Dancing with abstractions

How I am learning how to dance/think

Hippies

In the past few years I’ve started going to a bunch of “new-agey”-type events. Events that have some relationship to spirituality or emotional wellbeing. Think circling, ecstatic dance, radical honesty, breathwork, meditation retreats, and other hippie-esque workshops that aim to help you grow or heal or live a more fulfilled life. I really like this stuff. They are often fun and interesting. They usually provide me with what seem to be helpful insights into my own patterns of thoughts and feelings, and have given me opportunities to express myself in new ways.

I don’t always get along with the theory-side of events like this though. Sometimes these events are decorated with a coating of what seems a lot like woo. Talk of chakras, or quantum fields, or strangely inconsistent uses of the words “god” and “energy. When faced with spiritual talk like this I tend to alternate between finding it annoying, ignoring it or trying to see it as a helpful metaphor; something the person talking has found useful and which I can learn from. But yeah, some of the things people at these events talk about get on my nerves.

And one piece of theory that I have probably most often and consistently found annoying is the attitude towards thoughts.

Thoughts are bad

The most consistent idea expressed at these-sorts-of-events is that thoughts aren’t so great. Letting go of attachment to thoughts often feels like the main challenge of mediation. During circling we are asked to let go of thoughts and just discuss what is here and now, mostly in our bodies. In Radical Honesty they disparagingly refer to thoughts as the “upside down”. Similarly, during ecstatic dance, the invitation is to not overthink the dancing, just “move the way your body wants to move”. The overarching idea is that we are better focussing on the present, on the feelings here and now.

“What does your breath feel like? If you notice you get distracted by a thought, come back to your breath.” - these people

I think this is often really helpful. The ability to let go of thoughts is an incredibly useful skill. Being lost in negative thoughts is horrible and has often ruined my ability to enjoy many wonderful things. 

But sometimes I am not so sure. I'm kinda confused by what constitutes a “thought”. The line between feelings/percepts and concept/thoughts often seems blurry to me (is the experience of wanting and then planning to “walk across the room to get a drink” a thought or is that an urge or just a complex collection of percepts?). And also surely many thoughts are very very useful right? Even within the context of a dance. Sometimes I do need to make plans. Sometimes I want to walk around the room to find a new space to dance in. That’s actually quite a lot of thinking and planning that I need to do.

It’s about abstraction

I think/feel that thoughts and feelings are all fine, it’s just that it’s helpful to be able to navigate the space between them. Instead of a binary, I’ve come to see this more like a ladder. A ladder of abstraction. The higher you are on the ladder, the more abstract your experience is; more think-y, more conceptual . The lower you are, the more concrete. Sometimes I am at the bottom of the ladder, in the present moment, with few if any complex concepts. The higher I climb, the more complex, or strategic my thoughts are. No place on the ladder is “better” than any other. But the skill of deliberately climbing down is really useful, both so that I can let go of unpleasant abstractions (e.g. rumination) and so that I can climb onto more fun ladders.

The skill of moving up the ladder to more abstract thinking is also really useful in many contexts (e.g. project planning, making big life decisions, or organisational strategy), I just think I need to work on this skill less than the reverse.

Anyway -  the rest of this post is just a poem about my feelings about abstraction in the context of an ecstatic dance (a type of mindful dancing where the intention is to “listen to you body” and connect with how it wants to move in the moment)

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The dance of abstraction

As I start dancing, I repeat my intention

To let go of thoughts, and of dancing convention

As the music surrounds me, my body starts moving

I aim to be here, with no points to be proven

I reach out my arm, feel the stretch of my shoulder

Feel the air on my skin, it gets hotter and colder

I see dancers around me; I see one man in blue

I catch his eye and wonder, “what’s it like to be you?”

“Wait, was that a thought?!”, I think for bit

“Yes, so is this, this is all thoughts. Oh shit!”

Coming back to my body, I notice my feet

I notice my breath, I feel my heart beat

I am back with the music as I knew that I should

Then glancing around, think, “I bet I look good”

I enjoy for a second as I wave and I glide

That I’m being watched, I feel good, I feel pride

Then the music shifts, and I make a mistake

My foot slips and I stumble. “Oh for fucks sake!”

I glance at the others, my cheeks turning red

Then notice the judgement is a thought in my head

“I’m so lost in thoughts” I exclaim in my brain

“I can’t help but think, again and again

“I want to be here with my feelings, with fact”

“But feel pulled to my thoughts, to the very abstract”

“Oh fuck! That’s still thoughts, it’s just that they’re meta

and thoughts about thoughts are really no better”

Letting go, I come back to the movement and noise

Once again caring not if I’m dancing with poise

But again and again I get lost in ideas

In plans, where to dance, who to dance with, in fears

So again I release, through the present I flow

And let go of concepts, where I’ve been or will go

Through both thoughts and feelings my dance is now spinning

Some moments there’s no fight, in others I’m winning

I realise then, that this is what I must learn

To waltz through my thoughts, let them be in their turn

So I glide through the space as I dance through my mind

In past, present, future, being with what I find

I jive with sensation, goals, urges, distraction

For the dance I must learn, is the dance of abstraction