Movement as Resource

Resource is a complicated word. One of the associations my mind makes with “resource”  is the extraction of natural resources, most often by big ugly machines with no ability to feel or hear the cries of the land as she breaks open. I think of D.H. Lawerence’s novel, Lady Chatterly’s Lover, which illuminated the devastating effects of the industrial revolution on the land and the people and the soul of the world. I think of all the drives in my car on back roads through the national forests of the United States, seeing the signs proclaiming this as the “land of many uses,” which means the national forests can be logged and mined and thoroughfares for noisy ATVs that disrupt animal habitats and the flight of birds. I think of the rainforests, the lungs of the earth, the incredible biodiversity (including people) that live there, plowed down to raise beef cattle and soy and all the beef and soy that ends up in the dumpsters behind the supermarket rotting because of overproduction. I think of all the wars fought (endlessly) over the greed to control “resource rich” landscapes and the genocide of whole peoples and the thieving of land (including the land where I live). The list is endless; resource extraction is a problem. In a world of settler colonialism, of misunderstood religious decrees of “dominion over” rather than communion with, of the violence of capitalism and consumerism, which breed a kind of emptiness and coldness in the human heart that then claws at the earth with an insatiable hunger searching erroneously for the loss of soul through extraction and accumulation – in this world, I cannot write about movement practice as resource without first explicitly addressing how problematic it is to find “support” or “resource” through blind extraction … that kind of resourcing, the take take take, is not at all what I am speaking to in the realm of movement practice. My attempt to elucidate how movement practice can be a way of “resourcing” and supporting resilience of body, heart, mind, + soul, will be diametrically opposite to the energy of extraction. 

Resourcing through the body is all about staying relational with the animate living world.  

In movement practice, when I refer to resourcing, I am referencing the ways we find support in and through the body. The ways we access nourishment, vitality, alignment and connection with Source (what we’re made of) so that we can stay present, relational and creative with whatever is happening in our bodies and in our lives. Through the physical, sensuous, imaginative body, we learn where and how to root ourselves, to orient ourselves, so that we can listen, feel, and make ourselves available to life in all its varieties and textures. We cultivate capacity within our organism to hold and move sensitively and powerfully with the sometimes overwhelming sometimes invigorating experiences that are a part of being alive. Resourcing includes remembering (somatically) how interwoven we are into a much larger web of life and thus are designed to move as part of an ecosystem of sensitivity – with every gesture recognizing that how we touch and tend the waters from which we drink fundamentally shapes what’s possible in our lives. This way of somatic resourcing requires no extraction; on the contrary, resourcing through the body calls forth relationship, connection, mutuality, and sensitivity - learning to open ourselves to the earth, the air, the sun, the trees, the space in and around our bodies, the waters of our blood, the fire of our soul, the memory that we are but fractals of the wider universe and how we treat the rivers is how we treat the blood inside our own veins and the veins of our children. Resourcing through the body is all about staying relational with the animate living world.  

In Open Floor, we work with 10 Core Movement Resources, which are like ten theatrical spirits beckoning us to return to our instinct, giving us clues as to how to remember our wild origins (a remembering which is ultimately a powerful support system); ten universal forces (based on how life moves) that we become more intimate with over time and with practice, sensitizing ourselves to nuance and depth, subtlety in the conversation, calling our dance into a deeply resourced expression – which means a wild dynamism, connectivity, vitality, and capacity to stay with the kind of complexity and strangeness of which all life is made. Resourcing through movement allows us to become instruments through which life can play its whole dynamic range – we become responsive, adaptive, creative, with a capacity for agility and improvisation, so opposite from the flattening of modernity that requires us to forget sensuality, sensitivity, and beauty all together. The ten energetic guides into more dynamic and vitalized expression, the relational teachers that deepen our connective + creative capacity are as follows: 

Center

Ground

Expand + Contract

Towards + Away

Activate + Settle

Spatial Awareness

Release

Vector

Pause

Dissolve

These universal principles of movement are an entire ecosystem dancing together, speaking together, exchanging – and within each energetic quality, each spirit, there is an entire world to explore, full of subtlety. My favorite way to explore these beings is in movement conversations on the dance floor and out in wild places.  In upcoming blog posts, I will give attention to each of the core movement resources in some kind of creative way. Full of images of each energy at play, I will try my hand at the dance of perception recorded with pen and paper. 

A turmeric root risking form, direction, shape, life. Roots deep in the dark earth, new green shoots reaching toward the sun. The energy of vector: moving with choice, velocity, direction, instinct, courage, not waiting for safety or certainty, risking even amidst big unknowns.

If a movement resource is something that allows us to stay connected, sensitized, present, responsive, and relational as life moves in all its moody, mysterious, unpredictable ways, ask yourself what your relationship with each of these energies is in your own life, your own way of moving through the world. These movements are intrinsic to life; no one invented them; they do not belong to any methodology; they belong to life; our bodies are made of them and how we relate to the world, to life, to each other, is shaped by them.  How do they already move inside you and your way of relating? How might your attention magnify their presence (and vitalizing support) in your life?