Misty Hannah led us today in Sensory Awareness on Zoom.  She began with how she was folding her laundry today, folding and unfolding, noticing weight and texture.

She invited us to feel our shape, and then slowly to fold down, and then unfold back up and bring our arms out.  I became an egret, a heron, with wings broad and scooping the air.  My arms were fluid, not fixed like an airplane wing.  

Folded, I felt open in the back of the spine, breath pouring in, fluid.  When I unfolded back up, my head kept moving on its wand of a neck making figure 8’s, a dance of infinity.

As I fold and unfold, and knots untie, I’m reminded of Rilke’s wonderful poem from the Book of Hours: Love Poems to God.

If we surrendered

to earth’s intelligence

we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves

in knots of our own making

and struggle, lonely and confused.

So, like children, we begin again ..

to fall,

patiently to trust our heaviness.

Even a bird has to do that

before he can fly.