Meditation is an experience of relaxation and a first step toward creative emergence. Firstly, it is an emptying of the mind of past and present thoughts and imaginations, finally resting easefully and completely in the present moment. From this state of emptiness, we can experience unimaginable surprises and a freshness and newfound appetite for our lives. There is a hidden power in the pause.
A teacher once told me that meditation is not something that we do, it is something that happens to us. All we can do is establish the right context and environment for meditation to happen. “Meditation in motion” is no different. This is a term I’ve adopted from my Kripalu Yoga teacher training, and I’m expanding on its approach here. When we use movement as a tool in Expressive Arts, we invite spontaneous action to occur. We follow what wants to arise naturally and with ease.
It is a worthwhile and novel practice for us to have space and time to experience spontaneous free form movement, following our inner guidance system.
“Substituting technique for conscious awareness has a dumbing effect on our inner guidance mechanism. Devoting yourself to a formulaic and impersonalized practice of [movement] can easily displace trust in your ability to know and act upon what is right for you.”
“Kripalu Yoga: A Guide to Practice On and Off the Mat”, Don Stapleton
Sometimes it helps to have a map or framework in which to relax and become open and receptive to a meditative flow state, while doing what human beings were born to do, move. Expressive Arts demystifies the notion of meditation and makes it a craft that is easily accessible to all. We start with outward cues and established practices and then spend more and more time without external ideas about what to do. This gentle back and forth between willful action over the body and surrendered listening sets the stage for the possibility of meditation in motion.
We start with a plan to lead us into moving in some way, sometimes against how we feel, but with the intention to build physical awareness. (Tuning in to the body is tricky because it is not always obvious. There are many layers to how we feel, and the first feeling is not always the whole story. It can be helpful to remember that how we feel can be changed by what we do, and, in this way, we approach the body as an experiment.) Then, we find time to pause and feel into what we are experiencing and move however that sensation presents in the body. Essentially, in Expressive Arts we use both external and internal perception. If we are always using our outward will to force our movement and try to plan everything, there sometimes is not the space needed to acknowledge how we are feeling. Developing the skills to be able to tune into and track the body can be helpful. Sometimes we need to let the plan and outward cues lead, and sometimes we need to create space for what is most alive in our body to take us somewhere.
I identify three stages to cultivating meditative awareness or surrender in motion, and they exist on a continuum: 1. a willful approach increases awareness of bodily sensations 2. a balance between personal will and surrender expands awareness of thoughts, feelings and emotions and 3. the final stage of surrender expands awareness of instinct and intuition.
Inviting relaxation to step into the driver’s seat is key to the practice of moving meditation. It is spontaneous, effortless and automatic. It is spontaneous in the sense that the voluntary skeletal muscles do not innervate or fire in the same way as they do when controlled by the mind. Effortless implies the mental experience of not pushing or “efforting”. Muscles contract, elongate and hold, but there is an overall sense of release and ease. Automatic refers to unexpected and surprising ways of moving that could never be choreographed or pre formulated.
Why meditate in motion? One answer is that creative life is catalyzed in the wild, unpredictable territory of the unknown. As human beings, sometimes we think that we are supposed to know what we are doing all the time, but, on the contrary, we are the stewards of mystery and magic. Absorption in movement can be a descent into the unknown, gifting us with spontaneous suggestions from the body and revealing hidden ideas and meanings. My view of movement-based art practice that does not stem from this kind of giving over, when everything is happening at once and in flow and where restraints are released, is overly cerebral, in the past and dull. The wild ecstatic dancer rises from within, revealing our true nature, unbounded.
Artwork by Maggie Forgeron,
“Abstract 7”
Not Just Any Body Part 