the 10,000 year dance

At the end of dance class today, Johanna spoke of the long arc of practicing Dog Dance. 

The permission it gives and the ease that it brings.

Because of course I want people to experience only bliss, only delight, only connection when they are dancing in our class.

But that's just not gonna happen.

(Someone said to me once, after one of my free dance classes: "If you can promise me that every class will be as good, as fun, and as uplifting as this one was, then I'm ready to sign up, right now. Here, I have my checkbook with me," and she began rummaging through her purse looking for her checkbook. "Wait," I said, "I can't promise you that. I wish I could, but I can't. It's just not how it works." She did not sign up for the class).

It's easier, I think, to let each day be what it is when we know we will all show up, over and over again, to practice this dance together. Because that long arc -- it lets hope and expectation go, and instead it allows us to wait and see what takes shape in our bodies, our stillness, and our dancing.

Sometimes peoples' experience of our class is sublime, never ending, and complete. 

And sometimes those same people, myself included, have an experience that is a little lost maybe -- somewhat disconnected. 

I think though, that to be whole, we need all of it --

The little lost.
The disconnected.
The whirring mind.
The lonesome.
The true.
The delighted.
The deep breath.
The ten thousand years of dancing.

If we skip a step to get somewhere faster, or try to get to a "better" place -- well, that's not this dance.

If we wish too hard to dance the ten thousand year dance -- and I will be the first to admit that I wish to dance the ten thousand year dance all the time -- the dancing breaks.

Which is fine -- so it breaks.

This dance has broken hundreds of times before, and it will break hundreds of times more -- that's what makes it true.

And when it breaks, we just start over.

In that starting over, we notice, again.
We pay attention, again.
We listen, again.
We cultivate our curiosity, again.

That's the ten thousand year dance.

That's the long arc.

With Warmth,
Joanna
of
Joanna and The Agitators
sweetly agitating/persistently upending
www.joannaandtheagitators.com