Authentic Movement

… is a practice in which you listen and feel inwardly and express bodily that which wants to unfold just now in the present moment.

… is a way of working with movement, with eyes closed, without music, without expectations from the outside, in which your body and your very personal movements show you the path –  the path towards the depth of your inner being, your truth.

… includes the experience of being seen in this process and the opportunity to share your experience in language, enabling integration.

 

The Discipline of Authentic Movement

… is a wonderful embodied way to practice awareness, supporting the personality and the self to mature.

… is a spiritual path that always includes working with personal psychological development.

Through the specific structure and the careful attention given to language you develop your awareness and practice a friendly attitude towards yourself and others.

This supports your inner witness / the inner observer and thus lays the ground for healing experiences and the development of consciousness.

The clear form of this practice and the profound respect for each person’s experience provide the foundation of this work.
I offer you the clear framework that is necessary for this work, so that you can open to your known and unknown inner depths, while safely accompanied and supported in this process.

I work with individuals and groups.

EMBODIED AWARENESS PRACTICE

The Discipline of Authentic Movement is an embodied awareness practice, shaped by Janet Adler (USA/Canada) during the last 45 years and rooted in the work of Mary Whitehouse, the founder of Authentic Movement. Today there is a rich variety of ways and areas in which Authentic Movement is used: In the arts (especially dance and theatre), in psychotherapy and psychosomatics, as a spiritual practice, as an integrating process within body work and as a complement to various programs such as burnout prevention trainings.

DEVELOPMENT OF COUNSCIOUSNESS

The core of the Discipline of Authentic Movement is the development of consciousness: Movement evolving out of inner impulses, unfolding in and through the body, becoming seen with awareness and integrated into consciousness. This work includes the psychological dimension, especially in the beginning, while also holding a respectful awareness to transpersonal and direct experience – here the understanding is not attached to any specific religious or philosophical framework.

DIFFERENT FORMS

The Ground Form of the Discipline of Authentic Movement emphasizes working with the personality and its unique individual history. This both precedes and continues throughout the unfolding of other aspects of this discipline: the work with groups with the focus on collective and archetypal processes, and the attention to transpersonal processes, including energetic phenomena, inviting direct experience. The Ground Form is also a fundamental part of the many other ways of working with Authentic Movement.

THE GROUND FORM

The Ground Form is possible only through the developing trusting relationship between two people. The mover, with eyes closed, moves into the emptiness of the space, without plans or expectations, not knowing what will arise, following her impulses from within, guided by the wisdom of her body, in the presence of the other person. This person, the outer witness, is sitting with eyes open at the edge of the space, aware of her personal inner experiences while seeing the mover. For both, mover and witness, the relationship with her own experiences is of crucial importance. After the movement time they speak together, finding words expressing their individual experience and truth. The awareness practice expands, in movement time as well as in speaking time, allowing the deepening of the movement and witnessing process and the finding of words that express more and more directly the inner experience, free from interpretations or projections, free from judgments.

PARTICIPANTS

Many people long to be able to be just as they need or wish to, and to be seen and accepted by others just the way they are. This may be accompanied by feelings of uncertainty by times.

To practice the Discipline of Authentic Movement you need no special previous training or experience. What is essential is the wish to open more deeply to yourself and to learn more about yourself and the many dimensions of what it means to be a human being.

OBJECTIVES

The Discipline of Authentic Movement supports you to

  • become more friendly with yourself
  • embody your experiences, to anchor them in your body
  • deepen your body awareness and refine your sensations, as happens for example in yoga or taichi
  • follow your emotions and express them, to discover more of your creativity and let it flow, and to experience new ways to be in relationship
  • prevent burnout through more presence and connection with your personal process, and to further the opening to the fullness of your inner life
  • get to know ways of perceiving and to differentiate between perception, judgement and interpretation
  • deepen your awareness and development of consciousness; to strengthen the inner witness as practiced in most approaches to meditation
  • follow your inner call and to take new steps on the path of your unfolding essence.