Category Archives: Uncategorized

Boogie Oogie Oogie

I like to dance.  It is not Swing, Tango, Two-step, Waltz, or any structured dance.  It is pure and simple movement that my body chooses to make in that moment.  (In other words, watch out, I have no idea what’s going to come out of my body.  And yes, sometimes I make myself laugh!)

I love music that makes me want to dance – the kind when you hear it you immediately connect to the beat and your foot or hips or shoulders or all three! can’t help but start bopping.

This dancing extends to my car.  I’m the car in front of you that, while waiting at the stop light, is bopping and shifting around because the driver is making these “weird” movements.  I call it car-dancing and I love it.

And then there are those times when I’m in a bit of funk and I know it and I don’t want to stay there.  Especially when I know the reality that my life is good.  So I acknowledge feeling funky (a little self-compassion) and I invite myself to shift my energy (a little self-coaching.)  In that moment, if circumstances permit, I’ll put on one of those tunes that can’t help but get me groovin’ and I’ll boogie around for the duration of the song.

I always feel differently after the dance.  I may not have gone from funky to blissful, but I sure will have shifted to a more positive vibration.

Here’s one of those songs, that for me at least, get’s me bopping.  Take a look at the lyrics too. (Video and lyrics below.)  I read them as a call to boogie in my own life, to really show up fully until I just can’t boogie no more!  My gratitude to a “Taste of Honey” for bringing this song to life for me to enjoy.  Give it a listen and notice what happens for you.

A Taste of Honey:  Boogie Oogie Oogie

  • Songwriters: Janice Marie Johnson, Perry Kibble
 If you’re thinkin’ you’re too cool to boogie

Boy, oh boy, have I got news for you
Everybody here tonight must boogie
Let me tell you are no exception to the rule

So get on up on the floor
‘Cause were gonna boogie oogie oogie
Till you just can’t boogie no more
Ah, boogie, boogie no more
You can’t boogie no more
Ah, boogie, boogie no more
Listen to the music

There’s no time to waste let’s get the show on the road
Listen to the music and let your body flow
The sooner we break down the longer we got to groove
Listen to the music and let your body move

So get on up on the floor
‘Cause were gonna boogie oogie oogie
Till you just can’t boogie no more
Ah, boogie, boogie no more
You can’t boogie no more
Ah, boogie, boogie no more
Listen to the music

Get down boogie oogie oogie
Get down boogie oogie oogie
Get down boogie oogie oogie
Get down boogie oogie oogie

 

 

al-ONE-ness

Autonomous and interconnected.  Can we have both?  Can we be both?

I grapple with these seemingly paradoxical or contradictory needs on an on-going basis.  Sometimes I just want to be alONE.  To be ONE with just me.  Other times I’m feeling so alONE, what I crave is ONEness, togetherness, interconnectedness, shared reality with friends or even strangers.  In those moments I am needing to know there is more than just me, that there is a we.

And while this may sound like a big philosophical question, I can tell you that it plays out for me on a regular basis in the everyday of life circumstances.

I attend a spiritual community most Sundays.  There are two things I particularly appreciate about going there.  The sense of community and the spaciousness and acceptance I feel from within me and by the community to acknowledge my own spiritual journey.  While we are there in community, to listen and contemplate together, each of us is invited as individuals to decide for ourselves what we are hearing means to us in our everyday lives.

And sometimes I like the quietness of just me in my car, bopping to tunes, enjoying the me-ness.  Other times I delight in having a gaggle of friends in the car as we drive off to some adventure.

I love playing with paradox.  For those of you who read my blog  with any regularity, you will see that it is a theme that comes up over and over and over again.  In my view life is full of paradox and what an invitation it is to be fully alive and present.  My logical brain has a hard time wrapping my head around being both alone and one, interconnected.  When I am able to acknowledge the paradox and see it as a flow of energy, a dance in which these two elements of myself are in motion, sharing the lead, passing it from one to the other, doing different types of dancing – in those moments I get a warm fuzzy feeling accompanied by a deep calmness in my body, that sense of inner knowing that it is not about figuring it out, it is just about being in the dance.

 

Letting Go – pain, struggle, or release and relief?

When is it time to let go?

I’ve been moving into a new place the last few weeks.  I chose a place that I felt served me in many ways – love the location and the space itself made me say “I want to live here.”  And I knew the space was going to force me to downsize.  Not much storage and I was okay with that.

Then came the downsizing.

What if I might some day hold that party for 30 people I’ve been thinking about?  I would need those mugs then.

I do wear those shoes sometimes…

And then there’s the books and files that remain from my years as a grad student working on my doctoral dissertation and then as an academic.  The collection had already seen one purge several years ago.  Much still remained.

I felt heavy – literally and figuratively – as I tried to decide what to do with these items.  That is where the pain and struggle came in.  The memories – good and bad – of the experiences associated with these items come into my consciousness.  Thoughts – oh so many thoughts – came rushing in.  Am I throwing away my PhD if I throw away documents and books associated with it?  How will I prove that I did the work if I don’t have items from the steps along the way?  What if someday I might need this particular piece of information again?

I had lots of advice from friends.  “Don’t think about it.  Just throw it all away.”  Or “You can’t throw that away.  That was from your grandmother.”  Helpful?  Nope.

What in the end worked for me is the following.  It took me a while to figure out this was the process that got me the release and relief I was looking for and no, that doesn’t mean I threw everything away.  I just found peace with the process.

First I checked in on what the item represented.  Maybe there was some grieving I needed to do and in so doing, I would be able release the item.  Maybe I wasn’t living the life at 47 I thought I was going to – the parties for 30 co-hosted by me and my spouse weren’t happening.  No big parties.  No spouse.  And yet I could follow-up that up and say unequivocally that life IS good even though it doesn’t look as I had expected.  So I acknowledged the loss of the unrealized vision and found gratitude in the now.

Then I asked myself about how I wanted to let go of the item(s).  Somehow simply throwing things away didn’t feel right for a variety of reasons. Being able to give them away for reuse, or at least for recycle, felt better.  So I created different boxes for items I wanted to offer to friends, to various charities, and to recycle.

And I gave myself some time.  Those boxes of books and papers – I had to sit with them for a while as they blocked the ease of movement in my apartment.  At first I thought I would send the books to Africa.  Yes, that felt right.  And then it didn’t.  I thought about the environmental impact of shipping.  I thought about whether these were really the books they would want.  In the end the books and papers went happily to recycle because in that question of grieving and letting go I realized I had the fear that without all those goodies, somehow the PhD wasn’t mine any more.  That somehow I was going to be less smart and less capable.  When I recognized that story represented a typical shame (less than) response for me, I knew, one of those body knowings, that the stuff needed to go.  That I wanted it to go.  That I was whole, smart, and capable without those bits and pieces.

I did keep some things.  I didn’t need five of the items I had received from my Grandmother.  One would do so that every time I opened the cupboard, I could remember her with great affection.  And my two friends who bought me the chicken pitcher – well they’ll be happy to know I still have it.  It makes me laugh way too much every time I use it, albeit not very often, so I had to keep it.  For now!

 

 

 

Text and Images Copyright © Dr. Catherine Hajnal 2011, 2012