USING ART IN MOTION FOR COURAGEOUS CONVERSATIONS
TEACHER HIGHLIGHT: KAIA HAWKINS “Every day we are surrounded by colour, nature shows us freely the beauty of the changing seasons with colour. Everyone is an artist when it comes to colour because colour infuses every moment of our lives, waking and sleeping, conscious and unconsciously.” Kaia Hawkins (she/they/ia), OFI teacher and creator of A […]
Balance is a moment in time rather than a goal
A continuum is something that keeps on going, changing slowly over time. It is a whole made up of many parts, with a range that is always present. One of the core principles we practice in Open Floor, is learning to move freely back and forth along the following 4 Continuums: Fixed and Fluid, Include […]
Finding Some Peace In Tel Aviv with Open Floor
May 2021, 72 hours after cease fire following an 11-day war in Israel and Gaza, Open Floor Teacher and Peace activist, Rivi Diamond, held an Open Floor Class with her acting students at the Theater department in Tel Aviv University, Israel. “Though we were all shaken, there was still a wide range of experiences after […]
OFI Libido becomes Embodied Sexuality
The Circle Interviews The Score got a chance to catch up with Monika Körschner who is the Operational Lead for the Open Floor International Embodied Sexuality Circle* about the new energy and what direction the circle is going. The Score: What’s been happening in your circle? Monika: This year the Libido Circle expanded to become […]
Open Floor Post War
When (am I writing this) A Monday in May 2021, 72 hours after cease fire of an 11-day war in Israel and Gaza. Why (am I sharing this with you) Right after teaching this class, I felt so full of emotions, that all I wanted to do was to download it in writing. After doing […]
Inviting Ability-Diversity to Your Floor
Erin Adams, Open Floor Teacher I have a disability that for most of my life has been pretty manageable. It’s considered an “Invisible” disability because you can’t see it; I can pass as non-disabled. Between the beginning of my Open Floor Teacher Training and my graduation, my condition worsened and the way I moved and […]
An Immediate And Direct Application of Open Floor In My Life
Photography by Anita Murphy Johanne Webb had been hoping to train with Open Floor ever since she attended her first class 3 years ago, immediately seeing the potential of bringing embodied movement into her therapeutic work as a Family Constellations Facilitator. As a self employed, single parent, however, the time away and the cost involved […]
5 Ways We Are Expanding Movement Practice Through Pandemic
As lockdown has diminished our personal worlds to be much smaller, simpler, quieter (maybe!), our lives feel tighter, contracted. Many of us feel confined in one place, restricted to our homes, and reduced to socializing with the same people. However, those who are showing up to the movement practice online with Open Floor teachers are […]
Building a Global Network of Teachers
While many of us spent our winter adjusting to another season of pandemic life, working from home and moving holiday celebrations to Zoom, Camila de Asis attended the Open Floor Foundational Training – the Ground Floor Lab. She knew she wanted to train to be a teacher with Open Floor and this was her first […]
The Four Relational Hungers
At the core of Open Floor philosophy is the understanding that “we are always in relationship”. We are in relationship not only with each other and ourselves, but also with animals, land, art, ancestry, and the entire natural world. Relationship is a need, much in the same way as food and water. The drive for […]
A Movement Cycle for Life
The Open Floor Movement Cycle is a useful intellectual and embodied map of how physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual energy moves through time and space. The Movement Cycle shows how, with awareness, we can support this cycling of energy to become a rich, meaningful, and creative learning experience. The four phases of our movement meditation […]
A resource based movement practice
Open Floor is a resource-oriented movement practice. Resourcing ourselves is an ongoing process we can use to build resilience and capacity. Resources provide support, sustenance, and fuel. Movement resources support creativity, emotional intelligence, connection to oneself, to others, and to Source. Somatic resources are the physical actions and capacities that support self-regulation, and provide a […]
The Four Dimensions of Embodiment
When we move it is not just our physical body that we are moving Our emotions, our thoughts and our soulfulness move right along with us. We move body, heart, mind and soul. It is impossible to move only the body without moving these other parts of us. This is why in Open Floor we […]
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy – Interventions for Trauma and Attachment
Author: Pat Odgen & Janina Fisher Language availability: English The body’s intelligence is largely an untapped resource in psychotherapy, yet the story told by the “somatic narrative”– gesture, posture, prosody, facial expressions, eye gaze, and movement — is arguably more significant than the story told by the words. The language of the body communicates implicit meanings and […]
The Personal Body and the Political Body
can embodied awareness make better citizens of us? WHAT MAKES A GOOD CITIZEN? WHAT SKILLS DO WE NEED TO LEARN AND PUT INTO PRACTICE IN ORDER TO LEAVE A POSITIVE FOOTPRINT IN THE WORLD? These are the questions that Andrea Juhan muses on when we meet to talk about Encounter, the body of work she has developed over […]
Wisdom of the Body Moving
Author: Linda Hartley Language availability: English This comprehensive guide introduces Body-Mind Centering, the internationally recognized field pioneered by dancer and occupational therapist Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen. Devoting thirty-five years to a systematic investigation of the relations between bodily experience and the anatomical maps of science, Bainbridge Cohen independently discovered many of the principles that underlie Feldenkrais work, cranial […]
Spirit and the Body
Author: Alexander Lowen Language availability: English “You are your body.” Alexander Lowen describes how not to slip from one to the other such that they remain separate and non-sensate. https://youtu.be/H6QRg-l7ntA more resources on embodiment
Somatic Psychology – Body, Mind and Meaning
Author: Linda Hartley Language availability: English This book brings attention to the interface of psychotherapy and psychological theory with the somatic practices of bodywork and movement therapy. To offer a client only psychotherapy, or only bodywork may subtly or directly reinforce the body-mind split from which so many of us suffer; in some cases this will be […]
Emptiness Dancing
Author: Adyashanti Language availability: English There is something about you brighter than the sun and more mysterious than the night sky. Who are you when you are not thinking yourself into existence? What is ultimately behind the set of eyes reading these words? In Emptiness Dancing, Adyashanti invites you to wake up to the essence of what you […]
The Art and Science of Dance/Movement Therapy – Life is Dance
Author: Sharon Chaiklin and Hilda Wengrower Language availability: English, Hebrew The Art and Science of Dance/Movement Therapy offers both a broad understanding and an in-depth view of how and where dance therapy can be used to produce change. The chapters go beyond the basics that characterize much of the literature on dance/movement therapy, and each of the topics covered offers a theoretical […]
Ground as A Resource for Trauma Recovery
“I see my movement much richer and varied. I can look at myself in the mirror and say – This is me and it’s OK” says a woman from Inbal Interdisciplinary Center Open Floor teacher Edith Avni says: I was excited, curious, and a little bit anxious when Hadas Tal-Ragolsky, an Open Floor dancer, Dance […]
Resourcing My Activism Through Movement
Since 2014, I have been intensely involved with both Open Floor International and with the Israeli grassroots movement Women Wage Peace (WWP). I cannot imagine these past years in Women Wage Peace without Open Floor Movement Practice and it’s Core Movement Resources. Open Floor (OFMP) keeps me resourced, resilient, and sane! My work with Open […]
Moving Through Difficult Times
Catherine Martella walks into an Open Floor movement class led by Theva Indrasenan, in Freemantle, Western Australia. She says that before she started dancing with Theva, she was in one of the most difficult times of her adult life. She was depressed, crying often, and experiencing overwhelming emotions. She tried to tell herself that it […]
Peace Education and Open Floor movement practice
Hanne Tjersland graduated from the MA Program for Peace Studies in Innsbruck in 2016. She is now an Open Floor movement practice teacher and a Ph.D. candidate in peace studies with Open Floor as her research focus at Universidad Jaume I in Castelló de la Plana, Spain. “I grew up in Norway, considered one of […]
At Home on the Dance Floor
It’s a Wednesday morning at the Primavera Emergency Men’s Shelter in Tucson, Arizona (USA) and a dozen homeless men are sitting in a circle, waiting to begin ArtMoves, an embodied movement and visual art class. “Although that’s not what they think they’re going to do,” says Open Floor teacher Lynn Fleischman with a grin. Lynn […]
What is Embodiment?
In Open Floor Movement Practice, ‘Embodiment’ refers to the four integrated levels of awareness (physical, emotional, mind and soul), and the quality of consciousness that each catalyzes. We see/hold embodiment as an aware, awake, simultaneous sensate experience of our physical, emotional, cognitive, imaginative and spiritual processes.
