‘Be water, my friend’: The power of moving your body in troubled times

Gia Kourlas writes about how important movement can be in a time when life feels so restrictive

(Getty Images)

Bruce Lee talked about emptying the mind in order to become formless and shapeless like water, which “can flow or it can crash”, he says. “Be water, my friend.” 

The pandemic has made us shift our perspectives in so many ways, but Lee’s guidance rings true: we need to be water. And we need to move. It heals. And if more people moved, they might just find their way to dance.

Dancers know that how you are in your body relates to how you are in your mind and how you move through the world. Many people live in cramped quarters that now often double as workplaces, too. Our bodies are constricted. And although we aren’t back to exactly the same shutdown as we were in March, as the pandemic drags on, it’s getting harder and harder to find moments of release and wonder.

Winter is not my greatest season. I mean, it can be a struggle to stand. But when I least feel like moving is when I need it the most. It’s good to sweat. I run. Last spring, a friend who knows me well recommended a trainer, Erika Hearn, and she has saved my body and mind through her Instagram classes, which mix strength, Powerstrike kickboxing, resistance band-work and mobility. It’s a meticulous total package; plus, she moves with such dynamic ease that watching and mirroring her fluid execution of steps – including her occasional human moments of imperfection – in some small way fills the gap of not being able to see live dance. When she says “stay with me” it’s not only about completing a movement, it’s about having faith in movement.

Still, it’s hard to remain optimistic about much of anything at dusk. It’s too cold to roam the city; we’re basically stuck inside. But even our milder version of lockdown doesn’t have to feel as if we’re locked up. We can use movement as a way to look inward. Through stillness and slowing down, we can create a rich sense of space by moving our minds around our bodies. Slowing down can feel like freedom – and, for me, that’s a good antidote to dusk.

Somatic practice – named for “soma” or the living body – is a way to connect the mind and body that encourages internal attentiveness.

“We’re talking about allowing the living body to inform behaviour,” says Martha Eddy, an esteemed somatic movement therapist. “But then how do you do that? It’s by using your proprioception” – the ability to feel the body in space – “and your kinesthetic awareness”.

Focusing on the navigation of space and becoming conscious of how you move, especially when outdoor ventures are limited, is unsettling and grounding, excruciating and exciting, but always transformative. It’s a trip you can take.

“It’s a mind journey,” Eddy says. “And it’s a mind journey that’s real.”

During the pandemic, virtual training has opened up the somatic approach to the bigger world. Classes in the Feldenkrais Method and BodyMind Dancing are available at Movement Research at no cost. (The joke is that they’re priceless.) Eddy’s BodyMind Dancing, appropriate for any level or any body, is a delightful, curative way to spend a Monday night.

I’ve tried to distill it to that I teach people how to pay attention, what to pay attention to and why it matters

It’s fitting that a key somatic principle, Eddy says, is the idea of slowing down.

“I call it slowing down to feel,” she says. “Related to that is going into the breath, and related to that is releasing tension. Sometimes I separate those two and sometimes I keep them together: releasing tension and breathing.”

There are levels, but slowing down to feel isn’t a static act: it’s about shifting to a more internal place. The hope is that you emerge from a somatic class and bring some of that awareness into your everyday life. I know I have. In a time when it seems we have little control, having agency over our bodies – and our internal world – is a kind of power. By engaging in a somatic experience, you come to realise that these practices are not just about creating flexible bodies but flexible minds.

The Feldenkrais Method, created by Moshe Feldenkrais, does that and more with its system of exercises that zone in on skeletal function and self-awareness through movement. It’s slow, methodical and controlled. Sometimes the movements seem imperceptible. You are told to hold back, and you are also on your back a good deal. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy.

Rebecca Davis, a Feldenkrais practitioner, breaks it down: “You do a movement and you pay attention to how it feels,” she says. “You do something with the right side. You do that same action on the left side. I’ve tried to distill it to that I teach people how to pay attention, what to pay attention to and why it matters.”

In one class I took focusing on the feet and legs, Davis told us – repeatedly – to stay in a 5 per cent zone of range and effort. This, it turned out, was impossible. It’s like my muscles were laughing at me. Attempting to do less is a hard, humbling act.

‘Becoming conscious of how you move is unsettling and grounding, excruciating and exciting, but always transformative’ (Getty/iStockphoto)

“When I say, ‘Now slowly tilt your legs to the right,’ what comes out of people is definitely not my idea of slow,” Davis says later. “We have to recalibrate pacing, timing because for this work in particular it’s the sensory details that we’re interested in. Once you slow down and start paying attention to yourself in a different way, that’s really where change can happen.”

Davis, who teaches at Movement Research (her next classes are in February) and has an online programme, talks you through the physical instructions, which in turn develops a skill: you listen both to a voice and to your body. While executing small, detailed movements, she invites the release of the eyes, the jaw, the forehead – sites of parasitic effort, where parts of the body don’t need to work. It’s a way to quiet ourselves so the sensory details of our experience become clearer. It’s like relearning yourself from the inside out, and the breakthroughs are otherworldly.

“When your weight is not collapsing onto your spine, onto your skeleton – when you’re not falling onto yourself, when you figure out how to use your feet so that your weight is coming up and through, that feels so good,” Davis says. “You’re lighter. It takes less work to move.”

Which is our breath, which is our blood flow, which is our craniosacral rhythm, which is the cerebrospinal fluid around the nervous system

But it also takes work to remain still. Early in the pandemic, I found yin yoga, a practice focusing on passive poses, and Kassandra Reinhardt, who has been teaching on YouTube since 2014. She can ease the memory of any miserable day, and so can yin, which isn’t about stretching muscles but relaxing into them in order to release ligaments, joints, bones and fascia. Poses are held for at least two minutes and usually longer.

Some of them feel good; others feel like death.

“We’re slowly breaking down physical tension that we might have been carrying for years,” she says. “Maybe you just have it from the run that you did earlier that day, but maybe this is decades worth of tightness and tension that you’re now consciously releasing.”

It’s a process: you find your pose – and your edge within it – and breathe while remaining still. If all goes well, you melt lower and deeper; when class is over, it’s as if you’ve shed a layer of skin.

Embracing stillness-oriented practices is important to Marie Janicek, a dancer turned personal trainer who hosts a podcast, “This Thing Called Movement,” that explores how movement impacts our lives. “It allows us to flesh out the true depth and subtlety and dimensionality that’s inherent in the movements we do day to day,” she says. “And then we have a greater ability to appreciate all the threads of what’s happening in our bodies, in our minds, in our sense of self. Not just when we’re actually moving, but then outside of that as well.”

‘Once you slow down and start paying attention to yourself in a different way, that’s really where change can happen’  (Getty)

As Eddy points out, even when we are seemingly still, there are physiological rhythms that occur in our bodies.

“Which is our breath, which is our blood flow, which is our craniosacral rhythm, which is the cerebrospinal fluid around the nervous system,” she says.

For her, it’s an orchestra.

“Sometimes it’s very, very quiet and sometimes one particular instrument is very dominant,” she says. “But no part disappears.”

You can access that dimension and richness in her classes, too. In a recent BodyMind Dancing session, we were swinging and swaying in whatever way we chose. She says, “Let the weight move into lightness.”

It was the sensation of moving heavy water – thick yet unbound – and suddenly being swept to shore by a wave. In my apartment. After class ended, Eddy asked if anyone wanted to share their experience. One woman, effusive and out of breath, popped onto my screen and said she had been working up until the time class started but was determined to take it anyway. She went to a park. But she didn’t want to lie on the ground to perform the exercises.

“I found a tree!” she says.

Movement can do all sorts of things. On this night it brought the world a little closer together.

“Thanks,” Eddy says, “for bringing the tree to us.”

© The New York Times