Offering from the Conscious Body

The Discipline of Authentic Movement

Janet Adler

• Publisher: Inner Traditions
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781594776236
• Topic: Biowissenschaften
• Subtopic: Sport- & Bewegungswissenschaft

The exploration of the direct experience of healing and of the divine through the witnessing of movement becoming conscious. • Uses sample sessions and descriptive theory to explain the discipline. • Based on the author's 35 years of movement work. Offering from the Conscious Body reveals both the theory and practice of a unique body-based process that is cathartic, creative, healing, and mystical--as presented by Janet Adler, the presiding voice in the field. This Western awareness practice encourages the individual to experience the evolving relationship with oneself, another, the collective, and the divine through the natural impulses of conscious movement, compassionate witnessing, and clear articulation of experience. Through the vivid examples taken from her own practice, Adler demonstrates that physical movement can invite direct experience of spiritual truths. The reader is led through the multiple layers within the discipline--moving and witnessing in dyads and then groups, in the presence of a witnessing teacher--to develop a comprehensive and experiential understanding of this innovative way of work. Designed for professionals and laypersons interested in psychology, bodywork, mystic traditions, or personal transformation, the discipline of Authentic Movement is at the cutting edge of emerging Western healing practices.

The Conscious Body

Offering

Tzu-kung asked,“What do you think of me?”

The Master said,“You are a vessel.”

“What kind of vessel?”

“A sacrificial vessel.”

CONFUCIUS

Emerging Forms

True perfection seems imperfect,
yet it is perfectly itself.
True fullness seems empty,
yet it is fully present.

True straightness seems crooked.
True wisdom seems foolish.
True art seems artless.

The Master allows things to happen.
She shapes events as they come.
She steps out of the way
and lets the Tao speak for itself.

TAO TE CHING

Maturity in the practice of the discipline of Authentic Movement becomes manifest in the phenomenon of presence. It is not necessarily true that we are more present now as we step into the privilege of offering from the conscious body, but our ability to notice when we are present and when we are not has become heightened. When we are present, more than the details of personal history, engraved into the body matter, are evident. Though the details never really change, because of an evolving practice toward growing consciousness, our relationship to them can change. This changing relationship occurs because of experience of being seen, seeing, belonging, of touching and being touched by others. A felt distinction between personality and presence becomes apparent as giving and receiving require less and less of the self. Presence allows offerings to emerge from the body as vessel. Within the open space of a witness circle, the discipline itself grounds the arrival of such offerings.

As individuals cultivate an inner witness with developing clarity and compassion I see them arriving, one by one, into a clearing, an open space. Here encountering another awakens a desire to make an offering and awakens a desire for the presence of another to receive it. Perhaps people have been seen enough by others. Perhaps they know that they belong enough. And when challenged by fear or awe, perhaps they remember the ineffable bright energy within and around themselves. As they acknowledge each other here, their movement and their words become offerings. Their presence becomes an offering. In this clearing, as longing pours into the practice of concentration, an experience of devotion becomes known.

Participants arrive and leave this clearing in silence, gathering in the studio for many full days, only talking together when engaged in the speaking and listening aspect of the practice or in evening seminars. They lodge and eat nearby, also in silence. This social silence frees people to stay focused inwardly, to release themselves from what is habitually understood as a social responsibility. In the absence of social discourse empty space exists between people—at meals, on the path to and from the studio, waiting on the lawn just beyond the wisteria. Witnessing one’s relationship to such empty spaces, noticing the desire to rush in and fill them with words or noticing one’s relief born of permission not to socially engage, helps bring more clarity into the experience of relationship. At this time in the work some individuals begin to crave not only silence but solitude, and create personal retreats in response to changes in their inner lives.

In conversations with me as the teacher, each person who is considering committing to the offering practice chooses one or more ways in which her unique gifts can be developed, guided by her individual aptitude and nature. Those eager to continue working with the relationship between body and word commit to a study and practice of the discipline of Authentic Movement and embodied text. Those wishing to bring their study and practice more fully toward the transformation of the gesture itself commit to the discipline of Authentic Movement and dance. Because the discipline is centrally concerned with a developing articulation of body and word, it is natural to witness offering circles filled with dance and poetry or prose. However, painting, drawing, sculpture, music, theater, and film sourced in authentic movement are also all potential realms of rich artistic exploration. And some individuals who are increasingly embodying in their practice an energy that is transpersonal in nature deepen their commitment to the discipliine of Authentic Movement, choosing this form to support their developing relationship to energetic phenomena. As such energy moves through the body it becomes an offering that can be witnessed and received.

Coming toward immersion in embodied text, dance, and energetic phenomena—and some choose all three—people are trusting their intention to be present, trusting that they can remember afterward what was happening when they moved, when they witnessed. Tracking becomes an automatic aspect of experience.“Where am I?” is less frequently the question.“Here I am” is more often known. Because the inner witness can stay present more consistently, people can surrender toward a deepening and widening of experience until new content, fear, or awe appear. Then it is essential to return again to the fundamental tracking.

It is here in the work with the conscious body that the study of intuitive knowing becomes more active. With full and continuing awareness of the possibility that what is thought to be intuitive knowing can in fact be projection, there is now more space for exploration of the phenomenon itself. Though always opening to the possibility of unresolved inner material interfering with clear seeing, at times in the long circles now people choose to shift their intention toward witnessing from a place of intuitive knowing.

Because of the mover’s strengthening inner witness, developing directly in service of her own growth, it is less necessary for the outer witness to be in the service of the mover. Now the witness chooses to make offerings whether a mover whose work might be involved has spoken or not. It is no longer necessary to agree in the beginning on a certain number of designated witnesses in the long circle. In all aspects of the practice of offering from the conscious body, the mover and the witness increasingly manifest as the same within the circle.

The circle, one of the first forms known by men and women, is a shape within cultures that continues to hold the life of spirit. One can imagine movers and witnesses in original circles in which healing occurred as offerings to the gods were made. In the presence of a circle, poetry was sung, the full body was danced, other dimensions of awareness were entered. The spirit of the great and creative force was evident then and continues to be evident now within different mystical traditions in which prayers are embodied and spun into the numinous, emptying the self of that which is ready to be released, to be offered.

In the discipline of Authentic Movement, practice toward presence develops into moments when the body as vessel is experienced as empty. A longing to offer emerges from such emptiness. It is here that the form itself becomes transparent. Out of silence comes a word. Out of stillness comes a gesture. Out of presence comes a direct experience of energy. In the dyadic and collective body work, a prayer might be:“In your presence may I be able to embody my truth, speak my truth.” Now, as offerings are made from an emptiness, from a place of experiencing the Divine in life in all worlds, a prayer might be: “In Your presence may light fill my truth in word, in gesture.”

Embodied Text

The primary text of a mystic . . . i...