Birdie Transformation Program
Week 005 – Moving like a Baby
This week we will get in touch with our body in a new way. We begin to move. Maybe it would be better to say, we will begin again to move like we used to. I know, you already know how to move. You have moved all your life and your muscles, tendons and bones are in a particular habit. Maybe you even power through some exercises every day, because you know it is beneficial, or you like it or it makes you feel better. That is all okay.
We start at the beginning again, learning to move again with a different attention. Things might slow down quite a bit.
We will pretend to be a baby, with no agenda, no demands, just there, just following the impulses of our bodies.
If you have a 4-6 month old baby in your life, observe how it moves. Or, watch the video below.
Explore moving like a baby who does not know how to crawl yet, does not walk, does not yet stand.
It can look around, bring the hands together, arch, tilt its head back and to the side, move the legs, turn and push itself up, maybe get on all fours, maybe scoot forward, but not crawl yet.
Lie down on a surface comfortable for you. If you have a yoga mat, that works also. You can put on some gentle music, or not.
Lie down, feel where your body touches the ground, then – just lay there.
Maybe nothing more wants to happen for a long time.
Or, at some point, maybe you feel like looking around, or look at your hands or do little movements as they want to occur. Play with it, feel your legs, your back, your arms, your head, your neck. Maybe a stretch wants to happen, or a start of a turn, or maybe hardly anything at all. Start listening and let your body tell you where to stretch, what to move and where to open. Let the impulse come and follow it. And remember, babies do not judge how they move. They also burp, fart, sneeze, hick-up, sigh, whimper, cry, smile, frown and laugh as it comes.
Do this every day for as long as you want.
“Everything we feel and everything that happens to us is in the body.” – Angela Farmer
To live an inspired life, there needs to be internal space for energy to flow. The clearer the vessel, the more freely the energy flows. It we are tight, full of held stress, full of unconscious frozen energy blocks, energy can’t move and we are stuck and chronically stressed out. Anything more that happens can stress us out enough to explode, just to relieve pressure.
We need to feel to heal, we need to be able to feel our bodies.
Enjoy the exercise of this week.
Video.
addendum
For those who would like to go further on sensing and listening within, you have a few options: one is the financially cheapest: practice listening to your body’s impulses, your sensations, your body’s way of saying yes or no, its way of telling you there is danger, or to relax, despite what your head is telling you.
If you have intuition, this sense or curiosity to go further with a trained professional, below are listed three method’s good to research, and if you have a good practitioner available in your area, give it a try.
Somatic Experiencing, which focuses on one’s perceived body sensations (or somatic experiences). It was created by trauma therapist Peter A. Levine. Very good for any kind of past trauma and chronic pain still held in the body.
Hakomi. The Hakomi Method of Experiential Psychotherapy is a body-centered approach to therapy developed by Ron Kurtz. I combines somatic awareness with experiential techniques to promote psychological growth and transformation.
The Feldenkrais method, invention of Israeli physicist Moshe Feldenkrais, is a way of retraining the body. There are two modes of this retraining. The first is group classes called Awareness Through Movement or ATMs, group classes where the instructor simply stays where he/she is, not touching the participant or doing demonstrations.. The second mode, Functional Integration or FI , is more capable of causing dramatic improvements. They are done with a trained practitioner. In one-on-one sessions. You remain fully clothed on a low table and the practitioner gently moves or presses your body in different directions to make you aware of a subconscious tension and holding patterns that make your movement less efficient, and can help you learn more efficient ways of coordinating your body.
Are there other methods to help with developing this kind of body awareness, discovering pattens and beliefs held in the body? There are, but I don’t know enough about those to be able to recommend them.