At the core of Open Floor philosophy is the understanding that “we are in relationship.”
Every cell of our bodies, every aspect of our evolution, is relational. Every thought, interaction, motion and cue we get for every choice we make is relationship.
We are in relationship not only with each other, and ourselves, but also with animals, land, art, ancestry and the entire natural world.
Over 90% of the nervous system is designed for movement; movement is designed to navigate relationship at the level of survival (reptilian brain), love and care (mammalian brain) and awareness and creativity (neocortex).
Relationship is not something we do – it is something that we are.
Understanding this and learning to embody and move gracefully with our deepest and immediate relational hungers makes life meaningful and rich.
From a Buddhist and evolutionary standpoint, all beings seek to find happiness and all beings seek to avoid pain. Towards and away is the primary continuum of the relational dance; however, there are endless creative permutations, many possible movement continuums present in all our relations, such as in/out, up/down, side-by-side, behind/ahead, above/below.
We each have relational tendencies based on our history, culture, family story and many other life impacts. There are infinite ways to be in relation. Not being in relation is not possible – we are always relating on every level, even when we avoid or isolate from ourselves, others, community or spirit. We cannot live without others.
Relationship is a need, much in the same way as food and water. The drive for relationship is an inner directive, with a natural cycle of being hungry, full, and then hungry again. In any given moment we may feel one hunger in the foreground and others in the background. We may show up on the dance floor one week wanting nothing more than to dance on our own without interruption, and the next week we’re excited to connect with other dancers. We are complex creatures; sometimes we might move towards what scares us, away from what we want, towards pain and away from immediate pleasure. We might go past certain hungers because others are easier for us or more culturally supported.
The Four Relational Hungers
Hunger for Solitude
The longing to be left alone and moving with our own experience. At other times we feel lonely or trapped in our own solitude, unable to move out and make connection. We might avoid our self through constant engagement and partnering with others
Hunger for Connection
The ability to find safe and meaningful connection with others is essential to our well-being as humans. The awareness of thoughts and feelings in relation to others, a desire for intimacy, attunement, mutuality, and listening to others ,without excluding ourselves, speaks to our hunger for connection. Research overwhelmingly shows how healthy relationships create healthy bodies, can extend our life span, and create a world of more generous, stable people.
Hunger for Belonging
We are hardwired to find safety in a herd. We want to contact, recognize, and be welcomed, find our place and make our contribution. Feeling our self as part of a web, having a place in the group, the collective. At the same time, feelings of alienation, that we do not belong, may be all too familiar. We might find ourselves identifying with the “in crowd” or the “out crowd” in long-term dance communities. We may have habitual ways of protecting ourselves when we navigate groups of dancers, family, sangha, etc. As we share this planet with all species, it is imperative that we recognize our ultimate inter-dependency in order to survive. Healthy groups and organizations support the value and contribution that each person brings to the table and recognizes our hunger for belonging or union with a group, tribe, family, school, culture. Community is a natural byproduct of belonging and it is why so many long term dancers feel a sense of community among its members.
Hunger for Spirit
The hunger for spirit is a felt sense of oneness with everything and everyone. It is our deep, shared desire to feel relief from suffering, to feel meaning and purpose in our life, to experience kindness and compassion for self and others. Our longing for a deep, embodied connection with all of existence and a sense of profound acceptance of life exactly as it is fuels our hunger for spirit.
We can learn to tolerate a massive amount of feelings and human vulnerabilities as we familiarize ourselves with the embodied dance of these hungers. Maybe we expand our capacity to move neither towards or away, but to be still, witness and be with our hungers. Maybe we will be able to tolerate the vulnerable longing of human experience without always acting on it, giving ourselves greater awareness for making wise choices.
How the relational hungers might show up in your Open Floor movement practice
Solitude – longing to be left alone and moving with our own experience. At other times we feel lonely or trapped in our own solitude, unable to move out and make connection. We might avoid our self through constant engagement and partnering with others.
Connection – feeling excited and nourished by dancing with one lovely person and then another. We also know when our strong hunger for connection can make us feel insecure, distracted by our stories, awkward with others.
Belonging – feeling our self as part of a web, having a place in the group. At the same time, feelings of alienation, that we do not belong, may be all too familiar. We might find ourselves identifying with the “in crowd” or the “out crowd” in long-term dance communities.
Spirit – experiencing our holy longing to feel our self without separation from all things. We may feel as though we are not spirit and that others are, or imagine that we will unite with spirit once we’ve achieved some perfect or enlightened state. There is a holy longing for resource and refuge in something larger than our selves.
