It started on the yoga mat.   My morning practice.  My discipline.  It was serving my body, yet I realised that the joy in devotion, which is what gives a yoga practice its power, was missing.   

I moved through my practice with the question in my mind, 'how can I find my joy in devotion'?  I had learnt to internally reference my practice.  To feel the internal movement of energy, and to listen for bodily guidance towards what was needed next.  As I followed this inner impulse, with my question in mind, I found myself dancing .

My dance felt like awkward wings unfolding, and then growing.  My arms seemed to conduct the currents of my heart, and in those moments of intimacy with my inner impulse, powerful joy and a sense of freedom arose in me.

 I had found joy through devotion, by intimately following my inner impulse to move, and allowing myself to be danced from within.  

This was the beginning of my, ever-deepening, exploration of embodied dance.  So far, this journey has landed me comfortably at home in my own skin, with a capacity to transform my life experience, by simply letting life dance through me.

Now I take great joy in sharing this dance with others, and holding space for them to be danced from within.

We will be dancing this weekend......

https://events.humanitix.com/inner-moves-dance-deep

This morning I awoke, with many 'things to do' poised in my mind, ready to spring me into action.  And then an unusual impulse arose in my body.  Simply to relax, completely and pay full attention to the sensations in my whole body.     

I am learning more and more to trust the wisdom of my body, and today it clearly remembered the experience I had, during Non-Linear Movement Method ® Facilitator training, of becoming aware of the tension patterns of habitual 'push' arising in the body.  

I noticed that my shoulders and belly, were tense and ready to spring out of bed, so instead, i just relaxed completely and began again.  After relaxing, I then investigated whether the muscles that tensed in preparation for me to get up, were really necessary to achieve that movement at all.  A little, but mostly not.  

The revelation was not just that I noticed the habitual tension pattern, and found a way to move without it, but that the idea to do so, came from my body, as an impulse, despite the other plans that my mind had for me.

I am looking forward to now beginning my daily morning movement practice, with the opposite of doing anything at all.  Hooray!  Just Being.  And deeply inhabiting my body before I move it at all.