These two photos are about 9 years apart. The black and white photo is the older photo and the newer photo was taken in the studio where I teach here in Columbus, OH.
I’m 46 in the first one and 55 in the second. Though this has nothing to do with age.
It has to do with time passing, yes, but it has to do with life experiences over that time passing.
During that first photo, I was in the best fitness of my life, and I was on fire with ideas and passion and energy. I hadn’t met Craig; the pandemic hadn’t happened; so much hadn’t happened. And I was in a “flying high” sort of phase of my life. I felt completely healed of any and all mental health challenges. (Yes, I was a bit naive.)
Come to the second photo and those nine years between the two feel more like a few decades. And I’m betting that most of you reading this don’t just understand that but feel much the same about this chunk of time.
My point here is that our physical bodies end up reflecting the life we’ve lived through and our internal landscape. (Stick with me.)
It’s basic cause and effect.
There were dozens of reasons, but over those nine years, I slowly stopped moving as much. I slowly stopped engaging with life in the same joyful way.
It was so very slow… like a titration of making me and my life smaller and smaller. Again, there were a lot of external reasons for this, but those reasons then fed into old internal crap, and eventually the existential depression monster took hold and would not let go.
Until maybe a year ago. And I think it was almost harder this time through than previous times because I felt such a profound sense of loss this time. Before my depression had developed in micro-bits over decades and it felt like that was simply the water I swam in.
When I got healthy, I didn’t realize what healthy could be like. It was so new to me. To have that suddenly snatched away again felt like a cruel joke.
And so with that existential depression, my already diminishing movement practices got pretty much gobbled up. I got to the point where the only time I was moving was when I was teaching. And it was easy when I was teaching to not move in new ways because I was paying attention to others.
You can see the spiral here.
And it’s really the same for most humans. Except that we don’t look to see the connections.
We blame our bad back on our age and not on the fact that we stopped moving very much decades before.
We blame our bad relationship on the other person and not on the fact that we also disengaged and stopped trying.
We hate seeing cause and effect because it leads to responsibility.
Eventually, our bodies will change, and that change will reflect so many little choices along so many years and so many unexpressed and unprocessed griefs and traumas and so many experiences that are uncountable.
The point is to notice and to understand that bodies change is not just a negative statement.
Bodies change. When I took that new photo of myself, it kinda startled me that to make that shape was kinda... difficult. It took a bunch of tries. It was frustrating. I expected to just replicate it the first try and with ease because it’s my damn body.
But bodies change. And I had not really noticed. Even though that’s my work in this world.
Bodies change. And it's often because we've changed how we are in these bodies.
Bodies can change again.
So I'll be adding a LOT more floor play into my movement work. It was a huge part of my practice back then but it hasn't been as much lately so I can't be surprised that my body has changed in this particular way.
When I started to dance again at the age of 40, my body and mind both changed COMPLETELY in nine months. I’m gonna do that again. Starting right now.
Watch me.