Grand risings from Italy!
I cried a well of tears this week
Partly because my beautiful students graduated! Because their show blew my mind! Because there were tears of Joy and grief at what the show meant to me!
But the biggest tearful break through was understanding when I am not holding myself whole… and how interconnected that is with gender roles and beliefs… and here is why…
Whilst I have been living and working in London this past month making the show, I have been being ‘rolfed’. Rolfing is a deep tissue technique that works with the fascia to realign the body, (and soul).
I have been fascinated by rolfing and fascia ever since I met and danced for Russell Maliphant in 2012 and had a set of 10 rolfing sessions (and visibly grew over the course of the 10!)
Since 2012, I have a fair few new injuries to navigate and so being back in London I decided to book in for a series of three sessions with rolfer Hayley Matthews to see if she could help me with some of them.
What unfolded was a delicious combination of body realignment, synchronous realisations of shared moments on our life journey, delightful talks about emotions, and trauma, and masculine & feminine energy, life choices, Harriet Tubman, the mystics, spirituality and dance!
POW! (And I guess POV too but I think I prefer POW 💥!) I could not have asked for a more aligned (literally!) experience. Whilst she reset a shoulder injury, a rib, my scoliosis, my injured foot, my cocyx, I cried, I laughed, I felt held to be with whatever emotions wanted to arise, to speak honestly into experiences within the dance scene, within my personal life and to share whatever I was journeying with her. Hayley’s words and reflections were full of tenderness and intuition… and one time a song that really held me in the way sometimes only music can (listen HERE)
After the third session, it felt true to invite Hayley to come and watch the tech run of our show (which was at The Place), to which she accepted… and her wisdoms from watching me interacting in my work space led to such POW downloads that I just had to share them with you here!
There wasn’t much conflict in our beautiful rehearsal space, but on this particular day, there was something present, and Hayley’s wisdom supported me to alchemise it in a completely new and exciting way because Hayley saw how I lean into my scoliosis (I am off of my pole of the body) when I am in conflict.
Hayley witnessed a moment of discomfort and how it manifested in my body in the space in terms of me physically turning back into or leaning into my scoliosis. And as I heard that, I understood how the motion of coming out of my pole of the body affects my energetic field and how interconnected my alignment is with my being ‘off’ of my whole self…
As I sat with this this week, there has been a new, deeper layer of understanding of how and why I go out of centre in relationships…
I understood how years and years of oppression of the female (both my own lived experience and because we live in a patriarchal society), have led to my self abandoning my central line: my whole self, and that this connects to my leaving my central line (particularly) in the presence of male energy… it doesn’t necessarily mean the male energies in question are doing something bad, but my belief is affecting my perception, my behaviour and my body.
Since I realised that, the change in how I hold myself in conflict is tangible! Rather than shrinking out of my goddxx-like potential, shrinking into my beliefs about being powerless or not good enough, I choose to be conscious, and breathe into a lengthened spine and stay in my centre line balancing my crown atop my stacked spine!
This feels SO beautiful!
And so I cried tears for the me who used to go ‘offline’. I cried for the vast spiritual implications of this action of staying whole, and I further understood that there is the feminine and masculine in me, there are the gender roles which affect me, and there is my whole, non binary self who is outside of gender roles and just holds themselves in radiant truth.
And all of this too is connected to the pole of the body and the power that emotions can have over my goddxx-like potential when I hold them in my body or physicalise them in my body (such as leaning into my scoliosis).
Our thoughts and feelings and beliefs are so interconnected and when we allow our emotions to move out of the body (get the emotions in motion), we make yet more space for our goddxx-like potential, our intuition and our creativity, all of which I teach in Embodied Alchemy!
So much POW!
What are your thoughts on this? Do you notice this in your own self or your pole of the body? I would love to hear from you.