ShapeShifting and the body/mind connection

 

Your body (which includes your brain) is the teacher of your conscious mind; not the other way around.

 

Your conscious mind is a tool of your body. Your body tells the conscious mind what to do to create a healthy environment in which it can survive. The problem is that your conscious mind does not listen to what your body is telling it. It does not listen because it cannot handle the scope of what your body knows. Instead, it runs and hides from the truth that your body knows. As a result, you become an unhealthy person. It does not build a physical, mental and emotional environment that is based on the intelligence and knowledge that your body wants your conscious mind to have.

 

The goal of ShapeShifting is to allow your body to tell its story. It will tell that story in such a way that your conscious mind can listen to what your body knows.  Once your conscious mind has heard that story it can use its gifts to create a healthy environment in which you can survive and thrive.

 

ShapeShifting focuses on three modes/avenues that will allow your body to tell its story. The umbrella under which these modes/avenues are housed might be described as a healing art form. Under this umbrella resides expressive movement, physical and emotional therapy, and meditation. The vehicle that ShapeShifting uses is spontaneous movement meditation.

 

My name is Doug and throughout this website I will use my body’s story to illustrate how it has spoken to my conscious mind. I do not expect in any way that your body will tell my story. Your body has it own story that you will discover as you use this practice of creating spontaneous movement meditations.

 

Because the heart of ShapeShifting is movement, I will start with the present day misunderstanding of expressive movement as it has developed in recent history.

 

Dance as we know it today is a dying art form. ShapeShifting can bring it back to life.

 

Dance as we know it today is a choreographic process based solely on the conscious mind.

 

Dance as we know it today is basically choreographed dance. A person has an idea that they want to express in the form of body movements. They string together a series of movements that they think will express that idea. Along the way they may edit this series of movements. These movements may be based on styles or versions of styles that they have been taught or copied from others. These movements are then memorized by dancers and performed on stages in front of audiences as a product to be consumed.

 

All of this process (italicized words) from beginning to end is based on the conscious mind. This is thought-based movement created with some sort of intention and audience in mind.

 

This mental process which is based in the conscious mind has destroyed the power of the body to express itself.

 

Your body is the most complex living organisms on earth. It is the result of billions of years of evolution beginning with inorganic chemical compounds all the way up to the millions of daily electrochemical reactions that take place in your body today. Your body carries the recorded history of this evolutionary process in the DNA strings that reside in each of its cells.

 

This is, in a sense, a collective memory of all organisms that have gone before you on earth. What your body senses in the course of your daily life is added to that collective DNA memory. Your body and only your body has experienced and remembers all of the moment by moment encounters it has had with the outside world throughout the coarse of your life.

 

Your conscious mind has little or no access to this collective memory or to what your body senses and remembers from your inception in the womb to this moment. In fact, your conscious mind does not want to know what your body knows.  Your conscious mind does not speak the language of your body’s story. It creates mind stories. It imagines what a body story might look like. It has the shell of a body story but it is empty and sterile inside. It lacks immediacy and truthfulness. That is why dance on stage is a dying art form. It does not connect with real bodies. What we see today is sterile dances created in sterile studios presented on sterile stages to a distant audience.

 

For decades now we have allowed the limited intelligence of our conscious minds to dictate to our bodies what kind of movement is worthy of being expressed and viewed.

 

You can set your body free to remember and express what it knows about you.

 

There are multiple levels of consciousness and intelligence that energy feed-back loops create in your body before it reaches the level of your conscious mind. When you hear a loud noise or a bug suddenly hits you in the face, your body reacts nanoseconds before you are even consciously aware of the event occurring. This reveals at least one unseen level of intelligent consciousness that could fill this awareness gap. This hidden level would have full access to your body and its ancient collective memories as well as those memories of your own encounters throughout your life. There is a place in your brain and a consequent state of mind that allows your body to both fully remember and express what it knows about you and the world around you. This place is called your preconscious mind.

 

You can open yourself up to your preconscious mind. Your preconscious mind is where your body lives and breathes freely. It is the place where its intelligence and power is set free. It is the place where your body creates the movement that expresses who you are. And it is in this movement that your body relives all that it has gathered throughout your life with its complex sensory mechanisms. When you are in your preconscious mind, you will not perform movement; you will literally re-live what your body knows about you and our whole collective memory. And this movement is uniquely yours and not someone else’s choreographed product imposed on your body.

 

You can also open yourself up to the eternal energy that flows within your body and through your body. Energy is forever transforming itself from one form of energy into another. It is the force that creates all levels of consciousness with in you. It is the force that seeks expression through your body. Energy wants to be incarnated and it finds its embodiment in the movement of your body. Your preconscious mind is open to this energy wish and welcomes it as a co-creator of your unique movement. This again stands in stark contrast to the process of the conscious mind.

 

 

ShapeShifting is the vehicle that will allow your body to speak with power, truth, and clarity.

 

ShapeShifting is a healing art form which integrates the disciplines of movement, therapy, and meditation. These combined practices allow your body to tell its story in such a way that it will heal you and those who experience your body’s story.

 

ShapeShifting is Expressive Movement.

 

The heart of ShapeShifting is movement and the energy that flows through that movement. Movement is the universal language of your body. It is also the vehicle that allows the energy that flows within and through your body to give form to itself. Movement is the process by which you express and relive the painful parts of your story and consequently heal yourself and those who take in your story. Movement is the unique way in which you can practice meditation which will allow you to live with focus and clarity. The more that you practice your body’s unique movement forms the more you will communicate with power and clarity.

 

ShapeShifting is Therapy.

 

Part of all therapeutic methods is the process of retelling your past in a way that it is embraceable. You can take it in and claim it as part of who you are. Movement in many ways allows you to literally relive those powerful parts of your past with the full expression of emotional and physical realities that were there in that moment. The energy that flows through your movement supports you as you face those buried events of your past. Your movement embraces you and you embrace your movement. Movement becomes your companion.

 

ShapeShifting is Meditation.

 

Movement meditation has basically the same goal as traditional meditation. Both of them seek to set you free so that you can see yourself and the world around you clearly without clutter or delusion. Shapeshifting uses a form of meditation called open monitoring meditation. It is the opposite of focused attention. Instead of concentrating on something, your attention is open and remains aware of everything that is happening. All experiences are perceived as they happen, with a goal of remaining non-judgmental toward yourself. Some of the things that are watched in this meditation are thoughts, feelings, memories, sounds, smells, and bodily sensations. As your body moves, it is open and aware of all that is part of your immediate environment. Your body takes in through its senses all that it detects and incorporates that sensed knowledge into the movement that flows out of it. The practice is about listening to your body without judgment so that both you and your body are free to express whatever needs to be expressed.

 

In Summary

 

Your body has an intelligence and powers far beyond those of your conscious mind. Your body remembers all of your interactions with the surrounding world and the people in it. It is the most powerful sensory organism on earth that comprehends all of your joys, sorrows, conflicts, loves, physical and emotional pain, etc.. Your body only needs a time and place to express those memories. When your body tells its story, it releases you to be who you are. It has the power to transform you into a teller of truth- not through words but through the language of movement.

 

The spontaneous movement meditations that your body will create have the power to communicate to yourself and others who you really are. Your body will move through time and space with a beauty and grace that reveals a body completely at home and fully present in every moment.

 

As you speak the universal language of movement, you will be experienced by other bodies at a preconscious level. This level of consciousness is where all of our bodies live and breathe in complete freedom to tell their stories.

There are four foundational components of ShapeShifting: your body, your preconscious mind, your environment, and energy flow:

 

Your body is the most complex sensory organism on earth. It apprehends, comprehends, and remembers all of your encounters with the environment around you. And it is able to express all of this through the powerful language of movement. It knows who you are.

 

Your preconscious mind is a level of intelligent awareness far beyond that of your conscious mind. It is  where your body lives and breathes and expresses all that it knows about you and your environment.

 

Your environment includes all living organisms that have gone before you and all that surrounds you now.

 

Energy flow organizes and maintains all living and non-living forms in the universe from the beginning of time to this moment.

 

Your body, your preconscious mind, and your environment are all activated and linked/joined/fused together by the flow of energy within them and through them. And when they are all brought together in one place and time, the power of your body to tell its story happens. That power is set free through Shapeshifting.

 

For a more detailed explanation of the neurophysiological and psychological theory behind ShapeShifting click here.

 

 

Below is a diagram that attempts to show the relationship between your body, your conscious mind, your preconscious mind, and your environment and the essential unifying and organizing function of energy flow. Note where your conscious mind is in relation to your body.