Body Speak

2012 a new year has begun.  We think of what we want to change in our lives and make promises to ourselves how we will be better than the year before.  However, we are creatures of habit and making concrete changes can be very difficult.  I propose a sharing of embodiment daily practice without having goals or a need to change anything but a desire to listen and express a moment in a day that can be fully captured as an experience where we are fully present with all our senses and being.

I will post simple exercises and please share ideas and experiences.

January 5, 2012.  Take a moment and close your eyes and allow your ear sense to be magnified.  Listen to the sounds around you while keeping them outside of you.  Now allow the sounds to begin to enter into your internal space and meet with other internal sensation and just observe.

Music can be a beautiful backdrop to any embodiment practice that can help with a deepening of images, feelings and sensations.  Begin in silence and then turn on music.  Sigur Ross (Icelandic group) has wonderful full, textured sound to their music.

Why embodiment practices?  When we ask ourselves: Who am I?  How do I live my life? and What is the purpose of my life?  we are trying to find grounding and direction of where to put our focus in engaging in the world with our individual attributes, interests and things that give us meaning and joy.  We as human beings cannot be only existentially ‘I’ oriented which ultimately leads to self involvement and indulgences.  We need to also be asking how to find the resonance of my being in true, authentic present connections with others and within a shared experience with others.   The other/s could be one person or a group of people.  We are social beings and that need is also essential.  We live in a society and culture that robs us of the bigger, deeper more profound ways of living.  I believe allowing our senses, emotions, and imagination to be present and brought to awareness in moment by moment experiences in our daily lives, allows for these questions to be actively pursued in our lives.   When we can be in  solitude with the happenings of our inner space of our body, with our self witness, that can take in the details without judgement or criticism, we become fully in our being.   We can then begin to ask the existential questions about our “I” and our purpose in this world yet we also become fully present to and with others while not merging or losing our essential “I”.

Embodiment practices can happen through guided practices such as group meditation and yoga where focus on breath allows for a moment by moment focus.  Self focus can also happen through mindfulness practices of being present to internal (sensations, images) or external stimuli (sound, visual surroundings).  Movement that is focussed on breath, undulations, pulse, imagination and senses is the ultimate of embodiment practices in my view, such as authentic movement or improvisation.

We are constantly in a state of ‘transmission of affect.’ External environment is transmitted  and affects on our internal space or thoughts affect feelings, or vis versa, memory affect thought and feelings.  These dynamics are constant.   We are complex being who live in a world of constant stimuli.  However, we can reach the simplicity of listening and sensing through embodiment practices which can help slow down the world of stimuli and demands that create constant stress.  Embodiment allows for a slowed down and focussed attunement which is an alternative experience to stress and so the depth of our possibilities becomes more visible and accessible.

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