How Do We Live in Our Bodies?

The other night, I tried a Zumba class. I knew I wouldn't be able to do every move. I was a bit surprised to find out that I couldn't really do any of them.

I came home and said to my spouse, "I don't live in my body the way the Zumba instructor lives in her body."

He said, "I don't even know what you mean by that."

Not for the first time was I reminded that my relationship to my body is not the norm. Well, not for modern times. I used to joke that I had a medieval relationship to this body that I felt was always ready to go after the decadent, the extra calories, the slothful approach. I felt like a pure soul trapped in a body that was always ready to embarrass me.

Of course, that's hardly fair to my physical form. Lately, I've tried to develop a sympathy for my body, which after all, has done the best it could. I take weight off, and I put weight on, and my body copes admirably. Some days I give it fruits and vegetables and all the healthy things it needs. Some days I gunk up the works with junk.

Let me just state here that I realize that I'm still sounding rather divorced from my body. I'm far from integrated. But it used to be much worse.

I do better in exercise classes that help us think of ourselves as athletes: spin class and boot camp classes. I love seeing muscles emerge. I love feeling stronger and being able to do what I once couldn't do.

I do less well in exercise classes where there are lots of different movements. Having arms and legs going in a multitude of directions is more complicated for me than I suspect for others.

Then there's the dance aspect. I've always thought of myself as too klutzy and ungraceful/heavy to be a good dancer. That said, I'd probably do better in an exercise class based in ballet than in Latin dance--or any dance which has slow movements, rather than fast movements.

In fact, once I stopped trying to follow the Zumba instructor, I enjoyed the class more.  I twirled and moved my arms in whatever way they wanted to go.  I ignored the fancy footwork.

Maybe it's the type of movement, not the speed.  Zumba moves just felt very sexual to me. Sure, it was a class of women. But for a variety of reasons, I've never felt comfortable in those sexy dance moves.

I've spent my life as a woman trying to blend in, trying to downplay my female body, trying not to attract negative attention. I can't just turn that off for a Zumba class.

Maybe it's time to explore self-defense classes!

Or maybe I should return to the lesson of gymnastics:  what do I do well? 

Or does that leave me too happy in my comfort zone?  Maybe I should focus more on having fun and less on what I'm accomplishing?  Maybe I should try new things.

As with much of my life, I expect that the answer lies in moderation and variety.

Turning Points and the Roads Not Taken

Yesterday, while the rest of the world got ready for its annual football extravaganza, we watched The Turning Point, which I hadn't seen since the late 70's.

How did I come to watch this movie?  Someone asked me if I knew that Shirley MacLaine had been a dancer, and I thought about this movie.  When I saw we could stream it on Netflix, that was that.  We've spent a lot of time streaming old Westerns.  It was time for a ballet movie.

For a movie released in 1977, it holds up well.  The ballet scenes, of course, are timeless.  Even the clothes, which are so 1970's, didn't distract.  The shots of 1977 New York City fed a hunger I didn't even know I had:  New York, back when it was really gritty!  And look, the World Trade Center towers, just after they were built!

How strange to think how the world barely knew Barishnikov when the movie was released.  As I watched him dance, I thought of his character in Sex and the City, and how he never really changes his look radically.

It's strange to watch this movie from this vantage point in my life.  When I first watched it, I was the young drama student, taking dance classes, taking drama classes, dreaming of Broadway.  I knew that I would never, NEVER, make choices I would regret later.  I would never wonder about the roads not taken.

Ah, the certitude of youth.  What vanity.

Now, of course, I know that I will always wonder about the roads not taken, even if I'm sure I made the right decisions or the decisions that were right for me at the time.

I wonder if people stop thinking about turning points in the roads of their lives as they get older.  It would be a relief.  Maybe it's similar to weight loss and body image.  Through the years, it's become abundantly clear to me that to have the angular body I think that I want, I'd have to cut my calories to about 900 a day--and even then, I'd probably be a curvy kind of angular.  I will never have the ballerina body I would like to have, and as the years have gone on, I've quit trying and quit yearning to have something so different than what I do have.

Maybe some day, it will be the same with careers.  Maybe some day, I will quit thinking about career paths I didn't take.

I also found myself thinking about the more recent movie Black Swan, and how I just could not slog through it.  Hmm.

And I thought about going to traditional ballets when I was in high school, how I found Swan Lake just so boring, but I knew I wasn't supposed to find it boring.  Once a modern dance troupe came through town, and I found their dances electrifying.  I felt like I was liking all the wrong things.

Of course, now, I realize that there are plenty of art forms for us all.  How lucky I was to have had access to both traditional ballet and modern dance.  And now, thanks to all sorts of cable and online resources--and of course, PBS--we have access to all sorts of art forms we would never have seen back in 1977.