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Somatic Therapy looks at life in its fullness: body, mind, emotions, culture, nature and spirit. It reclaims the individual body the personal spirit and the transpersonal soul, holding that wholeness is what heals. We must tend our flesh just as we tend our thoughts. In order to heal ourselves, we must care for our relationships, the earth, and for all living things--knowing there is no separation. God is everywhere.

LifeMovesThrough is the idea that, if we bring our cells to the to the present, we become clear channels that life and love move through in radiant flow. It is learning to dance compassionately with challenges that arise, and opening the heart wide enough to hold everything.

This blog contains reflections on the process of healing. Videos of bodymind exercises, meditations, and ideas for healing challenges in the body, mind, spirit, earth that old paradigms may have called hopeless.

For information on individual therapy sessions or classes, contact Laura at lifemovesthrough@gmail.com


Monday, February 21, 2011

Movement and Organization (in unstable times)

I'm gathering that kids right now, and for the last few generations, are more intelligent and less organized than perhaps they have ever been in the past. And it seems like that trend is increasing. We have been called anywhere from "Indigo" to "Autistic" but I think simply we are at an evolutionary moment where the old structures (of control and rote belief, to name just 2) are falling away, but we have not found the new structures yet. Props to us, because this phase feels like falling apart, but we have some deeper compass or faith that lets us unplug from the old world, without reassurance that the new one will come.

Forcing old, unconscious structures is not the answer (thought in some cases one might find a way to force conform and think its a good thing). Nor is structurelessness, as there are all kinds of unconscious beliefs and energies floating in the air that someone without a strong sense of center might accidentally be taken by, feel overwhelmed, even lose their way. I see both options rising up: a surge in fascism and an equally powerful surge in structurelessness.

The reason that I work through movement is to give people the self or brain organizational tools they need in order to contain the world without dogma. Even long ago, Freud wrote, "The ego is first and foremost a body ego." (The Ego and the Id). We come to know ourselves through embodied experience; through an interactive process. Our brains and minds are patterned through our movement patterns in daily life. It is an emotional, psychological, and spiritual need to move and dance and tumble through life, this is why its important to me to restore our understanding of non-fascist forms of movement that build the amount of structure required for freedom.

"Fascism can be crushed only if it is countered objectively and practically, with a well-grounded knowledge of life's processes" (Wilhelm Reich The Mass Psychology of Fascism). Movement teaches the necessity of respect for life in all its physical forms. It also teaches neutral life principles: Gravity, Space, and Time. These studies become even more interesting now because, as many believe, gravity is literally shifting. The gravitational and magnetic fields of the earth may be shifting along with the alignments of the planets themselves (towards the rare and intense alignment of 2012). We feel these things in our bodies and I really wonder how much they might contribute to the increased incidence of challenges in sensory orientation. If we feel like we don't know where we are, we may be right.

"The existence of sensitive people is an advantage for humankind because it is this group that best expresses humanity’s creative urges and needs. Through their instinctual responses the world is best interpreted. Under normal circumstances, they are artists or artisans, seekers, inventors, shamans, poets, prophets….Sensitivity is transmuted into suffering and disorders only when the world is unable to heed the exquisitely tuned physiological and psychic responses of the sensitive individual" (Gabor Mate, Scattered).

They/We just need to be given tools--and I'd say movement tools that develop wisdom--to be able to find a personal harmony between stability and freedom. "Stability (when one is protected) increases the feeling of safety. Instability means risk but easy mobility. Both are biologically important. Becoming addicted to either one of them makes one unsafe for lack of choice" (Moshe Feldenkrais The Elusive Obvious).

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