Shamsi

This morning as I began my practice, there were so many other things on my mind.  I gave myself the directive to just “Be here, now.”  It worked.  Shelly had done the super-clean-up job on the front room yesterday, realizing that even if I wanted to, I might not really have room to move/dance.  Little did he know…  So there I sat in my two by two square (in the middle of a 10×10 floor space) bending forward and rocking back that casually gave way to turning and extending; finally just swaying in place and then rocking with small hand movements.  I was listening to the first track of “Taqsim, the Art of Improvisation.”  The track is almost twenty minutes long and I moved through almost the entire track when abruptly, right before the end a voice said, “That’s enough; now get to your paperwork.”

I know that may sound strange, but there it was.  I do have quite a bit of ‘business’ stuff to tackle at this precise moment in time, so that wasn’t so odd, but I kept thinking, I haven’t done enough, I haven’t moved enough.  The truth of the matter is however that I’ve very nearly brutalized my body lately trying to keep up with my schedule, classes, performances and personal practice.  My left knee has been nagging at me for some time now and I realized the directive of “that’s enough,” as truth.  The rocking, swaying and just taking the time to be in the space had been enough.  Enough to center and focus me for the day, enough to get me up and going, to not feel guilty by actually spending some amount of time (no matter how brief) with myself.

“Sometimes you have to do the not doing in order to undo the over-doing” Dunya