BraveSpace is an embodied and co-creative social dynamic that fosters individual sovereignty within group consensus.

The COVID-19 pandemic is asking each and all of us to bring greater awareness to our boundaries. In social distancing we negotiate the relationship between our individual edges and the needs of the larger population. It’s an uncomfortable process in part because there’s no one right answer:  We each contribute to group consensus at the same time that we attempt to listen to it. It’s so clear with social distancing that this negotiation is an embodied process:  It’s about what I do when someone offers me a hug, a handshake, or steps in close, far more than about what I say. I use words to speak to my actions after I’ve taken them.

Below are the BraveSpace agreements as I and BraveSpace workshop participants have seen them. They’re in-formation. Becoming.

I’m offering BraveSpace Online on Saturdays and Wednesdays at noon MDT. Please join us. Offered as a gift during these curious times.

To hold BraveSpace together:

1. We agree to confidentiality.  What is said within the container stays within the container.  Nothing should be shared outside group without discussing it with the speaker.   Legally there are certain exceptions to this agreement:  If you believe a reason exists to share something outside of group please speak with the group leader. 
2. We agree to take responsibility for our own boundaries in movement, touch, and overall participation.  We practice our ability to say ‘no’, and we practice repositioning ourselves physically or socially in order to uphold the boundaries that we desire in any moment.
3. We agree not to control others or otherwise force them to move, touch, or speak in a way we may prefer.  We do not chase or grasp others (even if we think it’s for their gain).
4. We agree to trust others to take care of themselves.  To do otherwise would be in violation of agreement 3.  We can graciously offer assistance to others and find out if it is accepted.

In holding BraveSpace together we will likely benefit by recognizing the following principles:

1. Being Witness:  In observation of each other we can generate and attune to a communal field of vitality.  We practice listening, sensing, and seeing ourselves and each other.  We recognize judgement when it arises.
2. We are willing to be uncomfortable:  We recognize that through vulnerability we are able to learn, grow, and explore.  We also recognize our mortality—it is inevitable that we will be hurt, and that at times we will hurt one another.  We engage with kindness, compassion, and a willingness to feel.
3. We are present to the moment:  We recognize that we are neither who we were nor who we wish to be.  We are willing to be unattached to future experience of interaction, touch, and emotion, even though we may desire or project it.
4. We are curious:  We allow ourselves to inhabit the gap between knowing and not knowing.  We sense and experiment; we improvise.
5. We are embodied and eco-somatic:  We recognize and respect the body’s inherent intelligence through the languages of sensation and movement.  We recognize and respect the body as nature.
6. Sexuality is different from sexual action.  We may embrace sexuality in innumerable ways, including an invitation to feel what arises, and we do not engage in sexual action in BraveSpace.  
7. Consent is an embodied and co-creative process.  We recognize that boundaries and resistance are inherent aspects of our existence.  We allow our thoughts and fears of our own and others edges to inform us without taking control.  We return to our bodies in order to discover what is right for us in any moment.

With COVID-19 many of us are going online to commune.

As someone who teaches touch and physical connection, it’s not my favorite place to work, but I’ve actually found it pretty effective.  I’ve done somatic movement therapy sessions with people thousands of miles away in their living room.  I’ve even taught some college dance classes from my living room.  Here’s a few guidelines I’ve found:

-Trying to imitate someone’s exact movement by watching it on a screen is not much fun.

-Being guided through improvisatory movement using auditory cues works well.

-Witnessing each other in movement and making meaning of what we see is transcendent.

-Connecting with people I otherwise couldn’t connect with feels worthwhile.

-Recorded work can be independent of time but lacks community, while live work (via video chat) generates community, but can be hard to commit to or coordinate

I’d like to offer two invitations.  

1. This Monday March 16th at 4:30-5:30pm MST (3:30 Pacific/6:30 Eastern)  I’d like to try offering BraveSpace online.  BraveSpace is a place to step into our vulnerability together, allowing ourselves to move and feel, to witness, and to make meaning together.  Always an experiment, our bodies will guide our sovereign individuality into simultaneous group consciousness.  You need zoom and a quiet place you can move on the ground.  Here’s the link:  https://zoom.us/j/4493544722
2. I created an online class a few years ago called Physical Freedom Method.  It’s still up and running.  The difficulty with it was always that as a recorded class it lacked community.  Yet, in this time of intentional isolation it may serve you well.  It is a somatic journey into the body and self.  You can find it at https://physicalfreedom.thinkific.com

Both offerings are given as a gift.  If you would like to offer a gift in return you can do so via

https://paypal.me/thewnelson or on venmo @Matthew-Nelson-180

And, if you would like to experience a 1-on-1 session using the movement meditation and therapy method I call Somatic Ideation, please reach out.

May you and your loved ones be healthy and well.

Matthew

I attended a dance facilitated by a colleague.  At one point in the dance I looked at their computer screen—which was easy enough to see from the side of the room—to check what was playing.  I liked the track and it was from a realm I haven’t investigated much—a Euro-trans upbeat vibe.  It’s a kind of music that makes me crazy if it goes too long, but in the right context and timing it’s pretty pure and awesome.  I was psyched to get a name I could look up and investigate the genre more.

What happened next troubled me—my colleague shoed me away and said “no, sorry.”  It was never my intention to invade their space or steal anything not freely given.  Clearly I had violated a boundary, which I regret.  And, here’s why my way is different:

1. As a dance facilitator and non-producing DJ (I only play others’ music) I have no ownership of the music.  It belongs to the musicians who create it.  I am indebted to those musicians and can show my appreciation by helping people find their music and spread their name.
2. As a dance facilitator my primary skill is the vibration of the dancing.  The music supports the dancing, but it is not the cause of it.  Having come to dance through the lineage of modern dance I am particularly bent toward the idea that dancing can stand for itself.  I love music, and I also can and do dance without it.  Music adds to the conversation. 
3. As a non-producing DJ my job is to match music to the energy of the group, both leading and following.  Finding new and interesting music is an important part of the role, but it is not the crux of it.  It’s similar to how being a chef includes sourcing ingredients, but it’s how they’re put together that really matters.  And yet even that differs because fresh vegetables and meats get used up by eating them; music doesn’t get used up by dancing to it.  The best tracks may even get better when we get to know them.

When I facilitate dances I leave my screen facing the people, and I dance with them.  I often see people looking at the screen.  I don’t generally post my playlists publicly—if you want to see them you’ve got to show up and do the work.  I love it when people do.

P.S. The photo is with Subaqueous. Check out his music.

One of the greatest injustices of our time is a collective lack of embodied literacy; many of us don’t know our way around our own bodies.  There is great potential:  Bridging factual knowledge and physical experience, we can learn where our hip joints actually are, or how our spines function, in order to move with greater ease and prevent degeneration.  We can help ourselves heal by touching places that hurt.  We can learn to find where physical and emotional trauma has gotten stuck in our bodies, and we can unstick it.  In my classes and movement therapy/bodywork sessions I often find myself joking with people that “we never learned this stuff in kindergarten.”  Why not?

I think our (dis)embodied injustice cuts across the intersections of race, class, and gender differently from some other prominent injustices of our time.  Technology and financial wealth has not favored physical experience, often separating rather than connecting people with their physical being.  If you’re reading this you’re probably ahead of the curve, at least in terms of curiosity.  Clearly I’ve enjoyed the tremendous privilege of conscious and focused study—that has takes resources many do not have access to.  Yet, I hold that we are all indigenous to our own bodies for this lifetime.  We belong here.  The primary source material is inside each of us, and people have been bodies for countless generations.  

And, if you want some support on the path toward embodied justice, please give me a call.

I had a dear Uncle pass from this world a week ago.  In celebrating his life and mourning his death a story arose for me:

   In death the physical relationship between body and soul dis-integrates.  

    The dynamic shifts between matter and energy.

    The particles that make up our bodies dissociate from the waves of our consciousness.

I come to this story because I’ve felt the opposite:  An assimilation in the wake of my Uncle’s death.  I feel that I have absorbed a tiny fraction of the density of consciousness my Uncle spent his life refining.  In mourning and celebrating my Uncle with family and friends, I feel like I ‘caught’ and took on qualities we saw in him.  

His waves are resonating in my particles.

Like all lived experiences, it’s a story. I share it in the hope that it might hold some value for you too.

I’m working with my dear friend Callie Ritter on an improvisational duet we call ZeroSpace.  In its simplest form we explore the intimacy of closeness and distance between two bodies in space and two humans in relationship as honestly as we can.  In this last rehearsal I was struck by the intimacy generated by allowing for awkwardness.

I have choreographed many dance pieces in the past, as has Callie.  We have participated in dance art attempting to hide or sometimes even showcase awkwardness.  In this post I am driven to simply reveal our process as the art.  My hope is that in the rawness of it you and I might find greater resonance with each other.  Here again lies the tension between vulnerability and exhibitionism.