I FALL DOWN, I GET BACK UP: Embodying the Rise-n-Fall of Life!

GROWING THE SOUL. The Rise-n-Fall of Life, the daily resurrections can be embodied. (art by Hallelujah Truth)

Hallelujah for spiritual practices! Hallelujah for practicing FALLING…and GETTING BACK UP again, again, and again! Hallelujah for finding a “kinesthetic” way to embody the perpetual Rise-n-Fall of Life.

Like breathing—breathe in and breathe out—the Rise-n-Fall of Life is an integral part of our being alive. Consider all of the mini-deaths we experience daily. We fail at communicating our intent. We don’t succeed in cleaning out any of that closet. The enterprise we envision is not manifesting.  We go over our calorie count, consume too much sodium and fat, and do not execute doctors’ orders. Over and over again, we seem to exhaust possibilities, to malinger, to die, to

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And all we need to do is practice, getting back up! Yes, we can practice falling and getting back up with a dance—a physical movement!

Practicing falling and getting back is one of the many dances that Cynthia Winton-Henry offers us in her book, Dance—the Sacred Art: The Joy of Movement as a Spiritual Practice. I had the surprising experience of this rising-n-falling dance with Cynthia during her online Monday night class, Dancing the Ruby Way.

Consider these beginning instructions from Cynthia’s book on the restorative movement of Rising-n-Falling:

Find a “friendly” floor, soft couch, or bed. Seated, gently fall in different ways, slowly to the side, to the back, using your arms in different ways. (Do this exercise where you will be safe. You don’t want to add to your fear of falling.)

Having fallen, lie on the floor, couch, or bed for a minute, noticing how it holds you. Notice what it’s like to get up, to rise again….

Now put on music and practice falling, resting, rising to honor—instead of trying to resist—gravity. (p 76, Dance the Sacred Art)

I was delighted with this physical practice of repeated Falling-n-Rising! And, I also got to witness Cynthia doing it with me in California from the small screen of my Ipad, next to me on the floor in Georgia. Having a community of others falling-n-rising expands the effectiveness of this exercise!

My discovery? Finding out that my body knows how to fall, and it knows how to get back up! Hurray!

So here is a list of a few of my falls and my recoveries:

FALLING

For a handful of weeks, I stopped exercising my persona, Hallelujah Truth, on my blog, “Coffee with Hallelujah.” I thought, “I will never blog again. It’s over.”

GETTING BACK UP

I’m blogging today. Right now.

FALLING

I am attempting to be an entrepreneur now for the third time. The previous two times came to nought. Wah! I failed. I will fail again. I keep getting stymied, befuddled, delayed, and detoured by the details.

GETTING BACK UP

I made a phone call to paypal to find out how clients can pay me online (my paypal account is already established). Yay! I created a Facebook page to offer my services: InterPlay Art & Soul Creativity Coaching. I met with my website builder to discuss where we were and what I needed to do resulting in making an InterPlay logo for part of my business. Yay! Thus far, I have attended each two-hour online InterPlay Entrepreneur course and done most of my assignments. I “get up” each morning prepared to take an incremental step toward establishing my business. The InterPlay Entrepreneur course encourages to perform three tasks a day towards our business.

FALLING

I struggle to eat correctly and to exercise regularly so I can keep a weight that is right for my health, including maintaining a low blood pressure.

GETTING BACK UP

Today, I ate a salad for lunch. I walked almost two miles this morning while I conducted business on the phone. I’m reading the labels on packages and drinks now for sodium content.

EMBODIED RISING-n-FALLING

Now, instead of just keeping and storing disappointed thoughts in my head and in my body of my “falls” or failures, I move them out of my body, mind, heart, and spirit by physically “getting up”! What a relief!

Getting up is such a relief, I feel that all of us can celebrate our Rise-n-Falls in Life by embodying them. My body now feels the connection between the physical experience of falling and rising and the other events in my life where I fail and need to begin over again. If I can pick myself up from the ground, I can surely pick myself up from this disappointment! Yes! Happy Day! This rising-falling dance is Life!

“It is liberating to breathe, shake, move, balance, fall off balance, tense and release, liberate our wholeness. We don’t have to hide the truth. We can dance it!” –Cynthia Winton-Henry

That’s Coffee with Hallelujah! Soul blog with me about your Rise-n-Falls. Do you dance them out? 

RISING-N-FALLING at INTERPLAY ALCHEMY.  During the four months of Tuesdays that I taught my first series of InterPlay Alchemy classes embodying the magic of the soul, I was able to implement content from Cynthia's online course, "Dancing the Ruby Way. Here the class is celebrating the Rise-n-Fall of Life at the conclusion of embodying falling and rising. It was particularly significant because we did this dance at the Spring Solstice when all that sap was rising from the Earth! Yay!