My face touches the floor of the yurt. Pressing on my bones yet it feels soft and warmly receptive. My chest connects with the ground through a delicate layer of sweat membrane. My hands to the left and right. The abrasion on my knee starts to sting from the dust and sweat as the skin begins to stretch. One foot is warmed by the sunlight filtering through the window, the other I do not feel. Probably because I've been walking barefoot for the last days. I don't know which point I feel more acutely, it seems as if all of them are with me at the same time, all of them are me and they are forming me. I can't exactly feel how long or heavy I am, but I definitely have outlines and I press the floor with some kind of weight. Especially my bones, they're the ones that the floor is really pressing me on. - I should move - I think, when numbers start rushing through my head. - If I finish two more tender applications today, and waking up at six in the morning tomorrow I can finish my work and still bill for this month, how much, I'll be ready with eighteen than that comes to nine hundred thousand... But they haven't even paid the last invoice, I don't understand why they can't pay me on time... Or are they messing with just me? - Ahh! I catch myself mentally at this moment. - I'M NOT WORKING RIGHT NOW! - I tell myself again, for at least the three hundredth time in the past few days. Because my mind and I started playing a game. It took on the role of increasing efficiency in making money by constantly thinking about work, tasks, and momentary issues, visualizing amounts using my mental capacity. So in our little game, I had the role of either completely submitting to practical functioning, or if necessary, forcefully taking back control, and when it starts to wander towards work in situations where it's irrelevant, like lying face down on the floor on the third day of a retreat, then I firmly reprimand it and redirect my attention to my bodily sensations.
I feel myself breathing again, taking a deep breath into my belly, it sticks widely to the ground, then my chest rises along with my entire upper body. As I exhale quickly and careworn, my cheekbones and the knee covered with the stinging wound both slide a millimeter on my dirty sweat. - I AM HERE - I say my other spell, which I've been repeating to myself for days like some addict. The addict of thoughts. The addict of work. It can't be true that I can't be present. I think and meanwhile I'm somewhere else again, leaving my body and its sensations lying on the floor alone.
– I should light a cigarette - I think for instead of at least three people lying on the floor. - Then I could fill up myself with the warm smoke. Then I wouldn't just feel my outlines, but everything inside too. Maybe that's why I smoke? - The poetic question arises when suddenly a slow piano sound rings from the speaker and Greg's voice calls lightly to let any of my small muscles, any part of my body, to move, to start in any direction. My tongue seems the most practical. I circle my mouth with it, then it invites my facial muscles for a light tour. My facial muscles pull my scalp and I feel my neck, suddenly urging my back and my entire torso to move. It's not a dance, just writhing, but I don't consciously think about it anymore because I'm in motion, feeling everything move at once. I curl up into a fetal position and cover my eyes with my palms. I don't want to get up. I don't want it to end, I just want to stay in the quiet moment of thoughtlessness. I hear the music and the movements of the others, their smaller sounds as they start to rustle from their stillness. Everything affects me and calls for movement again. Someone touches my back, then disappears. Half of my body touches the ground, the other half brushes the air. - I feel that my connection with the earth is constant and unbreakable. - What a beautiful thought! It's just hard for me to maintain this connection. It's easier to stay in my mind, I easily retreat into my world in my head and hide behind my thoughts from my sensations and feelings. This is happening now too. I manage to connect with myself for a moment, then again, imprisoned in the tower, I ponder something. - This realization concludes the exercise. The day is over. I got an experience, I got guidance, I felt myself in my entirety. At least for moments.
This is what it means to me still, the synchronization of external and internal sensations, the calming of thoughts through conscious silence. Following the suggestions of my body, discovering and embracing my emotions and intuitions. Slowly, from movement to movement, from moment to moment, I arrived in my body.
Written by: Andor Szabados in 2024, based on the experiences of the 2022 Moving Man Closed Group.