What is a body story?
Your body has a story to tell. It is a story that only it can tell. That story is based on the remembered bits of experience of organisms that have evolved on earth. This cumulative experience or collective memory of billions of organisms has been transmitted through the DNA strings that now reside in your body’s cells. Your body adds to this ancient memory everything that it has collected from your whole life through its sensory mechanisms. It records all of your joys, sorrows, anger, pleasure, losses, physical pain, etc.. Though your conscious mind has its memories, it cannot come close to apprehending, comprehending, and remembering all that you have experienced. Only your body is capable of this. It is a kind of sensory intelligence.
Your body tells its story in your preconscious mind. This is a place in your brain and a state of mind. It is a level of consciousness unlike your conscious mind. This place is where your body lives and breathes; it is where your body remembers and expresses what it knows about you. Your conscious mind cannot handle this because it is not designed to do so; it has other purposes. The result is that your conscious mind does not have a direct connection to an extremely intelligent and powerful part of you. However, your preconscious mind functions as the intermediary between your body and your conscious mind. It is also the place where your body interacts with the environment around you. It is the flow of energy from within your body and through it from your environment that creates and sustains these connections.
If you want to know the truth about yourself, your body will tell you. That may be both terrifying and liberating at the same time. ShapeShifting is not for everybody. If you are courageous and a truth seeker, you will be able to allow your body to tell its story. However, it does not use language as we know it to tell your story. It uses the universal language of movement. Your body has its own movement vocabulary and organizes that vocabulary into phrases, and sentences, and paragraphs which tells the whole story of what it knows about you and the world around you.
This is not choreographed movement. It is a spontaneous flow of movement. This movement is not performed. It is a re-living of what your body remembers through movement. Choreographed movement is performed movement which lacks truth and integrity. It is little more than gymnastics or pet tricks. It lacks urgency and immediacy. Choreographed movement comes from the conscious mind, not the preconscious mind. It is calculated, premeditated, and manipulated and thus stale and sterile. It is the act of someone imposing their body’s movement on other bodies. When you perform someone else’s movement, you are telling someone else’s body story. This is not your body speaking.
When your body speaks, it speaks to other bodies at a level beyond conscious awareness. ShapeShifting engages bodies at the preconscious level. This connection is beyond observing a performance; it is a communication of common experience at a level beyond words and ideas. It is a recognition of shared experience woven into each of our bodies cellular fiber. It is a part of that collective preconsciousness of all living organisms. It is your body’s version of that ancient remembered experience.