23. Je suis

In the early seventies, I attended the Dalcroze School of Music in New York City for one or two years. This was a music method developed by Emile Jaques-Dalcroze that connects music, movement, mind, and body.

One of the most powerful exercises we did was accomplished in three steps. I stood in a circle with others, standing tall, hands at my side. First step: I take a forward step with my left food and raise both hands to shoulder height with hands in a fist saying “Je.” Second step: I take another forward step with the right food as I fluidly move my arms down my side with hands still in fists and parallel to the floor, saying “suis”. Third step: The left food comes up to the same place as the right food, again standing tall and knowing “I am!”

We would do it again and again in the Dalcroze movement class—clearly saying “Je suis” (I am) over and over again.

I tried it this morning. And it felt good. I felt that I was moving through my space as a strong and capable woman.

Through the years I have learned that it is true. It is true that I AM. And when in doubt, I am reminded by this exercise of forty years ago that I still can take the steps, can stand tall, and let my body and the rhythm of the movement remind me of my reality.

22. Absolutes often wrong

When my four children were young (four within six years), they often came to me with always, and everyone, and never. You always let him do that and not me. Everyone has that toy except me. I never get to go.

I would carefully explain that when they used an absolute, they were often wrong. I don’t always let him do that. Everyone doesn’t have that toy. And you sometimes get to go.

I made the mistake once of saying, “You know when you use absolutes, you are always wrong.” Oops.

It’s been interesting for me to watch myself and the absolutes and try to catch the times when I resort to them. And I gently interrupt others who use them, because often they are wrong. And I learn in the process.

21. Energy Power of music

When I met my second cousin Paula after a number of years of being out of contact with her, one of the stories she told me was of the house she grew up in as one of eight children.

She said that the children would be sleeping in on a Saturday morning, but Saturday was clean-the-house day and to get things going her mother, Norma, would turn on the record-player, blasting out a Sousa march and shouting “It’s Saturday, time to get cleaning, everybody up and let’s go!”  They would start out a little grumbly, grab some breakfast, and before they knew it, the music energized them and they would all be off to accomplishing a clean house.

I bought a Sousa CD and tried it. What I learned was—it works. The music in its own energy can energize me!

20. Ask for What You Want Today

In one of my early sessions of participating in group therapy, I started to write songs once I got home. One of my early songs was Ask For What You Want Today. It seems like something obvious but I discovered that I was hoping that people close to me would read my mind and guess what I wanted and it was frustrating to me when that didn’t happen (at least not very often).

So I learned to take responsibility because that’s what it came down to—me asking for what I want and me taking charge of my very own life.

—–

Ask for what you want today,

Find for yourself another way.

Ask yourself what you want to do,

Find the time to make it come true,

In the search you find—you.

Ask for what you want today.

Find for yourself another way.

—

How many times have you done what would please?

How many times have you done what everyone agrees

Is the best thing for you to do?

—

How many times have you doubted what you thought?

How many times have you simply gone ahead and bought

What someone else says is true?

—

How many times have you said “I cannot do

What I would like, ‘cause I’ve learned so well that it is true

That what I want has to be last”?

—

How many times have you not asked the words?

How many times have you imagined that you heard

That the answer was clearly “No”?

—

Ask for what you want today…..

© Copyright 1983 by Ann Freeman Price

19. New Way to Start the Day

I was visiting my daughter with her five young children. I had slept on the livingroom couch and two children were already doing school work at the diningroom table when I woke up. The two-year-old was up and one of the older children fixed her a bottle. She came to the couch and climbed up and we sat together—no talking, just quiet and hanging out with Mary and her Ba-Ba. I discovered that it was a delightful way to start a day.

18. Walter Wink’s Chant

Years ago I took a one-week course at Union Theological School with Walter Wink and June Keener-Wink. At one point in the course Walter asked us to sit on the floor and get as comfortable as we could. He taught us a chant and then said that we were going to repeat it over and over again for thirty minutes. The four lines of the chant take twenty seconds to sing, so each minute you sing it three times and over thirty minutes, you sing it ninety times. It wasn’t actually Walter’s chant. I think it was Native American, but for me it is always associated with him. The words are:

Oh great spirit,

Earth, sun, sky and sea,

You are inside,

And all around me.

It was wonderful. I relaxed into it. It felt like it got deeper and deeper inside of me.  The interesting thing is that in the days and even weeks to come, when I wasn’t even thinking about it, that chant would emerge and I’d find myself humming it or singing it. It was just there.

And I learned that music can deepen and become a part of you.

17. The Wind is blowing

Summer camp and Debbie was the counselor for the four-year-olds. There was a line for the bathroom and suddenly the little four-year-old boy who would be next started to cry loudly. Debbie came over quickly and said, “Tony whatever is the matter?” Tony said through his tears. “I don’t want to wait. I want to go to the bathroom NOW.” Debbie assured him it would just be a few minutes.

The bathroom door opened, the other child came out, and Tony went in.  Debbie stood, waiting for him, and suddenly his tears started again.  She opened the door and he stood there crying and crying.  Debbie said, “Tony, you’re having your turn now.  What’s the matter?”

Tony looked up at the open window in the bathroom and the curtain that was blowing in the breeze.  He said, as he continued to cry, “The curtain is blowing.  The curtain is blowing.”

Debbie knelt down and said, “Tony, the curtain is blowing because the wind is blowing.  We can’t stop the wind from blowing.”

Tony’s crying accelerated as he sobbed, “But I don’t like the wind blowing.  I don’t like it at all!”

—–

I so identified with this four-year-old. I have recognized all the times when I have suddenly wanted something NOW. Or the other times when something is happening and I do not like it at all. Those are the times when I need a gentle camp counselor. And I have learned that sometimes I’m lucky and I have someone like that counselor, and sometimes I don’t and I just have to deal.

16. Let the negative stories go

Some of these learnings are not from years and years ago—they are things I’m working on in present time. I was at a lunch just a month or so ago and was aware that I was telling a negative story about someone—and it happened two years ago. As I drove away from that luncheon, I thought—how many years Ann, are you going to tell that story and why. And the big “why” is: Why don’t you let it go?

And then last night talking on the phone to someone who hadn’t heard that particular story, I told it again. And once I was off the phone, I thought again—why tell it? Let it go.

I’m not sure that I need to tell it at all but certainly the first time might be enough.

15. It’s good to be where you know where you are

In 1972 our family took a cross-country camping trip. Starting from Pomona, NY, we went nine thousand miles as far west as Glacier Park and Yellowstone Park, camped at an Indian Reservation in the Dakotas, and finally arrived back on Camp Hill Road in Pomona again. Dara, the youngest of four children, was seven years old and as she woke up and looked around she said, “It’s so good to be where you know where you are.”

There have been times in my life when I knew where I was and times when I didn’t, but I have learned that when I know where I am, it’s good.

14. Pull over and say a prayer

I learned this from one of my daughters, whose husband was a firefighter until his early retirement. She has five young children (and three older ones) and when they hear a siren, they pull over and say a prayer—for the persons that the ambulance is going to help and for the emergency people themselves.

It isn’t automatic for me yet. The pulling over part is. When there’s a siren coming up behind me, I do slow down and pull over, and I’m still needing to remind myself that this is a good moment to pray. It might help me if I had five small voices in the car reminding me.

I usually pray when I pass an accident. It reminds me how quickly something can happen and your life is changed, and sometimes the lives of many others too.