I miss floors. I miss dancing on them, I miss rolling on them, I miss doing child's pose on them, I miss moving my palm across their surfaces, I miss worshipping them.
I took an Intro to Contact Dancing Class a few months ago, and before we learned how to dance with each other we were taught how to dance with the floor. My teacher reminded me that we are always dancing with the floor, so we are never alone and that every movement we make is balanced by another. In that class I learned to love floors. However, my relationship with floors began prior to, with my yoga practices. I don't understand why, but every time I do the child's pose on the floor, it makes me utterly grateful for everything in my life that is stable and consistent. No matter how bad I feel, this takes me out of it. I discovered this coping mechanism when I was living with my parents and it saved me on quite a few accounts. I am reminded of how grateful I am that the floor beneath us does not shake or swallow us. I think of how I have my health and am physically and mentally capable. I think of how I have relatively clean air to breath, and food to eat and how my body is an amazing machine that houses my soul.
The Contact Dance class took this relationship to the next level, as we were shown how to roll on the floor and connect with it more. I suppose no one really needs to be taught this, but it is hard to find the mind set by one self for the first time.
Fast-forward to present day. After a particularly bad yoga/tai chi/meditation class at *cough* Good Life Fitness *cough*, I realized that I had this wonderful, beautiful, hard wooded floor room all to myself for 2 hours. Before the teacher left she offered me the use of a yoga mat, but I told her that I prefer my barefeet being against the floor. Once it was quiet, I was happy to be alone with my friend and said “It is quiet now” to it. I started off with some stretches, dancing warm ups, and rolled from one end of this large, wonderful, beautiful floor to the other. The rolling technique is only effective as a form of meditation when done slowly, focusing on one motion at a time and making the body as limp as possible. It was hard to really get into at first, but developed into a much more intense connection as it progressed. I was humming some lines from the Pocahontas soundtrack, and repeating religious words of encouragement to the floor. As I was rolling, becoming closer to the floor and “praying”, I was thinking that I was performing a spiritual ceremony. I do not follow any particular religion (maybe Paganism in the future, but “Dancing” was my religion on Facebook for the longest time. Something about motion, being in tune with the body, mind and soul connects me to nature and the world. As I was rolling, I calmly repeated things like, “This is how I pray...this is how I pray...this is how I pray...” As my meditation progressed, I started thinking about the different aspects of human life. As humans we need to fulfil ourselves in order 3 ways to survive:
1.) Fulfil our bodies by eating well and sleeping regularly
2.) Learn to play the game so that we can afford to be alive in this Capitalist world that requires us to have wealth in order to eat/rent/take care of our bodies
3.) Fulfil ourselves spiritually
The first one is necessary because we live in human bodies, organisms that can only give us energy by getting it from another source (not the sun). We are not the human body though, it just houses us. When we say “I'm sleepy”, what we really is “My body is sleepy”, because as a famous person once said (Mark Twain?) “We are not bodies with souls, we are souls with bodies”. That is one of the things I repeated a lot during my session. It also made me think how the other two requirements are superficial but absolutely necessary. However, without the last, we are not (what some people would call) “human”. I started saying out loud how I sometimes think I need new clothes, make up, personal belongings, even music, but I don't. What I actually need is to feel close to a floor. To God. To Nature. To the universe. Everything else is just a distraction. I actually started crying and proclaiming, “I need you so much”. Repeating it over and over. As I got closer to the end of the wall I calmed down and felt like I let all of my sorrow, pain, fear, love and passion out. I was sad to leave, but reminded myself that their are floors and ground everywhere, it is just a matter of me taking the time to really be with one. I know now that I can try to put that need aside, but it will catch up to me. When I left, it was the first time in a long time that I felt GREAT and strong all on my own. I decided to spoil my body and ordered Stuffed Mushroom Caps at Brio Gusto down the street.