AUTHENTIC MOVEMENT and HEALING By Aileen Crow and Mie Sato

AILEEN SAYS:-

This story of the healing through AM of a minor catastrophe begins in my kitchen. I’m home alone one evening, calmly sitting at the table sewing and watching TV. Suddenly the chair I’m sitting on breaks in half and falls apart. I am dumped down on top of it and my back is badly hurt. Shocked, and not moving for a few moments, I switch into my healing mode, which is mostly not pathologizing what is happening by going into “Victim”, with her familiar trauma-derived “catastrophic expectations”. I move gingerly --- is anything broken? No, I can move. I am humming as I put my healing hand on my back and lie there a while. Will I still be down here on the floor on top of the askew chair when my husband comes home? A funny picture.

It is interesting to me to see my beliefs about healing jump into action in emergency. What is healing, anyway? To quote neuroscientist, Antonio Damasio, “Joy is conducive to health.” And, in “the ultimate state of well being”, there are “sustained feelings of harmony, ease and joy.”

Although my back hurts and I have a huge dark purple bruise and I feel sick, two days later I have a scheduled session with my phenomenal Gyrotonic coach and Graham dancer, Jennifer DePalo. I know I won’t be able to do the usual strenuous and ecstatic movements she usually leads me into. I fantasize in advance that I will roll around carefully a la AM, with her knowledgeable and intuitive hands on my back. She does just that. Yes, it is certainly healing to me to get exactly what I want in a completely mutual interaction.

Two days later I fly to Maine for our annual Authentic Movement gathering at Carol Zahner’s great house. It’s a loose group that has been meeting for years to move, play, make art, dance and eat. We are six this year, only one of whom, Mie Sato, I don’t yet know well.

Feeling sick and hurting, I am treated lovingly. Carol gives me her bed and giant bathtub, and we all make and eat scrumptious food. I am given soft foot massages and Germaine Fraser gives me a beautiful aroma therapy massage in which I am more than happy to be completely receptive. Not just a massage, it was like being completely cared for by a perfect loving mother. Who could imagine more wonderful healing?

One afternoon between our AM sessions, I’m sitting on a bench at Carol’s dining table with my hand on my hurting back. Mie says, “Would you like me to put my hand there?” Yes. We are quiet for a while, then my body starts to do AM and Mie follows. After a while I think of saying, “Follow your intuition”. I say, “Move with me”, and she does both. Mie does not initiate, but follows, matching me. We are equally active, both of us following my AM impulses. We go on for a long time, as the leading/following gradually turns into mutually matching AM. Perfect. I open my eyes and see Germaine watching. I say to her, “Will you get a camera and catch this? It’s so good.” She does. Mie and I continue in our mutually matching AM. Perfect. An “ultimate state of well being, with harmony, ease and joy.”

Authentic Movement in real life, not just during official sessions within given forms. No designated external Witness, just two movers with Inner Witnesses in relationship. Being in one’s own AM while following another mover’s AM. Mutually matching AM. AM as healing without a program, protocol or system. Healing without solicitude. Love without sentimentality.

I am reminded of Shelley Tanenbaum’s intention in her “Intuitive Life Movement”, a form kindred to AM, to come to have one’s everyday open-eyed interactions enlivened by the continual presence of one’s spontaneous impulses. (See A Moving Journal, Summer, 2004.) And my AM buddy, and contact dancer, Lucy Mahler, tells me that mutual matching, a la AM, is not uncommon in Contact Improvisation.

My goals in AM are: (1) To use AM as my main resource in my on-going project to undo the trauma-induced patterns in my life. (2) To have my AM impulses and feelings present in my daily life and during my interactions with others. (3) To identify at least half the time with my understanding Witness/Listener, who helps me go into problems and projections without getting stuck in them. (4) To easily be able to choose to move out of my old trauma victim’s kyphosis and scoliosis, into the liberating high twisting chest arching that Jennifer and Gyrotonic and my spontaneous twistings in AM have taught me to love and trust. My twistings tell me, “You’re on the right track.”

I am fortunate. The main source sustaining my well being in life is living in love with my husband of nearly fifty years. Thank you, Bill.

My back still hurts and my bruise is still colorful, but it is talking to me. It wants me to be a loving mother to it. It wants me to call it, not ‘Hurt Back’, but ‘Honey Love’, (seriously, and without embarrassed joking) and give it all the time it needs. So I’d say that my (5) goal is: (as Germaine says), To be in love with myself. Harmony, love and joy: that’s healing.


MIE SAYS:

Initially, I responded to Aileen’s gesture of self care because I was in a better physical position to hold that spot on her back.

I was willing to be there and knew that my warm hand would be soothing on her sore back.

I was also willing to be there without doing anything, just witnessing and holding space.

When Aileen started to move I began by following her impulse.

When I surrendered to the dance of just flowing and following I felt my heart open to trust and caring.

There were times when we switched back and forth gently moving energy between us. It felt effortless and healing for me as well.

The other gift was I got to know Aileen intimately as well.

Comments...

Martha said...

Aileen and Mie,
Thank-you so much for this post! First of all, I could picture and follow you, Aileen, as you sat, fell, talked and un-talked to yourself, moved, opened yourself to caring, discovered, twisted in those yummy gyrotonic moves....

And then, what came up for me was the "choice" we have in witnessing ourselves, in choosing to heal, in choosing the form that healing takes in any given time, in particpating in others healing...

I hope your back continues to feel better and better...

Thanks again,
Martha Lask

Wednesday, September 16, 2009 9:20:00 AM EDT

Anonymous said...
I so appreciate your gentle way with your self. I also hope your back continues to heal. Elizabeth
Tuesday, September 22, 2009 2:34:00 PM EDT

Dawn Pratson said...
I really ejoyed reading this. I especially enjoyed hearing the account of the expanded-upon AM form "No designated external witness, just two movers with inner witnesses in relationship. Thank you.
Friday, September 25, 2009 5:30:00 PM EDT

Margaret Knight (by CZ) said...

Dear lovely ones, I just read the blog entry by aileen and mie. couldn't figure out how to comment so I'm commenting here. Thanks for writing that up. I also want to have AM be me, be authentic, be moving, be whatever is needed. When I was just camping in northern VT and the tent was covered with snow and I had to undress to get in my sleeping bag, I found myself making all kinds of sounds. They helped me deal with the cold. I think your spontaneous session at Carol's table could happen because we did authentic living while we were there. Love to you all, Margaret

Monday, October 19, 2009 11:43:00 PM EDT

Authentic Movement, Yoga & Healing by Jaime Stover Schmitt

I call my work yoga movement therapy. It is concerned with personal evolution, which to me is a continuum that includes healing. For this yoga provides a very big context in that healing can be thought of as a process of spiritual development. A healing process may be thrust upon us in the form of illness, or we may voluntarily open to ways in which we can learn, change and grow. Difficulties we face in various aspects of our lives such as in relationships, health issues, even finances can be thought of as earmarked areas for personal growth. Authentic Movement is an invaluable part of this healing-growing continuum because through it we are able to step out of our ordinary orientation and develop a manner of perceiving that invites an even greater inclusiveness. Over the past thirty years of engaging in this work, I have come to believe that this manner of stepping out of ordinary consciousness is a necessary element of the healing process. Shifting our way of perceiving from a pedestrian orientation to a non-linear, non-logical, non-causal context frees us temporarily from the strategies we have in place for getting along in our lives. When we move beyond these strictures, we can open to new possibilities on many levels.

Not too long ago people in the U.S. thought of yoga practice as an embodied method for inner work; a way to learn about and consciously work through personal impediments to one’s fullest potential. For instance one aspect of yoga, posture practice can be a way to learn about personal mythology through the associations made while holding a pose, similar to what can be experienced while moving. I am sad to see the superficiality of commodified yoga exclude dimensions of inner work, transformation and development of autonomy.

Based on this lack of understanding, a “do it right” attitude toward yoga practice has become the current norm. Students who don’t measure up are sometimes criticized and unfortunately even humiliated in class. This causes students to become defensive. If you are defending because you’re anticipating criticism there’s no opening to being playful, so you will not learn anything new. From studying cellular biology I learned that even the simplest form of life, a single cell, cannot exhibit a protection response and a growth response at the same time. It’s going to be one or the other. The cell that has the greatest capacity for awareness and receptivity is most adaptive and able to thrive. It evolves through this process into an even more intelligent way of being. This is true for us too. When we are defending we are not receptive which results in our perceptions being quite limited. Our understanding as a result will be far less inclusive. We end up reinforcing our conditioning instead of releasing it into a state of expansiveness. If a state of receptivity is necessary for learning, then it may well be life saving when it comes to the changes needed for healing to occur.

Once the shift to a non-ordinary consciousness is made, I believe the next step in the healing process concerns trust. In AM it begins as an ability to trust the form and the witness, similarly in therapeutic work it entails trusting the method as well as the therapist employing the method. But at a deeper level this step is about faith. Faith is a loan without a promissory note; it implies risk. We each have our own way of assessing risk. Our worldview comes into play as we weigh what might be possible against what is at stake. Here again AM affords a marvelous opportunity to become familiar with the unknown and to cultivate comfort with the uncontrollable. And in life really there is very little that is fully known or ultimately controllable, it only appears so through the filter of the comfort-concerned cocoon of ordinary reality.

This act of faith is both an attempt to extend our zone of comfort and an opening to discomfort. We project a positive receptivity onto the unknown while at the same time surrender to that which is beyond our control. In healing, this produces a sense of direction even when one cannot be rationally ascertained. We may feel we are in a no-man’s-land but we grasp there is a purpose to it. It is not about lying to oneself or denying one’s situation, it is about walking the knife-edge between consensus reality and wonderment. AM allows us to move into this necessary state of wonderment so that we can progress along our path toward wholeness.

© 2007 Jaime Stover Schmitt, Ed.D., C.M.A., S.M.E., I.D.M.E., R.Y.T.