Got Me a Fan Girl!

I met my fan girl (Hi Meghan!)

Meghan is already in this community, but I hadn’t met her—until Thursday, at a Zen Monastery of all places.

We were roommates in a dorm room (with another beautiful woman—hi Alex!).

At lunch that day, Meghan made the connection.  

“I’m you fan girl!” she exclaimed.

That wasn’t the only synchronicity—just the first.

I went to the monastery for the weekend expressly to take a course with former dancer and Director of Social Presencing Theater (SPT) at the Presencing Institute, Arawana Hayashi.

I’d wanted to study with Arawana in person since I learned of her work during the pandemic and participated in other programs she’s led since then.

When I saw she would be offering a two-day course in New York, I signed up.

And in signing up, I committed to a three-day practice in Zen life at the Zen Mountain Monastery.

Of all the new challenges—meditation sitting, the heat, the dorm, waking at 5 a.m., daily community service, kitchen duty—the real challenge wasn’t the doing of any of those things (although they were challenging!).

I realized that being there, and in the course with Arawana, the real challenge for me was dropping all my efforting.

I was reminded how automatically I can default—even under such seemingly mild stress as meeting new people—to performing presence.

I hadn’t participated in a live group in a long time.

And I’d forgotten what it is to open myself to the experience of being so aware of my capital “S” Self.

I became aware of my deep conditioning to “make an effort” to create peace—and the tender parts those old patterns are trying to protect.

We all have our version of this kind of efforting.

There is nothing like being in a group of people trying to co-create something together to stir up all our most vulnerable parts.

Feelings run the gamut: exuberance, terror, love, shame, grief.

Tiny moments of resistance and acceptance. Connection and rejection. Wonder and despair are great teachers.

We all experience them.

The challenge is to linger long enough in that empty space to listen in to those gaps.

The experience with Arawana and our group also illuminated how critical group practice is for our growth as a society.

Arawana teaches a movement practice that evolved out of decades of dancing, teaching, and advocacy. 

She calls it: Making a True Move.

It’s part of her larger teaching: to practice locating the wisdom we hold in the body (as opposed to the thinking mind), to stimulate conversations that might change the systems we live, love, and work inside of.

A “True Move” is one that’s initiated from a receptive body. The question becomes:

Where does your body want to move?

Her movement vocabulary helped us create a shared context and then revealed our difference - those unique social patterns that keep us stuck in sameness and the status quo inside of our lives.

You see this every day. Just watch someone cross the street.

What does their body say as they move?

What if they brought more attention to that simple act?

What might they notice, discover, create?

The bigger question Arawana’s work invites:

Are we willing to have different conversations—with ourselves and with each other—than the ones we’re currently having?

At the monastery, I sat with someone new at every meal.

I practiced letting go of my efforting.

I rested back into the awareness of just being Naomi in the body I live in now.

The gift of that work?

The stories women shared with me in the studio and at the table.

We shared a desire to create new beliefs about ourselves—ones that grow us forward as individuals and together.

This isn’t work we can do alone.

We live inside systems that need us to make a True Move.

What move will you make next?