Do it like it’s part of the dance

Joy, pleasure and play as a balm for when life-ing feels hard

G’morning! I wanted to share a quote that I shared in yesterday’s meta, as it’s one that I think can be helpful in times that feel heavy, but also because it pretty much sums up my MO when it comes to leading movement and life in general. It comes from Ram Dass, someone who I have written about before here who has a gift for conveying complex ideas in simple, easy to download (and practice) ways.

When I read this, I think of dance as a practice of finding joy, ease, release, and pleasure. I don’t think of my experience of feeling rigid and self-critical in ballet class. I share this to emphasize that it’s less about dance as a movement modality and more about how dancing can make us feel. I’m sure it’s slightly different for each of us. Below is how I described dance from a post back in March – you can revisit it here.

This Ram Dass quote reminds me that we get to decide how things affect us, another thing I have written about pretty extensively before, and that with a shift in our attitude, even the most mundane or even challenging things can become a bit more pleasant. I passionately believe that things do not need to feel hard or taxing to be effective. It’s kind of the entire point of this substack, actually. And I think Saturday meta is the perfect embodiment of this, if I do say so myself. Students come for the JOY of it – the physical benefits (think building cardiovascular capacity, muscle endurance, sweating, building bone density) are just an added bonus. And what’s so wonderful is so many of you report back to me that the sheer enjoyment of it all actually gets you participating more; shaking and bouncing with more vigour, catching more air in your jumps, elevating your heart rate higher because it feels. so. good. to. groove. To be clear, meta is not a dance class, but my goal is to evoke the physical, emotional and energetic feedback one gets from dance within the container that is meta. By sharing movement through the lens of joy, or release, or play, or pleasure, we tend to forget how hard we’re working (until we check our Apple Watch :)). What could feel like a great weight – burpees are friggin harrrrrd – feels buoyant and invigorating (okay, maybe not all of the time, and on those days we move with more tenderness, we take the breaks, we skip the plank part, because energy ebbs and flows and there’s nothing more empowering than listening to your body!!!).

So, my invitation is to infuse this concept into life off of the mat. Especially in times like these where things can feel quite heavy and the future looks rather grim. And especially for those of us who are spending most of our days in service – leading others, raising families, taking care of animals, showing up as friends, supporting aging parents – how might we infuse the qualities of dance into how we navigate our various roles and responsibilities?

Perhaps I’m also drawn to this quote and talking about dance in general because it’s a universal language – in a world that feels so divided, so black and white in its thinking, so polarized – dance transcends language, political views, age, race, gender and all the rest. I take supreme comfort in that. And, I am on my way to see Ballet BC’s DAWN show tonight (Saturday) and there’s nothing like taking in art and creative expression to remind us that, as RD suggests, lightness and pleasure and play can be found and experienced even when things feel dark and heavy.

Much love,

T