I prepared an experiment last week by creating some t-shirts that tried to explain what is going on with the energy that surrounds me. It was pretty much an act of desperation. I accepted long ago that when you send love out into the world, you surrender control over what is done with it.

In the specific context of the dance celebrations that I enjoy so much, what happens is that people channel it into sex. I’ve gotten to be much better, over the years, at controlling the reflection of that corrupted energy, but it’s been pretty exhausting. The political consequences are also disruptive to my life. A lot of men are visibly angry when I come into a club and start dancing by myself while the women stare in wonder at me. My son shared with me once that his female friends described it as “like discovering fire.” I kept on hoping that the men would be inspired by the beauty that wells up in a woman when she encounters a man that doesn’t want to dump poison into her, but in most cases the male reaction is rather to try and beat me down.

I thought that I was going to have to postpone the first trial this Sunday. I’ve been shifting energy in my yoga practice. It started three weeks ago when I held balancing stick posture beyond my normal point of collapse, and I felt energy emanating from my root Chaka and flushing up along my obliques, the wave cresting just under my ribs where the nerves erupted in burning. I knew that I had displaced something, and it manifested more recently in vertigo focused on the right side of my head. It was different from the normal cochlear vertigo (stimulated by a trapped air bubble), and finally shifted to the top of my head, directly over my foremen. I was a little panicked by that change, and was relieved when one of the ladies in class reassured me that “It’s just trying to work its way out.”

But with my obliques fully active, I’ve been building strength in them, which has led to stiffness in the area. That culminated on Saturday when I strained my right side during standing head-to-knee posture.

I wasn’t sure that I could actually dance – I could barely get in and out of the car on Sunday morning – but I went down to Culver City anyways. When an acquaintance asked me how I was doing, I explained my situation, and he jumped right in, rubbing, pulling, and massaging the right side of my back from hip to shoulder. I didn’t realize how much blockage I was dealing with, and when he was done, I was far looser that when he started.

So I went in to change and came out with my t-shirt on. He approached me almost immediately, sharing that he was an engineer and offering where he had heard similar thoughts. It was the first meaningful conversation that I have had in that community.

But what was most amazing was that people didn’t struggle against the energy that I organize when I dance. This was most evident in a young Filipina. She caught my attention, and we kind of skirted each other for a while. When I left the center of the room to rest against the stage, she took up the space I had vacated and began waving her arms gracefully in the energy there. Surprised, I pointed my finger to push energy into her heart, stilled the sexual response that came back, and then connected her cerebral cortex to the community of thoughts that was celebrating her courage.

When I had done this in the past, one among a group of men always approaches the woman to steal the gift from her. This happened next, and this lady just ignored him, staying focused on her dance. Finally, she turned to me, building a ball of energy in the air with her right hand, and pushed it back my way.

There was more – much more – and some of it wandered down the familiar pathways to sex. But as I laid Sunday evening on the couch trying to relax my abused muscles, I felt this great glow of energy enter my heart through the channel of the world. I’ve just kept on sending this message out: “Don’t focus on me. I don’t need more of it. Look rather into the world, and liberate people into the healing of it. It’s from there that the energy is magnified.”