Through the Waves

I started going to “5Rhythms” classes about 4 months ago. I am a creature of the head, and 5Rhythms is an intentional attempt to shift attention to what it is my body is trying desperately to have heard. Gabrielle Roth started the practice in the 1970s drawing from shamanistic, ecstatic, mystical and eastern philosophy. Pretty much the opposite of my deep soaking. I do remember a phase of “Slain in the Spirit” embodied work in the Church when I was growing up, but it mostly freaked everybody out. To me it felt fake. I desperately wanted to experience God in that way, if it was real, and had a purpose. I wasn’t willing to fake. I didn’t understand the purpose. 5Rhythms isn’t “Slain in the Spirit”. It takes you through waves, trying to connect with the energy and rhythms of your body. Focusing attention in different places. Releasing. Freeing. Giving permission. The Rhythms are Flowing (Feet), Staccato (Hips), Chaos (Head), Lyrical (Hands) and Stillness (Breath). The workshops I go to are about two hours long, and move you through and with whatever emotions you are experiencing. It is powerful work.

Embodied Thinking

The danger of elevating and separating thinking and work lies where we become disembodied. As Ken Robinson warns, when you start treating your body “as a form of transport for your head”. I read and write regularly about building endurance, resilience, and creativity. A base for this is financial security. There is truth in the saying that there isn’t a special entrepreneurial gene, most wildly successful entrepreneurs are just rich kids with safety nets. Safety nets aren’t just financial. Our physical health, community support, and an embodied approach to life is just as, if not more, important than a good idea and starting capital. There are good ideas, and there are good business ideas. Some are both. We destroy some good ideas by trying to filter them through the constraints that make them good business ideas. We also destroy some business ideas by not partnering them with good ideas that provide the qualitative environment for the lives we are trying to build. Even the things that aren’t connected, are connected.