Chapter Three: The Way of the Body

“Relax, Lara, relax!” John’s voice echoed concernedly for the fourth time the following morning. “You must find the right bodily position to set you mind right.”

Lara shuffled her limbs, lips pressed tight, determined and silent. She was standing barefoot on the grass in the garden, while he circled around her, observing her movements and giving her instructions. They had been trying to achieve such “right” position, whatever John had in mind with that, for an hour already. The girl’s body was tense and uncoordinated, and each position she assumed seemed unnatural and crooked.

“Let us start again, from the beginning,“ John sighed deeply. “Stand up straight, please, with your feet apart. “ Lara sighed more deeply, rather discouraged. She straightened up and spread her feet a little.

“Straighten up your back,” instructed her John. She froze her back like a soldier on a parade. John reacted, “No, relax it a bit: don’t throw your belly ahead… relax your shoulders… not so much backwards…“ He was still not satisfied. Each limb, each part of her body behaved as if it had a will of its own and was doing its own thing regardless what Lara wanted it to do.

“Spread your feet in the width of your shoulders.” Lara spread her feet wide now, losing her balance. Again John reacted: “Not that much please, a bit less.“ He measured the size of the girl’s shoulders and drew marks on the ground. “This much. Right, now close your feet; look at them, are they parallel to each other?” She confirmed.

“Now,” continued John as her posture began to resemble what he had in mind, “concentrate on your toes, and rub them into the soil. Feel the earth, enjoy its touch. Let your toes glue to the earth, as if they are roots.“ He waited. “Now, imagine that there is a force, a liquid force, overflowing from the earth… imagine that you can link to the strength of the earth, like all plants with roots do: they draw their strength from the soil and they let it flow through their bodies. Let your toes-roots do that for you. Let the rest of your body relax into that flow.“

Lara blinked under the perspiration on her forehead, slightly bent at the waist to look at her feet, trying hard to imagine something flowing from the soil. John went on slowly.

“Unlock your knees, bend them just a bit… not that much, half of what you did just now… good. “ He sighed again. “Relax your hips… straighten up but let your waist be free… Relax your shoulders.“

While she was concentrating on one part of her body, Lara seemed to forget all other parts, and these would bend or contract as they liked. If she concentrated on her knees, her shoulders would stoop; if she moved on to the hips, her spine would curve either too far backwards or forward.

“Alright, that is enough for a first time. Sit down on the ground,“ invited her John in the end. Lara fell on the ground disappointed, with confused and unhappy expression. She looked at John questioningly from the grass.

“Lara,“ asked John thoughtfully, “can you remember any moment of peace in your life?“

She lowered her gaze and looked puzzled.

“Any moment of… harmony?“ he asked again, trying out different words that would perhaps resonate with her. He was close to a realisation. “Can you recall any moment of life when you felt completely at ease, when things were all in order? “ The total lack of response told John of a touching absence of any experience in her life close to the notions he had listed.

“I do not understand what you want from me!“ blinked Lara embarrassed and upset.

John let go of questioning her. “Dear child, it seems to me that neither your body nor your mind have ever experienced peace or harmony. In this way, when I ask you to relax, the instruction means nothing for you, no experience in you matches the word ‘to relax,’ as you have never had your body or mind fully relaxed. Unless you learn how to relax, you cannot learn how to contract. Relaxation means harvesting strength, contraction means concentrating that strength. Until you learn how to relax your body and mind, they would not be able to concentrate, and neither would be able to coordinate. Thus we would not be able to move on to more complex exercises... We must start elsewhere,“ he paused. “I want to train your mind more than your body, but obviously the mind won’t learn what the body has never experienced. “

Lara looked at him painfully.

“However, I have an idea. We can train your body to learn harmony, so that your mind can learn from your body. Would you like to go and train a sort of a sport with a group of other children?“

“Train what? “

“It is both an art and a discipline of the body, but also of the mind. It comes as a physical training at first and you do a lot of exercises together with a group of kids under a supervision of a very good trainer. We can go and see them train, and you can decide then if you like it or not. “

“But I don’t know anyone there...“

“That is alright. When other children first go there, they too do not know anyone. Anyhow, the trainer will give you so many exercises that you will not have the time or the strength to think about it,” teased her John anticipating her fears.

Lara’s spirits were low, but she agreed to visit the training group with John. Later on that afternoon, they walked over to a school in the neighbourhood. The school gym had its windows lit up, although the school building and its courtyard were quiet and deserted.

When they entered the gym, suddenly a voiceless tap of many feet surrounded them. Children of all ages were running inside, silently following a middle-aged woman with their eyes. The woman cried out shortly, and the children changed the direction of running. When she clapped her hands, they would all throw themselves on the ground, and the next clap would set them running at top speed again. She threw a passing glance at the visitors and went back to her work. John shoved Lara on a bench by the wall and gave her a sign to be quiet. They observed together.

Sweat was pouring down the children’s faces. The woman instructed them to take positions throughout the room. She yelled a strange sounding name, and everyone took up the same position: feet apart in the width of the shoulders, arms relaxed but palms open and fingers pressed tightly together like claws. Lara watched with her mouth gaping. The children were standing exactly like John had instructed her earlier that morning.

The woman started counting. At each count, the children would swiftly move into another position, punch and kick in the air and then freeze up like statues. Each movement was somehow extreme: extreme speed followed by extreme stillness; extreme strength followed by extreme ease. Lara observed their eyes. They were so intense. Almost wild eyes but still. The woman shouted out again and they all jumped in the air, with both legs trying to hit their palms at the level of the eyes. Some managed to produce a loud smack and bounced back on the ground, but most of them either missed their feet or fell on the floor. No one, however, said anything. The woman shouted again. The children repeated the jump, with more or less the same result.

“How do you like it?“ whispered John into Lara’s ear. She looked at him with eyes wide open, her hands grasping the edge of the bench.

“What are they doing?“ she whispered back.

“They are training a sequence of movements known as ‘naewa.’” John began to clarify the term. “There are a number of naewas, some long, some short; each is made out of a different sequence of movements. The naewas tell different stories; more importantly, each naewa has at least two stories in it: one for the body and another for the mind. This naewa is very old, hundreds of years old, and it has been a traditional exercise for students of the body-art discipline. The part they are exercising is about a forest at night, and that is the story for the body; the story for the mind is about bringing darkness out into the light. I’ll tell you each story as you learn the naewas, if you want to train here.“

“I want to,“ answered Lara with an avid gaze in her eyes.

She watched the children further. She was fascinated by their precise movements, moreover, she their face expressions were nothing like she had seen before. Their eyes were gleaming, looking constantly steady ahead. They seemed so eager to perform the movements perfectly, although some of them could already barely stand. The girl wished to feel that strength, to acquire that gaze, to be so focused and silent. And there was something else. When they moved together in coordinated fashion, Lara’s body trembled. She did not know why, but she felt the urge to become a part of all that, a part of that powerful moving-together, of the rhythm of motion and stillness, to be together in silence, even with the sweat, with the exhaustion and the effort.

John remembered his first days of training and the contagious magic of collective physical exertion. He could see Lara getting hooked.

“Stay here and watch them, I’ll come back by the end of the training. Don’t worry, no one is going to speak with you,“ he smiled and left her on the bench. Lara continued observing the group, imagining herself to be standing amidst them, doing the naewa.

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