Day 46: Body and Soul

Three days with two 8-year-olds at non-stop activities take a toll on the body. The water park especially breathed life into body parts I'd long forgotten I have. So for two days now, I've felt nooks and crannies, joints that want oiling, muscles longing for massage. Then today, on the warmest day so far this summer, I spent six hours assisting at a singing workshop in town.

My goal for the three day workshop is to be in my body and let the singing arise from there. It's taken me years to get to this point and today the lightbulb finally switched on. It's that sing walking I wrote about in an earlier blog entry. Earphones securely in, I spent our lunch break walking around Söder singing from the gut, smiling at passersby and ignoring completely any strange looks I got.

It was like being transported back in time, to JHS and Mr. Patterson's chorus class. The class that stuck together for three years, from seventh to ninth grade. A time when we sang because singing was a natural part of our days. A time of expression because expressing was so self-evident. It wouldn't have occurred to us not to sing. That energy, that focus and self-confidence, that fun, is what I am on my way toward recovering. And it's all in the body, in movement, in singing for singing's sake. In singing to fill the soul.