What is it to feel alive?
It’s such a simple thing that we often take it for granted. To look into a lover’s eyes and feel a rush of warmth. To sense your atoms buzzing after a long soak in a hot tub. To feel the adrenaline pumping though your body as you near the finish line. To feel the base pulsing through your body as you dance to your favorite song. Without naming it, we know these peak experiences are connected to a sense of aliveness. Their hallmark is the glow – something just a little bit more remarkable than the sensation of ordinary life.
When we taste them we want more, yet they can seem elusive. How did I get there? Wow! What was that? While most of us can name them, few of us feel we have complete control over their presence, and even fewer of us have mastered the art of accessing them at will. In fact, for some of us, those sensations may be one of those things we’ve simply written of as “not for me anymore.” Other people get to feel that. Me, I’ve got work to do, bills to pay, a family to feed…
Last month I had the opportunity to travel to Haiti to visit my sister who lives and works there. What touched me most was that, even in the face of the extreme poverty and devastation since the earthquake in 2010, there is SO MUCH aliveness there! Far more than I get to experience in the daily grind of life in the USA. Nothing is suppressed. Anger smolders just below the surface of conversations about the political climate and the lack of real support the nations’ people feel from the global community. Yet along with it comes joy in bucketfuls when groups of two or more people get together to make music. Rhythms, beats, music, voice. These things serve as a universal medicine that is available in abundance and shared freely among friends.
It teaches me that in fact, aliveness is available to everybody. It can be accessed in the here and now. It’s the opposite of feeling numb, and it’s a choice that is available to all of us, all the time. True, there is a risk. As Dr. Brene Brown suggests in her research on ordinary courage, “you can’t selectively numb,” keeping joy but avoiding anger, sorrow or pain. In order to feel alive, you have to take the good with the bad.
This week I invite you to take an intention to FEEL MORE ALIVE. In your life that might mean ceasing to stuff your emotions (with a beer and a banana nut muffin, a la Brene Brown!) Perhaps you will risk getting a little closer to your lover in bed tonight. Taking an intention is useful, because you can use it in the moments when you don’t know exactly what to do. When it comes to aliveness, you may not know how to get there… but you will know it when you find it, I guarantee.
In your movement practice, you might simply direct more awareness toward the myriad of things that go on in your body at any given moment. When you run, sense your heart beating, your muscles straining, your lungs doing their job. If you love to dance, turn the music up and try just letting your body go! Don’t censor anything. Just see what shows up. The Five Rhythms free-form dance sessions are a great place to practice allowing your aliveness to come through. If the weather is good, you might try a challenging cycling ride… there’s nothing like climbing to the top of a San Francisco hill then feeling the wind fly by your cheeks as you race to the bottom of the other side!
Feeling it all,
LeeAnn
