Lessons from Silence

Reach into the Sea of Ambiguity. Here you'll find trust...in yourself.

Perhaps all those younger years, when I saw my parents strip off and lower their bareness into nature’s deep pool, left an imprint after all.

I was young then.  But I remember how natural they seemed.  I remember the exhilaration and relief, and I remember the freshness where water and rock meet.

My older siblings had a theory that my parents were especially chill when they conceived me, and that is why I'm the way I am.   I believe it to be the cause of my baseline open-ness which, after all these years, has still not left me. 

It was only many years later that I learned the number of receptor sites to Oxytocin is capped at a certain age. Oxytocin is the hormone of open-ness, trust, intimacy and ecstasy. It made every sense that the greatest gift my parents gave me was an especially high threshold for oxytocin.

I believe this to be what draws me to experiences which, for most, sit well outside their comfort zones.

I believe this to be what has drawn me to work with trauma….to shine a torch of warmth in those places which are cold and closed.

The experience of open-ness is quite simply, not personal.   It’s communion.  A union with what is shared or common.

So, when I share that I’ll be spending 6-days in Silence, the response is usually “I could never do that”, and if they get to hearing what we do with these days, there’s an almost visceral shudder.

Contact improvisation is an organically-formed and mostly non-verbal practice, included in the majority of Contemporary Dance Curriculums, and which crosses numerous spheres of interest, from psychotherapy to sociology, and would make an especially interesting study for anyone with funding for a study in neuro-hormonal-immunology.

What appears to the untrained eye as a swarm of human limbs, is actually a number of people using a series of movements, within a given ‘score’ or ‘jam’, all chosen spontaneously in response to each other.

As a Somatic Practitioner, it satiates my ceaselessly-expanding curiosity, including topics avoided elsewhere, such as loyalty, jealousy and autonomy; opening and closing dynamics; entanglement vs self-hood; masculine, feminine & archetypal interaction; all through the safe-exploration of a kind of sacred prayer-play.

The addition of Silence meant the usual distractions of socialisation were replaced by the deeper reality of body language.

Here, I’ve attempted to comprehend my own learning by wrapping words around the experience.  So here it is, five lessons and ongoing practices after 6-days in Silence on Contact Improv Retreat:

1.        I don’t have to

Consent is a multilayered concept.

Teens these days seem to have been born with it, in-built.

That I don’t have to reassure someone, validate them, or save them in some way, has liberated much of my time and energy. As someone strongly identified with the "heroine", "rescuer" or "saviour" archetypes, this alone has returned the 50% of my time, energy and headspace previously occupied.

Equally, it has liberated me from reaching for reassurance, needing validation and seeking to being saved. Jung knew that if we identified with one of the archetypes, it's partner-archetype was hiding in the shadows. In partner to this "superior" type, lay the "inferior", "less-than", "victim" type, which, you guessed it, took up the other 50% of my time.

The tiny swallows with who we shared the dance space, were not looking to each other like a toddler looks to its mother before taking a risk.

They were not reaching out a wing just to “check someone was there”... They were not even glancing at each other before sweeping wide out into the high open air. 

No validation needed

This, fundamentally, changes everything.

I notice a loosening of the grip I once felt upon "the future". I notice an easiness in ways I am relating.

I notice less expectation, and it's counterpart disappointment. I notice less pressuring of myself and a growing trust in the emerging.

While the need for connection can be the very drive that many of us to make a positive step, the settling I feel having received deep and true presence, has opened me to the felt sense of presence in the mound of earth I face as I write, to the neighbour chipping away at a project beyond my backyard, to the pilot flying overhead.

As I was reminded by a fellow dancer recently "As adults, we can't be abandoned".

"I don't have to" equally is coupled with "I can".

2.        No preference

That I don’t have to, also opens up the possibility that I might have no preference.

One of the prompts was to notice without preference for what you see.

This led me to open beyond perceived beauty, beyond the realm of relation, beyond the realm of personal.

I also found I felt uncomfortable when I was singled out or preferentially chosen.  

The culture of the contact community enables freedom to enter into and out of contact without entanglement.

Entanglement being the habit of making what's yours mine too.

Life... as a result... has got a whole lot easier.

3.        Ambiguity creates Opportunity

That I can turn my body this way or that also leaves wide open the space for ambiguity.    “Awkward moments” in contact improv are celebrated for their creative momentum.  Without the need to rush out of the awkwardness, as I have mostly found in a social engagement, I found moments of trying out something radical, get even more awkward, or just be in the phat-clunkiness as is it.

This, in itself, is an exciting experiment.

4.        Problem-solving is little more than angle shifting

Human bodies have an endless number of ways to “fit”.   A knee in an armpit can be surprisingly comforting. An ear behind an ear is one of the sweetest fits.

But sometimes our bodies just won’t go that way….and that’s when problem-solving kicks in.

Though we think problem-solving is a highly technical skill, in reality, it’s just a shift of view points, and the next one might be the one that fits.

To “get” this, at a bodily level, is most encouraging.  To persist is as simple as to re-fit.

5.        Less Ambition. More Care

Above all, through the stillness,

the delicate moments at the creek,

the content-less interactions

and the abundance of simple receptivity

the thing that has left me with the greatest impact is the experience of care.

I am still receiving the gaze that showed me that wisdom is still.   

I am still softened by the touch of unconditional warmth.

I am feel held by the safety of a village that has learned - in a matter of days - how to care and watch out for all members and itself.

I am changed for this experience.  I am fortified.  I am calm.

My shoulders have dropped for the first time I can remember.  My jaw is unclenched by default.   And yes, fellow-dancers, I am still finding myself in tongue-out resting face several times a day, but it's a practice!

This, has in all real terms freed me from a lifetime of saviourhood, and the falsities of validation, entanglment and ambition.

Life just got easier still.

I now have choice at the one place it matters….

where and how

I place

myself.

Somatic Practitioner and proud Contact-Improviser,