My Approach

Workshops in Contemplation, Reflection and Action integrate three bodily actions, breathing or contemplative sensing, reflection or fusing, and action. Each phase of the workshop incorporates elements of breath with somatic imagery that leads to action. Each segment of a workshop provides a building block for the next segment. For example: an introductory workshop would include: The first phase begins with breath. Just as life begins and ends with breath, so must conscious action. The challenge is to bring breath, thought, and action into mindful, unified, dynamic relationship. Awareness of how the breath enters and leaves the body then becomes a gateway to other sensory/proprioceptive capacities, including touch, taste, sight, smell, and hearing. Once you have a feeling for breath, you "fuse" with it by absorbing it inward, literally yawning or swallowing it into the cells, joints, muscles and limbs of the body until you have a deep sensory awareness--feeling. This fusion and released feeling gives rise to action. For the first phase of the exercise, action takes the form of exhalation: a letting go and lying down of tensions and habitual concerns; a linking up or grounding your body by bringing it in alignment with gravity; and, finally, a "standing body scan," in which you direct attention to each area of the body to discover and release areas. Phase Two, "Exploration," takes this embodied sense a step further by bringing it into dynamic act of discovery with the environment. You can focus on a specific indoor or outdoor space and or the objects in the space. For example, you can use an ordinary object and use your breath to fuse with the object, forgetting its habitual function and allowing it to reinvent itself in the present moment. This fusion then leads you to some form of action with the object. Released from habitual thoughts or patterns, you find the object reinvented in your hands. Another form of exploration is through contact with another person. Partners begin by facing one another, with only their index fingers touching. Again drawing on their somatic memory of feel-fuse-act, they take in the other, fuse with the other, and then act by sending, or "exhaling," their energy into the other. As one sends, the other receives and internalizes the energy, which fuses with her body, until it prompts an action or "exhalation" which the other than receives. Contemplation, Reflection and Action can be incorporated with a variety of performance explorations from those involved with texts to those that engage techniques such as Laban and Mask or deepen one’s experience of specific physical disciplines. Although this approach was specifically created for performers, the approach can be used by anyone who wants to expand their awareness or deepen their life experience.