The Future Of Movement Practices In The Garden
I am reimagining the future of movement explorations in the Garden. To honor my deepening into the next dimensions of collaborative creations in my body and inside the dance, I am acknowledging that after almost 25 years of being and becoming a movement facilitator, there is now great uncertainty, a sort of spiritual fuzziness even, around my labors of holding space and leading fixed-time (live) movement practices for others.
It has taken me a while to place these feelings into words, because our Movement Labs nourish so many beautiful frequencies and cultivate essential roots of our Come As You Are way of life. Movement practices give us vital pathways to play, question, explore, and heal without the weightiness of words, and when we move together the sacred sharing is enriched exponentially. Clarity, understanding and compassion are realized in their purest forms, transmitting straight from our heart center and outward to our embodied consciousness. When we dance we move through the world with boldness and confidence in the activated, self-directed majesty that comes from tuning in so honestly to what we feel, into what our bodies know innately.
Our stories are our wealth, and our bodies hold all of our stories. This is why I feel so deeply that dance and movement exploration are core elements of the Garden’s expansion. Moving in community helps us open up hidden stories and buried narratives that might otherwise not have been uncovered. Generative, inspiring movement practices nourish our abundance consciousness as individuals and as a sistership. Dancing keeps us present with the possibilities of our bodies to be a part of everything we are creating. Our Garden dance communions birth sacred stories that nourish our entire congregation. I am sitting with how to honor my knowing that dance is an essential part of sustaining Garden life, and also that I am being invited to create a new way for my dance practice moving forward.
I was originally very conflicted about not adding any more fixed-time movement sessions to the calendar after the Spring 2021 Garden season, but it felt good and necessary to redirect my labors away from facilitating Movement Labs and mmC Discovery Labs. Redirect to what exactly? And for how long? I am still listening and feeling my way into that.
This is a new space for me. Movement Facilitation is one of my love languages. Some of most treasured memories of dance are from spaces where I was sharing movement with people who were just awakening to the bounty of their bodies’ movement intelligence and creativity. I’ve danced with babies and elders, mothers who are incarcerated, survivors of cancer, doctors in hospitals, passengers at the gate before we board the plane—and also on the plane when in flight. I’ve moved with a crowd of one, and auditoriums filled to capacity. I’ve led practices outside in the sun, down by the water, under the stars, on the train and in the rain. I have always learned something, and had transformative journeys galore—and yet everything is still changing. Something else is being born.
At first I thought the shifting was simply a scheduling thing, or maybe an adjusting-to-Zoom thing. Then I considered returning to in-person workshops and thought maybe it’s a space thing, a socially distanced thing, a managing the munchkins thing. But none of those things is really it. The truth I sense most is that right now I am re/discovering my process as a mover, my relationship to my body as a site of abundant creation, and my optimal rhythms inside the core movement practices that sustain my life and my fertility. An inevitable outgrowth of this adventure will also involve a reshaping of my movement labors when engaging with others in the Garden, in my mama village, and in the world. This will take time, and time is all I have.
For now, my movement flow in the Garden is more soft-time, self-directed, pre-recorded audio and video movement offerings. I am also excited to pour more energy into one of my of my other joy spaces, writing about the interplay of dance, movement journeys, fertility and life. I welcome and encourage also any creators who feel a Yes to facilitate movement labs, dance practices, and other somatically centered workshops for the Garden in live, fixed-time gatherings because these are very holy, sacred, and so generative! The calendar is wide open, really. What are you dreaming up? What is on your heart to do to support more movement practices in the Garden? What types of movement offerings would nourish you as a creator? If you want more movement in the Garden, please share your thoughts and help us dream new ways and possibilities forward. As I learned a long, long time ago when I was just beginning to feel my way into my calling as a dancer: The dance belongs to all of us!
Revolutions, a moment of movement with Mother Mother | Soundtrack The Cinematic Orchestra A Promise (Instrumental)