This week, my recovery has started.

I feel my body getting stronger, more stable and balanced each day.
A subtle fear is still floating over everything. The unknown is always a little destabilizing.

But I dove in and I know I can swim…

Sensing, feeling, knowing where is my new beginning point: I am once again able to project myself in the future.

Before the surgery, I created a seated dancing meditation: hands, arms and spine dancing freely with fluidity.

A moving poem of ebb and flow stemming from stillness.

It is a creative recovery, relaxation and meditation tool everyone can play with, anywhere.

I do it every morning after my physio exercises

• to keep dance close to my heart
• to calm my mind
• to stay connected with images of nature.

When moving is impossible or restricted, I like to live movement through my imagination. Reminiscing the amplitude of high leaps and free swirls in spacious imaginary outdoor spaces…

Like in a dream, where everything is possible, I have this sensation of vastness and floating, as if becoming a helium balloon .

My inner space is opening: nerves, organs, fluids, tissues are becoming one big sponge responding to each movement of my imagination.

I remember past movements and create new beautifully complex ones: in my head, all possibilities are available…

As I imagine big movements, micro movements surface in my body. I experience different impulses in miniature:

• quick hops,
• slow wavy drops,
• sinuous turns…

that feel dream-like – as a dog asleep twitches because he is running and barking in his dream. This emerging microscopic dance is shadowing the dreamed one.

Resurgence of a Shiver of a Dance…

Dance does not have to be big and acrobatic. It can be microscopic and close to your heart and spine and be as satisfying.

Dance the dance of the microscopic. Tap into the energetic footprint of movement.

This dance of the microscopic is like a meditation. It allows you to connect while disconnecting.

The dancing meditation described in this blog is inspired by the Simple Fluid Choreography I learnt with the Dairakudakan in Japan.

I started by establishing what body parts I can and cannot move and worked around the possibilities that gave me.

My movement restriction is mainly in the lower body so:

• I do the meditation seated on a chair – feel free to do it standing or lying down
• I focus on letting my hands and spine dance and float – add legs and pelvis if your possibilities are there
• I then allow the fluid energy of my upper body to contaminate my pelvis and legs (my areas of restriction): subtly, gently, creating a sense of floating, surrounded by a supporting misty fog of energy… – spread this energetic footprint of movement into restricted areas of your body

I am doing this dancing meditation as a recovery from surgery but it can be done

• as a relaxation from daily stress and mental overload
• as a warm-up to open inner spaces and release the creative flow before starting a new project, a new day…

You can read the prompts bellow and then improvise your dancing meditation accompanied by your favourite music or surrounded by nature’s sounds.

Or you can listen to the video in which I guide you through a 10 minutes dancing meditation. The visual is there as an example – part of it was filmed before the surgery, the outdoor part was filmed after.

Comfortably seated (standing or lying)
Yield into the ground
Let your hands become helium balloons, soap bubbles, flying birds, leaves in the wind…
Let your torso become lava lamp, bubbling champagne, spiralling maelstrom…
Let your spine become sinuous eel in water, seaweed, river, ocean waves…
Follow your breath in an ebb and flow rhythm:
growing… shrinking…
widening… narrowing…
advancing… retreating…
Drawing Moebius Strips and Infinite Figure 8 with hands, spine, arms, torso (and all your body if you desire) all around you
Let a sense of floating emerge from it all