Moving at the Speed of Elements

1st in the "Dancemeditation(TM) in the Wild" series

Time doesn't actually exist anywhere. We can't touch it or taste it or breathe it. Although we experience it passing, it is a fabrication. Time is a perception we live by in the human world.

Wilderness desert has her own time. What to us is a million years is nothing in desert time. Wind blows, water flows, plants grow and die, mountains erode, stars fall, and life ebs and flows in the depth without regard to being marked on a clock or calendar.

As I absorbed the beauty of the land formed by water and air and reflected on the drop that is a million years, I moved with the elements at their speed.


Air was chaotic and wild, a violent storm bringing life: seeds and the water to open and flourish them. My breath was forceful like dragon's fire. Fast and flinging, my limbs were separate and free. I shimmered like leaves in a gust. Directions changed on a whim and without warning. I was power and freedom embodied.


Water entered hypnotic flow. Curvilinear movements breathed into each other, connecting my awareness to my body - one liquid in a unifying membrane. Arms led the way, opening space for my torso to curve into the space created. My hips, always eager for their turn, widened the bend and my legs waved like s l o w tadpoles following the stream.


Earth brought me into glacially slow. A movement so slow you can't watch it from the outside except over blocks of time. Internally the movement is full with the rich complexity of the subtle. This is the desert at the land's pace and she appreciated me slowing down to witness her.


Fire lives in me, electric transformation at work. Yet this element I couldn't quite get in movement. I tried explosive and it felt fake. I worked with waves of fire and it felt like flow. As I write this I realize the glow of the sun, the dimensionality aspect of the Diamond Approach 5 Movements practice is how I express fire. She and I are one, I only need sense to embody her, which I do in each interaction with God's creatures. This is what allows transformation to occur where I am the catalyst.