When pondering the title, Body-Mind Centering® I ask what is the ‘centre’ of the body-mind experience that we may be seeking or exploring? I cannot separate this question from the embodied approaches that are used in BMC® to invite attention to centre on the intrinsic cellular nature of the body, on the smallest constituent of the body – each living cell is a conscious entity within its community of cells that are, in the case of my body, the whole of ‘me’ shaping the ‘I’ that I am, my ‘animate’ self.
When I place a hand on my body and ‘drop’ into the idea that my cells are touching each other I can feel the intercellular communication referred to as touch. If I move my hand, I feel how this experience changes in different places – yet I feel and identify these parts within my whole body – I realise that my body knows itself, and how good it feels to give time to meeting it.
The exploratory nature of movement meditation (also referred to as somatisation) is memorable and capturable – the movement qualities, gestural shapes and form, can be recalled, tracked, likewise tactility, sounds, visuals and combinations. Each moment forms a part of a ‘body-story’, a series of relatable moments. The process reveals insights into the possibility of mutability – of a change in state, potentially providing a space for new ways of moving, being, touching, listening, seeing, a space where new patterns or pathways may be experienced, and states of consciousness may appear new, or reclaimed having been lost. The possibility to move away or in a different direction, or to undo or not do, allows space for change, an opportunity to forge ahead anew.
In experiencing the cellular nature of my being through sensing and feeling into it, I encounter a state which I identify as ‘centred’ – a state of consciousness which is a place of ‘inner peace’ – there is ease and an expansive sense of being, like floating on the sea knowing you can still swim or deep dive.
Metaphor is useful, a descriptor for the layered nature of this experiential process and assists me to perceive and write about it with less words, and feel I am true to its intrapersonal nature.
Over the past 3 decades I have consistently written down my experiences of embodied inquiry. I kept many notebooks, class reports, colourings, poems, reflections on the hours of body focussed explorations often undertaken in movement or in deep internal sensing and anchored in the present. (I will share some later in other blogs).
Finding words to elucidate and affirm an experience can be a means to rest the mind, to plant, or anchor unease, to contain a sense of (corporeal) stasis. Why then speak of corporeality as if absent of ‘mind’ – like the body, the mind moves along drifting between attentive states and pausing at focal points of attention like the eddies of a stream around the rocks.
If you would like to explore these principles through direct experience, you can learn more about our Somatic Movement Education programme, Infant Developmental Movement Education programme, view all Body-Mind Centering® courses, or browse our upcoming events and workshops.
