We are moving all the time. If not always visibly and intentionally, then internally at an involuntary level. As you read this, your heart is beating, lungs pumping, gut squeezing, blood flowing and countless cells contracting and expanding. It‘s not so much that we do movement, as we are movement. When we connect consciously with the body through movement, it provides an opportunity for personal development on many levels. On the simplest level, it‘s an opportunity to dance and have fun! But it can also be so much more than that.

 

Movement can be used therapeutically to get in touch with and release feelings. Emotions are e-motions, movements out. They are not just held in our minds but in our bodies, and when we set ourselves in motion, it supports us to naturally discharge this energy. As our bodies carry our relational patterns, embodied movement can also help us to recognise how we have learned to relate to others and provides an opportunity to discover new, more creative and authentic ways of interacting. It is also one of the most direct ways to get in touch with peri-natal and pre-verbal experiences and work with issues originating in early childhood. For for information go to What is Dance of Awareness?

 

Movement can be used to rewild the psyche. Human beings have been dancing to the simple rhythm of a drum for millenia. Whether it‘s to celebrate a harvest, mourn a death or heal sickness, dancing together has been a fundamental part of communal life since pre-history.  Even though so many of us now live lives divorced from ancient traditions and the rhythms of the seasons, dancing is a simple way to tap into a part of ourselves that isn‘t domesticated and knows that we are not separate from spirit and the natural world around us. Through dance, we can reawaken the wildness of the body-mind and reconnect to something within us that is inherently intelligent, self-balancing and unfettered by the self-consciousness of the ego.  

 

Movement can be used as a form of meditation by using awareness of the breath and the moving body to bring us into the present. Our minds and thoughts tend to move very quickly but when we connect with the breath and our sensations, we start to slow down. We can pay attention to what we are experiencing in the here and now and look freshly at who we are in each moment. What is emerging now….and now...and now?  We discover the simple yet profound spiritual practice of learning to be where the body is.