The Practice of Finding Safety Within and of Reaching Out with Confidence

When we use phrases like "going within," "getting in touch with myself," and "reaching out for help" we are cognitively calling on physical actions that are supported by the Bartenieff Fundamentals, especially the use of Developmental Progression and Connectivity.  Developmental Progression is one of the twelve basic Bartenieff Principles of dynamic movement.  It is the series of basic movement patterns established within your body through stage-specific developmental sequencing from conception until about two years of age.  

These patterns of this early life development are then access by all human movers throughout the entirety of their life span:  the adult version of these early development skills are called Patterns of Total Connectivity.   These Patterns of Connectivity are an active component of all that I share in my somatic movement work, whether I explicitly talk about them or not!

When we use phrases about getting in touch with ourselves or reaching out to another we are more specifically cognitively calling on our physical inner wisdom that is supported by the Pattern of Total Connectivity called Core Distal or Navel Radiation.  This pattern develops early in the womb and builds on the growing/shrinking foundational pattern of Breath, our very first developmental building block of movement!

Physically, Core-Distal is the pattern that supports us in moving toward the Core or Navel area of our bodies as well as in radiating outward to the farthest reaches of our Distal points of fingers, toes, tail and head.  Our ability to withdraw into ourselves and to extend to the farthest limits of our personal space is dependent on this early pattern.

Psychologically, Core-Distal is the developmental and connectivity pattern that supports us in safely going within and claiming our sense of self.  It is the skill of safely and comfortably going within that allows us to more confidently find connection with and move out into the Outer world.

Enhancing your skills of consciously moving with your Breath and Core-Distal Patterns of Connectivity supports you to more fully and resiliently move in all your more-complex activities of daily living!

Recently I have had several wonderful opportunities to introduce and explore the Breath and Core-Distal Patterns of Connectivity with folks at the Heart, Body and Soul Mindful Move Groove class,  in my monthly Movement Fundamentals workshop, as well as with some of my private clients In both the clinical and in the somatic education settings.  This blog post is my way of supporting the home exploration and practice experience of those who have moved with me recently as well as introducing this basic and yet powerful movement concept to those who didn't have a chance to be a part of one of these sessions.

To support your understanding of this pattern, I offer three videos.

In this first video she gives a brief explanation and then she moves the basic action of Core-Distal movement.  https://youtu.be/wDyvO70mlw8

In this second video the dancer uses the Core-Distal pattern as his inspiration to create a series of complex movement phrases.  https://youtu.be/HfTbo-gL2co

In this final video we have the opportunity to see several different young dancers exploring and sharing their perspective of moving with the Core-Distal Pattern of Connectivity (which they call Navel Radiation) as well as moving the other more complex patterns in the developmental sequence.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8fORKlNYFA

I hope that these videos are helpful to inform your understanding of this small basic part of the more dynamic and encompassing Principles of the Bartenieff Fundamentals.  I also hope that they inspire you to move yourself more consciously, whether with my support or otherwise!

As you move, I invite you to ask yourself:  do I move from my Core, or is my movement usually initiated by my appendages and/or, possibly, things outside of my Self? 

I wish for you, in all ways, to move so that you can Live Life More Fully!

If you have questions or comments, please share below or email me.  I look forward to moving with you in some way very soon!

Considerations for a discussion on ANGER

The following discussion questions were created by me for use with the Trauma-Informed Parenting Support (TIPS) Group for which I am a co-facilitator. 

The TIPS group is a support group for parents/guardians who have chosen to interact with their children from a trauma-informed rather than a punitive-based approach and who seek the guidance of professional & peer support in their process.  TIPS is sponsored by HeartSpace Clinic, a not-for-profit clinic directed by my supervisor at Lawrence, Oliver and Associates, which was created for the purpose bringing quality trauma treatment to our community through services provided to individuals, families, and social systems within our community.

I am sharing these discussion questions here on the Living Life Fully blog because these questions underlie much of the perspective I bring to the movement work I offer, and is especially pertinent to the workshops I have been offering related to CONFLICT, RESILIENCE and PEACE.

Questions for a discussion on the Emotion of ANGER

Let’s consider the unique meaning for each of us when we say that we or someone else is Angry?

1. What do you believe is the purpose of Anger, in general and in this situation?  How does the experience of Anger serve you or the person having the particular experience that resulted in the emotion of Anger?

2. What pattern of internal body sensations do you experience and identify as being Angry?  These can be physical or metaphorical:  consider body part affected, shape of the sensations, size, temperature, texture, rhythm, pressure, weight, color, tension.

3. What actions, voice quality or bodily changes in another person must you observe that will cause you to believe they are angry and to trigger a Fight/Fight/Freeze reaction within in you?

4. Do you experience Fight/Flight/Freeze if someone reports that they are experiencing Anger but you do not observe the actions or bodily changes?

5. What pattern of internal body sensations do you experience and identify when you observe Anger in another person and you have a Fight/Flight/Freeze reaction?  See suggestions of #2.

6. What did you learn as a child in your family of origin about Anger?  What have you learned about Anger in your adult relationships?

Anger is a word that we use to describe a set of sensations we experience in response to something in our environment, something we also call an "emotion".  The emotion of anger may be a patterned response, but the sensations and bodily reactions that we experience as Anger are not voluntary.

After reviewing the questions above, ask yourself:  what can I do for myself to give myself space:

1) to notice the reactions I have to observing something I identify as Anger,

2) to give myself the space to identify Fight/Flight/Freeze reactions within myself,

3) to soothe myself so that I can

4)  more consciously be fully present and able to respond to the unspoken communications/ needs/wants of the person with whom I am interacting who is angry?

For further consideration of your relationship with emotion:  How would your answers change to the above questions if we replaced the word “anger” with one of the following words: fear, sadness, embarrassment, confusion, blame, joy, confidence, empowerment, peace?

Art source:  https://elisafox.deviantart.com/art/abstract-emotions-1139275

Authentic Movement: A Natural Unfolding

Good morning, community - The following is a guest blog by counselor and facilitator Jeannine Salemi of Inner Truth Counseling of Chicago, IL.  In Columbia, MO the weekend of February 24th, Jeannine will be offering Grounded Freedom, a unique opportunity to invite integration through Authentic Movement.  Within the following blog post there are all sorts of wonderful links embedded to deepen your understanding about this profound, and yet simple, movement form.  Both Jeannine and I hope you will enjoy the post and will join us in this healing, inspirational event.  -Vic

The practice of Authentic Movement was birthed through Mary Starks Whitehouse, a dancer and dance teacher, as a way to bridge her work with active imagination in her own Jungian analysis with the students she worked with. She wanted to help the dancers she was teaching to move from a deeper and more authentic place. Originally called movement-in-depth, her approach to working with people eventually drew non-dancers to work with her to find their own authenticity in movement.

Janet Adler, a dance/movement therapist and one of Whitehouse's students, developed the form into how it is known today, as a practice where one moves in the presence of a witness. While Whitehouse discovered and developed what it means to let oneself be moved, Janet Adler delved into what it means to be present in witness to the process of another and how the inner witness develops.

Zoe Avstreih, my teacher, although never a student of Whitehouse, discovered the form organically as a psychoanalyst and practitioner of Zen meditation. While teaching a class for dance/movement therapists she invited students to close their eyes and explore the answer to the question, "what moves you"? Zoe later met Janet Adler at a national Dance/Movement Therapy conference and was invited into the lineage of Authentic Movement practitioners. Zoe later became director of Adler's training center for Authentic Movement.

***

I am drawn to Authentic Movement (AM) because of the way it allows for deep honesty and the opportunity to fully dive into the truth of ourselves. The trust I have developed over the years that the discipline of the form will somehow hold and create a container for all of the chaos, the unknown and the unconscious material that emerges (sometimes in repetitive movements) is comforting to me. I feel a kinship to this form as someone for whom movement is my first language, my first direct line of receiving and of communication. When I am trying to speak from an honest place, words often come after the feeling sensation or wave of energy. The practice of AM has given me a place to practice listening to my deeper movement impulses and allow them to move through me, as well as allowing my inner witness to hold my experience as it unfolds.

The practice of AM can invite us to let go of the conditioning we receive that our cognitive processes are somehow more important than the phenomena that arises in the body. If we want to find a balanced dialogue between body and mind, we often need to give ourselves permission and space to do so first. If we want to learn to listen more closely to our body’s wisdom, we often need to continually and gently remind ourselves that it is safe to let go of the need to understand every moment as it unfolds as a somatic experience.

Daniel J. Seigel, pioneer of Interpersonal Neurobiology, describes various states of integration that occur within the body/mind. We find deeper states of presence and mindful awareness by allowing ourselves to flow in the direction of balance, which sometimes means allowing ourselves to bump up against seemingly rigid patterns and chaotic emotions. However, our systems are wired to heal and integrate if we allow it. 

By closing our eyes and listening to our deeper impulses, we are often inviting the parts of ourselves which may be getting in the way of our full experience of integration and healing. By following sensations, images, feelings and movement impulses, we are inviting movement from the subcortical (middle) region of our brain. This internal listening and exploration through both movement and stillness is done in the presence of an unconditionally accepting witness so our process has the chance to unfold in a safe space. We have the opportunity to open to these more vulnerable parts of ourselves in a safe and accepting space, which invites us to accept more deeply these parts of ourselves as well. As we then verbally process the movement experience by speaking in the present moment, we are invited to keep the vitality of the movement experience alive so that we can bring it more into conscious awareness. This conscious awareness allows for deeper integration between the right and left sides of the brain, as well as the lower (subcortex) and upper (neocortex) parts of the brain. As the witness reflects the mover’s experience in a way of speaking and attuning that minimizes projection, the mover is invited to feel the space around her experience as similar to putting a protective fence around a newly planted seed.

As one begins to trust the natural unfolding of the dialogue between body and mind through the presence of a witness and the development of one’s inner witness, deeper integration within oneself is invited to occur. The more integrated we are, the more flexible and creative we are, which allows us to bring more of our true selves into the world and possibly inspire others to do the same. 

An Authentic Movement practice supports compassion for ourselves as we learn to witness the unfolding of our own somatic processes. There is then almost a natural desire, as humans are wired to be empathetic, to see another in the same way. As we hold space for another, we are given the gift of allowing ourselves to truly see another and release blocks for ease in acceptance and understanding. As we practice seeing ourselves and each other with more clarity and less projections, we create a safe space for all of us to step more fully into our true selves where love and acceptance can flow and fear has less power. 

References

Adler, Janet. Offering from the Conscious Body: The Discipline of Authentic Movement. (2002)

Siegel, Daniel J. Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology. (2012)

What is Embodiment? A coffee and conversation talk

This morning I share my thoughts on the topic "What is Embodiment" at a local free Saturday morning event called "Coffee and Conversation."  Here are the notes that I have prepared along with this previous blog entry. 

As embryos, fetuses, and infants we did not have thoughts or emotions as we have them as adults.    We began as an organism, a collection of cells, with sensory receptors and movement.

Our movement abilities formed from amoeba-like to the most complex of walking, jumping and running as a naturally organized process of development in response to the information we received from our environment through our sensory receptors.

Given this, embodiment is…the sensory experience of breathing and of our weight on the Earth, of pressure, texture, temperature, light, smell, sound, taste and rhythm.   These are all the things that prompted us to move in the earliest days of our existence in the body we are in.  We experienced a sensation and we responded or reacted, in pleasure or in pain, in response to comfort or discomfort.

Then we learned words.  Words give a symbolic form to our experiences, a way to communicate sensations, thoughts and emotions.  Words are valuable and words can be spoken from an embodied perspective, but words are not themselves embodied.  Similarly sensory and emotional words are just labels, not things themselves. Emotions are actually a collection of sensations we associate with a specific experience.

The map is not the territory.” A. Korzybski 

We learn, as individuals, and have learned, as a culture, to override the sensory information of our body for many reasons.  Pain.  Traumatic events we witness or experience.  Devaluation by other people’s words or actions.  Descartian split of mind from body. Some religious beliefs, especially dogmatic Christianity.  Consumerism that views sensations as something to market to.  Capitalism that views sensations as a nuisance, diminishing the value of the workforce.  Incompatibility between the design of our sensory systems & the sensory information in our environments.

My perspective is that the result is overwhelm, anxiety, depression, disease, disconnection from ourselves, each other and the Earth.  And that a  regular practice of noticing, deepening, inviting, enhancing embodiment is healing and powerful, in all ways.  This includes breath awareness, sensory awareness and conscious movement exploration to re-pattern what we have learned, as young children and into adulthood, about our body.

The Green Table and The Darkest Hour

Good morning, community!

I am slowly working on a blog post for this space that is not quite ready for airing.  This post is based on my recent viewing of Joe Wright's film The Darkest Hour and a scene in it that evoked, for me, a connection with Kurt Joos' The Green Table.

If you have not already seen either of these pieces of art, I hope you will take time to do so soon!