I Wanna Go Down to the Basement

At some point someone told me that the average hottest month in New Mexico is June. Although I've never really bothered to confirm this, the sudden, arresting presence of summer heat is notable. The body registers it. A gift for Pride month, maybe, a sudden reminder that slowness and celebration and togetherness are sometimes the very things that keep us alive.

And maybe because it's Gemini season, at least half of my heart wants nothing but that. And. The other half has gone to the basement!

I mean my literal basement, an odd and lucky thing to have in a desert. Having recently created my studio space down there, it has become a cool, subterranean sanctuary that I feel immediately relieved to enter. I like feeling the energy of the work I get to do, all the open and funny and insightful and vulnerable conversations that I get to have with the people I work with. And the gift of a room that can hold everything that comes up.

I've been dancing a lot down there. Specifically I'm studying Butoh, a style of dance that emerged in Japan in the 1950's, in the post World War 2 era and specifically in the midst of student riots, the questioning of authority and authoritarian violence, and all of the hierarchies that upholds (uh, sound familiar!?)

These things land in human bodies--they have certainly landed in mine. And although the experience is painful, we should regard it as a sign of a body doing what it is meant to. It is a sign that we are feeling, and therefore connected, and therefore affected. We should all be affected when we see violence like we are seeing in the world.

And somehow simultaneously, we have to care for ourselves in order to remain in that place that can both feel and not become destroyed by the feeling. And that requires being able to sense what Butoh teacher Vangeline calls "the internally-generated impulse"--a feeling of our next right move, as directed by deep attention to the inner body.

I can't forget the moment I first noticed the distinction between the internally-generated impulse and the externally-generated one. It was in a recent Butoh class, the first one I ever took. I remember noticing that, from time to time during the practice, my brain would suddently give me an idea--"I could begin moving from sitting to standing now, the teacher said that's where we should think about heading"--and then, I would be reminded to check back in with the watery inner body we were being taught to move from. And the frontal cortex idea-brain would be asked to wait; and that inner impulse would take all the time in the world to guide me somewhere new--sometimes in agreement with my brain's sense of what should come next, and sometimes not. Both outcomes were fine.

I don't know about you, but I need spaces like this. A space to be unsure, unfixed, moved by what I'm feeling without worrying I'll do it wrong. It is the opposite of anxiety for me. It holds everything and also lets it all move.

I'm grateful to have found yet another doorway into a love of human bodies, human movement and human experience. At this point, that's what ties every aspect of my work together, whether it's in working to help someone relieve pain in their back, or to do triangle pose, or to train new yoga teachers.

I’d love to hang out in this kind of space with you! Please reach out if you'd like to book a private yoga, strength training or Thai Massage session. Can't wait to be in the basement space with you <3

Wishing you all a happy June.

With love, Erin

p.s. If you got the reference to The Ramones in this title, I love that about you!