One of the most significant phases in terms of recall of felt sense experiences that emerged from movements beyond my usual range of explorations have been during the pandemic time since mid-2020 till date. These were experiences that the body and mind were witness to various stages across time and space till date. As I am writing this blog and reminiscing these moments each stage feels like a movie of a different genre playing in my head with the felt sense in different parts of the body acknowledging them all. Being a patient audience to these movies with my body and mind as the co-producers and the pandemic-lock down situation as the narrative of the story, my body built in a healthier sense of resilience from which emerged a new-found sense of creativity in the journey of exploring and widening my personal movement vocabulary. These explorations both online and offline ranged from learning basic Qi-Gong; an experiential workshop series in therapeutic movement; planned virtual dance sessions with a friend from another continent virtually with an ‘eclectic’ music playlist; swinging, jumping, hopping etc with a bunch of children introducing a range of movements for their agility among other therapeutic goals; and mindful movements exploring various emotions from time to time amongst other related activities. All these stemmed from options that came along as days, weeks and months passed by and the choices I made which seemingly served the need in those times, ‘good enough.’
My movement explorations adapted as I travelled to different cities which entailed different settings, weathers, schedules, people, and all these as a collective offered an array of enriching experiences in every phase. It was and continues to be interesting as an observer how my body responded to these external or inner circumstances and sometimes both moment to moment. As I progressed through these phases having explored my body’s natural capacity to move in the outer space whatever available at different times, I also explored the inner spaciousness which emerged as the need and seems to have expanded a fair bit, relatively speaking, over the last few months or rather years. And recently as a continuous process that became more exciting and following my curiosity, I explored more ways of movement in space in relation to and as part of the five elements – earth, water, fire, air and space. I specifically chose the element of space as I struggled through the experience of it not just physically owing to the confinement in the pandemic situation but also emotionally traversing through difficult times in spurts, where, I must add, the spacious stillness aspect at times gave birth to an enhanced bodily sense of it (space) later exploring them through movement forms arising naturally.
Thus far, these experiences in my journey have brought in more meaning to my ongoing explorations of overall resilience, the innate and ever-present openness of us humans and the allowing to witness and flow through with the felt sense informed by movement in time and space!
On this note, sharing here one of my favourite quotes – “If you don’t do your dance, who will?” ~ Gabrielle Roth
Written by: Pallavi Deshmukh
The art piece has been created in response to the post by Pallavi Deshmukh ©PallaviDeshmukhIADMT2021