Introduction
Open Floor is a transformational movement meditation practice and lively dance inquiry. The emphasis in Open Floor is to awaken our sensate experience, emotional intelligence, relational skills and our mindful, imaginative and spiritual awareness. Our methods are open and exploratory rather than prescribed. Open Floor is designed to support us in moving beyond how we’ve been taught to move (or not). Using our bodies, we learn to move along the continuum between fixed and fluid. We discover how to move between habit and creative possibility.
Open Floor shares deep roots with a wide array of movement modalities, and the Movement Cycle in particular draws inspiration and shape from Gestalt Awareness Practice (GAP) developed by Chris and Dick Price.
Definition
The Movement Cycle (Open Attention-Enter-Explore-Settle) is the basic unit of our practice – it can be as short as a song, as long as a two- to three-hour session; it might be a score repeated over and over throughout a long workshop. This cycle is our movement meditation spiral, continuous and never-ending, an awareness we carry on and off the dance floor.
Purpose
This cycle helps both mover and teacher know where they are, and how to use embodied movement to navigate their experience well. In time, movers learn to listen for their own inner movement cycles and will use that awareness to explore and enjoy deepening their dance experiences in open practice sessions. Off the dance floor, movers start to notice their own personal movement cycles in any given day, mood, conversation, task or moment of life.
The 4 Phases of the Movement Cycle
1. OPEN ATTENTION
At the start of the cycle, we learn to track both inner and outer awareness. We cultivate open attention to all 4 Dimensions of Embodiment, of our humanness (physical, emotional, mind, soul). We embrace any Relational Hungers we might be feeling (for solitude, connection, belonging and spirit). In this phase of the cycle, we allow our attention to travel inside and out without direction, allowing ourselves to notice and include anything that’s true in the moment: a longing, a jittery sensation, the pure physical pleasure of moving, an ache, repetitive thoughts, or fantasies of the future. So much life arrives with us when we walk in the door to practice and will keep shifting as we move.
2. Enter
A key aspect to entering is establishing an embodied anchor – moving towards sensation in a specific part of the body. Consciously entering what is moving through us, guides us to focus our attention in a particular direction, to be fully physically aware, with curiosity, intention and willingness to investigate.
3. Explore
This is where we broaden, deepen, expand and play with various movement resources with both guided and self-directed movement explorations. New possibilities can grow, and old patterns can shift. This exploration phase of the cycle naturally encourages creativity and connection. The teacher can guide students towards new possibilities or allow them to unfold on their own. As teachers, we learn to sense when a particular exploration has gone as far as it can or wants to go, and we move to settling.
In the Explore phase of the Movement Cycle, all four continuums are at play. Attention to these will help deepen the exploration.
- Fixed and Fluid
- Include and Exclude
- Habit and Choice
- Absence and Presence
4. Settle
Settling comes in many forms and textures.
- Sometimes it is a release of what has been built up in the exploration phase, or perhaps the active change of breath from sympathetic to parasympathetic.
- It might involve contact with another mover, or a reconnecting with the group body, or naming the experience we just had while dancing.
- It may be a slowing down or sitting and stilling.
- Settling is a form of digestion, integration and reorganization.
- Settling helps re-map the nervous system, allowing new embodied and relational pathways to be encoded.
Once settled, we return to Open Attention, a return to “How now?” as we end our session or move into another cycle.
A movement cycle for life
Being aware of the Movement Cycle, does not mean we predetermine what will happen, nor how each phase will happen – only that they do happen. A key value in Open Floor is embracing and moving with the unknown. Our movement practice fosters the skill of moving through this cycle mindfully as a way to navigate and keep present with experience as it unfolds. As a mover, you will be offered guidelines, images, anchors, touch points, themes, creative problems, and inquiries that can help you find your own creativity, your own meaning and current or new pathways through the cycle.
The Movement Cycle becomes like the “main stream of the river”: even though we know there are tributaries, eddies, rapids, falls and pools of still water along the way, your teacher can bring the group back into the cycle where each student may have left off, and support completion.
The Movement Cycle works as a container for our dance because we all know it on a human level, without thinking about it. It is everywhere in our lives. It’s a universal language that supports and enriches the Open Floor movement practice.
