Learning From the Body

In my most recent Authentic Facilitation training, I had the inspiration on the first day to get the group doing some authentic movement near the beginning of the three-day course.  In this particular course I had never done this before, although various forms of authentic movement are always regularly offering in my improvisation singing workshops.  I wondered why I suddenly felt inspired to invite the facilitation group to do movement, but I trusted the intuition and went ahead.  It was gold! 

Using simple movements and in a process I led, each person found a very small yet very precise movement they could express with even one hand or arm.   The process of exploration leading to this ‘capture’ of specific movement had encompassed both seeking out genuine in-the-moment physical expression, and an exploration of one’s own eldership.  During the training I found myself suggesting that participants refer to these movements when they felt confused, uncertain or emotional triggered during simulations and role-plays.  I was doing so because in every case there was an immediate shift in each participant, as these movement-based aspects of their own deep wisdom and ability to be present would become accessible to them again by re-activating movement.   Through movement, several people also found aspects of their persona that they had never thought to bring into their role as group facilitators.  This brought delight, ease and smiles, and in some cases, people even found names for these often repressed or forgotten aspects of themselves! 

I feel enormous gratitude to have been born in a time and place that has afforded me so many privileges of safety, education and opportunity to live authentically.  And at the same time, I have a lot of deep and unwavering critiques of the culture of which I am a member.  One of them is the innumerable ways my culture continue to focus on linear, rational thought as our dominant intelligence.  I have no real special training or education in movement.  Yet, like you, I too am an animal…utterly fluent in the vocabulary of gesture and capable of expressing most anything without verbal language.  I thank these participants of this recent course for the potent reminder that our holistic personhood holds so many kinds of knowing, intelligence and diverse dimension of self. 

In my social ecology studies, I learned (and remembered) that the only organisms that are non-moving are dead ones. 

Movement = Life and Intelligence.