Movement therapy focuses on the life process in movement. Life is movement and we are moving all the time. Movement Therapy works directly and psychophysically to free movement and therefore to free feeling. Balance is restored by changing body movement patterns, thus opening up blocked movement and perceptions; by experiencing one’s own flow of feeling; and by discharging energy in actions rather than unconscious inhibition and tension. The function of movement transforms from controlling and inhibiting life into the expression and creation of your life.
- Transform unconscious body feeling into conscious aliveness.
- Expand your movement abilities.
- Mobilize chronic tensions
- Increase your communication skills.
- Open blocked channels of expression of emotions s.a. anger, grief and joy
- rigidity into resiliency
- insight into action
- chronic resistance into response-ability
WHO COMES TO MOVEMENT THERAPY?
Persons who want to be in touch with their body, who want a sense of freedom and spontaneity in their life expression. Persons who seek a greater integration with body and feeling, body and soul, sexuality and spirit, who are ready to integrate into their whole expression what they are learning about themselves.
One way to find out if the Movement Therapy process is for you is to take a moment to look at a few of the “values and practices” that I list here. These will give some sense of how the Movement Therapy process might serve your “aliveness.”
VALUES AND PRACTICES
Aliveness: referring to a quality of experience in which there is a sense of joy and a unity between desire and purposeful living.
Barrier/block: What is between you and experiencing your own wholeness; the something inside you that prevents you from seeing what’s going on both inside and outside you.
Belief: A non experiential way of knowing, which often prevents a person from experiencing and thereby accepting what is.
Boundaries: The distinction between myself and others, between my experience and theirs–a distinction that is essential in order to give grounding and containment to the energy that is my own in relation to others and to the world; closely related to “space” (see below).
Buttons: as in the phrase “pushing your buttons,” triggering automatic behaviour; reacting in a predictable way to certain stimuli and, especially, to things that relate to deep feelings such as love, anger, happiness, sadness; accompanied by a rationale (“reasons”)
Clear/Clearing: Clarifying an issue; removing the debris that prevents one from seeing something cleanly and sharply; to free from doubt, restriction and obstruction; cloudless. The intended results of clearing is a release to greater spontaneity and openness.
Contact/Contactfulness: the ability to be interested and expectant in the place of meeting with others and to bring the whole resources of self into relationship with clarity.
Dance/dancing: Everything which the body gives through movement and breath which cannot be given by written or spoken words alone. A dance is the way that an energy or pattern in our lives gets revealed in many dimensions when it is channeled through body movement.
Desire: “inclination” or movement toward some person or object accompanied by positive feeling.
Get, Got: Means that someone realizes the meaning or significance of a communication or experience; a revelation.
Ground/grounding: a natural way of moving that is in relationship to gravity and the ground and where there is a downward flow of energy as well as an upward flow. Because of the nature of upright movement on the planet, a downward flow of energy is a flow toward support, specifically the support of the earth. Struggle in the body, manifested in ambivalence and inhibition, often leads to “ungrounding,” which is a pulling up and away from support.
Improvisation: to produce music, dance/movement, word language, etc. without prior thought or preparation. In other words, it is life itself concentrated to permit close observation and insight.
Process: a method by which a person experiences and looks at, in an expanded state of consciousness and without judgment, what is actually so with regard to specific areas in his or her life; often helped by the presence of a “witness” (see below).
Singing: Everything which the human voice gives that cannot be given by written texts (see “voice” below), i.e., nuance, emotion, presence, space, direct contact and knowing, truth.
Space: Space is not distance that can be measured, but distance that can be experienced. To allow somebody space is to let the other person be, do, or say what he or she wants freely and without imposing your own judgments.
Tension: because emotions are forms of energy, we can only suppress them by mustering counter energy–tensing muscles and controlled, shallow breathing are most common–and this leads to fatigue, tight, inflexible muscles, and impaired coordination. The antidote to unconscious tension is communication and expression.
Truth: that which you experience. In a psychophysical process like movement therapy truth usually arrives as body sensations and movements accompanied by intuition–a knowledge of how it is and what needs to be done.
Voice: use of body and breath to create auditory vibrations which carry through space; an extension of contact and inspiration (breathing). One consequence of tension and control in the body is to choke off the voice.
Witness/witnessing: one who observes the process (see “process” above) of another person with skillful empathy; the opposite of “looking at” or assessing. A witness relies on the grounding of his or her own body and a condition of inner spaciousness (see “space” and “clearing” above) to receive and clarify the truth of another person’s experience. As such a witness has a commitment to complete presence and service.
Private Movement Therapy sessions are usually one and a half hour sessions or even three hour sessions. Most often one to five sessions are contracted at the first meeting. No previous movement experience is necessary.
Tuition for sessions:
Three Hour session: $ 400.00
One and a half hour session: $ 140.00
Package of five one and a half hour sessions: $ 600.00
