Training wheels get boring quick.  Life is a risky art form.

And yet, even for those of us who are drawn to danger on one level or another, there is also an incredible beauty in feeling safe.  I find it’s practically required in order to go to sleep at night.  

Safety and risk have a rhythm and a balance.

Most of us genuinely want others to have the opportunity to feel safe.  Does that feel true for you?

More challenging to hold, however, is the space for others to experience risk.

We have systematically been removing risk from our cultural norms for at least the period of my lifetime.  Playgrounds when I was a kid had metal slides that towered overhead.  One could actually fall off of them if they weren’t careful!  It was sometimes exhilarating and always humbling to walk up the ladder.  I have no memory of falling children pandemic, yet I rarely see such slides anymore.  Perhaps there was a lawsuit.  Short covered slides came in like a mandatory vaccine.  Nobody is liable for the unknown side effects that removing physical risks from a child’s experiential vocabulary may create.  Similarly, pharmaceutical companies have no liability for the inherent risks of vaccines.  These risks are clear if we look in the right places, but those places are getting harder and harder to find. 

There is no such thing as safe.  No matter how hard we work to create safety and comfort for ourselves we will still have to face pain and death.  Bodies are temporary.  I find I can only transcend this limitation by accepting it wholeheartedly.

This time in our culture is the logical conclusion of an era in which we’ve done away with tall metal slides.  Anxiety has taken control, and anyone who dares disagree with the nature of our predicament is guilted into submission or silence.  Anyone who stands up and says “I don’t feel safe,” or even “I feel this other underprivileged person isn’t safe” holds a trump card:  Every ‘good’ person must bend over backward to save them at their own expense.  Shame is ruling us, and just the way an old slide rusts, this shame is eating away at our collective tolerance for risk.  A few children may fall off a tall slide, but what possibilities are lost when we fail to let children face danger?  The feeling of anxiety that arises while climbing the ladder is part of a healthy emotional ecosystem, and it eases with practice.  The slide is not the problem, and removing it does not make children safe.  

I like to feel safe, yet it’s not my purpose.  I’m here to experience love, sadness, danger, connection, pleasure, and sometimes even boredom.  I’m here to live.  I’m here to send emails that on a good day aren’t quite what you expect.  Doing THAT brings me a much deeper feeling of belonging, integrity, and joy than safety ever could.

The real-world middle ground of saf-er is a constant negotiation.  Control and anxiety come from the same source.  When someone says they don’t feel safe, attempting to bring them safety may deprive both they and you of the practice needed to experience saf-er.  With my rather elementary understanding of physics, I would like to invoke the first law of thermodynamics:  There is no energy created or destroyed in the universe.  Energy just changes form.  Calls for ‘safety first’ can easily trade one risk for another less obvious one.

Want a different way of seeing the ‘virome’ than you’ll find in the mainstream?  Check out Zach Bush.  Here’s a podcast with him that I’ve just been listening to (among others).  He’s an articulate, well informed, practicing scientist and clinician.

Want to further explore the risk of shared social vulnerability?  Check out the BraveSpace Pod Homestay Retreat I’m offering for New Years.  There are still some spots left.  Maximum participation will be 15 people.

Offering an online option for when you’ve really got to go.

Wait…that’s impossible!  We can’t do that on zoom.  

Our bodies’ needs may be illusory on one level or another, but the reality of life on zoom simply isn’t the same as life in a real physical world.  

The purpose of our communal isolation was originally to ‘flatten the curve’.  Now it has become the new normal.  For some people this may be just fine—perhaps even preferable given the circumstances.  For others it’s simply not okay to go without physical and social connection.  Anxiety, depression, and loneliness are as real as other threats to our individual and communal wellness.  

We can legally (and I believe morally) gather responsibly and with clear intent in small numbers.  Personally, I find the intimacy of smaller gatherings even more rewarding than those requiring porta-potties.

Again I’d like to invite you to join me in October for the BraveSpace Homestay Pod Retreat at my home studio in Boise.  I have space for 10.  More information can be found at this link.  Please spread the word to those for whom connection is a necessary nutrient.

I have been holding space for dance gatherings in Boise before and during these peculiar times.  It has been a conscious and sometimes weighty position to hold;  I’m sure a number of you reading this believe that I should not be calling people together, even within the confines of distancing.  I also imagine many of you see a great importance in gathering.  I am honored to be able to serve my community, navigating the ins and outs of our personal and communal choices.

I am holding a small closed BraveSpace retreat in Boise in October.  In gathering together we will be able to dance, touch, and connect.  If this calls to you please follow this link to learn more and apply.  Also feel free to reach out to me personally.  You can find the principles and agreements common to all BraveSpace events at this link.

With love, gratitude, and respect,

Matthew

As a subjective researcher of embodiment I write from my own direct experience.  I use ‘I’ statements, admittedly wandering into ‘we’ and even ‘you’ at times.  I haven’t written for a while:  In such a polarized social climate perhaps I just haven’t dared.

This weekend in meditation I saw a part of my shadow worth writing about. I saw that I often have an agenda; something I feel the need to prove.  Sometimes I dance just to prove that I’m a good dancer.  Sometimes I even dance to prove I’m bad at it.  Sometimes I write to prove I’m smart and interesting, to show that I’m morally righteous, or even to prove that I care and choose to serve.  In essence I always want to prove that I’m a valid human being.

It doesn’t work.  There is nothing for me to prove.  And yet if I stand in front of you I will still perform posture.  I have a shape.  We all have a posture in each moment.  As a movement therapist I often work with clients who seek ‘good’ posture.  What is that?  Clearly there are alignment principles that support the health and comfort of our bodies; posture does matter.  Yet, if I (and probably you) try too hard to get it right (anything, really) a paradox appears in which I (and likely we) are trying to prove something.  My posture easily becomes a way of pretending; pretentious.

Shadows come and go depending on the light, but with the possible exception of Peter Pan’s, shadows can never be detached or erased.  It is my nature to have something to prove.  I will probably always have this aspect of myself to grapple with.  When I can see it, however, I can take a deep breath and feel into my posture.  Some aspect of it is genuine, even when another part may be more of an aspiration, a projection, or a way to hide.

In seeing my shadow I am free of the compulsion to enact it.

This Thursday 6:30pm-8pm MST BraveSpace Somatic Circle will focus on this subject of Posture with Nothing to Prove.  It is open to 8 participants in-person (sign up here for in-person), and will also be open to participation on zoom to as many as wish to attend (sign up here for online).  It is $20 or is included in membership.  If you have never participated in BraveSpace before in any form, please connect with me personally before purchasing a ticket.  Work trade and scholarship options are available—please inquire.

The online guerrilla dance class I offered in my last post has not yet received sufficient interest.  10 people are needed for critical mass—I believe there’s 3 so far.

Thanks for reading.

Love,

Matthew

Painting by Danielle Fink

We are in the midst of a cultural revolution.  We have no singular source point for truth, and little reference to weigh each others’ suffering or authority as we lean into consensus.  While reckoning with forms of oppression we can see, we know that there is more yet unseen in the systems of our society.  In the midst of attempting to take responsibility for our collective predicament it’s hard to know where to begin, and what to contribute.

In this transformative time we need new ways of thinking, creating, and communicating.  And, in the face of grief, rage, and despair we have a choice between creativity and destruction.  The destructive impulse, violent, reactive, and often insatiable, is driven by by fear.  Fear narrows vision and nurtures hatred.  Fear multiplies pain and frustration, dividing us in anger.  Fear is also a perfectly normal and natural response to a shifting environment.  Yet, new patterns make old ones obsolete.  Creativity is authorship.  Creative consciousness is the basis for reclaiming authority and thereby a strong beginning point for dismantling systems of oppression.  Patterns of energy may be alchemized through creative action to generate new awarenesses, new relationships, and new structures.  In creative action we can demonstrate the consciousness we wish to see in the world.

As we increasingly go online to witness and communicate with each other we are losing our bodies.  Our words are meaningless without the people for whom they stand.  Emoticons are a poor substitute for presence, and in the absence of our physicality our tolerance for divergent viewpoints and discussion easy devolves into divisive disrespect.  The conversations that connect us in creativity require our bodies.

Genuine embodied connection facilitates generosity and equality, yet requires vulnerability.  To dismantle systems of oppression we do well to begin within ourselves, whatever the color of our skin, our economic privilege, or our cultural backgrounds.  We are all indigenous to our own bodies; we belong here for a lifetime.  Becoming better acquainted with our bodies can help us bridge cultural and economic divides:  Conscious embodiment provides an essential platform for grounding and respect.  Attunement brings humility, directly revealing the value of all life and people.  And, we will die. The compassionate acceptance of our miraculous and mortal bodies facilitates participation in the larger consensus reality.  Every voice contributes in the whole of consciousness:  The systemic power and resilience of diversity arises exactly because we are not seeing or saying the same thing.

BraveSpace GuerrillaDance is a six week curriculum and an ongoing community to support embodied vulnerability, diversity, and real-world presence by dancing in public places.  The central purpose of GuerrillaDance is to face the fear and insecurity we experience as social beings so that we may better co-create through difference.  GuerrillaDance asks us to face our own egos, empowering individual sovereignty while simultaneously sensitizing and contributing to the communal field.  In dancing we recognize both that we are never alone, and that there is no ‘other’.  

Holding space for that we wish to witness and embody is prayer-formance—prayer through form.  BraveSpace GuerrillaDance invites you to the generous act of allowing yourself to be seen in your form, your skin, and the movement of your breath.  As a practice of vulnerability it doesn’t matter how ‘good’ a dancer you are—you will be challenged to dance for purpose beyond skill.  Skill will develop through the creative process.  In dancing we invite each other and each person who witnesses us to embrace their creative authority.

The simple and courageous curriculum of BraveSpace GuerrillaDance will support you to dance on your own and to lead others in dancing.  Lessons will be provided as videos and dance assignments that you complete at your own pace.  The suggested structure is two lessons a week for 6 weeks.   You will be encouraged to engage in online discussions with others completing the program to support each other.  Music playlists will be provided on Spotify, although they are not required.  You can complete the program alone, and you are also encouraged to use it as a platform to inspire your friends to action too.  We dance as sovereign individuals co-creating a new consciousness.  Destruction will happen.  If you feel called to creativity I invite you to ceremony for a new dawn.  

Offered as a gift. Donations are welcome. Click here to sign up.

Painting by Danielle Fink.

How can I better tolerate discomfort?

1. Recognize that it’s part of a phrase.  All phrases have a beginning, a middle, and an end.  I may hold stories about future discomfort, and may fear it.  That’s okay. 
2. Pause.  I am not likely in control of the cause of my discomfort.  Acting too quickly will not solve the dilemma and will likely make it worse.  Feel what is there to be felt.
3. Find a source of flow.  For me this is often dancing and sensing my body.  Often I don’t want to, but once I start I typically shift states of consciousness.  Discomfort may even become pleasure.
4. Recognize that I am a part of a larger living system.  Be in service to the larger consciousness by allowing tension to come through.
5. Take breaks.  Be compassionate with myself.  Notice my conscious and unconscious attempts to numb myself.  Notice my tendency to complain.