Category Archives: the body

Nov14

resistance

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Picture 7

Resistance is about believing that you are vulnerable or susceptible to something not wanted and holding a stance of protection — which only holds you in a place of not letting in the Well-being that would be there otherwise. There is nothing big enough to protect you from unwanted things, and there are no unwanted things big enough to get into your experience.    —Abraham

 balk balk, verb:

1. to stop, as at an obstacle, and refuse to proceed or to do something specified (usually followed by at): He balked at making the speech.
2. (of a horse, mule, etc.) to stop short and stubbornly refuse to go on.
3. to place an obstacle in the way of; hinder; thwart: a sudden reversal that balked her hopes.
4. Archaic. to let slip; fail to use: to balk an opportunity.

I am interested in little resistances.  In the subtle strata of obstruction that sifts into each day, each hour, each activity.  I have been talking a lot about the big obstacle of losing my daughter.  In the midst of that, I have begun to notice little grains of resistance woven into my writing, my dancing, my thinking, even my breathing.  These resistances are actually distractions, ways of avoiding what is hard, what is demanding.  The body begins to reflect these small islands of tightness, breathlessness, mini-immobilizations.

Last night I did a teleclass on Embodied Horsemanship.  I talked a lot about softness, opening, allowing and breathing as the portal and anchor for bodily attention and feeling.  Being with horses is for me, the best way to dissolve resistance.  That is because with them, I am in a state of feeling awareness, a joyful state, a loving state.  Resistance cannot find a purchase there.  When I leave the barn, I feel like all the interstitial grit is gone.  I am rinsed clean.

IMG_0638aPhoto:  Jeffrey Anderson    Ingrid Schatz with Escorial (Pony)

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Nov6

can you feel this?

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5a958fb64d07acbe1dcdc67e61969888Anna Halprin

Every cell in your body has a direct relationship with Creative Life Force, and each cell is independently responding. When you feel joy, all the circuits are open and the Life Force or God Force can be fully received. When you feel guilt or blame or fear or anger, the circuits are hindered and the Life Force cannot flow as effectively. Physical experience is about monitoring those circuits and keeping them as open as possible. The cells know what to do. They are summoning the Energy.

—Abraham

Oct29

authentic movement

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c52f92efb563b8d885b6e3610403fc29Georgia O’Keefe

Authentic Movement has been at the root of my movement practice for the past twenty-five years.  It is a  is a meditative, intuitive improvisational movement practice involving a mover and a witness.  With eyes closed, maintaining a focus on bodily sensation and the flow of consciousness, the mover allows herself to be moved by whatever impulse is arising in the body.  I love teaching the work because it offers such a rich and truthful way to connect to inspiration and feeling.

While some practitioners like Mary Starks Whitehouse, who worked with Carl Jung, and Janet Adler are principally interested in the therapeutic dimensions of Authentic Movement, for me it has always been about the expressive possibilities that it unlocks.  As nourishment and ground for any artistic practice from writing to visual arts to performing arts, it has the ability to open doors that would not be apparent when “wide awake.”  Similar to Jung’s “waking dreaming ” practice, Authentic Movement draws us into deeper waters, the hidden caverns of our own creative, bodily and spiritual selves.

Later this fall I will be teaching both in Millerton, NY and New Haven, CT.   I hope you will join me November 16, 1-4:30 pm at the Wellness Center, 65 Main Street in Millerton, NY.

You can sign up here:


This workshop is for anyone who has a desire to move their body freely and who is open to self-reflection and exploration.  No dance training or experience is necessary.  Wear loose comfortable clothing, bring water and a notebook or writing and drawing supplies.  There will be some drawing materials available.

This is from Janet Adler’s film, “Still Looking.”

Oct23

stepping into the void

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Georgia O’Keefe

I am back in the studio.  Not the arena.  New dances, no horses.  For the past thirteen years, I have been dancing with horses.  That work is still extant, but I am drawn back to the theater.  For the first time in that many years, I am making solo work and duet work.  It feels exhilarating, wild, unhinged in the sense that the horse is not there to shape things, to create a certain kind of boundary, intention and necessity for the work.

I have been doing Authentic Movement more too.  Setting my witness-goddesses in the corner, and letting them hold the space, hold me.  There is weeping,  There is opening, there is stillness and darkness and light and quiet.

When I was teaching at Boston University in September, a student asked me where I start.  How do I begin a dance?  I liked that question, and reached back all the way to the beginning of making work for answers that were as varied as an elephant is from a mouse.  An image, a feeling in the body, a poem, a painting, some music, a dancer’s movement, something observed, something read, something felt, a place, a journey, a memory, a fragment of gesture that keeps interrupting, demanding. Something quiet, something loud, something big, something small.  Welcome all.

I am letting myself be called now.  Maybe it is that I am older, but I am surrendering to these calls more easily now, letting myself be shaped, asking fewer questions, and allowing the wild body to speak.