arriving, turning, centering

Arriving into presence
In this moment, this place, this community,
drawing awareness to breath
Extending the exhale a bit longer than the inhale
Moving from what feels good right now
Coordinating breath and movement
Drawing attention to breath, more specifically the exhale
Take a breath
Reach and ground and stretch and bounce
Notice what you notice
And come back to breath
Notice where the inhale ends and the exhale begins
The spaces between the two
Arriving into bodily presence

And as we arrive
We turn
Turning toward instead of turning away
Turning toward what frightens us
Turning toward in a full bodied way
Turning toward vibrant, entanglement with the world
Turning away from despair and toward the work of hope
Turning toward the darkness as our colleagues in palliative care turn toward death and grief and loss with deep care
Turning toward wellbeing times of times of transition.

And as we turn
we center, decenter, and re-center
Centering livability and
Decentering the human in a continuum of life

“we can craft other visions that will be conducive to the long-range survival of humans and of the other life-forms, biological and artificial, with whom we share the planet and ourselves”

katherine hayles

Centering livability means
Making a radical commitment to shifting and sharing power (and speaking as a white, cis-gendered, heterosexual daughter of conquest this is all the more vital)
Centering indigenous voices each day in what I choose to pay attention to and how we pay attention
Centering our Black and queer and non-binary communities, work, and voices
Centering spirit and grace with unapologetic loving kindness and deep awareness of relationally to place and to each other
Centering our plant friends and animal teachers

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Arriving, Turning Toward, and Centering/Decentering are some of the meta-practices I’ve developed during the establishment of the Livable Futures network (more about that here). It is also an expression of the specific space of dance and choreography, always concerned with motion and the way in which the body is our means of orienting ourselves to the world (makes me think of a beloved text, Queer Phenomenology by Sara Ahmed).