About Me
I am finding that I am drawn increasingly to the magic of Dartmoor, where I am involved with a long ranging personal project into human land relationships.
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My practice asks questions like… What is it to spend time on and in the landscape? And what does the land remember of our ancestors? These questions give a rich tapestry in which to delve into a movement relationship within this ancient landscape.
In the last 20 years I have been through an evolution in body, presence and compassion for myself. In the last couple of years a compulsion to get somewhere, be someone in the world and just survive has unravelled, leaving me awake to the fact that I am this beautiful human being, in this amazing world and that life is a very real gift. It’s been a long journey back to here. Many life threads have drawn together to make this possible, if I look back to where I was in my 20’s I was disembodied, divorced from the earth and isolated. Through the slow work of somatic’s and inquiries into the spiritual nature of relationship, source nature and change. I have found my way home to an intimacy with myself and my body.
Right now I am offering work in the shape of my interests. I am teaching Body Mind Centering® mostly, with the support of embodied awakening. Attention is given to textures and flavours of presence within our body and in the space around us, as we traverse landscapes of bone, nerve and fluid, journeys into our origins and ancestry through embodied embryology. Revitalising ourselves, developing nervous system resilience and becoming relational through the embodiment process.
Currently I am offering in-depth Body Mind Centering® Courses, a Body Mind Centering inspired conscious dance class to music, and then movement adventures in Dartmoor.
New influences are entering the picture of my interest, that of sexuality and the Anglo Saxon Runes. They have not found their place in my offerings as yet. As I am in an ongoing, unfolding processes with these inquiries. In the autumn I will be offering a set of rune workshops jointly taught with Duncan White on the three tree runes. I am also in the midst of developing a number of rope and dance workshops inspired by the fusion of contact improvisation and Shibari.
My Philosophy
Take the meandering path full of curiosity with little moments of rest and change.
Exploring is a great way to live ones life, finding out, through a participation in life, where the rubber meets the road. In my time I have experienced many teaching approaches and, for myself, the slow small approach seems to work the best. Initially I met this through the Feldenkrais technique but I notice that I appreciate it in all its forms.
Small and slow can achieve a lot of change through many years.
In the unfolding that I have lived through relationships have been primary. Initially it was lying on the dance floor for long periods remembering how to be supported and that it was safe enough for my body to begin to let go, slowly, slowly. Then being exposed to the nourishment of touch and the symbiotic relationship to other bodies that fed me so deeply. I had
no idea how starving I was for touch. From here differentiation happened, you and me, and then the group.
It was like coming out of a deep mist into life.
Slowly I re-patterned, remade my body entered a process of evolution. We already know we just need to remember
what we have forgotten, it’s all in there, in our bodies.
There are several keystone words that I use a lot in my life and in my teaching. The first is listening, we need to remember how to listen with a sense of letting life in. In this listening we become part of life. And in so doing find our place in the world,
even if it is only in a small way. Listening invites us home to ourselves.
The next two are attention inwards and attention outwards. Where we put our attention very much shapes our experience of life. So it is fundament that we start to explore attention and how we use it, as it can be very
habitually either in or out and somewhat stuck in its patterns.
The yield, push, reach, pull pattern is a movement pattern that we develop as young baby’s, we yield and push into the ground to find creeping, crawling, bum shuffling and eventually standing and walking. What I find fascinating is you can
apply these same movement principle to the way we do relationships.
Personal practice
I feel personal practice is a must, we each need our own river of curiosity and
inquiry landed into the rigour of practice.
To my mind, to commit ourselves to ourselves in some way and the continuity of practice every day, week by week, does deliver a deepening into ourselves. So what ever you are interested in, start to explore it at least on a weekly basis.
To me this looks like booking a studio once a week for self movement practice, getting out into nature to move in the landscape and then a daily ritual of releasing, stretching and sounding the runes. To this I have also added sexual Chi Gung, though I have found this harder to maintain just through the lack of available time I have.
If we commit to too much we sabotage ourselves. So start small and anchor a small piece of self practice into your life. It’s like planting a seed and from there it can grow.
Enjoy.
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