Leading and Following

excerpt from ‘Sojourn the Inner Heaven: Movement Meditations for Awakening’ by Dunya Dianne McPherson

When I first began to study meditation, I followed my teacher. He taught by moving slowly, meditatively. It was so different, this wordless way of being taken into something new. I thought maybe it was easier for him since he didn’t speak English well. Then, later, I realized that not using words helped my mind quiet down quickly. In time, it was clear that he was also handing spiritual transmission. Following is rich with gifts. To see, to feel, to absorb with the whole body-being. To pick it up. To catch it. To use all of self.  

‘Follow’ is a cousin to ‘receive’. Following is how we awaken and entrain ‘following-ness’. Here is Lead & Follow, which is more than a practice; it is a bulwark. A group gathers. There is a teacher at the front. The teacher leads and the groups follows. After, the group forms a circle with one person in the center, and the group follows this Leader; or in a circle of three or four, the Leader role passes around the perimeter from one to the next; or in a two-some, partners alternate roles. (Some use the cue ‘mirroring’ for this activity but a mirror is glossy, hard, rigid, flat. It breaks and brings bad luck, or the shard cuts us. It demands our perfection. A mirror yanks us up to our eyes out of the chewy juice of belly and thighs. It is a fine flashy word but too alienating for our soft creaturely flesh, which may initially be muffled and vague but, over time and with practice, reveals complex truths.)

The Leader closes the eyes and moves intuitively. The other or others follow, receiving the movement of the person leading. Though no one is touching, the unique quirks, pacing, grace or awkwardness of the Leader’s body sinks directly into the others. We feel the Leader’s body directly, unfiltered by thought. Body ingests body. Through experiencing the movement of the Leader’s body, we know the sensation of them, what is similar, what is different. We feel connection. We receive and absorb them. In this nonverbal interchange, the Leading is ‘speaking’ and Following ‘listening’. As a horse carries a rider, we follow another person’s motion and feel something inside we have never felt before. It is right there. Right there. Our mind can finally relax and quiet because it doesn’t have to analyze or invent. It doesn’t have to keep up.No one, not even the person leading, has to think of what to do because—and this is the key learning in Lead & Follow—even the Leader is following. The Leader follows the movement welling up from inside their own body or passing through their body. The Leader is listening. The depth of the Leader’s dive allows the group to also go in. The purer the leading, the sweeter the following.

In ‘Lead & Follow’, we awaken and entrain following-ness.

Now we close our eyes, enter our own world and follow. Follow what? Follow our body. Follow sensation released from girdles of thought. We might be surprised at how easily movement comes up. The music plays. In an ocean of dark space, spine and limbs, feet and hands, belly and back sway and tap, dart and swoop and surge. There was a time before birth when we danced in our mother’s inland sea of pulses and beats. Our body remembers, has been waiting for something like that liquid dark. It can be this easy. Just a matter of letting it happen. We can stop assuming that because we aren’t thinking of what to do that nothing will happen. Something will happen, if given a chance.

In following-ness, our life comes from something other than our willfulness. In turning the volume down on assessing, categorizing, and judging our experience, we drift away from using our mind to beat our body into submission. Cut that chord of subjugation. We shift from controlling and grasping into being. Our body moves its truth and our mind listens, perceives, collaborates, watches, respects, protects, treasures our flesh. We receive. We absorb ever more deeply from an ever more deeply moving Truth. In comes a deep breath, softening our shoulders. Our feet hang heavy into ground. A shaft of sun is an apron on our lap. We are in the new and new. We grow familiar with newness and relax our grip nameable destinations. The word ‘explore’ suffices.

This piece contains an excerpt from Dunya’s new book, Sojourn the Inner Heaven: Movement Meditations for Awakening  Order your copy today!