Human sculpture
Last weekend I participated in a workshop called Dynamic Awareness, co-taught by a meditation teacher and an acting coach (I've actually done this one twice before, but it is different each time).
Schedule:
Sit
Movement
Sit
Lunch (in silence)
Sit
Movement
Sit
Talk about it with the group
We did some new things this workshop. The first movement session was about internal work, using a “Starfish” exercise. Starfish have 6 points, and we used the 4 extremities plus the head and the tailbone. We breathed expanding into all 6 points, and into combinations of them. Then we allowed our bodies to naturally “curl up” in various ways on an outbreath, and expand out again on an inbreath—for instance, we would allow the 4 extremities to curl in toward the middle while rolling to one side, resulting in moving into the fetal position. On the next inbreath, we would “unfold.” It was fascinating to drop into the space where I imagined myself as the starfish and just let go into the intention to “pull inward” like that. Without planning the details of it, my body just flopped into a fetal position. When we did the same movement with a different idea in mind—such as allowing the head and arms to lead while the lower body followed—I would still end up in a fetal position, but I would have gotten there in a different way and the details of the position would be different too (perhaps my hands and feet were arranged differently).
Later, the acting coach told us that these “starfish” movements are actually very basic neuromuscular patterns that we have known since we were fetuses. Fetuses and very young babies indeed move in these ways. In fact, these starfish movements have been used in polio patients to help them connect or reconnect their nerves properly if there was disruption. The body has a deep-seated muscle memory of how to do these simple contractions/expansions. Not surprisingly, I found them deliciously relaxing and centering. After we did them for a while, we got up carefully and started to walk. It was amazing how different my body felt walking that state. It was a mixture of unusual feelings, like lightness and variations in density. My gait was also different.
That part was to connect us with our own body and its multitude of sensations. The next movement session was interactive. First we did a 2-person sculpture with rotating participants. We stood in a circle. One person went to the center and posed. Then another came from the circle (whoever was moved to do so), made one touchpoint of contact, and also posed, creating a 2-person sculpture. After breathing into it a bit, the first person returned to the circle, while the second remained in pose. Then another person would be moved to join them, making a new sculpture. Then the person who had been there longer left, and so on.
What I found most interesting about this was that I would be inspired to join the sculpture because I had an emotion or idea that I could go and embody with the other person. But then they would leave, and I would become the inspiration for someone else’s idea. When the new person came and joined me, I would sometimes feel a distinct emotional shift—even though my body was in the identical position! For instance, I did one posture where I looked like I was sliding into home plate because the other person was in a posture that looked (to me) like tagging a person out. After she left, the new person adopted a pose of holding my hand as if helping me get up. Suddenly the emotional tone shifted from the excitement of a baseball game to something soft and compassionate. It was important that I be able to let go of my old idea about the sculpture in order to be present for the new development.
Then we did larger sculptures based on a theme. For instance, we might be told to make a sculpture about “fire.” People would join, popcorn-style, always with one point of contact to someone else in the figure. Together, we created a large image of “fire.” Some were really interesting, like “thought” and “peace.”
Perhaps the most challenging was “clouds.” The first person adopted an airy, bright, light pose—like fluffy white clouds. But others had other ideas about what “clouds” might mean, such as the dark clouds of sadness or the mental cloudiness of confusion. These were added to the overall picture.
Finally, we did “poetry sculpture.” The acting coach read a poem one or two lines at a time. At each pause, a person would physically embody the image she had just read, so that over the course of the reading, we assembled an image of the whole poem. This sounds great in theory, but at first I had trouble getting into it. One thing that happens in poetry is that images become more and more developed and clarified as the poem evolves, so the first impression of a line might not be how you would view the line by the end of the poem. So enjoying this activity meant letting go of the idea that we were creating a perfect representation of the poem—it was more like we were assembling a salad of first-impression images.
These “games” were made richer by their alternation with periods of sitting meditation. In those periods, we were encouraged to meditate with the body as the object, paying attention to the subtle movements of heat, tension, vibration, and other feelings that are always present even though we don’t often notice them. I felt more in touch with my intuition about how to embody the sculptures because my mind was centered.
What did I learn?
Schedule:
Sit
Movement
Sit
Lunch (in silence)
Sit
Movement
Sit
Talk about it with the group
We did some new things this workshop. The first movement session was about internal work, using a “Starfish” exercise. Starfish have 6 points, and we used the 4 extremities plus the head and the tailbone. We breathed expanding into all 6 points, and into combinations of them. Then we allowed our bodies to naturally “curl up” in various ways on an outbreath, and expand out again on an inbreath—for instance, we would allow the 4 extremities to curl in toward the middle while rolling to one side, resulting in moving into the fetal position. On the next inbreath, we would “unfold.” It was fascinating to drop into the space where I imagined myself as the starfish and just let go into the intention to “pull inward” like that. Without planning the details of it, my body just flopped into a fetal position. When we did the same movement with a different idea in mind—such as allowing the head and arms to lead while the lower body followed—I would still end up in a fetal position, but I would have gotten there in a different way and the details of the position would be different too (perhaps my hands and feet were arranged differently).
Later, the acting coach told us that these “starfish” movements are actually very basic neuromuscular patterns that we have known since we were fetuses. Fetuses and very young babies indeed move in these ways. In fact, these starfish movements have been used in polio patients to help them connect or reconnect their nerves properly if there was disruption. The body has a deep-seated muscle memory of how to do these simple contractions/expansions. Not surprisingly, I found them deliciously relaxing and centering. After we did them for a while, we got up carefully and started to walk. It was amazing how different my body felt walking that state. It was a mixture of unusual feelings, like lightness and variations in density. My gait was also different.
That part was to connect us with our own body and its multitude of sensations. The next movement session was interactive. First we did a 2-person sculpture with rotating participants. We stood in a circle. One person went to the center and posed. Then another came from the circle (whoever was moved to do so), made one touchpoint of contact, and also posed, creating a 2-person sculpture. After breathing into it a bit, the first person returned to the circle, while the second remained in pose. Then another person would be moved to join them, making a new sculpture. Then the person who had been there longer left, and so on.
What I found most interesting about this was that I would be inspired to join the sculpture because I had an emotion or idea that I could go and embody with the other person. But then they would leave, and I would become the inspiration for someone else’s idea. When the new person came and joined me, I would sometimes feel a distinct emotional shift—even though my body was in the identical position! For instance, I did one posture where I looked like I was sliding into home plate because the other person was in a posture that looked (to me) like tagging a person out. After she left, the new person adopted a pose of holding my hand as if helping me get up. Suddenly the emotional tone shifted from the excitement of a baseball game to something soft and compassionate. It was important that I be able to let go of my old idea about the sculpture in order to be present for the new development.
Then we did larger sculptures based on a theme. For instance, we might be told to make a sculpture about “fire.” People would join, popcorn-style, always with one point of contact to someone else in the figure. Together, we created a large image of “fire.” Some were really interesting, like “thought” and “peace.”
Perhaps the most challenging was “clouds.” The first person adopted an airy, bright, light pose—like fluffy white clouds. But others had other ideas about what “clouds” might mean, such as the dark clouds of sadness or the mental cloudiness of confusion. These were added to the overall picture.
Finally, we did “poetry sculpture.” The acting coach read a poem one or two lines at a time. At each pause, a person would physically embody the image she had just read, so that over the course of the reading, we assembled an image of the whole poem. This sounds great in theory, but at first I had trouble getting into it. One thing that happens in poetry is that images become more and more developed and clarified as the poem evolves, so the first impression of a line might not be how you would view the line by the end of the poem. So enjoying this activity meant letting go of the idea that we were creating a perfect representation of the poem—it was more like we were assembling a salad of first-impression images.
These “games” were made richer by their alternation with periods of sitting meditation. In those periods, we were encouraged to meditate with the body as the object, paying attention to the subtle movements of heat, tension, vibration, and other feelings that are always present even though we don’t often notice them. I felt more in touch with my intuition about how to embody the sculptures because my mind was centered.
What did I learn?
- One thing I often learn in silent exercises is how little a role speech really plays in creating community. In the final debrief, the first comment expressed was how close one woman felt to all of us after this day together, even though we had hardly spoken. Everyone nodded, smiled, and agreed. This echoes the studies that find that the actual words spoken in a conversation account for something like 30% of the communication (and I’ve even seen lower figures than that). The rest is posture, head-nodding, tone of voice, etc.
- I learned that very similar postures can have different emotional tones. I already described how that was true with the rotating 2-person sculpture. It is also true when only slight changes are made to a posture. For example, I felt that sitting in a crouched posture embodied “safe” when my eyes were closed, but embodied “cowering” when my eyes were open.
- I am starting to grasp how a feeling of safety contributes to creativity and flexibility.
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