TEACHERS: Kevin Lacroix and Elke Schroeder
THEME: Let It Happen
MEDITATION: ‘All of me, why not take all of me…’
INTERACTIVE: From In to Out: Finding Presence through Partnered Movement Situations
Kevin: A friend of mine once bristled, “Surrender?! That sounds like ‘giving up’!”. “GREAT! And why is that bad?”, I teased. But I understood what she meant. When I try on ‘giving up’ (in the sense that she meant it) it triggers unpleasant somatic and mental reactivity. It feels like disengagement. Prying loose some attachment in a way that feels threatening to my sense of self. It feels like separation from something. Contrarily, if I take the cue to ‘surrender’, it usually prompts wave of soft and light spaciousness, and a sense of effortless presence and availability – a merging with, or dissolving into. I imagine we all have our own experiences of how it feels to ‘give up’ or ‘let go’ or ‘surrender’. Tonight we will open our hearts to all of it, and feel for what there might be to ‘give up’ in order to ‘surrender’. In the second half, Fighting Monkey instructor and dance artist Elke Schroeder will lead Partnered Movement Situations exploring this theme of surrender; how can we work with another person to poke/prod/mine/tune/hone our relationship with surrendering to that which is outside of ourselves? What can this illuminate?