Chapter 29
from my [in progress] autobiography: "Don't Fill Up on the Antipasta."
Golf is the epitome of stuckness. The lower the score the greater stuck the player until all human movement has ceased and a veritable machine is hitting the ball. The same for any sports or disciplines which require perfecting and refining repeated form and movement in order to achieve a goal. On the other side of this equation lay modern dance. On the highest levels the stuckness of classic ballet movements when use improvisationally are viewed as a liberation of movement but mainly in the transitions. The higher liberation comes from complete freedom of any repeated movements which might only be found publicly performed in the more avante-garde dance clubs of multi-cultural centures like like Nickie's San Francisco. In fact, that is where the notion of truly liberated movement came to me. I found it odd that only a few blocks away from the short Haight, Fillmore an Webster zone the few dance clubs which existed could be typed according to some definite Street styles like: Hip-Hop, Popping and Krump, and Swing styles like: Lindy Hop and Rock'n'Roll, and Jive, and dozens of long established folk dancing styles.
Schools of freestyle movements have been around for a while in the theater arts for many years to help students become more acquainted with their own bodies and exploration techniques useful for certain acting methods. I think the thing some people loved most about Nickie's was that it was a place where one could practice similar freestyle dancing movements in a public venue without inhibition and with the possibility of engaging or combining with partners, if only for a minute or so, while exploring and exchanging dance movement ideas quietly. Such an experience actually resulted in my finding a lifelong partner.
Along the pathway of dance I began to notice my own stuckness which was stiffness. For most of my life I kept moving in the same ways rarely altering my familiar bodily movements. Everything from lifting a fork to easing myself into bed late at night gently to avoid disturbing a sleeping wife characterized a kind of similarity of movement. In the youthful years my stuckness went unnoticed. In college I remember my fencing instructor telling me how stiff I was. Having engaged in the rigid and formalized movements Martial Arts achieving flexibility became more of a painful experience and so for many years I refused to stretch or alter my movements very much. Whenever I did I would suffer the usual sprains, strains, pulls and aches.
One day at a flea marked I bought a handful of used VHS videos. Two years later before giving them away I decided to view one by a health instructor named Jamie Brinkus on Stretching. I was amazed at what I found. In fifteen minutes he demonstrated an upper and lower routine which I have used ever since. Although these stretches are repeated daily what I learned was that in stretching I would be exploring new movements with beneficial results. I now understand when I am becoming stuck and know that a stuck body transfers into a stuck mind, and vice versa. With expanded awareness today to liberate my own bodily movements I am ever seeing new ways to move. The cells of the body seem to respond well to the new movements as their shapes are elongated allowing for greater transfer of nutrients and toxins to occur I am told. I feel more energized. My breathing and over all condition is steadily improving. At 59 I feel I have become much younger physically.
As an interesting aside, during these few years since taking on this new approach images of classic art would pop into my head. Here are a few of them. I wonder if these interesting poses tell us that those who commissioned them knew something vital about human movement.
I have decided to coin my study "Movement Altering Practices", or MAP. I hope you enjoy the pictures and feel inspired to dance, stretch and create new movements to break stuck energy inna you life.
Great pull on the lats.
Good shoulder move.
Nice pull on the quads.
Calfs working here.
Try this one and feel the gentle pull on the neck, waist and legs.
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