” So embrace your chance
And join our Dance
Our dance of alchemy
Where dreams and fears
And pain and years
Dissolve in synergy”

–  R.A. Lippin

Most of you know by now that I am happiest and feel most alive when I am dancing.
It is my opinion that we were built to dance and it is a crime against our nature to not allow ourselves to respond to the what our body wants to do when it hears and feels the music’s muse.

I am obsessed with this as a meditative practice and I use the following verse (in English and Chinese) on everything I do here (it is even on my ‘business’ card):

“Life is a Dance.
Sometimes you lead.
Sometimes you follow.
You don’t need to know the steps.
You will learn them along ‘The Way.”
(Note: I am changing this to be, ‘You will remember along “The Way.”)

Too many of us wait to be taught how to dance.  It is my contention that we already
know how, we only need to remember having learned in our evolutionary past.

Indeed, the science is now supporting the contention that we oscillate at a cellular level to nature’s rhythms (see, “An Introduction to Medical Dance/Movement Therapy” (Goodill, 2005).  We have forgotten consciously how to dance, we only need to remember how.
I will have a lot more to say on this later, I am just getting into this fascinating book.

The point is, or at least one point is, that “nature has more to teach us about dance than man.”  Learning dance steps is a human convention, moving with nature is natural — the fact that we would even deny this is also human convention.

Do birds only sing to attract mates?  Do dolphins only dance in the sea to navigate? Call me crazy if you want, but I believe that living things move by compulsion, unfettered natural compulsion — they play with the elements about them, they respond to their internal impulses and are shaped by the interaction.   On-going compulsive play is life’s natural state and I believe it is those behaviors that have been selected for creating bountiful, successful living — a happy life.   Those denying, withholding, controlling these natural impulse have moved into an unnatural state.

To me, a session of dancing, listening to soft melodies and pulsating beats, dissolving idle concerns in the patterns of a few carefully chosen rhythmic moves can “transport you to where you are” — in the immediate present.  The spirit of dance is like the spirit of Tao: it flows spontaneously, roaming here and there impatient of restraint.  There is an alchemy to dance and it is one of my ways of being “present in the moment.”  It makes me happy.

For me, basketball is another form of dance combining form and function in a sense of relaxed fitness, spontaneity and grace.  Playing basketball makes me happy.  I have long been a roundball devotee, playing in High School, College and the Army and coaching in the Army and in College.  I wasn’t exceptional amongst my peers, just persistent, not a star starter, just a dedicated team member.  The coaching was primarily taking on what others didn’t want and a chance to stay involved with a sport I liked.  This latter day involvement continued through a number of fitness and exercise classes, and adult and elder basketball programs.  At sixty-five I can still say that “I’ve got game.”  In fact, my relative skills have improved — by that I mean it is rare that I find a peer who can keep up.   Most have long since traded in their basketball shoes for golf cleats and clubs.  Actually in China, I am able to keep up with the best of them (even out of my peer group)  by countering their youthful hot shot maneuvering with an experienced court sense, passing eye and team play instinct (I also still also have a pretty good three-point shot).

As long as I physically can I will use the kinesthetic flow of basketball and dancing to get me out of my head and into my moving body.  It makes me happy.

“We should consider every day lost in which we have not danced at least once.”

–  Friedrich Nietzsche