What is Authentic Movement?

Authentic Movement is a practice that has been woven into my life since my first year at Naropa University as a graduate student of dance/movement therapy. It is not surprising that I would discover a practice there that was powerful enough to change my life forever as my decision to move to Boulder, CO and attend Naropa was seismic shift from being raised Catholic and growing up in Chicago. Yet at twenty-five years old, I was seeking something completely different – something that would challenge and ultimately shatter all of my assumptions about what reality was. A friend of mine in college had shared with me a copy of Pema Chodron’s The Wisdom of No Escape and although that was all I knew about Buddhism at the time, it was enough to make me want to attend the school founded by Pema Chodron’s teacher, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. We were required to take a meditation class and we bowed in and out of every class, so ritual and discipline was woven into the culture there. But it was studying and practicing Authentic Movement with my teacher, Zoe Avstreih, that impacted me the most profoundly. 

As a trained modern dancer, I was accustomed to movement improvisation, but Authentic Movement was improvisation on a whole other level than I was familiar with at the time. In the practice, one is invited to close one’s eyes and listen deeply to what moves them. It sounds simple enough, yet like most spiritual practices, holds many paradoxes as it is both simple and profound at once. There is a clear structure for the form, which involves a mover and a witness. There are many ways this can look, from moving in dyads (one mover and one witness) to triads (one mover and two witnesses) to a long circle, which involves one (or more) witness holding space for a larger group of movers for a longer period of time. Another part of the structure of the form is that the mover is the expert on their experience so they always speak first after moving and the witness speaks second. The witness can share both in movement and in words, and often witnessing through movement can deepen the experience for both mover and witness. If the witness uses words, the intention is to be in service of the mover and reflect what they said so as to minimize projection from the witness to the mover. 

This can have many implications, from learning how to communicate with others in a way that allows for more spaciousness as well as rewiring our experience of attachment with our original primary caregiver. Moving in the presence of an unconditionally accepting witness can help us feel deeply seen and felt which allows us to cultivate our own unconditionally loving inner witness. Authentic Movement can also bring us more fully into our somatic selves, into the deeper truths that our bodies hold. Sometimes movement can feel repetitive and even boring, and at times we feel as if we are moving through portals of transformation and our body is being moved by something larger than ourselves. There is an inherent order that occurs both individually and within the collective body/group when we close our eyes, listen deeply and move from that place. There is no ‘wrong’ movement, as long as we are not hurting ourselves or others. If one wants to move largely through the space, cracking the eyes open is imperative, but the invitation is still to stay with one’s own experience. 

More recently, connecting to my voice through singing and channeling songs has been a natural evolution of expression and movement through the limb of the voice. This deepening of connection to my voice organically led me to working with indigenous plant medicines in Peru. Sitting in ceremony and both listening to and singing songs, mostly in Quechua (the native language of Peru), I was brought back to my roots in Authentic Movement as the development of my own inner witness allowed me to be present to all that unfolded in me through the ceremonies. Also similar to AM, I felt part of the collective body, as experiences that others reported having during the ceremonies often resonated with me and somehow held a piece of clarity for my own journey. Another similarity with AM is that there have been recurring movement themes or body shapes I find myself in which point to a way I am being guided to trust the unfolding of my process. I feel the gift of receiving these movement themes that emerge as medicine for my own being. 

So, for this retreat, it feels like a beautiful colliding of both the wisdom of the body and the wisdom of the voice, all within a container of ceremony and reverence. My friends whom I have sat in ceremony with will be leading song circles (sans plant medicine) which bring one into the frequency of the indigenous plants through sound and song. The songs, or Icaros, have been channeled from the frequency of the plants by various curanderos, including our teacher from Peru, Cristina Mendoza. The vibration of the words and melodies of the songs carry specific frequencies which move energy and bring us into the healing frequency of the plant, which brings us closer to the vibration of the earth. This allows us to release energies which are not ours and helps bring us further into alignment with our true selves, our core essence. This is also what happens in Authentic Movement as we learn to listen more closely to what truly moves us and allow ourselves to be seen in doing so by an unconditionally loving witness.

Yoga practice is also a facet of this retreat, which can be a wonderful way to integrate sound and movement and come even more into a place of calm and stillness in the mind and body.

To circle back to Authentic Movement, it is indeed a movement practice but it is also a way of seeing. It is a way of learning to see oneself and others with less judgment and more spaciousness and compassion. Through entering into the realm of movement, of listening to and following the inner stirrings of the body, we begin to feel and know who we really are. And as we allow ourselves to be seen and received by an unconditionally accepting witness, we begin to welcome parts of ourselves that we may have learned to always turn away from in order to survive. This is an invitation to come home to the aliveness of our own bodies and souls; our own truth. 

Return to the Living Center Retreat – August 27-30 in Escondido, CA

“She Knows the Way” by Jeannine Salemi