Last week my heel suddenly started to hurt so much that I couldn't put any weight on it. At first I ignored it, then I decided to laugh at it. I even choreographed a little ditty on one foot to keep myself happy. But then I got depressed. For more than half a century I've been able to do what I wanted with my body.  I NEVER got injured. Yet, this was my second injury in a year. In my mid fifties I suddenly felt incredibly fallible. For about a week I was in the dumps. I just felt uninspired to do anything and unmotivated to move. 

Now let me be honest. My body has been pretty creaky and painful for quite a few years now. In my forties I discovered that  arthritis in my hips could make getting up in the morning pretty tough. Looking like a 90 year old when I step out of bed became routine. That's when I started my morning routine. I started doing 5 minutes of yoga in the morning so I could get moving. I had never done this and I thought I didn't have the discipline. But 5 minutes is nothing...and I forced myself to do it every day. It didn't matter what I did - no judgment - just 5 minutes of yoga. Then 5 minutes turned into 15 minutes and that into 20 minutes. And it really helped me get moving again. 

So why did the hurt heel bug me so much and what does it have to do with dancing at 5 am? Well the injury felt unpredictable - like it was out of my control. I couldn't come up with a solution to make it better. I just had to wait it out. And so my regular morning routine suddenly felt like a chore. It felt forced and unpleasant. And I started to feel old and uninspired. I was spending more time just curled up in child's pose than actually moving.

So yesterday morning I tried something new to get past my own pity party. Instead of doing my regular routine, my push ups and my sun salutes, and warrior twos, and my back bends... I turned on music (from my "I'm so Hip" collection) and stood there at 5am dancing gently to the beat, trying not to judge myself. I danced slowly and spazzily. I just felt the music in my bones and moved. I just let my fallible body guide me. Closed eyes... old lady dancing by candlelight at 5am before she goes to work.... 

And my heel is slowly healing. Just tuning in to my body and letting it guide me is not easy - but it is important. Remembering to have fun and keep it simple leads me to do what I need to do. Even at 5am.

Last week, on a dark and gloomy Tuesday in late February, Alison and I were feeling particularly stuck. We were supposed to rehearse - but we were feeling uncreative and uninspired. That's when Alison said to Karen, "Let's meet at the park!" I could think of a thousand excuses, "Oh God, it's too dark... It's cold...I'm in my work clothes...I'm tired..." But, I didn't say anything. And we did it. We met at Sunset Park just after the sun had gone down.

One of the things that we have found will really jumpstart our creative juices when we are stuck in a rut is to play. It's hard to play when you are an adult. If we want to do yoga we go to a yoga class or if we want "learn" to dance we go to a dance class. We almost never just experiment on our own. We want someone to teach us or guide us. We feel we aren't disciplined enough to have our own practice or knowledgeable enough to learn a certain move or string of moves. But no one knows our bodies like we do. We are our own true experts!

Alison and I will sometimes choreograph by just improvising to Joe's music. We'll let the music move us for a while until we get into the groove - until that little part of our brains that is constantly judging us quiets down. It quiets down because we go into play mode. We laugh, we do things that are definitely awkward and probably look pretty stupid. We goad each other and challenge each other.  Joe will change the music up a bit to remind us to move differently. Ninety five percent of what we do is really just playing, fooling around, experimenting... but 5% ends up being a gem. A tiny bit of gold that we can keep and then grow into something else. Sometimes we'll video ourselves and then watch the video over a Margarita or two, laughing, hoping to find something that will inspire us.

And, sometimes we'll go to different places, a park, the woods, our kitchen, or a bridge to explore movement. The change of scenery tricks our minds into coming up with something new. And it tricks our minds into temporarily throwing away judgement, because if that part of our minds is on alert, then it becomes impossible to create anything.

Playing is easy if you don't think about it too much. It's simple, productive, and it can get you out of a February, winter funk!