Let’s Dance Like Everybody is Watching and Loving It!
You may know the saying, “Dance like nobody’s watching”. Recently I had an experience that encouraged me to change the quote to, “Dance like everybody is watching and loving it!”
My husband and I went to see a show at the Perth Fringe Festival. The performance is advertised as one of hypnotism. Cool! Once seated, the extremely high energy hypnotist did a couple of entertaining ‘party tricks’ with the whole audience. Then there was a call out for volunteers. Curiousity overruled any trepidation I felt and I walked up onto the stage with numerous others. We sat on chairs in two rows. The hypnotist gave us the heads up by saying we would always be in control and will have lots of fun and feel great when the show was over. The penny dropped. We were being asked to go along and have fun.
And the fun then began. I went ‘full in’ with it all and the audience roared with laughter and applause. In the hour on stage we volunteers flew fighter jets undergoing incredible G forces as our bodies and cheeks shook with the stresses, did zombie walks, solved an imaginary Rubik’s cube with our bottoms and accomplished lots more… even walking on the moon! All under the influence of hypnotism.
I did feel great when it was over. Lately, my osteoarthritis has flared up causing some pain in my knees. However, on that stage I was doing funny dances and jumping around with abandon. My knees felt nothing. It truly was magical hypnotism! The whole time I was thinking inwardly of ways to really act out the instructions we were given. I wasn’t aware of the audience watching me, only of their applause and encouragement.
It reminded me of teaching yoga. There I am, giving instructions to a class of ‘volunteers’. Be a tree, vṛkṣāsana! Be a cobra, bhujangāsana! Be a camel, uṣṭrāsana! Do a dancing warrior, vīrabhadrāsana, sequence! Amazingly, they follow all my instructions with complete willingness and may I say it, joy.
Maybe yoga teachers are a bit like hypnotists. We give people the power to move in ways they may not have thought possible and in the process feel great after an hour of it. They don’t question what it looks like and don’t focus on the others in the class. We encourage them to turn inwards to discover themselves with their best efforts and let go of the results. We help them onto and along the path of yoga.
Being full in. Zombie walking.