Twilight, day 1
Oct. 14th, 2003 05:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mattlistener[10/10]
Patience is the theme so far. I seem to have acquired more of it along the line.
Patience is a difference I notice between myself as a massage therapist today and myself as a student four years ago, a comparison refreshed by a visit to the MTI's student clinic last week. The woman who massaged me went from technique to technique, area to area, never staying long enough for me to take it in. I used to be like that too -- my mind would wander after a minute or two of doing the same thing, and I'd come up with a way to change it.
These days I've been noticing myself able to continue doing the same thing for as long as it's working. I find it's not *really* the same thing on and on, because if it's working the body under my hands is changing, and the same move on a changed body is not the same move.
Too, I'm varying that "same move" in subtle ways, following, following my sense of what works. With positive feedback from the client, I can do the same move for hald the session now and not crave variety.
I'm in Impala clan here at Twilight this year, the work of which is extended drumming for trance and ritual. We divided our 7-person clan between two fires to drum for the releasing ritual tonight, and for a good long while I found myself the only drummer holding down the rhythm at one of them.
It was a 'heartbeat' rhythm, very simple -- bum, bum, da, da, bum, bum ,da, da... There was a burran behind me playing lightly around the beats, and between that and my own centeredness I was quite content to hold the same rhythm for over an hour while folks did their trance work around the fire in front of me.
[added 10/14]
Toward the end a couple other drummers had joined in, and I got up to do the ritual myself.
The purpose of the Releasing Fire ritual is to summon up and let go of anything that is in the way of doing the work you have come to do during the weekend. There are two preparation fires with drumming and trance-dancing, and a lower releasing fire, which you reach through a rattle track. (It's surprisingly cool to have people on both sides of you rattling their support for whateveritis you're about to do). You have an opportunity to do a release with that fire (typically burning something and/or letting emotions burst out), and then exit on the opposite side of the releasing fire circle and get purified with sage smoke ("smudged").
I repeated a personal releasing ritual that I'd ad-libbed a few years ago at my first (or second?) Rites of Spring, which had been totally effective. I brought with me pieces of paper on which I'd written some memories that were plaguing me lately. Stupid prankish things I'd done in grade school, faux pas, unrecoverable mistakes, the like. I built up my energy level and intention at the two preparation fires, then went and sat down at the releasing fire on the beach. I looked at each slip of paper, remembered the event, thought of what I can learn from it, wrote a keyword for that learning diagonally across the text, and then threw it in the fire. My mood, already quite good, became bouncingly optomistic, loving, etc.
Totally effective. Until this moment I haven't thought again about any of those memories, and even now it's in a "oh yeah, that happened" kind of way, rather than a plaguing kind of way. Very cool. Excellent start to the weekend.
Patience is the theme so far. I seem to have acquired more of it along the line.
Patience is a difference I notice between myself as a massage therapist today and myself as a student four years ago, a comparison refreshed by a visit to the MTI's student clinic last week. The woman who massaged me went from technique to technique, area to area, never staying long enough for me to take it in. I used to be like that too -- my mind would wander after a minute or two of doing the same thing, and I'd come up with a way to change it.
These days I've been noticing myself able to continue doing the same thing for as long as it's working. I find it's not *really* the same thing on and on, because if it's working the body under my hands is changing, and the same move on a changed body is not the same move.
Too, I'm varying that "same move" in subtle ways, following, following my sense of what works. With positive feedback from the client, I can do the same move for hald the session now and not crave variety.
I'm in Impala clan here at Twilight this year, the work of which is extended drumming for trance and ritual. We divided our 7-person clan between two fires to drum for the releasing ritual tonight, and for a good long while I found myself the only drummer holding down the rhythm at one of them.
It was a 'heartbeat' rhythm, very simple -- bum, bum, da, da, bum, bum ,da, da... There was a burran behind me playing lightly around the beats, and between that and my own centeredness I was quite content to hold the same rhythm for over an hour while folks did their trance work around the fire in front of me.
[added 10/14]
Toward the end a couple other drummers had joined in, and I got up to do the ritual myself.
The purpose of the Releasing Fire ritual is to summon up and let go of anything that is in the way of doing the work you have come to do during the weekend. There are two preparation fires with drumming and trance-dancing, and a lower releasing fire, which you reach through a rattle track. (It's surprisingly cool to have people on both sides of you rattling their support for whateveritis you're about to do). You have an opportunity to do a release with that fire (typically burning something and/or letting emotions burst out), and then exit on the opposite side of the releasing fire circle and get purified with sage smoke ("smudged").
I repeated a personal releasing ritual that I'd ad-libbed a few years ago at my first (or second?) Rites of Spring, which had been totally effective. I brought with me pieces of paper on which I'd written some memories that were plaguing me lately. Stupid prankish things I'd done in grade school, faux pas, unrecoverable mistakes, the like. I built up my energy level and intention at the two preparation fires, then went and sat down at the releasing fire on the beach. I looked at each slip of paper, remembered the event, thought of what I can learn from it, wrote a keyword for that learning diagonally across the text, and then threw it in the fire. My mood, already quite good, became bouncingly optomistic, loving, etc.
Totally effective. Until this moment I haven't thought again about any of those memories, and even now it's in a "oh yeah, that happened" kind of way, rather than a plaguing kind of way. Very cool. Excellent start to the weekend.
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no subject
Date: 2003-10-14 04:10 pm (UTC)When I'm feeling low but not bothered by one thought in particular, I have a nice cleaning visualization I came up with.
Lie on your back on a comfortable surface and focus on your breathing to center. Then visualize that inside your body is burnt ash. (I picture it as used energy or white light.) Then focus on expelling the ash by taking deep breaths in and exhaling the ash. Start with your head and work down to your toes. (Sometimes I find I even shake a body part, like an arm, to get it all out.) Then once you've expelled all the ash, breath in white light. Fill yourself from your toes to your head. Then just ground and relax. I usually feel sooooo much better after I do it.
On massage and on life
Date: 2003-10-17 09:11 am (UTC)Gee, this could apply to life. It seems a quality people get as they mature. They are more comfortable with the same thing, and notice the differences withing that same repitition. Switching and changing means you sometimes miss out...
BTW, I am a friend of bethr and she has mentioned you..
Re: On massage and on life
Date: 2003-10-17 12:34 pm (UTC)