Reflections on dance and life #4

When I got the virus I denied that I was sick. I refused help for a week until I moved into my parents. After a couple weeks convalescence I returned to pushing, denying, and ultimately learning the hard way that I was prolonging the recovery. A couple of months passed, I got better. I felt about 90%. My first shift back at work.
I wasn’t really better.
I had no idea how fragile that “better” was. A relapse of PVFS/onset of CFS occurred and finally I accept I am not ok. I am so shocked at my exhaustion that I stare at my hands expecting to see decrepit elderly hands. I am finally allowing myself to rest, accepting that my body is saying STOP! But this time, the rest doesn’t help. There IS no confusing cycle of exhaustion, rest, feeling temporarily ok again, exhaustion, rest, ok, repeat. There is just a constant heavy broken body that can’t seem to cope with anything, sunlight, baths, noise, chemicals, thinking, being upright.
Boy was I scared as it dawns on me what have I done.
Thankfully I was only like this for about a week before it started lifting inch by inch month by month. For some, it is more severe and lasts months, years. CFS can cause death. Isolating, only understood by those who have experienced it themselves. Even I couldn’t grasp what was wrong with my friend who had CFS for 5 years until I got this PVFS myself. “So what are your symptoms again? Or, so…why can’t you work?” I’d ask, time and time again, feeling blankly confused but curious. It never sunk in until now.

Now my catalyst was a dear friend. I didn’t want to be visited, I was embarrassed. I was pale and thinner but I still didn’t look sick, I looked alright. But she understood the experience of CFS and when she spoke these words to me, every cell in my body felt the full blown truth:

It is HARD
to admit
that

I

am

weak

Some kind of wall inside me broke and I was flooded with the pain of this deep truth I had been ignoring. Hearing it aloud from somebody else allowed me to accept. To release the denial, to see the truth that had evaded me, clouded by other peoples words and judgement, furthered by my own self-doubt. I now knew with certainty that every tiny whisper I’d heard but not heeded from my body was truth.
Listen to that whisper. Trust my body.

I had no idea how powerful my own self-doubt was, whittling away my health. People have no idea the effect of their frivolous words. To this day I can still find a hatred and resentment in my heart. God grant me forgiveness, dissolve this bitter anger, it is of no use.

In my time of physical weakness I discovered inner strength, the facing of denial, the uplifting of deceptions.

 

Reflections on dance and life #3

Dead space

The period of stepping away from salsa, absorbing my mind with different things provided a much needed perspective shift.

Months on, unsure how my health would stand up to the next lesson, but determined (with permission from my doctor) to try just one. The thought quietly crosses my mind if I dance now at this fragile state of health, I may be doing damage that robs myself of the ability to dance later for who knows how long.
But I cannot say no. I can’t face the loss of dancing from my life when so much has gone out of control. When I have had to give in to my body and let it run my life. When work tells me I cannot return to normal hours.
At the time it felt like a waste of a lesson, I made no milestones & we worked on my arms again for the sixth lesson in two years. Yet in hindsight it was a very significant lesson.

I went in having given up salsa in my heart, I was so sick of being pushed and pulled and not fitting in. I try to explain to him I don’t want to do salsa but he is scanning the playlist and doesn’t seem to hear me. I haven’t done any salsa since my last lesson in August, having been sick with the dreaded lurgy ie glandular fever. I complain about the lack of salsa scene here, I don’t know why I’m bothering even trying because there are no performance opportunities here or competitions. The ballroom scene has 3 pro couples in Tasmania, an expert teacher who is a national judge and socials every single week!
It’s too late…the clave starts playing and I cannot say no to his outstretched hand even though I know my salsa will be in some sad sorry state of disrepair.
I’m off balance everywhere…“The floor is so slippery!”
“Is it?” playful look in his eye.
Hm I think he means I’m not using my feet. So I put some more stomp into my stompers and find that indeed the floor is not so slippery after all…! Over a few minutes my body slowly remembers and my dancing improves, he is pleased with my quick ‘recovery’ as he calls it. Me too, was expecting weeks to get it back.

My homework is to use every opportunity I can to do cupping styling with my arm. Even though he has taught me this movement before, I don’t use it because I can never see where to use it with our leads. he showed me how to find the spaces to use it and it’s easier now I just have one piece of homework. Something to be said for working on less goals at once.

It was a significant lesson because although at the time I didn’t give it any attention, I found something had changed in me. There was freedom of movement in my hips, I was less a frozen icypole! Yet I hadn’t DONE anything. No salsa in months! This time, there had been no training my body with physical practice at home. Yet here I was seeing results.

Interestingly my instructor didn’t comment. Maybe my technique was shite; maybe he didn’t want to draw attention to it knowing how ridiculously sensitive I am. All he did was briefly stand me in front of the mirror and push my ribs side to side, saying, “Now we need to start freeing up your rib cage / upper body”. I didn’t realise he just gave me one of the very tools I needed to go to the next level in my dancing.

I knew I could do it, body movement, I can remember after my cousin dragged me along to my first salsa lesson (“to meet boys!”), dancing around like loonies to Latin music in her trashy one bedroom unit, discovering my body movement. And now, I use it every time I practice alone in my lounge. I just have trouble letting it out to play in public. I needed to learn to trust that my body knows what to do, to be less fearful, to take risks.

In the physically dead space of illness something had changed within me. My self-trust. And it flowed through my dancing, bringing my body movement from the invisible to the visible.Overthinking, mellowing and fixating on the many wrong things about my dancing was keeping me stuck in a cycle of negativity that I could not work my way out of no matter how much I tried, thought, reflected or blogged about it. I had no idea that my progress would lie in the stopping of all these things. In the rest. I find myself letting go, my dance progress becomes less important to me, I stop taking it so seriously.

This bitch of an illness provided a well-timed break, a break that I would never have chosen for myself.

Overlook.

I was so defeated after my August salsa lesson last year that I overlooked some positives that occurred. Firstly my amazingly one-tracked brain impressed my instructor!

He identified that every time he leads using my left arm, I’m not following & losing balance, so he gets me to try giving equal connection both arms. I’m right handed. I am concentrating so fiercely. As we dance I feel beat 1 is behind us somewhere: Hm there’s the 1! Why aren’t we ON it! He always corrects if we’re off time. Maybe he is too focused on assessing my arms. So I put it out of my head because I had to focus on my weak left arm.
He full on STOPS mid dance gasping at me with shocked delight, “Zomg we were just dancing on 2 and you were following me perfectly!” like he’d just discovered an exciting treasure.
Me on the outside: Nonchalant. Oh cool, I’m not really sure what that means.
Me on the inside: JOY WOOHOO! Absolutely giddy with delight that I impressed him! I can do on 2 when all I know is that it’s something that you do when you’re good!”
Then he shows me off to my teacher saying, “Look! What are we doing that’s different!?”.
Her: “Ooo you’re dancing on 2!”
Him: “Ok it wasn’t as good that time Courtney because you were thinking about it.”
Ever keeping my head on the ground…lol.
As soon as I knew what we were doing, I resisted it, it didn’t flow and I wasn’t following as well. Because I was thinking about it. Yet seconds earlier my force of concentration and one track mind somehow switched off that thinking part of my brain enabling me to follow new things that I hadn’t learned before.
I was so happy! But a little bothered that my immediate response was to hide my delight, as if it’s wrong to be pleased with myself, he must be wrong I can’t be good, or if I am then I shouldn’t say it out loud! Refuse, deny, squash.

Secondly, when using my arms he explained to not throw the movement away, that it’s a part of me not an add on. I try again and immediately get compliments! *mini swoon* “Très elegant!” *air kisses*. I was so shocked because I thought my arms were terrible because for 2 years he’s been trying to get them up and out and they just won’t budge.

Receiving praise is less frequent and harder to elicit the further along the dance journey I go.