Talking the Walk / feeling unpeeled

Last night I gave a talk about my Compostela walk.

It was a funny process for me, to dig up my writings and photos and try to connect to them again. It is such a different world from here…

I was also supposed to do the talk in January, but it got rescheduled, and then I specifically meant to talk about pain, because I had pulled a muscle in my arm; I wanted to talk about pain and negotiating with the body.

So last night was interesting – it was interesting, as in – I didn't try to entertain the audience.

In fact, it was after a 'hands-on-healing' session, and I was feeling a bit drained after that. In the past couple of weeks, I have reached a stage where I can feel people's auras. Nothing special – just that the chi under my hands float my hands up; the way I suppose hovercrafts function. I don't think I know yet how to disconnect properly though.

Anyway, so I was tired, and so I was feeling a bit introverted. So I didn't project my energy out in the way I usually might. Oddly enough I think I allowed myself to be vulnerable in a way I don't in front of an audience.

I don't know how much the audience got from the talk; because my talk circled, the way conversations do. It was not constructed in the way one might do for a presentation; with "this is my point" and "here is what happens next". So I broke most of the rules I ask of my students when I teach essay writing. Perhaps too, I could have taken more from the audience-

Anyway.

I talked a lot; a tangle of different threads in my life: being rejected from Lecoq; sitting meditation. I don't know how relevant people found this stuff; I think the people who have had meditation experience knew what I was talking about and were with me.

We then did a Feldenkrais exercise on foot exploration, and then slow walking; where I evoked something like Thich Nhat Hanh's "Touching the Earth" exercise – walk an expression of your blood ancestors, walk as an expression of your teachers; walk as an expression of the earth… my grandfather, oddly enough, came up a couple of time in my talk; about his death the summer before I went walking; and the idea of walking for our ancestors.

I think people enjoyed that part: the walking in the room was very concentrated.
I sang 'Climb Every Mountain' for them; sang imperfectly- but I gave it what I had.

I felt quite fragile afterwards. Instead of going to my grandmother's (where I camp out when I am in town) I went all the way home. I have not been home enough this week, and being home nourishes me. Besides, travelling helped me shake some things off.