This morning waking up, I had a thought of asking Jonathan Horan, Gabrielle’s son and my most important 5Rhythms teacher, if he could tell me something more about my home rhythm as I am still not sure about my home rhythm myself. Always this question … how do I know?

Then, while showering (the shower is my place to have brainwaves, insights, revelations) I had a deep deep experience of coming home. During our Teacher Refreshworkshop in Zagreb this month, we were asked in groups to come to the middle of the dance floor and dance our home rhythm, later the same for the shadow of our home rhythm…

I am so used to my decision that this is staccato, while I also hear people find me flowing… I have never been sure about my home rhythm… anyway I danced staccato as my home rhythm. To my surprise I saw a colleague dancing flow as her home rhythm, while I expected staccato because of her always being so clear. This observation shook me already up a bit: a rhythm one uses as an instrument in life is different from a home rhythm…

This morning, under the shower there started a movie playing in me, showing all pictures of me during my life, all in one rhythm… in one or two seconds hundreds of pictures in this one rhythm… a deep experience … in the rhythm of lyrical …

Tears came up, in me a deep sensation of landing, of coming home… release, relief, seeing…

Lyrical, the rhythm of which I thought would be the last option to be my home rhythm. Now this sounds already silly to me, but two hours ago this was still the case…

In the picture I saw myself growing up with a flowing mum and an shadowy staccato dad, no space, no other possibiliy than holding my breath and taking all possible shapes to fit in on one hand and staying true to  myself on the other… I was (am) creative, I create since I was born, but could never find it in one discipline, I shifted, shifted, shifted… classical ballet, beat ballet, jazz ballet, making cheese, candles, clothes, drawings, paintings, food (cooking, baking); finding my way with paper cuttings, knitting, frivolité, macrame, pitrites, papier-maché, clay modelling, etc. …

I had five professions, followed countless courses, studies, well… I could write a book about it, but I think you got it by now… shapeshifting is so close to me that I never recognised it… I do it all the time, in how I do my day, meet others, do my planning, built my life … though I actually never got it what was exactly meant with a shapeshifter…

I always thought I was good at moving with, adapting, flowing. I am able to, but what I am really good at is taking another shape… I have a shape to survive when I am with my family, I take a shape when I am in big groups, I take a shape when I am in uncomfortable situations … and when I do this too long I get ill, because I loose my true self in this… I don’t want a steady form, I don’t want to conform… My tendency to ‘behave’ is looking for the ‘right’ form to stay out of trouble … one of my shadows …

I totally dislike the shadow of lyrical, more than any other shadow. I thought because there’s so much going on in the world these days with all marketed ‘spiritual’ developments, guru’s, fake ecstatic, addictions … as if this were not the case with shadows of other rhythms…

Until now lyrical has been the most difficult rhythm for me to understand … too light (strict religious education)… this rhythm simply was not in my scope…I do embody flow, I do embody staccato… my home rhythm is lyrical… I can’t tell you what a deep shift this is in me…. finally seeing myself…it moves me to tears… coming home… this is a soul experience, a break through… I see myself from another perspective now.

As a child I had bronchitis, always, could not breathe, no air… air, space, endless space has always been a theme in my life. The best place in the world is that endless beach on Terschelling, that’s where I feel fully at home… what I do with my paintings is creating as much space as possible in 2D. My installation work in Zagreb… 5 papercuts as the basic and then I start shape shifting… I don’t think about it, it just happens… I can go on forever giving examples… also from what people gave me as feedback over the years… I just wasn’t able to listen, to let it in …

From this place I understand so much more from the workshop we did in Zagreb…which feels great, beyond my skin and fingers… feel a bit ashamed at the same time… how could I have been so blind? … the familiar voices in my head… I let them go for now…

Now the penny has dropped… not only the penny… I got the whole jackpot … I have to laugh at myself. That I didn’t see … now I do… it’s a huge permission, a liberation, a celebration …

Seeing, meeting myself from the perspective of lyrical is such a shift… and such a gift… so true… from pop into butterfly…
So here I am, in my true colors, with a lot of dots in my writing…

Soul Rebel 🙂