Authenticity

A little over a week ago I attended a class at Gabrielle Roth's 5 Rhythm studio in New York City. It has taken until now to realize how much of an impact the class really had on me. I feel that it has helped me overcome a deep-rooted internal barrier that needed dismantling.

The 5 Rhythms:
Flowing
Staccato
Chaos
Lyrical
Stillness

"It's Friday night!" Apparently people my age are supposed to be cavorting around with other young lovelies, drinking and indulging. Why? Why why why? I've been desperate to find something that helps me blow off steam, let loose, and is also good for me. The "Night Waves" class if from 7 - 9 PM every Friday.

I walked into the classroom, sliding through a mass of independently dancing bodies, and started giggling as I told my friend that I had her water bottle. Persephone smiled at me, and put her finger to her lips - shhhh! No talking! So, like her, I started dancing.

First, loosening my shoulders, then onto the moves that my surface-level ego pushed out. On through moves from jazz class, Bollywood dance club, other hip-y and sway-y type moves, all superficial and standard, warming up.

There were at least 40 people swaying to their own rhythms. I was so aware at first, of them, my image, of the people that attended the class with me, especially my fiancee Puneet because he supposedly doesn't dance and is sometimes uncomfortable with "different" experiences.

After a half hour or so I found myself out of ideas. How could I possibly keep dancing for another hour and a half? Aiy. My standard moves were all used up. Through my precursory observation of others I noticed the dances my classmates were employing really weren't typical dances at all. Some people stretched low across the floor. Other jumped as if in a mosh pit. Still more looked as if they were dancing with an invisible partner, swaying to and fro to rhythms unheard.

I got into it. Further. I tried to move to reach muscles that ached to be used, but are neglected in urban, office, modern-day lifestyles. The back was the hardest place to loosen up. I danced vertical, horizontal, compelling my body to move in ways never done before.

The teacher, Tammy Burstein, created a pressure cooker environment, pushing us with music and a high vibration environment to become ourselves. The music pulsed, so did the people. She galloped through occasionally, never overtly observing, just checking in, reading the massive vibrating group of people who needed or craved the healing dance facilitates.

After an hour of this she stopped us. Time to sit together. It was here that the she imparted her theory to us. Dancing to her own intrinsic beat she explained that what's important about this class is that it provides a space where you can be the truest version of yourself. Diving into the unpredictability, the unknown of where our bodies will take us, can be a terrifying experience at first. We are scared of ourselves, spending all of our days, sometimes all of our lives, fitting into an external structure.

I mean, when has any teacher or healer in your life actually said, "Do what the truest, deepest part of you desires?" NEVER, to me at least. Maybe I was supposed to know how to be myself. After all, who's managing my life if not me? In truth, I feel that I am constantly compromising, forgetting that today can always be the best day of my life if I just follow where my heart and soul crave to go.


I accept the status quo of eating foods I dislike, and listening to the watery radio and media because it's easy, living just to get to tomorrow when everything is supposed to be, eternally tomorrow. I make decisions based on a convoluted, confusing notion of what I think I should want, what other people want, and what the general populace defines as proper.

There are so many ways I do a disservice to myself in this way.

WHY?

So the theory part of the dance urges you to really get into it, LET GO! Be yourself, follow the inner beat you crush by shaking hands and sitting at desks. Become yourself, grow and heal in the process.

Anyway, I'll keep this short for now, mostly so I can go stand and watch the rain.

I feel more myself. I am dancing everywhere. People in my life know I do this already, but not nearly enough! In grocery stores, kitchens, cars! But perhaps more important, I am for the first time really asking myself in responses, actions, words, "What feels the most authentic?" Actually, I'm just being more real. Like I said, it seems so obvious, but someone had to show me because I was programmed otherwise. This class has given me permission to be myself.

There is no reason for apathy or lethargy or depression. They are non-issues in a world of vibrant, truthful movement.


love, t