Some March Studio Time Shots

 

Today's Practice

I started out today's practice settling with a breathing meditation.  Breathing into the hara at CV6 ("the sea of qi") and then into the heart's "sea of tranquility," at CV17 both on the yin conception vessel (CV) meridian that traces from CV1 ("yin meeting place") where it starts at the center of the perineum to CV24 ("fluid container") in the depression between the chin and the lower lip.  The conception vessel forms a loop with the governing vessel.

I followed this short breath meditation with a Continuum style sound-wave meditation using the OO sound (tubular) and the EE sound (horizontal).  I lay on my back, sometimes with my knees bent and movement began to surface of its accord... the movement itself led me to other positions as my body's own intelligence was allowed to flow in alternating periods of sound-breath stimulation and open attention to just be with whatever was set in motion through contacting and inviting the bio intelligence of the body to the fore.

Next, I did a sequence of Movement Ritual, moving through flexion, lateral flexion, rotation, extension, and hyper-extension.  Pressing up into a full backbend for the third studio practice in a row, with more confidence and strength and relaxation...

This is what I wrote after these two practices:

I am thinking about the segment of Continuum that I did today... 

Open attention is allowing (witnessing, being present)—it is a receptive mode of attention, not directive.  It is about what Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen talks about in allowing sensory information to come in through the cerebellum, the brainstem, in other words, the hindbrain.  Whereas the stimulus part of the cycle, the sounding, or roughing in a wave is more frontal cortex, motor and image-driven.  Open attention is about allowing the body's (the bio-intelligence) intelligence to flow after using vibration (and potentially micromovement) to break (jailbreaking) out of the imprisonment of conditioning (cultural, habit, trauma...). This jailbreak allows new information to feed the tissue (food for the embodied soul), or allows healthy implicit, bio-intelligent movement to dance in healthy ways that may have been suppressed.  During open attention, there may be a lot of visible movement (explicit) or there may be a very quiet heightened awareness of the implicit movement of life, or of the body's autonomic functions, that may now also be functioning more freely, having been liberated from a certain conditioned constriction.

The movement, more explicit or implicit, felt during open attention may feel like a kind of unwinding, a releasing, new information and bio impulses come to the surface or into awareness... again, it is about allowing rather than imposing patterns of movement.

In Continuum, we don't use a model such as in yoga, martial arts, acupuncture, etc... one's that map the body's physical and energetic topographies because our focus and intent is on the open inquiry, it is a phenomenological approach, rather than an approach based on historical models, goals, canons, and accomplishments. Though, in Continuum, we respect these disciplines and some of the insights may be used to stimulate our organism to spark further discovery.  

What is called baseline is a kind of assessment tool, done more at the shoreline, at the water's edge, before and after the dive... an exercise of noticing what is present.

In thinking about Movement Ritual.  I am aware that I have followed the invitation of Anna Halprin to make it my own.  Understanding the principles at work... especially the focus on the spine... and the principles of time, force and space, as well as inertia, momentum and gavity that she names in her Movement Ritual book... and l like to also think about centrifugal force and the idea of "levity" that I know about in the context of a Rudolf Steiner concept.  And always, presence, sensory awareness... arriving with sensitivity to the inner space (interoception) and the outer space (exeroception).  I also think a lot of in terms of not forcing range of movement or even strength, but dialoguing with the body, using the available resources, in breath, gravity and visualization to move into new possibilities in range of motion.

I then moved into movement/dance.  I explored motifs that have been arising for a few sessions... balance, sinking into gravity and pressing the earth away... finding such a sense of holding in that, such a sense of place, sense of security, sense of balance.  I have Judith Aston to thank for this.  I also continued to play with eye focus, visiting the global open soft-focus often.  Having Susan Harper to thank for the understanding of how sharp or narrow focal points are harmful to the inner ear the little hairs, the gel, the otoliths... also as a way of letting body-balance, rather than visual balance be more dominant. I played with levels and my relationship to the floor and to gravity... playing with rolling on the floor and then taking that rolling rotation into dance in the upright position...

Finally, I did a drawing "Regeneration..."  A healing image which I will not "interpret" here in honoring the image and the idea that the arts must be allowed to converse... and in honor of Hillman, of allowing the primacy of image, not to be explained away by the rational mind of the enlightenment.. to let it live in its complexity and multiplicity and in the vivid aesthetic realm.

Regeneración

 

Luto Prohibido :: Forbidden Grief

 

Today's Practice

Today I began my studio practice with a sitting meditation.  Gentle focus on the breath, alignment, gravity.  Bringing attention to the in-breath coming through the nostrils, turning down the esophagus, branching into the bronchi, and on the out-breath feeling the airstream full of nourishment for the "green ones" as Susan Harper put it.

Then, I moved to a movement ritual warm-up. Feeling expansion outward and heavenward and condensation into gravity.  Focus on the spine, the breath, sensing the body, and the studio space at Escuela Modelo.  

Then I moved into improvised dance.  Working with slow movement, balance, pressing the floor away, and sinking into gravity.  Working with the front, back, and side bodies and space.  It was absolutely a sublime joyous experience to synchronize the out-breath with sinking into gravity and the in-breath with pushing the soles of my feet against the earth.  A joy.

I also played with finding balance with the eyes closed.  And balancing as I yielded to gravity and, then, balance as I pushed the floor away.

To close, I did a drawing.  "Heart Sparks"...

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