Space, Time and Love
"Nothing can be loved at speed"
- Michael Leunig
What is the speed your body truly wishes to move at today?
If you take a moment to pause and feel into that question, what kind of response do you get?
How might your day be different if you followed your body's lead?
An old friend of mine in Australia once shared with me how he gives himself the gift of a whole day where he only moves at the pace his body really wants to move - which, more often than not, is really rather slowly! He makes it his practice to take the time his body needs to move through the day. I remember thinking, "Woah, a whole day? I don't know if I could ever do that!" I tried, and quickly realised how difficult it was for me to truly slow down. I was too impatient, driven by an internal sense of pressure, and I had no idea how to actually do it.
Many years of movement and meditation practice later, I've learned and un-learned a lot. Many knots have unravelled, and I'm much more accustomed to aligning myself with open space/time. But there are still times when a mental tangle is driving my body and I find it really challenging.
I may find myself moving through the day more hurried and stressed than is necessary. I drink coffee and speed up when I don't really need to. I rush through tasks trying to get it all done, only to think of more that I "need" to do. No sooner do I sit down to relax than I find myself jumping up to do something that feels suddenly imminently more important. I check my phone way more than is good for me!
Can you relate to any of these?
It's not that we need to go slowly all the time -sometimes we do want or need to move fast! But if we can't go slowly at all, if we don't know how to truly relax and be at ease in our bodies, then that is a sign that we are living beyond our means. It reflects our deep and pervasive cultural conditioning, our disconnection from Earth, and often our unresolved trauma. We are not able to rest in this moment, because a part of us is frozen in space/time and unavailable to the flow of life as it is happening right now. Part of us doesn't know how to simply be here, so we anxiously look for something to distract and absent ourselves from this nagging discomfort. We are functioning on stress hormones (and caffeine!), and rather than finding satisfaction in ticking off our to-do lists, we actually strengthen the habit of continually driving ourselves. We are constantly pushing, seeking and searching, and never, ever satisfied.
It's exhausting, isn't it?
Many of us feel like we don't have the luxury, that we can't afford to go slow or else the whole life we've built will grind to a halt and come crashing down around us. But the truth is, when we feel like we don't have time to slow down is precisely when we need to the most.
As writer and poet Bayo Akomolafe says in this wonderful article"time is not a function of speed, it's a function of awareness".This is a brilliant observation. Our sense of time will expand or contract along with our degree of awareness.
"Urgent times call for quiet; for rest and respite. Instead of ramping up, we must surrender....We need trickster approaches, we need ways of dancing away, or dancing to, fugitive spaces; dancing to sanctuaries where we can shape-shift. Grieving, mourning, even allowing ourselves to partake in pleasurable activities in the face of the storm."
In other words, when the shit is hitting the fan (which it seems to be doing regularly these days), we need to do less, not more.
Our awareness through movement practice invites us to discover this directly. We are invited to slow....right....down.
Why?
When we allow ourselves to take a breath, to return to our bodies, to move slowly, and savour the support of the earth, we can bring all the fragmented parts of us into alignment and a longed-for experience of wholeness. We shift from fight/flight/freeze to rest, digest, integrate, and connect. We feel a sense of release, relief, and blessed relaxation. Space opens up, and so does time. We begin to notice so much more of our experience, and are open to possibilities that we would have completely missed in our rushed busy-ness. Creativity, connection and care begin to flow again.
Week 4 of Moving with Change - "Space, Time and Love : Slowing Down to Discover More"
This week's class will explore this key dynamic in creating a healing environment for lasting change - the experience of space and time in our bodies. We will explore, through movement, the relationship between space, time, and love.
We will play with different rates of movement, and curiously observe what effect they have on us. We will see how these variations either support or diminish the sense of pleasure, support, and harmony that we've been cultivating. We will be learning more about ourselves and what our bodies really need to learn, to unwind, to discover and to heal. As Rabbi Tirzah Firestone states beautifully precisely- we can only heal from a regulated place. THEN we can meet with the challenges, from a place of love.