Adriene Thorne asked us to do something that I and the girl sitting next to me, didn’t want to do… move. The first thing she asked us to do was to take our shoes off. I sat there for a minute listening to everyone else take off their shoes… then eventually decided to do it. She asked us to start to massage ourselves… our hands, legs, arms. I immediately began to feel more embodied and realized the stress I had been carrying from the busy days of the immersion experience. Embodiment, what a concept!
The next exercise was to create massage lines and massage the people next to us. I massaged a man’s shoulders and felt him release tension and as we switched, I felt myself release tension. Something magical happened, I actually felt more connected to him afterwards just through that experience of touch and giving and receiving. She then made us walk around the room with shoes off. Walking fast, slow, on tippy toes, hunched over, up tall. She continuously had us remember that these modes of walking are what other people experience all the time. To walk s-l-o-w-l-y and to really think about how most able bodied people rarely take the time to think about this. We had been traveling around the city for two weeks. I had seen many different people and many different types of walking or moving around in the world available to various people. But I hadn’t connected myself to their experiences through movement. It was a humbling experience for me.
For Adriene, movement in her congregation is an important aspect of community. She said it is about learning to move together as one body. I found this to be profound. We become so cerebral, especially in academia. Even in our immersion class we traveled together, but did we move together? I would say yes and no. There was a bond that emerged through traveling together, but what would have happened if we formed a massage line every morning or engaged in a quick dance? I think with movement or dance there can be such resistance. This is what I experienced when I didn’t even want to take off my shoes. In looking at that resistance, I find it interesting how it always seems to lead us to more isolation and a lesser sense of groundedness. To see exercises of embodiment as a spiritual practice that a community can engage in together I think can be a vital aspect of community organization and movement. How can an organization or group even consider social justice (which is a form of movement) when actual physical movement hasn’t even been considered?
Transformation through Transcendence 