School of Movement Medicine - the embodiement and expression of the essential self

The beginning of the year always finds us busy with boxes - fetching boxes of leaflets from our printer, then delivering boxes of envelopes containing leaflets to the post-office, then more visits to the post-office with boxes of parcels packed with leaflets, then the delivery of boxes to Susannah and Ya’Acovs’ house, and finally the storage of boxes containing the remaining leaflets. There are so many boxes that we have to remind ourselves that we are not in the box business but in the Movement Medicine business. Then we wait.

by Susannah and Ya'Acov

Dear Friends of the Dance,

A very happy new year to you all!

We’re back on the wonderful trains again clickety-clacking through the flooded English countryside on our ways to Warsaw, Prague and Manchester to begin our 20th year teaching movement and see our families. It’s also the beginning of the second year of the School of Movement Medicine. We celebrated our birthday with a beautiful meal and an all-night ceremony on the 9th January. At 5.00 am on the 10th, Roland and Susanne joined us at our ceremonial hearth and we sent out our prayers through the warm glow of the winter fire. We all reflected on what a year it had been and how fast things have evolved.

The other day I bought my first pair of reading glasses. Have you noticed how the small print on everything has got much smaller recently? (!). Well, an initiatory moment!

At the same time I feel like I’ve gone back to school. In keeping with our commitment to experience being a beginner at least once a year, and following our growing excitement about (making) music as medicine, Ya’Acov and I are learning guitar together. I’m studying more music theory with my old friend and colleague Julian Marshall, doing a Family Constellations training (fantastic! watch this space!) and learning about systems theory with Jake Chapman.

In December, 120 dancers came together for a fabulous evening of dancing to Classical music with Susannah in Antwerp.

As a child classical music was the only music in her parents house, and so it was more or less the only music she heard as child. And so she used to dance wildly to many of these same tracks. So many people asked for the play list, that she promised to put it in the next newsletter. Here it is, with respect to the composers, musicians and beautiful, free and heartful dances, which came through you all that night!