Should we tame ecstatic joy?
Or dive deep with abandon?
Happy new year, dear reader.
I just spent the last three days dancing into and through the new year, feeling blissful, ecstatic, and deeply nourished by contact, connection, intimacy with self, release and relief to leave a whole lot on the dance floor. Workshops and intensives allow me to dwell in an expansive state for days at a time, totally liberated from daily life to immerse myself in wonder and joy.
(If you want to read more about my experience with 5Rhythm Dance, click here.)
In my decades of immersive experiences, I have learned that there is an important, sacred, often overlooked or even rejected integration period afterwards. It used to feel like “coming down” and I would feel sad to return to daily tasks and deadlines. I would long to stay in that place of liberation and expansion.
But it’s important to close. It’s wise to close.
Staying in that place of wide open wonder was alluring and even addictive… How could I connect with the cashier at Whole Foods so deeply? How could the eye gaze of a stranger become tears of soul recognition and a hug in the street? How could all the songs on the radio know exactly how I was feeling, pulling at the edges of my joy to raise me even higher? I loved the cosmic coincidences that would occur. Until I didn’t….
After several days of extending my workshop bliss I would start to feel overwhelmed. I was taking in too much stimulus, absorbing too much of the energy around me. I came to feel saturated and wanted to run off into the desert alone to soak in mineral springs and burn sage until I was out of reach, hidden behind a cloud of smoke and solitude (which I often did).
Why, when I opened so fully to joy, was I then a little beat up by it? Was it wrong to open?
I experimented with opening less during the immersions. I really tried to hold back, to guard myself, to hide from the sensual, mind-altering, primal expression of joy…
It didn’t work. I didn’t like it. I didn’t feel like me. I open and I open big. I go deep. I get intimate with myself and the room. I go for it all… all the feeling, all the movement, all the spirit I can channel. And I’m not alone. I do that in the company of others who bravely shine their hearts and open the soles of their feet and move.
Until it’s time to be still and close.
Not completely, but like pulling the bedroom door shut and leaving the light on in the other room. The light enters, but not so brightly that we can’t put our hands on the wheel and drive. We allow the stirred up particles inside to settle. We allow the connections to ease into grace. We return to our jobs, our families, our to do lists. We inhale and exhale back to here and now.
Today is great. Today is not a let down, or a worse place than yesterday when we knew our ultimate freedom. Today is practice for life. Today is a return to simple. Today is a place on the spectrum of ecstasy, and no matter how transparent the experience of expansiveness, whether it’s still easily accessible, or whether it’s starting to fade into normal, or whether there is a bit of slump and clinging, the ecstatic joy was worth every breath we gave it.
Transcendent beingness shouldn’t be shied away from because afterwards it’s a little hard. So is walking. Every step we take is a risk of leaving familiar ground, wobbling on our tiny little foot bones, and returning to stability.
I wish you peace.
Link to post here.