Words

In my Embodied Meditation program this past weekend, I became very interested in the way that words and stories limit or halt the experience of my body in yoga and movement. Our teacher, Bobbie Ellis, asked us to move deep inside our bodies, allowing the sensations space and time to unfold. It was harder than I expected to release the judgment, the conclusions that pounded up against the door of my consciousness: "Your hip's sore because of the hike yesterday." "You're too full. You shouldn't have had that scone." The stories poured in faster than I had time to process them, each abruptly halting tinglings of sensations, reductive and dismissive, or perhaps interesting and lovely - but completely disconnected from my actual experience. A cosmos of experience in my body, shrunk down to an imposed and rigid cast, mindlessly flung atop it.

It's hard for me, with my immense love for words, to imagine them as villains. And so I seek to imagine a new way of being. One that's expansive, with enough room for all the layers of wisdom inside my body, blossoming out love and intelligence and health, space for the mind to be quiet and rest. I imagine words might just find a new home there, allowing dead symbols to sprout wings and horns, halos and antennae, dance with music and light and color, and breathe life again.

Today, as I tripped over language, working to express this desire to my friend, she smiled and said: "Oh, you mean art." I think I do.