Capturing Aliveness is a photo series focused on what people love most about being alive. This photo series features my roommates, who I have had the pleasure to live and create community with for the past two months in Guatemala. This is a snippet into the lives of the incredibly amazing humans, who, once strangers, became my family.
During the global pause facing COVID-19 many people around the world feel at a crossroad with life in which there have been limitations for where we can go, how we can be and who we can be around. My intention with this series is to remind people that what is alive for us always remains inside of us no matter what is going on in the outside world. Capturing Aliveness is a project that sheds light on how magical it is to be living and all we can be grateful for in our world even during times of chaos and uncertainty. When we refocus our energy on what makes us feel alive, and why we enjoy being here on this planet, we can become empowered in the possibilities and expansiveness of our human experience.
So tell me, what excites you most about being alive?
Movement - Dana Humphrey
I love moving my body, especially dancing, and for me, I don't care about the type of dance. If I can shake my hips and move my body around, that makes me really happy.
When I'm on the dance floor, I'm moving a lot of energy, and I'm doing a lot of alchemy. So sometimes it's like I'm cleaning the energy. If, for example, I've been thinking about a problem in my life or trying to decide on something and then in the middle of a dance move when I'm not thinking about it, it clicks, and I know the right way for me to go. If I were to describe one word about how I feel when I am dancing, it would be freedom.
When I'm really in it, where I like the music or the base and space, I have no concept of my surroundings and who's around me, or who's watching, or anything. It's something for myself, and I move how I want to feel, and I don't care what it looks like. Sometimes I experiment with dancing as a giving and as receiving, and I have a lot of fun with that.
As a giving, it's like being aware of who's around me and maybe making something that looks nice for them, and as a receiving, it's using energy from the people and really transmuting it. That's something that's big for me. If I finished a good dance session, I feel very light; I feel like I even shape-shifted a little bit. For example, my face, if it was full of stress and worry, it just becomes not even there anymore. Also, dance is my prayer.
I like house music, tribal music and I love brass. Oh my God, just any kind of brass in the mix like trombone or saxophone, that gives it like an extra bit of soul that just really changes it for me. I like the drums and I like the brass flute.
For me, dancing really helps me get into my body and out of my head. I've spent most of my life in my head. So it's like the one place where I feel I don't give a fuck. It's really for me, and it doesn't matter to me the details about the dancing. It's really about moving my body freely.
Sometimes I use my soreness or my pain to create the movement. Like if my back is sore, I'll do a lot of things like bending over or if my shoulders are sore, I'll circle them out. And so it's like a healing practice that I have where I do feel completely free. I've fully allowed myself to be free in that expression.
Freedom -
Aitana Sanchez
What excites me most about being alive is when I feel the energy of life in my body. I feel this vibration running through every part, every emotion every sensation, and it is aligned with what I am. When my mind, emotions, and actions are in line, I feel free, feeling the freedom that comes from within.
The real freedom from the inside, when I feel like I can do anything I want to do. I feel that way when I am moving my body, especially when I am in the water. It’s how I get to have the intensity at the highest, and if this is mixed with the water, I feel much more connected. Feeling the aliveness of energy through my body, the ecstasy of life, through cold, heat, water, and anything that makes my body feel alive adds to the maximum intensity.
I think there is something in the water that takes me to somewhere really deep inside of myself. Maybe it is the lack of gravity, the lack of heaviness, feeling so light in the water. It brings this easiness of surrendering. I don’t have to be holding my body, bones, and structure; I can let go more natural, making everything soften. That makes it easier to stop the head and to stop control. Losing that control with the eyes closed in the water is super easy to travel to the inside and to get connected to myself, which is fucking awesome. It is the feeling of being home. That is how I felt the first time I ever scuba dived.
The water brings that easiness of a whole new feeling of something familiar and belonging, truth, and connection. Also, there is something about the water and body connection when there is no mind involved. It starts a dance between two elements with intelligence. One is the body, which it’s intelligent by itself. Everything it is doing without us controlling and then in the water; there is also an intelligence I cannot describe. It is connecting these two elements while taking control of the head out. There is a dance happening in that is super healing. It just moves the body wherever it needs to release anything; it is so healing and free.
Exploration - Diana Dittany
There are many exciting things about being alive, but I think exploring this beautiful world we are blessed to be on is my favorite. There are so many things to learn, and every little piece of this planet has lessons, wisdom, and interesting parts to it, from the smallest leaf to the biggest mountain. There is just so much to learn.
There's so much we don't know, and that is why I feel like the best way to find out is to experience as much as we can. If I were, to sum up, what experiencing this world feels like to me, I would say, expansion. Expanding into the full depth of what this earth is and understanding that. I think you know you can go through this life just engaging with a small part of this world and a small part of each other and even a small part of yourself in your mind. Or you can really dive in and engage with a much more comprehensive, a much deeper part of the planet. Whether that's going into deep meditation or learning topics on a detailed level, it's almost like you are interacting more with this world rather than just scooting across the surface. So, yeah, expansion in that sense of really engaging, learning more, and embedding ourselves, realizing our place in this world more through adventure, exploring, questioning, and connecting.
We think this world is what we see through our minds, but this world is 7 billion different worlds, just from the human perspective, let alone every other living thing on this planet. I think traveling is the sort of gateway to understanding this world. In doing that, I believe empathy and trying to understand others' perspectives is so important. This involves letting go of your idea that you understand the world because you don't, you understand from your perspective and your limited upbringing and culture.
But when you put all that aside and try to see the world through the eyes of someone else, through their perspective, through their framework of understanding, that's when I think you get all sorts of insights, and you experience a different world. It's almost like even though you are on this planet and you are experiencing it, you can experience it completely differently when you see it through someone else's lens and try and understand that. Traveling in a way that helps you see different perspectives, and not just taking your views and assumptions and conceptual frameworks of how the planet is.
Connection - Dimid Hayes
Looking back at the undercurrents and themes of my life, I would have to say that my purpose in life is to aid in the connection of bringing people together. I have been the founder of a couple of intentional communities along with other people like the local indivisible chapter in the resistance here in the United States.
Circles upon circles, I feel my greatest joy is when people come together and sit all with equal access to the center of a heart circle. So the word for me that I think best describes the theme of my life, my purpose, and what I love most is connection.
Playing - Sam Peters
So what excites me most about being alive is having fun and playing. I think that takes a lot of different forms from anything from like playing video games to jumping out of airplanes. I like stuff that stimulates me in an enjoyable and engaging way. It excites me because every time I partake in these activities, I am getting slightly better than I was previously in whatever form it is, be it climbing, walking, surfing, running, having sex.
When I'm in that fun flow state, and I'm enjoying and engaged in whatever I'm doing, I feel like I'm getting to know myself more, I'm getting to know my surroundings, and getting to know just everything more. I'm learning more about myself. I'm learning more about what puts a smile on my face; I'm just learning. When I engage in these things, I do so with the intention of being determined to be better than I was last time.
So if I'm sitting down on the drum kit, I want to play that song crisper than I played it last time, or I want to look better when I'm playing it. Like I want to look more controlled or I to want to feel more controlled. Or if I am skating, I want to nail a new trick or make it look cleaner than I did the last time. When I'm climbing, I want to climb a little bit faster. I want to set a faster time, and I want to use less holds.
Like whatever it is, I want to be slightly better than the last time. Usually, when it comes to having fun and playing, the feeling is determined—determined to better than I was the last time. I like to play and enjoy so many things in life; it just depends on the day. Somedays, I am aching to go skate. Other days I am aching to go to the gym and lift heavy shit and throw it around or somedays I am just aching to play video games with my friends. Every day is a different day. I just like to play.
Exploration - Luna Mangan
It's quite interesting based on the situation we are in now because life for me has always been about exploration. And usually, that means exploration as in going out. I have always been looking for adventure. I have always been explorative with my work, with the people I choose to connect with, my sexuality, my travel. For me, it's all about tasting things, getting out there. That's really what makes me feel alive is when I am exploring, when I am finding new information, new feelings, new sites. In regards to our situation of being in quarantine, that freedom has been taken away in a sense.
What has been in me recently in the last few weeks is this exploration of inside. What I have been doing this last year is this self-exploration of spirituality, the soul, the inner workings of our world. Exploration, that's what makes me feel alive. I like to push myself into exceptional environments. I am very deep into the festival world, the nightlife, or the small subcultures I have found myself in the last few years. It has always been about exploring different sides of me, different characters, fetishes, different kinds of relationships, various explorations of sex and sexuality, and different foods.
I class myself as someone that pushes themselves outside of boundaries to explore without fear. That is what makes me feel so alive. It's almost like a rush of excitement, it's like choosing life, choosing to live further than the expectations. I've always felt that, and that excites me. Often it comes with risk. I've put myself at risk many times in my life, to feel something. So you are always kind of playing with death in a way, and I'm not scared of that, and I like the rush of that.
By choosing life differently with these explorations, you are putting yourself at risk, and there is a high that comes with that. I thrive off of that feeling. Because I live and get out and do things and not necessarily climb mountains, but I climb my own mountains. And the risk is there, but I am not scared because I'd rather be out there experiencing life.
Possibility - Matt Dahse
Possibility. The endless possibilities of what each moment can be. I wake up in the morning to the birds here, but you could be waking up to traffic in New York, and that's fine too. But it's like every day represents a possibility of something. And when you start stacking days on top of each other and days turn into weeks and weeks turn into months, fuck the possibilities just expanded inferentially. I always geek out about opportunities and possibilities.
I've got a mantra and affirmation that I say in the morning that is relevant here, and it's lead with love. Leading with love means to me like when I say that to myself in the morning, it means that I make decisions based upon what's possible and what can happen. That's amazing instead of using fear as a driver, like coming to Guatemala.
There was a big decision for me the day before I came to Guatemala. Trump was on the TV, and he gave his first real address, public address press conference about this and people were scared. And I remember I was on the phone with my sister and she was like, I don't think you should go to Guatemala. I think you should stay in Mexico where you have a community, and you have the infrastructure and not go. And my brother-in-law also told me the same thing, and I remember I went back to that and I was like, okay, that would be a fear-based decision.
I would be scared, and I would let that fear drive me back to Oaxaca. That would be the primary driver of that decision. Or I could lead with love and come here, and all the possibilities would unfold by coming here. I'd be with Gareth. I'd do ISTA and so much more. So when I think about what it's like to live, there's so much possibility in our future, and we are choosing it every moment that we consciously imagine. Being alive is continuing that exploration for me. It makes me feel grateful for the possibilities of the opportunity.
Silliness - Meredith Elzea
The first thing that came to mind is the opportunity for play—cultivating play between people as a means of connection. One of the places that I feel so alive in my life is when I go to different Burns. Burning Man, or Regional Burns, and I think I feel so alive in these places because play is a foundational part of it, and nothing is taken too seriously. It's just like continually playing with life, words, experiences and visuals. And I think that's one of the coolest things about being a human. Animals play all the time, but humans have a different level of play that I love to tap into often.
It's like when you meet someone or people who are in the play silly mindset, and you're in the play, silly mindset, and you guys can just come together. When I come together with that person, and we can play with life because we're in that place. Because sometimes you know, you're not always in the state of play, but when you're in this really free state and find somebody else in that free lifted state, you can have such a fun interaction.
I also think that's what I try to do with my art too. I draw a lot of characters that are kind of silly, sweet, and unrealistic in their form, but also realistic in their personalities. Part of my goal as an artist is to create playful things that people can connect to because they have real human emotion, but they're also a little silly in how they look. Or they show human dynamics that are a bit heavier, but in a light, playful, loving way through their form and their colors. It's fun to be silly and to bring silliness into the world. Everyone is like you are 31, you are a grown-up now, and it's like yes, and that doesn't mean anything about not being able to be silly anymore. The whole point of living is to fucking live, and a big part of that is to enjoy and to let yourself be silly and not judge yourself for any of it.
Connection - Tal Siegler
The first word that came up is connection. I feel like in my journey, it's finding the balance between connecting with others and connecting with myself. I feel this is something that is becoming more and more powerful, especially while living with 11 people. You have to find that balance of inner and outer connection.
Connection with myself, my body, my energy, the people around me all are important. I feel like, in a way, that's my superpower, being able to connect. It turns off and on at points, but the connection to myself is growing stronger by the day. It's powerful. It's bringing out the purest essence of me and telling my mind to shut up and letting my body and energy do what they want.
Also, through connections to others, I connect more to myself because talking to other people is also clarifying things in my inner world. For me, I love meditating, painting, journaling, and being in nature to connect more with myself. All the things we got to do here daily at our house in Guatemala, were are so lucky.
Magic - Shadi Henau
To be a conducer for the magic. It is allowing for the power and the wisdom of the mystery that is continuously playing out through all of us, like conducers of the divine. To allow myself to align with that and be like a puppet in that play, which feels most true to my nature.
Allowing for this body to become a vessel of the spirits and energy and to truly align to the purpose of being a vibrant conducer of my soul's energy. For me, this takes shapes in many different forms, such as dancing. I feel like when I'm dancing, I'm shaping energy around me or creating some energetic charge that vibrates out towards others as well, and is co-created continuously with other people.
Also, I love being in rituals. This is kind of the thing that I feel like I made for, to be in ritual. I don't mind if it's intense; of course, it can be challenging. Especially when maybe there's certain blockages or certain things that feel they need to be transformed within a ritual. It can sometimes be challenging, but I genuinely feel like what excites me most is embodying the magic and embodying the spirit energy charge that wants to come through me, in ritual, dance, movement, and also in shamanic sexual work.
