A Few Words about Hang

Hang is one gym within Dojo.

As a gym, it is set up to facilitate certain kinds of practices.

As a gym, whoever joins the gym understands that Hang is not Real Life.

What you practice in the gym with other gym members, you probably don’t want to be practicing out there in your Real Life, especially with non-gym members.

The practices in Hang center around vocabularies and skill sets that the cannot and/or will not practice in their non-Dojo lives.

Not any singular vocabulary set nor any singular skill set.

As Hang is a subset of Dojo, and the stated objective of Dojo is for you to have the life you want to have, an assumption is that you're going to want to practice those things which you believe are going to get you the life you want.

And, if you want to practice things just to practice things (just because you want range instead of specific outcomes)…that’s the life that you want be having, evidently.

AND, you also do NOT have to practice one damn thing differently than what you are already doing.

Technically, that is also a practice.

Solo dancing vs partnered dancing.

You can come to a Hang and have it all be about you trying new things.

What is going on with anyone else due to what you’re doing is none of your concern.

You have never been able to curse or be angry or be fem or something.

And, gol darn it, you’ll going to do those things that your Primal Character says you can’t do.

Just to prove to yourself that your head won’t actually explode.

That’s a solo dance.

Which is all good and fine.

And you can stop right there, if that’s the kind of life that you want to be having.

Partnered Dances

If you want to gain vocabulary and skill sets AND make more of what you want to have happen, happen, then you’re going to have to pay more attention to your dance partners, your audience.

I understand that there are a lot of people out there who have “had to” suppress one thing or another about themselves and believe that it is a major thing to not-suppress it, to let it out, to let it be seen/experienced by others.

Usually under the rubric of “healing myself” or “loving myself” or “accepting myself” or “being tired of hiding what is true for me”.

Again, totally fine in Hang. I’ve seen some amazing things happen when individuals took that particular tact.

As most of that stuff was put away when you were a child, it’s probable that your meaning-makings about, your vocabulary, and your skill sets stopped developing at that time as well.

So if you want to dance with those things with more nuance, you’re going to have to develop more vocabulary, more skill-sets, more meaning-makings about them and in dancing with others about/with/in them.

If you put away your anger/rage/heat when you were a small child because your caregivers told you to, then if you take that first step in Hang and let it out, it’s probably going to sound a lot like a small child. Small child’s meaning-making. Small child’s vocabulary. Small child’s skill sets.

Exactly as it should be.

And, if you believe that the life you want to have involves being able to dance with others, as an Adult, with anger/rage/heat, then you are probably going to have to learn new vocab, new meaning-makings, and new skills sets.

You have to be willing to be a learner. You have to be willing to be bad at it.

You have to be willing to make mistakes.

You have to be willing to look silly/stupid.

So, why go to Hang?

To watch the show. To dance as you currently know how to dance.

To out something that you’ve kept hidden.

To practice doing something that you don’t know how to do.

I think the deepest cut is, “How do you get people to dance with you in the way that you want them to?”

Sure, you can do the, “I know what to do and I’m going to tell you exactly what to do and you are going to do exactly what I tell you to do or you are going to suffer the consequences.”

Personally, I don’t like dancing with know-it-all bullies.

How to make them do what you want them to do, while they meaning-make, “It just came up organically in me.”

Imagine partner dancing where you just flow into where the lead is leading.