My butoh practice: Experience with the Axis

It's been nice having my Fridays free to practice movement and butoh. I've been setting aside a couple hours each Friday, especially this month leading up to a performance, which will be on March 11. But as I work on my performance piece, I also have time to practice exercises I've learned from others: teachers and classmates. It's also a great way to keep it fresh.

I practiced an exercise where you focus on your axis. In other words, that line between the tailbone and the crown of your head. I learned this from butoh teacher, Diego Pinon. You start standing with eyes closed or half open. You visualize your axis in your body, as if your body surrounds your axis. As you breathe, a subtle spinning begins at the crown of your head or tailbone; or if not spinning, a pull from one side of your body. This "spinning" or "pull" engages the body to begin turning along your axis. Once you go a few rounds, you may stop to feel your axis from time to time, but the idea is to keep turning along your axis. Then, at some point, you can open your eyes with a soft gaze. This adds the environment around into your vision and space as you move along your axis.

During this exercise, I initially felt the pull to go left. But about 5 min later, it switched. That never happened to me before. I always turned one way the whole time and I did this exercise for about 10 min. What I found interesting and funny was that I could feel myself resisting to go the other way! It was as if my mind was interjecting and saying, "Um, I don't think so!" But I allowed it. I wanted to see what happens.

Afterwards, I felt open, relaxed, and a little spacey. I always ground after doing an exercise like that because you don't know what you release or draw in. In a way, I felt almost TOO open, which is why grounding is so helpful and sometimes, necessary.

We don't know what could be lingering in/on our axis. I would love to investigate this practice deeper and perhaps on a regular basis, just to see what can come up. In fact, I find it very cleansing overall. It's another way to really BE in the body.

We shall see what happens this Friday ;-)