The first quarter of a movement meditation class is usually a warm-up for me, a woman in her 40s. Even after the designated 10-minute-or-so settling in period, my arms, legs, and neck still feel like rigid sticks and twigs protruding from my tree trunk of a torso. I am hyperaware of stiffness, the creakiness in my joints, how angular and non-flowing I feel. I imagine myself looking like a collection of hard, plastic flesh-colored Legos assembled to resemble a human being.

A bit of mental hardness also tends to accompany this physical stiffness. Mind chatter about what I’m trying to “work on” today, trepidation about dancing with new people, conversations with myself about why I keep coming back to the dance when I feel like what was once an “answer” to my quest for spiritual and physical nourishment now just bombards me with more questions every time I take my first step onto the floor.

In that first quarter, I work hard to chip away at the crusty dirt caking my body and mind. I douse it with water, a baptism of sweat softening the shell that envelops my flesh, turning the hardened earth into pliable mud. Fifteen or 20 minutes into the class, I may still have tree bark in my hair and speckles of dirt between my toes, but I’m no longer as skeletal as a sycamore in winter or as rough as volcanic rock.

Sometimes the shift is profound, other times subtle, but almost always there comes a point in the class where I feel my body become distinctively soft. It’s like someone used the “blurred edges” photo filter on me. I still have bones, but a mystical force has curved and bent them like vines. My brain no longer feels like an intrusive anvil in my skull; it too is soft—not mushy, though—an enigmatic organ that has shifted from on-alert beta to more mellow alpha waves. When I bound across the room, I feel like I am leaping feet in the air as opposed to inches.

Instinctively, I move to the center of the room, my Play-Doh limbs wanting to mesh and mold with the other pliant persons around me.

I am a soft cotton square weaving its way into the patchwork quilt of humanity gradually taking shape on the floor.

I am a plump polyester tea sachet dipping gently into a warm water bath of bodies.

Ahhhhh.

By the end of class, I am an infant swaddled in the softest of blankets, curious eyes wide open, face round and creaseless. I feel fresh out of the womb, no weight on my shoulders, no labels stifling my spirit. I am not “Jennifer, the [editor/worrier/planner].” I just am.

Sometimes the sensation of softness that pulses through my body as I rest in the final moments of class brings me to tears. Slithering my way onto the floor, stomach pressed against wood, breath by breath, my pelvis melts into what feels like a slow ripple of waves.

My hips, which usually feel like Barbie doll legs plugged crookedly into their sockets, become liquid. It feels as though my body ends at my waistline and the flesh and muscle that lay below have become a shoreline in Maui: soft sand, lapping waves, my lower body a beach that extends beyond where my feet are supposed to be and into the ocean of energy around me.

I cry because it is so seldom my hips experience that kind of softness and openness. For someone who is constantly fidgeting with her hips to get to a place of comfort, those few moments of fluidity are a beautiful reminder that my essence extends so far beyond my bones, muscles, and skin. Despite the hard armor I wear, underneath, I am nothing more than a soft soul.