Several weeks ago in a class, one of my favorite teachers,
Maria Cristina Jimenez, had us rig up a little strap-sling for our upper arms,
and in several poses she had us press out into the strap with our biceps as we
folded forward. Our charge was to find
(and revel in), from that pressing out, the magical extra opening of the heart
that quickly followed.
And for weeks I have been using and adjusting and playing
with this same trick (thanks, MC!) and variations on it in my own practice, and
in classes.
Right away, while testing this out in classes, I realized that
there are two types of people. There is
the type of person who is all loosey-goosey flexi-pants, who really needs to
draw in instead of pressing out. This person has got enough out.
This person needs some holding to their center, and so for them the
strap is actually about restraining, about holding them to the middle. And then there is the other type of person (I
fall into this category), who errs toward the muscular, rather than the loose,
and who needs a little less holding
it all together, and a little more expanding to their limits. For them, the strap is really about something
to expand against, to relieve all that constant contraction.
We all need structure.
Boundaries. We all need something
to push up against—whether that is a literal pushing out, or an invisible
drawing in (a pushing up against one’s own center)—whoever, however…there has
to be some kind of structure in place or else…chaos.
We know this about children.
You hear it all the time, that if kids don’t have boundaries, they are
going to go crazy in the looking for them.
If you have ever made theatre or made a painting or made just about
anything, you’ve probably heard a variation on this theme—that the rules have
to be in place before anything really creatively free can take place. You need to know who is doing what, where
things are happening, what the beginning and what the end is or else…the whole
creative work would just devolve into nonsense.
When I first started writing in a more serious way, several
years ago, I used to ask P. to give me a list of random elements to make a
script from. He would come up with five
or six things, sometimes practical like, “only use one location”, sometimes
plot-based, “there has to be an explosion”, sometimes more moody, “it should
feel dark all the time,” and off I’d go.
Immediately, list in hand, I felt free.
Because, though I didn’t know much of anything else, I at least knew
that there would be an explosion, there would be darkness, and we would stay
put.
And the body, perfect metaphor that it is, is no
different. As soon as the boundary lines
are established, as soon as the feet and the head and the ribs and the arms all
know what they’re doing and where they’re heading—that is when a real opening
can begin to happen. You take a shape,
and then you spend some time in that shape, and you explore its
dimensions. You push out, you draw in,
you soften, you engage…the pose is a playground within which you
experiment. You play.
But the challenge is, that for most of us as adults, we are
left to our own devices when it comes to creating structure. I remember when I first moved to New York
after college, at 22 years old, it was such a shock to my system to have no
rhythm to my days. I didn’t understand
how people made it work, this whole life thing—where exactly was I supposed to
go? How was I supposed to spend my
time? Who was handing out the grades,
here, anyhow? It took years for me to
realize (and I think I’m still figuring this out, day by day) that I had to be
the arbiter of my own structure. If
there was something I wanted to do or make or be…I had to be it. And without anyone nodding their approval I
had to set aside the time and the means to make things happen.
I am a person who craves structure. But, I am also a person who craves freedom
and craves a creative life…often these two things do not go hand in hand. There are days when all I want is for someone
to tell me where to be, what time to be there, and what I should do once I’ve
arrived, but what I often forget is that, that person…is me. I am the one who gets to (has to) tell me
where to be and when and what to do when there.
I am structure-maker and I am play-er within.
Some days it’s harder than others.
But, on the days when the structure feels futile, when all I
want to do is navel gaze and ruminate, I have learned to enlist my
block-builder self, and set to work.
That is why the structure is there.
It’s there to hold the shape on the days when passion alone can’t
suffice.
These days, I just imagine a strap hugging against me,
hugging my arms together, and I close my eyes and press out. And then I wait for the opening that is sure
to come…
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