Virtual Bodywork (?!)

It is the 21st century.  I am finding through trial and error, exploration and surprise there is a practice which could be named Virtual Bodywork.

Merriam-Webster's definition of bodywork, in my estimation, is woefully vague and lacking:   "therapeutic touching or manipulation of the body by using specialized techniques."  My experience of what bodywork is, from both the giving and receiving point of view, is complex and layered.  It includes M-W's definition, but goes way beyond (see a more in-depth description in my post:Bodywork, Energy Medicine: Whole Healing).  Bodywork is an act of a layered, mutual listening between facilitator and client.  Intuition and all senses are engaged in an acute attention.  The relationship in the experience of bodywork is anchored in trust; it has to be, because what occurs is deep, intimate, and often edgy.  From both role's point of view (the facilitator and receiver), there is a heightened sense of the sublime in oneself:  the way energy is moving, expressing itself; and the subsequent following provides information to the now and what is present.  The facilitator is not only grounded in whatever skills he/she might have developed, but is also providing an attention (full-bodied listening capacity) and meta-witnessing skills that are flexible enough to go with the flow, often the unexpected.  Trust is implicit. Trust of one's knowing in a moment.  Trust in one's inclinations as they come (even if they seem cognitively bizarre in the moment).  Trust in other.  This happens for both parties.  Whereas there is room for wonder and question, there isn't room for insecurity and fear.  Easy to say, hard to Be.

Based on the decades I have done bodywork, I can say that communication between facilitator and receiver is not usually seated in verbalization.  Bodywork is, by nature, often nonverbal; and when it's not, the verbal communication is based in an energetic exchange and doesn't usually have a 'chatty' or talkative quality.  Good facilitators and open receivers who are experienced in this type of work don't have rigid agendas or hard and fast rules.  To get the most from the work both facilitator and receiver allow the "energy bath" of the work to wash over them without immediately interpreting, but just following.  We are curious energy detectives, following the small and large clues, making no immediate conclusions, allowing what is to Be. 

Some of my work with people necessitates the use of the internet, webcams and (virtual) software applications.  Up until recently I was using this technology primarily for wellness coaching, which works pretty well with clients whom are long distance.  Almost accidentally, as of late, I have begun using this technology to do a version of long-distance bodywork.  

Returning: Authentic Movement in the Now

Sometimes we find ourselves in the throws of circumstances we know nothing about, and for which we have no reference point.  Perhaps it is precipitated by a shock, trauma, re-trauma causing a degree of disassociation. We are left almost bereft, uncertain, feeling outside of our normal self.  The world has turned upside down, we try to act, make decisions, behave to and in the completely unfamiliar.  What is, becomes living an estrangement; a betrayal of one's core truth.  In this disorienting position, we grapple with trying to reach an understanding with skills we don't have, that aren't in our normal milieu.  Perhaps the shock has us abandon our centered self, the place of understanding and homeostasis from which we usually operate.

Recovery is not immediate.  There is an unwinding necessary.  Typical destressing techniques don't work, aren't possible in this scenario.  Time is actually the healer, the thing that helps us regain perspective, bringing my externalized self back home.  Returning to the body as a point of reference, returning to the act of listening to the body is a salve that begins to heal the torn fabric of ourselves, our being.

In my mind this is the true value of the Authentic Movement (AM) form.  It's an invitation to return to what Is.  There is a client I have coached for several months and we have used AM in significant ways to reassociate (self)Presence as a prescription.  After a very difficult week of losses, I suggested she do some AM during our session.  Initially, she didn't want to; she felt too tired and she didn't want to do all the angry air punching she felt she would end up doing.  I asked her who in her believed she knew what her tired body would turn to in the moment of dropping in and stillness that is the beginning of the form.  That's a moment that is new, not laden with anticipation or agenda.  We are asked to breathe, sense and Be-- and then finally allow what is to manifest.


She described this session as I have described sessions, as many many others have described sessions, as being an affirmation of the body to Self, an experience of returning to what is true, now. When we stop, breathe, drop in-- the unexpected often happens.

We are our bodies in this way.  Our bodies are a source to return to for a reality check, for our truth to pass through and the rest of me to register.  All of a sudden, the frenetic head energy I've been running on all day is redistributed, transformed to include the rest of me.  I find my strength, my vertical in the presence of the body in the now.

Following the Rules: Embodying Ourselves and the Practice

The embodying of an art form, practice or ourselves, means a two-fold process:  learning the "rules" well, living them so they are a natural reference point, and then letting go of the rule's structure.  Only then is there a deep confidence in one's "Way" and a freedom in that Way. Only then do we become ourselves, or form art or live a practice.

I am not particularly a lover of rules.  In fact for me, it has always been a secret pleasure to bend and/or go against them.  Rules often impinge upon "individuality", a self's impulse.  They are often restrictive, even stifling.  But as in all things, there is a season, a time for everything.  So there is a time to understand and live the rules (without them absconding who You may Be).  To blindly identify and attach to rules, whether they be a religious or spiritual practice or a craft/art, is to live bound.  There comes a time when stepping beyond the structure of rules is necessary to grow oneself and one's practice up.

I am a 'personal witness' for someone in a large group Authentic Movement (AM) session.  I move first and find myself doing a lot of strong, grounding movements with my arms, legs, body.  It's as if I am filling myself with strength and courage.  I move out and my mover moves in.  I am 15 feet away from her and have the impression I should be closer.  This would be breaking the group agreement (rule) of returning to the same place for witnessing all the time, established at the beginning of the group session.  I stay where I am, but keep feeling the tug to move closer.  I finally move the 10 feet I need to be closer to her.  I "sprout" my arms, moving them into a large embrace of the space to identify my new spot to the other witnesses. They sprout their arms as well, acknowledging the change. The container feels intact.

Despite my deep love and appreciation of Authentic Movement practice, I almost always have an inner eye roll when the form's guidelines get raised in a new group.  They are practical and almost entirely safety based; why take the trouble to bring them up, we all know them.

Well, we don't all know them in the same way. It is an assumption to think otherwise. Much like social etiquette in different families, regions and countries, the rules, customs and the understanding of AM rules can be different.  It becomes necessary when crossing boundaries and terrain to keep clear the very simple guidelines.  The reminder of them actually sets an intention for safety.  Safety is imperative in an AM setting; the depth of our work has the possibility of surfacing and showing us our otherwise submerged material.  Without safety, our protection and survival mechanisms are always in play, in at least an oblique defense, making it impossible for the more subtle expressions to reveal themselves.


As I witness my mover, I remain standing, this being somewhat irregular in the form.  The mover's process is intense and the witnessing requires a significant renewal of self-grounding on my part.  I find myself moving slightly (maintaining stillness is a norm in the practice) to what I witness.  This standing and moving is necessary for me to stay present and unattached.  I have an impression of myself being a samurai; knees are bent, feet wide apart, arms bent in front of me as if protecting my dantian, my torso, my 'home'.

Embody:  to give a concrete form to; express, personify, or exemplify in concrete form: (to embody an idea in an allegorical painting.); to provide with a body; incarnate; make corporeal: (to embody a spirit);  to collect into or include in a body; organize;incorporate; to embrace or comprise.  Merriam-Webster Dictionary

What does it mean to embody something?  M-W Dictionary says it in a cerebral way above.  Embodiment is quite the opposite of cerebral.  Embodiment is a full integration of parts; parts of an understanding we hold in varied aspects of ourselves.  Embodiment is to fully live or express something complete.  To be embodied is to be ourselves as we are meant to be in that moment.  To be a complete expression in movement, verbalization,  or visualization.  For anything to be embodied is for it to be perfectly Whole, to be exactly as it is meant to be.  This usually doesn't look or sound like what we  imagine the expression to be.  And yet, it rings absolutely true when it is expressed.  Embodiment can not be forced or created. It creates itself.  It's the timely accumulation in experiencing the suffering and joy of our material over our continuum, and the benefit of having lived the rules.

My witnessed mover has moved out of the moving space and is now witnessing.  I enter the space as a mover, running, skipping, jumping lightly, releasing any held tense material.  I circle and bend and turn and feel absolute lightness and joy.  My face feels open and ecstatic.  I become aware of another who has entered the circle.  She is following me;  it actually feels like I am being stalked.  I feel she wants a part of me.  It comes to me that this needs to be confronted.  I stop circling and stand in my samurai pose.  I am surprised at how relaxed and unafraid I feel.  The other mover doesn't hesitate to move into my body and attach.  The primary guidelines for contact in AM-- to move slowly, wait for cues that mutual engagement is desired by all parties, has not been maintained.  My samurai arms move swiftly up disengaging the mover.  I feel angry at the violation. 

I later describe this experience in the circle.  The other mover reacts and starts to justify her actions.  Before she starts to speak, I want to ask her to take three breaths before speaking so as to enter herself, the cell memory of her experience.  But I am too slow and also, this would be irregular to do this.  She is defensive, reactive, not clear in her verbalization.  She forgets or doesn't know the AM guideline to attempt to be in oneself (one's embodiment?) while talking about a movement experience, as she was in the actual movement.  She forgets or doesn't know that witnessing response to a mover is always in service to the mover not themselves as witness.  When this (difficult) effort is made, the verbalization becomes an extension of the movement experience instead of outside the movement experience.

The concepts of following the rules and being embodied seem antithetical on the surface.  But they are related, part of the same process.  We have our attitudes about words, like "rules" and "embodiment".  When these attitudes relax into an open inquiry, a word and its previously assumed meaning becomes an unknown.  It isn't attached to the attitude any longer.  I can have a different, fresh experience of it.

Not living the simple guidelines/rules of AM practice agreed upon by a group of movers/witnesses, can have dire consequences; even in 'mature' and seasoned groups.  When the rules are relaxed in groups where the trust level is high amongst the members, a certain vigilance and integrity also relaxes.  Sometimes it results in a further spaciousness, an expansion of possibility.  Sometimes it leads to a 'no one being home' situation, and a drop in meta support of its members and the container's safety.  In groups that don't have a seasoned foundation, people get stepped on, bumped into, (not usually serious) injuries can ensue, as well as the obvious psychological repercussions of not being seen, felt or respected through "accident".  Unwanted contact can feel like a violation.  Unwanted, unembodied verbal witnessing in a circle cheapens the mover's experience and can feel like a violation.  Rules in the form are not arbitrary, but provide safety in a circle of movers, seasoned or not.

No matter how mature one is in a practice or art form, returning to and letting go of the rule's of the form is necessary. As one becomes more seasoned, they are a light reference point touched upon and released.  As in all rules maintained in society and elsewhere, one doesn't have to think of them, they are well established in our interior.  When this is mature in us, embodiment of a material and of ourselves is possible, in large part to the safety of the rules we have integrated over time and practice.  How do I know where I am in this way?  Our self-awareness becomes more refined with practice.  I begin to see the natural adherence and letting go of the guidelines and the oblique repercussions.  This is my maturity, my seasonedness.  This is how I know where I am in the practice.

A Right Rest

For most of us, when the need to rest arises, the first choice taken is to lie down or nap/sleep.  The awareness that other types of reprieve are possible if we follow the availability of the body's call, is often unavailable.  This requires a more nuanced listening.

Rest is required when we have expended considerable energy, negativity has created a leak in my energy channels, or the failure to shift my energy through another type of activity (or too much repetition of even a good thing) can be draining.  Sleep is not often the only or best resolution.  Evolving one's own individual care-taking approach is possible.

There I was, wrapping spring rolls for 60 people, about 100 in all.  It was a lovely task:  the beguiling stretchy rice wraps, fresh vibrating herbs and slivered vegetables in interesting layers, ending with a careful tuck .  It was a small motor hand coordinated, delicate operation-- very pleasing to the senses.  About two hours into the task, it became apparent a gear switch was necessary.  A fatigue came over me, my legs had been in one place for hours, my hands in a small repetitive pattern for same.  I picked up a broom and vigorously started to sweep the floor.  I then mopped it with big wide sweeping arcs, a sort of dance that was fully enjoyable, a static containment getting released.

An entire day of large, challenging movement, considerable perspiration in extreme heat conditions, with a concentrated attention to a myriad of tasks --called me to rest.  I took half an hour, went into an air conditioned room and crawled under a large work table. (A vague recollection of spending a lot of pleasure time under tables as a child came to me.) There, I rested on my back, pulled my knees up, rolled side to side, enjoyed some prone stillness, played with my hands and elbows and provided a rolling touch to mostly unrecognized places like ankles, groin, back of legs near buttocks, sacrum, moving and smoothing (energy?) layers of self.  I followed impulses, some surprising, all of them deeply restful. I finished by rolling out from under the table, picking up a water loaded watercolor brush on the table and ran it across a piece of paper, appreciating its movement and action.  I completed the period by adding  a dot of color at the end.  Sublime satisfaction.

Unexpectedly, I spent most of a morning with someone with a consistently mild thread of sarcasm running through their dialogue.  By the end of the morning I was feeling depleted and fatigued.  Realizing, despite my efforts not to let that particular brand of negativity impact me, I had indeed been influenced.  I took a "bathroom break" and instead went out into the drizzle and energetically walked around the block, feeling the hips, femurs in the sockets, my arms swinging up and wherever they felt like going, the cool heavy precipitation dampening my exposed arms.  It wasn't an easy start; the body was halting and apparently in a stuck rhythm at first.  But before long, attention to the way the movement was unfolding and the almost joyous arm swings had me emitting small yelps of pleasure and the shift was made. I did a few chi (energy) baths at the end for good measure.

The common aspects in these different scenarios is awareness of the need for a change in energy and a willingness to let the body play (a type of rest/release any child would attest).  Rest for the weary can be finding play in the heart, mind and body. The right configuration is limitless, it just depends on following the call to where the awareness is leading you. Fingering a delicate branch of a plant, submerging oneself in water and receiving that new impression.  Lying still or allowing fingers to find their expression through another media or their own manifestation.  Sleep is a delicious mode of respite.  But a rightful, authentic rest can be found in our own nature's beckoning if we listen a little closer and respond.

MAKING WAVES: Alexander Technique and the undulating self

Aileen Crow, is a woman whom I consider one of my "mothers", and whom has been an invaluable mentor (and friend/"playmate") to me for over twenty years.  In my mind she is the quintessential "maverick", who has modeled and taught credibility through self-ownership; that is, when one is true to oneself, there can be only rightness (in relation to bodywork and everything else).  Aileen is someone I have worked and played with with the greatest of intensity.  She meets you.  She matches you.  Brilliantly.  Even when the vibration is extremely (unbearably?) deep or profound.  Aileen is a Master.  For me, she is a model of love, gratitude, appreciation and most of all Joy.  She walks her own truth and is absolute in her permissiveness that you walk your own. It is my great pleasure to print here, respective writings she produced in 1992 (Inner Flow and the Spiraling Spinal Wave) and for the Alexander Technique International Conference on Consensus, (Making Waves), 1996.

"We all know that the Alexander Technique [AT] leads to expansiveness and lightness. Once we attain that, what do we do with it?  If we just maintain an expanded shape or a state of expansion and lightness, it is static.  Oscillation and inner movement define control of movement impulses and its torso held in one piece sometimes looks like an elegant empty suit.  In our desire for "good use," we must be careful not to eliminate the fluidity of movement that allows torso rotation and undulatory, spiraling movements of the spine.

To make contact with the flow of inner movement impulses is essential for actors, dancers and singers--- for anyone who wants to make emotional contact with others.  The inner movement impulses communicate emotions.  Often involuntary and spontaneous, they may not suit our self-images, but they have their own reason for being and if they are ignored they will reappear in symptoms or in dreams until their wisdom is received and integrated into our lives.

In a cross-cultural study of movement styles, the Choreometrics Project (1) demonstrated that the world can be mapped into areas defined by two different body attitudes.  One is a one-unit torso, associated with patrilineal control of sexuality.  The other is a two-unit torso, with twisting and undulating, from matrilineal cultures in which sexuality and fertility are valued. FM Alexander lived and taught within a Northern European one-unit torso culture; the limited range of movements used in his teaching and in most Alexander teaching today reflects the attitude toward sexuality inherent in that culture.

If Alexander's principles are cross-culturally valid, Alexander lessons should include movements that use three dimensional torso twists, spirals, and spinal waves; and not be limited to those that maintain a straight spined, one-unit, flat torso that only folds and unfolds at the hip joints (as in 'monkey').  Unfortunately, many people see that carefully maintained (if high class) limitation as a cliched 'Alexandraoid' look.

Every bone, muscle and organ in our bodies have a three dimensional spiral to it; there are no straight lines.  Even our DNA spirals.  From conception, living tissue is formed from spiraling, flowing plasma.  Anything that flows, spirals. (2)

The design of the human body is that of muscles in a double spiral pattern - left and right twin spirals - around the bony structure (3,4) with its wave-like spine.  And or bodies move in complex spirals and waves, if they are not culturally conditioned otherwise.

Any such influence that restricts the  natural fluidity of the body also tends to isolate the individual and distort emotional communication within their human relationships.  We naturally move in synchrony with each other on a micro-movement level (5). People with communication disorders are out of movement synchrony with themselves and with others.

In parts of the world characterized by a two-unit torso (such as parts of the Middle East, Africa and India), undulating movement promotes communal harmony.  In the Middle East, it is a way of passing on the skills that inform sexual communication; women wave/dance together in unison, forming harmonious support groups for themselves; and women wave/dance around a woman as she gives birth, to encourage her.

I personally feel that the relationship problems within the Alexander community are related to a mistaken idea of what 'good use' is.  Carefully maintaining an ideal body state or shape restricts fluidity and sets up a hierarchical mind-over-body relationship within the individual because of the constant need to control inferior, non-ideal body impulses.  Maintaining the Alexander ideal of good use necessitates inhibiting any movement impulses incongruent to that ideal.  Those incongruities may very well be the body wanting to speak its mind, perhaps expressing dissatisfaction at having 'one right way imposed on it by even a benevolent director.  The unwanted bodily impulses may be offering another point of view, or counter examples to the ideal, or even new discoveries and new connections that could benefit the total person.

That's analogous to the political situation in the Alexander community, with its problematic concerns about who's in and who's out, and who gets to approve of and controls whom, etc.

It is also interesting to me that so many Alexander teachers are doing Authentic Movement in which spontaneous 'incongruent' movement impulses are followed and expressed until they yield their indispensable meaning. I hope this ATI conference work on Consensus will help lead the Alexander community to this kind of complementary [alignment] and to a broader cross-cultural identity."

(1)  The Choreometrics Project, Forestine Paulay and Irmgard Bartenieff in Folk Song Style and Culture, Alan Lomax, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1968
(2)  Sensitive Chaos, Theodor Schwenk, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1965.
(3)  The Double Spiral Arrangement of Voluntary Musculature, Raymond A.Dart, Human Potenial, Vol. 1, No.2, 1968
(4)  Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation, M. Knott and D. Voss Harper & Row, 1968.
(5)  Cultural Microrhythms, William S.Condon, Interaction Rhythms, edited by Martha Davis, Human Sciences Press, NY 1982.

Aileen Crow has been an Alexander teacher since 1969.  She taught at ACAT in New York City until she formed her own AT training program in 1978.  She is a Creativity Counselor in private practice in NYC and in New City, NY, is a Laban Movement Analyst (since 1969) and a Dreambody Process-Oriented therapist.   Her most recent interests are calligraphy, Solo Focusing and transforming trauma.

Aileen's more recent writings have been in A Moving Journal (1993-2006 ),  AuthenticMovementCommunity Blog, and the Journal of Authentic Movement and Somatic  Inquiry (JAMSI) AuthenticMovement.Journal.com.

Unimitable Aileen at Play

Authentic Movement: a Larger Listening Intelligence

One of the occurrences I have come to trust implicitly over the years, is the event of the arrival of the Unexpected; the event that is so surprising, yet usually so True in the moment (even when unpleasant).  This may be why Authentic Movement (AM) is such a compelling practice.

Entering the Authentic Movement "space" in oneself is like walking through a door or gate of a temple/church, a garden, a dream.  The ordinary is not exactly left behind, it just becomes secondary, not the loudest voice in the room of oneself.  What we enter is a fuller intelligence that is elicited through a stronger connection to our breath, a quieter more sensitized energy field, a listening that isn't with the ears alone, a watching that isn't with the eyes at all. "Seeing", "Listening", "Being" "effort"  take on an entirely different dimension. We become more embodied in a larger intelligence.

In this space, we in a way, emulate a Pentecost of sorts.  The energy of a reconciling force descends (ascends?) upon our chaotic, fragmented self (inner disciples) and unifies the estranged others whom live (oddly enough as one) in us. As in the Bible's Pentecost story (The Story of Pentecost), all tongues (languages) are understood, welcomed and accepted. The subtle daily alienations, misunderstanding, separations--- they some how are transformed (by this third force, reconciliation). Or not.  The former is what might be expected as in the Leviticus XXV story.  The unexpected would be a unification of another sort.  Where the chaos might ensue (as usual) but walks almost in partnership with what is still, quiet, observational.  That experience of equally weighted, very different energies co-existing is unexpected, perhaps even miraculous.

In Authentic Movement, through an intentional open wonder and inquiry, the body becomes more relaxed and the sub-conscious enters from left field, which surprises she who entered the space in the first place.  Through a modicum of relaxation, something internally opens allowing an energy with all its material concreteness to enter (sort of like what happens in the REM state when we are sleeping) and play out in images and relationship to body parts, and others.  However you lean, however you define the experience, material arrives, often unexpectedly.  Not what we were anticipating. Even when we (in our ordinary self) think we aren't in expectation, the surprise often proves otherwise.

I think what keeps calling me back to this amazing, generous form is the wish to experience this fuller listening intelligence and the opportunity to experience what is my ordinary self at the same time.  My daily experiences of myself and the world around me are so fractured; this spacious intelligence in conjunction with the routine householder, unavailable.  Entering this church or garden gate and the reinforcement of spending more time there, gives me the taste of living a bigger life, a more intelligent life.  One that is not devoid of one quality or another, but inclusive.  It's not just a type of  listening done with one sense-- a more spacious and energetic capacity unveils itself.  The idea of an effort that doesn't exist in "trying" makes itself known.  Life becomes apparently bigger than that.  Anticipation and expectation become uninteresting and pointless.  The unexpected vibrates with another type of knowing; it's fresh, clean, mysterious and enlivening.
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The Body as Political Forum

In my posts Violence: a Cautionary Truth and Use: The Alexander Technique, I broach the subjects of the impact on the body by external influence.  In other past posts I've supposed the malleability of the psych/body to cultural influence and the often disempowerment of self to these forces.  In an article, The Architecture of E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E in Performa Magazine (http://performamagazine.tumblr.com/post/33854559841/), the suggestion our bodies are a political forum because of their materiality ties these deductions together.  Author Cassie Peterson, puts forth some provocative conjecture:  "The body is a material representation of the ways we exist in relation to the social (dis)order. In her essay 'How Can We Have a Body?: Desires and Corporeality' (2006), psychoanalyst Susie Orbach writes, 'All our known ways of being create physical and neural pathways that become constitutive of self, not just on a psychological level but on a physical, material level.'  Much like Foucault, she believes that our bodies are constituted by the social discourses that shape them. She asserts, 'bodies are made, not born,' meaning that we become our 'selves' through repetition of language and social practices. Accordingly, E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E begins with a performer asking us, 'What’s the difference between uncirculated money and heart disease?'

Nothing. There is no difference. Social discord manifests as personal dis-ease. The social body is becoming in the physical body. "

a stylized (socialized?) image of the human form

She continues, "Our relationship to our bodies mimics the perpetual privatization of space and resources. We are socialized to dominate our bodies, to 'own' them, and shape them to meet idealized consumer standards. In 1975, Foucault wrote an essay called 'Docile Bodies,' in which he concluded that the more a body is coerced by dominant social forces, the more equipped it is to reproduce these same disciplinary forces unto itself and others. The more 'productive', economically viable, and groomed for service our bodies become, the less political force we have because we have become isolated in narratives of individuality and exploitation, ensnared in the competition and tyranny of the market." 

This is a powerful and meaningful conjecture.  Much of F.M. Alexander's work was about healing the impact of this relationship between the natural inner and the unnatural outer influences.  But it usually takes much physical pain and kinesthetic dysfunction for a person to seek help in addressing the negative impact of the external world on their organism.  For those who don't turn to a modality like the Alexander Technique to right the wrongs of this influence, doesn't mean they don't need it or their bodies aren't under this social influence.  Trend and fashion are at our heels (literally; five inch stiletto heels being the rigueur of urban women), at our hem lines, in the trends of cultural cuisine and the neighborhoods we choose to identify and live in.  As is indicated in Peterson's, Orbach's and Foucault's writing the apparel we cloth ourselves in force us to have a relationship with our body, for better or for worse.  Not only does it actually change the way we move and behave in our bodies, it can't help but change our perception of social issues such as poverty and probably disables our awareness of pretty much everything but the superficial. To the impacted (us), this veneer becomes our reality.  Social context becomes political.

Pina Bausch embodying the "let go"

As might be indicated by Foucault's writing on these dominant social forces, the "perfecting" of our physiques through rigorous "health" regimens is part and parcel of this concept, especially when done for appearance.  This holds true for the perfecting of anything;  a newly minted resident doctor once confided to me she was worried the medical training (which would include the social influence of the training) she had received would kill the right impulse she had in becoming the doctor she had hoped to be.  So it is with the exacting training of being an artist and maybe more so, a dancer or musician.  

The politicizing of the art of dance begins with the rigorous training and even "branding" of the type of dancer made.  A dancer doesn't become the artist until (s)he lets the training go.  It is only in the melding of the natural self to the almost militaristic trained self when the honest, authentic self is revealed and the art of it surfaces.  Perhaps I speak of "performer" more than artist in this way, as I am not at all sure that a non-trained person is not a dancer-artist. I just know that the relinquishing of the material one's cells have adopted by virtue of a long and perfecting process (training) need to be surrendered before the genuine truth of movement can be known and seen.  All those jetes and arabesques need to become fodder for the natural movement/expression impulses waiting in the wings.

All of this is an interesting premise in relation to nature, pointing once again to the enormous sensitivity of the organism.  If our bodies are indeed "made and not born" and they are "constituted by the social discourses that shape them", we as material beings are as powerlessly impacted by our surrounds and social influence as we are by the automatic release of hormones coursing through our blood stream.  There is indeed no difference between uncirculated money and heart disease.

So, are we damned to "become isolated in narratives of individuality and exploitation, ensnared in the competition and tyranny of the market."?  What makes us free? (Is that an impossible premise?)  Even though they too are subject to social influence and hormones (among other things), I turn (once again) to the young child for perspective; they are somewhat more free then the general population, social indoctrination not a huge factor until age five or so.  Young children rest in themselves and their all consuming interest in Being and response.   Their worlds are not huge yet (or is it miniscule?).  They are Nature, heavily weighted in what Is; the body's process, sensation, the ephemeral.  They are working on being indoctrinated, but they are not there yet.  They are a little more free than you and me.  What freedom they enjoy is one we could return to (partially) when we return to our more authentic nature also in our body's process, sensation and the moment.  Unlike children, we have a more global, mature and experienced intelligence to support the notion of a freedom.  It is dependent on an integrated intelligence, meaning an all of me that is informed, body, mind and spirit.  Like the highly trained dancer or medical resident, a letting go of materiality is required in order for there to be a return to the authentic, a hope for a life to become art.  And this is not an end product, a static performance, but a rich and moving process dependent on a cultivated awareness, deep interest and patience.

Bodywork, Energy Medicine: Whole Healing

Bodywork constitutes a myriad of modalities when one is actively working with a skilled practitioner.  The practitioner has cultivated a "knowing" and skilled intelligence in their hands (as well as in his/her larger self) and is able to help or lead the client to a healing direction through touch, adjustment or manipulation.  Several (touch) bodywork modalities have been mentioned in this blog (Energy Field Surveillance,  Use: The Alexander Technique ,  Reflexology as Informant , Somatic Healing , MYSTERY: The Practices of QiGong and Authentic Mov... , QiGong: Following in a Purpose-Prone World).

Although not usually hands-on, there are many energy-based modalities I consider bodywork, because they open the body to a fuller intelligence, thus have a capacity for healing not only one's physiology, but subsequent layered energy fields.  Movement practices like Contemplative Dance/Authentic Movement, Core-Shamanism practices, Gabrielle Roth's Five Rhythms, Qigong, Tai Chi Chuan, Yoga-- all seek to balance the body and energy fields through movement and breath.  Many of them are somewhat dependent on sensitizing the self to an altered state, allowing the body's fuller intelligence to manifest, influence and impact one's entirety with a cell-effecting healing.  This type of bodywork (although initially facilitated) is largely self-regulated.  They are self-empowering and wisdom-instilling practices primarily because it is one's self that is generating, moderating and witnessing the energetic experience.

To me, the essence of bodywork includes both that which impacts the energy fields of one's being as well as the physicality of one's body.  Bodywork is a Whole practice encompassing all of me.  It impacts my many layers whether they be psychological, emotional, spiritual or physical.  This affirms the concept of Oneness in myself.  This often aids in closing the often divided, fragmented way I look at myself, my relation to outside myself and the healing experience.

As mentioned in a few other earlier posts (see above links), bodywork is often the best way to approach a necessary healing (ie: PTSD, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, TMJ to name a few). But for many people beginning to open to the concept of bodywork's potential healing power can be daunting.  There are so many different type of bodywork modalities and so many varying types of practitioners even within one milieu.  How do you know which modality to try, what will be the most useful?  How do you know if a practitioner will be a good fit with you and your needs?

One of the most interesting things about good bodywork is that it rarely can be mechanical.  Whereas, there is a standardized practice in forms like chiropractic adjustment, cranial sacral work and Alexander, if a practitioner were to strictly only follow the structure of tenets of the practice it wouldn't always be following the client's more whole healing (in a given session) because energy is not always predictable, nor able to follow a conscripted pattern that is its own.  Whereas a standardized practice is often a start in waking up the healing potential in the body, it can be sometimes somewhat limited unto itself.  Good bodywork depends upon good, deep listening and an expanded awareness from both client and practitioner.


A bodywork practice finds you.  So doing too much thinking about the right or appropriate one for you is probably unnecessary.  One usually is drawn to a modality or meets/hear of a practitioner very serendipitously.  A musician with a specific malady in their neck say, due to wrong use, would do well to start with an Alexander Technique teacher or cranio sacral therapist.  That bodywork might lead to a "hybrid" version of either or another depending on how the healing unwinds itself.  The more one "knows thyself" (which can be an expansive learning process as one experiences different techniques), the more the right attraction to a modality will present itself.


The earlier post, Finding A Healthcare Partner in a Practitioner, applies here. The conversation one has with a practitioner prior to a session will resonate or not with one's own healing affinities. You may be quite certain a "purist", unadulterated modality practitioner will serve your purposes entirely, or you may be intrigued with the hybrid version another may offer, an attitude, an approach, an energy the practitioner represents.  Whereas, experience speaks for itself, the open approach a new practitioner offers, the willingness to explore and engage themselves is a wonderful ingredient shared in bodywork.  It depends on where you are in your healing process as far as a "fit" goes with a practitioner.  Likewise, it is the same for practitioners.  Where they are in the evolution of their work, dictates a type of client required in a moment.

The Creative

When I am completely myself, entirely alone...photo credit: World of Dance

"When I am ..... completely myself, entirely alone... or during the night when I cannot sleep, it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence and how these ideas come I know not nor can I force them.”  

--Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

From different snippets of a news program, a magazine article and notes from a music program, the energy from what I call "the creative" has been infiltrating into my now. When synchronicity arrives, one does not turn away, but sits up, begins to open to, examine and follow.

As a culture, creativity defensively hides in a small box and is not well respected (if you can't make a lot of money by doing it, as a rule).  Somehow, it's all well and good for small children to explore art materials, but a few years down the pike, these explorations or most other "impractical" inquiries are subtly discouraged. Imagining, thinking outside the educational box, unrecognizable (by the majority) delving into unvalued areas are not seen as useful in a standard education. (Thank God for Montessori and Steiner.)

Like owning our physicality, the creative is our birthright.  All people are of spirit, all people are creative.  It is a general misconception that a creative idea has to be "artistic" oriented or even original.  Some say there is nothing original, that accessing the creative is borrowing and renewing (for self) of the old.  As a nurse, the creative is a resource I depend upon, especially when in relationship with patients or other staff.  I have seen when I am reactive, judgmental ("spirit sick") my choices are limited, and I am unavailable to the creative.  Relaxing into the moment, identifying the interesting aspect of the irritating-other (a separation of sorts) produces the possibility of relationship.  

A difficult, hostile dynamic between a married couple in a small hospital room where no one is listening, all my various (and thin) cajoling attempts are rebuffed and what is imminently required is locked out by what feels like an endless habitual polarization. I go back to the nurse station sense my agitation and take a few moments to breathe.  How can I approach them rightly, what do they need?  The creative arrives. A novel thought comes to me.  I am a bit unnerved by this notion, it counters my usual modus operandi. It feels edgy, but somehow right.  I breathe a few more times, feeling my feet under me.  I go back to the room to the deadlocked couple and begin to order them around with definitive assertion; I do a lot of arm flailing, throw my head every which way, appear fed up.  This they understand.  This they respond to.  Their previous sarcastic contempt of me is now replaced with respect and they begin to listen and do what is necessary.  Go figure. 

A terrified chiropractor is admitted for unexpected surgery. He is resistant to all care, all procedures, he refuses to cooperate with anyone on anything.  When I greet him at his bed, he is hunkered down, arms crossed, his face a wall of tension. Somehow, I recognize this state he is in and it actually inspires me to let go of my own tensions. I ask him about himself, his practice, what he needs now.  He asks me to do a right brain-left brain exercise with my arms and hands (validating his own knowledge and understanding of the relationship of the brain to the body).  We do it together and it is very cool, I can feel my brain connections switching sides.  Afterwards, he's good to go with all the tests he has refused thus far.  Getting met.


These stories could easily be paralleled by a bus driver dealing with unruly kids, Greenpeace canvassers on hostile territory, air traffic controllers on a holiday weekend.  We all have access to the creative and we are creatively relating a lot of the time.  It's a question on how to recognize it when it arrives (or is quietly dwelling). Is it the spontaneous wry comment defusing a room of tension?  A moment of "intuition" that deflects an accident? The organism is very pliant and the creative is ever ready.  

A relaxed state has a lot of faces:  Post a glass of wine, the time before sleep, the ill state (ego out of commission), the state of vacation, the chaotic state (so much static, creativity can sneak by), the purposeless ("lazy") state. I heard a radio interview wherein the musician/lyricist being interviewed was watching her girlfriend dye her hair.  What must have been a relaxing, pleasurable time, she wrote in her mind while watching her, the song which would be her next hit (nothing to do with dye-ing hair).  Or the guy snacking on a bag of chips on a subway car who witnesses a slap fest between a male and female rider, stands up (still snacking) and walks to the exit door of the subway car, stopping to stand between them, without saying a word, somehow diffusing their hostility. 

These are all examples of fertile ground for the creative to reveal itself.  Allowing something to rest long enough to receive something else.

A Walk In My Shoes

After doing a lot of witnessing of art, people in life and in Authentic Movement sessions as of late, I am feeling a little protective of the ordinary she in myself who is not embodied, never heard of presence or mindfulness and couldn't care less about being.

Witnessing is directly related to the amount of a fuller attention I have available in a moment.  My attention is labile; it is the human condition that this is so, not a personal deficit.  So, what do I have if I don't have attention?  I have a self who is projecting pretty continuously, about what she is seeing and what she is experiencing.  In the past, this was a fated experience to bemoan. Now, I see it differently.  It seems that it is just more material, more information to help Me have a more complete picture of myself, a better understanding.  If I don't turn away from the fact that it is projection, I might even have an opportunity to enjoy it.

This more relaxed attitude helps me embrace my humanity a little more fully.  It keeps the judgements at bay.  It gives me a larger perspective of all of me.  In the past, I've leaned toward trying to grasp the experience of the open presence, the less attached attention.  Perhaps it is the flexing of this "muscle", the experience of going in and out of this presence that has garnered this more free attention a little space that can observe, watch and witness when most of me is not fully there.  Like a camera shutter, she glimpses the few seconds in the hours of a day the tripping, the ordinary, the hand that turns the door knob, the genius timing of the kinesthetic response, the sometime Quixote-esque self as she navigates her life.

The past's habit of almost condemning the parts of myself that are not conscious (and never will be), usually labeled "ego", and diminishing of what Is, does not seem so entrenched.  Someone has stopped buying that what is ordinary is not ok. Someone has become interested in the pedestrian walking in my shoes.

Unexpected Healings

Stay with me, you non-medical gentle readers, this might get a little graphic.

I slammed the car door on my finger at Christmas.  This mishap caused a huge hematoma (blackish blood spot) to be created at the cuticle base of my finger.  I've been watching it now for a few months.  I expected that the body would eventually absorb the blood spot, my nail would get all yellow and grotty and I would lose it.  But that didn't happen. As my nail has been growing, the hematoma under the nail has been moving along with the nail's growth. So I then surmised that the hematoma would slough off as the nail grew out. That didn't happen either.  What did happen was the nail, with the blood spot now in the middle of the nail, having grown that far from the cuticle, erupted (!), broke through the nail above (as the new nail is growing under), freeing the debris of the hematoma.  Extremely unexpected! (ok, "gross" part over; fyi, it doesn't look as bad as described. And it doesn't hurt at all.)

Healing is unexpected. How the body deals with trauma or illness is largely mysterious, despite the plethora of knowledge as to how the body works.  The body has its own ideas.

A client suffering with uncharacteristic impulsivity and poor decision-making of late wondered why this was happening, what was going on.  We delved into the question with the intelligence of an open body by doing some Authentic Movement.  What arrived for her was an experience of the self named "Magnificent Vertical Beauty"; a part of her that respectfully follows the quiet, delicate and Knowing; that finds exactly the right note, tone, gesture and movement needed in a moment rather effortlessly. A part that knows when to be still and is guided by the listening and the moment's quiet.  With the surfacing of this 'character', she recognized she had been indiscreetly generous in a host of ways, too often; not respected nor appreciated by the receiver. Post session, she realized how she had taken for granted this more sacred aspect of herself, and all the giving it away would not relieve the need to share it.  Somehow this Magnificent Vertical Beauty was for her alone, not to be shared (at this point), was delicate and fine and required protection and discernment, but most of all an acknowledgement of its value, her worth.

This information for her gleaned from this session was unexpected. Could we have arrived at it through analyzing the events of life that were troubling?  Maybe.  Would that approach have been embodied, and poetic and using more of herself, a larger intelligence, to understand the dis-ease? No, most certainly not.

Unexpected Healings.  Staying open to the surprise of what is possible, what transpires, what is.

MYSTERY: The Practices of QiGong and Authentic Movement

Energy Orb caught on camera at Confuscious' Burial Ground

Authentic Movement (AM) is an "in-depth" movement process named by Mary Starks Whitehouse (a dance therapist) in the 1950's.  It is the act of allowing oneself to listen deeply to the innate intelligence of the full body and following the body/voice’s cues in the moment, while a trusted facilitator witnesses, is holding the container for the mover’s expression. What transpires is an authentic expression, true and spontaneous from moment to moment, often revealing understanding and information not usually accessible. "The movement becomes ‘authentic’ when the individual is able to allow their intuitive impulses to freely express themselves without intellectual directive, as opposed to movement initiated by conscious decision making – a distinction which may appear clear, but practically a challenge. Individuals simply pay attention to what they feel at a sensory level, since 'the core of the movement experience is the sensation of moving and being moved.'”*

*Adler, Janet. Offering from the Conscious Body: The Discipline of Authentic Movement. Rochester: Inner Traditions, 2002.


My decades long study of both Qigong and Authentic Movement has been a search to understand this thing we call energy and the relationship of the body's fuller intelligence to that which is inside and outside of me.  For me, AM and Qigong are not separate practices, but one practice that is a many sided prism, reflecting their own unique emphasis.  

The following essay was first posted in http://authenticmovementcommunity.blogspot.com/ and http://www.healingtaobritain.com .  SEE for more articles of interest on both practices.

MYSTERY.doc 29K   View

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObLgFrbP-AQ

Grief Work

2000 year old elder

Grief work is a very necessary activity as we navigate our life's continuum.  There is a lot to grieve about.  It can be, however, uncomfortable and often frightening territory to traverse for many, conditioned as we are to be "up", "fine" and able to manage anything with chronically sunny dispositions. In western culture, it's not a readily accepted undertaking, or is often mislabeled as depression; hence there isn't a lot of support for it.  So when we make an inquiry into that dark place, it can be lonely, foreign and well.... dark.

After a series of significant losses, I found myself in a grocery store following a carriage with a baby in it. I experienced the baby seeing me.  Seeing me in my loss.  I hadn't felt seen in this way by anyone up to that point, being an invisible grief-stricken pedestrian to be avoided at all costs. When the baby saw me, I felt this surge of joy in my solar plexus that stopped abruptly at the top of my diaphragm, as it ascended up, as if there was a lid on the rest of me.  It couldn't move up to my heart, the space occupied by the necessary grief.  I realized, this grief was living in me and it had its own time and this surge of joy would have to wait a bit to complete itself.  Surprisingly, this didn't add to my sadness, but actually gave me hope.

I've had the privilege to do tremendously varied grief work with myself and others.  It is dense and rich material that affirms our humanity, if the courage can be found to meet it.  Following is an essay on creatively using energy / movement work to address grief.  Holistic Grief Work