The sun is shining and it is the time of year for sitting in the garden with the laptop, good music playing in the background (R Plus - go listen folks) and a cup of tea, even the dogs are content.

I want to write to you all about the experience I had in Boulder, two 4 day trainings in the Reembody Method, however I have to confess that I am struggling to find the words because how do you describe the experience of being taken apart and then being put back together again?

I have been following the work of Kevin Moore since he lived on Lamma with me many years ago, some of you have attended the workshops of his that I hosted and some of you have even had sessions with him. All I knew was that he had an uncanny ability for sensing what I needed and providing a unique experience that met those needs, I would always walk away feeling freer and more at ease. I have since watched with pure pleasure, his expansion and growth across the pond in America and silently hoped that he would come back to Hong Kong to offer the training. No such luck and so I used up the last of our air-miles and I booked myself a ticket.

I flew via LA and landed in Denver early evening, everything felt alien and unknown. As someone who has travelled extensively on my own I was surprised to find myself nervous, a grumbling uber driver did not do much to dispel the nerves as we got lost on the roads around Boulder with no phone signal to help us, however we eventually found the lodge and I met my room mates for the next few days. A major part of the Reembody training is the community that comes with it, staying together with those on the training allows for connection and social harmony not to mention long conversations into the night about the neuroscience of movement. Kevin maintains that one of the biggest threats to our capacity to feel safe is a loss of social harmony. Think how many times you have walked outside your door and into the world and seen nothing but unfamiliar faces, you may not notice it, but this alone can cause unseen levels of internal stress, your nervous system is constantly evaluating for a perceived threat and from that making decisions. I went from feeling very alone and anxious on day 1 to feeling like I have entered into a unique tribe of remarkable humans by day 8.

A jet lagged nights sleep passed and I was straight into the classroom the next day. The course was being held at Boulder University and seriously, all places of education should look like this place did. It was stunning. Big skies, mountains all around, large and spacious buildings offering all manner of courses. We were in the recreational centre with more kit you could shake a stick at and so many people out moving their bodies, it was a joy to see.

Day 1 - 4 was level I - Reembody Certified Apprentice

Day 5 -8 was level II - Reembody Certified Apprentice Practitioner

Alongside me were other Yoga Therapists, Personal Trainers, Movement Experts and Bodyworkers - it was a room full of curiosity and it felt amazing. I love yoga, I love yoga philosophy and can talk it for hours but actually it was really kind of refreshing to not be talking chakras and prana! Reembody is a simple but very effective approach to wellness, it is born out of the physics of gravity, the biomechanics of movement and the social and cultural anthropology of humans. It recognises that we all have some simple basic drivers in life that develop out of the desire to survive and the need to feel safe. It recognises that our bodies are not broken, that we do not need to be fixed and that even though as humans we are vulnerable, our strength lies in being able to access that vulnerability.

The full catastrophe of living means that every day, every hour, every minute; stuff happens that causes degrees of stress to our system. Some times we are aware but more often than not we do not even notice these tiny little pokes into our system. We are too focused on getting by to stop and pause, to stop and feel, to enquire and ask what we notice. Survival comes at a cost to the system. In fact, quite literally, it is more neurologically expensive to lay down new patterns, to build new resources, than it is to revert back to learned behaviours and so that is what we do, we reproduce learned behaviours as a short term response to a situation. Simplest way to test this idea is, the next time you find yourself in a stressful position of some kind, to ask yourself the question.

“Am I responding to the situation I am in, or am I responding to the last situation I was in?”

Whilst it is fine to fall back on learned behaviours, sometimes it is kind of essential. The issues arise, like all things, when we get stuck there. A sense of stuck-ness saps away at our capacity to feel, it impacts our creativity and joy of living and more often than not it leads us to a place of pain, both physical and/or emotional.

So you may ask me what actually happens in the process and I shall try to find the words to explain it in a way that offers meaning rather than bog you down in the phsyics of force and momentum.

Three experiences particularly come to my mind:-

On our first day we talked about feeling safe, creating the container for safety for ourselves and those we work with. We talked about how this container of safety allows us as practitioners and those we work with to be free to be curious about whatever is there. This method is a hands on method, something that is new to me and actually not easy for me to get my head around, and yet I do believe that hands on touch can be hugely healing. My partner for this exercise was invited to put her hands on me in any place that felt right to her, she was free to connect with me in any way that she felt may meet me. So as I lay there on the mat, knowing that this was the experience, all I could notice was how much I craved the touch, I wanted to be touched, almost desperate in fact. I could feel a pressure bubble of emotions inside of me that felt dark and heavy; it was overwhelming and I needed to somehow find a release, I knew that release would only come when I allowed myself the permission to let go. The moment I felt a firm but gentle hand on my shoulder I felt an instant sense of permission granted, the tears flowed down my cheeks and I felt no need to stop them. In my exhausted and home sick state, that sense of knowing that someone was on my side was immense and the relief huge. I felt safe, supported and ok. I was not broken, I was not needing to be fixed. It was a profound moment of connection.

“How much potential is possible when you feel part of a tribe?”

The next was when we were working with the Non Dominant leg*. In this practice we are inviting the body to fall into gravity and to allow the ND side to experience what it is like to move into and absorb force. I have worked with this before and afterwards I often get a really nice sense that my ND side is awake and alert rather than asleep and inactive. Throughout the week I was starting to start notice more and more what I was feeling, I was becoming more aware of the sensations in the body that would arise and dissolve and I was noticing how they made me feel. So as I played with this particular falling step I started to feel some intense pain in my neck, but instead of listening in I chose to ignore it and continue; after all I was enjoying myself and I felt like I was getting “better at it”! Until I hit a wall, the pain escalated and I had no choice but to simply lie down. As I lay down I felt a huge wave of emotion engulf me, and yet in the millionth of second that it took to arrive, it left. I actually saw myself watching it run away from the room. For a fraction of a moment I could have allowed myself to surrender into that emotion, perhaps tears or words would have come, who knows, but instead what I saw was my capacity to shut that feeling down. It was sudden, it was intense, it was fascinating and then all I was left with was the pain which was frustrating. However later that day I noticed that for the first time since I had arrived I felt totally clear headed and light, it was an exhilarating feeling. From that experience I realised my own capacity to witness myself, to see my my processes and within that I saw so clearly my tendency to close myself off to emotion and in that moment I was able to offer to myself compassion and kindness. It felt good.

“Can you see your process?”

And finally in our last few days we were working with the skull and I was the demo model for the practice. The actual details of the movement is not really relevant, what is interesting is what I felt, because what I felt is what I think I have been “seeking” all my life. As I sat up from the floor, my first sense was of being completely overwhelmed, I had no words for what I felt; that was unusual for me. As many will know, I rarely don’t have the words for how I feel, that is not how I work! But I was utterly silenced and all I wanted to do was sit very still. As I allowed myself to sit I began to get a sense of how I was feeling and I was able to find some words to describe it. My head/mind was utterly silent, there was nothing there, I could look into it but all I saw was a sense of spaciousness. My body on the other hand was awake, alert and vibrant. I could feel my every synapse thrum and buzz in a way that I could only equate to an unbelievable sense of aliveness. In fact it felt to me like the best meditation ever and I felt like I could have stayed there all day, I was comfortable and at ease; there was no pain in my body and I have never felt so calm. My body felt like it was able to more occupy space without effort and struggle. It was an immensely powerful feeling. It made me wonder about all the ways I work to take up less space, to be smaller and less powerful. It offered me an insight into on how I operate within my environment and was an experience that shall stay with me for a while.

“Why would a person not want access to more power?”

So there you have it folks, a little window into my world these past few weeks. It was intense and exhausting. Huge amounts of content, huge amounts of experiential work into feeling and sensing. It was an incredible process and I am thankful that I got to experience it. I have still so much to process and I am hoping to get better at explaining what the Reembody Method is over time. To be honest, it is something that is best experienced rather than something over thought. Put the critical mind to one side and allow yourself to explore and see what is possible within you.

My next step is to think about how I bring this all to you. Already my mind is buzzing over what we can do in classes but more than that, the work that I offer on a 1-2-1 basis in combination with yoga therapy. And so for the month of December I am looking for guinea pigs and if you have got this far and are still curious, please message me here. I would like 5 bodies to practice with - first come first served folks so do reach out. This can be done from your home if accessible to me, or we can rent a space in town. For whatever reason you are curious to find out more then please do get in touch.

Be well and be kind

Charlotte

* If the nerd in you wants to know a little bit more then read on here but if to be honest you have had enough - then move on, go and do something else!

Reembody works along some simple concepts

Physical force is the fundamental unit of human movement
As the body encounters force it will perceive it as either safe or threatening, which will in turn determine the efficiency of movement
All humans have a dominant and a non dominant side and that these D & ND sides have tendencies that are predictable based on our levels of perceived threat and resulting coping mechanisms for short and long term survival. Within this is included the physical structures of the body and contralateral hemispheres of the brain.
The dominant side is pulling us forward in space and as the stress response increases it takes on more responsibility and moves into fight/flight, the ND side acts as the gate keeper for the freeze response and as stress increases it pulls us down. We are constantly toggling between these states and our capacity to move through them with ease rather than get stuck will determine our resilience to stress.
If we do not feel safe we will live in a place of short term survival, which in turn will increase the D side’s level of threat and the ND’s side of freeze. The end result of this is pain both physically and/or emotionally.
If we can create a container of safety and invite in compassionate curiosity over what we feel then we may allow the two sides of the body to integrate and talk to each other, by reducing the levels of threat we are able to learn new patterns that will be available to us again. These new patterns will help us to find more efficient ways to absorb and disperse force.

REEMBODY ME.....

Charlotte