This experience was going to be somewhat different and maybe 'out of concept', but then again my concept for this is flexible and based on intuition and desire.
It had been 5 years probably since I had seen Anna for the last time. We used to study choreography together in Amsterdam. She didn't finish the program and moved back to Stockholm where she is from.
So naturally I wanted to use this opportunity to have a reunion with her and I thought it would be nice to do this in the frame of an intimate walk.
We had agreed by email to first meet up for brunch on Saturday together with her boyfriend Matti and possibly some more of her friends. And then later on go for a walk. She came to pick me up at the tram station skipping to meet me with a white shawl and a huge smile full of glee. This was Anna as I remembered her! She had always had this capability to go very wild with happiness and to burst out in carefree and childlike behavior without needing to warm up or feeling self-conscious about it. I had always loved that about her. We gave each other a squeezed hug and laughed with joy. I commented on the nice, green neighborhood and asked her how long she'd lived here. Immediately her expression changed. She explained me that it's actually her father's rental flat and that there are some issues with the landlord and that they don't know how long they can stay. I felt slightly bad for asking the wrong question and was impressed by how quickly her mood had changed. And then I remembered also that quality of hers - to change at a moment's notice from one mood to another. And I remembered that she could also be very serious and heavy at times. Later on during brunch she said something about these different sides of her personality and mentioned how for Matti it hadn't always been easy to deal with them. Matti made a very pleasant, balanced and patient first impression on me. He is into these special shoes with a special pouch for each toe and let me try them. He goes walking a lot in the forest with these shoes and says they make him feel much more grounded and connected with the earth.
While Anna and I were preparing brunch in the kitchen, Matti was mending a sweatshirt in the living room. I had brought fruit and greens for a green smoothie and a fruit salad. Anna felt like baking a plum pie and made fried patties with fresh zucchini and potatoes from the garden where she works as a gardener. She made a dough for the cake and was super efficient in preparing and whisking everything up in a flurry. The food was truly delicious and very healthy. We talked about a lot of things: Anna's job at the garden, her dance project with a Swedish choreographer who had also been a teacher at the SNDO (where we both studied) many years ago. We talked about the Swedish right wing government (I wasn't aware of this), about how much taxes they pay. If I remember correctly around 60%. Incredible! Matti said he doesn't mind paying so much taxes if the tax money is used in a good way which he thought had been the case but with this new right wing government things might change. This statement impressed me. We talked about Anna's and Matti's trip to Senegal where Anna was involved in a dance project at l'Ecole de sable. We talked about Anna's applied kinesiology treatments. She studied kinesiology after coming back to Sweden and started treating patients, but now she doesn't have the time for it because of her work in the garden. We dreamed about having a space which could be a health food cafe / practice for body work / dance studio / artist residency all at the same time. After some questioning I found out that Matti is on a spiritual path. He committed himself to a spiritual self-study program with a book called 'a course in miracles'. He also works as a caretaker of a man who is paralyzed. We talked about rainbow gatherings and permaculture. Lots of interesting stuff. . . I felt awake and inspired.
After the pie Matti said that he would go out for a walk and asked us if we were interested in joining. This took Anna a bit by surprise and me also, because the plan was to go for an 'intimate walk' with Anna. But since my concept is not very well-defined and in constant evolution, I thought why not go for an intimate walk with a couple. Since it was grey and not so warm outside Matti lent me a woolen vest from India. As we left the house I confessed to them that I actually have experience hanging out with couples and don't mind so much being the third wheel (or fifth wheel) which I think for some people can be rather uncomfortable. I also said that one couple I had hung out a lot with ended up breaking up. Which was true. But after I said it I felt a bit stupid for saying that. We were in good spirits I felt. Or at least I was. I felt very talkative and light. I was laughing a lot and making jokes which I don't do so often. Matti was the most quiet of us all. There were times when I thought maybe I'm too loud and speaking too much. But I didn't want to get overly self-conscious and worry about the dynamics in this triangle walk too much. I realized that my main desire and wish was to reconnect with Anna which felt natural and not difficult at all. Anna said that she was concerned about giving enough attention to the two of us. I said she shouldn't stress, that we're both doing just fine. On an open field we spotted a dog and its owner. Anna started petting the dog, then I petted the dog. And Matti also petted him. And then the dog put his muzzle in Mattis crotch and was hiding from the world there for a while. Out of the blue I asked them if they were thinking of having children. I think this question startled them somewhat. After a long silence they said they hadn't taken the time to talk about it. Again I felt I had probably asked the wrong question and decided to stop sticking my nose into their couple intimacy.
Matti discovered a nearby forest on some ap on his iphone. We decided to check it out and walked past some typical colorful Swedish cottage style houses. The forest was leading up to a small hill. We walked up a trail which was wet and had a little brook running down it. On the way up that trail we found some berries and Anna told us an anecdote from her childhood when her sister had made her eat poisonous berries and her aunt had made her throw them up. She always used to eat everything she could find as a child - all kinds of berries and plants - this is a way of getting intimate with one's environment too. This made me think of a practice I had learned in India: vamana dauti. It's a gastric cleanse. One drinks 1 or 2 liters of salt water first thing in the morning, swooshes it around in one's stomach and then sticks one's finger down one's throat and regurgitates the water mixed with possibly some leftover putrified food of the stomach. I had found the practice very difficult and invasive. But one morning when I managed to throw up almost all of the water I felt very clear and light.
Matti walked a bit ahead of us and said he was looking for a vantage point. Anna and I were jokingly saying that it would be good to find an advantage point where the real intimacy could start. We had a nice way of laughing about the intimacy project together. Laughing is a great valve and medicine. And it creates immediate connection if both parties are truly engaged in it.
It was a actually a very beautiful forest with smooth rocks overgrown with moss. On some of the bare rocks up at our self-appointed vantage point I proposed to do the being present in silence exercise. Since it was a bit wet, we didn't sit down but squatted instead. Squatting in silence for ten minutes isn't super comfortable for most Westerners and some small adjustments and repositioning became part of the ritual. I felt like we were posing for a Swedish fashion magazine's autumn collection. Certain squatting positions looked really awkward and I think it was more these funny positions that made us crack up and less the feeling shy about looking at each other in silence. After a while Anna picked up a tiny little baby slug on her index finger. She stood up with the slug and we all did the same and zoomed in on him. It made a little tiny movement as though it was massaging Anna's finger tip. Anna said she could feel him move and was wondering if the slug could feel her movement. Anna then passed the slug on to my index finger and we kept observing it like scientists. I passed the slug on to Matti. This ritual felt like a sequel to the dog petting earlier on the field. On Matti's finger the slug hesitantly let out his antenna to feel if it was safe to continue his journey. After the slug ritual we walked over to the real vantage point and could see a giant ice-hockey stadium in the shape of a globe not too far away. It was already getting a bit dark and we decided to walk back and go grab something to eat. Anna tends to get cranky if she gets hungry because of her low blood sugar. As we walked back through some fields with trees the sun came out just as it was going down. This colored the leaves of the tree golden and it was like a small miracle. I was awed. We walked through a big garden where city people can rent patches of soil to plant flowers, herbs and vegetables. This garden too seemed enchanted in these last rays of evening sunlight. In the end we decided to go and cook something at Anna's flat. I did the afternoon's dishes while Matti made some quinoa and Anna cooked cabbage and soy beans and baked some baby eggplant with olive oil and sesame seeds in the oven. While the things were cooking and baking, Anna and Matti had a rest on the bed and I lay down on the floor and massaged my sacrum.
The food was once more scrumptious. We got to talking about teaching and Matti voiced his opinion that one shouldn't start teaching others before one isn't ready to really hold a class and deal competently with whatever comes up in a student. Since I had started teaching yoga after completing a one-month 200hour teacher training, I felt compelled to say something and expressed my opinion that one shouldn't have too high expectations of a teacher and that I often found myself learning more from somebody who is down to earth and human and not afraid to expose their own shortcomings as opposed to the perfect guru. This slight difference in opinion led to a lengthy discussion and became quickly very personal between Anna and Matti . . . to the point where I couldn't follow anymore and felt that there were some unresolved issues of their relationship dynamic coming to the surface and taking over the course of the conversation. Before I knew it it had turned into a quite personal and edgy dialogue between the two of them which actually made me feel rather uncomfortable. I wanted to sneak out and do the dishes but didn't really find the right moment for it, but on the other hand I also felt there was something at stake from which I might learn an important lesson. I felt I should try to mediate this argument and not let it escalate too much and at the same time I thought it was actually something they had to resolve amongst them. There were moments when I felt both Anna and Matti were close to tears and I was suffering with them but couldn't find the right words or action to ease the situation. When there finally was a moment for clearing the table and moving to the kitchen, I was relieved to be leaving. Yet a guilty feeling of having cowardly backed out on a commitment lingered with me on the journey back home. I hadn't been able to competently deal with whatever comes up in a situation that had gotten far too intimate for me.
It had been 5 years probably since I had seen Anna for the last time. We used to study choreography together in Amsterdam. She didn't finish the program and moved back to Stockholm where she is from.
So naturally I wanted to use this opportunity to have a reunion with her and I thought it would be nice to do this in the frame of an intimate walk.
We had agreed by email to first meet up for brunch on Saturday together with her boyfriend Matti and possibly some more of her friends. And then later on go for a walk. She came to pick me up at the tram station skipping to meet me with a white shawl and a huge smile full of glee. This was Anna as I remembered her! She had always had this capability to go very wild with happiness and to burst out in carefree and childlike behavior without needing to warm up or feeling self-conscious about it. I had always loved that about her. We gave each other a squeezed hug and laughed with joy. I commented on the nice, green neighborhood and asked her how long she'd lived here. Immediately her expression changed. She explained me that it's actually her father's rental flat and that there are some issues with the landlord and that they don't know how long they can stay. I felt slightly bad for asking the wrong question and was impressed by how quickly her mood had changed. And then I remembered also that quality of hers - to change at a moment's notice from one mood to another. And I remembered that she could also be very serious and heavy at times. Later on during brunch she said something about these different sides of her personality and mentioned how for Matti it hadn't always been easy to deal with them. Matti made a very pleasant, balanced and patient first impression on me. He is into these special shoes with a special pouch for each toe and let me try them. He goes walking a lot in the forest with these shoes and says they make him feel much more grounded and connected with the earth.
While Anna and I were preparing brunch in the kitchen, Matti was mending a sweatshirt in the living room. I had brought fruit and greens for a green smoothie and a fruit salad. Anna felt like baking a plum pie and made fried patties with fresh zucchini and potatoes from the garden where she works as a gardener. She made a dough for the cake and was super efficient in preparing and whisking everything up in a flurry. The food was truly delicious and very healthy. We talked about a lot of things: Anna's job at the garden, her dance project with a Swedish choreographer who had also been a teacher at the SNDO (where we both studied) many years ago. We talked about the Swedish right wing government (I wasn't aware of this), about how much taxes they pay. If I remember correctly around 60%. Incredible! Matti said he doesn't mind paying so much taxes if the tax money is used in a good way which he thought had been the case but with this new right wing government things might change. This statement impressed me. We talked about Anna's and Matti's trip to Senegal where Anna was involved in a dance project at l'Ecole de sable. We talked about Anna's applied kinesiology treatments. She studied kinesiology after coming back to Sweden and started treating patients, but now she doesn't have the time for it because of her work in the garden. We dreamed about having a space which could be a health food cafe / practice for body work / dance studio / artist residency all at the same time. After some questioning I found out that Matti is on a spiritual path. He committed himself to a spiritual self-study program with a book called 'a course in miracles'. He also works as a caretaker of a man who is paralyzed. We talked about rainbow gatherings and permaculture. Lots of interesting stuff. . . I felt awake and inspired.
After the pie Matti said that he would go out for a walk and asked us if we were interested in joining. This took Anna a bit by surprise and me also, because the plan was to go for an 'intimate walk' with Anna. But since my concept is not very well-defined and in constant evolution, I thought why not go for an intimate walk with a couple. Since it was grey and not so warm outside Matti lent me a woolen vest from India. As we left the house I confessed to them that I actually have experience hanging out with couples and don't mind so much being the third wheel (or fifth wheel) which I think for some people can be rather uncomfortable. I also said that one couple I had hung out a lot with ended up breaking up. Which was true. But after I said it I felt a bit stupid for saying that. We were in good spirits I felt. Or at least I was. I felt very talkative and light. I was laughing a lot and making jokes which I don't do so often. Matti was the most quiet of us all. There were times when I thought maybe I'm too loud and speaking too much. But I didn't want to get overly self-conscious and worry about the dynamics in this triangle walk too much. I realized that my main desire and wish was to reconnect with Anna which felt natural and not difficult at all. Anna said that she was concerned about giving enough attention to the two of us. I said she shouldn't stress, that we're both doing just fine. On an open field we spotted a dog and its owner. Anna started petting the dog, then I petted the dog. And Matti also petted him. And then the dog put his muzzle in Mattis crotch and was hiding from the world there for a while. Out of the blue I asked them if they were thinking of having children. I think this question startled them somewhat. After a long silence they said they hadn't taken the time to talk about it. Again I felt I had probably asked the wrong question and decided to stop sticking my nose into their couple intimacy.
Matti discovered a nearby forest on some ap on his iphone. We decided to check it out and walked past some typical colorful Swedish cottage style houses. The forest was leading up to a small hill. We walked up a trail which was wet and had a little brook running down it. On the way up that trail we found some berries and Anna told us an anecdote from her childhood when her sister had made her eat poisonous berries and her aunt had made her throw them up. She always used to eat everything she could find as a child - all kinds of berries and plants - this is a way of getting intimate with one's environment too. This made me think of a practice I had learned in India: vamana dauti. It's a gastric cleanse. One drinks 1 or 2 liters of salt water first thing in the morning, swooshes it around in one's stomach and then sticks one's finger down one's throat and regurgitates the water mixed with possibly some leftover putrified food of the stomach. I had found the practice very difficult and invasive. But one morning when I managed to throw up almost all of the water I felt very clear and light.
Matti walked a bit ahead of us and said he was looking for a vantage point. Anna and I were jokingly saying that it would be good to find an advantage point where the real intimacy could start. We had a nice way of laughing about the intimacy project together. Laughing is a great valve and medicine. And it creates immediate connection if both parties are truly engaged in it.
It was a actually a very beautiful forest with smooth rocks overgrown with moss. On some of the bare rocks up at our self-appointed vantage point I proposed to do the being present in silence exercise. Since it was a bit wet, we didn't sit down but squatted instead. Squatting in silence for ten minutes isn't super comfortable for most Westerners and some small adjustments and repositioning became part of the ritual. I felt like we were posing for a Swedish fashion magazine's autumn collection. Certain squatting positions looked really awkward and I think it was more these funny positions that made us crack up and less the feeling shy about looking at each other in silence. After a while Anna picked up a tiny little baby slug on her index finger. She stood up with the slug and we all did the same and zoomed in on him. It made a little tiny movement as though it was massaging Anna's finger tip. Anna said she could feel him move and was wondering if the slug could feel her movement. Anna then passed the slug on to my index finger and we kept observing it like scientists. I passed the slug on to Matti. This ritual felt like a sequel to the dog petting earlier on the field. On Matti's finger the slug hesitantly let out his antenna to feel if it was safe to continue his journey. After the slug ritual we walked over to the real vantage point and could see a giant ice-hockey stadium in the shape of a globe not too far away. It was already getting a bit dark and we decided to walk back and go grab something to eat. Anna tends to get cranky if she gets hungry because of her low blood sugar. As we walked back through some fields with trees the sun came out just as it was going down. This colored the leaves of the tree golden and it was like a small miracle. I was awed. We walked through a big garden where city people can rent patches of soil to plant flowers, herbs and vegetables. This garden too seemed enchanted in these last rays of evening sunlight. In the end we decided to go and cook something at Anna's flat. I did the afternoon's dishes while Matti made some quinoa and Anna cooked cabbage and soy beans and baked some baby eggplant with olive oil and sesame seeds in the oven. While the things were cooking and baking, Anna and Matti had a rest on the bed and I lay down on the floor and massaged my sacrum.
The food was once more scrumptious. We got to talking about teaching and Matti voiced his opinion that one shouldn't start teaching others before one isn't ready to really hold a class and deal competently with whatever comes up in a student. Since I had started teaching yoga after completing a one-month 200hour teacher training, I felt compelled to say something and expressed my opinion that one shouldn't have too high expectations of a teacher and that I often found myself learning more from somebody who is down to earth and human and not afraid to expose their own shortcomings as opposed to the perfect guru. This slight difference in opinion led to a lengthy discussion and became quickly very personal between Anna and Matti . . . to the point where I couldn't follow anymore and felt that there were some unresolved issues of their relationship dynamic coming to the surface and taking over the course of the conversation. Before I knew it it had turned into a quite personal and edgy dialogue between the two of them which actually made me feel rather uncomfortable. I wanted to sneak out and do the dishes but didn't really find the right moment for it, but on the other hand I also felt there was something at stake from which I might learn an important lesson. I felt I should try to mediate this argument and not let it escalate too much and at the same time I thought it was actually something they had to resolve amongst them. There were moments when I felt both Anna and Matti were close to tears and I was suffering with them but couldn't find the right words or action to ease the situation. When there finally was a moment for clearing the table and moving to the kitchen, I was relieved to be leaving. Yet a guilty feeling of having cowardly backed out on a commitment lingered with me on the journey back home. I hadn't been able to competently deal with whatever comes up in a situation that had gotten far too intimate for me.
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