Au Revoir, Emilie

Posted on April 14, 2014 by admin

I just heard the news of Emilie’s passing from my friend Deborah and I am feeling a deep sense of loss, for myself, and for all of us somanauts and explorers of the mystery of aliveness. Emilie was a mentor and friend and her deep support and encouragement of my own unfolding was incredibly powerful and important to me. She was unique, to say the least, and fearless and will be tremendously missed. This is from the Continuum web site and offers a brief glimpse into Emilie and her life’s work.

A Letter from Emilie Conrad, Continuum Founder

Although Continuum officially emerged in 1967, the work basically represents a lifetime of freeing myself from the confines of culture.

As a very young person, my intuition sensed that all life was imbued with a unifying spirit and somewhere within my body this spirit could be experienced. The impression I received from the world around me was, “God was elsewhere”.

For years, I had a recurring image of the movement of fish dissolving into the undulating waves of the ocean, becoming one inseparable reality. I felt that somewhere in a secret long ago, we were all swimming with the very same boundless wave movements of ocean fish, and if only I could discover how to get there, the “real” world would be revealed to me.

In 1953, I received a scholarship at the Katherine Dunham School in New York, where I steeped myself in the magical world of Haitian dance. A few years later, I arrived in Haiti, and through a series of fortunate events, I became involved in a newly formed folklore company as choreographer and lead dancer. It was there that I had an epiphany that would change the course of my life.

What I witnessed in the prayer rituals was the undulating movements I had been searching for all my life. Though I had seen these same movements at the Dunham School, it wasn’t until I was actually dancing in a Haitian hut and feeling myself drawn deeper into the primal call of the drums that my known self dissolved into the memory of those ancient rhythms. To this day, deep in my eyes, there still dances a timeless undulating resonance.

What I saw was how the undulating wave movements of the Haitian prayer became the connecting link to our spiritual bio-world. At last I saw the movement of ocean fish personified in human movement. I knew in that moment that these fluid undulating movements transcended time, place or culture and provided the crucial connection, linking organism to environment as an unbroken whole.

I returned from Haiti in 1960, and spent the next seven years exploring the universality of those undulating wave motions that so inspired me. These explorations eventually led to what is now known as Continuum. It’s important to know that each of us carries billions of years of an ongoing global process, a sequenced continuum of life on Earth, which is taking place within the galaxy and human alike.

We are basically fluid beings that have arrived on land. All living processes owe their lineage to the movement of water. Our implicate pre-existent memory beginning with the first cell, lies in the mysterious deep, quietly undulating, circulating, nourishing this aquatic being on its mission to planet earth. God is not elsewhere, but is moving through our cells and in every part of us with its undulating message. The fluid presence in our bodies is our fundamental environment; we are the moving water brought to land.

I would like to suggest that the far-reaching consequences of having a body are not just to serve as a conveyance, not just to propagate, but that we are composed of a mysterious substance that has no defined boundary. Without this substance we could not exist as humans. We may, at some time in the near future, learn to replace our pulsating wet body parts with metallic ones, in which case, we will become something quite different.

It was the vision of a universal human that beckoned me. I had no map to follow except my strong urge to experience our essential bio-lineage and my certainty that our existences were fed far beyond our cultural moorings. It is my belief that we carry in our cells, in our tissues, in the very throb of our existence an underlying flow that urges, inspires, flares our nostrils and beats our heart. This encompassing atmosphere of love has its own destiny — perhaps using humans as its messengers, this love has arrived on Earth.

La Bayadere

Posted on November 14, 2013 by admin

My career as a performer with the Boston Ballet is in the rear-view mirror but the lessons learned from this amazing experience will take months if not years to process. In many ways it completed a circle begun years ago during my yoga days in San Francisco.

(The priests and high brahmin have the stage to ourselves for about 10 seconds at the beginning of Act 2. I was cropped out of the picture!)

Iyengar’s approach to hatha yoga with its discipline, dedication to practice and precision of alignment has strong parallels in other realms of the somatic world. Structural integration or ‘Rolfing’ is one that has provided me with many long lasting relationships.

Another, amazingly enough is with ballet. When I was teaching in San Francisco in the 1980’s, Rodney Yee was just ending his dance career with the Oakland Ballet and beginning his yoga teacher training. Around the same time, an ex- dancer from the American Ballet Theater, John Leech, appreciating the clarity of Iyengar’s approach, had begun taking my classes. He was teaching at the San Francisco Ballet school and brought me in to teach a yoga class there. Soon two of the SF Ballet’s principal dancers began coming to my classes, joining several other dancers who were regulars. They were an easy group to teach as they were already deeply embodied and knew how to practice. Because I was living in Oakland at the time, I bought season tickets to the Oakland Ballet and became fascinated with the parallels with yoga.

(what the audience never got to see!)

Many years later, about 4 years ago, and now living in Arlington, I received a mailer from the Boston Ballet featuring a special evening ‘preview’ performance with excerpts from several up coming programs. Kate, Sean and I went and I was immediately hooked. The mailer worked! I signed up for a season pass and became a big fan. One of the great surprises was the breath of BB”s repertoire as many modern and cutting edge choreographers were also included. And as I now had lots of experience with movement through my studies with Emilie, Bonnie and Caryn, I was taking this in on a whole new level.

Several months later I receive a call from a old student from San Francisco who I had not heard from in 25 years or so, Jennifer Karius. She was one of the San Francisco Ballet dancers who eventually went on to live and dance in the Netherlands. She kept up her yoga practice and after retirement, became an Iyengar Yoga teacher. She was calling to tell me she was now all psyched to be teaching in the US and wondering why I wasn’t still involved in the Iyengar scene. I told her of my newly rediscovered excitement with the Boston Ballet and how complementary ballet and yoga were. So Jen says “well you’ll have to get in touch with Mikko”. And I say “who?” And she says “Mikko Nissinen, the guy who told me to come to your class back in San Francisco. He is now the Artistic Director of the Boston Ballet.” I go, the other dancer, omg, wow!

(Lia Cirio as Nikiya, shows how to levitate in ‘hanumanasana’ as Lasha Khozashvili, as Solor, stares in amazement)

So I contacted Mikko, went to visit the BB home down on Clarenden St. got the tour, sat in on the company master class, met his assistant Liz Olds, talked yoga and dance, and was invited to watch rehearsals whenever the schedules fit. A year or so later, I ran into Liz Olds at a Boston Ballet performance where there were ‘non-dancers’ participating and asked her how these ‘supernumeraries’ were chosen. She told me she would put my name on the list if I was interested and I said absolutely. All was quiet until this past August when I received an invitation to ‘audition’ for La Bayadere, which would open Boston Ballet’s 50th anniversary season.

A classical ballet from1870’s Russia, La Bayadere is known in the west primarily because of Rudolf Nureyev, who in 1963 presented revitalized version in Paris. Nureyev eventually defected from the Soviet Union and took up residence in Paris. A full performance La Bayadere, produced by Rudolf while he was dying in October of 1992 can be seen on youtube. (I practiced to this version, although the super’s choreography is slightly different.)

La Bayadere takes place in a forest in India. The bayaderes are the temple dancers, who along with the priests, fakirs and the high Brahmin, are in charge of the temple and the fire ceremony.

(The priests get to join the bayaderes and the fakirs around the fire pit while the High Brahmin makes his move on Nikiya. This was the high point of our participation. )

Solor, a famous hunter has recently saved the life of the head bayadere, Nikiya by killing a dangerous tiger that has been terrorizing the area. They fall in love. But the Rajah has decided that Solor will marry his daughter, Gamzatti. And the High Brahmin is in love (or lust) with Nikiya. To make a long story short, Nikiya is betrayed by everyone and dies a nefarious death at the end of act 2, but returns in act 3 with the ‘shades’ or ghosts, in one of the most famous scenes in all of ballet.

In “the Kingdom of the Shades”, One by one, ballerinas appear from the wings atop an 8 foot high ramp and perform a series of arabesque penchees while slowly descending a ramp, moving totally together, as a single organism, zig-zagging back and forth until all 24 reorganize into a grid and continue to move in synchrony. It is an amazing and demanding feat of focus, integration, relaxation, balance, co-ordination.

Having never participated in anything like this, it was a blast to be back stage, in the wings and out on stage, weaving in and out of these amazing dancers. From the high of opening night to the many ‘oopses’ of live performances, it was non stop fun. The Ballet Orchestra was wonderful and kept me on my toes, as live performances are always different. Just about every dancer in the company was involved and many had multiple roles that changed from night to night. My appreciation of their skill, discipline and dedication was high before, but is off the charts now. Special thanks go to our dedicated teacher Larissa Ponomarenko, who took us amateurs and whipped us into a finely tuned organic whole. Larissa, who recently retired after 18 years with the Boston Ballet, moves like and has the heart of an angel. She was wonderful with us and working with her was certainly one of the hi-lites of the month. My fellow supernumeraries, the priests and guards, spent many an hour, waiting for our call to visit the costumes ladies, plotting how to ‘individualize’ our performances. But in the end, professionalism won out. (We’d all love to be invited back!)

And, as most of you know, while all this was going on, the Red Sox were winning the World Series. The back stage crew had all of the games on which amped up the energy even more. The last of our 14 performances came too quickly, as I was ready for a few more weeks. But BB is on to the Nutcracker where they will put on 41 performances in 5 weeks. Wow. That why they are pro’s and I am not.

Mobility, Motility and Stillness, part 2

Posted on February 1, 2013 by admin

(Notes from the Detroit workshop, Jan 2013)

Motility

What is motility? It is not a well known expression in the modern world, but refers to the innate movements of life: heart beat, the respiratory rhythm, peristalsis, cerebro-spinal movements, and all of the other ways in which the inner fluids and tissues dance to the music of the life force, the prana or chi. We can also refer to this as the actions of the energy or subtle body. Here we also uncover our emotions, healthy and unhealthy, expressed or repressed as they connect thoughts, memories and deeper motivations to our physiology. Therefore this is a challenging and yet highly therapeutic realm for exploration.

For the individual, this inner dance of the subtle body begins at conception.

In the embryological chart above we see the conceptus, the earliest stage of the embryo, at first cellular differentiation. The inner layer of cells or endoderm (yellow) becomes the gut tube, liver, lungs and other internal organs. The outer layer, the ectoderm (blue), becomes the nervous system including skin, brain, spinal cord and nerves. The middle layer, the mesoderm, just emerging above, creates the connective tissue structures, muscles, bones, ligaments, tendons, plus kidneys and heart. Motility has taken the single egg-sperm cell to here through the constant movement we call growth and development and this will continue on through the rest of life. Somewhere along the way we lost our ability to feel this dynamic state of aliveness and our yoga practice is one way to help reconnect with this inner dance. ( On a future post we will show the connection of this first cellular differentiation to the three doshas in Ayurveda, vata, pitta and kapha.)

The modern human has essentially lost touch with the endoderm or gut tube. We live in out brains and muscles, the ectoderm and mesoderm, and only notice the inner organs if there is a problem. We need to slow down to feel the inner rhythms, to be able to navigate them, to be soothed by them, to feel their connection to the cosmic rhythms. Restorative yoga postures are designed to awaken our inner sense of motility by using props, supports and gravity to do the work of the outer musculature and thus release some of the ecto and mesodermal holding patterns. B.K. S. Iyengar’s pioneering use of various supports in his therapeutic classes in Pune have revolutionized the way yoga poses as he uses them to untangle the endodermal confusion also.

A beginner approaches motillity through feeling the breath. Dharana, bring your attention to, and dhyana, sustaining your attention to the breath and integral components top a yoga practice. Most beginners are too caught up in instructions, muscles, effort and confusion to stay with the breath, so savasana, or other supported poses are a great way to awaken this inner world. At the level of motility, it is all about ‘letting go’. Digestion happens. Circulation happens. At a cellular level life happens. The delightful reality is that ‘we’ are unnecessary. That is, the “I” that wants to ‘do’ something is extraneous here. Of course this can create some difficulty as the egoic mind, the one that wants to ‘be in control’ will find ways to be distracted and not allow you to ‘let go’. Be patient. You may even fall asleep in the beginning. Once you learn how to ‘dive in ‘ an infinite inner world awaits you. B.K.S. Iyengar has described one level of his inner sensitivity as ‘feeling the height and temperature of the cerebro-spinal fluid as it fluctuates during the pose’.

The challenge is to bring this awareness and sensitivity to the more challenging poses as well. When you can move in and out of a pose smoothly, easily and relatively effortlessly, then you will be able to find the balance of energies that sustain the pose from the inside. This is why mobility comes first. Patanjali call this sthira sukham. Many students are sthira dukham. That is, they stay in the posture by constricting the energy (rajas) or collapsing and hanging out (tamas). Sthira, steady, stable strong comes from gravity. Sukham fluidity, ease, sweetness, comes from a freedom of breath and all other inner movements, the dance of life. Sthira sukham, sattva, That is a healthy pose. Mobility and motility in perfect balance. Dukha is suffering, being out of balance, off center, in a state of unnecessary effort. Find time to rest in your inner aliveness, feeling, sensing, letting go, allowing Mother Earth and Father Sky to hold you in a loving embrace, and find out what emerges. With balance and harmony comes grace. With grace comes the possibility of awakening into your own inner stillness. Rest there.

In part three, we will dive into stillness, or melt into stillness, or dissolve into stillness or awaken to stillness, or……..