THE FOUR Rs
RELAXATION, RECEPTIVITY, RECIPROCITY, REST
The Four Rs is a rubric of
our somatic deepening into
subtler and sheerer experience.
It names an intentional, structured progression.
by Dunya Dianne McPherson
excerpted from Sojourn the Inner Heaven
Someone once came to their first Dancemeditation workshop on the strength of hearing these four words from a friend. They were intrigued by this poem and wanted to know more. In my usual fashion, I began wordlessly, leading movement with only an occasional verbal cue about breathing. I gave no introductory explanation. Soon we were side-by-side alone, sunk deeply in. At the end, I proffered the Four Rs—Relaxation, Receptivity, Reciprocity, Rest—as thumbnails to bag up and carry home the session’s as-yet-inarticulable experiences—a little mnemonic to help our minds get a foothold after hours of nonverbal motion.
The Four Rs is a rubric of our somatic deepening into subtler and sheerer experience. It names an intentional, structured progression, and…is most often delivered at a session’s conclusion to confirm experience.
Relaxation
Relaxation, a place where we dump burdens we’ve been carrying all day, or all week, or all our life, and close the door to outer pandemonium.
On the mat, we practice the patient art of slowing, of feeling what we are doing, of noticing the sensation of breath, skin, organs, bones, space, gravity. We slow and notice and pause to digest what we are feeling. We experience our experience. Slow, notice, feel. I cannot say these words enough. The more we slow and notice and feel, the more we can notice and feel. Little by little, anxiety whittles down, and whispers of our real-ness sneak out to play inside us. Little by little, we cut through our crust of scars and fakery….
We need to do not doing in order to undo overdoing. This is what we don’t do even as urgent impulses rise: Need to check my phone. Need to eat something…again. Need to pee. Need to wash the dishes, call so-and- so, buy a new whatever. We don’t do them. We do the not doing. Not doing is its own work, inaction an action. We are not doing our habituation. We are not doing our escape hatches. We are not doing our running away. We are not doing our self-destruction. We are not doing our self-starvation. We are not doing our self-flagellation. We are not doing our do-goodness, not doing our self-righteousness, not doing our manipulation, justification, pain, despair.
We are not doing all that. We are not rehearsing our Constructed Self. We do the not-doing, and it undoes our overdoing.
Receptivity
Receptivity is the shimmering pivot in consciousness work.
— Dunya
Our minds have been loosening, sentences turning into phrases, phrases into words, and words dissolving. We have not yet disappeared, but we’ve been losing track of thought, of pattern, of personality shape, of linearity, of causality. As sensation increases, rationality subsides. As sensation increases, time-tracking dissolves. As sensation increases, presentness increases. We alter not only the content and density of mind but the way it engages. Our mind, rather than leading, begins to watch and follow. This is the turning point in consciousness work. The pivot.
We receive our motion. We receive.
With our gaze turned in, we receive and absorb…Nourishment is not only food and human love. We need what is in air and space and dreams and beauty and mystery and possibility just as surely as we need a meal and a roof. We need what we can’t see—magnetism, momentum, resonance, ineffable palpability. Though we can’t fully understand this, we know this. We know, when touched and immersed by it, that the Invisible is essential not only to a fulfilled life but to the most basic life.
Reciprocity
We opened our heart’s gaze to the great firmament.
We were standing in the garden, in the fragrance of roses, the Host everywhere and nowhere,
Our flesh everything and nothing.
There was no day, no night, no come nor go, no time, no turn.
— Dunya
Reciprocity is a nonordinary state. Until now we have been aware that we are a self working with a self. In Relaxation, we drew our focus to movement mantras, opening to embodiment, exploring and immersing ourself in an unfolding that was no longer muscled and willful. The crust cracked. In Receptivity, we pivoted toward deep asking and nourishment…In Reciprocity we enter the fruit of our labor, a sustained and sustainable pulsing, generating more energy than we use, in fact rolling in a momentum beyond an oscillatory equation. We moved beyond the limits of our imagination. Reciprocity’s holism, while still relaxing and still receptive, tastes of limitless infinity.
Rest
When in deepest peace, deepest beauty.
When in deepest beauty, most divine.
When in divinity, deepest peace.
— Dunya
After Relaxation, Receptivity, Reciprocity, we arrive at Rest, right? No. Rest is not an end point. Rest is the warp to the weft of actions and non-actions in Relaxation, Receptivity, Reciprocity…
…Rest is existential. Rest is the weaver of our moving tensegrity. An ocean wave surges then recedes. Sound waves have peaks and valleys. Our movement surges and pauses, intensifies then subsides. The antiphony of heartbeat and breath oscillate between effort and rest. Wave form underpins all we do and are.
When in deepest peace, deepest beauty.
When in deepest beauty, most divine.
When in divinity, deepest peace.
— Dunya
FURTHER READING
To learn more about Dancemeditation
& Dunya's journey, explore her books.
