Where do you really want to go?

ND women are awkward, intense and sensitive.   Meaning they bring a different perspective, sharp insight and tender feelings to any situation.    Brilliant gifts all, enriching every interaction.

But in a world where polished conformity and compliance are visibly rewarded – and any deviation quickly punished with public ridicule, these gauche attributes can become habitually shunned and silenced.   Masked with a fixed smile, held breath and trying hard to not be a klutz.

Undermining our natural responses and enjoyment / appreciation of many situations, because we learn to distrust the clunky parts of ourselves.  Which can actually put us at risk of mistreatment and abuse by smooth operators.   Oof.   Because we have abandoned our sensitivity to the sinister in ourselves, and consequently others.   Leading to hypervigilance and trying to figure it all out mentally.   It’s exhausting

ND women are also brilliant performers, habitually slipping on the mask of charm and capability, jealously guarding their inner awkwardness, intensity and sensitivity from judgemental eyes under a cloak of indifferent laughter.

Often it is our own inner eyes which are most harshly judgemental, being cruel to be kind, seemingly protecting us from the criticism of others by getting there first.

Tragically, it is these very same awkward, intense, sensitive quirks which make us most memorable and endearing, so their suppression is a sad loss to ourselves and the people who love us.

How to claim back the awkward, the intense, the sensitive that have been shunned for so long?

The process is integration.  Happens slowly, over time, to be sustainable.

This is a relationship building process.  Negotiation, give and take.  Reconciliation.

This is where the personal meets and mirrors the political.

There are similarities / allegories between the integration of the awkward, intense and sensitive self into the daily life of the efficient, cool and indifferent person who is able to navigate regular life – and the integration of women, Indigenous and other marginalised groups into the patriarchal colonial capitalist society.  

And I am not suggesting assimilation, but integration, where both remain accessible and also combine to create something greater, more generous and more sustainable.

This is an experimental process at every level.  There are established practices, which continue to evolve over time, adapting to the needs of the moment and the individual.

Essentially, the starting point is recognising common ground.   Shared humanity, this body, this life.  This is the root of kindness – literally, of a kind, kin.  Acknowledging self in the other.   From here curiosity, community and creativity are possible.  This in itself is a process – Kindness as a discipline, in the words of the Dalai Lama.

Then listening.   Meditation, mediation, truth telling.   Finding stillness and openness to hearing a different perspective without taking it personally.

Learning from. Taking on board what feels manageable for now.  Leave the rest.  Not because it’s wrong, or useless but because it is beyond comprehension at this time.  This is the internal work of integration, of accepting with humility and grace the wisdom of the other.  Here is joy and calm.

Showing up in solidarity with.  Taking the learning out into the world and crediting the source, directing others.  This is the external work of integration – spreading the word.  Here is excitement and challenge.

So what does this feel like?

Often confronting, scary and confusing.  Then glorious, while the glow of comprehension lasts.  Then, frequently, the humdrum of regular life for a while before the invitation into mystery arrives again.

What might trigger it?

Courage.  Showing up in an unfamiliar space willing to pay attention, breathe and move.

Family, friends and fun.

This week I attended a family funeral, a gathering of people who have surrounded me, at various distances, my whole life.  I stayed with my elderly mother, who was coming to terms with the permanent absence of her younger brother, and her own proximity to death.

When I came home a friend invited me to attend a beginner salsa dance class.  It was not what I had in mind – I wanted to stay curled on the couch – but it seemed like a sensible, healthy thing to do.  I figured I could come back to the couch after.

The class was fine.  A teacher, awkward new students, guided progressive partner dancing practice.  All standard issue.   I presented as charming, capable, helpful, took instruction to relax and follow with a fixed smile and sincere intention to perform as instructed, laughing at the uncomfortable bits.

When I returned home to my empty house, I sobbed and gasped with ugly tears.  It was not pretty or comfortable.  Or surprising really, framed in context.

I was still emotional when I saw my friend again the next day (she is also a teacher*) and announced that I could not return to the salsa class.   “I am over performing femininity!”  

When I reflected on the class, I remembered feeling my body frozen from my fixed smile down the front of my ribs, barely breathing.  This is not what I want for myself.  

I was still tender as the day progressed, but able to become curious about what was going on for me, especially in the knowledge that I want to write about self awareness and dance…

As I started blobbing out the first words that would come, articulating my raw experience, this emerged:

Everything is hard right now.   What can i share from that hardness

 

I can literally feel the mask now.

 

It’s the rictus smile, watching, learning, blending in, being able to count, timing, following instruction

Don’t be awkward!   Don’t be awkward.  Don’t be awkward.

 

mid-14c. (adv.), “in the wrong direction,” from awk “back-handed” + adverbial suffix -weard (see -ward). The original sense is obsolete. As an adjective, “turned the wrong way,” 1510s. The meaning “clumsy, wanting ease and grace in movement” is recorded by 1520s. Of persons, “embarrassed, ill-at-ease,” from 1713s. Related: Awkwardly. Other 15c.-17c. formations from awk, none of them surviving, were awky, awkly, awkness.

 

1704, “lack of grace, inelegance,” from awkward + -ness. The meaning “physical clumsiness” is attested from 1770; that of “social embarrassment” by 1788.

 

You’re a klutz.   That hurt.  I’ve tried so hard not to be.

Left handed.  Gauche.  Sinistre.    

 

Awkward.    Well developed emotions of shame and embarrassment.

 

Performing grace and feminitinty.   Grace and ease.

I am awkward and intense.

A large part of me anyway.

 

And i don;t know what to do with htat.

 

Where is hte place for awkward, intense and sensitive.

There is none.  Who has time for that?  I do.  I must.   Because it’s so much of me.

 

ND women are brilliant performers, habitually slipping on the mask of charm and capability, jealously guarding their inner awkwardness, intensity and sensitivity from judgemental eyes under a under a cloak of indifferent laughter.

 

How to claim back the awkward, the intense, the sensitive that have been shunned for so long.

 

Shielding myself from judgement.  That’s the mask.  Anticipating criticism and hardening against it in anticipation.

 

I don’t care, silly me, imagine!  How embarrassing.   Harder, try harder, do better.  Don’t be a klutz.

 

There is no grace there.

 

Curiosity, community, creativity all help.

 

Curiosity gives distance.  Community support, encouragement.   Creativity expression.

 

Focused burst of expression, reflecting the experience.

 

AIS   the gifts of an artist.   Awkward, intense, sensitive.

 

All of them give space from the everyday.   And thus a fresh perspective.   Awkward in itself.

 

This is what i have jealously guarded.  

 

So claiming it .  awkward   intense   sensitive.   This is me.   It can be a lot.

 

I think i am not alone in this.  I know i am not.

 

Ok. so this is something of what i have to share.

Here a deep calm settled in me.

And so this embodiment encouragement message emerged.

So that is a lot.  And here I am.     Death and dance, friends and fun, written reflection.

Enough for now.

Big love  (then I went to the festival of the same name, but that’s another story)

*My friend in this story, Liz Page, is an experienced and embodied Feldenkrais practitioner, who brings her own wisdom and experience directly into her warm and accessible teaching, plus enormous enthusiasm and knowledge of current neuroscience developments.  

My own embodiment practice of the essentials of breathing and walking has benefited hugely from working with her and the Feldenkrais method.  

I’m planning a collaboration with her to bring some of that magic to you in the first half of next year.  

Find more about Liz here if you can’t wait.