So, I have started working out with a trainer at the Y. Tony. He is like my bad baby brother. The other day, he made me do squats on every step of the five flights of stairs in the Y, and then run back down and do it all again. Today, it was all about basketball. I was dribbling through an obstacle course, and then had to shoot baskets. He would deliberately try to block me, and then make me start over again, and do 40 push ups if I did not make time.
Now, anyone who knows me knows I do not do basketball.
And anyone who has known me for a long time knows I do not really do athletics.
And anyone who has known me for a really long time knows that, above all, I do not sweat. Run. Do squats. Or go to the Y.
So what happened, Mama?
Passion. That’s what happened. So annoying, so unnerving, that passion. Makes you do all kinda foolish things in its name.
It all started about three years ago, when my pal Sally gave me the gift of five ballroom dancing lessons with her internationally renowned Ballroom Dance teacher husband, Alex Tchassov. I thought this was the queerest and most perplexing gift of all time. In fact, I tossed the gift card right in the trash. Why? Well, I was in the middle of my divorce, and dancing seemed waaay too frivolous and irrelevant to the deep suffering I was into at the time. Fortunately, I came to my senses, and went to the studio for my first lesson. Now, these studios are filled with the oddest looking people you have ever seen. But I soon came to find out that when the music swells and you are in the arms of your partner, being swirled across the floor, an indescribable feeling descends. Instead of a woman on the battlefield of life -- I felt like the pretty girl in the swirling dress, like Baby in Dirty Dancing. I was in love.
And then, soon after, came my first trip to S Factor. I cannot tell you how awkward it felt to be pushing 50, and just beginning my dance career. Odder still was that I fell head over hopelessly-high-platform-heels in love with the pole. The Dance. The experience of using my body to give expression to the songs of my soul. Here was a brand new playground for this Woman of Words, the woman who sang solely from her head and heart. I mean, don’t get me wrong: I went to the gym, I punched the clock. But my soul, my mind, never partnered with my body in a creative collaboration, making art of my daily life, until now.
And slowly, slowly, slowly, I learned that I was not a mind with a little body dangling from it, but, rather, I had this amazing beautiful instrument of expression, that ached to be heard, felt, noticed, experienced, and surrendered to.
All those years of punching the gym clock brought me nowhere near the place that pleasure took me. Pleasure hurled me right past my fears and limitations and straight into my passion. And passion connected me with my body in a way I had never known.
Now, every day, my body is no longer my unfortunately-slow little sister that I drag everywhere, irritated at her inability to co-operate with my agenda, irritated at the depth of her feeling, as I try to get lots of important things done. Now, she is my teacher, my ally, my vehicle for expression of the most sacred parts of myself.
As women --
I don’t think we get to really really connect with our bodies without the experience of pleasure. And in this culture, when and where is a little girl encouraged to really learn and really feel the pleasure that her body is capable of? It was not something that happened for me, as a child.
This is why I am so grateful for this community that has provided the connecting dots for so many experiences of my womanhood that I would not have had otherwise. It was Sally’s experience of her passion for dance that opened the door for me to experience mine. And it was Sheila Kelley’s passion for movement, and passion for women, that led to her recognition of a Huge Global Vacuum in the body arena. This realization then instigated and inspired the creation of S Factor, which has led so many of us to the privilege of connecting with our own higher power -- our bodies.
My days are different now.
It is all about my body, now. I eat sooo much better. Why? I gotta take care of my baby so she can dance us to sanity, to soul expression, to working our way through the ecstatic business of being a woman, each day, each class.
I go to the Y and see my bad baby brother twice a week. Why? Because I want to get even stronger, so I can soar like a little fairy on that pole, and wind my way upside down and around, just for the sheer raw fun of it all.
I know I have a place -- at S Factor, at the studio with Alex, or at a Nia class -- to allow my body to dance into being.
Thank you, Sister Goddesses. Thank you, women. Thank you for your passion. It has restored me, and connected me to mine.
