February Summary

In this months moving journey there has been several interests and points that have come up for me. 

The first was learning about the homologous, homolateral and contralateral patterns. Doing these within movement patterns gave me an of awareness of my bodies length. These patterns also felt more realistic even though the homolateral pattern in walking feels strange.  Maybe because it involves more of my movement vocabulary today. 

The 3 different levels of witnessing is one of the other interests that i have been working with.

1: Witnessing a person while not moving.

2: Witnessing one or a group while moving myself 

3: Witnessing yourself moving. 

Number the 3 final one is reflective and keeping embodied and aware throughout is an interesting but challenging task. I find this brings questions such as… What am i doing? …. Is what i am seeing the same and what i am doing? …. How do i see myself? (birds eye view) ….. Do i only see me or others?….

These questions are all questions i find my self asking when i am moving. The one i know is always the same is... How do i see myself?.... for this question i always get the same answer and it is usually when i am writing in my journal that i realise it is the same. I always see myself from a birds eye view i find it hard to see myself from closer or within. 

During some of the classes I used free writing in my reflecting to use as stimuli for moving, this is something that i find works for me as i often reflect and free write questions and using questions as a stimuli for moving opens up more. 

The final point to reflect upon on is during a BMC class we moved through all the movement patterns so far. During this there were several patterns that were hard to get into in the time limit we had, however i found the mouthing digestive pattern and the use of the spine easy to find and i enjoyed this the most. My experience of doing these patterns provide images that i can relate to, also the practical aid of chewing the sweet in a previous class stayed with me and i was able to use that to inform my moving. 

January Summary

 At the start of this month I wrote 3 goals for term 2:

• Investigate my question of 'How can experience a new experience? '
• Pin Point my interets in moving each day or each week 
• Allow new 

So this months movement practice has brought up a few different interests, mostly relating to my goals:

• Attention 
• Allowing things to change 
• The on going question how can I experience and new experience. 

The first point, Attention came from my own interest and other influences. With dissertation on my mind, having a workshop with Charlie Morrissey and also studio practice it is something I am drawn to. With reference to BMC and the work we have been doing on a friday, giving my attention to intention of where the movement is coming from is a useful tool to use, as I found in my experience when watching my partner the information I receive is a lot. Therefore by drawing my attention to the intention of the movement allows for my own identification and interests to become from the movement. Also as a choreographer you need to be able to identify what you want to see as it could be too much and you will not see anything. Paying attention to intention also became useful in Feldenkrais. As the intention of the movements is to do them with as little effort, specific attention have to be paid to fulfil the intention. By doing this in Feldenkrias I have noticed a shift of attention during my other classes in how I concentrate on attention. One of the sessions in Feldenkrais I noticed how heavy my shoulder was to lift. This took over any other thought about the action i was doing until i shifted my attention to the center of my back and started trying to lift from my shoulder blade. This level of attention to the movement allowed a whole different approach that became easier to do. This practice of attention in both classes has helped in general and they are slightly different but are still asking to think about a similar thing. The other class that it has been helpful in is, phrase class. During the phrases we are asked to think about what is going on within the movement you are doing, by paying attention to the intention of the movement allows for this to happen. I used to find it hard to concentrate on the intention as i just wanted to perform the phrase, however by working on the attention, this has become easier and i am able to identify and think about the intention whilst performing the phrase. 

The next two points, Allowing things to change and experiencing a new experience overlap as I have found if I allow things to change (allowing new) then the new experience is there. Also by pin pointing my interests each day I am acknowledging how I change and what I change to. This plays a huge part in experiencing a new experience. By having the interest different but the task/score/movement the same there is a difference as I am thinking about a new thing or interested in a different part.  These two points have be applied in various movement classes which has given me a challenge i enjoy.