International Authentic Movement Day: Share Your Dreams for Authentic Movement
October 4, 2015
Mary Starks Whitehouse's Day of Birth was October 4, 1911.
We wish to celebrate her life and vision on this first International Day of Authentic Movement.
She began the vision/dream which became known as Authentic Movement with her dreams for "movement in depth" which began in the 1950's over 60 years ago.
Do you have a dream or wish for the future of the Authentic Movement Community? Save October 4th or thereabouts as a time to move your dream with the international authentic movement community as a whole. More information about this will be coming closer to the time.
Over five years ago Carol Zahner hosted a conference call exercise with a group of us who were volunteering for the Authentic Movement Community Web site. It was an exercise in sharing our "Wildest Dreams" for the authentic movement community.
Five years later that call still clings to me and lives in my body as I work on the web site for our community. A recent event to celebrate Aileen Crow's 90th Birthday brought some of these volunteers back together. Many of us have gone on to bring our wild dreams to life.
Paula Sager shared her dream that we have an International Day for Authentic Movement, where people from over the world would be invited to practice alone or with others and share their movement time from that day. She hoped it might be a day where the whole community could feel a connection like she and Lizbeth Hamlin wrote about in their art book, "red thread, two women: who is seeing this longing to awaken?"
by Paula Sager and Lizbeth Hamlin. A long-distance collaboration through AM.
Our wildest dreams from five years ago included:
Elizabeth Reid wished to meet everyone in the whole community. (There were 150 on the list then… now 500 or more on our web site list, 1600 + on the Facebook page...making this a wild dream beyond possible!)
Carol Zahner wished for a world that regularly practiced authentic movement like folks used to regularly pray and go to church weekly.
Aileen Crow wished for yearly International Gatherings. She also wished for further understanding of the connection between authentic movement practice and healing of trauma.
Ann McNeal wished for local groups to have easy access to information about peer groups, including easy access to joining peer groups and a forum that made immediate connections possible.
Martha Lask wished to continue taking witnessing and the compassionate goals of authentic movement into the organizational world to help create compassionate relationships in organizations.
Germaine Fraser wished to write more about the amazing power of witnessing and to encourage others to write more about this as well.
Jaime Stover Schmitt wished to help particularly shy writers to write about their authentic movement experiences. She wished for long articles that shared the spiritual depths of our practice. And she wished for an archive of all the articles from the past to be available on the web.
Inspired by the welcoming container held by the creators of “A Moving Journal” for 13 years, Karen Kornhauser wished for new pathways to feel the strength of the long circle connecting all of us whose lives have been touched by this rich practice across the globe in ways both concrete and unknown, through the stories we share of our experience and the ways we bring this practice into our lives and into our world.
Patrizia Pallaro wished to bridge authentic movement with the newest discoveries on how the brain works in hopes of showing authentic movement's position on a par with things on the newest edges.
Kim McKeever who joined us after this exercise expressed wishes for a way to share all the blogs that write about authentic movement in one place such as on our authentic movement community blog or on our Facebook page.
Kathy Chowanec also joined us later. She wished for sharing of creative forming that came in response to authentic movement sessions. Her dream idea was to have a place for art strictly from authentic movement experience.
She created an invitation on the Authentic Movement Community Web Site Blog to send photos of art pieces someone might be shy about showing other places.
My dream of meeting everyone gets touched with each person who joins or updates on our Authentic Movement Web Site Directory. During the last update I connected with Abadha Lila because I was going to San Juan, Puerto Rico and she lives there. She gave me a perfect tour of San Juan and shared her dream that a gathering be held in San Juan. Many who join our directory feel they are the only AM person in their area, despite our growing numbers of people interested in the practice. So I continue to dream that the web site will help us all get more connections to each other and the practice.
So please won't you join us for a movement session sometime during the day or week of October 4th, 2015 (or thereabouts) and then share your experience here in a blog comment or on Facebook in a post? Your movement session might be alone, with a group, in a long circle, or as part of a workshop or an event.
Share your plans of how you will design your movement session now by putting a comment below or posting on Facebook. After we embody them around October 4th, we will share our dreams for the future of the Authentic Movement Community in the same way.
Kat said...
I love this idea, and love those red threads shared, we can form our own healing quilt / tapestry. I plan to either move along or with a peer far away on skype which I have tried and was kind of amazing, and or with a peer in town or all of the above and then write after the movement and draw and share on this site. wonder- filled. Each time I offer AM to new people and see the hesitation at first and then that knowing moment of ahhhhhh, this was a gift, I feel blessed and grateful. Thanks. Kathee Miller
A photo I posted on the facebook page of a Workshop in Auckland celebrating Mary's birthday. Anne Frances Hurst and I practiced together Friday afternoon, Friday night we offered a 20 minute practice as a warm up to a healing dance class and Saturday was the afternoon workshop with these lovely people (two others also attended so 9 in total and I was the witness) I believe we were first to begin this wave as New Zealand sees the day almost first in the World so we began the celebration and continued feeling the presence of others as we practiced yesterday. What an honour and privilege it is to be part of this community. My friend Penni Ha'penny also offered a practice yesterday so we are building momentum and community in New Zealand, Aroha
E. Connor Kelly
Thank you so much for sharing this great photo. So much fun to see the faces from around the world. I hope this will inspire others to send photos! ~~~Elizabeth
From Paula Sager and Lizbeth Hamlin
September 7th, 2015