Braided Lives: A Love Letter to a Lineage in Motion
- Delia Brett
- Dec 8, 2025
- 8 min read
By Delia Brett
About five years ago, I did what, to me at the time, was unthinkable: I let go.
When I surrendered to that radical free fall, I learned to stand in the grief and joy of the unravelling, in the discomfort of not knowing, and to feel a greater current of trust, faith, and intuition move through my life.
Over the years—through teachers, practices, and 3½ years of coaching work—I’ve come to see myself not through the lens of a 20-year-old’s longing, but as a soul on a lifelong journey of understanding, revealing light as I go.
I still get tripped up, still doubt, make mistakes and flare up, but I no longer take those moments as evidence of failure. They are part of the deepening. Even still, a restlessness has grown in me to “be done,” to move on to the next chapter.
With the imminent passing of Peter Bingham, I now see that restlessness for what it was—impatience. The story wasn’t finished because evolution never is. I am one thread in a much larger weave. Or, to use a contact analogy, I am one arm in a tangle of hearts and bodies that form the whole of this dance.
So I’m writing this now—a love letter to a community, a lineage, and a man whose life and leaving have stirred something profound in me—in hopes it might heal, uplift, and honour all of us.
Because if I am learning anything right now, it’s that our lives are braided in ways we can’t see until much later.
The First Door: A Fifteen-Year-Old Meets the Lineage
For 30 years, I’ve been rolling, swishing, tumbling, jumping, and landing on the silky floor of EDAM, under Peter Bingham’s feet. Why for so long?
Short answer: Because in loving and leaving EDAM, I was learning to claim what is mine.
Let me explain.
I met Peter when I was 15 years old during a high school theatre festival. There were various classes we were participating in, and one of them was with this long-haired, balding, hippie guy who did this kind of aura sweeping thing, and that got us to lean on each other and roll around on the floor, like kayaks.
I still recall every detail of that class as if it just happened. I was Peter’s demo partner, and he was asking me to lean against his body and see if I could use his body to slip down to the floor. Something I would later understand is called Sluffing. This was my first introduction to the wonders of physics. Even though I felt like I was defying gravity, the truth was I was consciously playing with it for the first time. And it felt incredible.
I didn’t know then that this moment would return to me decades later, revealing just how interwoven our paths truly are.
But at that time, I just went back to being a small-town kid with ambitious plans of becoming a famous actor.
The Red Door Closes, the Yellow Door Opens
But, when those plans didn't come to fruition at 18—when, as Liz Miller, author of The Awakened Brain, describes, that Red Door (that A + B + C strategic plan, that acting career) didn't open—I was left lost and disoriented.
Another wide-open Yellow Door appeared.
I was living in the downtown Eastside, in this hundred-year-old house, replete with artist roommates and dumpster-dived furniture, feeling totally aimless, with my dream slammed shut. And my roommate—who, following Liz Miller’s metaphor, could be described as a “trail angel”—encouraged me to explore a place called Main Dance Place.
Another path began to open. This one was less lonely, more demanding, and more affordable. It was a path where I could be simultaneously free and safely constrained inside a cocoon of cultural obscurity at the same time. Perfect.
So I started taking dance classes in the day, and at night I would watch strange dance performances, where painted naked bodies would writhe in slow motion to the scream of the saxophone and screech of electric guitars.
Eventually, at 19, I ended up in a workshop at EDAM Dance. It was a contact dance workshop with Nancy Stark Smith. It was challenging and inspiring. There was a community there, filled with other somatic explorers, teaching me that it was safe not to know.
So that sealed the deal.
It was as if something—some deeper intelligence—was guiding me back into a lineage I had already stepped into at fifteen, without knowing it.
Returning to the Teacher I First Met as a Child
I decided to go to the Main Dance Place for professional training and to become a dancer. About 5 years later, I was working for Peter at EDAM Dance.
It wasn't until a decade later at EDAM that Peter and I realized that he was the same long-haired teacher who had opened my 15-year-old eyes all those years before.
From this perspective now, after having fully come through, what Liz Miller calls the “wide open yellow door,” my 15-year-old “trail angel,” Peter, had become my teacher again.
He was my teacher at 19, 20, 26, 36 and stayed my teacher till I was nearly 50 years old.
Three decades that taught me, quietly and relentlessly, how to walk my own path—even when I didn’t know that’s what was happening.
The Second Yellow Door: Leaving to Become More Myself
After 30 years of sitting, stomping, whirling, and sliding at Peter’s feet, the time had come for me to pass through a second wide-open Yellow Door.
This one held all the heartbreak, disappointment, and frustration that came from trying to open the Red Door of recognition, acceptance, and achievement in the Vancouver contemporary dance scene.
So I slipped into another life.
A life I never even knew was possible—one where I learned the skills and capacities of coaching, the perspectives, mindsets, and frameworks I had been missing, which helped me integrate the lessons of dancing and grow as both a yoga teacher and a coach.
The Third Yellow Door: Peter’s Departure
Now, as Peter decides to end his life on his own terms, I can see the way death is that third bridge—the third “wide-open yellow door”—that ushers all of us.
And for all who were intimately woven into the fabric of EDAM, we are all here, together at this time, peering through.
Because when a pillar of a community prepares to leave this world, the entire web trembles.
Peter and I met the other day, and I spoke to him for an hour. He talked about the exaltation that can come when you don't ask for too much and you keep it simple.
I felt the wisdom of his teaching again.
I was able to see how Peter had learned to walk his dharma and how it has become clarified through his 70+ years. His offering has been constancy. He’s been holding space again and again and again for the dance. For all of us.
And throughout it, he’s had this way of not stepping in your lane. He just showed up day in and day out, regardless of his physical capacity. He quietly held the space for us to move in and through it as we needed.
Profoundly. Electrifyingly. Ridiculously. Honestly. Arrogantly. Beautifully.
Peter claimed and executed his path with a singular focus. And although his “I don't ask for too much” approach came to him through his lineage of teachers, even that, Peter did in his own way.
The Path I Needed to Claim
However, we have to claim our path as good. Sometimes we do it by flipping the table and getting angry and stomping out, just to give ourselves the energy to make a change. Sometimes we slip out in the quiet of the night when everyone else is sleeping.
I chose to leave EDAM through a kind of squeeze. In a moment of interpersonal drama, when everyone was distracted, I squeezed myself out.
But the actual leaving process—the letting go, the grieving process—was never really complete.
But now, thanks to Peter, claiming his truth through his own dying process, I finally feel the freedom to acknowledge mine.
This is what is mine to claim:
The agony I felt at not celebrating.
The agony I felt in keeping it small, in choosing not to speak into the love we felt for one another, in avoiding the acknowledgement of our interconnectedness.
The pain I carried from not having a social-spiritual context that properly named and honoured the big and small sacrifices we—and our loved ones—made so we could show up as professionals, even when resources were lacking and opportunities uncertain.
Because this daily dedication dance we do has more than two partners. It is dancing through the lives of our families, our friends, and our greater community, and although it's a privilege for which I'm infinitely grateful, in this world, it still costs.
So when Peter spoke to me about not asking for too much, I realized what I had been learning all along: how to ask for more.
Not more recognition. Not more resources. Not more support, even though I thought that's what it was.
But what I really wanted to ask for was more from myself.
I want to ask for more truth, more authenticity, more gratitude, more celebration.
I want to ask that each of us be acknowledged.
I want to ask that you, the professional dancer, be valued as you should be.
And want to ask for more from each other, too.
I want to ask that each of us be a source of encouragement and strength for the other.
And that each of us recognize our power to create—not just art, but greater connection, care, understanding, and courage.
So that, through our skills as creators, we might be able to create a world that is more radical, innovative, inclusive and humane.
Because I believe there is no real scarcity here. This has only ever been a story of abundance.
To Everyone Who Stepped Into the Dance
We are truly blessed to have had such a long-standing member of our community hold space for this exceptional practice.
And to every single one of us who has ever walked through EDAM's doors, hung their street clothes on the hook, slipped onto the floor to surrender expectation and thinking for curiosity and receptivity, I want you to know:
You have been an essential and irreplaceable part of this story.
What we practiced together was never just dance. It was a way of belonging—to ourselves, to each other, and to something quietly holding us all.
And that belonging is still here, woven into each of us, guiding the steps we take from here.
Epilogue — A Poem From the Threshold
When I first left EDAM, this poem arrived suddenly—as though my body needed to speak in its own language before my mind could catch up.
It feels right to bring it forward again now.
Holding Empty
(2022)
Holding empty, this palm, filled with etchings, line drawings, stories, worlds.
I was here, dark moon
I was here, sunflower
I was here holding a newborn's finger
I was here, though hidden, then bursting out for fear of being hidden
I was here, gripping the precipice, leaning backwards
I was here lifting, hauling, leveraging, heaving the groceries, adjusting the strap, gripping the baskets, the handles, the cups, the rags, the cords, the foam, the sequins, the diapers, the knives, the nozzles, the broken glass, the bed frames, the ledges, the shoulders, the hair, the ankles
The hook at the back of your knee
The hook in the crook of your elbow
The swing of your wrist
The twist of your thigh
The circumference of your neck
The way your head can cast my whole body like a fishing line when I cup it just right
The way we danced
The way we touched every part
Every piece
Every anchor and rock
Every canal and black expanse
With our whole bodies
Our whole bodies
About the Author
Delia Brett is a transformational coach, dancer, and writer with 35 years of experience in the performing arts. She is the owner of Green Room Yoga and creator of East Van Wisdom School, helping others access their deepest creative intelligence and live with greater coherence, artistry, and purpose.
Further Reading & Inspiration
Lisa Miller — The Awakened Brain Miller blends spiritual insight with rigorous neuroscience to show how cultivating awareness and connection to something greater than ourselves can transform how we live, heal, and make meaning. Apple+2Kirkus Reviews+2
Lisa Miller’s “Red Door / Yellow Door” imagery & the idea of life-turning synchronicities (“trail angels,” unexpected pivots, awakening through suffering). This metaphor articulates how closed doors may redirect us toward paths more alive, right, and aligned — a framework that resonated through my own journey. PodScripts+2Thrive Center+2
Spirituality, resilience, and integration: The psychology of spiritual awakening as a path through grief, loss, change, and rediscovery — especially relevant now, as we face endings, mourning, and transformation together. The Awakened Brain demonstrates through research how “awakened awareness” supports mental health, meaning, and connection. Kirkus Reviews+1
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