On Vulnerability

Recently I watched this documentary (that’s available right now on Netflix) and I think about it every day. I’ll probably have to watch it again.

At first, I couldn’t understand this dancer’s appeal to anyone. Ohad Naharin adored her… took her to Israel out of university so that she could learn from him and be a central dancer in his company. OHAD! The dude I adore.

And then… then… she does her first solo piece. It’s in the nude. I’ve never seen a reason for the nude thing until this moment. It had to be in the nude. There was no other way for the piece to make sense, and within moments of watching her, you’re so captivated by her body’s ability to be truthful, that you stop noticing the nude aspect.

She is freaking amazing.

But one quote caught me:

“I wanna get to that place where I have no strength to hide anything.”

— Bobbi Jene Smith, Choreographer

The level of vulnerability… what a warrior she is.

What a warrior we are all called to be.

Have you ever gotten near to this idea in your own life?

Are you willing to get near to this idea in your own life?

I’m sharing this and hoping it brings about a conversation because my mind is still spinning from it.

This, too, is a dancer's body

From a demonstration years ago in our city arboretum. Betty was almost 80 in this photo.

This, too, is a dancer’s body, because all bodies that dance are dancer’s bodies, and all bodies are meant to dance; it’s in your genetic coding. Dancing is an expression of being human, no more and no less.

I got to teach Betty for a couple of years before she passed away. That’s the very happy part of our story together.

The sad part is that it was only during these couple of years with me that Betty felt like she was truly embodied, that she felt her feelings deeply, that she got to know her body. This is not my story of Betty; this is what she said over and over again.

She was a nun for a lot of her life, left that, and became a nurse practitioner. When she came to this work, it was not something she ever thought she'd be doing, but she'd tell you that it's never too late and then she'd add with great passion and seriousness that IT'S NEVER TOO SOON!

So much of Betty’s life, like a lot of women her age, like too many women to this day, was in her head. She walked through most of her life as if just a head or as if the body were just a vehicle for the head.

I spent a great deal of my life there, thanks to chronic depression. I know how easy it is to stay there, how “comfortable” it can be — it you think it’s comfortable to only be partly human, to only know a tiny bit of yourself and this great experiment of life.

For the first time in her life, she FELT HER BODY. And she learned that she loved The White Stripes. 

"Managing Depression:" Why This Approach Fails

One of my favorite photos from our brief time living in Vermont.

I’ve never flown a plane but the metaphor is too good to resist.

When you’re flying inside a storm system, you have to work extra hard to maintain flight within that system. All your energy goes to getting through.

But if you fly above the storm, you have energy to look around, to enjoy the flight. The storm might be doing its thing below you, but you’re in blue sky.

Either way, you’re using the same instruments, doing the same sorts of checks, etc.

In situation one, you’re stressed, getting exhausted, not learning anything new, just surviving.

That’s been me since our move to Vermont and back home to Pennsylvania again.

Being away from everything and everyone triggered my depression in a way I hadn’t experienced in some years. When we returned home, I told everyone this version of things:

“Before Vermont, I had achieved a high level of management of my depression. That’s how I got so happy and functional.”

And so I went back to trying to manage all the bits… like the pilot in the storm.

I had checklists. I was doing “all the things.” I was going through the motions.

And I was not getting back to where I had been… I was in survival mode. There was no thriving and no sign of it to come.

My frustration, as you can imagine, was profound. WHY was this not WORKING? My management skills had not decreased. I knew the “things” that worked.

Then I was reading the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying one night. Re-reading some passages, to be exact, and after, I got in the tub, the place where I do some of my best thinking.

And this sentence went through my head: “DESIGN YOUR LIFE TO ELEVATE YOUR MIND.”

Otherwise: fly this damn plane out of this damn storm and get into blue sky.

In a lot of meditation circles, they even say things like, “get into Big Sky Mind… mind above small mind… small mind always has problems but above it, all is clear.”

This was the KEY: when I had gotten to a place of peace and joy in my life, I was NOT “managing my depression,” I was LIVING IN ELEVATED MIND.

I was not “doing things off of a checklist to feel better.” I was doing things that helped me to live from my higher mind.

Depression was always still there… below me…

I knew this at the time. Daily, I could sense it, see it, smell it… lurking. But I didn’t fly down into it. Even on rough days, everything I did helped me to stay in elevated mind. Everything I read. Everything I watched. And soon, subsequently, EVERYTHING I THOUGHT.

Depression — true mental difference depression as opposed to circumstantial depression — is really like Diabetes type 2. You never get rid of your diabetes type 2 but you can live above it by eating and exercising and taking your medicine. It is always there but it doesn’t DEFINE you; it doesn’t RULE your every day.

Managing my depression was really my depression managing me, but creating a life and an environment that elevates my mind, well, elevates my mind.

And PS this is NOT magical thinking. I’m not “thinking my depression away.” I’m thinking above my depression’s mindset, and in that higher space, I know I am MORE than my depression and from there I will always make better choices for myself which then feeds that higher self and on and on … a positive cycle created and maintained that is more powerful than the negative cycle. No more wasted energy… no more FIGHTING it. Much like the Japanese martial art, aikido, I defeat it by not engaging.