Laura Huxley was 96 when she died the other day. Most people know her husband Aldous Huxley, the man who gave us Brave New World. But Mrs. Huxley did not live in her husband's shadow — the NY Times noted in their obituary that:
Over the years, Mrs. Huxley was also a concert violinist; a freelance
filmmaker; a lay psychotherapist; a self-help author; the head of a
children’s foundation; a lecturer on the human potential movement; and,
in her words, a restrained investigator of LSD.
And it is on the subject of self-help author I want to take a moment to remember her, since a number of years ago I came across her book "You Are Not The Target" at the Strand and bought it in a flash. The last line of the Times obit mentions some essays in that book with just a touch of condescension:
The book offers a set of what Mrs. Huxley called recipes for getting
through life’s many difficulties. These include punching a tetherball,
imagining one’s own funeral and dancing in the nude.
Sounds, like so much self-help writing, rather airy-fairy. Well this fairy jubu was very taken with her "recipes" and most particularly with the essay called Dance Naked With Music. Here is an excerpt — try it
and change your life:
Go into a room by yourself. Put on your favorite music. Throw off your clothes. And dance.
For one hour, in complete privacy, you are going to be naked — physically, emotionally, and psychologically.
This may seem to you an extraordinary thing to do. I agree that most people do not ordinarily shut themselves into a room and dance naked. Nevertheless, put aside shyness, reserve, convention — and do this recipe. There are sound principles behind it, and good values to be gained from it.
You are going to set your body free of all its limitations and inhibitions, set it free to feel the music, to move with it, to be at one with it.
This is not an artistic undertaking, so do not judge yourself. Ignore the mirror, or if you cannot ignore it, cover it. Do not correct your movements; do not even allow yourself to make a mental image of your movements. Do not compare of evaluate — stop judging.
The goal of this dance is not art. The goal is personal freedom.
Whether you are nineteen or ninety, whether you weigh one hundred or three hundred pounds, whether you move with ease or difficulty, whether your joints are supple or stiff — no matter. Dance.
This dance is not for anyone’s eyes, not even your own.
You are dancing from within, dancing only your feelings, especially your repressed feelings. You are dancing what you cannot tell your mother or father, your husband, lover or friend, what you cannot tell your minister, priest or psychoanalyst, what you cannot tell yourself.
When you are throwing off your clothes, think and feel that you are throwing off all the ideas, feelings, compulsions, embarrassments, fears and shames that have been superimposed upon you. Some of these ideas and restraints are necessary and useful some of the time, but not all of them, and not all of the time. For this dance, throw off everything that has been superimposed upon your real self.
Be whatever you are.
BE — naked and alone.
With the first article of clothing throw off your social status. You may like your status, you may enjoy your social role — no matter. Throw them off.
With the next article of clothing, throw off the blindly accepted conventions of behavior; they may serve you well enough in public. But now, as you get ready to dance, throw them off.
With the third article of clothing, throw off your personal mask, the image of yourself that you present to others. Whatever it is, whether it is an heroic cover for desperation, whether it hides tenderness with a scowl, anxiety with laughter, loneliness with aloofness, resentment with humility — throw it off.
When you come to the last article of clothing, throw off with it the fear, ignorance and shame that have been imposed upon you by those who lack understanding and respect for sex and love. Throw off that last bit of clothing and that restraint before you begin your dance.
If it is loneliness you feel, let all your body feel it. If it is rage or hostility or fear, feel it with every cell. Through your naked dance, you expel all the unwanted, painful feelings.
If these feeling become people and faces and colors, look at them. If they haunt you, dance them away. Dance them out, out of you.
…
Dance. Let the music and your feeling and your body be one. Dance what you feel. BE what you feel. This is your dance. IF you feel like singing—sing. If you feel like shrieking or chanting or wailing, then shriek or chant or wail. This is your dance—your creation—your liberation.
Remember, this was written in 1963. When I first read this, it reminded me of a performance I had seen in the presence of another Laura, my friend and storytelling teacher, Laura Simms. One year at one of her amazing one week storytelling retreats one of our fearless companions performed the Descent of Inanna. As he told the story he danced it. And in this story, as she enters the dark realms of the Underworld, as she passes through each gate she must remove an article of clothing, until she arrives naked in the world her sister rules. I cannot think of a more mythically resonant ritual, and a more terrifyingly liberating "recipe." You may dance all night at a club, taking any drug you like, and you will never enter these realms and return whole and hale. No. Dance naked and find your self.
