There’s a 90s song I’ve loved ever since I heard it decades ago. It’s called U Got to Let the Music by a band called Capella.
I was listening to it last night and was so struck by it again. It’s not really the music that matters, although I love it. It’s really about the lyric that’s being repeated:
U got 2 let the music
U got 2 let the music
U 2 let the music
Move your feet
As soon as I heard it, it felt like something inside clicked in place. Like I was recognizing an ancient truth wrapped in modern dance music.
What I feel inside when I listen to it is something like this: You have to allow the music to hold you so that dancing becomes effortless. Not thought about, not choreographed, but moving your feet as a natural outcome of surrendering to the music.
This is an example of what I’ve come to call the spiral-circle field. The circle holds. It’s a container, it’s structure: the music. The circle gives a home, the soil from which to grow to the spiral, which is activity: dancing. Where the spiral and circle meet is the field: an external place where you listen to music, let go, and are moved to dance. Or an internal place where you recognize a truth and allow yourself to be moved by it.
It can also move the other way where music is the spiral instead of the circle, the activity. And the circle that holds it can be you, listening quietly on your headphones at night in the dark.
The spiral and the circle aren’t just opposites, they are also in relationship. And the field is the hinge, the meeting place. The spiral-circle is like the upper and lower arm, with the elbow joint being the field. An arm is made of parts, but it’s also one unit. The lower arm, upper arm and elbow work together, they are a system.
We don’t tend to think about whether we favor our upper or lower arm. But we do spend time thinking about which one is better: action or rest. Force or flow. Sound or silence.
You can see them as opposites. But another way of looking is seeing them as linked, as extremes of a continuum, as a system, as movement, as a freedom to go back and forth between. And when you do, you create more balance.
You can choose one over the other in a certain situation and choose the other over the one in the next moment. Going to the extremes is not necessary either, you can find a comfortable place anywhere on the continuum.
So in the event you ever feel stuck, embrace where you are. It’s not wrong, never wrong. It’s a part of a larger whole you may not be able to see yet. Movement will come when you’re flexible between zooming in and zooming out. When you allow yourself to be the tree and the forest. The upper arm and the lower arm. Your particular movement may be a section of a beautiful composition. Let the music move your feet.
✿ Image of young woman dancing joyfully by Vitaly Gariev via Pexels