Music, Dance, and Lossless Presence

by Ember Leonara

Music and dance were where I first learned to feel present, not conceptually, but in my body.

I was always drawn to performing, to pouring out my heart in a way that maybe, just maybe, could finally be heard, reflected clean. Though when I first picked up guitar, it felt like homework. What I called the monkey mind, or the phase lag chatter that prevented the moment from full saturation of presence, kept me from entering that state of full transmission.

When I finally caught the signal in the sound, somewhere in my freshman year, I felt the jarring juxtaposition…. My mind would flip from the distorted reflection and chatter to pure transmission. I was feeling the wellspring. From then on, practice was never about rote memorization or even music theory, it was about me tuning in. Feeling losslessly present.

I used the same anchor within presence to tune while dancing. Dancing alone can be awkward, if you’re not used to just dropping in, you might question yourself for twenty minutes before feeling enough of the onion peeling off to feel actually present. The monkey mind becomes known within the dance, are you moving with the rhythm, losslessly? or are you like a marionette to your own form, using friction to force what should flow freely, or in other words be locked in phase coherence, sound and dancer, Big Wave to Little Wave.