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

Many years ago when I taught English as a foreign language I sometimes had to teach students about conditional sentences. I especially liked the 'past unreal conditional' and in order to practice it we would play a game in which we would tell a story just using past unreal conditional sentences. This morning I found myself composing in my mind just such a story.

If Ya’Acov hadn’t been feeling ill he probably wouldn’t have left his wallet in the back of the taxi.

If the taxi driver hadn’t been such a good guy he wouldn’t have handed the wallet into the police.

Today is a month away from the official beginning of spring. Underneath the tree where I like to sit in the forest to do my morning meditations, there are the beginnings of the carpet of bluebells that will appear in April. These tiny green shoots hold so many promises. All around, things are stirring and as I look within, I feel the same too.

I’m into ecstasy. I don’t mean the drug - I mean the experience. The unveiled sensual, spiritual, joyous and shared experience of life. I was in a whole food shop in Bern recently, and I was happy. So I was singing. (or does it go the other way around, I was singing, so I was happy?) And a lovely old man came up to me and asked me “where can I get the good mood?” I did not understand his Swiss German and he became more and more animated as he tried to mime to me what he meant.

by Andrew Holmes

I was a theatre director for many years before I started teaching the 5 Rhythms. So theatre more than dance was the art form through which I first learnt to make sense of the world. All those feelings out there in the space, like mine, but reassuringly not actually mine.. All those people, situations, lives - vivid and clarified. Like reading a book, but alive and present in the room with you right then and there in the moment. And all of this experience shared with others, in a great communal feast.. Rich, powerful stuff.

This month's winner of £100 School of Movement Medicine workshop voucher

I have a photograph of my grandmother on my mantelpiece. It’s a great photo; she’s striding down some street in Dublin with a smile. Today I lit a candle for her, she died a year ago, I knew her to be a proud and private woman, a woman who loved to dance. This photo has been chopped in half, my mother told me she cut my granddad out after a row they had. But that’s another story.

By David Kellett

Last year I attended Resonance with Susannah. It was really magic, I'll never forget what I felt was happening both outside of me and inside me during those four days. The air around us was vibrating full of love, warm. Just as if we were birthing ourselves again and in a different way, one after one, helping the others to "come to light" as we call birth in Italian and in French.

by Ya'Acov (plus a piece by Susannah)

Our beautiful dog Anushka died in the early hours of the morning on January 28^th. She was 10 years old and had been a beautiful part of our and many other people’s lives. She came to sea with us, sat in ceremony with us, and took us out walking in the forest every day we were home. We had her funeral in the back garden and her grave is by the pond. Flowers are already planted there.

by Julia Knezevic

After dancing and singing in the streets of Cologne some weeks ago (carnival is always specially celebrated here) the spirit of the upcoming DanSing - workshop takes this energy field to a different/higher level.
“the energies of celebration and prayer are coming together” Susannah says, and I feel the vibration of the middle age chorals of the Cologne Cathedral humming through the times into the now, an exciting moment!

Last month we asked you to send in your limericks based on Movement Medicine and dance.

This is what we got:

by Peter Wazinski

about a year ago I compiled a classical wave, see below.