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Practice. I am pondering practice today. And when I talk about practice I talk about the practice of self connection. ..(also called meditation, presence, conscious movement, etc). What I am intrigued about today is how the genuine practice of self connection already is self connection. It is not possible to practice in order to become good at it in the future. The practice of self connection needs to be grounded in the intention of connecting with myself now.…and now and now… However I am aware of how easy the practice of meditation, yoga, conscious movement becomes something arriving to us from the outside. Something we perform because it is good for us..because we feel it is good for us and it supports us, but we forget to put weight on the quality of presence and sensitive atunement that we give to ourselves in our practice. This can not be given to us from the outside. Nobody can ever do that for us. No-one can teach you to turn towards yourself with gentleness, friendly open awareness, and genuine heartfelt interest. Others can inspire it in us, encourage it, guide us into that kind of awareness, but in away it is nothing to learn, it is something to just do. And as we do it, we cultivate it in ourselves; the ability to be friendly, the kind interest that we need to give to ourselves… The reason why I like to call the practice of bodymind inquiry a practice of (self)connection, is to never forget the reason why we practice. Insights, deeper understanding, liberation, skillfulness in movement and concentration is, if it aims at presence and self knowledge, missing the mark if it doesn’t value the present moment of life in and of itself… the quality of presence, the alive connection, the loving deepening that resting in and as ourselves intrinsically is. And nothing in our experience has to change for it to be so. We can be with whatever, if we make the choice of practicing curious friendly awareness. Our experience is never wrong. It doesn’t need to change, be improved, or manipulated. It needs to be met. And meeting it is the practice. In this sense practice is beyond the practical ritual that I am performing. It is in the aliveness, the presence/ intention put into the practice. In a certain sense we are always practicing something. See if you can follow me on this one: The body is always active in some kind of practice. Standing, sitting, lying down. As long as we are in form, movement is happening...and as long as we are moving, we are practicing. And - in whatever action our practice takes, we can choose; either we practice our long time unconscious habits, we practice the movements of our known habitual familiar sense of self, avoidance, striving or efforting, or we are practicing what we want, we give into the movement our freshness, presence, awareness and self connection...the expression of what is most important to us. There is a saying about dicipline that I like a lot, and that actually makes even more sense now that I think about it in the context of my morning practice: " discipline is remember what you want". If discipline is remembering what you want, the kind of practice I like, is discipline in action. A practice that is completely in alignment with my deep intention, a practice that is an embodiment of my intention... What my intention is? It is a question to be asked again and again…right now, to touch the earth.. to be near. To be here. To value this moment…I love life to be an expression of love... not another performance, super-ego project or self projection experiment. But what is an expression of love right now? The moment I answer this question certainty...didn´t I already loose it? This intention makes both life and practice into a living breathing inquiry, an ongoing exploration! So how can my morning practice be just that? A living breathing ongoing exploration? An expression of love allowed into the world? Thinking back to the morning, in a way..when did I start practicing? It was the moment I went out of the cabin. It was before I gathered my mat and blanket and went to the dock... Before the first breath on the mat. Even before tuning inwards toward my experience. It started with the choice of giving myself space to be. It started with the choice of stepping out of the expected stream of events from our joint community this morning, and going my own way. It started as I took the tray of dirty dishes and carried it to the washing up. I stepped out of the comfortable easy-going "its the same for me" attitude, and into a "damn it, now let me choose what is important!" I remember myself this morning, as I was looking around outside the cabin where I am staying..looking for a nice place to do the morning practice. I find it. Furthest out on a floating dock. I put out my mat and my blanket, and then, I simply lay there on my back, looking up into the deep blue sky. Waiting. And as I lay there I smile, because I know I am already practicing. Because I am here with the intention of giving space for genuine practice. I cannot forcefully be friendly and attuned. I cannot do presence. I cannot do being. The only thing I can do is nothing. And not even that is possible. There is a fresh wind, a breeze on the water. Sky is blue with light happy clouds on it. As I become present to this, I slowly start to feel held and supported. I feel that I belong in this moment. Lying there looking into the deep blue sky. The questions forms in me; the questions that will give form to the practice today ; Where am I? What do I need? I do not know the answer to this questions. But the practice becomes alive in me genuinely asking them I do not expect myself to know what I need or where I am. I simply listen. I listen and find myself in the middle of experience. And I can hear my mind: «Are you not going to do anything? What kind of stretches are you going to do? Which yoga routine ?» …It takes courage to stay still. Not follow any of the automatic options for morning practice that I could have chosen. It takes courage... because I need to tolerate the noise of my inner pusher and perfectionist..what if nothing happens ...what if you waste your time, this is not what a serious practice looks like...you ´re lazy and dull..." it is unpleasant. However playing ping pong with my super ego is a practice I am quite good at, and I know that it is not fulfilling for me, so I stay... listening to the inner activity that wants me to perform.. honoring it as part of my experience now. Nothing to change, not a problem, not a hinderance for my practice. Simply the content of experience. Dropping deeper into the moment, allowing myself to feel my experience deeper, I see how the inner activity of the pusher and the perfectionist is trying to serve the little child in doing good in the world… having approval from the grown up. Sensing even deeper, I feel the activity as a movement of maintaining identity… the good girl, performing good…however at the other side is the grown up, who will never fully recognize and value being….Who will never see and acknowledge the intrinsic value of being. The grown up is felt as a physical wall… a thickness in the head…a motionless hardness and the little girl feels like an innocence, a need for value and mirroring, jumping towards the wall forever… wanting support without succeeding. Awareness drops even deeper, beyond the activity of the mind, and there is a calm soothing feeling in the body. The ground comes up to meet the body, support and belonging feels even stronger. Here, in the middle of practice the support and recognition that the little girl was striving for, is happening. In the meeting with ground, the nourishing mothering comes in …soothes, holds, nourishes…the ground arises as loving holding space, nourishing every cell of the body… letting it know that it belongs and is held as a child of the loving light. Bringing awareness to where I am and what is going on inside, the experience informs and inspire movement. I find movement happening, in communication with the ground. Movement that supports the sense of being held, of letting go beyond the old and stale relationship of the mind, into the alive relating with the ground in the present moment. The movement of my body happens in response to my present moment experience. Forgotten is all old yoga routines, all right ways of stretching, all learned exercises. All right or wrong.. all performance. Moving happens in unexpected and nourishing ways. Deeper and deeper into connection with ground. Deeper and deeper into oneness with itself and the deeper layers of soul... The practice is in the genuine openness to listen, and the knowing is in the movement. A living breathing inquiry showing the deep meaning of every experience, every move, every breath. What is it that I want? For every expression of life to know its intrinsic beauty and value... (…and to never forget to ask that question again in the next now.)

Kelly Suleman interviewed me about my world of inspiration; Mo(ve)ment and Zen, and here is the interview, brought to my blog! Inspiring Soma Sisters: An Interview with Norwegian Coach Hanne Pedersen in the Mo(ve)ment by Kelly Suleman & Hanne Pedersen (read more on Kelly`s blog MOVING INTO WELLBEING: here) ----------------- Tell me about your practice and how it helps you? The most important inspiration for my practice, I have from the performing arts, creative somatic movement, inquiry (specifically the work of the Diamond Appraoch) and Zen Coaching, a coaching method and life approach, which I am practicing consistently since 2008, and also teach to others. My practice helps me stay connected to myself. It helps me choose love and learning over the habitual limiting beliefs of conditioning, and to meet my inner experience, with openness, empathic attunement and allowance, no matter what it is. My practice has come to teach me not to be afraid of meeting myself, but rather to see all the doorways to being that the present moment is offering. This is what I practice and it is also what I love to facilitate for others through the workshops and individual programs that I offer. To offer a space where one can practice becoming ones own path; an adventure, that fully engages ones creative potential. NOORI, and the arts and practices of BodyMind Inquiry is founded in 2016, and is a creative platform for weaving and sharing the practices that continuously are shining light on my path. The name NOORI actually means “light”. It came to me one night when I did song improvisation with some friends under the full moon. It was one of these magic moments, when the nature seemed to respond to the singing. I heard myself sing NOORI, as the full moon grew whiter, bigger and brighter, and it almost came out of the sky, dancing in all its beauty…Later I googled the word NOORI and found that it is a name, and means light. What inspires you? When I stop and sense that I am, it is as if the stillness of the present moment is a doorway to a vast and unknown mystery, ready to reveal itself to me if I love it enough. A friend I once met said that to me; “there is nothing you cant come to know if you really, really love it…” I feel that I am inspired by my love for life. I want to know life, not as concepts and stories, but through a real felt sense; Knowing life through being life. I often find myself dancing on the edge, with one foot in the known and one foot in the unknown, continuously expanding my courage and capacity to know what is here. Dance in that sense is a deep dialogue with existence. Whatever I call that which I move with, it could be a three, a cloud, an inner experience, a question… whatever it is, when I am fully with it, and bring my sensitivity to a meeting in mo(ve)ment, I am brought to a place of humbleness and gratitude in the experience. As Rumi, I find something sacred in the experience of intimately knowing a beloved… in one of the billions of forms that existence can take…. A meeting is a place that expands the horizons, and creates new patterns where being can flow. It opens the possibilities for something entirely new to happen. I guess that also is what inspires me, a sense of moving in the place where “the pen meets the paper”, and the story is written. What makes you move? I am moved by wonder, moved by love. Looking at the sky, I receive my own sensations of a warm tingling joy…it moves into a smile. Life is a sensuous experience that in and of itself is movement. In a way sensation and movement is what I am, and what I am becoming. So I move to be what I am, and to know what I am, and to know the worlds and universes that are opening up,- right here in this mo(ve)ment… I move to create, to transform, to heal and understand. I move to follow myself home, or to walk with you a little part of your way. I move because it feels like moving is its own full purpose and its own mystery. Sometimes I am moved by fear, sorrow, nervousness, anger or despair too. Sometimes I am the space where difficult emotions may exist, and be seen and loved through the movements they make. I love when movement arise spontaneously from a sensing into the present moment. Sometimes when I walk in nature I notice that my hands start dancing, I don`t not know where the movement is coming from, but it feels connected, coherent, whole and wise. Movement, sound, feeling, sensing & imagination come together in a whole, and have a sense of inner purpose. A part of what often thrills me is that I do not know what makes me move, but I get to know what is becoming in the movement. What are the key most important things that have helped you along your journey so far? I think the common principle that I am inspired by, and that is at the core of all the practices I have taken to heart, is a recognition that the movement of life, if undisturbed, is naturally moving towards healing, opening and expansion. And of course here, the body, as perceived from the inside is the meeting point.This is our sensing feeling experiencing self, and at the same time, it is the movement of life. For me, the body is both an anchor to the present moment, and one of those doorways to deeper understanding, healing, transformation and creative unfoldment. I see something beautiful happening for me and for others, when we can stay connected to the present moment body, and let our mind open into the landscapes of sensuous presence and wise embodied imagination. Doing this through creative somatic movement practices is like letting the mind dive into its own origin, and come back refreshed, and with expanded perspectives on what life is. It strengthens the connection to the felt perception of the world; our inherent navigation system, the sensitivity which often have been ignored, belittled or more or less shut down through conditioning. Through my practice and work as a Zen Coach I have also very positive experiences of allowing life’s movement through a verbal dialogue centered in the present moment. As a listener then, it is all about being there with genuine interest, allowance, and compassionate presence. It is deeply healing and liberating to share the inner authentic reality with someone who doesn´t want to change or fix it, but simply let what is be. It is even more healing, when that allowing listener is yourself, - when you can listen to your own experience from a place of open spaciousness, and let yourself be. All in all, life wants to be welcomed. When we say to life: “welcome” our experience may open like a flower with an infinite number of petals…Resistance may melt, inner conflict dissolves. When life is welcomed it becomes creative. It finds its own way towards healing, opening and expansion. Even if we forget it for while and get lost in resistance and inner struggle, every moment is a new chance to sense, feel and perceive. We can always come back to the present moment, and welcome ourselves as the movement that we are…. That is saying to life and to oneself: “YES. You are welcome, just as you are;) will you please be my flower? ”

Making it fun. Thats the whole reason. The reason that often is lost on the way. Why do I do what I do? Why am I writing these words? The day I feel like the work I do with coaching and facilitation looses its joy, I need to question myself: Why am I doing this if it is not fulfilling for me? Right now, writing these words, enjoying to hear my own words flow into the paper, I enjoy the kind of task I have given myself: Write 500 words, stream of consciousness style. Let the words flow. No censorship. Stop at the exact word count of 500 words. Is it to much or to little? How will I feel about it when I get there? Not even I know, because the purpose of this is in the experiment. I have promised myself that what I will be sharing in this blog will be anchored in my own practice in one way or another. In a way, thats the whole purpose for me in sharing the work on creativity and self inquiry, that it is an inside out process. Connecting with myself and sharing as to sides of the same coin... I can not really think of anything more meaningful to do than that. It is a lovely truth that even when we contribute to others we do it for ourselves. When we contributes, we do it because it gives us something back. Contributing to "the world" is contributing to myself. I also see that when I actually do something that I truly enjoy the other also enjoys it more. A very good example is in giving somebody a massage. If I am truly present in every touch with my hand meeting the other, if I enjoy the moment without trying to get somewhere or change anything, and allow myself to fully feel the enjoyment of being in the touch, the other person will receive more. Basically being connected with myself in what I do FOR ITS OWN SAKE - is fulfilling and it is serving everybody. Isn`t that just an amazing truth that should be celebrated? Isn`t that almost to good to be true? It means that what we most love actually is the greatest gift we have to offer. For somebody with a people pleaser pattern like myself, this just sounds like the best music in my ears. It means that I actually can become a a master pleaser by doing what I mostly love. If I listen to my own needs, and take myself into account, I can trust that this will benefit everybody! Actually this was the topic of a webinar I offered a few weeks ago. The title was: « People pleaser: This is how to recover» Towards the end of the webinar, we got up with a sloagan: «From people pleaser to master pleaser.» Reminding us how we can step into win win win relationships when we learn to respect ourselves and include ourselves and our own joy, while sharing with others.

“To be loved is to be recognized as existing” – Thich Nhat Hanh Do you know the experience of standing face to face with the realization of a dream and at the same time holding yourself back from that experience? It is a most painful split. You long for love, you long for freedom, you long to realize your creative potential and live life from a place of freedom, presence and respons-ability. When the concrete opportunity comes along – you can feel exactly how it would be to live those qualities to their fullness, but you hold back. It may be the moment where you are about to step into your full freedom, or in the moment where you have the possibility to fully embody the love that you are, – nothing on the outside is actually stopping you, and still you do not do it. You do not go fully for what you love. I recognize this tendency in my life. My dreams and visions may be so clear, and when the opportunity to realize comes along, they bring with them all the habits of holding back. How do we deal with it when this happens? We may easily go to war against ourselves. We start blaming our ‘bad’ sides saying I cannot fully embody my freedom because I am ‘such a coward’. Or “If I just wasn`t so ‘emotionally dependent’ or ‘shy’ or ‘fearful’ I would be able to realize my creative potential”. Now – what is the effect of believing in these blaming thoughts? We create war within ourselves, a war fought towards our most vulnerable inside. We feel stuck and our pain increases. When we try to do something about our stuckness, the inner conflict intensifies because something deep in us is resisting the expansion that we think we want, and this “something” is ignored, hated, overpowered, suppressed, intensely fought and treated as “a problem” to get rid of. In our intent to actualize our potential we may actually go to war against ourselves, because we do not accept the part of us who is in resistance. We may think that in this situation there are two options. Either we convince the one who doesn´t want, into wanting, or we give up, are overpowered by our resistance and resign to a less fulfilling life. This is the war. The case is just that if one of them wins, everybody loses. We will have to look deeper: One of these days, as the inner war is going on, there is suddenly a being approaching the battlefield. It is the friend. She looks at it without doing or saying much. Her eyes search for the eyes of the one who everybody else is trying to fight; seeking her out with warmth and curiosity, seeing through all the layers, looking deeply in beneath the armour; and she can see someone there. There is a heart beating. The friend stretches out her hand and carefully feels the breath. She sits still for a long time – just sensing. The one she has found in there is a precious being. Seen through the eyes of beauty something happens. Like a soft animal to a friendly touch, something hard starts softening, something frozen starts melting. “Is it safe? Is it safe to be? Are you not going to demand anything from me, analyze me, try to capture me and keep me a prisoner? Are you not going to tell me how I ought to be? How I ought to feel? May it be that it is actually okay to just be? To just be like I am?” As a response the friend whispers: “I am not leaving you. I am not leaving you. I am here to stay. ….Will you show me what you love? “ After a lifetime of practicing doing, it may be easy to ignore the one in us who just IS, and longs to be honoured in her beingness. We find her at the depths of our most rigid patterns and our most defensive strategies. We find her at the depths of the warrior soul, and in the core of our most controlling and suppressing structures. The presence that we are – and who’s only wish is to be recogniced as existing. As a listener in the Zen Way of Coaching, we seek to honour ourselves and others in our beingness, and value the meeting of beings here and now. I experience again and again, in myself and others that when the soul is received with friendliness and curious allowance, something in us opens, softens and unfolds. We start breathing. Opening like a soft animal to a loving touch, or like a bud receiving the nourishment of warm sunlight, we can open to receive ourselves in what we truly feel, in what we truly need, as who we really are.

“Sitting still is a way of falling in love with the world and everything in it” (in Babauta 2015: http://zenhabits.net/distraction/). The following text is the literature review of my MA research process. This is an existential phenomenological exploration, opening up to intimate experiences of the unfolding now, as experienced from within first-person perspectives, through cycles of movement and creative responses. In a modern world where a lot of value goes to quantifiable and measurable doing, this study aimed to discover, experience, and bring wonder to the mystery of human beings, and further create pathways of understanding and meaning, where being can flow, in individuals, communities and the world at large. Working on my research I wished to start the process from a place of being in touch with the real and precious nature of life. I see how the topic of connection, being central during the whole research process, arises in relation to the cultural paradigm of the west, where the value of what is, is ignored for the sake of what can be. In opposition to the eastern cultures typically portrayed as being oriented, the west is seen as having a focus towards measurable and quantifiable doing, highly valuing productivity, individuality, future oriented achievement and prestige. Growing up in modern culture, the alienation from being is internalized from early childhood. Based on an “objectifiable experience of body and mind” (Almaas 1988: 274), the child internalizes a self-representation that is cut of from, or in conflict with the inner sense of being. Seeking the acknowledgement of the parents, the inner feeling sense of right and wrong, is replaced with the value judgements of society; the child adapts to good, bad, right wrong, yes, no, reward and punishment. Founder of Humanistic Psychology Carl Rogers, speaks about the learning process of children emerging from infancy: “…to buy love, we relinquish the valuing process. Because the centre of our lives now lies in others, we are fearful and insecure, and must cling rigidly to the values we have introjected” (Rogers 1961:256). Somatic practitioner and writer Andrea Olsen reflects on effects of adapting to ideals and behaviours of society: “Adapting to outer images…makes a division between our inner impulses and our outer manifestation” (Olsen 1998: 12). This division is carried under the skin, and what is not accepted as part of a self image is devised to live in the shadow. Linda Hartley confirms: “Past experiences that we have been unable to integrate, or which have been forgotten or repressed, are stored in the body tissues and fluids as bound energy; they are also stored in the unconscious psyche as images” (2004: 55). Psychotherapist and somatic practitioner Linda Hartley, sees processes of psyche, soma, and spirit as deeply intertwined. She (2004) explores an holistic approach to body psychotherapy and transpersonal psychology, and states: “We are both individual and unique human beings of physical matter and form, and also beings of conscious spirit connected in mysterious ways to the whole of existence” (2004: 19). Hartley refer to the work of Jung and Reich as similar attempts “to free individuals from the bonds and constraints of the collective norm, and to help them realize their potential for a creative and uniquely fulfilling life” (2004:21). Wilhelm Reich, psychoanalyst and major contributor to the development of Somatics, viewed all psychic and physical energy as expressions of life force. He understood disconnection from being as a result of holding back life energy (1949). Building on the work of Reich, Bioenergy Practitioners hold the view that body armouring are fixed behaviour patterns, “structured in the body as chronic and generally unconscious muscular tension” (Lowen 1976a: 136). According to Lowen, holding-patterns are accompanied by mental attitudes, rejections and projections that we on a subconscious level identifies with. These are connected to strategies for seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, keeping a person away from an immediate feeling sensation of the present moment (ibid). As Brennan confirms: “We stop feeling by blocking our energy flow” (Brennan 1988: 99). In order to see how disconnection is maintained, one can look to the mental attitude and the bodily tensions as two sides of the same coin. They maintain each other in a loop where mental and emotional images sustain a body posture, and a body posture sustains a mental and emotional attitude, keeping a person from being. This can only happen as long as he/she identifies with the attitudes and bodily sensations, which involves our subconscious participation through our imagination. Bringing awareness to the present moment body, though sensing, touch and movement, held in an allowing embrace, we can release our life energy from identification with habitual patterns and reconnect with ourselves in our becoming. “The defence does not define a person, the core does… whose soul has an inborn brilliance and beauty…” (Pierrakos 1990: 93). The soul Another clarification of the disconnection from being can be found by looking to Jung, founder of analytic psychology. He was concerned with the disconnection from the subconscious, which he, according to Hartley regarded as a source of wisdom, potential and healing. She describes: “Jung’s primary contribution was the search to heal the split in the psyche of modern man and woman that alienates us from the deeper roots in our soul, in the archetypal realms, in the spiritual dimensions of being and in our connectedness to the whole of life” (Hartley 2004: 23). Jung’s understanding of the collective conscious, is underpinning the validity of embodied imagination though movement. According to Jung “psyche is the living body and the living body is animated matter” (Jung 1967: 76). The individual psyche has its true basis in the collective subconscious “the realm of the archetypes and our ancestral heritage, which is shared by all beings, human or animal” (Hartley 2004: 23). Accessing the subconscious through imagination can be seen as a way to support integration of a fuller sense of self. For Jung the collective subconscious came more and more together with his experience of nature. As the sensuous body is nature, through sensing and movement it reveals itself as a major gateway to the silent hidden wisdom of biology. He said: “Nature is not only matter she is also spirit”(1967: 229). “If one touches the earth one cannot avoid the spirit” (1976: 5). In this sense, the body as nature may also be seen as a gateway to spirit. James Hillman, taking the work of Jung further, talks about “the sensate presence of the world as body.” He says: "Let us imagine the anima mundi (the world soul) as that particular soul spark, that seminal image, which offers itself through each thing in its visible form" (Hillman 1997: 101). Hillman’s encouragement to imagine soul might come from a similar recognition of what LaMothe clearly is pointing to, that we co-create the world we experience through embodied imagination: “What we create in and through the movement of our sensory self is reality itself – the reality that is real for us” (2015: 33). Fluidity and Fixity Within a movement paradigm the self can be seen as a “dynamic open-ended process of bodily becoming” (LaMothe 2015: 212). McNiff is imagining soul “as kinesis, process, creation, interplay, and continuous motion” (1992: 54), and Thomas Hanna reflects that soma is “a process of unified movement” (Hanna 1991: 5). Understanding thoughts as patterncreating movement, rigidity, stuckness, static stillness can be seen as an effect of human beings imagining themselves as separate isolated entities, while in our biology we are processes of life deeply connected to everything. Stuckness arise as the patterns that form, bloc the perception of the interconnectedness that shapes us. The idea of doing vs. being can be seen as co-arising with the idea of the human being as a separate isolated entity. Emilie Conrad, somatic pioneer and founder of Continuum, talks about how all life in the universe is ultimately one fluid movement, connected through the principle of resonance: “All fluids, whether in the cell, the body or the planet, function as a resonant intelligent whole and can never be separated” (http://www.continuummovement.com/ov-fluid.php). Physicist David Bohm known for his holistic view on the world as an undivided whole in a state of becoming sees human crisis as arising out of a lack of this recognition (Bohm: 1980). As Mary Starks Whitehouse, the founder of Authentic Movement said: “There is that in us which has moved from the very beginning. It is that which can liberate us” (1963: 53). We are patterns of nature Somatic practice and research can be seen as reawakening and bringing back to life the basic experience, that we may have lost contact with as we move in the world identified with our cultural upbringing. Through dance and movement we experientially get to know the pattern of energy in the natural world. As Romanyshyn said: “In some unobservable way, consciousness and nature are one. The being of nature is also a way of knowing it” (2007: 35). Similarly Cohen poetically verbalizes how the body may support deeper self-knowledge: “There is something in the nature forming patterns. We, as part of nature are also forming patterns. The mind is like the wind and the body is like the sand. If you want to know how the wind is blowing you can look at the sand” (Cohen 1993: 1). Participating in a living field of presence “There is an ancient longing wired in us as infants to be seen, to be felt, and to have our surging, somatic-emotional world validated by another. When our subjective experience is empathically held, contained, and allowed, we come to a natural place of rest. What is love, really, other than fully allowing the other to be who they are, for their experience to be what it is, and to offer the gift of presence to their unique subjectivity? In this sense, I love you = I allow you” (Licata: Available from http://www.mattlicataphd.com/blog/the-mystery-ofholding). The text above is Licata`s words to enliven the felt sense of a holding environment as described by psychiatrist Winnicott (1991). The words reflect the sacred quality of a meeting that happens in a space of trust and allowance,- intimate with experience, and still centered in spacious and grounded presence. Winnicott confirms: “It can be looked upon as sacred to the individual, in that it is here that the individual experiences creative living (1991 vol. 13: 39). This kind of presence is a fundamental ground in most kinds of somatic co-creation work. For movement to release, re-pattern, unfold and bloom, life needs to feel welcome. “Through her attentive and embodied presence, the witness holds a safe space, a sacred circle, within which the mover can enter deeply into her world” (Hartley in Williamson et al. eds. 2014: 25). Somatic dance and movement happens in a living realm, opening up to the felt experience of what is. Seeing and being seen, curiosity towards the unknown, and dialoguing in a verbal or kinaesthetic way with experience, opens the pathways to giving and receiving, unfoldment and life enhancing transformation; thus participation in a living field of presence. “Dialogue is something much more profound than mere verbal exchange. Its characteristic is meeting and honouring the otherness of the other – a sacred other – which allows a mutual alchemy to take place.“ In Bubers view “fully inhabiting the human realm… is to live in dialogue” (Welwood 2000: 7). The unknown Tina Stromsted reflects that Authentic Movement is a powerful vehicle to awaken the whole body wisdom and “live a life that is richly informed by it” (2001: 41).To live in deep dialogue with oneself, others and life, requires a befriending of the known and the unknown. The characteristics of Authentic Movement such as meeting, openness, connection and unfoldment anchored in bodily presence can be seen as a way of living from the intimate unknown, thus from a deep sense of connection. Most somatic practices build on a trust that life if undisturbed naturally moves towards healing, opening and expansion. “The body-mind will usually, if allowed, choose the most natural, healthful, and efficient patterns available to further the tendency toward wholeness” (Hartley 1989: 99). Jung called the search for wholeness within the human psyche, “the process of individuation;” to become what you always were. This can be understood as the process of embodying being, and the qualities of being such as: love, spaciousness, allowance, joy, creativity, etc. that characterizes a holding space of awareness. It is a life long process of participation in life, going hand in hand with reclaiming oneself from conditioning and integrating doing with being. “If the soul is operating from her own inherent capacities... unfoldment will happen on its own. There is a force within our soul that is intelligent, responsive, and aware” (Almaas 2002: 204). Jung further claimed that the way to participate responsibly as a conscious member of the collective is through rediscovery of soul (Hartley, 2004: 23). According to Jung our evolutionary task now is “to bring the gifts of individuation into conscious membership in the whole, to find a way to be uniquely ourselves inside a sacred conscious circle” (Hartley 2004: 23).

“ Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person, it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole” - Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving, p. 55 #love #quote #relationship

"To be oneself is to question, to ask, "What is this is about? I don't want to listen to other people's explanations and stories, I want to know myself. I want to satisfy myself by my own experience, by my own investigation. It doesn't matter what authorities or teachers say if it doesn't make any sense in my own experience". The more you question and think for yourself, the more you become yourself. To be oneself means not to be conditioned by others, by the external, not to be an extension of the past, yours or anyone else's past. To be oneself means to be an original." (A.H Almaas, Diamond Heart Book 2, pg 199) #EmbodiedInquiry #BeingOneself

"The act of awakening and enlivening the consciousness of our whole being, in all the cells of our body” (Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen) I resonate with Debenhams understanding of embodiment as a “kinetic process”, “the ability to somatically read what we are experiencing and to make it concrete and perceptible in an ongoing way.” Debenham (in Williamson, et al. eds. 2015: 314) consider embodiment an “ever-evolving process of be-coming,” where we begin to “understand the subtle underlying physical, psychological, emotional and intellectual currents that are operating in our life, and incorporate and personify principles, concepts and values that resonates with us” (Ibid: 290). Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen describes the process of embodiment as “the act of awakening and enlivening the consciousness of our whole being, in all the cells of our body” (Schwartz, ibid: 314). (From unpublished essay, Hanne Pedersen: 2015) #presence #unfoldment

THE CHANGE I WANT TO SEE IN THE WORLD ‘Listen to what you have got in there…’ He is pointing to my heart. I look at this boy that is standing in front of me. Time has stopped, I am home. In this everlasting meeting with myself I am the deep knowing that I have carried with me for as long as I can remember. I am the secret waiting to take me out of the pretending of the world, into the fuller sense of self. I am this, which can show me from within how to engage in life - not as a persona of the world but as the living presence. In my chest I feel a hurt, a dark painful hole. I also feel something else, something that has endured, that has always been there, seemingly from before the beginning of time; the silent loving presence that could never be harmed, distorted or diluted. Always untouched, always silently, peacefully, lovingly here. I hold my hands to my heart. ‘I am so happy,’ I say. (Copenhagen, March 2005) It is with wonder and humbleness I refer to this experience as an entrance to this essay. The same kind of humbleness I find in my relating to the open room in wich I dance the somatic practices. For me this work is happening on sacred ground: The ground of here and now, which is also the ground of our human being, - undivided, wise and graciously unfolding. My work is first of all anchored in a deep calling from within, towards a life in service of truth and manifestation of love. In this essay I will reflect upon my journey within the somatics, and the key principals that have inspired it. I will describe how the somatic practice has arisen out of practical exploration within the context of the theatre, driven by deep existential questions conserning the ground of being, and how the notions of ‘emptiness’, ‘inner authority’ and ‘inquiry’ has formed as important elements of this practice. Towards the end I will describe the principles and practices of Zen Coaching, as part of my own practice and deeply ressonating with my somatic work. I will look at my how my own contribution, being part of what Marta Eddy called ‘the field of wild flowers’, can contribute to the shift in the individual and the collective towards living from being rather than from the conditioned mind. My reflections will be underpinned by perspectives from Zen Buddhist teacher Tich Nhat Than, A.H Almaas, Linda Hartley and David Bohm. Theatre as an entrance to somatics and self knowledge ‘Intimacy with the creative act of becoming’ - My journey of somatic practice started during my 3 years in the theatre school where I got to know myself through intensive physical training, improvisation, voice work, modern dance, butoh, and an extentive amount of group improvisation work. Our physical work was on breathing, grounding, centering, stretching and alignment, building of spacial awareness inside and outside the body, kinestetich sensitivity, co-ordination, strength, endurance, release and relaxation, imagination, expression, and much more. The main intention in this physical work was to gain body awareness, strength and flexibility, for the sake of becoming a performer able to create my own work and use the body as the instrument of expression. However for me the focus on creativity and performance actually woke me up to the deep ground of creative emptiness as the fundation of being and the space from which all actions truly happens – not only on stage but in life as a whole. Jerzy Grotowsky, polish theatre director and innovator of experimental theatre, is beautifully describing theatre as way to experiential selfknowledge in this quote: “Why do we sacrifice so much energy to our art? Not in order to teach others but to learn with them what our existence, our organism, our personal and repeatable experience have to give us; to learn to break down the barriers which surround us and to free ourselves from the breaks which hold us back, from the lies about ourselves which we manufacture daily for ourselves and for others; to destroy the limitations caused by our ignorance or lack of courage.. ...art is a ripening, an evolution, an uplifting which enables us to emerge from darkness into a blaze of light.” (Grotowsky and Barba, 1968: 255) Grotowsky describes the existential search from which I also see that my interest in performance and later somatics arose. The creative act is also an act of honest perceiving, listening, questioning and discovering, and in that sense the somatic exploration can be experienced as an inherent part of creativity. Dance and movement came to show itself as a way of being intimate with the mysteries of life, getting to know oneself, the other, the world and the divine. Being danced by a flower Starting out on my actortraining I was the fixed habitual identity, wanting to contribute to the world by creating art. I came to see that engaging in creative work, is engaging a deeper sense of self, an intelligent force that expresses itself through me and also changes the ‘I’ that I am. Seeing that in its deepest sense creativity arises from the ground of here and now and is not separate from me. What particularly invited these insights was the extented amount of work with butoh and bodyweahter, brought to me mainly by Stuart Lunch, Akemi Takeya, Su-en, and Mari Mägi, wonderfull dancers teaching from their own practices in the crossfield between western contemporary dance and eastern movement. The following quote from the bodyweather site amsterdam describes the view on the body that was transmitted to me through these years of training: ‘Bodies are not conceived as fixed and separate entities but are - just like the weather - constantly changing through an infinite and complex system of processes occurring in- and outside of these bodies.” (http://bodyweatheramsterdam.blogspot.nl/) This understanding goes well together with the understanding of emptiness as taught within eastern wisdom traditions such as Zen and taoism. I love this quote from Zen master Tich Nhat Than on the notions of form and emptiness, and the underlying understanding of interconnectedness: “Form is empty of a separate self, but it is full of everything else in the cosmos. The same is true with feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness.” (Nhat Hanh, 1988: 7) I remember my teacher Su-en holding a towel and moving it up and down towards the floor: “ You need to be as this towel” she said, “it is empty of a willed structure, thus it folds and curves freely from the meeting with the floor, and is capable of taking on any form.” I was deeply inspired by the approach of making oneself empty and available for expression, rather than willfully imitiating and acting out of mental images. For instance, in this sense, in expressing a flower, you do not dance the flower– you make yourself empty so that the flower can dance through you. This work deeply seeded my explorations into emptiness. What patterns of movement and thought have been formed in me through my conditioning that are defining my sense of self and my ability to act freely? What is true and what is false in my experience of gravity, balance, time, inner alignment, and so on? Who am I if I let my identity as tension start to relax, and allow new possibilities of perceiving and movement to arise in its own timing in my location? If I follow this exploration to its end – what will be left of me? A living breathing presence in the creative emptiness Staying with these questions in the creative work through the body, initiated the inner movement of disolving an identity as tension into spaciousness. I mean spaciousness as an openness and curiosity towards life – allowing habitual patterns to soften, inner capacities to surface and qualities of being to arise from within. From identifying with the habitual body and its mindset, an unfoldment happened revealing layers of unconsious embodied habbits, selfimages, suppressed feelings and hidden belief systems. As a molded piece of clay relaxing, I let go of identifications and started to find home into shapeless, formless and empty nature leaving behind conditioned patterns. I began to realize ( thus embody) myself as a soma – a living, moving and relating presence truly intimate with the creative act of becoming. My creative work became a somatic openended discovery process, arising from the creative emptiness and streching into all areas of life. I was inspired to live life as artfull meditation in alignment with my deeper lifepurpose, and contribute to others in living from their inner truth as well. The practice that arose in me, could be described as a practice of leaning into experience, inquiring into what it is to lead a life that has ‘true ground’, meaning a ground in something more real than a mental construction. It started a (neverending) process of disolving of identity as a separate self, and continous awakening to myself and the world as a living breathing expression of the creative emptiness. I have later come to understand this as the practice of inquiry which is central to the work of the Diamond Approach. Almaas talks about how the state of open curiosity and wonder, the spirit of inquiry, can be a transforming agent in our life: “Inquiry is a process of nuzzling into God’s bosom, delving into the secrets of existence. Ego encrustations begin to break up when we start to see images as images, structures as structures, patterns as patterns, and projections as projections. All of these are created and held together by our beliefs that they are reality. The more you see them as they truly are, the less you believe in them and the more they start to break up and dissolve.” (Almaas, 2002: 280) I also love this quote by Almaas refering to emptiness as the unchanging ground within all form: “(The soul) She can trust emptiness, for it is the ultimate unchanging ground that is certain to be found at the depth of everything…The unfindability of their ultimate existence is their ground.” (Almaas, 2004: 430) So..if this I is not a separate entitiy but a movement arising from a deep source in the present moment, how do I embody this raising awareness in my way of living, in my way of relating to myself, the other, the world, art and sience? How does it look for each and everyone of us from moment to moment, to live from a place of deep freedom and connectedness with a greater sense of self? An important notion here is that I am continously re-discovering that what arises as response to this curiosity is ‘lived meaning.” Answers arise as lived experience in the moment, not to be heldt on to or given to much significance, more as transforming agents revealing themselves through somatic movement, meditation, creative expression or verbal inquiry, opening up life into new possibilites. Inner authority and unfoldment in the field of wild flowers In the theatrical part of my journey I did not know about somatic movement practices, though in retrospect I see I was deeply immersed in this work. I see the value of having been introduced to the inner listening through a creative context, without any theoretical knowledge of somatic movement work. Not having my experience filtered to much through the mind of somebody else, gave me the chance to form my practice first of all from inner authority and personal experience. This is also an essential part of what I like to offer to others: A space to cultivate trust in ones own experience, and ones own personal ‘wayless way’. I like to offer an open space for people to discover for themselves what they need to discover in the present moment, grounded in conscious embodied experience and guided by inner curiosity and necessity. Somatic approaches have all arisen out of the ground of here and now, from practicioners listening to their inner authority and the intelligence of being. Marta Eddie reflecting on how the somatics became a field, points to the fact that “this field arises from personal experiences combined with a love for movement and a curiosity about the physical body.” (Eddie, 2009) I see that I have in common with a lot of the early pioneers of somatic practices, such as Elsa Gintler and F.M Alexander, both the trust in inner authority and the experience of bodyintelligence showing way towards healing, opening and selfknowledge. “Ultimately, the only thing that will free us is our own experience, our own perception, our own understanding. We have to be converted by our own experience. We have to attain our own certainty” (Almaas, 2011: 77) LIVING AND EXPERIENCING FROM THE SPACE OF NOT KNOWING Zen Coaching is an approach to coaching and life developed by norwegian Kåre Landfald with inspiration from many sources such as Mindfullness as thought by Tich Nhat Than, Diamond Approach (A.H. Almaas), and NVC (Marshall Rosenberg). Philosofical writings of Martin Buber and Martin Heidegger were also among the early inspirationsources for the development of this approach. The meeting with Kåre Landfald and my work with Zen Coaching has given me a deeper understanding of the fundament of my movement practice, supported my capacity to articulate the basis from which I invite the somatic work, and developed my capacity to be open and lovingly available to the present moment of another person. It has also given the concrete and practical context for my practice to grow in its relational nature. As the key principles of Zen Coaching also seems to be the core principles that inspire my somatic work. I will shortly go through some of them here: Listening from open spaciousness is the practice of resting as awareness and supporting a clear seeing of what is happening in the moment. This is being present in the spirit of silent openended inquiry. Allowing as practiced through Zen Coaching is the practice of non-doing, non-interfering. Simply letting be and fully experiencing the experience of the moment as it is right now. If there is resistance, instead of trying to feel peaceful and allowing, the key is to allow and fully feel the resistance as it appears in the body in the present moment. Helping through non helping. This practice rests in two insight: 1) The experience that it is our presence, more than our doing, analyzing, suggesting, advicing, that is of support for our clients. 2) That the movement of life, if undisturbed, is naturally moving towards healing, opening and expansion. Thus as a helper in this way, we want to support our client to stay open to the natural unfoldment, and experience the shifts that happens as the intelligence of being moves from within. Empatic connection is the capacity to connect with the good intention/beautiful longing hidden behind every thought, feeling, longing, need and action(impulse) and being able to atune to and ressonate with the felt experience in the moment. Action from being. Relaxing into open spaciousness we allow supportive action to spontantiously arise from within. Thus all tools, questions, and other impulses that serve life can be acted out from a space of non doing. To act from the above principles in the meeting with life both privately and profesionaly, I find being a simple but profoundly lifeenhancing choice, the choice of offering our presence as open conciousness, thus actually to be beyond form in the realin if firm. As Kåre stated in a live webinar nov 2013 this is a choice we can take from moment to moment: Instead of allowing your mind to rule your life, choose something different, but you have to choose it 1000 times” The undivided universe “As thin as this paper is, it contains everything in the universe in it” (Nhat Than, 1988:4) In this essay I have been reflecting upon my journey so far within the somatics, and I have been presenting the key principals guiding my approach in this work. Among them creativity, emptiness, inner authority, not knowing and nondoing. Central to what is the question of what it is to live and act from a place of being, rather than from the conditioned mind, and my interest in how somatic work can support this shift within the individual and also as a collective. “The body and its movements provide a physical basis for consicousness and are the medium through which this can be expressed in human activity.” (Hartley, 1989:25) Through the somatic work we discover universal truths about human consciousness through the immersion into subjective experience, and at the same time, these movements in the inner landscapes of our bodies and beyond creates new possibilities for human interaction: We are the evolution of consciosness as new options of listening, allowing, unfolding, relating and manifesting arises in our locations and starts communicating with the world. When we listen deeply to ourselves and our bodies we are actually listening to the undivided ground of being. I think we are many within the field of somatic that can see in our work a potential for humaity as a whole – the potential of living and acting from that space of inner trust, allowing the unfolding of the wisdom of being to act through our human form Thought is emerging from the tacit ground, and any fundamental change in thought will come from the tacit ground. So if we are communicating at the tacit level than maybe thought is changing.’ (Bohm, 1996:14) Movement is tacit, prereflective and intimate with the creative act of becoming, It contains potential within all areas of life, as we start moving from the understanidng of th undivided universe we can taking art, sience, meditation, selfcare, co-creation and manifestation to a whole new level. As the wisdom of being arises in ones conscousness it is not only to enjoy for our own sake, it is our responsibility to find a way to embodi it and be the change we want to see in the world. References: Grotowsky, J. and Barba, E. (1968) Towards a Poor Theatre, 1st edition, USA, Routledge, p 255 Van de Ven, Frank. (2013) Bodyweather Amsterdam, workshop description statement, available: http://bodyweatheramsterdam.blogspot.nl/ Nhat Than,Tich. (1988) The Heart of Understanding – Commentaries on the Praiñaparamita Heart Sutra, Canada:Parallax Press, p.7 A-Hameed Ali. Almaas (2002) Spacecruiser Inquiry, USA, Shambala Publications Inc, p.280 A-Hameed Ali. Almaas (2004) Inner Journey Home, USA, Shambala Publications Inc, p. 430 Eddie, Martha. (2009) A brief history of somatic practices and dance: historical development of the field of somatic education and its relationship to dance1, Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices, Vol. 1, Number 1 A-Hameed Ali. Almaas (2011) Diamond Heart book V - Inexhaustible Mystery, 1st edition, Shambala Publications Inc, p. 77 Nhat Than,Tich. (1988) The Heart of Understanding – Commentaries on the Praiñaparamita Heart Sutra, Canada:Parallax Press, p 4 Hartley Linda. (1989) The wisdom of the body moving: An Introduction to Body-Mind Centering, Berkley, California, p 25 Bohm, David. (1996) On dialogue, USA, Routledge, p. 14 ----- Information about Zen Coaching available at www. zen-coaching.com #lifeiscreativity #unfoldment #presence #embodiment #inquiry #theatre #selfknowledge #formandemptiness #creativeemptiness #somaticapproaches #notknowing #zencoaching #responsibility #bethechange

" To see the world in a grain of sand and the heaven in a wild flower. Hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour." William Blake Hva er fusjonen av lyttende, spørrende og skapende virksomhet? Det rommet hvor å lytte blir å spørre og å spørre blir å skape... Det rommet hvor vi er medskapere som beveger verden gjennom vårt blikk på den, og åpner opp for å gjøre helt nye oppdagelser av hvem vi er og hva som er mulig. Nærvær er i sin essens kreativt: Nærvær åpner opp det jeg tar for gitt og tror at jeg vet, som begrenser min opplevelse og forståelse av livet akkurat nå, og åpner gleden ved å se dypt inn i fenomener i verden. Gleden som kommer med innsikten når jeg kjenner hvordan det jeg ser/ oppdager forandrer og beveger meg, og forankrer meg i en magisk, forunderlig og kjærlighetsfull verden bakenfor alle mine vante beskrivelser av den. Nærvær handler om trene evnen til å stå stødig i uvisshet, tillate verden å være i konstant flux, og ta våkent del i livets oppdagelse og skapelse av seg selv. Vi er forskere i et tomt rom og vi spør oss selv: Hva åpner jeg opp til å se, transformere og skape på nytt, dersom jeg møter verden med friske øyne? Kreativ somatisk utforskning En måte jeg nyter å oppleve øyeblikket, er gjennom kreativ somatisk utforskning. Dette arbeidet inspireres av skuespillerens og danserens research for å skape scenisk materiale. I bunnen ligger en dyp lytting og en meditativ årvåkenhet overfor opplevelsen her og nå. Gjennom leken utforskning med bevegelse og improvisasjon kan vi komme i kontakt med nye dimensjoner, og utvider og romliggjør våre begreper gjennom å ta fullstendig kroppslig eierskap over betydningen, innholdet og meningen i dem slik den viser seg for oss i øyeblikket. Gjennom kreativ bevegelse finner vi oss selv på en reise hvor vi gjenkjenner oss selv som nærvær og er åpen for å se på nytt - se forbi antakelser, inngrodde kollektive idèer og vanemessig handling, slik at vi kan oppleve oss selv og vår plass i helheten og skape i tråd med en dypere intim forståelse av hvem vi er og hva som er mulig. Det handler ikke så mye om å erstatte en idé med en annen som om å stå i åpenheten, i rommet bak alle idèer og oppleve seg selv og verden frisk hvert øyeblikk. Utforskningen starter der hvor vi har lyst at den skal starte, enten ved de spørsmålene som er levende i våre liv akkurat nå, eller i en utforskning av konkrete konsepter. Det kan også starte i fra kroppen, hva finnes, hva beveger seg, hvor beveges jeg? Hva bor i spenninger, blokkeringer, ømhet eller stivhet? Hva skapes igjennom meg nå? Gjennom lekende, undrende, kreativ forskning kan vi søke innsikt i hvordan vi kan leve sammen på jorden, dersom vi sier ja til all vår kraft, gjenkjenner oss selv og hverandre i vårt fulle potensiale og er villig til å skape noe som er større enn oss selv som enkeltindivider. Hvordan lever vi som 'menneskehet' når vi tillater oss å være alt det vi er - guddommelighet, dyrisk instinktuell intelligens og naturlige medfølelse? Å bidra til verden begynner med en selv, og hvem vet hvordan og hvor mye du faktisk bidrar når du forløser knutene i ditt eget liv... "To be oneself is to question, to ask, "What is this is about? I don't want to listen to other people's explanations and stories, I want to know myself. I want to satisfy myself by my own experience, by my own investigation. It doesn't matter what authorities or teachers say if it doesn't make any sense in my own experience". The more you question and think for yourself, the more you become yourself. To be oneself means not to be conditioned by others, by the external, not to be an extension of the past, yours or anyone else's past. To be oneself means to be an original." (A.H Almaas, Diamond Heart Book 2, pg 199) Vi avlærer, smelter og oppmyker rigide strukturer og idèer. Vi forstår intuitivt hva som skjer, kommer i kontakt med nye kvaliteter, aspekter av oss selv som vi kanskje har lengtet etter å gjenkjenne uten å helt forstå det. Vi er selve denne bevegelse i retning klarhet og integrering og vi lærer oss selv hvordan vi kan agere i verden, leve og uttrykke vår sanne natur. 'Når du vet hvilket spørsmål du stiller deg selv kan du begynne å forske. Nåets utfoldelse gir innsikter og innsikter transformerer. Du er ikke den samme i to ulike øyeblikk. Du er øyeblikket, dette øyeblikket uløselig knyttet til her og nå, større enn kroppen, større enn personligheten, levende og sansende, - selve livet! Alltid. Behøver ikke gjøre noe for å være det, behøver ikke gjøre noe for å oppdage det, bare tillate deg å hvile der...' #embodiment #inquiry #somatics #tilstedeværelse #nysgjerrighet #kreativitet #dans #bevegelse #meditasjon #nåetsutfoldelse

I am on the floor, moving, sensing into breath. I sense myself in relationship to the room I am in. The room feels like a big loving container, I have a lot of space around me, and sense the breath moving, stretching, widening. There is a sense of slowly landing the creative mind in this sensations on the body in connection to ground, allowing myself to be in the middle of my experience, surrounded by the loving embrace of this space. ...It is a sense of being the bud in a flower, the exact point of existence where unfoldment is happening. And there is a deep sense that this unfoldment is supported by the holding space of the house. The house again is supported by the holding space of earth... The earth again is supported by the holding space of cosmos...Infinitly big, and infinitely loving. I imagine the moment as a bud in a flower in a flower in a flower, the wholeness of one movement happening simultaneously in a countless number of places, and simultaneously outside time and space...All of existence is one wholeness of movement, the unfoldment of time and place, as it happens right here in my embodied experience. As I move, I see the face of a little asian girl before my inner eye. She as I, we are meant to open. Buds are buds in order to be touched by air and open into flowers. In the bud is the memory of compost. The memory of mud and water, the memory of how we belong to everything. I move to touch this reality. Sensing the body and giving space to the movement that is already happening, I can recognize myself as the movement of wholeness within my own embodied being. I allow myself to feel the wholeness of existence, as it is present right here under my skin, in my breath. In the multitude of relationships happening right now, can I sense where I touch reality ? Embodied movement practices allows us to move where the personal reality touches this mysterious vastness of the moment... in the continuous becoming of embodied presence. #somatics #creativity #presence #unfoldment #fluidnature #lifeiscreativity #lifeismovement