Articles
Being an Edge Walker
BEING AN EDGE-WALKER
By Melissa Michaels, 1992, Boulder, Colorado
"Le Centre Du Silence blew the whistle on the illusion of disembodied concepts, while also providing me with practical tools, which I could begin to navigate my way into my vehicle. The work provided me with one key to the laboratory, my body, through which one day something real could be known. 'And, despite the fact that our little big man mime friend is very human, or because of that fact, he sure played a role in calling this woman back into her body."
Isn't it ironic that being an edgewalker requires being fully in the body, namely incarnating...that only through center can we move along the edge! Yet, how many of us truly commit to staying present each moment?
This is not a rah-rah Sammy letter, But, I will say power to those courageous and visionary ones who dared to call us back home into ourselves long before modern society was naming the body-mind-split. And, despite the fact that our little big man mime friend is very human, or because of that fact, he sure played a role in calling this woman back into her body.
I met Samuel when I was twenty-one (21) years old, receiving honors from modern academia due to my intellectual insights into the possibility of bringing the sacred into our environmental design, our physical structures. Just by 'chance' I studied with Samuel my last summer of school. Little did I know that real school was just beginning. Together Samuel and I began to navigate across this huge ravine between ideas of space and the reality of the body as the foundation for all knowledge of form, space and the sacred.
Le Centre Du Silence blew the whistle on the illusion of disembodied concepts, while also providing me with practical tools, which I could begin to navigate my way into my vehicle. The work provided me with one key to the laboratory, my body, through which one day something real could be known.
A decade later I continue to renegotiate many of the original traumas that catalyzed the initial splitting. I hang out in my body more often than not. And, I'm often successful in creating environments that catalyze a similar process of incarnating for others. Seems so simple.
The fact is, however, that those edgewalkers who devote their lives to midwifing the birth of the soul in the body charting essential and highly charged terrain. Samuel was a pioneer. He planted many seeds. So I say Hail to those who recognize that without body parts we ain't got much to work with, and then set out to help our collective humpty back together again.
Thank you Samuel, May we each keep reeding this precious Earth! Ho!
Editor's note:
Melissa Michaels received her B.S. in Environmental Design from the University of Colorado. Her focus on sacred space ignited her journey into the body, her quest to bring spirit into the matter. Movement disciplines she has studied include Mime; Eurhythmy; African, Belly, and Flamenco Dance. She appeared with Zuleikha, Master Storyteller, Performer, and Educator. Melissa has also been deeply involved in therapeutic arts that serve as tools for renegotiating trauma in the body, specifically Jin Shin Jyutsu and Authentic Movement. Her ongoing apprenticeship and Teacher Training with Gabrielle Roth, Master Educator, Performing Artist, Healer, and author of Maps To Ecstasy, serves as the umbrella for Melissa's present work as a movement facilitator and performer.
