In Trinh T. Minh-Ha’s Notes on Feminisms, she writes, “Walking is an experience of indefiniteness, and traveling in this context does not, as commonly understood, lead to the “discov-ery” of the world—a term so endearing to the colonial quest and conquest. Rather, the focus is all on the ability to receive and the expansive nature of reception. 

With each step forward, the world comes to us. 

With each step forward, a flower blooms under our feet.

With each step forward, one receives wide open and deep into oneself, the gifts of the universe. Learning how to walk anew."

While I was walking today, on April 27th, home to write this text, I noticed my feet more than usual. My feet, encapsulated in black boots, feel extra sensitive (sensitized) as I bring my attention to them. From the soles of my feet, to about a half inch into my feet is where this hyper-sensation lives. I realize that it allows me to understand (feeling as understanding here) how deep my footprints might actually reach. It allows me to expand my view of how my footsteps echo into the surface area around the physical containers of my feet. This listening, and care-full attention allows my body to expand; allows the awareness of what’s possible of a body, to expand. This is what happens in the work I’ve directed and crafted with my collaborators, and inside of the movement practice I’ve been working with. 

a quick synopsis of the movement practice

First, my guidance through a caring, attentive body scan. 

Using breath as a listening device for sensation. We’re with our breath - and just like we are with our attention alongside our breath, we bring that attention to the rest of the body. It allows listening to deepen.

Then, my guidance into an awareness practice/scan of external sensation. 

Then, my guidance through spinning (becoming dizzy).

Then, dizzy, with our eyes closed. We could be anywhere. I guide the practitioners through a practice of staying with the breath as a sensory listening device and letting an environment form around them that supports them. Leaning into intuition as textures arise. I ask about the elements: what is the ground? Is there a ground? How dense is the air, the space around you? Is there precipitation? Can you fly? Is there gravity? What does it smell like? What do you see close to you, above you? What’s in the distance?

Then, movement becomes a listening device. Textures become clearer as we move through them. Sensations become clearer as we move through them. We build this world and we keep going, and keep going, and keep going.

We start slow and rigor can unfold just as clarity does. 

We demand more from these textures and environments through this care-full attention. In the demand of support, as these environments become clearer, we’re also supporting these imagined worlds we’re crafting and making tangible before our closed eyes. 

Just like how today, I began to understand the sensitization of my feet as I bring my attention to them, and just as I understand how this allows my footsteps to fall deeper, and wider. How it alters my perception of what it is a body does; this way of listening in this practice allows for a body to expand past what we believe bodies can do. 

This is how I ended up in a tangible memory while engaged in this movement/dizzying practice. I spun, and before my closed eyes, before my body, I saw the field 5 minutes down the road from my mom’s house in seventh grade. I viscerally remembered the slant of the hill, the architecture of the trees, I felt the sun on my skin, and I remembered what I was wearing. I hadn’t thought about this seemingly insignificant moment since that day; but my body brought me there. I didn’t know my body could do that. 

By listening, and sensitizing, I understand that I (we) can do much more than I once imagined.

It collapses time as we know it, and suddenly we’re everywhere we have been and everywhere we will be.