I chase sweat. I love activities that make my heart beat strong and fast and provoke sweat. I have long felt that many of my sweaty activities were akin to a meditation—running outdoors, dancing, the flow of mountain biking on a trail, cross country skiing. They are activities that can simultaneously focus the mind and unhook the mind from its usual patterns.
Back in May, when I lost my meditation streak (which I wrote about here), I counted my 5Rhythms dance group as a meditation the first day I forgot to meditate. At the time, I felt like I was playing fast and loose with the definition of meditation. So, it seemed appropriate when a few days later I forgot to meditate again and ended my streak. As if the universe was catching my fast-loose-ness and correcting the error.
Then, a few weeks ago, I was in a training about how to use Internal Family Systems in psychedelic-assisted therapy, and the trainer mentioned that traditional seated meditation worked less well for her than moving meditations, like dancing, because she felt more in touch with her body and the feminine flow of movement. Oh, I thought. As if she had given me permission to approach meditation more expansively.
In the same week, I went to a three-day, silent-ish meditation retreat. Silent, because we were not allowed to speak to each other. Silent-ish, because there were moving meditations, so vigorous they left me drenched in sweat. We also made a lot of loud noise. One of the moving meditations we did each day was Osho’s dynamic meditation. I was dubious at first. I’m not an Osho devotee and resist gurus. Despite which, I loved this meditation. It lasts an hour and has five parts. The first is 10 minutes of chaotic breathing. The second is 10 minutes of cathartic explosion, using body and voice. The third is 10 minutes of jumping and vocalizing the word hoo. The fourth is 15 minutes of stillness. And the fifth part is 15 minutes of dancing. I felt like I’d been waiting for this meditation all my life. So much permission.
I have always missed the vibrancy of connecting to my vital energy in movement when I’ve been at silent retreats in the past. I have memories of going out for a run at one retreat, only to encounter the glares of two women out walking (silently, separately and slowly) in the woods. As if running were heretical, even though I was silent and alone, without a phone, so no possibility to listen to anything either.
The opportunity to breathe deep and sweat out the internal muck that was loosening during the silent-ish retreat was life giving.
All this permission has made me rethink my theory that the universe was smacking me down for defining dance as meditation. I have a new theory. The universe was inviting me into more ease, loosening the rigidity of my counting and defining.
There was a forest with trails at the retreat center. Every day I went out on the trails to play. I’d walk until I felt like running. Run until I felt like walking. There was a thin layer of snow over wet leaves and ice in the mornings. I wore my big winter coat and boots, reveling in the solitude and the joy of moving, breathing and sweating. By the end, my coat would be unzipped and hanging off my back. While I would have gone into the woods, no matter what level of official permission I had, I felt more ease and freedom, knowing that no one was going to frown at me.
The retreat had a second silent-ish element. We spent a lot of time contemplating one particular Zen koan. According to Britannica a koan is, “a succinct paradoxical statement or question used as a meditation discipline … The effort to solve a koan is intended to exhaust the analytic intellect and the egoistic will, readying the mind to entertain an appropriate response on the intuitive level.” One of the most famous koan’s is, What is the sound of one hand clapping? If we can resist our first smart ass response, the koan’s begin to burrow inside our psyche. The koan we contemplated was, Who Is In? The mode of contemplation was this: Our meditation cushions would be turned to face one another in a row of dyads. We would sit facing one of our fellow retreat participants, looking them directly in the eyes, a gong would sound and either the person facing the lake or the forest would be invited to ask the question, Tell me who is in. The answerer would speak for five minutes, holding eye contact and saying whatever was arising in that moment for them. The asker was to maintain a steady, neutral gaze and body posture, listening actively and not responding with facial expressions or gestures. Then the gong would sound again, and we were instructed to switch. A round could go back and forth for 50 minutes at a time. In between rounds we would have a break, some silent meditation, possibly one of the moving meditations I’ve mentioned, and then we would begin again, with a new partner.
Just holding the eye contact for that long was a struggle. Then speaking truly about what was arising was another uncomfortable challenge. And not being able to respond to what others were saying, was its own struggle. I simultaneously hated it and loved it in the moment. In hindsight, I just plain love it. The contemplation was like an internal scrub. In the connection of the eye gaze and the complicity that arose, as we noticed the universality of our struggles, I began to feel as if I were walking down a long hall with windows covered with vertical blinds, so that the hall was striped in the rays of light coming in through the gaps in the blinds. Each person I sat across from became one of the strips of light, as we connected through our eyes. With each exchange, the silence of the rest of the retreat had a richer texture. We were progressively tuning in to each other’s frequencies.
At a certain moment, toward the end of the retreat I was starting out the window at a winter tree filled with birds. A sight that never fails to move me. All at once the birds lifted and wheeled into flight and I felt their lightness in my own bodymind. Silent sitting alone would not have gotten me there.
Since the retreat I notice that I feel more ease in my seated meditations, as if knowing that I could meditate in some other, sweaty way, makes being on the cushion more choiceful. (Side note: Choiceful is a word I’m considering for my word of the year for 2024). I’ve also adopted the language of the retreat leader, who named everything a meditation. As in—shower meditation, breakfast meditation, sleep meditation. More permission.
Before I wrap up, in case the answer to the question I pose in the title of this post isn’t clear—YES.
The final meditation of the whole retreat was an irreverent coup de grace, leaving us all helpless with laughter. I offer you that meditation here. Laughter is, after all, the ultimate healing agent.
