My consciousness is regularly drawn across the arc of this pendulous heart journey - feeling alone and together. Maybe it’s because I’m an only child, or live thousands of miles away from my birthplace, but this tension has accompanied me since I’ve known myself. Give me a music festival, for example, and that’s almost enough people; but please know that I’ll be hard to find there, happiest skipping alone and free between thousands of beautiful dancers. I may experience these poles of independence and community more intensely than some, but I’m guessing I’m not the only one. Maybe, like me, you also feel pangs of complete solitude, separateness; and within minutes you experience a mirrored ache: we are so connected, it’s overwhelming! In life - and in our relationships - the push and pull of autonomy and belonging creates a vertigo-inducing rollercoaster of pleasure and suffering. Am I part of something bigger than myself or on an abandoned island? For some time now I’ve found it helpful to analogize human relations - the close and far ones - to a dance: sometimes I want to lead and sometimes to be led, sometimes I’m dying for attention and sometimes I need my space. Alone - Together. I’ve found that becoming mindful of this dance helps me feel less dizzy, less anxious, less on a rollercoaster. Dancing also helps me flow between those poles…and being conscious and mindful about this polarity makes it feel a little less random. Rather than just being tossed by the waves of others’ emotions, social media, news cycles or outside interests, I recognize and honor my authentic feelings of loneliness, of belonging and of flow between them. It is in this spirit that I created my signature workshop, called "The Dance of Intimacy." Read more about it, and my other workshops, here.
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