For a Girl

For a Girl by Aisha Kuryana"Impermanence exists within every material layer, constantly forming and dissolving over the course of a season, of a life. My colourful clothes – the pieces I spent months restoring after a fire took my home. Feeling their weight in every possible way.Of course I’m grateful to still have them. But there’s something freeing about loosening your attachment to things, even briefly. What it feels like to let go of the costumes I hide inside. The pressure to look beautiful, expressive, put together. The performance of being perceived.A reminder that even what feels fixed will eventually shift, soften, and make way for something new. And you will feel lighter. Like a ray of light. "

I write this curled up on my bed, early on a freezing winter morning. The past few months I’ve met almost all of my fears head on. My home, my career, my body and everything in between has slapped me in the face and demanded my attention. 

One of the guiding lights in this time has been my residency at Sense Of Self. As Resident Prune, every Friday at 5pm I would turn up, put my phone away and slow down in every way. I stretched, I scrubbed and I meditated. It kept me tender and grounded and human, while giving me space to reflect, heal and deepen my dance practice.

I have been thinking a lot about what practice means when the ground itself feels unstable, and what it means to keep returning to your body when life is asking so much of you. Taking time for yourself requires planning and fierce protection – this is the hardest part for me, but I am learning slowly.

This whole experience has been about loosening my grip on always doing. I am grateful that my body has received rest, and for the deep knowing that I need slower systems and time to just be. More than anything this residency has taught me that healing does not always arrive as some grand transformation, and sometimes it looks like the small ritual of showing up at the same time each week, breathing deeper than you did the day before, and allowing yourself to be held by something simple.

The days are getting shorter and as the Winter Solstice approaches, I remember an ancient promise. If we dance through the darkest night, we give way to more light. A new day where I surrender to whatever comes.