Words…it’s difficult to select which ones to use…especially since over the last four months they’ve been largely condemned into silence by Lee’s Subbody method, and thus often repressed, misused, misunderstood, forgotten…it is somehow ironic to now try and evoke them to express what’s been transformed into much of the unanswered questioning and confusion that has given way to the state of paradox I presently find myself in.

Four months of class have come to an end and I feel like time passed in a flash, as in dream—yet so much has happened and evolved me that it’s impossible to place it in order or recollect all the events. I feel blessed and nurtured by life—the fact that it put me here and gave me the chance to encounter countless opportunities for growth as well as many challenges and issues to question and struggle with. I would like to approach the last several months’ experience from many angles—honestly and without censorship. My thoughts are but contemplations, changing naturally as they arise in me, answering their curiousity as often as creating new twists and turns upon themselves. So, please bear with me…

I feel frustrated in the sense that only now that the first term is over do I realize the weight of the many paradoxes I’d been hushing and pushing down—in a sense, denying—in order to go on with the work and avoid the turmoil that would surely force me to challenge the very method we’ve been exploring. I see the paradoxes clearly enveloping me now, tangling me up like a bug inside a spider’s web, and naturally I feel the instinct to push through and fly towards freedom. Ironically, I also feel that this freedom can only be found by staying put and facing the confusion; looking at it despite the resistance it creates, with the resistance it creates.

To begin with: the subject of the Self. From the start of our approach to the Subbody method, we’ve been told and constantly reminded to “throw out [the] Self”—to stop the mind, to stop thinking and abandon duality by abolishing ego. At the same time, we’ve been urged to follow the body and its internal qualia as well as calm it down through relaxation techniques and conditioning exercises so as to resonate with Life. But in order to follow the subconscious, one must be deeply connectede to the Self—it is in the subbody that the deepest sense of self exists! The idea that “I am not my subbody” is duality in itself! And trying to “throw out the mind” is so cognitive a concept to begin with, that it actually serves to activate the ego—the very thing it is trying to abolish.

Meanwhile, we were also instructed to go against the body’s tendencies in order to release from habit—but this too is a mental exercise, for it requires the mind to come between the body’s natural flow of movement and consciously break its authentic rhythm and reaction to Life. I found it difficult to make sense of how to meet these instructions sometimes, which clearly constructed a pretense towards good and bad, wrong and right—all of which are man-made concepts that Butoh stands to negate in its essence. All the while, we were told to forget these mind-boggling masturbations and listen to our Life…more brain work. The paradoxes seemed limitless…