You are living juicy! Ride into your life on a creative cycle, full of juice, abundance and ecstatic wonderment. You are a star.
SARK, Living Juicy
How would you feel about reclaiming the energy that modern life drains from you, reanimating your feminine fire, turning up the sound on your instinctual nature? Give a hoot and a holler, work up a lather. You may be saying, “But I’m so tired. I just want to go to bed. I just need to not think for a while. Reading that novel I bought sounds much better.” Trust me, this is what this exercise is for, to overcome the ennui, the limits, the dryness that comes from living too much, too long, without time for yourself, until you feel like you are choking under a cloak of chalky dust. Do this one exercise and then see if you want to spend the rest of your time reading and napping. If you do, great. But try this first.
This exercise is a good one to do if you are feeling stuck when working with another practice in this book or when you are feeling tired, nervous, depressed, or anxious. It works well at the beginning of your retreat, too.
Prepare
Propulsive, intense dance music and slower, more meditative movement music.
Your journal and a pen.
A drum or rattle.
Imagine yourself as a bonsai tree, pruned and forced to grow in a tiny dish, squeezed so that you are only an eighth of your potential glory. This is what happens to most of us. We are hobbled by our beliefs, society’s constraints on what being a woman should entail, and the often harsh requirements of survival. But today, right now, in this moment, you can choose to leave that tiny dish. With a crack in your knees and a groan torn from your chest, you can yank your roots free and spread your toes in the earth.
Start right now, right here. If the weather permits, walk outside (if not, do this facing a window). Plant your feet apart. Curl your toes into the soil. Fling your arms wide open. Arch your back and neck, puff your chest out, pull your shoulder blades together, and imagine your heart opening to the sun. Breathe. Stay here for a moment. Contemplate the question “What will it take for me to be fully alive?” Listen for the feelings this question stirs up.
Relax your back, neck, and arms. Align your spine. Open your eyes.
Take a deep breath and let out a sound. Do it again, louder.
What are you holding on to? Let it out with a final “Ahh.”
Grab your drum or rattle or put on music and thump along with it. Feeling awkward? Never done this before? No one need know what you do on this retreat. You can tell them you did your nails for three days or read Sartre. This is your time. Dare. Breathe, close your eyes, and feel the music. There is no right way to do this. The point is to get out of your head.
Experiment with tempos. Drum or move through any fatigue, any doubt, any voices that might be saying how bad you are at this, how stupid it is. Drum or dance energy up from the base of your spine.
Keep playing until you begin to feel you must make sounds to accompany your drumming or the music. Don’t open your mouth until you can’t resist. Belt out your song of soul juice. Give a voice to being fully alive.
Sense the energy of life moving through you. Allow yourself to open. Push yourself past your usual stopping point, where you give in to boredom, limits, smallness, self-criticism.
At your own pace and at an organic stopping point, put down your drum or turn off the music and check in with your body. How does it feel? Do you feel energy running up your spine? Do you feel silly? Tired? No judgment, no expectations. Lovingly check in. Want to quit all this nonsense and lie in the sun? Before you do, try finishing this last part.
Put on some slightly slower music that still inspires movement. Listen for a moment without moving.
Shake your feet. Lift and spread your toes, feeling each one separate and flex.
Roll your hips in a few wide, slow circles. Sensuous. Bend your knees a bit. Now rotate your hips in the opposite direction.
Shake out your hands. Snap your wrists and fingers.
Tense your shoulders by bringing them up to your ears. Squeeze tight, then let out a big sigh as you release. Repeat a few times.
Visualize the music melding with the place in your body where your most powerful life energy is stored: your laughter, your wisdom, what makes you you. It might be your throat, the base of your spine, your solar plexus, your womb. Spontaneously pick a spot. Feel the music shaping that energy, magnifying it, pulsing it throughout your body. It may feel like a bolt shooting up your spine or a soft glow expanding.
Allow the music and your energy to move you. Instead of controlling your movement, let the movement flow through you. Let the music and your energy soften and warm any rigid, bored, lonely, tired places in your body. Let the music and energy breathe you, lift you, spin you. The music/energy makes the effort, you don’t.
Forget “dancing,” forget trying to do anything.
Feel yourself coming alive. Don’t let the voice of inertia stop you. Let this new energy carry you longer and further and deeper than ever before.
Gyrate, pirouette, leap, grind: fully alive.
Ask the music/energy, “If I were fully alive, how would I move?” Let her answer through movement. If you could, for just one moment, relax the inner critic, the layers of sadness and tiredness that may have settled on your vital soul, what would you do? Dance being fully alive.
Keep going until you can feel your chi, your life energy, setting you on fire (even if it is just a little warmth in your hands and feet).
When you feel you have danced your very essence into heat, pick up your journal and, without thinking, write everything you can think of to complete this sentence: “To be fully alive, I could….” Feel the energy in your body from drumming and dancing. Stay in this fluid, hot, juicy state. Write standing up while you continue to sway or move your feet. Allow words to rush forth unrestricted. Write a poem or a list, write down what you sang or chanted. “To be fully alive, I could….”
Finish with three slow “Ahhs” or other sounds from deep in your belly.
End by grounding yourself, perhaps by lying on the ground. Breathe and check your balance. “How do I feel? What do I want to do next? What do I yearn for?” Follow your instincts.
For Long Retreats
Do this practice a number of times. Experiment with listening to yourself through your physical body. See if it gets easier the deeper you move into retreat time.
For Mini-Retreats
This exercise makes a great mini-retreat in itself. Try doing it in the morning, before work, before a Friday night date, or before you attend a kids’ party. You can do it in only ten or fifteen minutes.
For Retreats in the World
Listen to music on a personal stereo with headphones while walking. Swing your arms and legs energetically. After a few minutes, finish this sentence: “To be fully alive, I could….”
For Retreats with Others
You can drum and dance together, using one another’s energy to magnify your own. However, in most groups the issue becomes one of inhibition and of trying to drum in sync. It usually takes several tries or an experienced drummer. Try working off one another’s sounds, drumming, and dancing. Don’t fight feeling gawky, unmusical, or nervous. Acknowledge these feelings in yourself, yet keep going. Making the transition into dancing or journaling can be a little tricky. Avoid worrying about what others need, and stay focused on your own process. It is fine if one woman keeps dancing ten minutes after everyone else is finished, as long as the group has discussed this ahead of time. Don’t try to end together. Have a place others can go off to write, rest, or eat and allow the dancing to continue.