Breathing to Move 4: Water

There is pleasure in being moved by something outside yourself—boat or bicycle, skis or skates. A power-stirring gust of space rushes past.

There is a pleasure too in being moved by something you welcome into yourself—a rose hued scent or a mountain view, a jolt of coffee or bright burst of ice cream, the flash of a painting or a lover’s touch. The impressions scrub your sensory surfaces alive.

The greatest pleasure, however, is the pleasure of moving yourself—of being the beating breathing unfolding of your own capacity to do and be. It is the pleasure of discovering and creating new sensory shapes—stretching, bending, and twisting; running, skipping, and leaping; writing, building, or playing. It is the pleasure of making the movements that are making you.

It is for this pleasure that I dance.

I breathe to find and flow with life enabling currents coursing through me. What movements can I make? What is possible in this moment? What am I capable of thinking, feeling, knowing? What am I becoming?

I dance to practice the most fundamental, life enabling challenge we face as human beings: bringing sense to life. This task is not an abstract pondering of purpose-making reasons to live; it is a concrete exploration of the possibilities enfolded in our bodily movement. It is about breathing to move, moving to breathe.
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I go into the living room where a span of rug and floor awaits, cleared of the body-binding couches, tables and chairs so often crowded into living spaces.

Lying on my back, pulling my knees to my chest, I begin the cycle of breaths. I inhale and then release down into the earth. I feel where I am. My back is a block. I am stiff and groggy, scattered and numb. I breathe again, releasing all effort, tension, and strain, all worries and preoccupations, into the ground. I still don’t feel the points of my connection to the earth. It is cloudy, bumpy. I breathe again, down. Let go.

Unexpectedly my right hip drops into the floor. The move is slight, yet my right knee now floats loosely in my hand. It is as if a fist in my lower back released. I can feel my hip touching the ground. A second ago I was oblivious.

An air breath. I breathe in and exhale my attention open and out through my skin into the surrounding space. I dissolve in white light. My internal gaze boomerangs home, lodging suddenly behind my eyes. My jaw hums. The beads of my spine settle along the floor. Riding an impulse to unfold, my right heel presses to the sky. A fire breathe (2/13) plunges deep into my belly, finding the strength to sustain the stretch. Then, with the fourth in the cycle, the water breath (see below), currents of energy shoot upward along the leg path skyward.

Suddenly I am tumbling into my body, shifting sideways and down. New angles of sensation, new flows of energy come into view. Who I am is this pleasure in moving. My movement is making me. I attune fiercely to the pleasure, following its firm, gentle guide.

I begin a new series of movements on my back, lowering my lifted legs to one side and then the other, passing through the cycle of breaths again. A pang in my hip prompts me to stretch up through my lower back, turning a bit farther than I have before, digging deeper into the ground with the opposite shoulder. I breathe into the new shape: earth, air, fire, water. A gasp of release. Something surges. I ride it through my finger tips. Lovely.

I stand up. I feel completely different. My head floats. My breathing glides in and out. My sense of weight gathers in my lower abdomen, off my back and thighs, freeing torso, shoulders, and arms. My rooted legs sing with anticipation of movement yet to come.

It happens, maybe once, for a few seconds. I can’t will it or force it. But there it is—a moment where I am nothing but the flow of the movement making me. Lost. Found. Present. Becoming. Vivid.

I arrive at the end of my dance time. Limbs tremble slightly. Every breath washes through me, cleaning bright. Pockets of strength break open; courage streams out. Thoughts crackle in the horizon of awareness, snapping with intention and understanding. I greet my new self with relief. With joy. Time to feed lunch to the kids.
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People live day in and day out, not knowing that there is more of them—more in them—more breath, more movement, more vitality, more wisdom. There is.

Action: Water breath

The final in a cycle of four, the water breath gathers the first three (see 1/29, 2/5, 2/13). Earth, air, fire, we are also water. Mostly water. Lapping around our island eyes, beneath our lips, everywhere under our skin, in our blood, our lymph system, our flesh. We are like sponges. Squeezed out, all that would be left is a small pile of dust.

The water we are is warm water. Water cooked in the fires of our cells and center. It is this water that washes through our bodies, streaming through shapes of sensation.

Breathe in through your open heart. See the air, feel the air, streaming in, illuminating the heart. Exhale, sending air down through your points of contact with the earth and out through the surface of your skin, leaving a clear flame in the fiery hold of your belly.

Breathe in again and as you exhale imagine your glimmering belly fire caught in waves of fluid. Imagine this light flecked fluid, warmly flowing from your center through arms, legs, and out the top of your head, rushing out the limb-lined trajectories into space.

Breathe in again, filling your heart, and then breathe out, spilling the fire of your desire through your extended self. Feel it moving through you, moving you.

Let whatever you are doing flow. Even if you are sitting to read these words, let your spine straighten, your eyes open, your attention clear. Come to life.

Next week: Finding wisdom in our desire for food