Dancing at the Threshold of Ignorance

In a sense each lesson is little dance on the threshold of ignorance, where our sense of “normal” changes each time we experience ourselves doing some simple movement more comfortably.

The older we are, the more unconscious somatic tensions we are likely to carry that inhibit coordinated movement. These parasitic tensions endure from long-forgotten physical, emotional, or psychological injuries. Like watchful sentries with a finger always on the adrenaline button, they can give us a jolt at a tone of voice, gesture, or facial expression reminiscent of pain.

Each Flowingbody lesson is a mindful exploration at this threshold of ignorance. There are certain movements we never learned were possible, and we don’t know that we don’t know them. Consciously observing the initial moment of translating any movement intention into action offers an opportunity to discover muscular contractions that actually impede the intended movement. Or, as Mark Twain put it, “a man who holds a cat by its tail will learn something he can learn in no other way!”

These gentle explorations are “Dances at the Threshold of Ignorance,” There is much  we don’t know about how we unconsciously paint ourselves into the same corners over and over. Maintaining mindful patience and curiosity through each movement sequence creates a conscious witness to what extent we are really doing what we think we are doing.

It is fair to say that to a large degree the purpose of these lessons is to experience again the wide vocabulary of movements we explored as children, from standing, to walking, to running, dancing, throwing, catching, and so on. Each new little sense of ease is a relief, a burden lightened, a cloud lifted.