I've gotten stitches since I was a kid. Not sure when they started, but the most memorable was during sport's day when I was 8. One of the kids in the year below drew a picture of me lying on the track as his assignment on 'Sports Day'. My adorably sensitive neighbour came to tell me, lest I spot it on the noticeboard outside their classroom and be upset. 'A girl fell over'.
Curious thing is I was quite a good sprinter, I did a fair bit of dance in my extra curricular activities and had strong legs. The year before Mam had videoed me in the relay: we pasted the competition: 'you were so far out front I couldn't keep the other kids in the frame'.
It got to the point last year when I was getting stitches while driving. A car. It was because I'd stopped breathing, I do that sometimes. It's a way I let myself know I'm stressed, or more to the point, it's a way my body let's the me in charge, the me that lives in my head, that firmly believes in mind over matter, that can make my body-self feel things by thinking them into being, it's how my body let's that me know she's maybe a little bit stressed.
And breathing, well you're not supposed to think about that are you? It just happens automatically. If I were to hyperventilate due to my stitch and pass out, my body would regulate my breathing while I was out for the count. Try not thinking about something you know you're not supposed to think about because it might have terrible, embarrassing consequences. Don't think about cocks. Now don't picture the last cock you saw in curious detail, I'm being serious here, whatever you do put the image of that great big chicken down. Sometimes, if I catch it early enough, I can talk my diaphragm down from the precipice. Breathe in 2, 3, out 2, 3. You're ok, you're, you're ok. (I was recently given the brilliantly sensible advice of concentrating on the out breath, because as we've already covered, your body is all tooled up to deal with the in-breath thing on it's own).
Anyway, long story short a few too many instances of 'I can't breathe, I can't breathe', the familiar stabbing pain in my ribs, tightening of the windpipe, rising panic, soon abbreviates itself to 'I can't breathe, I can't b-. I can't-. I can't.' And so I don't do as much exercise as I would like, for fear that I can't.
It's no coincidence that my psychotherapy course has recently taken a swerve toward neuroscientific study of the brain in the body: how the body thinks and the brain feels. So this year's resolution, late and only half made for fear that I can't, is to start a revolution in my body politics: no more shall mind rule over matter. I've promised myself a reconciliation between the limbs and organs that exist beneath my head and the 'me' that floats above.
So my first audition of the year came right on cue: as things do once you open yourself up to an idea. The Mayers Ensemble is a cross discipline experiment run by dancer, choreographer and theatre maker Pauline Mayers to find a common language between 'dancers' and 'actors', so that maybe we could drop the labels and all move and talk and make some work together.
Perfect.
The audition was tough. It was a room full of dancers, before I knew it we were lunging rhythmically to music that was fartoofasttobelungingtoo. I got a stitch within the first ten minutes. 'This is not for me' I thought. I pushed on. 'I'll never get this job' I thought. I pushed on. 'This is what you wanted' I thought'. 'Fuck off' I thought.
I got the job.
The escape route out of that tightened fist round my oesophagus has always been dancing. I enjoy dancing, and so I kid myself it isn't 'exercise' like running or step aerobics, but something nearer fun. Last week the Mayers Ensemble came together to do some dancing. Last week dancing was exercise.
When it comes to contemporary dance I don't know my arse from my elbow, but it turns out either are as good as the other as a starting point; and for someone who isn't always comfortable being up and personal with my own body being in touch with everyone else's from the word go has brought with it some interesting challenges to how I think about bodies and how I feel about thinking.
Amanda is a beautiful, physically strong dancer. Because her body is really strong. It bulges and flattens according to what it needs to be able to do. It is a doing body, poetic and expressive. There's something knowable about her body that I don't always feel towards my own. She starts from the body and lets it think for her.
By day five, my mood was low. I was spending a lot of time thinking about pain thresholds (and the efficacy of deep heat creams). There is no getting round physical pain. Even if you know it's making you fitter, stronger, more bendy. The relentless physical challenge of each day forced me to feel, and not only my body, but the feelings I carry that I don't want to feel. The shame, the anger, the sadness that I am so adept at bottling, dissociating from, thinking away.
'This is what my body does' I kept thinking. This is part of how it expresses itself. My solo pieces were frenetic, distressing to watch, tiring to perform. But they were also a release, of who knows what.
At the end of the first week I got home and cried and I didn't know why. Well, I didn't know in the way I was used to 'knowing'. A girl fell over.
I'm glad to be starting from the other side of the spectrum: to start with the body. Usually my head does all the work and the body comes along for the ride. As with the show I wrote, which was my way to think myself better after a traumatic relationship.
My lovely new partner summed it up the other night when he said 'you told your past like a story and it's only starting to hit me that this really happened, to you.' And frankly, it's only just started dawning on me.
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