Birdsong Flow: Remembering Our Wild, Living Bodies

By Dori Edwards

Birdsong Flow- an ode to our body that shares a planet with other beautiful bodies, human and wild. Although it should rather be human and non, or more-than-human, because we still are very wild if we only allow ourselves the gift of such beingness. 

When I was asked by my Executive Director to write about my inspiration for this practice- a bird-themed yoga and intuitive dance session sequenced to a Birdsong infused playlist- I was excited to share my passion and my enthusiasm. But as it came time to sit down and write, it felt like a tall order to meet. For I can’t name one inception point, one moment. It has been a lifetime in the making, if not lifetimes. So for me to start somewhere, I have to go back to the beginning. Of me, of time. 

I promise I won’t take too much of yours, but time is an important character here. 

My mother said I was born a rhythmic being, bobbing along to music before I could speak. She, too, regales me with stories of my stint as a dog, running down the beach on all fours to the behest of my more proper grandmother. I guess you could say that is where the rebellion started- when my parents gave me permission to explore and listen to the imagination of both my mind and my body. They knew that I was also an animal body. 

We are all animal bodies. When I think of my ancestors, I do not often think of my great grandmother (though she is of course honored and important), but of the great, great, great, great, and many more greats, giver of life that was a whale, an ape, who once was mineral, soil, the same pieces her bones build now. I think of the water that wends through my body that once was a storm, a glacier, an ingredient in the vast oceanic potion. 

My relationship with my body, nor my mind, was not always built upon this depth of appreciation. While my early years were steeped in rawness and rhythm, the inner critic, the internalized patriarchy we all know too well, came to dissolve the trust of my own animal. My mind became too loud with worry, stress, fear, and I became just another wall in the system of separation societies have built. I cemented suppression, laid bricks to bury my truth at the urgent request of that incessant voice in my head. 

But, my heart and soul are archaeologists. And they never stopped digging for the divine seed of me. 

These digs led me to several countries and throughout the Western half of the US. I led children on wilderness education trips and witnessed the immediate alchemy of being outside. How a waterfall, a lizard, were embodied epiphanies about how wondrous this planet is. Later, I met a penguin when I worked at the Santa Barbara Zoo and observed how telling his story brought together a global community of hope during a pandemic of both covid and hopelessness. I fell in love with Birds.

I got to watch the wild be a bridge for people back to themselves. Beyond the voice that told them some arbitrary rules of what success looked like and towards the vision of life that leaves one’s eyes glittering. I got to be danced by those same waves of wonder. 

And speaking of dance, time has led us to the next part. 

My pursuit of the passion of existence led me on a solo road trip, one that ended in a small mountain town where disaster after natural disaster left me to turn my living room into my church. Now, I’m not religious, but I do believe in prayers of gratitude to everything and everyone that has and does happen to create our unlikeliness of being right here, right now. It does not have to be prayer in the form of a bow, or a chant, though I have been known to do those too, but it can be singing, laughing, rolling on the floor just to see what it feels like, because to take a moment to enjoy this vessel we were given is the ultimate devotion to life.  

My form of prayer became dance. I turned my linoleum floor into a stage and found that to be in a body was awesome. Somehow being in a body in a system had made me forget that. And I realized that was my work. Because as much as I unconditionally loved every wild creature I had and would ever meet, there is only so deeply I could meet them if I hadn’t met the reality of my own existence- I GET TO BE HERE. And if my bubble, my perspective, was clouded by self judgement, shame, doubt, fear, worry, scarcity, that made me forget that, I could not see the full depth of how absolutely beautiful they are. You are. We are. 

So I danced. I shook. Literally. Like I’ve never shaken before. 

Animals have a shaking mechanism that releases and flushes adrenaline, the flight or fight hormone, through the body. If you observe a gazelle after being chased by a cheetah, they will shake- a process that brings them back to center and allows them to finish the circuit of both feeling and survival functioning. When we restrict our emotions, our thoughts, and do not move our bodies, these states of impermanence do not finish their circuits and instead become more permanent. They leave a concentration of energy that not only binds our musculature, but binds us to those moments. Essentially, the past becomes stuck. We become stuck. And from stagnancy we cannot be conduits of change. 

So I shook. Off the past. Off the unhealed trauma. Off all the voices that sounded something like- be smaller, be convenient, too loud, too intense, messy, control yourself, not good enough. I shook off all the constrictions, all the old skins and roles that were never mine to carry, until suddenly I started to move like me. Through breath, yoga teacher training, somatic dance coach training, I got to come alive again. When I started leading sessions, I got to watch others come alive too. Men, women, humans who let themselves move without expectation, hear their own growl, open their hearts and smiles to the sky, kiss their feet on bare earth. 

Intuitive dance, when there is no choreography or expectation, attuned me to not only the freedom of the present, but the safety and sovereignty I had within me as I learned to adapt each moment, to turn a fall or a stumble into an improvisational conversation with my environment. It connected me more to my creativity, through solution and seeking novelty, and therefore more to the great creator herself- Mother Earth. 

It taught me to collapse time. 

Everything we live and are is a story. We are storytellers and the stories we choose to tell and believe are the truths we are subscribing to. Our language can be what contains us, or what frees us. If we continually tell ourselves we are unworthy, or that doomsday is arriving, our mind and nervous system will seek evidence and will confirm this truth. But if we tell ourselves that we are open to miracles and that possibility breathes through our pores, that too is ours. And when you MOVE with the story, when you embody it, dance as if I AM FREE is the truest thing you know, time collapses. You realize that it is not in the distant future, it is here now, we only had to crack our movements open to it. 

So we work at collapsing time- becoming who we want to be by realizing that power, that expression is already blooming within us, we just have to water it. 

I also thought about collapsing time backwards, in the form of remembrance. Before capitalism and colonialism to when coexistence was a way of being. When we engaged in reciprocity with the earth and wildlife, when Birdsong was nuanced communication that our environment was safe, that we too could express ourselves without vigilance. I thought about how as the Communications Manager for the Denver Audubon, this is part of our mission- to uplift, inform, and inspire us all towards nourished communities where everyone, human and animal, is included and empowered. 

I thought about how trees receive more carbon dioxide when Birdsong is their symphony and how it is known to reduce our stress, uplift our mood, and, like the sun, regulate our circadian rhythms. 

So I also thought, why not offer a space where Birdsong can again create a spacious, accepting environment for us to liberate ourselves beyond the shackles of shame and perfectionist, urgency culture? Why not deepen the practice of embodiment to include the fact that being a body means getting to be on a magnificently shared planet? Yes, we are always invited outside to listen to their sweet song, but this was my way to fuse my loves, to combine all that has freed me into a supportive template for our own becoming and remembrance of belonging. It’s my own little microcosm of humanity. Where all of us are welcome, our feelings, our uninhibited movements, our breath, our giggles, and our deep knowing that when we transcend systemic noise and come back to the earth, we are reminded that we are a part of something. Exactly as we are. 

Finally, to learn to accept and even love our own body, is a deep practice in tolerance that radiates beyond ourselves. When we become compassionate and caring for the waves of us, for our relationship with time, for how we change, we can extend that compassion outwards, towards our family, our friends, our neighbors, towards the birds and squirrels in the trees. When we learn to love all of the expressions of our own life force, we see the magical perfection of all the billions of ways there are to be a conduit of it. Therefore, to learn to enjoy, to be in joy, and be with ourselves is a revolutionary act. To do so with the intention of deepening our relationship with the planet is what will change the world. 

This, to me, is creative, accessible conservation. Because what we connect with we protect and when we are deeply connected to aliveness, we are mobilized to stand for all beings inherent right to their own awesome aliveness.