Article by Yolande Clark
Embodiment
Go fly a kite.
Go on. Get outside.
Have you noticed that our culture has developed virtual versions of almost everything…yet virtual kite-flying just doesn’t have the same lure, does it?
Flying a kite is a subtle art; a tenuous one.
There is no flying (and no kite), without the earth to ground you, the sky as canvas, and the wind to carry all.
As with so many of the paradoxes of embodiment, the key to levity is in the letting go.
In life, growth resides in moving from a sense of it and mine to we and us.
When we can finally get to the point of identifying seamlessly with the kite (or the person in front of us), it is then that we can flow with them.
That’s a profound kind of love.
Showing Up
Put your shoes and your jacket on.
Sling your kite-bag over your shoulder, and step out the door, onto the path, through the brambles and into the wide green field.
You’ve made it. You are here.
You have already overcome the main obstacle to how to fly a kite.
You have become a person who wants to discover; a seeker. An adventurer.
Now, when you’re old and gray, and resting in your bed, you will remember this moment of doing, this precious day of action.
You will feel the sun on your face again, and the journey that got you there.
You will remember the flash of colour set against the azure sky.
Showing up is an act of becoming.
Intimacy
Digital words and the moving screen can be connecting and enriching. Educational even.
But they will never be intimate.
Intimacy begins with the self and our origins as beings of the sun and soil.
The kite is a lightning rod for intimacy with the self; a communion between you and the elements.
There is nothing more truthful or precious or intimate than the stretch of muscle, the minute motion from wrist to elbow.
The sun in your eyes.
True intimacy is being able to see what is there. Powerfully, without witholding.
The space between your body and the sky is a long-term relationship.
Power
The recurring culmination of a meditative practice is giving one’s power away in order to receive it back again.
The way of the kite illustrates the dignity of this quiet power.
Without your direction, the cloth would never rise. The kite is the dirigible only when you are the guide.
But who is the master?
Feedback. Integrity.
This is completion; the trajectory.
Heart beats, energy moves from synapse to arm, the line of inquiry moves from this place to that.
You and the kite co-create an event in time. Your powerful self, and this small slight thing, making stories.
Transformation
Flying a kite is a transformation.Transformation is enigmatic.
It is a challenge, a task, a job, a piece of work. Lay the foundation, step by step.
What movement isn’t a learning process?
There is a distinct moment of transformation. the moment the cotton skin, with its wooden skeleton takes flight, finally, it is no longer what it was.
Now, it is alive through you. Aloft.
As in life, when we concentrate on our and others’ transformation rather than our comfort, we will soar.