Our lives in the 21st century have become very complicated. With the endless stream of information and on-line connections, I am challenged to make sense of all that I see and experience. Once in a while, in a rare moment, I discover something that stands out against the backdrop of meaningless, random events.
This happened recently in Meridale, New York, west of the Catskill Mountains, where I went to visit a friend whom I have known for most of my adult life. Kelley, a retired chiropractor (he still sees patients), lives in rural New York on a hill overlooking a lovely pond and a distant view of the wooded hills beyond. In their home, which he shares with his partner, he occupies the second floor of the house with multiple rooms which serve his divergent brain. A Steinway piano in the north room, his chiropractic office on the opposite and in-between an alcove for practicing writing and deciphering a classical language, Sanskrit. In between is an exercise room with interlocking tiles on the floor, large mirrors opposite the windows with a view of the pond, and a wide assortment of weights, bands, balls, gongs and a punching bag, which hangs from the ceiling.
Today, I’ve come to experience and record his very own body work project called Integral Movement Pattern. Although Kelley began many years ago a series of body movement practices to complement his chiropractic work, something of recent spurs my interest way beyond what I felt years before. Perhaps, it’s my own aging body, narrowing brain paths that I’m desperate to redirect, search for bliss and joy, call it what you want. In short — change. I want to push the limits of my own body and mind. My own intuition sees a direct correlation between body movement and longevity, mental agility and health. This all is part of this program taking hold of my imagination.
What Kelly devised as an innovative way to dance with elastic tubes filled with a single steel ball or multiple balls or bearings is beyond description. It simply needs to be experienced. While the video you will watch gives you the back story to what he is doing, you must participate in the dance at whatever level you can to advance not only your own description of the movement but to momentarily change your relationship with self and the space you occupy.
You start with the weight suspended in a spandex tube front of you. Your two hands grasp the tube and begin moving up and down and/or side to side. The lightness of movements leads you into a rhythm that enters your body and you join in partnership with the movement. At times, you have agency and move the weight, at times the weight continues in the direction you’ve sent it and you follow. Who’s leading becomes indecipherable. The elastic band, which Kelly might describe as a metaphor for an elastic spine, takes on a life of its own and takes over your imagination. You are present in the moment and the dance continues.
During this visit, I go beyond the Integral Movement Pattern of the balls to experience a transformation of my mind through Kelley’s curiosity and sense of adventuring into other worlds: be it intellectual curiosities, music, an ancient sacred language, other religious practices like Buddhism or Hinduism, or simply the physical workings of the human body, which he has pursued his entire adult life.
I can begin to imagine this catching on and becoming part of family and friends gatherings, community circles, and even festivals, where people join together in music and dance. It may all seem fanciful, yet I can truly see this happening with elastic bands.
April 2025