October Asides
The Body Never Lies
We recently had an ISSC information meeting explaining what a CoLab is, what the organization is, and why it is. In response to a discussion about what the ISSC is doing and why dancers do the research, I found myself saying, “The body never lies”, knowing I was dividing body from mind and knowing that the ISSC is built upon its entanglement as a single act of being. So, I thought to delve into that statement a bit here.
I think the physicality of the mind that is a body, never lies. It has to be coerced into shaping and behaving in ways that appear to be harmony with external events or pressures. The embodied truth of being, while perhaps not visible, simply shifts to another level, layer, location for expressing its always and forever congruence. In other words, when we “train” our bodies to do things, like dance, like sit quietly at a desk and attend to a teacher, like not hit someone who is rude, like not just lie down when we are tired, we are doing this against the fact of the body’s congruence with the thoughts and feelings that are formed on the multiple levels of our mind. In its material form, that emergent being we always are, composed of trillions of other beings on far different scales, simply reorganizes itself to remain congruent – to not “lie.” This is done in a world in which the definition of a lie is to be out of congruence, doing one thing but thinking another- I’m thinking of the clever pick-pocket who distracts your attention in order to put fingers in your purse without your knowing, or the salesman who smiles in approval of something she, herself would never buy. That way, the appearance is of congruence with a thought, “you are an interesting person saying an interesting thing and it wakes me up,” enforcing bright eyes, while the necessity of simultaneously constraining tension in your stomach and keeping rhythmic time with your toes, hidden within shoes, says something different. The body will find its harmony with its deepest mind, thoughts, beliefs. In other words, if we think the body lying, maybe we just aren’t looking deeply enough. The body knows.
And that is why we dance.
And, I haven’t even turned to Daniel Stern and his language around vitality affects, or attunement which is really fabulous worthwhile work that I suggest people check out – especially new parents.
The deal is, we cannot escape social constraints or a trained bodymind. There is no “natural,” unshaped human form separate from its environmental and relational practices. We are all touched. Each touch, whether it is through words, sights, or any other level of engagement, leaves us in motion on mental∞physical levels. We are those engagements and we live them as our physical presence. What dancing allows us to do is to experience congruence, as best it can be physically known. Not that our dancing is always congruent in its action, as if we always do what we intend to do. Rather, we seek to know how our present is congruent and we work to bring being up to the forefront and give it clear visibility. We seek transparency. We seek minds that are caught in motion as bodies. We seek a touch that speaks our relations bodily as directly as possible and to recognize any forms of mediation that influence it. We enjoy the feeling of physical truth telling, and this is why we are never done dancing. Telling the truth as a congruent act of being available in the world takes a lifetime and more. We are never fully done with this practice. Yet, where we see this level of congruence, we are compelled to look. The beauty is astounding.