The Open Space

Embodiment and subjectivity are inseparable. Our physical and sensory life does not merely accompany experience; it shapes how we encounter the world, others, and ourselves.

Excerpt 2) Anorexia as a Disorder of Embodiment Opening Note: Anorexia is most often understood as a disorder of eating, weight, or distorted thinking.

The Self is an ongoing layering of the essence of our being. Our child Self, our natural way of being. With fantasy, curiosity, gentleness, joy and wonder. As we take in and are impacted by others-mother, father, siblings, cousins, aunts, teachers, friends.... and the external world, we are changed and more layers of self with its protective shield appear. Hopefully the child in us, still remains known and expressed. Our integration is not a neat picture of closure, but like a work of art that is messy, connected, soft, empty, playful, wound, disconnected... We see the WHOLE. We are a landscape of new openings as we stay attuned and trusting in the natural unfolding and becoming.

“Autumn days are for watching

the way auburn leaves fall and

kiss the earth to show

that the trees have made peace

with letting go.” Jai Gaurangi

Light, colour, transition and temporality could be inspirations for creative expression. Metaphorically these themes surround us in the Fall. Holding us in the beauty of light to colour in leaves, that signify a beauty that holds for a moment, that we cannot control, as the deadness of winter cold is in the distant.

Attunement to the lessons and containment of our natural world
help us metaphorically and literally with transitions and understanding that nothing is permanent. We are always in change.

To be creative means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty, you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it. — Osho from Creativity: Unleashing the Forces Within

Allowing for a process with no clear outcome is a metaphor for being excited by uncertainty. This is the creative and explorative process allowing for something to become its own novelty.

Summer reminds us that with the warmth of the sun, trees bloom, the world becomes full of life. Coexistence of the natural world is in sync. We have become so disconnected from ourselves, from one another as humans. Our world does not need more divisive focus, more war, more hate, more of any attitude, ideology, narrative or perspective that does not move towards a coexistence.

"The unity of the world is not one: it is made of diversity, and even disparity and opposition. It is in fact, which is to say that it does not add or subtract anything. The unity of the world is nothing other than its diversity, and this, in turn, is a diversity of worlds. A world is a multiplicity of worlds; the world is a multiplicity of worlds, and its unity is the mutual sharing and exposition of all its worlds-within this world." Jean-Luc Nancy, Being Singular Plural, p. 185

It the last day of a 10 day intensive Hilltown Commons for module #2 of the Ilan Lev Method led by and and assisted by . We learnt new text through full immersive experience and practice to bypass the mind and enter into patterns of movement through invitations of touch. To support and guide our ongoing learning in this practice of life, we create a process of code words to guide and support our ongoing learning in this method of life.

Being in relationship with the natural world is larger than us as individual human beings. Rather, collectively attuning and listening from our sensorial, physical lived being. As Vandana Shiva's says, "You are not Atlas carrying the world on your shoulder. It is good to remember that the planet is carrying you."

Being an embodied being in relation to other beings and the natural world is a webbing of interconnectedness. The experiential of creating moments of these interactions and relational experiences make a life.

Embodied Trees workshop focused on three concepts as invitations to embodied sensing, relational experiences: oscillation, balance and feedback loops.

Elemental inspiration from Authentic Movement practice:
Fire: Anger, our fire, our deepest form of compassion, for another, for the world, for the self, for a life, for the body, for a family, and for all our ideals, my vulnerability and all, possibly about to be hurt. No physical imprisonment and violent reaction. Anger is the purest form of care, the internal living flame of anger, always illuminating what we belong to, what we wish to protect and what we all are willing to allow in hazard. What we usually call anger is only what is left of its essence-our fire within burns low, high, wild, with rage and simmers in me.

Earth: Begin to walk. My feet, heels into earth, each pad of each toe touch the earth and arches lift with outer sides of my feet gently lie on the earth, reaching to and from it. Feeling and sensing the earth between my toes with my heels reaching deeper into the earth. When I walk, sit, lie, when I forget, when I am in my mind, when I fear, when I am alone-earth is always my holder, my anchor and my support.

Water: I hang my feet into the waters of Oak pond, feeling the roots of the water lily as wet leaves wipe up against my ankles. This pond was a water bowl of the past. The past is the past and the present is what your life is. So come to the pond, river or ocean of your imagination or the shores of what you long for and lift your chin to the sky and live your life.