Can You Really Fumble Towards Ecstasy?

I didn’t really know what to expect. Sure, I had danced before. I had been dancing ever since I can remember. I had even sold everything when I graduated college to go dance and drum in the villages in West Africa. ( as little-known fact about me J )
Dancing has been my one of my greatest stress-relieving and happiness-inducing practices throughout my life and you’ll often find me and my son turning up the tunes and dancing around our living room. But, today was different. Today, I had been invited to dance around a big dance studio with many other adults in a sort of free-form way. The event was called, ‘Fumbling Towards Ecstasy’ and I really didn’t know what to expect.

The room was huge and completely filled with bodies already in motion. Moving all sorts of ways. There wasn’t a teacher. Just this beautiful, rhythmic music that filled the air, candles glowing on an altar, and bodies twisting and contorting around in that big, vast space.

We were told to breathe and ‘focus on the inner realm of your body while you are here’, ‘be curious about how movement arises’, and to ‘treat yourself and everyone around you with respect and tenderness.’

Hmmm, I was very curious at this point.

As I entered the room, I felt intimated.

What shall I do first? Where do I start? Can I really go anywhere I want in this room?

What about the others? Are we all dancing together? How do you do this thing?

A rush of questions flooded my mind and I flashed on how a child must feel with every new experience that they enter. Their curiousity and wonder. Or maybe fear or intimidation.

So, I decided to let all of my questions go for the moment and with the mind of a child, I took the plunge.

I became acutely aware of my breath and what was happening inside of my body and I decided that I would just move from there.

It was strange at first. I felt like people were watching me and that I had to move a certain way. Then, I slowly realized that nobody was watching (they were all focused on their own inner worlds and movement), and I could really just feel my breath freely and move from there.

And, guess what?

It worked.

My feelings of intimidation soon dissipated as I realized that ‘all was ok!’ I could move about however I liked. However my body dictated me to move. All felt safe. If I felt like resting, I would rest on the floor and breathe. Then stretch out like a cat or stand up and flow my arms like a waterfall. Spin my head or keep it steady, kick my legs, tiptoe, or leap across the room. All was ok.

Huge sigh of relief.

This all felt so different.

The experience fascinated me as I continued to move in this space that was so incredibly different than my perception of the ‘outside world’.

We live with so many rules and regulations. Our lives often become about routine and schedule as parents that there is little time to just explore this miracle that we call life. Little time to explore our breath and how funny and unique we all are. How we can move differently through this world. And just how many variations of movement there actually are.

Then somewhere in those short moments, amongst all of these other wonderful people exploring what their bodies were dancing, a song came on called ‘It’s OK’ and it touched me so deeply.

Here it is, the song by David Bailey with photographs by Amy Doerring:

(when I found this version on Youtube, it brought tears to my eyes and I reached out to Amy, who is an incredible photographer in Iowa and was a dear friend of David Bailey’s. As a sidenote, Amy so openly shared her stories about David and how his life, friendship and struggle with cancer touched her life and work….’It’s OK’ and other songs of David’s live on!)

So, here we are dancing to ‘It’s OK’ and I’m feeling complete and utter permission to have whatever experience is happening in the moment.

And I finally got a glimpse into the mind of a child. Brand new and on the brink of all this exploration. What it must be like to have a body for the first time and be able to move it in any direction, any way you choose. What an incredible miracle a child is stepping into– his/her own unique expression of life.

Now, how do we nurture our children’s unique expressions of themselves?

I found myself exploring this question as I continued to move.

I was aware that others were moving too and as I turned within even more, I was able to free up all of those ideas about how I should be, how I should act, how I should move so that I could just BE and MOVE with the mind of a child once again.

That’s when it struck me what I was doing.

I was completely accepting myself.

Dancing, sweating, moving in that space with everyone else who was exploring their own movements, their own space in their own divine way, acceptance was present.
Acceptance is when you can give yourself permission to just BE with everything that is and everything that’s not in that moment.

So, there we all were, just like in life, all contorted and ‘imperfectly’ in motion with a bunch of others who were all contorted and ‘imperfectly’ in motion.

Allowing myself complete permission to just be however I was being, not worrying how these movements may look to the ‘outside world.’ Maybe they look completely ridiculous and that’s ok because they are coming from a place deep within me that is genuine.

There wasn’t an answer in that moment as to how to BE.

There wasn’t any parent or teacher or culture or society telling you that you can’t do this or that. Or that you must do this or that.

There was only this safe space to express whatever your body needed to express.
There was only that genuine, authentic part of you within that longs to emerge and express itself.

It was in that moment, that divine moment that I found that we can all allow ourselves acceptance of all that which makes us unique. As parents. As people.
It was like nothing I had ever experienced before.

And then, I realized in that moment, dancing sweating, moving with complete permission that this was the very heart of ACCEPTANCE.

I was finally and completely accepting myself in those moments for everything I am and everything I’m not. I was finding my own movement through the world, just like I watch my child do every single day.

And the answer to my first question flowed through my body and mind:
We can nurture our children’s unique expressions of themselves by first accepting ourselves.

Accepting yourself as a parent right now for everything that you are in this moment and everything you’re not.

With acceptance as the starting point, you can begin to allow for that unique expression of your child to emerge.

Acceptance is the doorway in.

The music grew to fill the room with these ecstatic beats. I found myself jumping, completely allowing my body to move however it needed to move in that moment.

And David Bailey’s words echoed throughout the room:

‘It’s OK to hold on, It’s OK to let go, It’s OK to admit there are some things you’ll never know.’

These flashes flooded my mind and body about how acceptance really feels. And, you know what?

It feels really delicious.

What if you could offer yourself as a parent this kind of acceptance and know that you are just finding your own way through this incredibly big, incredibly challenging, incredibly beautiful experience that we call ‘parenting.’

Holding on.

Letting go.

Playing.

Guiding.

Loving.

Being.

Accepting…

As we all stumble just a little bit closer towards ecstasy.