Today was day two of paratheatre work in the Ojai Valley. There were to be 5 of us. All paid up. 3 dropped out in the last 48 hours. Jessamine and I proceeded to drive north and work anyway. Today was mother's day. I asked everyone to bring some trinket for the alter - something that connects them to their ancestor and something that is relevant to their connection to the land we were working on. I brought a stuff beaver (Ojai connection for me for some reason) and three stuff snowmen from my childhood, represented my brothers and I... was connected to what I got from my mom, the items literally, but the three of us as brothers being the connection at least to the previous generation of my mom and dad.
Sequence:
NOTES:
Ancestors ... felt my grandma Hopkinson/Starr there strongly. being that is was mothers day … makes sense that I would sense the mother of my mother. I reviewed a variety of connections I had with her (san Francisco, Lombard street, Oreos in her kitchen, decorating the Christmas tree by the big window at the beach), but also her funeral came up, including my shame about how I handled her funeral. at a point I was weeping, asking her forgiveness, and I felt her holding me and then laying a hand on my right shoulder and saying "stand up and live son". It was a powerful sense of contact with her and her telling me to forgive myself and go on and thrive for her. That's what she wanted for me. for me to stand and thrive and live and forgive.
Second trip to the ancestors was a return to the eagle I found in SKY at the beginning of the evening. This time much larger and powerful. HUGE - ancestors in this Ojai valley. not my biological ancestors, but the ancestors of this land. and what they carry and passed down and continue to share. I was a giant eagle, perhaps bald eagle, then down to crouching - I was a shaman, hundreds or thousands of years ago. I had been like Castaneda's Don Juan - shapeshifting and being the eagle or dancing the eagle. I had a strong feeling of this ancestry. and as I returned to mother and father realm I noticed ways that both parents had shared native elements with me. my mom buying me dream catchers, native flutes, plaques with native culture stuff on it. Dad taking us to nature, Yosemite, big bear, and more. He was giving us the land which was connected to the ancestry of these aboriginals I had been embodying in the realm of the ancestors.
in the mother and father areas... strong. was sorta easily stepping right into their experiences, as if feeling them from first person. my mom's pain at her three boys being so distant from her - three chords running from her chest out to wherever her boys are, but not able to connect to them. laying in bed in deep sadness at that. I also struggled with not wanting to embody her energy or take it on at all. Kept trying to get away from her. but that's part of my relationship to Mother - an unavoidable dimension of my relationship to this energy. in dad, there was was Vietnam. there was wide open vigilance. there was violent outburst. the was jitters and grabbing for a gun under his pillows when his kids woke him, as he did when were young. and also there was a gesture of turning to stone at my center and going statue-like to shut down all I had experienced in the war. That was a strong sensation of how he responded. again, I was in his energy as if I had somehow absorbed it enough to fully embody it like that. strange. but also unnerving. trying to get out of it. not wanting to be in his experience, wanting to be in my own experience.
in EARTH / SKY - the eagle or soaring bird came first. it was gentle quiet and gliding, spacious, gentle, free. But also, it was me on the plane the previous day. the turbulence. I had a strong sensation of being an EARTH bound being and how unnatural it was for me to fly - how hard and how dangerous. moving back to earth - I came slamming to the ground, as if falling from the sky, I could feel how earthbound I was. How dangerous it was to fly and splat on the earth. Also in earth - deep sounds, resonate in my back and deep in my body - growling and earthbound animals on all fours. how much more earth oriented and low to the earth they are. much harder for them to look up. they are much more earth bound than we. but felt good to have my voice activate with that much earth resonance, especially in my belly and back. finally, towards the end of earth/sky I splayed out on the floor - bottom half of my body in earth and top half in sky... laying there like the Vitruvian man I had a realization or feeling of image of two inverted triangles meeting in the center of my body - this image has come up in the past but it was a great reminder and a deepening of previous experiences.
Sequence:
- Space Relations: moving stretch, back presence, ?
- Foundation Source: LOVE - asked to tone the energy to charge or fill the space
- Warm Up
- Personal Polarity - EARTH / SKY
- Vertical Jog - toning/singing the connection that came from it.
- Movement Vocabulary work - upper / middle / lower then front-back / side-to-side / up-down
- Group Polarity - Mother to the left / Father to the right
- Heat Jog
- Final Ritual: Mix of Father/Mother on one side --- Realm of the Ancestors on the other far side of the room. Instruction was to travel through the soup of mother and father until we find something we something that makes us feel a connection to the ancestors. Then travel into the ancestors and see where it takes us - go back and forth like that.
- No Form Bath to discharge
- Closing Circle
NOTES:
Ancestors ... felt my grandma Hopkinson/Starr there strongly. being that is was mothers day … makes sense that I would sense the mother of my mother. I reviewed a variety of connections I had with her (san Francisco, Lombard street, Oreos in her kitchen, decorating the Christmas tree by the big window at the beach), but also her funeral came up, including my shame about how I handled her funeral. at a point I was weeping, asking her forgiveness, and I felt her holding me and then laying a hand on my right shoulder and saying "stand up and live son". It was a powerful sense of contact with her and her telling me to forgive myself and go on and thrive for her. That's what she wanted for me. for me to stand and thrive and live and forgive.
Second trip to the ancestors was a return to the eagle I found in SKY at the beginning of the evening. This time much larger and powerful. HUGE - ancestors in this Ojai valley. not my biological ancestors, but the ancestors of this land. and what they carry and passed down and continue to share. I was a giant eagle, perhaps bald eagle, then down to crouching - I was a shaman, hundreds or thousands of years ago. I had been like Castaneda's Don Juan - shapeshifting and being the eagle or dancing the eagle. I had a strong feeling of this ancestry. and as I returned to mother and father realm I noticed ways that both parents had shared native elements with me. my mom buying me dream catchers, native flutes, plaques with native culture stuff on it. Dad taking us to nature, Yosemite, big bear, and more. He was giving us the land which was connected to the ancestry of these aboriginals I had been embodying in the realm of the ancestors.
in the mother and father areas... strong. was sorta easily stepping right into their experiences, as if feeling them from first person. my mom's pain at her three boys being so distant from her - three chords running from her chest out to wherever her boys are, but not able to connect to them. laying in bed in deep sadness at that. I also struggled with not wanting to embody her energy or take it on at all. Kept trying to get away from her. but that's part of my relationship to Mother - an unavoidable dimension of my relationship to this energy. in dad, there was was Vietnam. there was wide open vigilance. there was violent outburst. the was jitters and grabbing for a gun under his pillows when his kids woke him, as he did when were young. and also there was a gesture of turning to stone at my center and going statue-like to shut down all I had experienced in the war. That was a strong sensation of how he responded. again, I was in his energy as if I had somehow absorbed it enough to fully embody it like that. strange. but also unnerving. trying to get out of it. not wanting to be in his experience, wanting to be in my own experience.
in EARTH / SKY - the eagle or soaring bird came first. it was gentle quiet and gliding, spacious, gentle, free. But also, it was me on the plane the previous day. the turbulence. I had a strong sensation of being an EARTH bound being and how unnatural it was for me to fly - how hard and how dangerous. moving back to earth - I came slamming to the ground, as if falling from the sky, I could feel how earthbound I was. How dangerous it was to fly and splat on the earth. Also in earth - deep sounds, resonate in my back and deep in my body - growling and earthbound animals on all fours. how much more earth oriented and low to the earth they are. much harder for them to look up. they are much more earth bound than we. but felt good to have my voice activate with that much earth resonance, especially in my belly and back. finally, towards the end of earth/sky I splayed out on the floor - bottom half of my body in earth and top half in sky... laying there like the Vitruvian man I had a realization or feeling of image of two inverted triangles meeting in the center of my body - this image has come up in the past but it was a great reminder and a deepening of previous experiences.