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An experimental approach to moving in meaningful ways

I have an MFA in Modern Dance from the University of Utah. My grandmother talked about modern dance as interpretive dance.  Interpretation is a process of making meaning.  I see modern dance is an experimental approach to moving in meaningful ways.  The dance floor is a laboratory for living a meaningful life.  The development of movement as consciousness is form of technology, and the basis for dance technique.  We can learn to move our bodies in certain ways in order to invoke particular ways of perceiving and creating our reality.

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I am me.  You are you. Considered together, we are we.  These are concurrent realities:  I am still me, and you are still you, as we are we.  The basis for co-creative being and action is that our individual and collective wholeness are true at the same time.  We create life together, and our lives carry meaning with each other.

Who am I?  The co-creative perspective has implications for identity and power dynamics. I am both a fully formed individual and a part of the collective.  The word ‘sovereign’ speaks to my wholeness; I have supreme and ultimate power over myself by choosing to remain present in consciousness.  Sovereignty is a declaration of freedom in which I claim my ability to make choices.  Neither dominant nor submissive, I perceive my self as whole.  I am not alone.  I require the life that surrounds me in order to live.  I would starve without the other living beings that I consume to survive. I will also eventually be consumed. I cannot control how or when I will live or die:  My sovereignty arises when I participate in conscious awareness of my self, taking on the response-ability that is available to me in any moment.

I am a community of the parts of myself.  This community includes not only my organs, muscles, and bones, but also the components of my consciousness.  Thoughts, emotions, and sensations flood my experience of my self. Meanwhile, there are bacteria in my gut that don’t share ‘my’ DNA.  These bacteria do release neurotransmitters capable of making ‘me’ want to eat more of the foods that feed ‘them’.  In this sense I am defined as much by the consciousness arising with these beings as much as I am the consciousness arising from cells that do carry my DNA. We are me, as I am me; concurrently.

In The Sacred Matrix Dieter Duhm points out that my heart and my liver collaborate as distinct entities within me.  They are not in competition.  They do not have the same role in my being.  They also could not survive without each other.  He suggests that the same is true for you and I in community.  We are each whole, and we also require each other in our uniqueness.  He calls this the “communitarian I.”  This relationship of individuals to community is the essence of co-creation.  We are sovereign and we are interdependent.

Dominance and privilege hierarchies such as patriarchy generate tensions, wounding, and trauma between individuals and communities. These patterns can easily stand in the way of co-creative action, and often operate well below the level of consciousness.  Rather than detail the nature of these problems, the purpose of this text is to consider embodied practices that might help us to resolve, or at least redistribute these tensions.  I’d like to approach embodied sovereignty and co-creativity as a developmental process; one that I believe can contribute strongly to healing the relationships between self and other.  I see three primary phases of this process:  Consensual boundaries of no and yes, positioning, and invitation.

Our boundaries are our edges.  They make our safety and overall freedom possible.  We have many different kinds of boundaries, from social dynamics, to physical structures, to energetic fields.  On a physical level our skin is perhaps the most obvious boundary. As a semi-permeable membrane, some things can get through and some cannot.  If my skin is punctured too severely by a knife then my death could actually result.  A critical situation is one where my existential safety is at risk:  The stakes are life or death if a knife is coming towards my body. In this sense the protection of boundaries is the basis for criticality.  We must be able to evaluate when our boundaries are at stake.  I hold my edge when I say ‘no’ to a force that is coming at me.  My ‘no’ is a choice that I can attempt to engage; a claim that I do not give consent. In the knife example this might be by verbally interacting with the person holding it, or by attempting to deflect it with my movement.  I can also reposition my body as a way of claiming my ‘no’.  Whether I am successful in holding this boundary against an outside force or not definitely matters, but it is not entirely the point.  Once I engage my ability to respond I have made my claim.  Somatic trauma recovery methods such as Somatic Experiencing often actualize an ability to create a ‘no’ in the body even when that response might have been compromised in the past.  Doing so can resolve a freeze response by which someone may have stopped attempting to hold their edge after a traumatic event.

There are many times I might allow people or things into my physical, social, or energetic structure.  Even a knife may be welcomed into my body if I feel that surgery could be beneficial to my being.  If someone offers me food or drink that I desire I will likely allow it in, perhaps even developing a desire within myself that had not yet existed.  These are examples of a consensual ‘yes’:  Something from outside myself comes toward me and I allow it into my structure.  Notice that this is different than asking for something or reaching for it.  Consent is permission.  My consent relates to something being done to me—a force coming at me.  To change positioning in relationship to my environment and the beings within it reveals another layer of development.

We are always in relationship to others and to our environment.  Life moves, and as living beings we are always repositioning ourselves.  This positioning is a movement of our edges through the greater landscape of physical, social, and energetic possibilities. Why do we reposition ourselves? We may move toward or away from something to take care of ourselves.  Moving away from a knife is one such example.  We might move toward food.  We might also be drawn to another person to explore companionship, sexuality, and other social possibilities.  We might simply reposition ourselves out of boredom or curiosity—we may not know exactly what we are seeking.  I personally enjoy hiking through nature, repositioning myself in the simple pleasure of moving.  I do not get this pleasure from walking on a treadmill, so clearly my relationship to the environment has an important role in my motivation.  For me natural environments are live beings, and their animacy is what draws me in to the pleasure of relationship.  Overall, I am quite curious about the role of pleasure in how we position ourselves.  Functional repositioning, such as avoiding danger or procuring food seems obvious enough to explain through logic, but how do we explain aesthetic experiences such as walking through nature, dancing, or speaking with a friend about something I care about?  I believe pleasure is a key element of these experiences, even if they are not always entirely pleasurable in the moment.  We navigate pleasure in relationship with others, matching our desires with theirs. Repositioning around pleasure is a particularly nuanced texture of relationship, and I think it offers rich ground for co-creative exploration.

As a dance facilitator and somatic movement therapist I am particularly biased toward physicality as a way of exploring, describing, and practicing shifts in position.  I believe physical practice can support our development in interpersonal and energetic realms.  Improvisational dancing, and particularly Contact Improvisation, in which dancers establish physical connection with each other, are great scenarios for co-creative investigation.  I approach these dances as experiments, and I attempt to remove goals beyond the simple pleasure of interaction.  One of the basic principles guiding contact improvisation is to not grasp.  Dancers may share weight by leaning in, pushing, reaching, and even pulling on each other, but grasping is strongly discouraged. Beginners will often try to pick someone up like a sack of potatoes; this is not the dance.  Potatoes do not have the ability to respond and co-create: Potatoes are passive dance partners, and they may be owned.  I grasp my potato because it is mine.  I have control over the potato.  In the co-creative dancing of contact improvisation I do not have control over anyone or anything except myself.  I do not claim ownership.  To grasp another person is to exert will in a controlling way.  The dancer who is grasped has lost their ability to reposition themselves freely.  From ballet and ballroom dance to acro-yoga, there are forms of partner movement that utilize and even depend on some grasping, but these forms have some level of choreography structuring the interactions.  The dancers have shared physical vocabulary they can use to actively position themselves in relationship with each other and remain at-choice in each moment.

Co-creativity requires that I remain fully myself and you remain fully yourself so that we can create a larger living field together. If we have exerted control over each other that limits our freedom to reposition; we are no longer fully sovereign individuals.  The power structure is no longer balanced.  Co-creation asks that we each fully inhabit our power, our pleasure, and our choice.  When these requirements are met we will probably be intrinsically drawn to dance with each other.  The potential for dynamism when these requirements are met can be surprising to those that haven’t experienced it before—our bodies are capable of great feats of balance, shaping, and learning.  Experienced contact dancers can flow together as one being, launching to great heights, each always capable of taking care of themselves should the other make an unpredicted turn.  For me, unpredictability is a great part of the pleasure of dancing with others:  I am given the gift of new possibilities, and my senses are heightened.  I get to practice my ability to respond because I am never fully in control.

Perhaps co-creation is defined by response-able collaboration.  I am a community of the forces that compose me.  In an atom the space between the nucleus and the electrons is many, many times the size of the particles themselves.  My apparent solidity is a product of these forces, if not a complete illusion: I am composed of the spaces between particles more than by the particles themselves.  When I consider myself this way I begin to perceive my consciousness as the primary force through which my matter takes form.  The edges of my identity have a relationship to my physical form, but they are not the same thing.  I can identify my edges in many ways, including as part of the collective whole of life in the universe.  And, my physical form is the most direct evidence I have of my identity.  Through my form I can experience my self.  I am sovereign because I choose to participate in my existence.  I am able to respond to the forces within and around me.

We are a community of the forces between us and within us.  When I identify myself as part of our selves then I recognize a larger whole.  I am part of Gaia–the collective living whole of the Earth.  I am Gaia, and Gaia is far more than just me.  When I perceive myself this way I am better able to witness my sensations, emotions, and actions in the context of a larger whole.  I am not in control of my circumstances.  When things go differently from how I intend them that does not mean I am at fault.  I may be cursed or blessed by circumstances.  I may be supported or abused by others.  I may be provided or deprived of the privilege of attaining my desired outcome.  I may or may not feel free.  Yet, I am able to respond.  I can share the truth that comes through me.  Response-ability is a choice capable of redirecting victimhood into sovereignty.  This is the benefit of a co-creative attitude.

When we practice co-creation we can offer invitations to others without attempting to control them.  An invitation is directed outward, asking another being for consent and/or co-creative participation.  This text is an invitation to you.  You accepted my invitation and made a choice to read it.  You may choose to agree or disagree with the ideas I’ve presented, an expression of your ‘no’ and your ‘yes’.  You might also take the opportunity to reposition yourself in relationship with these ideas, dancing with them in your own life, and with others. You might even be in dialogue with me. I invite your response, finding pleasure in the dialogue.

Co-creation need not be the only method for creativity. I imagine there are times for grasping, and times when equal power structures might not be possible or optimal. Perhaps it is sometimes important to command, request, or acquiesce.  Yet, I am personally fascinated by co-creation.  I believe that practicing co-creation in our bodies—engaging both personal sovereignty and communitarian unity—is at the edge of human consciousness and creativity.  In a world in which we are quickly exceeding limits of all kinds, the opportunity to practice working together non-hierarchically, staying ourselves while being aware of the larger whole might be exactly what we need in order to survive.  We cannot dominate a finite planet in infinite growth, and our collective boundaries are reaching a critical capacity.  It is my hope that practicing co-creation will support us individually to take pleasure in taking care of the larger whole of our civilization.

As a dance facilitator and movement therapist I teach mindful movement. I ask people to move and relate in ways they don’t often know are even possible for them.  The biggest obstacles I face are the fear and judgment that come with self-consciousness, both in my clients and even within myself.  How confident am I that we can find common ground?  How much do they trust me to help them change something that feels unchangeable?  In witnessing our selves, fear and judgment differentiate self-consciousness from mindful awareness.  We fear what we don’t know, and so often judge ourselves incapable of significant change or growth.  Self-conscious, it is easy to be afraid I’m doing things in a way others won’t approve of. Feeling self-conscious, I believe I’m not doing ‘it’ right.  Ultimately my fear is that I will be ostracized.  When self-conscious, I’m judging myself as I believe others judge me, as if from outside myself.  In my own life, and in my work as an embodied mindfulness teacher, I find that self-consciousness gets us stuck in our heads.  Our thoughts stop us in our tracks, and nothing feels right.  The flow of physical motion is literally interrupted by these thoughts.  In contrast, mindful awareness can assist creativity, flow, and interaction.  In mindfulness I stay present with myself from the inside—a loving and supportive observer.  I suspend judgment whenever possible.  Much of our intelligence is intuitive and intrinsic, easily blocked if we believe we need to know everything before we’ve even begun.  Mindful awareness is the skill of noticing ourselves without getting in the way of our natural flow.  In short, when we start with awareness we’re doing ‘it’ right.  We give ourselves the opportunity to learn to do things over time, through experience, and with the possibility of surprising ourselves.  I don’t think it matters much what ‘it’ is.

Am I am judging judgment too harshly?  Aren’t there appropriate and even important times to judge our selves or our actions?  Certainly our actions have effects on our lives, each other, and our ability to reach our goals.  We must make decisions about our actions, and using our cognitive abilities to weigh information is an essential part of that process.  Lets break this down a bit to differentiate judgment from discernment.  Judgment is a determination of value.  We judge to say that good is better than bad, beautiful is better than ugly; something valuable has more worth than something useless.  Discernment is different; it is an interpretive process of making meaning.  A cat meows more than a dog, a line is straighter than a curve, and a car is both bigger and faster than a breadbox.  The value of meowing, straightness, or speed depends very much on the situation at hand:  Discernment offers comparison without an assignment of value.  I believe effective judgment follows focused discernment.  As a sensory, embodied process, discernment requires awareness, and may engage us in action to gather information.  I can discern the difference between a cat and a dog based on visual and auditory cues, and I may move my body to better look and listen.  We decode our sensory cues to generate meaning—a wagging tail and panting help me discern that the furry warm being in front of me is probably a dog.  I then make decisions about my actions.  Do I pet the dog?  How do I determine the relative value of petting the dog vs. leaving it alone?  I need to weigh the value of petting the dog against the possible risks.  This is a judgment call.

Before we make any judgment calls, lets further differentiate discernment and awareness.  Awareness arises from our ability to pay attention, gathering the data that we make meaning of through discernment.  Does the dog appear friendly?  Do I feel safe?  Is its tail wagging?  To discern my answers to these questions I must become aware of the tail’s shape, and how that shape changes.  I pay attention to what I see while looking at the dog.  Through my senses I can be aware of what’s taking place out in the world. I’m aware of the dog.  Internal awareness also affects my discernment. To know whether I am scared of the dog I can notice the feelings in my body.  Perhaps I notice a reflexive desire to draw my hands back toward my torso.  On another level, I can have awareness of my past experiences and the bias that my past experiences may bring to a situation. My son was knocked off of a porch trick-or-treating one year on Halloween by an enthusiastic puppy. Whenever we encounter dogs together I remember that experience, and it plays a part in how we interact with dogs. I am aware of how that experience affects my discernment and the judgments I make when I interact with dogs. When I begin with awareness, using discernment to guide my actions, I’m doing it right.

What am I doing right, and for whom?  I’m making the best judgment call I can in any moment based on my sensory awareness, situational discernment, and my past experiences.  I’m deciding whether to pet the dog.  I’m doing it for myself, for the dog, and perhaps even for others who are tangentially involved, like the dog’s caretaker.  I’m doing it right when I start with awareness because I can’t possibly know what will actually take place.  Perhaps the dog will bite me, or the caretaker will yell at me. Perhaps we’ll have a pleasurable moment of connection together, all three of us.  Perhaps.  I’m doing it right because I’m participating in the flow of experience, connecting with the world both outside and inside of me.  I’m aware that I’m still slightly traumatized by the experience of my son being knocked off the porch, so I discern that my reflexive reaction to pull away from the dog likely comes from past experience; not the actions of this particular dog.  I am aware that this dog is wagging, and I discern that the caretaker is calm and smiling at me when I look at them.  So, I choose to pet the dog, end up in a friendly conversation with the caretaker, and come away from the situation feeling connected.  I also resolve some of my trauma about dogs.  All is well, and clearly I did it right.

Now lets imagine instead that the dog had bit me or that the caretaker had yelled at me.  Did I do it right?  I still made the best judgment call I could in that moment given the wagging dog, the smiling caretaker, and my awareness of bias.  I cannot control the world—only my actions within it.  I attempted to participate fully in the world even though I did not know what would happen.  I’ll probably question my discernment, and might judge my self, the dog, or the dog’s caretaker harshly.  It’s easy to jump to blaming self or others when the world gives us feedback we don’t expect.  Yet, this blame isn’t particularly useful.  Re-evaluating my relationship to dogs may be—perhaps my discernment requires further awareness.  Perhaps it was bad luck.  I’m doing it right when I stay aware and keep participating in the flow of life despite troubling feedback.  Instead of letting self-consciousness prevent me from interacting with dogs and their caretakers, maybe next time I ask the caretaker if petting their dog is a good idea.

Have you noticed situations in which you alternate between judging yourself and others negatively, as if one must be the truth?  I think we can tend towards one of these more overall.  I often perceive and do things differently from others—it’s just my nature.  I’m prone to feelings of self-consciousness because as soon as I discern variation between my behavior and others’ I worry that I’m not doing ‘it’ right.  Then, far more often than I like, if I decide to approve of my own actions I judge others’ with righteous indignation. They’re not doing it right!  Does this ever happen to you?  What if you read the first paragraph of this essay and you identified yourself as tending to be self-conscious?  Perhaps you became afraid that you wouldn’t get this difference between self-consciousness and mindful awareness; that on some level you’re just stuck?  Ironically, then, reading the essay intended to support you in mindful awareness just shut you down, furthering a cycle of self-consciousness.  It works similarly in the other extreme:  What if in reading the first paragraph you decided that I’ve got it all wrong, and that there’s nothing worthwhile here for you?  Yet, you kept reading and have gotten here just to collect more reasons to feel superior, yes?  This is a form of self-consciousness too—a judgment being formed as if from outside yourself to ascertain your value.  Rather than moving on in the flow of your own experience, you’re stuck in your head just to prop up your belief system.  When we do this we’re trying to create some external sense of ‘truth’.  What if this is a complete waste of energy?  What if it comes from not trusting our own awareness and discernment?  Yet I find that these examples happen for me all the time. I often project an outer standard for all experience that doesn’t matter and that probably doesn’t even exist under most circumstances.  Mindful awareness begins by noticing from the inside, rather than in the frame of this imagined outer perspective.  Ultimately, you’re reading this for whatever reason suits you:  Notice and play with that, and you’re doing it right.

Other people’s needs and beliefs matter; we are not alone.  Yet, self-conscious judgment doesn’t actually require other people. To be self-conscious is to judge our selves through the mirror of any imagined external consciousness.  Self consciousness is about what ‘they’ are probably thinking.  This does not mean we should avoid weighing the effects of our actions on others:  We are social beings, and our ability to be conscious of our selves in a frame that includes others is the basis of morality. Relationships, from families to civilizations, depend on some level of shared value.  We do ascertain value through a process of judgment.  Yet, the perspective from which we examine the value of our own actions is from inside ourselves.  If we don’t ask, we can’t truly know what others are thinking.  To be vulnerable enough to ask others how they perceive us, and then to listen without defensiveness, panic, or judgment, is a powerful act of moral attunement.  And still, we cannot believe everything we hear about ourselves—our internal awareness, discernment, and judgment filters the communications we receive. When we take the time and are vulnerable enough to simply listen, we’re doing it right.

I used to have a recurring dream of being in class at my elementary school and suddenly realizing I was naked.  I was always so embarrassed—panicked really.  I felt hugely self-conscious.  I’m no longer all that concerned with nudity, but the story remains for me:  There are still many things that embarrass me when I imagine them being exposed.  I practice playing at this edge, attempting to offer whatever gifts my own vulnerability might provide for others.  My hope is that in revealing myself in certain ways I am helping others find more flow, awareness, and discernment for themselves.  Yet, sometimes I may be over-sharing:  However willing I may be to run around naked, it may actually be inappropriate or even traumatizing to others depending on the context.  Imagining how others are affected matters.  How do I know when self-consciousness is serving my relationships with others and when it’s preventing me from full and mutually beneficial expression?  I grapple with this in sharing with you here.  I am mindful of my emotional state as I write, noticing when I feel more or less connected to what I’m communicating.  Editing, I stay with my ideas until they feel true from many angles, carrying both logic and emotion.  Being aware of others’ needs while communicating from my own center, I’m doing it right.

Mindful awareness suspends judgment in favor of curiosity, playing in the flow of experience.  The self-assurance mantra “I’m doing it right” is a method for entering this state of curiosity and flow because it counters the freeze responses of fear and doubt.  In the space of suspended judgment we have the freedom to improvise, and to trust intuition.  Yet, what about when we’re not doing it right?  What if we start driving down the wrong side of the highway and endanger people, singing softly to ourselves that we’re doing it right? That’s why we must begin with awareness. We can create safe containers to consciously explore, further developing awareness.  If you don’t know if you’re driving well, go to a big empty parking lot where you won’t be able to hurt anyone.  Practice your driving there and most anything you do will be right.  Explore nudity in the wilderness before trying to bring it to the city.  If nobody is going to get hurt nothing is lost.  We can seek and create appropriate containers to develop our awareness and discernment step by step.

I teach mindful movement and dance.  People are commonly scared to dance; afraid they will make fools of themselves.  And yet I still hear many stories of self-consciousness even from people trying to dance alone in their living rooms.  Who is judging?  Who is at risk of being hurt?  The dancer is judging, and they are hurting themselves.  Dancing with others is of course a riskier event, and yet the same question holds its power:  Who is at risk of being hurt?  Unless we physically impact each other, the only risk is social judgment.  Indeed, just as a dog may bite, it is possible that I will be heckled or bullied by others for my dancing.  Coming from the mantra “I’m doing it right,” with the qualifier “when I begin with awareness,” it’s clear to me that I as a dancer am not hurting anyone.  If someone wants to make fun of me, so be it.  My discernment may help me find contexts for dance that minimize my exposure—being heckled can be draining—but I do not need to be self-conscious.  I have worked through my own self-consciousness specifically by dancing in public places.  I have been both supported and heckled, and have even come to perceive certain heckling as a form of support.  People heckle me to see how I respond, and when I respond generously towards them they often show appreciation.  The dancing is a gift of vulnerability that allows them to feel less self-conscious in their own bodies.  Public dancing can be quite healing because it is a safe container to practice suspending self-conscious judgment.

I teach partner dance through contact improvisation, and this is a more complex situation.  When we are touching and dancing with each other there are physical risks.  It’s important not to control others in contact dancing—sensitivity is paramount.  An uncoordinated or insensitive motion can injure another person, especially if that person has been grasped or controlled so that they cannot get away.  And yet, the mantra “I’m doing it right when I start with awareness” still holds. Mistakes happen, and people do occasionally get injured physically or emotionally when interacting, but the healing potential is far greater than the risks.  When we are vulnerable enough to interact, to flow together, and to stay sensitive as we do so, then we can grow beyond the fears the prevent our flow. When we practice dancing with awareness and discernment we learn to dance better, resolving the cycle of self-consciousness that might stop us from trying.  Because dancing is so activating of self-consciousness, it is also a spectacular place to practice removing it from our lives.  The apparent fool may be the wisest in the room, having quieted the self-consciousness that would have prevented their full expression.  To be whole in oneself while mindful of others is a place of power.  Once we judge the container of our interaction safe, we need not judge our selves or others further.

Dance is truly the safest container I know to get curious about life. There are infinite possibilities for dancing well, from mastering steps, rhythm, partnership, and choreography, to freely expressing inner impulses.  With practice the specifics of dance can be honed.  What I most love about dance, though, is that you’re already doing it right.  There is no one recipe for dance, or for life.  The dance floor is a microcosm for the power of awareness in flow.  Don’t control people, don’t run into them, and don’t judge them.  If you start with awareness, you’re doing it right.

I have come to recognize the privilege I carry in consciousness.  I particularly enjoy the privilege of embodied consciousness—the somatic experience defined by movement and awareness.  I have had the resources, curiosity, and drive to investigate my somatic experience deeply through movement, dance, bodywork, meditation, sexuality, and simple presence.  For me these various approaches integrate to the degree that I don’t even differentiate them for myself:  Breath is movement.  Dance is meditation.  My creativity can bring me pleasure when I am simply present in the moment.  Like most people I experience my fair share of pain, anxiety, loneliness, and other discomforts, yet my practice with embodied consciousness in particular gives me the great power and privilege to endure and transmute such states of being over time—I am far from helpless.  My discomfort has been both a curse and a privilege, motivating much of my practice.  I have been exposed to some rather esoteric and intriguing practices.  My gratitude for all of these experiences is immense.

Perhaps great privilege comes with great responsibility—certainly it comes with the potential for sharing.  Yet, I cannot give my privilege away.  The currency of consciousness requires some level of participation from all involved in its exchange.  For a long time I was ashamed of the embodied consciousness that I could not escape, and that I did not know how to share.  I danced mostly in the studio, shut away from other parts of society:  The average person does not attend modern dance concerts. I remember going to night clubs in Philadelphia in the early 2000’s trying to navigate my own awkwardness around my unusual movements, my discomfort with sexuality, and if nothing else, my relative sobriety!  I rarely met the eyes of others.  Over many years I have come to understand that staying present with the creative power of my embodiment while engaging with people is a powerful gift.  I look for invitations from others—witnessing me is an extension of their consciousness.  Perhaps being witnessed in the pleasure of my embodiment is the most exquisite way I can share my privilege.  I prove to people that such experiences are possible; even probable.  Embodied consciousness is attainable.

What privileges do you carry—perhaps inescapably?  What do you have in abundance?  Do you circulate and share your privilege?  Do you ever feel ashamed of it?  Societally we are taught to think of money as our prime form of privilege and currency. Financial abundance is surely relevant, yet its meaning diminishes once our basic needs are met.  Money in the bank may have potential, but it actuates nothing.  Consciousness, love, and creative pleasure cannot be directly bought, sold, or given away—they require a more active form of exchange.  They take practice.  Investment in practice calls in the privilege of consciousness.  To me this is the pleasure of being alive in this body, today. It is never too late to enjoy and trust being ourselves.

Pleasure isn’t a thing. You can’t touch it. Pleasure is a feeling; an experience. Call pleasure in with your intention. Can you find pleasure now? Notice your thoughts. What emotions are you experiencing?

Are you suffering? In myself I’ve sometimes noticed embarrassment when I feel pleasure. I’ve also noticed righteousness when I suffer. I’ve carried a sense that I’m not supposed to feel pleasure—that somehow my pleasure is inappropriate or draining to others. I’ve righteously suppressed pleasure by gripping my spine, my breath, and my pelvic floor. I’ve chosen to overwork rather than to revel in a moment. I’ve brought suffering into the world that didn’t need to be there. Have you ever felt this in your body? This seems like no way to live… and I think mostly we do it everyday.

We all experience pain and suffering. Pain can be an incredible resource and even a gift, but it’s also a given. It’ll be there. Suppressing pain is no good, as its messages are lost. The same is true for pleasure. Personally, I think it takes greater refinement to deepen into pleasure; perhaps this is because to find it we need to be open to the pain as well. The practice is simply to open to our sensory capacity—to be now. I dance because it opens my potential for pleasure.

I’ve created a short dance film about pleasure, our going-going-going lives, and my mission with Physical Freedom Method. I feel good bringing this to the world. I hope you’ll watch it.

With love and gratitude,

Matthew

Culturally I think we’re at a crossroads in awareness practice.  From climate change to gender relationships, the primary question being asked is how to decide what is true about our selves and our actions.  Certainly we can find information to support almost any kind of conclusion on the internet.  Science can give us great information about the physical world, and yet science’s perspective relates only to the specific questions we choose to ask and can reduce to measurable variables.  Alas, interpretation of the meaning of things (such as the meaning of my life) is about feeling as much as thinking.  Meanwhile, the circulation of information is another process, and is dependent on who can gather the attention of the community.  To make sense of what to believe takes a lot of awareness and attunement to our feelings.  I believe it also takes the ability to move ourselves toward information streams we can trust.

Meditation is a practice of feeling.  In meditation we structure our actions in order to quiet our minds.  Through mindful attention we can activate consciousness, engaging experience with greater distinction:  When I practice feeling I perceive the texture of my world in greater detail.  This makes it easier for me to discern meaning, truth, and even power—my ability to affect some kind of change through action.  I also perceive that most of who I am, and what I do, happens outside of my conscious control.  I breathe, balance on my legs, and digest my food without much in the way of active choice.  Yet, in every movement I make, including my breath, balance, and digestion, I can become more aware and thereby more empowered.

Movement meditation is a practice of moving and feeling.  Truly we are always moving—breath and digestion are key examples—even when otherwise maintaining stillness.  By choosing to bring mindful attention to voluntary movements such as rolling, rocking, balancing, and traveling through space we can expand the edges of consciousness just as much as when sitting still.  Through movement we shift our relationship to the environment, thereby changing the information coming into our senses.  I am a dancer because I experience a ‘heightened’ state of being when moving with awareness, and because such movement has expanded my capabilities and consciousness.  I teach movement because I have a passion for sharing this consciousness that I feel.

Physical Freedom Method is a movement meditation practice that is ready to support you at your own pace and in your own home.  An online resource, the method requires no previous background in movement or mediation, and can also support you in other practices such as yoga, sports, or sitting meditation.  I have created this resource because I believe it is one of the most important actions I can take to support my community in greater consciousness and discernment.  Rather than try to describe it further here, I’d like to give you a free month to try it out for yourself.  Please take a look at this link and let me know how it feels to you.   Use the coupon code ‘freedom’ to sign up for free for one month; after that you will receive the discounted price of $24/month as a beta-tester if you choose to continue.  Level 1, focused on feeling supported, is ready now.  Level 2 will be ready by the time you finish level 1, and will focus on feeling whole, engaging with the tensional network of the fascia.