InnerPoetry.com

For example…last week I took a Zumba class. If you are not familiar with Zumba, the definition on the official website, Zumba.com, says it is “a fusion of Latin and International music that creates a dynamic, exciting, and effective fitness system.” I agree. It was definitely a good workout, som ething new, energetic and a whopping learning experience for me! I love to dance, and I’m not bad at it as long as I get to choose the moves. But I am highly aware of the challenge I have with coordinated movements - line dancing was never my thing. So, attending a Zumba class was a practice in detachment - how much could I drop my guard and let myself have fun with this, regardless of the millions of people I imagined watching (and somehow caring) and the moves that were completely unknown to me but seemingly perfected by everyone else? The outcome - I am no Zumba Queen, but I did it, and did it fully aware of how awkward I felt and yet managed to hold no judgment and actually have some fun.

But none of that was even the greatest realization had. This is…

The Self knows freedom, and seeks it in skin, and Life is too often a series of habitual movements. Now, some habits are necessary - like eating and sleeping. Some are good - like exercising and connecting with others. And some - let’s call them “practices” - are positive (dare I say, essential) rituals for the well-being of the Self, such as meditation, yoga, journaling and mindfulness. But all too often the majority of time is spent on living on auto-pilot, getting done what has to be done, and doing it in a manner that digs a groove in the Self’s memory systems. I see it as a ditch dug into the synapses. We walk the ditch daily, enacting the same routines, moving our bodies in so oft repeated patterns, responding and thinking in ways most familiar. We brush our teeth…up and down..We eat…scoop, up, down. Even our exercise becomes a cadence, whether we run or walk, use an elliptical machine or play tennis. Or even take yoga (oh my!). The body moves in remembered patterns.

The same can happen with our minds. Our particular way of speaking…our opinions and beliefs…our definition of who we are and our ideas about what defines us. All of it becomes regulated, routinized (not a word, but I bet you get the meaning). We risk becoming encapsulated in our chosen language and Self-image.

I say all that while at the same time holding the belief that coming to know who we most deeply and truly are and being that in full is, at least in part, the Universe’s call to us. But to be true to the call we must be willing to shake things up once in a while, to hold as our deepest commitment that we don’t really know anything. It’s all a great Mystery.

So what do we do?

We get unstuck. We jump out of the ditch. We throw off the costumes…any preconceptions or decisions we’ve made about ourSelves and the larger matrix of existence. Shake loose the mind, set down the ideas, concepts, analyses, beliefs and dogmas (no matter how enlightened they are). If even for only 5 minutes.

How? The best way I have personally found? Dance baby.

I return to my Zumba class. Yes, it was a class of coordinated, patterned movements…but I didn’t know them. The key to the experience was that I felt in my bones how locked into patterns I was…even patterns I considered “good.” It had been much too long since my body, mind and whole Being had been flung into free flowing movement. While in the class I yearned to break free, to just let go.

The body is the best leader when it comes to shaking it up because it can literally do just that. And when we allow our bodies to move in unfamiliar ways, in total freedom, we come face to face with our greatest inhibitions. We feel all or our self-consciousness and attachments to external approval, we feel our embarrassment, our needs, our “stuckness” and are given the chance to approach and love them, and to shake them loose.

If the body is given the chance to just let go, to unlock, the mind will follow. New ideas are born. Silence is discovered. Chaos entered and unwound. Potential becomes limitless.

We may soon return to our rituals and routines, but we return newly energized, our creativity nourished. We feel different. We see differently. We have grown. Then we do it all again.

Namaste.