Photo of Christian by Lindsey.
It was a re-connection of sorts with a new friend and a practiced idea. Guided by Christian we went to three very different parks over three days in and around Holyoke, MA. It was thrilling to jump back into the Daily Practice structure with Lindsey and Christian. Although it felt mostly awkward and discombobulating for all but one of the 9, 3 minute explorations I was happy to live in that awkwardness listening to my editing voice, and my patterned voice. And like my three minute explorations, I also found the watching difficult as well. My mind wandering while I tried to gain the focus and thought to be in the moment as a viewer and provide that important watching feedback to the performer/explorer/improvisor/dancer who was in the middle of their 3 minute practice. A couple thoughts were brought to the surface during these three days. Some dealing with how I felt about my 3 minute moments, mainly trying to understand when my ‘thinking’ mind is guiding me, when my body is guiding me and when they are working closely together. Sometimes it is the little comments that spawn a host of other thoughts or epiphany’s. I struggled to get ‘out of my head,’ and allow the rest of my body to have more of a voice in the choices I made. And although a relatively simple and known idea I was most satisfied physically when I acknowledged to myself that the intellectual thinking brain is still very much a part of my body and not some separate entity from the rest of my body. Instead of fighting to turn one off and another on I just allowed them both to be on and communicate with one another. It might sound hippie/dippy but it started to work for me. I felt a dialogue emerge physically and mentally. Another performative decision I made was to use some of the mediation structures that I have learned and applied them to what I was doing. One of the meditation ‘helpers’ that I used is to acknowledge thoughts if they enter my mind while meditating. I should put a disclaimer first that I am by far a regular meditator! When I do meditate as soon as I realize my mind wandering I would say to myself, ‘thought.’ It is a very successful way to acknowledge what the mind is doing and it usually makes the thought disappear and clears/focuses the mind. I applied this during the 3 minute practices but rather then acknowledge thoughts, I was acknowledging craft, choices that I was making that have been learned. When I noticed what I was doing I just said ‘craft’ and immediately my choice became apparent to me and I broke from it.
