I recently attended a seminar on body mind integration. I had to apply and be chosen in order to attend. I was unsure of the intention of the seminar, but I wanted to meet the leader, an innovator in conscious dance. The application questions were fascinating.
Have you had experiences with awareness-based movement?
What were your experiences with those body-based approaches?
Do you have a regular movement practice?
Assess your level of being “in your body.”
What does it mean to be “in the body” to you?
What feelings are you most uncomfortable with?
What feelings are hardest for you to access?
Have you experienced significant loss recently?
The theme was experiencing emotions, with an emphasis on loss. We used a poem and deep spiritual music to experience grief and used our bodies to recreate grief in a dance. We then created a drawing expressing our feelings.
This was an exploration in how the body fixes attention on loss or grief.
Was there a specific place where the grief resided?
What happens in your body as you recreate or re-experience the grief?
We were encouraged to dance, to move, to use our voices to express ourselves. All day we were in silent meditation toward each other, no side talking.
I have lost close friends, some of whom have died. Both of my parents are dead. I have lost my favorite pets, money (a type of security) but my attention turned toward what I have lost of me.
I like my emotions. When asked how I feel about emotions I said to the group, “I love emotions.” Well after we re-experienced Fear, the step after Grief, I recanted at the final sharing “I accept emotions.” It was here that I recognized that my losses were all of others, but loss of youth by aging. The gradual hearing and hair losses. The need for reading glasses. The sports I can no longer compete in, and loss of friends I wish I could share our processes of aging.
I know it’s all where I place my attention, not where the attention is fixed.
It’s all in appreciating the changes.
It was a learning experience to find where grief and fear reside, because beside them resides joy and love.
We may lose youth on the exterior, but I hope none of us lose our youth on the inside.