Pemanagpo Bodypoetry

Dear all,
Unfortunately due to the lack of demand, Safe Connect: Touch & Consent class was cancelled.
Instead, we do a 75-min session of emove every Friday at 20:00!
Join us!

DANCE / EMBODIMENT CLASSES ON FRIDAYS!

Deep dance, movement and touch practices for all levels, shapes, genders and abilities.
🎭Emove (19:30)
A dance practice on the basis of 5 rhythms, gaga, ecstatic dance and some others. It is a 50-minutes guided session of psychosomatic exploration through dancing 6 types of emotional states. It helps with reinforcing the connection between the body and the psyche, brings a brighter emotional dimension to one‘s dance practice and helps with managing one‘s affects through conscious and embodied process of associating and dissociating with a wide range of emotional spectrum.
(Bring clothes to sweat 💦 )
https://www.facebook.com/events/7579818132060772/7579818168727435/

🤗Safe Connect Sessions (20:30)
A movement and contact practice that invites the participants to safely explore their boundaries and enhance the sense of connectedness and responsiveness through experiments with distancing and touch in a safe and non-judgemental space. The participants will be invited for a guided partner work (we will change the partners after each exercise) that involve movement, touch, eye contact, embrace.
https://www.facebook.com/events/545662717087293/545662720420626/
Studio OneSpace
Limmatquai 116
8001 Zürich
Each class: 25CHF / monthly abo available

!STARTING THIS FRIDAY! 6.05.2022
// Regular classes in the heart of Zürich //

A brand new way to connect with yourself and others.
19:30 – Emove (Express & Flow)
20:30 – Safe Connect Sessions / Touch & Consent

Studio OneSpace
Limmatquai 116
8001 Zürich

ABOUT:
// Emove is a dance practice created by Lerie Pemanagpo on the basis of 5 rhythms, gaga, ecstatic dance and some others. It is a 50-minutes guided session of psychosomatic exploration through dancing 6 types of emotional states. It helps with reinforcing the connection between the body and the psyche, brings a brighter emotional dimension to one‘s dance practice and helps with managing one‘s affects through conscious and embodied process of associating and dissociating with a wide range of emotional spectrum.

// Safe Connect is a movement / contact practice that invites the participants to safely explore their boundaries and enhance the sense of connectedness and responsiveness through experiments with distancing and touch in a safe and non-judgemental space.
The participants will be invited for a guided partner work (we will change the partners after each exercise) that involve movement, touch, eye contact, embrace.

What's going on down there? The neurophysiology of losing ourselves.

Embodiment starts with seemingly simple things, which nowadays are at high risk of becoming the most difficult. That is: acknowledging your physical reality. “Being in one’s body” doesn’t necessarily mean doing a split or having ripped abs. It starts from acknowledging, noticing, registering, tasting, recognising. Those are not simply mental operations I’m talking about here. Embodiment means recognition of the reality, recognition of what is required here-and-now. Are you thirsty, do you need more water? Is it time you change your body position?
And then it extends to whatever surrounds your body. Is the air in the room stale? Is there too much dust? Does your car needs cleaning?
And then it extends even further. How healthy is the air in my town? Does this garbage belong here? Am I aware of the toxic emissions in my area? Recognising the cycles of nature also belongs to the basics of embodiment. Is it the right time of the day/month/year to do what you’re doing?
To me, ecology and embodiment are close to being the same thing. They both deal with the right time and space, those basic physical dimensions, for doing what we do.

Even professional dancers can live dissociated from this basic physicality time to time. We might try to train a separate group of muscles, completely unaware of how much pollution we absorb from our own apartment. Pursuing the goal of apparent “embodiment” in training, we might forget to drink clean water, to have enough sleep, to empty the stinky garbage bin.

Communication with physical reality is the first and very fundamental step towards embodiment. Communication requires relatedness. And relatedness requires courage to give in. Relatedness is something different from pursuing the goal or hunting the enemy down (whether this “enemy” is a rival, addiction or unwanted fat tissue). To be “related”, to become one family with the body, means to respect the time, the space, the situation and other bodies involved. To have a clear sensation of what is needed at this exact moment. Those are the things they don't train in fitness centres.

One might say it requires a high amount of vigilance, but awareness doesn't equate vigilance. Also, you cannot muscle your way to embodiment – there's nothing to do but to dwell in it. The real discipline of body and mind relies upon surrender and registration rather than "doing" something. Being embodied is simply to give the right answer to life in the right moment. But, as one of my teachers, Imre Thormann, likes to say: "Don't give the answer by yourself. It's too complicated".
Remember, reality is ready to welcome you back at any moment. And so is your body.

WORKING WITH ANXIETY / BECOMING USELESS BODY

"Everything has speed limit. Physical has its speed limit. Then, the subtle body or emotion has its own speed limit. Then, of course, thinking mind has also a speed limit. If the body's moving fast, I think it's quite okay. Thinking, clear and fast, I think, it's very good. But unnecessary feeling in the body, like rushing up, [is telling you:] "Just do it, do it, do it! Go now! Eat now! Finish now!"... ...That is very difficult for the physical body. This unnecessary [wind/energy movement] is going through your channels and make them tight".

Tsoknyi Rinpoche is giving beautiful explanation of how our goal-oriented lifestyle can affect our body and psyche, according to Tibetan medicine. When we don't respect our psychic/emotional speed limit, wind-channels (qi or psycho-somatic energy is called "wind" in Tibetan medicine) in upper body become clotted. We speed up, devouring information, food, emotional responses and perceptions, without processing it adequately. The result is anxiety, which is essentially energy coming up from the bottom of your body that cannot truly reach its destination, being suppressed by the "tightened" chest and head. It happens on physical level by micro-contractions of the muscles and inadequate activation of sympathetic nervous system. Psychically we can describe it as such: the signals from the depth of your being, your vital energy that wants to reach and bring the message, is prevented from being felt and recognised.

Tsoknyi Rinpoche compares the processes happening in the physical and subtle body during periods of anxiety to putting a car on "neutral" but pressing accelerator to the maximum speed. The initial aim to "complete" something becomes its opposite. He names over-achieving and goal-oriented attitude one of the greatest contributors to our daily anxiety. The flip-side of anxiety is apathy and exhaustion.

This is why becoming a "useless body" is so necessary. Giving rest to your organs, senses and thoughts is needed in order for them to function. Unfortunately, even the most ancient form of "useless body" – a single-pointed meditation, became in the West but an utilised tool to "achieve": better concentration, better results, better relationships, even more money or respect. In this way, we want our meditation to be "useful", but for what?

Shall we regain our centre, allowing psyche and soma to function in their own speed, we would be able to see how life can spontaneously unravel by its own: how our body is able to cure oneself without medications, how our emotions regain wellbeing without additional stimulation, how our thoughts become clear without effort.

Working with anxiety, it's crucial to focus on your body centre, which is about three fingers below your navel – "Hara" in Japanese or "Tandyen" in Chinese – and its connection to the rest of the body. In the video below Tsoknyi Rinpoche is talking about the importance "for the energy to come home", to this place, which is: to shift the focus from your head back to the bottom of your body. I call it "dropping your head/heart to the inside of your belly". You can try a simple exercise after a strenuous mental activity or emotional outburst. Imagine your head – if it was an intellectual activity, or your heart – if it was an emotional one – to literally drop inside of your belly. You might want to comfortably stand or sit and move your hips in a way that will allow you to massage your inner organs, to really feel where your Hara is located. You can place both of your palms on the spot below your navel and feel the warmth penetrating your whole lower belly and pelvic organs.

Find at least some time every day to become "useless body". Let your hands, feet, head drop. Let the limbs that aren't used at the moment fully relax. Let your inner organs float in the liquids of your torso. Let your thoughts just float naturally and spontaneously, not arranged by the will of your ego. Breathe. Chew. Feel your feet while walking.

Remember your Hara at least two times a day. Listen to your natural speed and respect the speed limit of your body, speech and mind. Stop searching for means, meanings, ways, solutions at least for some time. Finding solutions is too complicated, instead – let the means, meanings and solution find you and your soft passive body and rested psyche, coming up from the depth of your being.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOJAjStgsy8&feature=share

Subtle Body (Speeding) An excerpt from Tsoknyi Rinpoche's teachings on Fully Being. For more information, and to subscribe to the whole course, please visit http://www.fullybeing.o...

“There is no sense talking about “being true to yourself” until you are sure what voice you are being true to. It takes hard work to differentiate the voices of the unconscious.”
— Marion Woodman

Every Sunday morning in November (except 23.11, Saturday).