For the first time in a while, I can begin to feel the onset of soreness in the most bizarre places – the sides of my ribs, my lower stomach. The result of moving from far away engines, a feeling I’ve been missing.
Today, we were being taken by unknown forces, tossed and thrown across our own rooms. I feel like that a lot nowadays, always being subjected to the effects of this pandemic on the lives we once knew. I could feel my body being pulled in all different directions, both in this room that I’m in and in relation to the whole world. I try not to always just feel the unknown forces in the same body parts, but it’s difficult. Difficult to sense how it feels for someone to pull your right collarbone, or left femur. I think I also may be collapsing too much when I am being moved by these unknown forces, like I’m exaggerating the echo. A part of it is maybe because I’m lacking the strength right now to not let the rest of my body be affected. That’s something that has been frustrating for me during this quarantine – not feeling as connected or physical with my body as I’m used to. It seems my body has forgotten how to feel certain things, but I suppose it comes with strength and practice.
The teacher was telling us about these unknown forces.
What? I was struggling enough to just feel like I was actually being moved by the unknown forces, but adding in different textures made my mind explode. A fun challenge, but difficult to do right. I felt a bit stumped and was thinking really hard about these sensations. “Don’t be too serious,” the teacher reminds us, and immediately I feel my mind clear up, allowing the movement to flow through my body. Crazy how thinking too much can actually impede movement. I feel that sometimes I use my arms too much to externally create movement, so I’m working on feeling it more internally. During this moment of chaos, my right leg lunged out to the side into a deep lunch, and it really was a test of strength that I wasn’t sure I was going to pass. I noticed that it was hard for me to let myself get pulled off my leg, maybe because I don’t feel strong enough right now. Something I will try to work on in the coming weeks.
At one point, I really did lose myself to my body. Limbs were flying everywhere, out of my control. It felt good.
Towards the beginning of class, we were playing with our shoulder blades and describing curves. “Find a sense of stretch as you reach and pull your shoulder blades out of their sockets.” I sure felt the stretch out, the grabbing of the flesh around my shoulders to rotate in and out, wringing myself out like a towel. “Now bring your shoulders closer to you. Bring your shoulders home.” Wow. Such an unexpected feeling of relief. A completely different sensation in my shoulders compared to before, when I was pulling them, but perhaps I also wasn’t as aware. It felt like there was so much more room in my shoulder sockets, and I could move them more into me. I felt a lot softer and gooier in my shoulders. It was comforting to move them close to me, contrasted by the slightly uncomfortable stretching from before.
We used our shoulder blades to bring us down to the floor. I touched the ground like it was a baby’s face, something I’ve been told by Gaga teachers before. “Touch the ground like someone you miss.” Immediately, a different sensation floods through my arms and into the floor. Still gentle, but with more longing and attachment. I’m sure many people are missing people right now. I sure am. Not anyone in particular, but all of the people in my life. I miss touch.
(Shaking on the cold, concrete ground is challenging, and I’ve found it is difficult to “stay soft” while I bang and bruise my joints doing so.)