It is spring. Baby chicks and bunnies have presented
themselves as symbols of birth through the Easter holidays. Tulips and
daffodils have been pushing their beautiful heads up through the earth to make
their appearance in our gardens. The vegetable gardens are being planted with
great care and enthusiasm. The earth is turning green again.
As I write this, I am on a train heading to the little town
of Stroud, UK to teach a Continuum Movement workshop, inspired by the
developmental movements of the birth process. I cannot help but perceive them
occurring all around me! The baby coming through the birth canal senses the
uterine and vaginal walls pressing against her delicate skin. Her time of
simply resting and growing in the watery world of the womb is quickly passing. Her
little head pushes and reaches into the opening in front of her, as waves of
contractions meet her little body, washing her out into the unknown. Whether
that time in the womb was entirely pleasant or overwhelmingly traumatic, what
lies ahead includes unknowns.
How often do we encounter a similar sensations in our lives?
I watch the children I work with, as well as my step-daughter, moving towards
the end of their school year, accompanied by fears and anticipatory excitement
about the unknowns of moving to a new school, a different college program,
entering the work world are soon to bring. It is as if the waves of their lives
are propelling them forwards, in concert with their own hopes and ambitions.
As a Continuum Movement teacher, I witness and participate
in the enormous transition as we completed last month one year since our dear
mentor, Emilie Conrad’s, passing and explore what and how we can co-create
within this new field of the unknown. Like a serpent shedding its skin, we find
the old form dry, tight and sticking in some places while we fluidly slither
into naked being in the mystery.
Just one week ago, I returned home from sorting through the
last bits of my mother’s life after her passing in July last year. Another wave
of grief combines with the one from losing Emilie, as well as the relief that
my time of working hard to take care of her affairs from 5000 miles away is
essentially done. A new phase of life seems to be replacing the more familiar
one of the last few years. I wait upon the threshold of this new life, letting
go, letting go, letting go. No need to fight the forceps, the doctor’s timing,
or the anesthesia with this birth. Skins upon skins are being released. I
remember Emilie speaking of how snakes need to drink a lot of water when
shedding their skin. I drink. I practice Continuum to deepen into fluid being.
I observe the shifts as life morphs once again.
It is spring. Dare we to believe we know who we are? Do we
want to carve ourselves in stone in this way? Or do we take the risk of letting
go of what we know so well (and perhaps complain about so often) to make room
for the new, the unknown. The promise awaits us, beckoning as the days lengthen
and the flowers bloom. Can we have the courage, like the flowers emerging from
underground darkness into the sunlight, to give that important push against the
earth? That push that frees us, differentiates us, determines us from all we
have known in the past? What is it you would create or welcome into your life
if you were not so burdened with that one thing (or more) you hold so tightly
onto?
