How aware are we of our physical body and its way to engage with ourselves, other bodies and the environment? How do we listen to our physical self, to its ways of moving and positioning, in order to be able to use its full potential? Our self-image is never static, it changes from moment to moment, but through time these changes become fixed and transform into habits. Some parts of us are clearly included in our self-image, others, maybe because of early traumas or emotional blocks, are excluded, limiting our range of movement, asking us an enormous and unnecessary amount of effort. With the support of different awareness tools, as tactile experiences, breathing and movement explorations, we are going to listen to our body structure, energetic component, moving aspects, bodily sensations, feelings……and redirect them into a more balanced and harmonious whole.
The Tools:
The self in movement. Allowing.
Listening, accepting, appreciating and determining.
Being creative through movement with a joyful and light heart.
Be open to vulnerability and disorientation by feeling integration and belonging (bonding).
We look at the person as a whole, not just as a body.
From the vision that the individual is an holistic being, in TCM a particular function of the body is viewed as a metaphor for a psychological process, so to work with the different level of our physical dimension has an effect on the whole that we are.
We look at the structure, the energetic component, the moving aspect, the vibration within the body, we look at what holds us together our deep connections, at the energy, seen as the movement within, that enlivens us.
The intent is to gently allow the coming back home into our body, to re-experience the harmonious integration of sensation, feeling, mind and spirit, that is our by nature.
By connecting with our physical self, and by connecting our physical self to the earth, the space and to its many parts, we stimulate and support deep changes in our movement patterns, which will become integrated into our entire being.
By using the “moving body” as a main resource, we stimulate proprioceptive awareness and we learn to listen, accept, appreciate and determine.
Through the easing quality of moving we are invited to experience our physical, emotional and spiritual self, in pleasure as much as in pain, and to discover tools that support efficiency, power, range of movement to bring movement, breath, energy flow and health into our daily life.
Breathing Awareness:
The act of breathing reminds us of the unceasing movement of life.
Everyone of us is breathing with a specific rhythm deeply connected with the state we are in, with our way of talking and moving therefore of communicating.
In TCM the lung meridian fills the whole posture with Qi (energy) and express this energy outwards to the outside world.
By listening to our breathing, we can learn to cope with our inner self and to experience the interactions with the outside world, with the whole, the expansion of our borders and the way we express ourselves.
By listening to our breath in different situation and by allowing our natural rhythm to occur we might learn to invite a specific way of breathing to best support specific actions or purposes and eventually new ways of relating with ourselves and the others.
When we are connected to our breathing we are connected to our spiritual self, and our thinking process tend to slowdown, even to stop for few seconds.
This is another way to be in the here and now and to perceive ourselves and our being in relation through our inner self.
Tactile Experiences:
Tactile exercises are used to offer kinaesthetic effects, to seed an awareness, to offer an experience of our alignment as fluid, as a dynamic process, where we don’t hold the balance in any one part of the body, but where we relate to multi-gravitational fields, where the shifts of weight cause the shift in actual center of balance.
Each part of the physical body is constantly falling and re-falling into line with each other, the totality of the physical self is falling and re-falling into line with the other dimensions of the self and the whole is falling and re-falling into line with all the forces in the universe.
Excess tension, that might cause alignment problems, constricted breathing and inflexibility, is kinaesthetically released allowing the experience of principle of multi-directional alignment.
No force is needed to defy gravity, inertia, and friction, instead we operate with the conception that other forces support and propel us through movement, the multi-gravitational, cosmic energies.
Less effort for more efficiency.
We let go of control, we let go of holding, gaining trust in the self and in the universe, accepting and coping with the constant seasoning of life. We experience ourselves as a multidimensional energy-self and as part of a higher and larger reality; we experience ourselves as a boundless physical being, channeling the energy and creativity of the entire cosmos.
Voice Awareness:
The use of sound and voice is netting through the entire process of self awareness.
Through freeing the voice, we are invited to free the body, our inner world, the whole self.
The intention is to release tension, self defenses and physical, emotional, intellectual and aura blocks that we acquired by being in the world, to be able to support the efficiency of our natural voice and its ability to communicate our emotions and thoughts.
Attention is also given to emphasize the good vibration of the organs and the different levels of our consciousness, by performing specific sounds and supporting them with the body in movement.
Guided Imaginary:
Our whole physical self is not equally accessible to our awareness, some parts, because of experiencing freedom and openness are more available in becoming components of our self-image, other because of being the site of our physical blocks, manifestation of our emotional traumas, they seems to be missing somehow from the whole picture.
Guided imaginary will focus on different areas of the body, or on the totality of the self, in order to get in touch with them and their state.
We will learn to experience ourselves not only in terms of density, tangible self, but also in terms of emptiness, of our inner spaces.
The emptiness becomes a presence.
But is a more rarefied presence, telling about freedom, availability, high potentials for transformation. These “spaces”, through which the whole universe is flowing, unleashing our real self, are slowly revealing themselves and our hidden emotional holdings.
The image is a metaphor for kinaesthetic knowledge, and this metaphor is apprehended intuitively rather that analytically.
Since much of the mechanics of movement are unconscious and not immediately subject to the control of the analytical mind, space is given to the intuitive mode, free from the conscious control.
By allowing ourselves to merge with the image, we simultaneously support the letting go of fixed points of muscular tension and the manifestation of novelty, of “new movement”.
The release of tension, of distorted alignment is, in effect, a release of perceptions, of preconceived ideas, of psycho-physical energy.
Guided Meditations/Alfa State:
Sophisticated guided meditations bring us into deeper states of consciousness and deeper body/mind integration, the “Alfa” level, a state just under the conscious state, the conscious control, where internal calm and quiet is access, a state free of tension and anxieties, alert to new stimuli, and most conductive to growth and change.