Is your body your HOME?

Included below is a reflection by Dance Artist Sarena on BODY as HOME.

"What does it mean to call my body home?

To have the complete sensation of feeling all parts of myself

As one singular organism

Orchestrated to a single harmony

Vibrating with all passions that make me feel alive

It is about reversing the chatter

That scorns my bodyweight, and my personality

By remembering what is beneath and between all those self-conscious stories

A remembering of my consciousness itself

That some force animated me to share my persona with this world

That every day when I open my eyes 

I can make choices

To see light and beauty in everyone and everything that I touch

It is a deep feeling of safety

An indeterminable trust

What does it mean to call my body home?

It Is to know that I am never alone

That I am in all ways

All one"

Reflection in Poetry

Below is a poem created by Dance Artist Sarena in reflection of the HOMEbody process.

Home isn’t a place

It’s a feeling that swells inside of us 

When we’ve stopped living in longing.

When we switch the story from needing more

To having enough exactly as we are right now

And with this, a settling arrives,

The body begins to stop running marathons for the mind.

The body is granted the time and space to heal itself.

The heart beat slows

And you feel the soft rush of complacency

A tender sensation, like being caressed by someone you love.

To have a home, to be home

Are such separate entities

To be home, to feel home

Are worlds apart.

Who makes the walls that separate us from coming home?

My mind, my stories, my window, my world view, 

My thought patterns, my fears, my future projections

There are millions of ways to build walls

But the body won’t thank you

The soul won’t thank you

The spirit will long to be free from the cage you’ve built

Do we have the power

Right now. In this moment

To break down the walls and and speak a new story.

With this next breath.

“Inhale, I have arrived.

Exhale, I am home (thich nhat hanh).”

HOME in lanuguage

Virtual high fives and hugs and appreciation for your thoughts, words and reflections on HOME!

In a Facebook discussion, Michael Lancaster suggested that he and several other authors use my post, Defining HOME, as a writing prompt on PLACE and HOME.

See the comments on Defining HOME for some of Michael's written reflections.

In a group chat, Michael shared:
"Reflecting on Home, friend Becky Patterson who wrote The Ranch that Was Us, author Becky Patterson offered this poem as a touchstone for home"

As a researcher in this process, I've been gathering articles, stories, and artistic reflections that other folks (artists, writers, musicians, bloggers, news organizations, dancers, athletes, yogis...) have shared about home. I'll continue to share that research here.

I'm so grateful to Michael, Scott, and Jenner for embarking on this creative challenge as we all sort out what HOME has meant and what it develops into as time passes.

Comments...

Hi, Dear Readers!

For some silly reason, I can't respond to your comments, so I'll be posting here with a link to your original comments and the post. ::fist shake::

From Michael's Comments on HOMEostasis:

Hi, Michael! Thanks for writing and reading! Yes... so many thoughts, ideas, studies, and research circling around. I find it interesting that you mention hunter/gather groups because they don't identify with a place, rather a state of being. In looking at home, we're wondering asking this question of ourselves, especially because our current world/ career/ life trends tend to be pretty mobile, or at least fluid. I look forward to continued conversations! ~JCWK

Discovering HOME

What does HOME mean to you?

Is it a place?

Is it a feeling?

Is is a person or people?

Could we experience HOME in our body? What does that look like? What does that mean?

Is HOME the earth? Our community? A building? A spiritual experience? and/or something else?

What are some of the positive connotations of HOME?

What are some negative connotations of HOME?

What does it mean and what does it take to address both these positive and negative aspects?

What makes HOME joyful?

What makes HOME a challenge?

What does it mean/ look like/ feel like to move away from and return to a HOME?

............. How do you, dear Reader, respond to these questions? What movements does your body make as you reflect? Please feel free to include your thoughts in the comments!

.........

Over the past four months, I've been deep into the research process of these questions with four other dance artists. In addition, we've been asking:

How do we, as dancers, experience HOME in our bodies?

How do we, as people who work with other bodies as educators and healers, hear and observe how other people manifest HOME in their bodies - or not?

What can we learn about looking at how we define HOME? What can we learn from the ways we are drawn to or repelled by certain notions of HOME? How does digging into and sharing our stories about HOME provide more information about us and the way we interact with the world?

How does this process and our ideas about HOME change as we gain more information during this research?

What are your thoughts?

Stay tuned for our results!

And, if you'd like to see the performance live, you can get tickets here. 

......

As part of our conversations during our studio research, we often come back to the idea that the body is a microcosm of the universe. In this case, our body is our physical home in the greater home of our communities, environments, world, and cosmos.

Included below is are some visual reflections that Sarena, one of the dance artists, found and shared.

Original source unknown