time to move it move it
The following imperfect monologue is how I opened my first movement workshop.
Since we are all adults, and closer to peers than not, you as the student are responsible for keeping your own body safe. There is a difference between uncomfortable and unsafe, and your body knows it well. I encourage you to explore the uncomfortable while respecting and avoiding the unsafe.
What that means in practice: if at any point during some exercise you sense your body is moving into unsafe territory, stop. Observe. Make any modification to the exercise as necessary for your body. One example I can think of for myself is with a pushup. Depending on the day, it might not be safe for my shoulder to do one on the ground. Not a problem, I can modify and do a wall pushup. I might learn something I never would have from the one on the ground!
If you remember one thing throughout this whole workshop it is that there is no right or wrong in anything we do. Because that is not the point. There is no right way to do a pushup or wrong way. There is no right or wrong way to move to music. I will encourage you towards whatever way I think is less familiar to you, but even the less familiar way is not the right way. It’s just a way.
In other words: as long as your awareness is in your body and you are noticing things that you haven’t noticed before, you are doing everything right.
The purpose of this workshop is to get you to move in ways that you aren’t used to doing. But why? Indulge me while I wax metaphorical for a second.
Your body is constantly making maps for itself. Layers upon layers of maps. It has a map for how to you can balance on one foot, a map for what to do if you trip over a tree root, a map for how to twerk, another map for how to sit at a desk, yet another map for how to slump at a desk, so on and so forth.
The body is also constantly optimizing for two things: safety and energy efficiency. This means that if it has a map that works for how to climb a stair, it will keep using it again and again. As long as you don’t fall and get hurt using this map, the body thinks: cool, this is a good map. Why would it bother making a new map to climb that stair in a different way? Too costly. And this is fine in the short term. But it can lead to problems in the long term: certain tissues get used too much, other tissues don’t get used enough. The more maps your body makes and uses, the more robust it is and will be for longer. And the effects compound.
A common misconception is that sore, tight muscles get used too much. It’s actually the other way around: the sore, tight muscles are the ones that don’t get used enough, don’t bear weight and expand and contract, and therefore don’t get enough oxygen flow, don’t stretch and grow, and just retreat into themselves. By definition, what your body finds uncomfortable is anything that it hasn’t mapped out. To make new maps, you have to explore new terrain.
That’s enough of me talking! For the rest of our time, I will try my best to keep us out of the world of thoughts and more in the world of movement. Less thinking, more doing. If you are thinking, the present moment is lost to you. You are not optimizing for what’s right. You are not going from point A to B. You are existing in a state of perpetual transition: the present.