Here I am again! Today is Monday and I have not been able to start writing today till now. It is 13:47 exactly! What a brilliant time to write, couldn’t be better! You may ask of course what have I been doing till now, but I will spare you the troubles of reading my choreful-busy morning 🙂 but I did have moments to open a space in my mind and spirit to start my dialogue with you all even during a lot of chores that I had to complete today. And how are you? Are you having a coffee and reading this? Or are you sitting in the bus or tram and reading it from your mobile? Wherever you are, I hope you are here with me, because knowing you somewhere there motivates me to write.
The walk
As you know by now, I cannot start writing without walking in the morning. Like all mornings I found myself at the entry of the forest, birds chirping away preparing for spring and the trees taking their sun shower and me, following the funny little steps of Gigi, who was as always leading the way. I must admit that my walk was beautiful, each step was leading me to a gradual release of the morning tensions in my pelvis and chest. And surprisingly this morning my head was not full of thoughts… how pleasant the emptiness is in the head… This emptiness which is allowing me to flow in the nothingness of the forest. I could really feel this time the strength of the trees, their strong roots in the thawing earth and the branches reaching even more to the sky, being caressed by the sun rays.
The rhythm
In my everyday life I sometimes forget the importance of rhythm.. that is my awareness does not necessarily settle upon the rhythm which is being created through the actions. But this morning as I was walking up the hill slowly, I could feel that the rhythm was developing in me: I was not deciding how the rhythm should be, but the landscape was giving the pace, and my body was slowly welcoming the rhythm of the walk. And slowly my thoughts were aligning with the rhythm of my body.
Little streams of satisfaction
Thoughts about the last few days, which I thought have been positively productive, started little streams of satisfaction in my soul. How?
Well, last week after I had decided that I will put aside working on the notes, and start writing the book, I of course couldn’t just leave my notes alone. But the decision was made: it took off the burden of working on my notes. Nevertheless I finished reading them. But reading them lightly and not taking them too seriously. I could really recognize that those words of 4 years ago, which sprang out of my mouth and which I had written down, were words of that time. They were relevant at those times, when I was teaching the 1st Cycle of the Facilitator Training. The themes were related to Somatic Dialogue, yes, but the way they were expressed was for the participants of that cycle. Those were outcomes of my dialogue with the group, nourished and inspired by their needs, their engagement, their comments and questions. (I must always look back to those times with gratefulness, because it is thanks to that group and my faithful colleagues, who were then assisting me, that I could make all this happen)
However, now I had to trust all that experience and leave it aside, and start writing with my mind and experience today. This realization gave me another little stream of pleasure: All that food - the experience, the exchanges, the knowledge, the ideas - has been digested, they have found their places in me and nourished my cells and created space for newer thoughts to happen, which gave birth to fresh ideas.
And I have started writing these last two days: opened a blank page and came out the very first pages with freshly written paragraphs. I will tell you in a while how 🙂
The path leads back to trust…
No matter what we decide to do, or take an action, or manifest something, comes a moment where we either feel the trust and jump or we don’t feel the trust. For example, in our work Somatic Dialogue, one of the most important challenges is to enable the others to feel the sources of trust within themselves. Because if we do not feel the physical trust in the body, it becomes very difficult to pass into action. We need to feel our ground, our weight, our possibilities and we need to hear our motivation and give it a free way so that a movement can happen.
Walking and seeing the trees in the forest reminds me again how trees teach us about trust just by being as they are: their roots are firmly in the ground, the stems are in their strength, and according to the stems the branches have grown. Some more some less, but when we look at the trees we can perceive the strength of the stem and see the fragility and endless possibilities of the branches.
Let’s have a look at them:
What do I understand from the trees?
When I look at them, I am impressed by their decisiveness to grow, and yet be in complete surrender to how this growth will be. They simply ARE, which we as humans have such a difficulty embodying! In their process of BEING, they surrender to gravity: their roots grow into the earth, taking the energy and nourishment of the earth, their stem in the rhythm of time gets wider and wider, and from this support they grow their branches. The growth of the branches are perseverent and yet again surrender to the environment: wind, sun, birds…sometimes they grow their branches straight up, or to one side or even downwards and then up again… Because they want to grow towards the sun, that is their motivation… they just go for it in complete surrender and full presence no matter what interacts with them. The direction of the branches and the leaves will always be towards the light. The stem and the ground are there in full support.
That is my inspiration and model. I learn from the trees everyday: and in the last week this was my motive in writing. I am trusting my ground and my stem, which I have built up for so many years, through failing, learning, interacting and embodying. And I am letting the paragraphs grow like the branches, in all possible directions towards the light.
Won’t this be chaotic?
Honestly I hope not. Actually not, because order is something that we invent. And here I get my support from the trees too, there is no order according to which the trees grow, they just grow towards the light and evolve, break, die or flourish on, or sometimes are also just cut.
I take this writing of the book as a personal journey through my own experience and knowledge, hoping that I will put aside my ambition and my pretentiousness (I am writing a book), but simply write without being afraid of failing.
A new chapter has begun!
In the past weeks I have had so much resistance to writing or reading and sorting out the notes…I also had a lot of physical resistances.. Now when I think about the podcast I was invited to by my dear friend Nazli Cevik Azazi, the storyteller , about the resistances in the creative process, I remember that I mentioned that we take ourselves and our creations a little too seriously… I guess this is an inevitable moment in the creative process. As we plunge into our desire to produce something, and as we dig deep in order to really find the “original” ideas.. we also fall into the trap of seriousness. Because we write or create we think somewhere deep down inside that we are important..that we bring to the light something that has been in the dark.. (well that sounded a little dramatic). But in short I feel now that I have taken this action of mine also a little too seriously. Actually what I do by writing about this method is that, I am refreshing again my own experience and would like to put it on paper in the simplest and purest way, so that it won’t be lost or forgotten (primarily by myself).
Often my ex-students, colleagues or clients remind me of what I have said about a certain issue concerning Somatic Dialogue, or the body or the movement. They usually start saying: “well, once you said about gravity, that…” And I always panic thinking, oh what have I said again…hope it is not nonsense. Therefore one of my deep motivations for writing is that I might put on paper a distilled version of my own thoughts, and let it in the process age, just like whiskey. I hope just that it won’t take 20 years 🙂
What comes next?
After having written the introduction, where I put in words my intention for the Manual, the idea of starting the first chapter with the Muhabbet came to my heart.
It all starts with Muhabbet must be. Because how can a life be without Muhabbet? My very first real encounter with the notion of muhabbet was… oh? What is Muhabbet?? of course, how pretentious of me to presume that you should know this word.
When we look up the word Muhabbet we will find many explanations in which there will always be Love. Because in our definition of Muhabbet it is a conversation where love flows between the conversing parties.
My first real encounter with the notion of Muhabbet
It was through Turkish Classical and Spiritual music that I first encountered the notion of Muhabbet. The wonderful Ney player Aziz Senol Filiz, who has initiated me to Turkish Musiki (classical music) made me experience to the bone the phenomenon of Muhabbet. I would listen to him play, to him talk about the space that music could open in a person’s soul and mind, and I would dance to the different improvisations that were available on CDs.
Muhabbet has never left me since, and later on through another wonderful Ney player, Salih Bilgin, Muhabbet entered all my cells and made me move the way I do.
We would listen to music, Salih Hoca would talk about music, about listening, about letting the music pass through your being, about drinking tea, talking, drinking Raki and talking about love, about being in love with music, with food, with life, with the beloved… endlessly throughout many nights… someone would sing, recite, play and all would listen letting that flowing love touch us and penetrate our senses. We would hear something, and deeply touched we would not hide our tears. Salih Hoca would say that crying softens and opens the heart.
Having revived all these memories I cannot let you go without inviting you to listen to these moments of muhabbet happening in an improvisation.
Here is one improvisation by Salih Bilgin and Murat Aydemir (and my most sincere love and respect flies to them here )
Or another very old recording of the taksims (improvisations) of the Ney master Niyazi Sayin:
These moments of muhabbet happen to all musicians who allow the flow to happen, to all artists who surrender to something bigger than their own desires, and to all people who have a taste for listening to what is happening in them and around them.
What will I do now?
I had not planned at all that I would speak of muhabbet in this blog, but it just came. I take the emotional flush of memories nourish me and with this motivation I will hopefully write the first chapter during this week. The chapter will be about muhabbet and I really wish that I will write in the state of being in muhabbet.
Before I leave you for this week, I would like to invite you to think and reflect on what you do, and try to recognize how much love is flowing between you and the other, between you and a tree, between you and your actions, your work, your children, your lovers, your partners.
Because I guess one of the ways of not falling into the trap of seriousness is to remember to be in love and to feel the love in the steps we take.
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