keeping it moving

a breath into a sigh into a stretch

ughhh I’m stuck.

I’m jammed.

I’m obsessing

My butt is glued to this chair.

It starts in that tricky time of day: waking up. The body love to linger.

How do we start moving? How do we shift gears, shift contexts? How do we keep it up?

i do mean this in both the micro and most existential ways. I do mean this about my body and my mind and my spirit.

how to get moving, from a place of inertia - from waking up, from sitting on this chair for 90 minutes (seriously mine is falling asleep right now).

How to keep my mind-body-spirit moving. Not like obsessive rumination/can’t shut my brain off kind of moving but like opening myself to other shapes, ideas, and mental processes. How to flow. I want my consciousness to move from topic to reflection to connection. I want to remember possibility and be in conversation with ideas of the world. with the people and plants I’m surrounded by.

I want a new thought. Do you ever notice this? Do you crave this? I keep thinking of the same shit. I want something new. how do i have a new thought?

Wait for an impulse.

This is a prompt I have received and given in many a dance class. Sometimes there isn’t one. Sometimes i do just want to be still and focused and precise. I am tired. I am also a little scared. So I stay and dig in.

Notice. Something in you is already moving. Your breath, your blood, your eyeballs. What if they get just a little louder, a little more rowdy. A breath into a sigh, into a stretch, into rolling over, into a new perspective.

no answers, but some other practices to try on—

7 little suggestions for how to keep things moving:

find a new sweet little neighborhood walk, take a different turn, be nosy

scrunch your face up into a new bizarre shape, imagine you just smelled the nastiest fart and you want that person to know that you know

rock yourself like a baby, rest your hands on your chest, hold your head in your hands, give yourself a gentle squeeze

next time you sneeze or yawn, add some absolutely unnecessary sound to the whole ordeal, turn it into a song, be dramatic

rub your hands together, build some heat and friction, hover your hands a few inches from your head and face, let your hands float around and imagine that you are moving thoughts, ideas, memories

have a conversation with something near you— the potted plant that’s asking to be watered, the pile of books on the floor, the dust collecting on said books, the spoon scooping oatmeal into your mouth. what do they say back?

change your physical perspective. if you’re standing, lay down and look up at the ceiling. if your sitting, stand and look in another direction. fold over and look at your room upside down.

tell me, how do you get/keep things moving?