7 options

CONTACT IMPROVISATION is relational medicine. It is freedom grounded in connection. It is a powerful balm and sublime fun when there’s awareness present and options available for immediate use.

It is improvisation. You are the source, filter and framer of your experience. You are the initiator/responder, receiver/transmitter, master/student…… in charge of the ever changing nature of your experience.

Commit to caring for yourself and all you are related to!  You are an intricate and unique part of a whole. If the whole is not healthy, the parts suffer. Own that you are the one and the all. Pay attention to the lively dynamic of continuously and simultaneously influencing and being influenced. Own your participation in and responsibility to the mutuality of interbeing.

Become intimate with gravity. It is the lord of us all, dictating that we are relational. Track the perpetual unfolding of the one and only moment. Notice whether what is happening is beneficial. If it isn’t, explore what else is possible!

 

 

7 OPTIONS
for your touch @ the point/s of contact
                                                                                

1. ASSESS SUPPORT  

(ideally, this option is a constant that supports exploring all the other options)

Gravity is our context. Support is inherent.

Touch to be aware of, to feel your circumstance.

Touch to assess the existing support.

Touch to track the support as it is changing.

 

2. DO NOTHING

Explore non-doing to experience and witness the complexity of being.

Touch to simply receive and be received. Touch and do nothing.

 

3. ENTER / LEAVE

Touch to leave one point of contact in order to enter another (think walking!).

Touch to enter into, to initiate a dance.
Touch to leave your partner on their center when you need to leave a dance.

Touch to relate to what is. Touch to rearrange your relationship to what is.

 

4. MOVE YOURSELF 

Support precedes movement. Assess the support and use it to move.

Use the support to roll, slide, push, pull, pivot………..   your own body.

Touch to notice how you align yourself with support for ease and oppose it for effort.

Touch to play with how you use the point/s of contact to organize your movement.

Touch to express, balance, explore, amuse…..    yourself.

Touch to Adjust For Comfort- AFC and you shall receive!

 

5. MOVE  OTHER 

Touch with the intent to move your partner.

Touch to initiate, to influence and direct your partner’s movement.

 

6. GO WITH WHAT IS OFFERED

Touch to accept being moved, to go with the direction that is being suggested.

 

7. COUNTER WHAT IS OFFERED

Touch to counter what is offered, to not go with the direction being suggested.

Touch to counterbalance. Counterbalancing creates structure.

Structure creates support for movement.

 

Use the options to explore ‘spectrums  of  possibility’

~such as the range and degrees of effort, weight, speed, tone, surface, space, states, intent, emotion, response, allowing………

 

Practice, practice, practice…..   ever noticing, ever curious, ever responsive

“What am I doing?  What is my partner doing?”
Cultivate spacious attention for the WE of You and Me.

Awareness of what is creates safety and defines what else is possible. 

Track what is and notice if what is is beneficial?
If it is not, then use the point/s of contact to change what YOU are contributing.
You are half the equation, so changing your participation changes what is! 

Aspire to a seamless, continuous awareness of what is co-evolving here, now.
Commitment to a continuous connection is what unifies the diversity necessary to achieve and expand the capacity for mutual well-being.  

When we’re aware of what is we don’t need to know where we’re going.
What’s next is already becoming, according to our relating to what is.

 

Awareness + Curiosity = Exploration

Connection + Options = Belonging + Freedom                               

Participation is Divine! 

pay attention / tell your truth / listen / ask what wants to happen to care for all those involved