Step 1: Dance Center
Agenda: Your mantra, move from your center, seems so unclear to me. I know I have a belly button, but where is my center?
[Pat gets down on all fours and pulls me over his back.]
Mike: I’m going to get hurt.
Pat: Just relax and you won’t get hurt.
Mike: That’s easy for you to say. You’re on the floor. I’m dangling off the floor.
Pat: Close your mouth and keep shifting your body until you feel balanced on mine. This is the center of your body.
Mike: [I awkwardly wiggle around on Pat.] What makes you so sure I have a center?
Pat: Close your mouth and you’ll find it.
Mike: [I close my mouth for a few seconds.] A center, a center, my kingdom for a center!
Pat: Keep adjusting your body and closing your mouth.
Mike: [I awkwardly flail.] I don’t think I have a center. Can I borrow yours?
Pat: When you find yours we’ll share.
Mike: [I balance for a moment.] I feel it. Can I get off now?
Pat: If you found it you wouldn’t want to move away from it so quickly. Now that you’re balanced be still and let your center find you.
Mike: Who would have guessed there’s a center to my body. Can I stay here forever.
Pat: as long as you remember to search for it. Try feeling your center when you roll off me.
Mike: I’m going to lose it.
Pat: Losing is a step towards finding.
Mike: [I close my eyes and roll off Pat with a thud.] Ouch!
Pat: Even if you’re in pain, don’t lose your center. Feel the center of your body with your hands.
Mike: Isn’t this banned in Boston?
Pat: We should ban people who don’t live from their center.
Mike: [Feeling under my navel.] I feel my belly contracting and expanding.
Pat: Sense with your hands the breath from your belly. Allow your breathing, from your center, to make a sound.
Mike: Haahhhh!
*****
Grace Notes: I tell Pat I like using the word “OG” instead of such an abstract word like “center.” “OG” stands for the Organizing Gang of organs, flesh, bones, and blood in or around the center of my body.
After we agree to use the word “OG” Pat gives me a gift for a lifetime:
Lifelong Homework
To Continually Dance in a Playful Body
With and Through
OG, Feet, Heart and Head
1. Be aware of your small dance (awareness of how your body is moving even when you’re not trying to move). Feel how your OG, feet, heart and head are dancing together. {Dear Reader, you can be aware, while reading this, how your body is moving.}
2. Your awareness can help shape your small dance into a larger dance. {Readers, why not move, stand, dance while reading?}
3. Be aware you’re always dancing with everyone and everything.
4. While standing, sense that your soles and feet and legs are interacting with what you’re standing on. Be aware your feet and legs are supporting you when you sense anyone or anything with other parts of your body. Feel that your feet and legs are sensing--through the other parts of your body-- who or what you are meeting. {When you read my writing our feet are also touching.}
** Refelctions: Our OG might include what the Buddhists
call “nothing.” I wonder if all our physical parts include
nothing? I can feel nothing in the pit of my stomach. Perhaps
this feeling of nothing is what you mean when you say
“center.”
It feels even richer to type from this center--this pit of mystomach. And of course have the rest of the OG join in.
This OG including nothing can radiate love. Each of these parts are loving one another and together they can create a symphony of love. But even though I can feel this love dance I must also remember to pay attention to the physical components of this love.
Pat adds: We need to practice saying “yes” and “no” from our OG. And often find at least a hint of “No” in Yes. And at least a hint of “Yes” in “No.”
**
