Physicality and Compassion

For centuries, people of the Western world have been trained to view the mind, body, and spirit separately. Because of this, on an energetic level, these spheres have learned to function separately. Mind, body, and spirit may be seen as aspects of a being, but there is no separation. As this connection is acknowledged, it can soon be noted that strengthening one may increase the capacity of the others within oneself. The premise of this paper is to explore this interconnection between physicality and the potential expression of compassion. That is, by increasing and/or developing one’s physical activities, one can more easily express compassion.

In her talk for a TED convention, journalist Krista Tippett explained how compassion is often mistranslated into terms such as “pity” or “tolerance” or misunderstood as “heroic people you can never be like.” She further explained that “cultural imagination about compassion has been deadened by [such] idealistic images.” Compassion is kind. The breeding ground for compassion is “curiosity without assumptions.” She explained, “Compassion can be synonymous with empathy. It can be joined with the harder work of forgiveness and reconciliation. But it can also express itself in the simple act of presence. It is generosity, hospitality, just being there—just showing up. It is willingness to see beauty in the other, not just what it is about them that might need helping” (Compassion, Beauty and Physicality, 2014). Compassion is rooted within the mysteries of space and time, the flow of flesh and blood, and the complexities of color and life. By developing our understanding of compassion, we can come to realize it isn’t about giving away more than we have in our reserves, but rather it is changing the way we interact with the situations we are already given.

Compassion also does seek physicality. Physical exercise has many well-known medical benefits. As the Mayo Clinic website describes, these benefits include such aspects as improving mood, controlling weight, boosting energy, and combating health conditions and disease. However, physicality goes so much deeper than these medical benefits gained. To illustrate with an example, I recently received bad news from a friend over the phone one night. I didn’t sleep well because my mind was trying to find a solution to be able to salvage the situation. The next day, I let myself become completely absorbed in a cardio dance class which distracted me from the problem entirely. When I was stretching on my own afterward, many pieces of the puzzle suddenly came together and it became clear what I should do. This is a small example, yet it helps exemplify this idea that physicality impacts us in many ways that we can’t predict until we actually experience it. These benefits can include, but are not limited to, clarity of thought, unconditional self-acceptance, and an increased compassion toward others. It all derives from an increased mind-body-spirit connection.

Matthew Sanford beautifully elucidates this idea on his website using an example of how one feels a different connection with his body by merely changing the way he sits. He says, “what I mean by mind-body connection is simple. Sit back in your chair, slouch and let your legs splay out. Notice what you feel in your legs — the dullness, the lack of crispness. Now sit up straight, press gently down through your buttock-bones and heels, and lift your chest. Notice the change in sensation — in how, what and where you feel within your body. This is what I mean by mind-body connection. When we deepen the quality of where and how our minds interact and intersect with our bodies, our consciousness shifts. We get more connected to our lives, to each other and to the planet” (Sanford).

Synthesizing the ideas of compassion and physicality takes time and practice. It can be helpful to begin with oneself. Physicality can enable one to experience a deeper level of self-love and mindfulness as it helps one accept the past, experience the present, and shape the future. The aforementioned Matthew Sanford has come to intimately understand that compassion begins with healing oneself through physicality. Sanford’s past was explained in the PEOPLE Magazine article entitle “OM-AZING!” He was “paralyzed from the chest down at 13, when his spinal cord was severed in a car crash that killed his father and older sister.” This experience could have crushed Sanford, but instead of letting that happen, he turned his life situation into an opportunity to connect with himself and then look outward. After “dragging [his] body around” for twelve years and graduating with a master’s degree in philosophy, a friend suggested that Sanford meet with a yoga teacher she knew. “He did and noticed that despite his limited movement, he felt newly aware of his body.” He explains that “my life’s been hard—that doesn’t change… but as I do yoga poses I didn’t know were possible, my view expands.”

            Sanford’s experience isn’t a unique case, either. As yoga student Susan Orem shares in the yoga book Moving Toward Balance, “during my divorce, the mat became the only place I could cry. As soon as I stepped on the mat in Mountain pose, I wept. It didn’t stop me from practicing, and I didn’t look forward to practice as that specific release. I would be feeling fine. Then boom. As soon as I focused on my body and breath, the gates were opened for grief. My yoga practice offered me help every day. I didn’t have to ask” (Yee and Zolotow, 17).

            I have had a similar experience in a yoga class after the breakup with my first boyfriend. I told myself that I had to be strong, so I wouldn’t let myself cry in front of anyone. Yet as I exhausted myself physically through the yoga poses, I came to feel that I didn’t have to hold myself up by my emotional will power any longer. In the yoga class I gave myself permission to be weak if I needed to. I let myself ride whatever wave of emotion came to me naturally until the final relaxation pose of the class. It was a release and in this process, I began to heal.

      In the course of healing oneself, it soon becomes natural to turn outward in compassion toward others. Christopher McDougall’s book Born to Run tells the story of when running coach, Joe Vigil, began to make this connection. “Vigil had become convinced that the next leap forward in human endurance would come from a dimension he dreaded getting into: character. Not the “character” other coaches were always rah-rah-rah-ing about; Vigil wasn’t talking about “grit” or “hunger” or “the size of the fight in the dog.” In fact, he meant the exact opposite. Vigil’s notion of character wasn’t toughness. It was compassion. Kindness. Love. … Perhaps all our troubles—all the violence, obesity, illness, depression, and greed we can’t overcome—began when we stopped living as Running People. Deny your nature, and it will erupt in some other, uglier way” (McDougall, 91).

      Deena Kastor (then Drossin) was taken under the wings of Coach Vigil. It was explained that “posted on the wall of Vigil’s office was the magic formula for fast running that, as far as Deena could tell, had absolutely nothing to do with running: it was stuff like “Practice abundance by giving back,” and “Improve personal relationships,” and “Show integrity to your value system.”…Deena got it, and couldn’t wait to start. Coach Vigil believed you had to become a strong person before you could become a strong runner.... within a year, the aspiring baker was on her way to becoming one of the greatest distance runners in American history.”

It continues, “She crushed the field to win the national cross-country championships, and went on to break the U.S. record in distances from three miles to the marathon. At the 2004 Athens Games, Deena out lasted the world-record holder, Paula Radcliffe, to win the bronze, the first Olympic medal for an American marathoner in twenty years. Ask Joe Vigil about Deena’s accomplishments, though, and near the top of the list will always be the Humanitarian Athlete of the Year award she won in 2002” (McDougall, 119).

            In the same book, another story is told of a Czech soldier, “a gawky dweeb who ran with such horrendous form that he looked “as if he’d just been stabbed through the heart, “ as one sportswriter put it. But Emil Zatopek loved running so much that even when he was still a grunt in army boot camp, he used to grab a flashlight and go off on twenty-mile runs through the woods at night… In his combat boots… In winter.” In the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, Zatopek won two gold medals and decided to do an additional competition of the marathon even though he had never run one before. A hilarious story was told of how Zatopek ran up to the person running first place in this marathon, Jim Peters, who was then the world-record holder and running ten minutes under his own world-record pace. Zatopek asked him, “Excuse me, this is my first marathon. Are we going too fast?” Peters sarcastically replied, “No, too slow,” thinking that “if he was dumb enough to ask, he was dumb enough to deserve any answer he got.” Zatopek took Peters at his word and took off.

The most amazing part of this race is that “when he burst out of the tunnel and into the stadium, he was met with a roar: not only from the fans, but from athletes of every nation who thronged the track to cheer him in. Zatopek snapped the tape with his third Olympic record, but when his teammates charged over to congratulate him, they were too late: the Jamaican sprinters had already hoisted him on their shoulders and were parading him around the infield. “Let us live so that when we come to die, even the undertaker will be sorry,” Mark Twain used to say. Zatopek found a way to run so that when he won, even the other teams were delighted” (McDougall, 95).

            Similarly, I was a part of a dance performance entitled Phalanx, choreographed by a graduating senior, Aaron Hooper, for his senior honors project in the dance department in 2012. In one particular section, my choreography was a simple repeated sequence and with each subsequent repetition an additional movement was added. In order to make this movement interesting for viewers, he asked me to look inside myself and find a story that this sequence represented. Soon, to me this pattern came to represent the story of a friend who, at the time, was considering suicide. In dancing his story, each repetition represented a day in his life and after not too long, the movements took on the heavy quality of the deep conversations we had been having. I came to feel the weight that he carried within him. This physical experience helped me be able to express more compassion toward him.

      In the modern world, there is a phenomenon which can be called “compassion fatigue.” The presence of this negatively impacts all areas of our society from students’ learning in schools to patients’ treatment in hospitals to seniors in assisted living homes to customers in a grocery store. In Aycock and Boyle (2009), some interventions for “compassion fatigue” are discussed including pastoral care, retreats, emotional expression, and peer support. Each of these could potentially help, but they tend to be aimed at controlling the symptoms. The emotional energy required at work can be compared to a battery. These treatments are much like recharging a battery as it drains. However, a better solution could be to not only recharge the battery, but to also replace the battery with one which has a larger reserve. Increasing the quantity and quality of physical activities is like increasing the size of the battery while simultaneously recharging it. Of course that isn’t to suggest that there will be less stress on the job. However, physicality does give one a tool to get away from the situation, release the stress that builds up, and to begin gaining a greater compassion for self and others. For the human race which is only growing greater in number and diversity, there is an enormous need for an increase in compassion. Perhaps this compassion really is as simple to develop as making a habit of taking walks, enrolling in a dance class, trying out yoga, or any of hundreds of other physical possibilities.

Literature Cited

Aycock, Nancy, and Deborah Boyle. "Interventions to Manage Compassion Fatigue in Oncology Nursing." Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing 13.2 (2009): 183-91. UNM Electronic Reserves. Web. 7 May 2014.

Compassion, Beauty and Physicality. Perf. Krista Tippett. TED. Meus Blog, 16 Feb. 2014. Web. 7 May 2014.

Mayo Clinic Staff. "Exercise: 7 Benefits of Regular Physical Activity." Mayo Clinic. Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, n.d. Web. 7 May 2014.

McDougall, Christopher. Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. Print.

"OM-AZING!" PEOPLE 26 Feb. 2007: 131. Matthewsanford.com. Web. 7 May 2014.

Sanford, Matthew. "Matthew's Vision." Matthews Vision. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 May 2014. <http://www.matthewsanford.com/content/matthews-vision>.

Yee, Rodney, and Nina Zolotow. Moving toward Balance: 8 Weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee. Emmaus, PA: Rodale, 2004. Print.

Misnomer

My mind today has been thinking about dance performances and how to make them even more modern. The modern dance pioneer Loie Fuller is an inspiration to me for really stretching the capabilities of the dance. She explored with stage lighting and ways to make the experience for the audience even more exhilarating. She was originally a skirt dancer on the Vaudeville stage. She further expounded upon that basis by lengthening her skirts and incorporating colored lights. This video is one example of her work in her piece "Danse Serpentine."

I love her story of becoming friends with Marie Curie and asking to use radioactive materials because she wanted to glow on stage. While we now know of much smarter ways to do this, look at how she pushed dance so much further. She explored with the best technology of her day, received great inspiration, and made many innovations in the field of stage lighting. 

Our technology today is so much more advanced! Take a second and imagine the possibilities of mixing concert dance with the technical capabilities we have today. I would love to explore that very concept further through my life! Below is just one possibility. An animator filmed a dance performed by two BYU students and created an amazingly unique and beautiful experience for viewers. 

Likewise, Chris Elam of the dance company Misnomer performed at a TED event and then gave a little speech about how audience interaction can become a larger part of the whole performance experience. 

There is so much possible in this realm of dance. What other ideas can you think of?

Aerial Dance

After my post on Cirque Du Soleil yesterday, aerial dance has definitely been on my mind. I wanted to share a video which I have probably rewatched about 100 times over the past year. It is an aerial dancer from London who talks what it is like flying through the air and what struggles she has had to pass through which have led her to the point she is at now. 

One of the most inspiring details about this video is the part where she talks about how she studied English and philosophy at a university and after that she decided she really wanted to dance. She trained for a year and she's been working and dancing ever since. 

That story is immensely inspiring to me because I feel like that will be my story as well. I just want to dance, so I will be demonstrating courage to not stick with my original plan of medical school and I will be going with the field where I really feel alive. It is funny how much courage something as simple as that takes. I have no clue where I will end up. But there is beauty and passion in that unknown/anything is possible state of being. That is what I live for right now. 

Here are some links to more of Vanessa Cook and other aerial artists:

The Group "Gravity & Levity"

Push

Professional Experience Page

Mystere by Cirque Du Soleil

This is a true story about pretty much the best weekend of my entire life; the weekend I first got to see Cirque Du Soleil.

So it all started when, on the spur of a moment and at the push of a great groupon deal, a friend and I decided to go to Las Vegas, Nevada (not Las Vegas, New Mexico... did you know that that city even existed? Neither does most of the world!). It was a one-and-a-half day long trip and we spent most of it walking up then down the strip. Can you believe that they put whole malls with a hotel? And have dancing fountain shows and nightly volcanic eruptions? And an entire aquarium inside a hotel? Being there blew my entire mind!

But nothing compared to the Cirque Du Soleil show, Mystere, that we got to see! I think nothing in the world can completely compare to getting to be a part of that entire experience. With the hilarious clowns who swapped out couples, stole and dumped popcorn on the viewers, and picked a "papa" from audience to help out an adult size baby I was laughing harder than I have in months. From the intense drumming-from-the-sky introduction to the giant snail finale, they introduced me into a world that I have never before visited. When they dropped me off at the end of the show, I was left wanting so much more. It is difficult for words to describe being lifted into another state of being, but this is what the performers allowed me to do.

Acts included an aerial silk piece, trapeze flying, strong men balancing, trampoline jumping, aerial cube, bungee, and Chinese poles, among other unforgettable performances. Something about these performers made my right brain go wild with an immense amount of glee. They were able to move in ways that I've never before imagined possible for a human being. They taught me so much about how very hard work can lead to intense amounts of beauty. They made me wish to leave everything I know in life so that I can make their Neverland a daily lifestyle for me. I just may become an acrobat yet.

One thing I do know for sure, to feel alive I need movement and performance. If I were to give that up, I'd have choked off a huge part of my soul.

Inspiration

We all need a little inspiration sometimes! It is what helps us believe in our dreams in the first place and is what helps us remember why we do what we do when the going gets rough. Here is a place I'll use to collect videos and quotes that inspire me on those hard days. Hopefully it will help someone else as well.

Diana David: Have the Balls to Follow Your Dreams

She describes her journey from being a mechanical engineer because her family wanted it to becoming a mover, a clown, and a contact juggler. In explaining her story it becomes so clear how important following one's actual dream is to living a happy, fulfilling life. 

Nelson Mandela:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Louis Zamperini in his book Devil At My Heels

"All I want to tell young people is that you're not going to be anything in life unless you learn to commit to a goal. You have to reach deep within yourself to see if you are willing to make the sacrifices. Your dreams won't always come true, but you'll never know if you don't try. Either way, you will always discover so much of value along the way because you'll always run into problems-- or as I call them, challenges." 

M. Russell Ballard

“I am so thoroughly convinced that if we don’t set goals in our life and learn how to master the techniques of living to reach our goals, we can reach a ripe old age and look back on our life only to see that we reached but a small part of our full potential. When one learns to master the principles of setting a goal, he will then be able to make a great difference in the results he attains in this life.”

Martha Graham

"There is a vitality, a life-force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is; nor how valuable it is; nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you."

The Beginning

This is a blog about dance. It is a personal journey and an exploration for me. I've recently decided I want to make dance a big part of my life. I don't know where it will take me. I don't know the struggles I may pass through. But I am excited to embark on this journey. This blog will be a place where I can place my findings, experiences, struggles, et cetera to help me remember why I dance and to maybe inspire someone to follow his or her dream as well. I will start by telling my story of why I dance.

I've always loved dance. I took my first ballet class when I was about 6 years old. Even at such an early age, I was such a motivated individual. My mom told me that I even went around doing extra jobs around the house to help pay for them. I didn't stick with ballet for too long mostly because my family was pretty religious and didn't like that the recitals tended to be on Sundays. I always loved dance, but after that experience, I didn't think it was for me or rather I wanted it to be for me but I figured it was already too late. I always regretted stopping and if I could go back I would have kept on doing it. The first dance related thing I got back into was when I was in the colorguard in the marching band in high school. I did that for all four years of high school. I loved doing that! I loved getting to dance with and without equipment (which included flags, sabres, rifles, et cetera). I was really good at it too-- I had solos, duets, trios, etc and I loved the whole performance feeling--the exhaustion, the beauty, the feeling of finally being able to perform in front of people who appreciated music and the arts.

That is one huge part of me. Another big part of me is my intellectual side. I was a little bit crazy with that in high school as well. I took basically every AP class I could fit into my schedule-- some of them being AP Literature and Composition, AP Language and Composition, AP World History, AP European History, AP Art History, AP Calculus, AP Calculus Based Physics, AP US Government, AP Macroeconomics, et cetera. Likewise, I took quite a few dual enrollment classes (college work when you're a high school student). Basically I entered college with somewhere around 40 credits already done. I would say I'm pretty smart, and because of that side of me, I thought that it was necessary for me to go into something that uses that, so according to that plan, I began my major (Biology) with the intention of heading toward medical school after my bachelor work.

However, the side of me which absolutely loves dance was super happy that I had the liberty in college to choose my classes. I chose my minor as dance so that I could take my dance classes and it would all still "count" for something for me. I have loved absolutely every dance class I've taken--technique, classroom, et cetera. Little by little I've been realizing that it is dance that gives quality to my life and that is the moments for me that make everything else I have had to do worthwhile. I have especially appreciated all of the dance performances we're required to go to in many courses in the dance program. There are always the pieces that really speak to me and make me feel like "I could do that!" --I guess it could be explained as moments when my soul is really connected to what I'm seeing and I want to be a part of it more than anything else. One such piece was Aaron Hooper's "Uwieziony." At the time I was in one of Mary Anne's modern dance classes and I wrote about his piece for a certain paper we had to turn in. She said that it was amazing and that I should share what I did with Aaron. I did that. Several semesters later, Aaron put up signs around the dance building that he needed dancers for his senior dance honors thesis (Phalanx). I got into that and that was the first pure dance performance I've been in and I can't describe how amazing that whole process was for me. Every time we got out of a rehearsal I was feeling a sense of euphoria! After the dance project was done, he told me that he knew he had to have my energy and passion in one of his pieces and he was glad that it was in that one.

The dance/creative and the intellectual are two important sides to me. A third is my religious side. I'm a Mormon. After the aforementioned semester, I took an 18 month leave of absence from UNM to serve a religious mission which I just returned from in December 2013. It is interesting how much you learn about yourself when you leave everything behind and are thinking about others 24/7. One such thing I learned is how much I longed to dance. I never feel that urging/longing to be a doctor. (It is funny because for me, becoming a doctor actually feels like the path of least resistance. I know I could do it and I would be good at it). As I was on my mission, there were times when we would be driving down the street and I'd see people in a certain arrangement at a street corner and something would spark in my head and I'd start choreographing how I would play out that scene. There even have been a few times that I have been lucky enough to have dance dreams.

So that kind of brings me to where I am now. The internal battle I've had for years on going the medical route vs. the dance route is still playing out. On different days one pulls stronger than the other. But conclusion I've been coming to over the past few months is that I feel like I want to dance so badly, so I think I need to go down that route. The part is that it is scary and I don't know that I would succeed. It is kind of scary when your body is your canvass so the way others view your art is also the way they view you. It is scary because I haven't been dancing for the past 18 months that I was gone and, beyond that, that I didn't start when I was 3 (like many other people in this field). For me it definitely isn't the path of least resistance. I don't care about money, but I would need the hope that I could eventually succeed. So I've been trying to research what others have done and brainstorm potential paths I could take in the dance field.

One such inspirational story to me is that of Donna, the director of the dance program at UNM. She, like me, didn't start dancing when she was super young. She took her first dance when she was in college, at 23 years of age. She graduated with a BA in History because she was convinced she wanted to be a high school teacher. But she realized that as she was teaching, her mind would constantly wander to dance. She said that she finally took the risk, stopped teaching high school, and put everything she had in trying to be a dancer. She said, "I was in Boston at the time, teaching in a junior high school, and I couldn't stop thinking about dance and choreography, so I quite my job, took dance classes five days a week, waited tables at night, and told myself I would give myself one year of classes and then audition for companies, and if I were taken into a company, then I would continue to dance."

I'm a very logical thinker and I try to think of what path would even be possible for me to walk down. So far, that seems like the most promising path for me and the path I'm currently considering... to continue to work out basically daily -- cardio, strength, and flexibility -- until I graduate this coming December. Then I will probably do something similar to Donna-- take as many dance classes as I can and audition for dance companies.

They say that the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is today. That is what I want to do with dance. There is a chance I may completely fail. But I believe the price to pay will be well worth the sheer exhilaration possible in this field.