Because movement is our first medicine.

time to integrate. this is seasonally true, if we are living in Time, and culturally true on so many levels.

At this moment in the season, I imagine the trees looking down at their bare branches, exposed to the slanted winter light and thinking, “now what?” The landscape has vastly shifted, and we’ve crossed the threshold into winter* and the beginning of a new year. Everything in our ecology is saying integrate.

Integration….the act of bringing together the parts of a whole. Intrinsic. Belonging together. Can we know - really know - we belong together?

I don’t really know. Humanity is a complicated thing to belong to.

But I can now see the lake through the trees.

The retaining wall that has held the forest back is slowly, but certainly, coming down.

The buds on the linden trees have already formed. Now they wait, for a long time they will wait to open.

Tall crowded pines sway in small circles together in response to the wind.

Six - no seven jays work the woodland edge, planting four times as many acorns as they eat in the wide open, neatly mowed field. These blue jays are how the oak walks in mile long strides.

Expressing compliance with our environment means we are working with conditions not in a way that we might shape those conditions to our liking but, instead, allowing those circumstances to shape us, says the Daoist mantic artist.*

I walk, look, and sip in this reality through my rhythmic steps. This has been my way of integrating the season. To integrate the massive cultural changes afoot, its been dancing hard and long in the kitchen to the most rhythmically complex music I can find. Sevens and nines are my favorite, but also salsa, samba, and cumbia. I’ve tried writing, and have so many almost finished things to say, but for all the reasons I just haven’t felt compelled to share in that way. Anyone else tired of the echo chamber?

(invitation to stand up and shake here.)

The oldest form of integration might be dance. And music. I trust these. I trust my body, despite the allopathic medical story, toxically laced with religions based on the concept of ‘bodily sin’ and imperfection. I trust the complex overlapping rhythms of my autonomic workings and the deep language that is made through that movement. There is wisdom here. There’s no way to get lost in translation when the beat is in the feet, you know?

Wait. Why what? What am I talking about? Why, after these politically fraught weeks in an increasingly dangerous time am I referencing dance??

Permit me a moment to braid, also a practice of tangible integration.

Dance (and music) are relational practices. Relationship with the obvious ones: gravity, each other, rhythm. And also relationship with surfaces, wind currents, bone and blood, momentum, and most fully: the stories of a place. We dance the weather, whether we realize it or not. We dance to shuck off the encasements that hold our seeds, keeping them from catching the light. Dance is a light practice. Walking is a dance. Shaking is a dance. Looking is a dance. Curiosity is a dance. Falling is a dance. Embracing is a dance. Dance, in its broadest definition, is how we move together, like the tall crowded pines swaying in small circles together, in response to the wind.

For so many humans, its a moment full of tension. For the oaks, totally different story: This year was a mast year across the whole of North America, meaning oak trees dropped about ten times as many acorns as last year. That is a huge number of possible viewpoints quietly reaching roots down, even as the ground ponders freezing. As Tyson Yunkaporta says, “Every viewpoint is useful, and it takes a wide diversity of views for any group to navigate this universe”.

Because traps are everywhere in a land of sinkholes. We’ve got to know how to dance our way through and keep our minds from settling into despair, which always precedes numbness. The blood’s got to flow. Qi is needed for any revolution. What else is possible? Quickest way to find out: spin around, shake your butt, welcome physical disorientation. The retaining wall that has held the forest back is always slowly, but certainly, coming down.

Some of the trickiest dances come out of the places with the most treacherous histories. Afro-Haitian dance. Samba - at the right tempo. Bellydance. Capoeira. Irish dance. Cumbia, the rhythm of the slave chains. Tap dancing when there were no instruments to be afforded. Look up any of those dance’s histories, and you find the turmoil they spiraled out of. Hard times call for hard-to-master moves. The simplicity of the 4/4 time signature reeks of war, and the homogeneity of the march leads to monotony of thought. Where are the complex steps to work on in these long dark nights, stoking creativity?

Creativity is our immunity, says Dana Iova Koga. Stagnation is the peril of the body. We need steps that challenge us physically, but that even the vast numbers of chronically ill among us can participate in. The most complex dances many of us have been doing together are typing and swiping - but there’s not enough body in that finger form. There is just not enough movement in our bodies. I have to get up and shake right now just to understand that. This lack of physical trust and awareness is echoed in the supreme lack of awareness most of us have in our place. Earth body, human body: same damn thing. When will we see this metaphorical lake through the trees?

Humanity is a complicated thing to belong to. But the cut has been made. The slate has been wiped clean to begin anew.

How does life begin? A vibration, a spinning, a hum. Maybe we can allow this moment to shape us, to respond to the weather - both physical and metaphorical - with our most creative gesture.

Maybe it will be as beautiful as a blue jay swooping down to plant her 1,000th acorn…

*according to the solar calendar, early november marks the end of fall and beginning of winter. this time is often referred to as the new year, referencing the fallow fields, the harvest fully in, and the quiet energy of the plants rooting down.

*Seanán Zook, Daoist mantic artist.

About this Substack: I like letting this be a place where I can share some writing, and you can comment or share some of yours back as you like. You can reciprocate with dollars, stories, ideas, or not. I’m not going to use Substack as yet another way to do ‘social media’, and deeply respect your attention, which I think should mostly be where your body is. Just wanted to let you know that.

If you want to know what else I am offering these days in terms of movement and/or herbal medicine, you can sign up for my newsletter on my website: www.friedakiparbay.net.