Returning to Skeriol

In the spring of 1995, two weeks before I turned 40, and after seven years of modern medical intervention, I was told I was pregnant.  In fact, the exact words used by the nurse practitioner who read my lab results were, “Michele you are REALLY pregnant – we know there are at least two and no more than five.”  While the news of carrying a long tried for but possibly complicated pregnancy sank it, I began to disentangle myself from all the plans I had made for my upcoming sabbatical.   A year filled with domestic and international travel and study would not be on the agenda with a December due date.  At my eight-week ultrasound, I discovered that there were two gestational sacs but only one fetus had a heartbeat.  At fourteen weeks, the surviving twin’s heart quit beating. To say it was a difficult time would be a huge understatement. 

Slowly I began to devise a Plan B.  I traveled to Northampton, Massachusetts to study authentic movement with Mary Ramsey, Daphne Lowell and Alton Wasson.  A long ago issue of A Moving Journal described authentic movement as “a deceptively simple form of self-directed movement. It is usually done with eyes closed and in the presence of at least one witness. The mover follows inner impulses to move freely, and the witness watches and tracks inner responses to the mover with the intention of not judging, but working on self-awareness.”  For two weeks, in a quiet, safe and supportive environment, I closed my eyes to the outside world and tried to listen to what was going on inside of me.  I remember feeling drawn to the floor and wanting to have both hands and both feet firmly holding on to the floor.  Within the practice, there is often a time when the mover can share their experience with the witness.  I said I needed to hold on because it felt like the ground kept shifting underneath me.  I remember saying it felt “like the rug had been pulled out from under me.”  And in one of those “ah-hah” moments I realized it had been.

At the end of the summer I spent a wonderful week studying contact improvisation with Chris Aiken.  In contrast to authentic movement, contact improvisation requires you to be aware of all that is going on all around you.  In her book Caught Falling, Nancy Stark Smith's describes contact improvisation as “a dance form, originated by American choreographer Steve Paxton in 1972, based on the communication between two or more moving bodies that are in physical contact and their combined relationship to the physical laws that govern their motion—gravity, momentum, inertia.”

She describes these improvisations as  “spontaneous physical dialogues that range from stillness to highly energetic exchanges. Alertness is developed in order to work in an energetic state of physical disorientation, trusting in one’s basic survival instincts.”  It was during that week of righting myself from disorienting positions, surrendering my weight to the support of a partner, and catching and supporting others that I began to trust my body again.  My basic survival instincts needed, and received, a tune up. 

That fall I began a yearlong, modular training program in Body-Mind Centering with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen.  I traveled to Berkeley, California in September, December and March, to join students from all over the globe in studying with this master teacher.  During the third module I discovered I was pregnant again.  This time there was no fancy lab work – just a plan drug store pregnancy test. 

While no one would ever accuse me of having a zen-like personality, I somehow managed to develop what I thought of as a zen-like attitude toward this pregnancy.  I knew in my heart if it was meant to be - it would be.  And if it was not, there was nothing I could do to change the outcome.  I don’t let go of control easily, but I knew from the beginning I had no control over this. 

With that attitude, at three months pregnant, I got on an airplane and flew to Sweden to teach for a month at the “Folkhogskola” in Mora, Sweden known as Skeriol.  My time in Sweden was wonderful.  At Skeriol I taught a course that combined dance, embodied anatomy and writing stories. The students in my class were from very diverse backgrounds but all approached the class with open hearts.  I still remember so many of their stories. 

When I left for Sweden, no one except my husband and a few of my closest friends knew about the pregnancy.  When I returned it was a little harder to keep it a secret.  My favorite memory is seeing a colleague at the St. Peter Food Co-op.  He put his arm around my shoulders and asked in his wonderful French accent, “Mee-shell, you look different.  Are you different?”

My little stowaway is almost 14 year old now.  And I am bringing him back to Skeriol.  I can’t wait.