I feel the muscles slide down my back. My shoulders follow opening up and dropping down. At the same time, my chest rises as if pulled up by an invisible cord and my whole torso lifts out of my waist.
It’s as if my body is separated into two halves. Above the waist and below, working together yet independent of each other.
I am taller, inside and out.
It’s an amazing thing to learn how to stand straight, strong, and comfortably after not knowing how for 57 years. My back and neck hurt less and my legs feel stronger as if they have a lighter load to carry.
It’s as if my body was just waiting for me to discover those back muscles and how they can work in conjunction with the rest of me.
This discovery happened after my Bellydancing class two weeks ago. I walked into the kitchen after our Zoom class and my body just fell into place more like it was remembering something than learning something new.
And Emily’s words came back to me…Trust your body she said to me during one of our classes last month.
It reminded me of when I was struggling with my writing years back and Jon said I should trust my writing the same way I trust myself to make my art.
It didn’t happen immediately, but soon after Emily said that, I was practicing the Torso Twist, a move I was having a hard time doing.
Instead of trying to do the move correctly, I sunk into it. Instead of breaking the move down and trying to control each part of it, I allowed it to happen.
I trusted my body would know what to do.
And it did.
After that, it happened again and again. As I thought less and tried to do less, my body took over and as if it were just waiting for me to trust that it knew what to do.
This wouldn’t have happened in the beginning when I first started dancing, because I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. But now, after almost four years of Bellydancing, it seems my body knows what to do as much and in some cases more than my brain does.
I feel like I’m learning to trust myself one part at a time.
Maybe someday it will all come together the same way that learning how to stand makes it easier for me to be in my body. Maybe I’ll find an ease with being me
