Weighting for Inspiration

"There is no way to be in-Spirit without a changed awareness -So when you accomplish this, you give yourself the gift of moving from being flawed, limited, lacking, and imperfect to being completely comfortable with your magnificence" ~Wayne Dyer

I recognize that I am not in this place yet. I often think that I have a changed awareness and maybe sometimes that is true.

I also recognize that this is EXACTLY where I WANT to be...AT ALL TIMES.

In Spirit.

Completely comfortable with my own magnificence.

"God dwells in me AS ME..." Elizabeth Gilbert

I am reminded of that line from Eat Pray Love....what a comforting thought to remember at the very moment that I begin to dive into the land of self loathing and disappointment...chiding myself for what I have or have not done this week or the last.

God dwells in me AS ME...in all my imperfections I remain a child of God....worthy of his love and the love of others, the love of self. Hmmmmmm.............where the heck did THAT come from?

An interesting place, the mind, very interesting place. Many winding roads, forks, unpaved paths and overgrown labyrinths.

When I went to sleep last night I decided that Monday would be FRESH START (Take 105) on the weigh loss journey----I realize that it REALLY IS a J-O-U-R-N-E-Y. I mean, SERIOUSLY, a perpetual journey in many ways----I decided that I would eat "the good eat" in this battle (oops, I meant JOURNEY) of better eating and better living! I decided that eventhough the Biggest Loser ended and I was not by any stretch of the imagination "The BIggest Loser," I was determined NOT to FEEL like a LOSER....a real loser ( and not of weight I might add).

Sooooooooooooooooo, off I went to work and I almost lost it around lunch time when I decided to go with a co-worker tp Panera for lunch. Well Iwas ableto make it thorugh with the "You Choose 2" menu. I chose the Chicken Ceaser sandwich ( LUV SANDWICHES) and the Chicken Cobb salad....

...."whew....I made it" I thought as I sat down with a cup of ice water(yay me!).

After a GREWLING day I decided to head home bc I was STARVING! I drove toward my house thinking to myself "I can miss the Weight Watchers meeting tonight (I haven't been in several weeks), I am soooo tired and today was a BUST." Then a tiny voice said loudly: "COWARD!"

"Who me?" I replied

"Yeah you, who else is in this car dumbass?!"

"Well, I am not a coward, I am just soo tired and I have a headache." I responded defensively

"SO what," the voice replied, "you had a heachache this morning and you will have the SAME headache later, GO ANYWAY!" the voice commanded.

"But, I...." I stammered.

"If you chicken out now, it will be another week missed, because the rest of the week will be IMPOSSIBLE." the voice reminded me.

Dang it....I went and I was DOWN .8lbs

I sighed.

"That's almost a pound" The lady at the front desk reminds me....

"Yes, you are right...almost a pound."

Today's Weight: 238.2 (Total weight loss 10.2 lbs)

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Weighting on Mr. Fagan

"Spiritual teachers have raised the vibrational frequency of their daily lives, to the point where they're able to provide inspiration to others merely by their presence, and this is the standard to which you need to inspire." ~Wayne Dyer

Providing inspiration to other simply by being near them...this is something that I experienced when I met Garth Fagan. It's kind of weird. As an artist, you often have someone to whom you aspire to be like, or someone whose work you aspire to simulate/imitate. I remember watching an Alvin Ailey performance and thinking: "Dear God, please make me that good!" When I met Mr. Fagan I thought, "Dear God, please make me that influential, that creative, that DRIVEN!" I had already been a part of the Dance Department after being coerced into auditioning. So of course I thought that I would IMMEDIATELY meet this choreographic genius. I mean, isn't this what my HS dance teacher sent me here for? Geez!

It was actually years before I would actually see Mr. Fagan on the campus and it would be moths after that sighting that I would be blessed with an opportunity to take his class. I cannot tell you how AMAZING this whole thing was. He arrived for the first day of class in his jumpsuit and this weird hat and I thought: "See, only a TRUE artistic genius could wear a hat like that andget away with it!" I felt like I was in the prescene of royalty. I mean, in the Rochester dance community I was taking class with the King of everything PHENOMENALLY dance and culture.

I was shocked (sad really) when he did not return to class until we were close to taking our midterm. Woah!

The class had been taught by a small contingency of the company and they were FLAWLESS. NO, seriously, they were flawless. It was AMAZING to see them move, it was like watching paint being pured from one can into the next, over and over and over again. And they could count like nothing I had ever seen/heard in my life. There is no such thing as even counting in Fagan dance. There are only the oddities of 7's and 5's and sometimes a 1 to throw you into an anxiety filled frenzy of thoughts and limbs. I was in HEAVEN! I mean, I was being challenged to think, feel and see all at once. It was like coming home! Although I felt that way, I also remember thinking that he would never accept me into his company because all of his dancers were slim and tall. I was neither of those things, but I loved to dance and NOTHING was going to change that.

So when he came into the studio, unannounced as he often did, I almost threw up! I tried to play it cool, as did every other student, but it was impossible to concentrate on the combination. It was especialy difficult becasue PJ was adding movement and even more bizarre counts! "Why, oh why did he have to show up today?!" He watched silently with his eyes and sometimes he wuld whisper into the ear of one of the company members and we all hoped he was talking about us just as we were praying he wasn't. Did he think we were good, bad, sad, without hope? What was he thinking? Looking back on all the times he entered the studio (few, but memorable), I don't think I ever learned what he was thinking. Well, actually I think that maybe he was looking for that raw talent that he could shape into flawless perfection. And when he was done shaping and molding, he would pour that flawless perfection onto the performance stage.

Once, after class he said: "Good job Wy."

Garth Fagan raises the vibrational frequency of dance and life, he inspires, simply by being present in the moment. Thank God for that!

Weighting in the Wings 2.3

"I am burdened with what the Buddhist call the 'monkey mind'-- the thoughts that swing from limb to limb, stopping only to scratch themselves, spit and howl" Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)

I too am burdened with Monkey Mind! I apologize and take FULL responsibility for this. I hope that you will forgive me and CONTINUE to read my blog in all its GLORIOUS disjointedness.

I left the last entry with a comment about standards and the image of me as a viola player:

I began to play the Viola in 6th grade I believe. I was a student at Seth Low Intermediate School 96 (I.S. 96). My teacher's name was Michael Kushel. Mr. Kushel was a great guy and he wanted us to play, but sadly he never taught us to read music....I will NEVER understand that. It was not like we were incapable of learning....Duh. Anyway, when I entered HS I continued to play, memorizing pieces and writing in notes on sheet music.

While in HS, I auditioned for a place in the All City Orchestra. I was so serious about that opportunity that I convinced my father to pay for me to take private lessons with a Viola teacher in Sheepshead Bay (Brooklyn, NY). I think her name was Ms. Epstein. She was a lovely old woman…a very, very, very old woman. She LOVED children and she was a wonderful teacher. She taught me how to read music…well she TRIED. We focused on one piece of music that I would play at the audition. Every weekend I either traveled by train or was dropped off at her house with my borrowed Viola...I played and played and played.

When I arrived for the audition at Julliard, there were sooo many kids there (including Ed, the first chair from my school). I don't remember being worried about them at all. I remember thinking it was GREAT that Ed was there too! I played the piece that I’d memorized (maybe the New World Symphony) and then they said “Alright Ms. Hicks please play this piece.” Sight reading...I was DOOMED!

I did not get into the All City Orchestra, but Ed did! Wow…we were all so very proud of him. A Kid from our school in the All City orchestra?

What is the point, you may ask:

I never even thought TWICE about NOT really being able to read music. What the hell was I even doing at Julliard? I mean really?

I was determined and unafraid.

Determined and UNAFRAID. That is what I remember about myself.

Current Weight: 239 Yikes!


Weigh-In with words!

Weighting in the Wings Take 2.2

Greetings!

Here is the bad news:

My last post was on June 22nd. I have not written since then because I was drafting a post that was very close to my heart and it was lost. It was a post filled with such honesty and raw feeling. What I uncovered in that post are things that I think I may have been hiding from myself for years. When that entry was lost I was deflated and discouraged.

Here is the good news:

I'm back!

Last time I wrote: “I often felt that I was on the periphery of the circle of "real dancers," but I always felt like a pretty good dancer. That is a weird thing to say. I mean, as I look back on those words I had written, I realized that this is a bigger issue than I have been really willing to acknowledge. I ALSO realized that this was not the first time I have written these words. I wrote them for the first time in a Facebook message to a girl I danced with in High School. I am not sure what her reply was, but it was something along the lines of "you're crazy, it was never like that."

Was I crazy? Was it never like that? Hmmmmmmmm......well here is more f what I DO remember.

When I finally sat down with my teacher to discuss college dance programs, he mentioned SUNY Brockport. He told me that Garth Fagan taught there. I knew Garth Fagan, he was from Jamaica, began a company called The Bottom of the Bucket AND he was the choreographer of the Lion King which was on Broadway. He said that I should go there and study with him.

Me?

Study with Garth Fagan?”

"How was I supposed to do that?" I mean, even though I felt that I had a pretty good handle on dance, was it firm enough to study with a Master like Garth Fagan? Even to me, that seemed a bit too ambitious. I mean, I wanted to keep dancing, but I was not sure about all that. I had given up a lot for dance, but I was still a little unsure about going to school for dance. I was so convinced that dance was what I needed to do that I left the orchestra to focus on dance full time.

I knew that it was never something I was going to be able to afford outside of school, but that never made a bit of difference to me. I had the BEST teacher in NYC as far as I was concerned. He made sure that we had as many opportunities as possible. He arranged for us to take Ballet at the Henry Street Settlement and brought in prominent choreographers to set work on us. At that time I did not realize that there were people who had been dancing since they were 3 yrs old. I did not know that I was starting “late.” I mean, I felt like my life had just changed, I felt like I had been reborn....reborn to dance!

Before I looked into SUNY Brockport, I had a dream of attending NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. I always had a high standard for myself with relation to my art; take my years as a viola player for example......

Here is my current Weight: 237 lbs.

What do you think?
You can WEIGH IN with words via the Blog or in an email: dance_yneshia_2005@yahoo.com