Everything substantial I have ever learned,
I learned through being in my body.
I am a dancer; a student of yoga. This is my process.
When I dance, I recover the ability for my mind to inhabit my whole body;
all my senses become active,
spontaneously responding to the changing textures
of my internal environment.
Through my senses, my mind can feel, listen;
and abide in the intelligence of the body tissues.
This living fully inside the senses and body
is remembered rather than learned.
In the womb and for a short period after birth,
the body, mind and senses develop and function simultaneously.
So this uncontrived, preverbal integration
of the body and mind through the senses
is a natural capacity for all humans.
The awakening of this intelligence through the senses
so that my mind can reach out
and feel with more acuity the world around me.
And listen more deeply to the sensuous language of nature herself
is what I refer to as embodiment.
There are very many different approaches, Eastern and Western approaches,
to the process of embodiment,
and while they may be radically different, both in means and aspirations,
the places where they cross-pollinate provide a vast field of explorations
where both ancient and modern seeds of possibility
have a chance to symbiotically coexist,
ripening intelligence, ultimately to sprout again
into the fertile ground of further explorations.
I am deeply grateful to all the yogis, artists, therapists,
that are tirelessly exploring, and forming, and guiding their peers
in this somatic and bodymind practices.
My dance training was a classical conservatory training,
where you study long hours a day
via repetitions of external shapes and movements;
via copying an idealized external form
and correcting it by looking at a mirror.
Interstingly, yoga training, nowadays, tends to follow a similar approach:
an external pursuit to achieving a particular skill.
I noticed my physicality was deeply affected
by the buildings the forms were taught in.
These man-made structures
deeply affected not only my sense of space, lines, rhythms, volumes,
but also my mind, my emotions …
though in accordance with the laws of nature
and perhaps even inspired by the grandeur of their beauty.
I started to notice that these idealized forms,
which I had now embodied as my means of expression,
were out of touch with the sensuous world
and thereby of my own self.
I felt fragmented.
This is how I trained and I got injured a lot.
I also got really bored –
probably the reason why I stand on my head –
(Laughter)
and at times, deeply sad.
I felt like rather than sensuously inhabiting my body.
And exploring the natural world within and without,
I was enforcing my bodymind into yet another idea.
While I could appreciate the beauty of a newly distorted body
or correctly aligned body,
my sensing self was not involved in the discovery;
it felt contrived.
The true simple but profound methods in yoga.
I sensed how much of my human capacities laid dormant
in my dancing and in experiencing life.
I started exploring different modalities to re-approach both,
all of which emphasized learning experientially through my body,
I started to remember to connect to a deeper field
of sensitive intelligence greater than my own self reflected image.
I wanted to feel the rhythms of the earth, the tides, the seasons …
I went to nature to discover her bodymind, her intelligence.
Reaching out through nature, through my recovered senses,
I became aware that my bodymind
could move freely between the inner and outer landscapes,
there was a continuum in the silence beyond the confines of human thought.
I started to discover a more direct contact
with the sensitive intelligence of the living earth.
I became aware that nature was inside me too –
her rhythms, her qualities, her tides.
In this sensuous embodied approach,
I caught myself dancing free of pain
with a newly discovered sense of what it means to be human.
We are all born dancers of life
with a natural capacity to feel the intelligence of the living earth,
but we need to consciously step out of abstracted mind made structures –
architectural, intellectual, cultural –
to listen and respond to these kinds of wisdom.
Through attentive touch, awakened curiosity and a sense of play,
we can create profound contact between ourselves and the life around us.
My learning experience, and the one I am attempting to share with students,
has to do with recovering the ability to live fully in the senses.
To be present, embodied, responsive.
Starting with the breath,
we listen to her qualities, her sounds, her depths …
In doing so, we become aware of places in the body
where she may not move so freely.
When we listen attentively through the breath,
through sound and sensation,
we start to notice when the sound stops;
when the breath stops.
This usually signals a blockage, a tension in the bodymind,
an unconscious hold or habit,
and the body has such a great capacity to adapt
that we will often compensate loss of mobility in one area
by overworking another.
With time we are likely to assume these unconscious compensations
as our normal way of being.
And this, in turn, creates other blocks, other tensions, other compensations,
and it goes on and on until we find ourselves in a constricted bodymind
that is quite far from its natural state
and deprived from its potential.
Through sensing, hearing, feeling …
we invite the opening and the release of these contracted restricted patterns;
whether emotional, physical or mental.
When the body mind is not able to enter an area of hold,
we can use structure guided anatomical imagery,
and this can help our senses remember her more effective bodily alignment.
Our senses’ intelligence can then reach you and join position and mobility.
We can also do hands on partner work
to help the bodymind access, feel, a physical or emotional blind spot
that needs unwinding in order to transform and become sensitive again.
We revisit early developmental patterns,
both human and evolutionary,
to assist the recovery of our bodymind memory.
All body tissues are intelligent.
They receive, perceive, respond, transform;
they each have a way of exploring on their own.
When the body tissues are in full sensual contact with the living earth,
they can yield into her, feel her intelligence, her bodymind.
If we listen closely, each organ, muscle, fluid, cell,
who all carry their own memories and experiences
as a story that wants to be told.
I am inspired to learn more about who and where we are;
to be deeply rooted
in my bodymind, in nature, the community and place I live in.
Once rooted, we have a chance to hear all the living voices
of the organic and non-organic world.
In waking up to their stories, we wake up to our own.
(Applause)
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