In this authentic movement session, I felt like a child. I forgot all that I had previously stored in my mind about what movement should look and feel like. I erased my previous experiences of life and my stresses about the future. Maybe this is what my earlier evolutionary self is like. Simply being; not planning, thinking, or critizing. I was finally able to fight my mothers earlier in life warnings to: "act, not react..." to stimuli. I stopped planning my next actions and simply reacted to feeling and sensation. I reacted to things inside, outside, and around without thinking about them. My new childlike self didn't care that I was being watched, but was aware of being watched. I moved when I felt like it, smiled if I had the urge, and withdrew if I felt threatened by other loud or close movers. My reactions were controlled by urges with absolutely no command from my conscious mind and I loved it. I know there is a time and place and humans may be at an advantage for being planners with 12 step cognitive processes, but the release and freedom of reaction are what makes the interactions of animals so beautiful and intruiging to us. Although authentic movement can bring us closer to this state of being, I still find myself wondering if there is a way to truly get there. To be as our earlier evolutionary self.

Bodystory

Sage brush, pine trees, forest fire smoke, and the knapweed and flowers called baby’s breath. Every time I return home, I soak in the warmth and smells of my childhood summers on my parent’s ranch. Not to say that the chill air, snow, and smells of burning snowmobile oil aren’t equally gratifying in my remembrance. But the summers were full of dogs barking, horses fighting through the fence or neighing to each other across the road, or to me for some food. I would spend my extra hours in the barn, filled with the stinging, fresh scent of alfalfa; building hay forts and taming barn cats or chasing my brothers and their friends as they avoided the little sister by running up the hills and climbing trees. At the end of the day, washing off hay and dust. Remembering, horse rides that ended in a downpour of rain. Not the moldy Seattle rain, but a clear and fresh storm that pounded and raised the dust. What a wonderful sensation: Soaked hair, warm and sticky clothes with the house just in sight at the bottom of the hill. The summer rain showers of a mostly—desert landscape. The landscape that cradled my every experience until adulthood.-Jessica