I get to dance the Latin Rumba.

I get to dance the Latin Rumba!

I get to dance the Latin Rumba with a treasured friend!

I get to dance the Latin Rumba with Ivan, and he’s a freakin’ nationally ranked professional dancer!

I love the Rumba. I just do. And I’m not just doing the basic steps. No. We are doing a routine. A routine that could be an open routine. We are doing tricks and things I never imagined possible, at least not in my current body. But I’m doing them right now, just the same.

But I have to say, the spins and drops are eye-catching and all, but it is the simple stuff, the basic stuff, that really lights my fire.

Some of my favorite moves are are when we get the connection just right doing a fan. Then, there is this other move we do where I spin and then put my knee up and hug onto Ivan. He told me today that it’s not a move that he’d think to do with just anyone. Because I am, he told me, not just his student, but a partner. It’s just dependant on how the student shows up. And I’m showing up as more than just a student.

I feel like I’ve graduated – passed some invisible line where things have changed. I’ve entered into a new realm where nothing will ever be the same. Just doing the steps isn’t enough. I am on my way to inhabiting the movement. I’m not doing it, I’m being it.

Amidst the innumerable moments of practice, and screwing up, and sweating, and laboring, there are also a few magical moments speckled in between, as a grain of rice nestled amidst all the sand on a beach.  Finding these rice grains, these moments of absolute perfection, is a little bit of a miracle.  It is like the sun aligns just right over my head for one instant, and then the crystallized moment dissolves, as salt into water.  One moment it was a fully formed entity, the next, it fades away into the void.  Like that part in Indiana Jones where he holds up the staff with the jewel in it, the sun is at the right place for a moment, and the secret location of the Ark of the Covenant is revealed.

In these moments, my link to God/The Source/The Universe/My Higher Self is revealed.

As I say, dance for me is a spiritual practice, a walking meditation.  I am revealing myself to myself.

There is no grasping or seeking for the grains of rice.  That is the magic of it.  There was a time when I’d have relentlessly pursued the perfection (like the Borg Queen from Start Trek).  The moments feel so good that would be easy to do.  But now, I simply appreciate them when they organically show up.

I remember the first time I felt this “flow.”  I was with my first dance teacher, Matt.  After hours and hours of practicing the same movements over and over we did it again (something in the Foxtrot, I think) and it was as if I wasn’t in my body “doing” the movement.  I was expanded beyond the boundaries of my flesh, still connected to it yet more than just the body or the brain.  I was whole and complete.  For one microsecond, the world stood still.  Then, as quickly as a soap bubble pops, it was gone.

But I am not sad that the moment is gone.  I am grateful I got to experience it.  I am grateful that the possibility exists to experience more of them, even if they are as rare as grain of rice upon the sand.