Hanging from the Sky

Prone to lying on the ground, I hang mid-air, no air between me and the floor. But gravity can’t fight this flight. I’m flying.

In the background, my playlist called “work” plays. Work is not always easy, but I show up. Calling my movement practice work reminds me of its value. Of course—in my line of work (moving, writing), all of this work is play. As I used to say to students, play is a deep form of work. I’m big on play (You could say I’m nailing it in the play department). So flipping the focus back to work gives me the seriousness to take myself seriously, especially when no one’s keeping tabs but me. So, I get to work. Playfully.

Facing up, I’m flat on the floor with arms overhead. It feels, when it works, like falling and flying at once. Jumping off the cliff into the lagoon from the safety of the hardwood. It’s one of my favorite paradoxes…movement within stillness. The churning of life in the quiet.

I send breath everywhere and it draws and stretches me out, inch by inch. Getting taller at this ground level. Elongating without edges. I’m un-cramping my belly, moving vertebrae further afield, lifting ribs off my abdomen and hips off of my legs. 

The effect is dangling, a happy skeleton with space to spare. “Hanging from the sky” is what I call it. The moment when everything aligns—stars, breath, bones—in sync with what? My old self, dusty from disuse? All the bare trees out the window, moving in time? The molecules in the air, bending to my benevolent will? The universe?

Well.

When I’m hanging from the sky, falling through cumulus and cirrus (but still flying, and somehow floating) then yes, sure. The universe itself.

It’s as though I’m hanging upside down at the playground and all my grown-up gunk from pockets flies out. No phone, no keys, no wallet. The stretch is not a move or a stunt or a bland series in a workout. This is stretching as reaching, giving, receiving things as they are now and as I’d like them to be. The work is to hang out, literally, stretching the boundaries of stillness one breath at a time.