From Reckless to Renunciate

On a warm Friday evening, in the fall of 1978, a little performing group I
was working with in Menlo Park, California, Dymaxion Moving Company, headed
by Chloe Scott, took a fieldtrip to a workshop led by "a woman who moves
like water". I walked into the auditorium at Lone Mountain College in San
Francisco. There was a penetrating and mysterious music coming from a group
of musicians and instruments in one corner. We quietly slipped into some
open spaces in the group sitting on the floor. No words were being spoken.
On a large screen on one side of the room, image after image, mandala after
mandala appeared, flooding the room with beautiful colors and complex
patterns, piquing my curiosity. The music surged and softened as the
pictures continued. Slowly my sense of seeing began to alter. I had no
ability to organize any of the input I was receiving. Primed from my daily
meditation practice, my mind was quiet and my awareness opened to an
exquisite and passionate offering. It was a direct experience happening
through my body, unmediated by rules, theory, dogma or restraint. Tears
began streaming out of my eyes like rivers. My heart was beating wildly
under my breastbone. I had had experiences of oneness with the divine a few
times in my life (the great "AHA!"moments that keep one inspired enough to
go on) but nothing this all- encompassing and confusing. It felt like a
true baptism. I was immersed down to my bones. It was a cellular initiation.

Emilie Conrad and Susan Harper were working together to create this potent,
resonant field called "Continuum". Born out of Emilie's experiences of
movement and Haitian ritual and trance dances, this was beyond any cultural
familiarity to me at all. Continuum, I learned that weekend, is an inquiry
into "the movement of movements". It is an investigation of the body as a
verb. Emilie has said, "Movement is not just something you do; it is
something that you are". The same patterns and motifs of movement in the
musculo-skeletal system can be witnessed in the movement of the breath, the
movement of cells, the movement of the nervous system, the movement of
thought, the movement of perception, the movement of relationship, the
movement of communities, the movement of cultures, the movement of
molecules, the movement of stars. When viewed from this perspective every
difficulty in being can be referenced through movement: Where do I stop
moving and participating with my own passion or someone else¹s? How can I
MOVE with what I don¹t prefer?

All weekend I struggled with my bound, dancer/yogi muscles trying diligently
to move in the fluid way I had witnessed in the demonstrations. What I
encountered were chunks of habit and holding. I could not measure my
progress by how good I was, how far I could stretch or how long I could hold
a pose. In fact, I felt very discouraged because I was so "bad" at moving
fluidly after 20 years of dancing! All my need for structure flashed
before my eyes: 15 years of rigorous ballet training, followed by rigorous
yoga practice and eventually into the structured life of a yoga community
where even meal times were set and the structures were in place. I could not
sensorily feel my world, only my success/failure in adhering to the
prescribed trainings and schedules. Yes, I was calmer and happier but I
could not really embody the experience of being what I was: alive in every
moment, a living process, a planetary organism.

I left that weekend with a stirring and an imprint in my soul. I knew that
more preparation for this path was needed. I had an inkling that I had
stumbled into what would become my lifetime work. I longed to make relevant
the understanding I had gleaned over the weekend. Yet I was unsure. Up until
now, I thought that I had a clear sense of my life path.

Earlier that same year, I had been initiated into a Vaisnav tradition of
yoga and meditation. I had already spent two years studying asana at the
Iyengar Institute in San Francisco and was attracted to pursue the very
heart of yoga, reading ancient scriptures and carrying out the daily
instructions of my beloved guru. I truly felt I had come home. My life path
was clear - I thought. A few years before, I had been the lead singer of a
small rock n roll band in Pittsburgh, PA, which I had joined with a wild and
youthful exuberance following my graduation from college. The band had
rented a barn in the country outside the city for practice sessions. The
barn was also a yoga studio on occasion. It was here I fell in love with
yoga and made a sudden shift of direction. Moving into a spiritual dimension
was a broad-brush stroke, from reckless to renunciate. I was relieved. I
thought I could rest. I threw myself into yoga with the same exuberance with
which I had joined the rock n roll band and made youthful, exuberant
commitments to this demanding path. I was smart. Yoga was a challenge to my
intellect, my body and my spirit. Oh how I thought THIS was it.

Within two months of my initiation, my guru recommended that I continue my
education with a graduate degree in dance (I had danced very seriously for
15 years during my early life). I willingly complied and was in my first
semester of a Master's program at Stanford when I ventured into the workshop
at Lone Mountain. My world-view was suddenly shaken. It was unexpected and
deep.

The Gestation Period

I continued on with my spiritual commitments. I received a degree, had a
child, married another follower and moved to a residential yoga community
where we proceeded to build our dream home. On the surface it seemed
perfect. Yet, while yoga means union, my seven years in the yoga center were
slowly tearing me apart. It was true that the more I practiced yoga, the
deeper my experiences of inner silence became. But what also began to grow
was a sense of disparateness to my own surroundings. My attachments to "the
world" were indeed falling away. I felt safe and complete in my awareness
that "I" was constant and beyond fluctuation and could "live in the world
but not of it". But I had a longing to connect. I directed this longing to
"God" and to my guru.

Gradually, I noticed I was having a harder and harder time in social
conversations with people. My ability to feel comfortable with anyone not
involved in yoga felt distant and patronizing. Small talk was next to
impossible. I was certainly not experiencing oneness at times other than
when I was practicing. I was feeling more and more separate. "Detachment", I
understood, was a sign of spiritual progress. So, I stayed the course.
Following instructions like a good patient.

In my quest for enlightenment through yoga, I was aiming for a "place", a
non-moving, unchangeable state of bliss where I would be unaffected by the
changing colors of human existence. Human nature is such to seek comfort. It
is virtually instinctual for each of us to gravitate towards what is
familiar and predictable. As the pursuit of higher consciousness had become
more and more comfortable, I began to feel an internal dis-ease. It seemed
that something was missing. I felt a dampening of my own vitality and
aliveness. Most of my former creative expressions as a singer, dancer and
poet had ceased. But the creativity of living water was stirring in me and
in Continuum I found a refuge where I could feel my own significance.

Through the process of counterpoint with yoga and Continuum I began to
discover that the actual seed of truth and mystery is found, not in the
attainment of the state of enlightenment (union) but in the movement of
uniting. I understood that the process of uniting IS yoga itself. Continuum
emphasizes the awareness of movement as life. Everything that lives, moves.
When things begin to move less, stagnation sets in and the creative forces
of life cannot wield their transformative powers. I was trying to establish
a feeling of dynamic equilibrium in my life: wanting to feel the pulse of
aliveness along with a sense of stability. The paradox felt too huge, the
ambiguity immense. I could feel my own places of static positioning in my
life with yoga being challenged by the movement inside, as my immersion into
Continuum deepened. I had to begin to address the way in which my practice
of yoga was becoming s form of paralysis. The striving for "the state" had
become so intense I could not feel my own vitality.

As Continuum is an inquiry into all movement, I let the questions surface
again: Where was I shutting down? How could I live without my deepest sense
of self? Daily life truly became the practice ground. Every moment became an
opportunity to move with what was happening or not. How did my participation
with myself as a living process become paralyzed?

I could begin to thrive within the environment of Continuum. Here movement
and change were not only possible, but deeply valued as signs of positive
growth; things to be invited courted and participated with. The Aescylepian
Dream Temples of ancient Greece were an early model for Continuum. Ancient
cultures knew the value of creating context and that, at significant turning
points in a life, a prophetic dream was often needed and best retrieved in a
context where dreaming was the main event. People would sleep in the temple
to elicit the dream. Nothing else went on there, so the atmosphere in the
temple was conducive to opening and informing. Continuum is the dreaming
temple of our modern times. How is my life moving? How do I keep creating
the same condition over and over in my own physiology? In my relationships?
As a living system? . It is participation that elicits growth. It is
movement that allows something new to occur.

Out of the Birth Canal

I left my yoga community, my marriage, my hopes and dreams, my ideas about
being on "a path" and entered a true bardo. The darkness and confusion were
immense and I was left without the instructions of an outside expert to
guide me step by step. I began to feel my way with movement and attention
through each day, each week, each month. I attended to the moments where I
could feel the movement of new life springing forth and follow those,
steering away from those moments that felt black and ink-like in my veins.
When I didn't know the difference and the lines became blurry, I waited,
hovered, feeling the movement of breath. I stopped looking for comfort and
settled into the movement of movements, the movement of what was happening,
as I had learned in Continuum.

When movement is the informer, the partner and the path, we are connecting
to thousands of years of history and being. Snake, spiral, wave, paired
bones, tails, gills, water (rivulets) are all occurring within us, all
beginning in ancient times. There are no straight lines or precisely
symmetrical shapes within the body or within the natural world, from
molecule to cosmos. Angular, repetitive movement has given rise to
aggression and conformity in our military structures. The aerobic fitness
phenomenon of the last 40 years grew directly out of military training
exercises. It is no wonder we struggle with our duty to exercise. It is no
wonder we struggle with the level of violence we are now witnessing. There
is something inherently destructive about this type of movement. On some
level, I could feel this.

As I relinquished the need for outside instructions, using sensing and
feeling as the primary guides in my life, I began to find my way towards the
movements that felt most nourishing. My daily practice began to flower out
of my own organism. The movements I chose were curved, arcing, swirling
circuitous pathways in which my organism could feel itself as whole, as part
of something larger. All of its parts were communicating, just as the
connective tissue inside my skin was participating in a variety of shapes,
planes, speeds and gradations of movement. "Performing" asanas by going
through the motions now became impossible. My sense of belonging blossomed,
as I began to feel a palpable connection between the movement in my body and
the meaning of my life.

The Pathless Path

Continuum uses as its primary model a concept known as "Embryongenesis".
Exploring the moving intelligence of life in utero we can begin to
understand our planetary life and its origins in the primordial sea. Through
movement, sound and breath, we make inquiry into the rhythms and biological
interactions that give rise to new life within the amniotic fluid. By
referencing movement themes in this primary world, we create atmospheres
that allow our own growth and perception of life to continue to be "born
again".

Richard Grossinger in his brilliant treatise Embryongenesis; Species, Gender
and Identity, has described it thusly.

Embryongesesis lies at the heart of our riddle. It is the
unadulterated text of both creation and evolution. Every time
a creature forms anew out of raw atoms it makes a replica of life itself.
The way in which it organizesits body and complexifies is the way in which
meaning was invented. (p xv-xvi)

Creation truly remains the source of mystery. Meaning and mystery are
contained within movement. By imposing my will upon this mystery in the
performance of postures, techniques, and ideas about what is "good for me",
I am limiting my very ability to experience life and how life exists within
me. The way I move in my body will affect the way I see and think. Can I be
alert to the pitfalls of my own perceptions? The innocent eyes of the unborn
deliver information about the true magnitude and mystery of living.

Continuum offers a way of participating with the unfolding of the self and
the evolution of our own species through moving explorations in which
something that never existed before is allowed to come forward and be
participated with. We are in accelerating times. Our social systems are no
longer functioning in a way that sustains our life or the life of our
planet. How can we move into the next phase of our life, either individually
or as a species, with more compassion, inclusivity, kindness and
responsibility?

Conclusion

During the past twenty years I have taught at colleges, universities,
hospitals and clinics everything from AshtangaYoga, Mindful Movement and
Meditation to Choreography, Modern Dance, Ballet, Aerobics, Creative
Movement, Improvisation, Jazz and Hip-Hop. Each class would begin in a
fairly straightforward way, true to its subject, exploring traditional yoga
asanas or classic dance steps. But before long, in every class, I would be
weaving in an awareness of Continuum through movement and sensation. I
noticed a distinct presence and vitality beginning to grow as students began
to move with themselves in a direct, compassionate, and less structured way.
The focal point gradually would move away from technique and toward each
person¹s own experience of internal sensations, movement and aliveness. What
emerged from this experiment were human beings who could greet the world, in
whatever form it presented itself, with intelligence, aliveness and
compassion.

As the meaning of my work and the meaning of my life have become
inseparable, I have let go of teaching anything but Continuum now. I am
honored to be teaching graduate level courses in Somatic Psychology based
solely on Continuum. The movement of movements has become my true teacher.
And so, I ask students to bring their life into the room, not leave it
outside. I try to encourage less and less separation and more and more
inclusivity so that every breath becomes relevant to the one breathing, in
class or out of class.

I gratefully acknowledge the work of Emilie Conrad and Susan Harper for
clearing a pathway of unfolding beauty. Their continued investigations into
the nature of human life have given birth to so much mercy and compassion
and I am deeply indebted.
© 2001 by Beth Pettengill Riley.