Six weeks ago I was running in the woods and thinking about what I had seen one of my chickens do, which was to leap up in the lightest and most graceful of ways. I was trying this as I jumped over things in the forest. It was fun. I felt so alive and young. Then, WHAM! I was on the ground. Somehow as I was leaping over a log, one foot stepped on a branch fixing it into the earth while my other leg came down on top of it. Pain shot up my core and for a minute I could not breathe. I was caught so unawares. That alone made me sob.

When I looked down at my shin, I swear I saw bone. It was grotesque. I couldn’t bear to look at it so when I got home I put a band-aid on it without even cleaning it out. I left the band-aid on for two weeks. While I felt an almost continuous sensation there, I just could not look at it. Finally, in the presence of other people, I did look. It was a little gross, but getting better. I regularly showed “my wound” to my husband like I was a kid with a boo-boo. He would put on his concerned face. This helped. Then the scab came off, revealing a whole new level of wound underneath the scab on top. There is still a bruise which runs the lower half of my shin and is sore to the touch. But it too is healing. I am seeing that even though the worst is over, there are still some things I need to do to help this along.

This experience has paralleled for me the first real “wham” that we get in the world when we are young. The one that cuts the deepest simply because we were innocent to the possibility of its occurrence. At first, it feels like it’s too much for us, so we cover it up with false stories, behaviors and defenses because we are too afraid to look at it directly. And then slowly, if we are lucky and starting to wake up, we look beneath what we have covered up; hopefully in the presence of caring and compassionate people. We start to look at the hurt, becoming aware of what caused it along with noticing the ways that it has radiated out into our lives. And if we are smart, we learn to tend to ourselves lovingly; all the way to the end. No matter how long it takes.

This morning, I was out running the same loop. Just as I became aware of judging my body through cruel and misogynistic eyes, WHAM!  I’m back on the ground again. This time with bruised palms and a scraped knee. I start to cry. The thought immediately comes,  “I’ve gotta stop doing this to myself.”

The truth is, those original kid wounds were inflicted by others, and yes they cut deep. But, worse yet, are the wounds that we daily inflict upon ourselves.

Recently I was away at a dance gathering. At one point, we were asked to reflect upon why it is that we dance. Many, many reasons quickly came to mind. I feel more open and free when I dance. I feel more attuned to my body and connected to others when I dance. These reasons were all true, but were somehow less than the ineffable gift that dancing brings to me. After letting that question rattle around for a bit, the truest answer spontaneously came. I dance because I am more of who I most want to be.

I once heard of a tribal custom where when someone would fall ill, the healer would ask a series of questions. One of the questions was; “When was it that you stopped dancing?” Here, dancing can be viewed literally or metaphorically. Really what is being asked is, When was it that you stopped doing what it is that makes you feel most alive? Traditionally, that absence was recognized as a blueprint for illness and disease; a kind of soul-sickness that eventually makes its way into the body.

When I look back over my life, the times I was dancing reflected periods of both great freedom and a sense of belonging. So whether it was the years of ballet, dancing alone in my room, sneaking into clubs to dance when I was underage, teaching aerobics or finding my current dance form, I am never so charged with life as when I am dancing.

What is it that brings you most alive? This is not a should. This is not done as a means to an end. It is not a job you parlay into something else. It is, instead, something that lights you up from within. It is something you do just because of how it makes you feel, not because it gets you anything.

If you don’t know what it is for you, look back to childhood. Back then being charged with the sheer joy of doing what we enjoyed most of all was all we knew how to do.