A few years ago a friend accused me of sexual assault.  It arose out of a workshop in naked contact improvisation that I held at my home studio, and specifically one-on-one time I’d spent with her preparing for it as she was going to be late to the actual workshop.  Obviously this was an edgy and experimental container, and this situation has been given to me as a significant learning opportunity.  At the time I was not able to disentangle the various threads of trauma and transference that each of us brought to the interaction.  Now it is time for me to speak publicly in order to properly set the boundary I was not able to speak when she accused me, two months after the event.  It is not okay for her or others to continue to damage my reputation and my community, spreading rumors based on this extreme and false accusation.
 
If you know the woman to whom I speak, or anyone else involved in spreading rumors about me, please share the below statement with them.  
 
For context, I’d like to invite all of you to take a look at my film that explores the beauty and mystery of naked contact improvisation, Naked: The Deep Pleasure of Integrity (Note: The link here will take you to a short descriptive preview.  Scroll down from there to get a link to the full 9-minute film)
 
To my accuser and anyone acting on their behalf-
 
You have put me in a very difficult position by accusing me of something so extreme, and untrue, as sexual assault.  Such an accusation carries incredible power, and with it you are damaging our community.  You have had the ecstatic dance I hold for the community shut out of two beautiful spaces.  Once such an accusation is levied, fear results no matter what is true.  Nobody wants to get near a story like this.  This is all deeply painful to me, as you clearly intend, but I am beginning to understand why it is necessary.  Thank you for challenging my power so deeply.  I must stand up to you, hear, publicly, and tell you that what you are doing is not okay.  There are lessons here for all of us, and likely for those who witness us as well.  
 
My part in our interaction was not in integrity—I touched your breast in the context of an artistic exploration you enthusiastically consented to join, but to which you as an ongoing client of mine should never have been invited.  In my excitement to explore some edgy things with you as a friend, I was careless with my role and power dynamic as a teacher.  I activated the very trauma you had come to me wishing to heal.  Alas, I lacked the sensitivity to recognize that you did not know how to communicate a boundary.  
 
Simultaneously, I trusted you, and when you came to me two months later accusing me of wrong-doing I similarly shut down in my own trauma pattern.  I tried to appease you, falling into a pit of shame rather than telling you that what you were saying and doing was not okay.  I did not know how to set my boundary!  There is a fantastic mirror in it.  I touched your breast, genuinely wishing to touch your heart, and as you claim in the letter that resulted in my cancellation from the International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association, my touch on your breast turned you on.  I stopped touching you immediately once you spoke to being turned on and of being uncomfortable with it.  This you name as assault.  What is it that you seek in this public humiliation?  What would bring you fulfillment?  I wish to be as gentle as possible, yet I will not let you continue to damage me, our community, and the work I am here to share.
 
If it becomes necessary in the clearing of this pain and destruction I will share the letter you wrote to ISMETA and my response to it.  Indeed it is wrong that I included you, a client, in such an event while a member of an organization with a zero-tolerance policy for sexuality.  Yet you are deeply out of integrity by calling what took place assault.  Still, I don’t think our dirty laundry belongs here in the public eye.  Through the mistake I made with you I’ve learned a lot about the power I carry as a therapist, facilitator, and artist, and the sensitivity with which I must use what I’ve been given in these roles.  I actually find myself more motivated than ever to acknowledge, honor, and speak to the presence of sexuality in all our bodies, and I am deepening my own education in trauma, sexuality, and group dynamics.
 
I sense that at depth you seek to know that you are safe.  Please, put down your weapons and recognize that you are.  I have never desired to hurt or take anything from you.  Each of us has pained the other out of ignorance.  I’m sending this to the community because I believe the path to wisdom and compassion is paved with responsibility and transparency.  I will not be shamed.
 
I invite a public forum if that serves.
 
With fierce love,
Matthew   

Finding wholeness in the tension of opposites.

I marvel at the tension between the sacred and the profane.  

While not universal, people will typically only tell us to go f— ourselves if we penetrate their space or energy in a way that has not been invited.  You can surely imagine a scenario where you might offer this bit of profanity to someone.  Don’t be shy with yourself here… what’s the situation where they would really deserve it?

Having imagined the context for profanity, let’s consider that this phrase can also be a truly sacred invitation:  To fuse with oneself in divine union; to make love internally.  To do so I recognize a polarity or tension of opposites within.  For example, I write here using my thoughts—sharing ideas—and yet this part of me that writes struggles to comprehend or express anything below the surface of my mind.  The emotional and spiritual depth of being is—at least in my experience—not mindful.  The mind observes, but actual depth is in my body, my energy, and in my emotions—energies in motion.  

Emotional power is something profanity excels in, as the power of profanity actually relies on the sacred.  In profanity we make fun of the sacred in order to catch a glimpse of the divine.  I’m consciously directing it here to evoke and point to a heightened state of being.  I know in my body the experience of making sweet love with myself internally, but to communicate this possibility to you we need common ground.  You may or may not have had this experience, but chances are you have some level of emotional response to the suggestion that you “go F— yourself.”  So here’s the tension in action:  The profanity makes the sacred more available, catching your attention.

Imagery is a very powerful somatic structure capable of organizing energy and holding its tension.  I’ve written here about the masculine and feminine polarities within:  I’m drawn to a neo-tantric definition of the masculine as structural consciousness, and of the feminine as an embodied experience held by that structure.  Sure, it’s simplistic.  We could call this division the Alpha and Omega, Bindles and Stenets, or P’s and Q’s.  The point is that there exists a tension of opposites inside us all, and by engaging playfully with this tension joyful wholeness is a natural result.  Imagery for me is masculine.  I can hold inner images of the direction my arm is reaching, the possibilities for my hip, or where others are in the space around me.  I can make moment-to-moment choices about what I’m doing with my body by inhabiting these images.  Inside of this structural container I can feel my body moving, releasing into the sensory experience.  This is the essence of all somatic practice—movement and awareness in relationship.  It is also a basis for inner lovemaking.

Sometimes I work with imagery very literally with my sexual energy.  In meditation I can be both masculine and feminine; both man and woman, in the same body.  I can do this with my breath, my spine, my sounding, and my dance.  It amazes me that we don’t talk about these possibilities more, and that despite knowing the power of this work I am still so often ashamed of my sexual energy.  I shared some of this work in a tantric men’s group and was ridiculed by my peers there for expressing the power of making love with myself in my movement and energy.  It’s not for everyone.  And yet, when I’m anxious, angry, sad, lonely, or otherwise ‘triggered’, coming back to this inner meeting of polarities has helped me be more loving, capable, generous, and whole.  I am also more cocky, penetrative, and daring at times when it seems called, more comfortable with my own masculinity having received it within myself.

Honestly, I get kind of claustrophobic in most cuddle puddles, squirmy and uncomfortable being in one position for long.  While there is surely plenty I can learn and practice here about yielding into the intimacy given by these situations, it kind of cracks me up to see how often Contact Improvisation Puddles manifest at events I hold.  These are a bit like snake pits, with bodies twisting, turning, and tumbling in multiple dimensions all at the same time.  For devoted cuddlers I imagine it might seem silly to expend so much effort.  As a dancer, however, I find these so much more interesting, with the ability to play with where I wish to be in each moment—where I’m going.  I like the feeling of activating my body and receiving the experience at the same time. Sometimes it is my turn to be still and receive the group, or to assist someone else’s motion through my relative stability.  And then I’m often back in motion.

The video above is from the last class of a Contact Improvisation skills series I taught in Boise.  I pushed the group to be up and moving in larger ways much of the time, building skills with each other in time, space, awareness, and the sharing of weight.  For this last dance I let it puddle—as so often seems to happen when a group of humans drawn to such things are given the permission.

I’ll be offering a short BraveSpace Workshop—the Art of Wholeness, and a Pleasure Spine Contact Improvisation Jam in Portland, OR on April 1^st.  If that’s your part of the world please find the details and signup here.  The next BraveSpace Immersion in Boise is scheduled for April 21-23, and a new 3 class contact improv class and jam series runs April 20^th, May 4^th, and May 18^th.

Preparing for What’s Coming

These are wild times—we are riding big waves in the texture of humanity’s earthly journey.  There is so much tension among and between us:  Topics of health, food, race, gender, climate, war, and perhaps most deeply purpose are aching with charge.  It’s easy to blame, shame, and judge, both ‘other’ and self.  I watch myself do it—my way of seeing makes sense to me.  I ‘know’ better, yet the experience of righteousness is by nature one sided.

Mysticism is a practice of holding the unknown with open hands.  My mind wishes to grasp—to determine what is and what’s coming.  My mind is a pessimist, so if I let myself hold on then I expect the worst.  If I try too hard to counter it then I paint the world with roses.  To immerse myself in mystery I simply sit in awe, holding my own heart with unconditional love in presence with the unknown.  It is a vulnerable, embodied state.  As I approach it I tend to shake, shiver, and start.  It’s an internal making of love–sometimes subtly orgasmic—and at times feels like a death through which I’ve thus far been reborn.

I have been leading events I call Somatic Mystery Journeys.  We drink cacao, work our breathing, move in awareness, and eventually turn up the music for ‘ecstatic’ dancing.  Through our bodies, and in the group field, we invoke the sacred space of mystery.  We let our bodies move in the permission and intention that we don’t know what’s coming.  I imagine that people have always done this, yet it seems particularly important right now.  The body has a way of knowing and being with others that’s very different from the mind.  Even thinking about it barely touches the power of the experience.

To prepare for what’s coming, especially as we don’t know what that is, we benefit from ways to hold and channel the intensity of emotion.  Anxiety is rampant, and when anxiety controls my actions I rarely make the best decisions.  We are communal beings, and the deepest anxieties often revolve around being isolated, shamed, and otherwise left unloved.  The power of journeying together in ceremonial movement is finding out who we are when we take off the masks (as many as we are aware of), dive under the anxiety, and perhaps let ourselves die.  As I read this it feels dramatic.  It may in fact be boring and banal—just a human being.  And yet, this is exactly the whole of it—humans consciously navigating our drama together.  

That pain is evidence of vitality came up yesterday in an Advanced Ongoing BraveSpace group I hold. We were mapping our experience of our bodies and then sharing what we discovered there. Pain was a theme. This isn’t unusual in my experience with groups. Perhaps it’s because culturally (universally?) we tend not to bring attention to our bodies unless there is pain. Yet, one of the things that has helped me make ‘sense’ of pain and how to engage with it is recognizing pain as evidence that I am alive. When I come from this place I am better able to hold my pain with grace. Pain is a form of longing–a longing for healing–and longing is a key way vitality manifests. I share this not to minimize the sometimes excruciating experience and effect of pain; yet pain is most likely affected when we understand that it is not objective.

Pain is an experience. It is often linked with the physicality of the body, but it is not a quality of the body itself. Pain exists in the subjective realm of consciousness. To affect my experience of pain, I use practices that shift my consciousness. Movement, breath, and meditation are pretty effective.

I’m offering a free Online Movement, Breath, and Meditation class Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6:30am Mountain Time for the foreseeable future. Here’s the class link–you will need to signup in advance to get the link.