Steps to follow

I broke my glasses frame beyond repair, making me walk with extra care.

The beauty outside comes into our souls through our eyes, and the bluebells blooming in the hills of Dartington this season are just a small, wondrous example. It is a comforting, exhilarating sense. Seeing is also crucial for our balance and orientation.

The insecurity in my walks comes from the blurred world around me, and a sense of losing identity. After all, I have worn glasses for decades. They enhance my appearance, and not wearing them feels like walking the streets naked.

As I write and reflect on this, I realise that the subpar quality of my walk may not solely be attributed to my diminished visual acuity.

On my walks, my past comes, my health shows, and thoughts, emotions, and feelings are a constant company.

It’s perhaps easier to navigate this journey by pointing out where I want to be.

Step one - Trusting my body

For a few days, I found myself meticulously calculating my steps. There is a great deal of tension in that way of moving, a lack of confidence almost akin to the early stages of learning tango, where beginners often believe that failing is not part of the dance.

Basic control and a sense of balance are essential, but I am gradually developing a greater trust in my body’s capabilities and ability to respond wisely to any terrain.

Step two - Arriving

I want to be here, present. Landing is arriving fully. I can only make the next step if my moving leg lands entirely. The ground provides the reassurance and energy we require to move forward.

While pushing the floor is part of the process, it is ultimately about receiving the immense gift of the solid earth.

Step three - Letting go of agendas

Generally, I know roughly where I’m going, but I am also convinced that my paths don’t need to be fixed. They cannot be. Life is too vast and mysterious to presume that the shopping centre will always be there.

I left home one morning to buy bread when an exultant friend showed up in the street and asked if I had a minute to spare. When I got to her flat, she gave me a bag with the bread she had made that morning.

I’m guessing the supermarket is still there, but I didn’t check that day.

Step four - From the core

One day, a tango teacher was trying to tell me how to signal a forward movement to my partner. I was dancing with someone also eager to learn, but I was constantly stepping on her feet and losing mine and her balance.

“It’s an inner thing”, the teacher finally said.

Let your legs follow your core. That’s how you communicate, not by pushing, dragging, or manipulating others, but by moving with an intimate knowledge of where you stand and what intention lives in your heart.

Step five - Attuning

Pauses are crucial to my journey. Stopping regularly helps me to calibrate, reorient and recover pace.

Last week, I went into a period of solitude and introspection. During this time, I refrained from social interactions and community events. Sometimes, the demands of external voices and expectations can be too loud, and my soul needs stillness to remember its rhythm.

I love the almost imperceptible movement of tango dancers when they collect.

It happens in a split second and provides pace and space for attuning.

Step six - Relaxed

Trauma or hurtful past experiences might show in our cadence and level of confidence when we walk.

In contrast, walking fully relaxed with a healed nervous system exudes grace. We humans often hold incomplete and detrimental energies within our bodies. Other animals deal with these energies by running away, fighting, or shaking themselves, which helps them to return to a state of safety. Understanding how trauma works and practising somatic exercises make a dramatic difference to our dance.

Step seven - Walking in the dark

I have danced with my eyes closed. There have been occasions in my tango practice or during 5Rhythms sessions when surrendering happened. In those exquisite moments, I am in flow.

I want that level of trust more often than not. I crave the capacity to walk and dance with trust and abandon even in the dark.

Nobody puts it better than Saint John of the Cross in his poem Dark Night of the Soul:

In summary 

The kind of walking I aspire to comes from the core, with constant listening to my body, relaxed, present and trusting that, in the end, I am guided.

Stay attuned
Jesus Acosta

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Intention, journey and landing