Member-only story
A couple of years ago, I joined Challenge Partners, an informal club founded by a local teenager. He is primarily a music maker, and I am a writer. We share a common interest in dance and movement for expression and sport. When we meet up, we first select a Theme that is the Challenge for the duration of the practice session. The challenge theme two nights ago was Addiction.
Following the 100:10:1 grid, we had a minute to write down fifty examples of familiar addictions. Then we put them up on the common board, intermixing substance attachment with blame, judgment, anxiety, and self-doubt addictions. Finally, we elected our top five addictive habits most likely to be obstacles in our path of authentic emergence. I chose Abandonment, Masking, Hypervigilance, Start Over, and Pain.
A~ban~don~ment closed door/ left alone in/wrong vibration
Masking tape/paint/layers/death and dying
Hy~per~vig~i~lance amygdala on high/relentless/wary/ever ready
Start Over work harder/hope/come back/I’ve changed
Pain broken body/torn soul/fear sear
Finally, we selected the top addiction we wanted to release. I chose Abandonment.
We drew platforms and named them our Addiction Pattern. There are four stages to a partner challenge, with Stage #1 a three-minute stream of consciousness addiction expression. I typed the song Breath by Blaze into the Pandora search bar and clicked on the play arrow, using slo-mo…
