Dorothea Tanning

“Some things are unchangeably wild, others are stolidly tame.  The tiger is wild, and the coyote, and the owl.  I am tame, you are tame.  There are wild things that have been altered, but only into a semblance of tameness, it is no real change.”

Mary Oliver, Long Life: Essays and Other Writings

Reading this early this morning, I thought, “not quite.”  Residing for a month here in this holy (wholly) artists’ space, I am letting the wild out, letting the wild in.  It is a freedom from other eyes, even my own, a place of opening the floodgates to what may seem to ordinary eyes, madness, even possession.  Maybe it is more available without words, though I think not.  I know some wild writers, some feral painters, and so do you.

I know that I come quickly back to tameness, but there is a fierce pride in thrusting hands, feet, hips and mind into the tumult.

I remember my first session of Authentic Movement.  Dropping into the vast stillness and finding there eruption a commotion, a chaos, a disturbance of movement.  Sometimes it was stillness like lying at the bottom of the sea -dark and empty –  no sound, no sight.

Other times, the movement was irresistible, scary, intoxicating. Wild ropes of movement woven like ganglia into the spaces between the cells, knitted into the ligaments, sewn into the fibers of muscle, soaked into the bones to the marrow.  Movement like the capaill uisce – the ferocious water horses in The Scorpio Races – that will rise our of the depths and devour you whole; pull you down to the sea floor and leave you dismembered.  Other times, the movement could be exquisitely tender, delicate, sensuous .

Over the twenty-five or so years that I have been practicing and teaching Authentic Movement, I have found no other way of opening to source, to grounding inspiration in the body that is so simple and profound. I come back to it time and again because it keeps me honest, tethers inner to outer, opens me to the unexpected.

I work with individuals and also teach workshops.  To learn more or schedule a session, Email Paula.

I spent a part of yesterday doing Authentic Movement with my friend, dancer Pamela Newell.  In Authentic Movement, the mover closes their eyes, and in the presence of a witness, “waits to be moved” by whatever impulse is arising in the body.  There is no expectation or preference for a particular kind of movement.  The witness is a container for the experience of the mover, and follows their own images and bodily experiences as they arise.

In my experience, there is nothing like this practice.   You never quite know what kind of wind is blowing, where it will come from or where it will take you.  Yesterday, at one moment, my fingers felt gossamer, transparent, light as moth’s wings, and in another moment, my arm stretched out for minutes like an iron bar seeking heat.  There are no stories that need be told or interpreted, only one moment linked to another by breath and the body.

This spring I will be offering several workshops.  If you would like to host a workshop in your community, contact me here:   Email Paula