Movement as Restorative Contemplation

Saturday, January 6th, Siobhan Davies Studio

10.30am – 5.30pm

Booking link
https://app.acuityscheduling.com/catalog.php?owner=12493285&action=addCart&clear=1&id=1652798

This workshop will also be accessible via Zoom at a reduced rate. Please contact if interested.

This time around we are combining our three disciplines in a different direction, focus, and order –

Focusing on the organic body – the unknown – to redefine our understanding of ourselves

Key Focuses –

• Inner Space
• Organs
• Breath
• Lymphatic system
• Rest

The Agenda –

1. Gyrokinesis
2. Short Break
3. Embodied Flow
4. Lunch
5. Restorative Yoga

The day will begin with the Gyrokinesis method to awaken the lymphatic, nervous, and organ systems into simple breathing patterns and rhythmical movements.

After a short break we will transition with Embodied Flow to continue initiating movement from the perspective of our organ system which changes how we experience and feel movement.

After a break for lunch, the day will end with a deeply restorative Yoga practice incorporating props to integrate all the layers of the physical, mental, and spiritual body.

When we move through space the skeletal- muscular system is our primary mover; bones align and muscle levers bone to shift us outward into the external world, grounding us to earth, resisting and absorbing the forces of gravity. Our bones and muscles are the scaffolding for the outward expression of organs occupying the inner space, which we could say represent both our living functions and emotional states

Our organs are deeply connected to our autonomic nervous system and thus impact greatly how we interact with our world. When our organ systems are not working efficiently and no disease is present, they may have lost their spring or elasticity (organs maintain tone through constant intrinsic movement), we may notice postural dysfunction, less ease in movement or emotional imbalances.

Our bodies work in concert, we cannot separate one system from another – working together in symphony each system influences the other. Working from the perspective of our inner world can help unlock the way we experience being in our body. While we can sense bone and muscle fairly easily in movement, it is our soft inner centres, supported by tissue and muscle deep within the body, which provide the internal integrity for our bony structure. As organs function involuntarily and they are housed deeply within we can’t actually move or “tone” them as we would with muscle, but we can effectively optimise their good health by exploring how to move in a more holistic way, attuning and sensing from the inside out.

Using imagery we will explore sequences of movement to help us explore, visualise and connect to our inner world as we experience moving into our outer environment.

This will be our last workshop for a while, as our beloved colleague Kindall is relocating back to Lisbon in February.