my frustration. When I felt like I totally messed up the moves, I closed my eyes, took a breath, and felt the rhythm of the music. I let that guide me. I thought less and felt more.
At one point, when my self-critic began to speak up while we were prepping to transition from warm up moves to veil work and our routine, one of the girls in the class looked at me and said "You look concerned." and flashed me a big smile.
I smiled back and said something about trying to focus on following the moves instead of doing the modified moves I'd needed to do in the previous two classes due to a mild shoulder injury. I didn't want to get into how I was mentally shushing my self-critic...
We laughed through the routine and the mistakes we all made and found our way back again.
As we got into a circle to end class, the same girl who noticed my concerned expression and I noticed we were both kind of moving to the rhythm of the music and started dancing together instigating a "dance off" that had each of freestyle dancing in the circle as everyone else swayed around us and encouraged us.
I left class thinking about how different the class felt than the others had. Much more fluid and relaxed. I wondered how much of that came from my attitude shift and how much from the class itself.
Finding the rhythm, feeling it, and giving myself over to it, felt liberating. I'm not sure how well I danced, but I enjoyed the process and I felt very alive at the end of the class.
It reminded me that when I fight my life, my life fights me. When I find the rhythm in my life, in my day, in the project at hand things progress much better and even challenges don't seem like obstacles. Sometimes, we have to pause in the moment to reacquaint ourselves with the rhythm in order to stop moving against the beat.
When I write something, I often find a rhythm in the process. Right now, I feel a rhythm in my typing. My brain is tapping out a rhythm in the words. My thoughts and emotions are flowing to the rhythm of what I want to express. All of this is important for me to find the words to communicate. When I lose that rhythm, my work suffers. No matter what I'm working on - be it writing, editing, housework, financials, etc.
The rhythm of life invites me to dance every day. I have the option to say yes or no, and then I have to deal with the consequences of my answer. Dancing against the rhythm never gets me very far.
It's a little like focusing so hard on the goal one loses sight of the process. That's why it's a dance. I signed up for the belly dance class with the goal of learning the moves to dance for fun but also to understand the nuances well enough to write about them, but I forgot about the fun part and lost my rhythm. I was so focused on getting the moves perfect and learning I lost the rhythm and in the process lost the dance entirely including the moves I was so focused on learning.
How about you? How's your rhythm? Are you dancing with your life or against it?
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