I am travelling for almost 7 weeks through British Columbia, Canada. One of the great pleasures of my profession is that I get invited to some of the most beautifulest places on this earth and the islands off of Vancouver in British Columbia definitely qualify for that.
My journey began by being a part of the Salt Spring Island Contact Improvisation Festival. I got to take classes with Angie Hauser & Chris Aiken (Chris having been one of my favourite dance teachers over many decades and a dear friend - see my podcast with him https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQQENSMQJn4). I danced with lovely collegues and participants, was a part of a panel discussion on CI and perform a short solo. What a treat!
I then travelled to Hornby Island, a place where families vacation in the summer with expansive, sandy beaches and gorgeous rockformations. My path then took me up to Hollyhock Leadership Center on Cortes Island, a pioniering retreat center in Canada, bringing together visionary and cutting edge teachers in an absolutely stunning scenery of the ocean, forest, a never-seen-such-beauty flower and organic vegetable garden, stunning food, hot tub, sauna and magnificent people.
There I participated in a retreat called "Non-Dualism - An Exploration of Effortless Presence" with Lama Tsültrim Allione. I have wanted to meet Lama Tsültrim for more than a decade, having read her seminal books "Women of Wisdom" and "Feeding your Demons" and being very impressed by her buddhist teachings that she combines with her view of psychology, ecology and feminism. I have been practicing tibetan buddhist meditation since 2005, feeling deeply indebted to my Lamas for their wisdom and protection and yet, all of them were male. So meeting Lama Tsültrim was such a joy, because she is not only a fully liberated and recognized Lama (Lama means teachers in tibetan), but also because she has very clear language around the issues of motherhood and spiritual practices in connection with personal fulfillment as a woman. And she talks about the destruction of the earth, our deeply seated fear of the feminine being one cause of it, how we need to pay attention and find a fitting way for us to act both through hands-on activism and meditation.
In the non-duality retreat she spoke about the "ground of being" or the "Great Mother" - meaning literally "the ground out of which all beings and all things arise". To me this is an approach where everything has place, everything may be a part of a larger experience and everything is possible. To me this also feels like a deeply feminine space. It is non-dual therefore also without judgement and this of course relates to me to the practice of Authentic Movement and Improvisation.
"The one ground of being is infinite potentiality from which the whole of the universe comes - the source of all creation. This infinite potentiality is formless and so vast that it defies any attempts to conceptualize or limit it in time or space... The "two paths" form when the ground of being expresses itself or self-exteriorizes into appearances by radiating its pure, luminous, rainbow-hued light. ... At this point the individual awareness either recognizes that pure rainbow-hued luminosity manifesting as appereances as inseperabel from itself, or it sees that luminosity manifesting as a seperate world of appearances. In that moment, the split occurs and the two paths are created: the one path of liberation, which recognizes the inseperability, and the second path of confusion, which sees appearances as seperate, creating fear and anxiety. This path of confusion forms the dualistic barrier and our ego fixation becomes a way to resolve our seperationanxiety, and the result of taking this path is called samsara, the pattern of grapsing that propels us through life, death, and rebirth. This is the path that we all took."
Lama Tsültrim Allione (from her book "Wisdom Rising")
At the core, our entire human condition can be summed up by that. We still have to pay our bills, take care of our children and loved ones, get up in the morning and brush our teeth etc.. And yet many of us, I feel, are looking for something that addresses this "mothership", our ground of being that supports, nourishes, holds and contains our existance. In so many ways I feel that in our dance practices we get to feel a glimpse of this ground of being. Connecting to a deeply rooted sense of ground by way of relating to gravity, inviting our visceral sense of being supported from the earth. But also playing, creating, listening, letting "things" emerge...emptying out of our expectations and becoming a moving container for information to dance through us.
(c)sabfab Lama Tsültrim Allione on the beach by Hollyhock Retreat Center on Cortes Island, CAN
see more https://www.taramandala.org
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