Learning To Practice Anywhere

Written By Stacy Carleton

I’ve spent a lot of time stretching in airports and train stations recently.

It started in Chicago, just a few minutes before I boarded my flight to Paris. I knew that if my body would be confined to a cramped sitting position with very limited mobility for close to eight hours, it was calling for spaciousness and fluidity while it could get it. 

I decided to do some of my somatic practices right there at the crowded gate.

I felt self-conscious, but I knew my body’s needs were more important. 

So I launched into a set of gentle movements that almost never fails to bring more balance, mobility, and presence into my body: some hip twists, wrist and ankle rotations, psoas stretches, toe-heel rocking, swaying, side body extensions.

I have often done a version of this routine in public bathrooms for more privacy, but I was short on time and wanted to take up more space than a tiny stall could offer.

As soon as I started a basic quad stretch, my inner critic lobbed me with questions:

Who do you think you are?

People are looking at you.

Are you just trying to show off?

You might get in someone’s way.

Maybe you should stop.

I didn’t. Instead I followed my intuition, moving into the next posture that called to me, not unlike the many times I have given myself a containment hug in the grocery store line or shaken out my arms and hands before teaching a class.

A fellow traveler at the gate walked up to me. “You should lead us all in a stretching class,” she suggested, nodding at the throngs of people around us.

I let out a dismissive laugh, then chatted with her while we waited for our boarding group to be called.

Ten days later, waiting to board my flight home at the Paris airport, I did my practices.

Again, I was surrounded by people.

Again, I was the only person doing something other than sitting or standing.

Off to my left, I glimpsed an older man looking in my direction, doing his own little twisting motion for a couple seconds, then resuming his previous stance. I don’t know if he was even conscious of his brief maneuver.

Was my body giving him permission to move his body? Did he even notice if he followed that invitation? Did he have an inner critic like me, and did it stop him from continuing?

I’ll never know what this stranger’s experience was, but my airport interactions did get me thinking about the ways we move, or don’t move, out in the world.

I’ve been thinking about our collective relationship to our bodies. 

I’ve been thinking about what kinds of movements and expressions are acceptable in public spaces, who is allowed to move, and who is not.

I’ve been thinking about how many of us are taught to keep ourselves still and small so as not to inconvenience or offend others.

I’ve thought about how we learn the necessary skill of sharing space in a crowded world, but in the process, we sacrifice our innate sense of freedom for the sake of polite containment.

One of the many sites of my experimental public embodiment practices

I’ve thought about Abigail Rose Clarke’s observation that “most of us have grown up in a system of worldviews that pushes us to align ourselves with industry,” which is reflected in a narrow set of sanctioned public postures and movements: walking (preferably at a brisk pace), standing, looking down at a phone or book (but almost always a phone these days), or sitting upright in a chair.

What would it look like if we allowed ourselves to embody something else? 

What if we followed Clarke’s call to be more anchored in our “soft, wise bodies” as we center “the vast intelligence the body holds, accessible to our conscious thinking minds if we are willing to patiently attend to feeling what we feel as we feel it”?

What if we moved in whatever ways called to us, and supported our bodies with our reverent curiosity and thoughtful responses whenever we needed to?

I invite you to explore these questions with me at my upcoming community sessions.

JUNE SESSIONS:

As always, please contact me with any questions, suggestions, or ideas.

I hope to connect with you soon!

When we rest together, we heal and we thrive,

Stacy

Stacy Carleton
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