WHY WORK WITH THE BODY-MIND?

What do you do when you are experiencing painful feelings, fearful thoughts or vulnerable states?

Do you tend to become overwhelmed by your feelings and take them out on others? Or do you numb yourself with comfort eating, social media or other addictive behaviours?   

 

If so, you are not alone. We all fall into unconscious defensive patterns, either acting out by becoming emotionally reactive or suppressing feelings through avoidance, distraction and dissociation. 

 

In this workshop, we will explore how we can befriend ourselves when we are struggling. How can we turn towards ourselves in the same way we would if a friend needed emotional support? How can we meet ourselves with curiosity, openness and self-compassion? 

 

Part of the answer to these questions lies in recognising that our maladaptive coping strategies were formed in response to our childhood conditioning. Most of us grew up without the necessary relational support to manage distressing feelings and learn to self-regulate. We internalised the message from parents or society that certain feelings or parts of ourselves weren’t acceptable. Understanding we have been doing the best we can is an important step to developing a kinder attitude to ourselves.

 

But we also have to learn to do something different at an embodied level. We have to be willing to consciously feel our feelings and the sensations that arise in the body along with those feelings.

 

This workshop provides an opportunity to practise this. Using dance, somatic awareness and breath to create more spaciousness and awareness around our automatic reactions, we will focus on counteracting the tendency to judge and push away what feels uncomfortable and to stay with what we are experiencing. 

 

As we move through the Dance of Awareness cycle (Sensing, Grounding, Expressing, Releasing, Connecting and Completing) to connect with ourselves and others, we will cultivate our ability to stay present with feelings and sensations in our bodies. 

 

Over time, this is a life-changing practice. When we are able to be with our pain and accept ourselves as we are, we can bring an end to the cycle of self-abandonment. All of us will have experienced feeling abandoned by others at some point in our lives. We can’t control whether someone leaves us and we can’t always get our needs met by others but we can make the commitment to stay with ourselves come what may and learn to become our own best friend through all that we experience.
 

What Is Dance of Awareness?
Dance of Awareness™ is an embodied movement practice that explores early developmental patterns through a dynamic movement journey. It invites a rich and joyful exploration of what it is to be a body in the world, moving in response to inner awareness and outer connectedness. It draws on several influences: Post-Reichian body psychotherapy; Five Rhythms; Authentic Movement and Mindfulness Practice. Set to music, the Dance of Awareness cycle takes you through six sequential phases: Sensing; Grounding; Expressing; Releasing; Connecting and Completing. Informed by ideas from psychodynamic theory and developmental psychology, the cycle is designed to evoke childhood stages of development from pre-birth to around 5 years. Throughout the process there is a strong emphasis on body awareness which provides the ground for our experience. By revisiting imprints from our formative years, we can celebrate strengths and resources that have evolved, let go of self-limiting patterns from the past and discover more authentic ways of relating to others. 

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An Overview of What the Day Involves:
We will start with warming up the body to music and arriving in the space. There will be an opening circle and brief introduction to Dance of Awareness™. Over the course of the day, we will dance our way through the 6 phases of the Dance of Awareness cycle (Sensing, Grounding, Expressing, Releasing, Connecting and Completing). There will be guidance from myself, some structured exercises and time for free movement and dancing to find your own flow. We will have a lunch break of 1 hour at around 1p.m. and a tea break in the afternoon. For most of the day we will let our bodies do the talking but there will be some opportunities for verbal sharing in the whole circle at the beginning and the end of the day, as well as time for reflection and integration in pairs and small groups after exercises. The group will have a maximum of 14 participants to allow for in depth exploration and a safe, well-held, therapeutic environment.

 

About Lucy
I am a relational body psychotherapist and have been working with individuals and groups for over 25 years. I have an MA in Humanistic and Integrative Psychotherapy and have done extensive further training in Somatic Trauma Therapy and Embodied Relational Therapy which emerged from Reichian body work and body-centred psychotherapy. I am a full member of the European Association of BodyPsychotherapy (EABP). When I discovered Dance of Awareness™,  I immediately knew I’d found a home for myself: it brings together two things I feel passionately about, conscious dance and body psychotherapy, and in 2017 I qualified as a licensed facilitator. I am also a certified breathwork practitioner and run regular groups in Conscious Connected Breathwork in Findhorn.