The wild ride of incarnation
Dear all,
How are you? I hope you are thriving amidst all the challenges, the unknown, the beauty and the beast of life in this wild ride of incarnation. I hope you are discovering the inner and outer resources to dance with it all.
For myself, I’m taking in the sea change in understandings which is coming from everywhere right now about the importance of the body to our understanding of health; both physical and mental health and consciousness itself. From Polyvagal Theory and trauma awareness to combating depression and overwhelm, to cultivating empathy, to my own unfolding awareness of the power of embodied listening – the body, movement and the felt sense (interoception) of the physical experience of our sensate interior are being shown to be crucially important. if you don’t know what i’m talking about just dip into books such as “Dancing is the Best Medicine” by Julia Christensen and Dong-Seon Chang, or “Move! The New Science of Body over Mind” by Caroline Williams, or “The Dance Cure, the surprising secret to being smarter, stronger, happier” by Dr Peter Lovatt. You get the idea! And we’re already doing it!
This brings with it, for me, both a feeling of relief, satisfaction and confirmation of what we have developed and learnt through our decades of work in this field. I want to thank all the amazing people who have danced so deeply on our dance floors as well as all of our teachers. You have helped us learn so much as we reflect on what actually works to support the liberation of the life energy, wellbeing and empowerment. THANK YOU!
We are at work on our new website which will represent, as well as our own offerings, the work of all our wonderful Movement Medicine Professionals. A new era is coming, and I feel Movement Medicine is right on time to help people everywhere access the resources of a life fully lived in and through the embodied soul.
So, I am super glad that we now have a date for our next Professional Training in November 2024. If you want to jump on board that, there is still time. Our path is rigorous and vigorous. So naturally, before training to hold space for others, one deeply goes into the experience of being held in that space for one’s own inner work. Thus, there are substantial pre-requisites to the Professional Training, central to which is completing a Movement Medicine Apprenticeship, of which there are two coming up in time – one with Yasia Leiserach and David Mooney (English speaking) and one with Anne Ena Bernard (French speaking).
I’ve been thinking a lot about the relationship between the emotion of fear and the element of earth recently. This might seem like an odd mixture. This month on the Study Hub I’m bringing together what is for me a whole new understanding about the relationship between earth, life in a body and the emotional energy of fear, which I think is useful as we all have to deal with this energy in life, even if we’d like to think that we don’t.
From the response on the Hub so far, it seems that this work is really hitting a chord and proving helpful to people with something that we many of us struggle with. I am deeply grateful for the profound meaning my life has, being able to offer work which touches people so deeply. Thank you life and thank you to all those who dare to dance in these waters with us.
I love how the Study Hub journey is weaving month by month; David Mooney’s life changing work with “Befriending your Nervous System”, Ya’Acov’s work with the M.E.S.A. practice and Sacred Space and now we begin a new level of the odyssey with the heart, this time giving a month for each of the 4 chambers in turn. Practical as well as subtle medicine. If you want to join the Hub I cannot recommend it enough as a place to study, practice, connect, refresh. It is complementary rather than an “instead” of work in the room together in person. It’s not either or, though it does require more personal discipline at home, to choose to tune in, to study and to practice.
Unlike being in the room, we get to use images and film…. YEAH!!!! I simply LOVE being able to include such rich visuals to express what i want to say. Thank you once again to Kata Mathe for your outstanding visuals which light up our online work.
And lastly I want to share with you one way I will be celebrating my father’s 90th birthday on 19th April. I’d been feeling that I wanted to make a film with him, to support him to harvest and to share his insights for the next generation as well as to honour his life and work and contribution and to explore what happens if we bring embodied listening skills to an interview situation. Dad and I had spoken about this, on and off, for months, and, when I didn’t go to the Amazon, the perfect space opened up. I called our old friend and collaborator Emilio Mula and when I told him about the project, he said: “YES! I’ve been wanting to use my film making to honour the elderly and their lives and to support the passing of cultural knowledge to the next generation, so we don’t always have to re-invent the wheel.”
Wow. So we’ve had a glorious time making this movie and I’m grateful for what I’ve learnt once, more, from asking good questions. I’ve got to know more about my Dad and his work with housing, public participation, homelessness and Emmaus, and his quest for self acceptance. I hope you enjoy this little film; it’ll be out on the 19th April and is called My Road to Emmaus.
I wish you well and above all, keep dancing!
Susannah Darling Khan