Let’s talk about movement instead…

For a second now, just for a second, forget politics and focus on your body sensations. Feel how your finger muscles tense as you scroll down the navigation pane. Feel how you’re sitting. Feel how you’re breathing.

Today, when I encounter my teachers that teach movement and connect it with neuroscience, and psychology, and physics and what-not, and explain all sorts of things through the use of body, that would not be explicable otherwise, I often feel close to tears. How come I have not been taught this earlier? How come I have not been taught this at school? How come I had to learn to jump and run ridiculous leghts for no apparent reason, but I’ve never been told to listen to my body. I’ve never been informed to speak to it, to ask what it wants, but only impose things on it. ‘Coz an opportunity to learn how to live in sync with my body sensations from an early age, would have saved me from a great deal of trauma in life. Such education would have helped me to help myself instead of looking for things to heal me externally.

Last year I have spent most of my time in my sweat-pans. Quite literally. But not in sweat-pans on the sofa changing TV channels and not in sweat-pants sweating in a gym. I  have spent the year in my sweat-pants on the rehearsal-room floor, moving. Moving in the ways I’ve never tried to move before. And I must say, though I’m not sure what’s yet to come, but chances are that it was the happiest year of my life so far. Which will probably be known as “the year when I have moved and it has moved me”.

By saying this I fully-comprehend that I have been very privileged to have such a year, which I could spend on that floor being taught to feel things through movement. To understand life through movement. I understand that it’s a luxury, that not everyone is able to afford and the only reason that I can think of as to why I was granted such a luxurious education is that – I really needed it. That my desire to move, coming from an acute sense of inner pain, has been greater than the desire of those who did not have this privilege. But I am merely guessing here. Perhaps I was simply just lucky. Perhaps I was just lucky to be inroduced into the idea that by moving you can actually change your perception of life, that you can become a much happier person by simply just moving.

Body. I was always a lousy mover. For about twenty years of my life I believed that I was not meant to move for any other reasons than efficiency. That body was in place to just strictly comply with the orders derived by my mind. That it was meant to listen to me in order to get me from one place to another as means of transportation and do things it’s being told to do. That it was meant to be occasionally fed and given something to drink when it was thirsty. That it was meant to be abused to fit into the socially acceptable norms of effectiveness and beauty.

Today, I can say that my body has literally saved my mind. My body preserved my sanity. My own body has healed me. For if it wasn’t for the movement practices that I employed out of shear desperation – for there was no other way my mind could be helped to deal with its demons – I wouldn’t be writing these words today.

That’s how “Move and be moved” became the summary of 2017. The tagline. The slogan. My stair-way to heaven. Movement opened up new sensations in me, it actually made me not only feel, but also think differently. So, I am sharing this in a hope that if you are a little bit like me – a person who tends to get tangled in thoughts, anxieties, doubts and the fear of uncertainty – worry not. All you have to do is keep moving.