pre-movements and Pilates

This morning I am reading How Life Moves and was struck about the writings on pre-movements, resetting/exploring movement habit patterns, changing our perceptions of our movement patterns.

I love somatic work. I love being an explorer in my own body, and I like to help others go deep in themselves too.

Eve Gentry's Pilates Fundamentals are what really called my heart to Pilates. The art of exploring each movement as its own piece, and then seeing how each small movement pattern connects with others throughout the body is fascinating. How interesting it is to watch an inefficient movement pattern in the hip affect the rest of the body, up and down, and how simply exploring the hip pattern, finding a new, more effective, more effortless pattern also changes everything in the body, up and down. And yet, if the student is not ready to be 'in' their hip yet it is very difficult to help them undo and find a new pattern.

In my experience in my own body and working with others, I find emotion in the ineffective patterns. Of course, movement patterns are not just emotional, they are genetic to some degree, habitual with what we do in our bodies all day, injury and illness. But, I am truly fascinated in how emotion gets stuck in the body. I've seen many go through counseling of the mind, without movement counseling of the body, and their body still locks these old emotions into itself, and they still cannot fully undo. I've seen many who force out of their body the emotional evidence, but never do they deal with the mind/heart piece, and they are never really free either. I believe the best way to work with unhealthy emotions is by exploring and processing them in the mind and the body.

In less than two weeks I am off to study with Marie-Jose Blom-Lawrence. Like Eve Gentry she works with the Fundamentals. With her, I believe she calls them pre-Pilates. I took from her last summer and was again absolutely sure in my heart that the fundamentals of movement are a big key to unlocking so much in each one of us, not just to get out of physical pain, or emotional pain, but to explore the world with more ability to sense physically, this world, and to be more aware of how we are experiencing the world.

I am looking forward to going deeper and deeper into my own body, so that I can explore out of my body with even more feedback to my senses.

I love movement.