Since lockdown put the kybosh on going out last Spring, we have all had to become a little bit more inventive with our home entertainment. I have found online classes and workshops a real lifesaver, and never in a million years did I think I’d be singing with a group of people I had never met (albeit on mute!) or signing up for ‘Move Like No One Is Watching, How To Ease Anxiety Through Movement’. In fact, when I signed up for that one, my anxiety seemed to soar when I hit ‘Book Here’.
Also, there was fat chance of me moving like no one was watching with a living room that faces the street and me flatly refusing to draw the curtains on the first blue sky we had seen in what felt like months. But in for a penny, in for a pound as they say and I donned my ludicrously named “active wear” which was surely only invented to help the modern-day lockdown lounge lizard to feel less lazy whilst watching TV.
Once the class started, we were gently cajoled into moving without thinking about it. And it was unbelievably easy to buy into it once we got going. It was so unlike anything I had done before. Normally when someone asks you to move it is prescriptive and you know what is being asked of you, say in a yoga class or even an online disco. In other words, the way you move your body is usually to look like how everybody else is moving theirs.
Photo by Adriana Aceves on Unsplash
So, it was with gleeful abandon that I was wriggling around on the floor that Thursday morning with people I didn’t know, to music I had never heard before. Completely unselfconsciously too. (It was only with hindsight that I realised it was probably a blessing that the DPD driver who had been the source of my lockdown crush did not appear at that very moment with my ‘make it at home veggie food box’ that I really didn’t need but which brought this handsome man to my home once a week. I honestly don’t know if he would have called an ambulance or asked to swap delivery routes.)
Through the class we were invited to simply be present with whatever we were doing, and I laughed as I pretended I was made of jelly, and I felt like an Olympic gymnast writing my name with my body. I could move my body however I wanted to. No limits. And yes, like no one was watching! Moving is not the same as dancing. And dancing is not the same as moving. Yet they are one and the same thing. But dancing implies that something is expected of you and moving is whatever you want it to be. So, I could feel free, empowered, or silly.
And did I care that the upper deck of the 702 bus got an eyeful of my wriggly, swirly madness? Not really. In fact, not at all. This is me. Today, this is how I move.
It was only afterwards that I realised that the enjoyment had really come from being completely mindful of the movement. Really experiencing it, with genuine curiosity and beginners’ eyes. I hadn’t expected to create that all encompassing flow state in a session about movement, and the surprise was a good one. It suggested to me that my Everyday Zen (being as mindful of everything as possible) could be ramped up a peg or two. It was also a great reminder that we are constantly perched on the edge of our future, and we never really know what is going to happen next. Now, where do I sign up for tortoise psychology?