A Contact Improv Life Path

Today I did contact improv for the first time. Often when I’m at dance gatherings I see people doing it, but I never do. Today someone I was dancing fast with offered me his hand and then pulled me into himself and lifted me off the floor. I was shocked and terrified. When he finally put me down I told him I didn’t know how to dance like that. He said it was okay, he would show me. Then he slowly flipped me over his head and gently brought me down to the ground, head first!

I stopped him again to explain that he was scaring the bejesus out of me. He said I was so light there was no way he could drop me and that he was a trained professional. I decided to relax into it and trust him with my neck (hopefully not to be my broken neck).

It wound up being one of the most amazingly wonderful experiences I’ve had in a long time. It was one of the most intimate exchanges of movement and heart I’ve ever shared in a dance. I had to completely trust him and be totally present with everything that was happening between us in order to know how to shift my weight at different times in order not to go flying or rolling off him. He still had to occasionally remind me that I didn’t need to hold onto him, as I would periodically recall that I had a self-story as a person who didn't know how to do contact improv, and would then clutch at him to avoid tumbling -- but for the most part I was able to let go and ride a wave of trust into a very beautiful space of communion.

I share this as an example of how the risks we take in life are often frightening. The most valuable experiences usually involve letting go, having nothing to hold onto and no knowledge of which direction fate is going to turn us next. And yet, if we take that leap, if we take those risks, on the other side is just a little bit more of our true selves. Sometimes the reward is quick in the coming, and other times years away. But always there is the refinement process going on of our becoming more and more true to the fullness of our potential.

What are you holding on to? What makes you feel like you're in control of your life? Who would you be if you let go of that? Could you let go of it? Would you? When?

With each letting go of the walls defining your self-story, the story that tells you how you grew up, what you learned and did, and who you are and are not, with each letting go of that story there is a breeze of freedom that blows through. If you let it, it will lift you and spin you and carry you and gently lower you down to the ground once more. And then you will walk with new feet on a new land and be new yourself.

This is to live life as if it was a contact improv exchange, with your partner embodied by all that is. I invite you. Enjoy the dance.