Dancing in the Moment

Imagine this:

You are in a community hall. On the stage, a band is playing traditional folk music, led by a fiddler. In the hall, people are dancing until the wooden floor bounces — the whole room moving in unison. You are dancing with a partner, but you are also dancing with a whole line of other people at the same time, alternating between twosomes and foursomes and everybody.

Onstage, a caller is shouting out the moves. But you’ve gone through the sequence several times and it’s in your body now, you can flow smoothly from one move to the next, your momentum carrying you and buoying you up.

With each person you meet, male or female, you touch hands or dance with your hand on their shoulder, and you look into their eyes. You see your own joy and exhilaration reflected back as you spin together, the room circling around you, their eyes anchoring you.

Then it’s back to rhythm and the room stomps in unison, dozens of people together, an exclamation point before a new sentence begins. The band changes keys and plays harder. You dance harder, spin faster, energy flowing back and forth between you and the band and your partner and the line and the rest of the room. You’re all grinning like fools and sweating and your eyes sparkle with sheer joy and you are alive, right there in the moment and nowhere else.

That was my weekend.

I’m still glowing.

(It’s called contradance. You can see a video of it here, with lots more where that came from. If you’re in the US or eastern Canada, chances are good that it exists near you. You’re welcome.)

How was your weekend? What have you done lately to put yourself in the moment, in that state of “flow”?