Bridges

Updated on Tuesday, June 12, 2012 at 10:16AM by Elena Taurke

Let go…..Cleopatra.. said my dance teacher in response to my failure to connect a phrase.   Say what?!  said I, stalling for time. It's a Donkey Bridge, he clarified, let go of the arms, then Cleopatra to make a shape.   A memory device, a connector, so called because donkeys are supposedly too stupid to make it across the river any other way.   In Zen it is said: Every Ass can Pass.   Every one of us can get to the other side but we need the right bridge.  

Words can be a bridge to dance.  Dance can be a bridge to freedom.   Yoga to meditation or meditation to yoga.   The specter of death is a nifty bridge to a satisfying life.  

Click to read more ...

Your Working Zone

I'm calling It the Working Zone, because of the clarity of its counterpoint--not working.  As in: this is not working!   Because you know when it's not  working, don't you?  You're burned out, or enraged, or stuck, or depressed, or freaking out with anxiety.  In that condition, nothing is more important than finding a way to lower the decibel level of the stress until we can work with it.  Go ahead and sweep that problem under the rug for now.   

Click to read more ...

The Monster

In the moments before ballet class was to begin, I was hanging over my legs, trying to find the inner awareness of my spine.  Suddenly, improbably, I felt another body in my space--an intruder!  I quickly rolled up to encounter a grotesque face, and it was actually asking me to take a step back to make room for her.   I concealed my horror and annoyance (I think), and tried to explain that she was not in a good position, having encroached also on the person in front of her, who had nowhere to go.    She didn't understand and I gave up, insuring that I would encounter her at close quarters for the remainder of the class.

Soon it became very clear that she didn't have the least idea of what to do.   If she was lucky, she'd get a fraction of each exercise, but mostly she would stand and shuffle in that panicked way that beginners do.  Please understand that I am normally very very sympathetic to this state of being, because that is almost always my condition. 

Click to read more ...

Bateson's Brilliance

"The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and how people think."  -Gregory Bateson