Soul Motion Foundations Course - Day 1 - Interiority
People begin to arrive, place their personals in a cubbie and survey the space. I can feel the excitement in the room. Many have traveled a very long distance to be a part of this Soul Motion ™ Foundations course with Vinn Arjuna Marti. There is a palpable energy in open movement spaces that feels healing to my soma. It’s a coming home amongst seeming strangers who share a common language of embodiment and an interest to explore consciousness through movement and felt experience.
Though my foot is in a cage I know I will be processing a lot throughout the course and that is exactly why I wanted to participate. Even with my disability I am welcome in this space of movers. Normally, when I am out in public I receive looks of horror, but not here. Here I am free to let my guard down a bit. I am welcome in the dance just as I am, as a wounded body looking to heal, move, release and grow.
Vinn masterfully selects each track throughout the session as a complementary element intermixed with deep silence and the sound of breath. The music starts slow and calm. Some students explore easy warm-up type movements while others chat and fill up the room with laughter and verbal connection. As everyone eases in the stage is set for a transformational three-hour introduction to this potent inner process of awareness and a great emptying out.
We begin circling. A casual humanness yet awake presence blankets the room. From the beginning Vinn creates an atmosphere of ease and trust. He offers us spoken inspiration that ignites our poetic imagination to apply within our own unique dance. He reminds us of the fundamentals of the practice; shape, space, and shape moving through space. Though we dove into the basics it was rich with layers, elements and internal sensory ques that filled us up.
After a series of movement explorations, we were invited to dive deeper into our spacious interiority. Led by the ever-present breath we began to allow ourselves to be breathed, naturally and fully. Vinn’s purposeful language, soothing voice, and articulate cuing created an inner and outer atmosphere in which we are guided by our own curiosity, self-awareness and non-judgement.
After moving in ways that I haven’t in a long time and this new-found freedom of being held in a cocoon of consciousness I had a well-deserved emotional release. Emotions rolled through me like waves. Just as I predicted, I spent most of my time rolling around on the floor in a puddle of tears.
My imagination took me deep under the sea to the exact moment right after I broke my ankle. At first I cried tears of sadness as I recalled the incident; being under water alone, traumatized and holding my breath. I went into it deeply, then it shifted to a sensation of floating peacefully under the sea, completely held in grace and ease. I felt that deeply as well and tears streamed, my body shook, and my breath anchored me therapeutically. It was healing to shift my somatic experience from fear into let go.
I cried tears of loss for the movements I couldn’t do and the pain of not having full access to my body. In the next moment, I cried tears of gratitude for all the ways in which I can move, all the movement possibilities still available to me and all the wonderful shapes my body can make.
In each moment there is beauty and pain, grief and forgiveness, an opening and a closing. This is the dance of coming home to the self and moving through the very raw reality of being an embodied soul in motion.
Meet us in the dance, join the movement Soul Motion