Years ago in an advanced class I taught on Authentic Relating, one of my co-teachers and I had a messy, mad, teeth-bared, horns-locked, power struggle right in front of the students. Cue cringe. I can still feel the burn of it all.

 

Yet the biggest complaint we got from the trainees after the weekend was not that we’d had a tousle in front of them. I suspect now that they were genuinely fascinated by the realness of that moment. The main critique from participants was that my co-teacher and I did the repair from that conflict behind closed doors – during one of the breaks – and denied them the chance to see the full arc from breakdown back to connection.

From therapists to mediators to trauma experts, these days we are all talking about relationship repair.  But so few of us have the opportunity  to showcase repair in real time, in the jungle of the unfolding human moment.

Which is why what happened recently in my class at Dance Camp Northwest was so, damn, extraordinary.

I have been teaching at Dance Camp Northwest since 2016, each year trying out new curricula at camp as my career as a Relationship, Connection & Communication teacher has evolved. This year, I decided to teach about an aspect of friendship, namely how to give permission to having needs in connection, and how this kind of vulnerability empowers healthy repair in friendships.  I hadn’t taught this material in this format before, so I was a little nervous. I was also run down, having crash landed at camp with my husband and toddler two days prior, short of sleep and raw on nerves.  But I also trusted the larger intelligence of camp to guide me.

I had no idea how much it would.

My workshop was planned for mid afternoon. I walked into the dance hall fifteen minutes before class at the same moment as one of the other campers; we ended up strolling in side by side. She and I hadn’t interacted directly yet, but I recognized her face. Once we got to the snack table, she turned to me, introduced herself and said, “I’m here for you”.

OK, so that was our first interaction. “I’m here for you”, were her exact words.  It was a simple phrase.

Now remember, I’ve been teaching at dance camp on and off for ten years. So I also know that at every class, there is something called a “space holder” assigned to each teacher, someone who will assist in demos or adjust the lights and most importantly, tend to students’ needs during the class while the teacher may still be teaching.

When this person said, “I’m here for you”, it signaled to me, oh, this is my space holder for the class, cool. I assumed she might come and talk to me more before class, to align our expectations, but the fact that she didn’t was no big deal.

Unbeknownst to me, she intended one thing and I interpreted another. This was our first communication snag.

So I went about setting up my music on the sound board, skimming my notes and grounding myself, trusting this person would be supporting me  once class time commenced.

By the time the workshop started, close to 30 students had assembled – it was a large circle.  After the warm up song, I invited everyone to gather in a huddle in one corner of the hall, where the mottled afternoon sun was streaming softly through the wide windows.  I began as I often do with deep breathing, introduced myself and offered an overview of the class.

Then I turned to that woman who, as I understood it, was my class space holder, and said to the room, “Oh and this is my space holder for class. She will be available to anyone who needs extra support during the next hour”.

This in retrospect was our second communication snag.

What happened next was profound.

The woman looked at me with confusion, furrowed her brows and said directly, “I don’t think I consented to that and I’m not comfortable with that agreement”.

Uh oh.  My heart sunk. And so many thoughts flashed through my mind in an instant. Don’t you know what a space holder does, I thought? This was derailing my opening, how would I recover? And also just…wtf?!

So I took a breath and engaged with her, person to person, in front of a large circle of onlookers. Drawing upon a lifetime of self-regulation tools and deep trust in relating.

“Well”, I replied, “You didn’t check in with me before class, so I couldn’t confirm what you were open to, but this is part of what the space holder does”.

The confusion in the air was thickening. And from what I could tell from my periphery, the students were paying very, close, attention.

A new voice in the unfolding plot then interjected.

“Oh, I’m a space holder for class, too!” Another camper across the circle was cheerfully raising her hand, and now my thoughts were spinning. There are rarely two space holders for class. “I’m sorry I didn’t check in with you before class”, she added.

I looked between the two “space holders”. I saw one woman’s clarity and the other woman’s consternation.  And I got it. I had misinterpreted the statement, “I’m here for you”. This first person was not in fact my space holder. She was there to attend my class. OMG. I had made an assumption and I had been wrong. Facepalm, big time.

Keep in mind, this was all unfolding in real time, in front of 30 unsuspecting dancers, within the first three minutes of a new class, and testing my already worn mama nervous system.

Now, I’ve spent a lifetime leaning into messes. Taking responsibility.  Letting myself be seen as imperfect. And understanding that every misattunement is an offering for refinement, if we a widen the lens.

So I did what I knew to do. I leaned in.

“Wow!” I said to the room, turning back to the first woman. “I get it now. You aren’t in fact my space holder, good Lord. You’re a student in this class who came to attend like everyone else!”

The tension melted out of the lines in her brow and I saw her meekly smile.

“I’m sorry”, I said. “I misunderstood. And I’m so glad that you held your boundary so I could get clarity”. Now she was actually smiling back at me. Ok, we were back in shared reality, phew.

So then I turned to the room. “Okay everyone, so what just happened was in essence, the heart of this class.  Two people who are not bad communicators just showed you how easy it can be to have a misunderstanding, however innocent, but clearly misattuned. And then how vital it is to check assumptions, clarify needs and boundaries, take responsibility and own a misunderstanding so that the repair can happen”.

Before I moved on, I turned back to the first woman and said simply, “Thank you. We are going to be bonded now I can tell”, before I wove what happened into the rest of the class.

I never could have orchestrated on purpose a moment of breakdown and repair that was as genuine, relatable and efficient as that one was. Friends told me after class how inspiring it was for them to see that in real time. I can only imagine the ripples we actually sent through the group.

More often than not, I think most of us see examples of conflict without the repair, either between adult friends or from our families of origin. The dangling mangle of misunderstanding and a certain finality and futility to it all, without the cycle being completed by two people who can regulate, take ownership, re-open the love and care and then experience the deepening that comes with that cycle.

These examples can make repair feel scary.  Elusive. Impossible, even.

By contrast, an entire arc from breakdown to cleanup, repair and reconnection offered itself to us, in real time, in the opening of a class on relationship integrity, courage and authenticity.

It’s jaw droppingly amazing, really. I can’t help but think that a much larger intelligence was guiding what was needed that day.

From what I can tell, that arc offered several things. One, for me to see that even worn down, I could collaborate with the energy in the room in a truly productive way. Two, for the participants to witness what repair looks, sounds and feels like, making it so much more within reach to attempt their own repair. And three, for that woman, to learn that her boundary was in service to the entire circle, a tribute to her lifetime of growth and a gift to all of us.

Esther Perel writes:

“…rupture in a relationship is a given. Repair, however, is something you must actively reach for. The big work in repair is the risk that it requires: to step away from what feels safe and to allow yourselves to become something new with and for each other.”

I believe that risk becomes so much more possible when we can witness and literally share breath with what happened in my class at dance camp, in the most organic, emergent way.

I continue to feel grateful that even though I could have gotten triggered, I stayed calm. I think it helps that I’m a mom and so I have a lot of familiarity with mayhem and how much I really can’t control. I also think it helps that I’m an improvisational dancer, and know that  dancing bravely with chaos can lead to beauty. And I know it helps that I’ve spent countless hours growing my capacity for human disarray and staying conscious when things go wonky.

I’m teaching this class again online at the end of the month, July 29th at noon. I hope you will join us. When humans gather to practice vulnerability and repair at this moment in time, and are wise to enough to stay soft in the unfolding, I’m getting more convinced that a greater intelligence also joins us, to help us with the relational healing that  we all most need.

Come. Let’s see what is possible together. Read more about the class here including how to register!

Photo by BehindTheTmuna on Unsplash