What I saw when I strolled out from my open prison of retirement.
I retired for real in spring 2010. For the first two years I was completely free to do anything at any time.
Looking back, I see that the discipline of obligation to do what others wanted me to do at their set times, not mine, left me hanging in the air.
For nearly two years, when Telma would go out walking on the clifftop, or for a paddle on the beach, I’d be moping in our flat, guiltily cleaning or picking fluff off the carpets. Why? 42 years of obedience to the externally imposed imperative of the Nine-to-five!
In 2012, I joined a wonderful weekly Djembé and percussion group locally and I had begun to make new friends in this new town we’d made our Forever home.
One fine spring morning, I wandered out to do some local window shopping. Cheerful, curious and courageous, I wandered into a strange looking shop full of African drums. This shop was called MAD Underground. (Music Art & Dance). I got talking to a most amazing shop owner. I mark the beginning of my latter life journey of exploration and discovery from that sunny morning’s first encounter.
In that same shop, I later joined a class for serious African drum players. One evening in February, when the class was over, the group chatted about Biodanza.
“What’s Biodanza?” I asked. Knowing glances were exchanged all round. “Why don’t you come and try it on Monday evening?” said Christina.
She gave me a lift there. Seven miles each way. Thus I placed myself, through the courage of my curiosity, directly in the path of a new opportunity.
8pm Monday 4 February 2013 was my first Biodanza class led by Milarepa Malc Burgin at the Winchelsea School hall in Wallisdown, Poole. I was one of some 25 people ready to dance in bare feet. Nobody gave me any attention unwanted or not. I felt unthreatened and safe. I was immediately at home and ready to assimilate into the dance.
This opened me to major life renewal. Radical involuntary changes in me arrived through a succession of epiphany moments.
I felt a new over-arching joyfulness. Everything had changed. I could no longer rely on my past experience to explain my new state of being. I had to discover and remap my way forward. I was in love with living, instead of being in love with love.
It took me a year and a half of intense self-questioning and diligent research with friends and on social media to find out what this new feeling of unshakeable bliss means.
From 2013 on, I used daily journaling to make sense of the uncharted, unknown, never-ending newness that seemed to have engulfed my identity.
In the end, it was clear that intensive searching, while it was informative and often painful, was pointless. There’s nothing to “out there” to find. I stopped, turned around, looked and saw. I had arrived in and made friends with my own heart.
I danced Biodanza every week for about six years till I had to pause classes for a heart condition. In this last year, since 2023, with my reconstructed health and fitness, I joined a local group who dance Biodanza with gifted and qualified facilitators, Rachel Bell and Angie Miller-Smith.
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My awakening heart burns golden consuming nothing – in sickness and in health – from the centre to the outermost edge
I do nothing to light the way.
The way is lit
The way is inexpressibly beautiful always
Love is the answer
to which no question exists
~ Love is present EveryNow
The View at 72+ 