While Gaga class offers a place to freely research, I find that in the process, I am also constantly struggling. I grapple with the verbal prompts that we work with, because the neural connections that we must make are new and unfamiliar to me. It is much like carrying out a task using the nondominant side of my body, or clasping my hands together with the other thumb on top. As a result, I experience new sensations and awaken the dormant areas of my body.

What I currently find to be especially challenging is making connections between opposites and extremes. Connecting horizontal to vertical forces. Connecting pleasure to pain. Letting go to receive more. Being simultaneously aware of internal sensations and external surroundings. Keeping effort to certain areas of the body. Letting go to explode. Giving and receiving both at once. Falling into floating in water. Hiding the beginning.

At times, they seem like impossible tasks, but perhaps they are meant to be impossible. Maybe we are supposed to be overwhelmed. Maybe failure is okay. And in this struggle, I find my mentality changing. I recognize and accept when I fail and simply try again. I attach less value and judgement to being able to master a prompt or skill quickly with relative ease.

In fact, I am beginning to wonder if mistakes even have to exist and if it is all in our perception and control. For example, Saar often says matter-of-factly, “If you fall, you fall.” But it is about the way we fall. By riding the fall, we harvest that movement for investing into something new, thus, reappropriating a would-have-been mistake. By opening our bodies to possibility and new perspectives, we are able to perceive the moment as something other than just falling. I can fall, but I don’t have to.