Cilia Sindt - Loop

Part 1B Description of flow

1) Written Overview of my loop The Ingredients:

Both hands are in contact with floor creating a push and a pull and somewhat of a sideways spinal wave. One leg kneeling or lying on the floor (on the side) – sweeping and swooshing of the other leg in front and back. The sweeping and swooshing will help induce a turn and then the other leg is sweeping and swooshing.

When lying down on the side one hand is in a “hand sandwich” the other hands palm and fingers are in contact with the floor. Depending on how much push through the “handsandwich” the booty can move upwards (can be seen in the video in the end).

Focus on sweeping and breathing- og saying “mmhhhmmm sound”. Music as an ingredient is Forndom “resan”, which means “the travel”.

The process, what felt good, one thing I would change and what did I learn:

I chose the parts because I wanted to do a loop that I could use to get into a flow feeling, and sweeping, pushing/pulling with my hands is a go-to movement to get this “mmmhhhhmmm” feeling for me. Also I had already done some work on my final project which had a focus on “warmup/welcome”. I had been thinking “Is there such a thing, as a loop that sometimes can be turned into flowy, flowfeeling like state for me and can I change the loop to be a warmup floor thing with a possibility for people to get a feeling of presence or at least connection to the floor?” I have done the loop in my house, at the pole-studio where I teach, alone in a fitnesscenter, with a personal trainer and with my Zoom FFTT group. It worked.

If I were to do ONE thing differently I would have said my mantra out loud right before everytime I did the loop and before filming. My mantra is: “I/you have a good body, it can do many things”, and then just let my body go into the loop.

Lessons learned. Well, I am a scientist and I know that quantum theory has demonstrated that observation affects reality, so people are also affected by a camera or a person watching them. This is also why I had to film it so many times – I knew I was being watched, so in my teaching I will from now on try to have periods of “non-watching” and “not knowing” because it might benefit people in the room.

Cilia Sindt - Final Project

2B Written overview of the process in the final project

Process description

I was interested in how people felt about warm-up/beginning of movementclasses because I noticed people do not talk of it as something positive. I am interested in what people long to do when it comes to movement, so I took classes in a dancestudio, the polestudio where I teach, a fitness class, and a class at a crossfit gym. After class I asked some students how they felt about warm-up. My cover image has some quotes. The overall response to how they felt about warmup was that people felt disconnected, too exhausted, not in contact with the floor or like doing a chore. By doing these unstructured interviews I was encouraged to revise my own idea of how a movementclass should begin. It felt liberating to let go of my own preconceived ideas of “warmup”. I created a “welcome to class” session using a brush and focusing on moving closer to the floor after “brushing”. The participants who tried it said that it helped them focus on “where do I feel what” and it made them feel ready to get into contact with the floor. Luckily that was the purpose. One participant in the Zoom group adviced me to prepare the participants of using the brush because if you a tickly you might laugh out loud and people need to know that it is ok. Actually, laughter activates the vagus nerve! So, if I were to one thing differently, I would do more things that activate the vagus nerve. This experience with asking people how they feel will change how I do classes from now on. I actually think I will ask some instructors/movementteachers/mentors too: “why do you start class the way you do? What is your idea of warmup and why do you think it is so?”

2C Sentence Summary of my project

From “Warm up needs to be over with because it is a chore and not what I came for” to “Welcome and enjoy this preparation time because it is giving and simple”. Bring a brush to class, be a ragdoll and swoosh the legs.

Kathy Lucas - Loop

FFTT - Loop Overview

1) What are the easy to remember ingredients of your loop?

Basic:

• Supine Resting butterfly

• Prone arm sweep

• Seated Folded star

• Seated Knee lift to knee drop

Progression Part 1:

• Supine Resting Butterfly

• Leg swing

• Prone Arm Sweep

• Seated Folded star

• Seated knee lift to knee drop

• Kneeling leg switch

• Roll back

Progression Part 2:

• Supine Resting Butterfly

• Leg Swing

• Prone Arm Sweep

• Seated Folded Star

• Seated Knee lift to Knee drop

• Kneeling leg switch

• Undulating kneeling lunge

• Back roll

• Shoulder pivot

2) Describe your process.

Initially, I had grand plans of building a loop around front, side and back rolls. Rolls are a skill that I’d like to improve in my own practice and also in my teaching. So I started reviewing FFTT class vids to become more aware of what my hesitations have been around diving into these skills. Neck and head stuff has always made me nervous and over the years, I’ve realized that regardless of the awareness around those fears, I’d force myself into learning without really listening to any of the red flags that would come up.

In reviewing the FFTT material, I was able to become aware of some bad habits and it was very helpful and hopeful but I decided to shift my grand plan to something more simple - and more importantly, something that made me feel better. I think the combination of rolling to learn and unlearn - build and rebuild made me miss the experience of the floor. This was a GREAT lesson for me because I listened to what my body was calling for not what I thought the loop should look like.

Since the rolling was a little disorienting and I knew I needed to reset my nervous system, I started by lying down on my back and felt how my back body had been supported by the floor. Simply hearing the words in my mind that you’ve said before, “Let the floor hold you. Feel the ground beneath you” helped me to find my breath, slow down and allow for exploration to happen. Beautiful movement in flow reveals a seamless connection to breath, awareness, presence and continuity and so at this point in my learning process, beginning in a supine position and moving through side, prone -adding swinging and swirling positions helped me to feel those connections. I noticed that when I would speed up the tempo, I was not as aware or clear of the endpoint shapes. It became “muddy” movement. A former dance teacher once said to me, “Always clearly begin and complete movement or a phrase.” And this showed up in putting together this loop. Presencing to prepare my body, becoming aware of my contact points and breathing helped me to slow everything down.

How did you choose the parts?

A great takeaway from the small group work, feedback and learning from viewing your movement has been the “cause and effect” experience. I really wanted to challenge that aspect of my learning with the parts that I choose. Using the floor as an apparatus helped me to build the parts. I wanted to feel the significance of resistance into flow so that I could understand the crescendo of the phrase. Identifying contact points in Supine position is probably one of the easiest ways to begin. Feeling the perimeter around me with arm swoops helped me identify how I use space and time. Seated folded star is one that feels centering and accessible for my body. It’s also one that helps me to transition pretty well to other movements. As I progressed the loop, I knew I wanted to add some type of roll in keeping a promise to challenge myself with that skill. And that particular roll felt most natural to add to the end of the loop.

How was your experience leading up to filming this?

I’d say I second guessed myself about the contents of the flow, the filming of the flow, the music, my abilities and maybe even what I was wearing a whooolllee lot! I think I was trying to come from a perfection perspective vs experiential. This was good for me to notice because everything that I’ve been learning in FFTT classes has more to do with the possibility aspect than nailing anything per se. And in just re-watching the videos, I see the value of that as a student and would want the same for mine.

One thing that was very helpful was to connect with my FFTT group. We had a brief Zoom meetup to discuss how things were coming along and then texted one another our flows for feedback. Super helpful. I personally always do better when I engage some type of community.

What did you need to do to get in the right state of mind/body/spirit to Flow?

I needed to remove myself from exterior distractions and set up my environment in ways that would calm me. Connecting and settling into the floor by finding stillness from supine position were necessary in helping me to set a gentle, slow pace when experimenting. Another key component for me was to scan my body and give my nervous system permission to settle the weight of my body to the floor. I’d listen to specific music selections to find inspiration. I even needed to take off my yoga stretch pants and wear something that wasn’t suffocating me!

Simple as it may seem that choice goes a long way for me!

What felt good or provided a healthy challenge?

One of the things right off the bat that felt good and challenging was slowing the whole thing down. Even when I thought I was moving slowly, I’d check the video and see that was not the case. Slowing down movement is so much like being still during meditation. The stillness and focus on just breath, inevitably brings the monkey mind into focus. So when the loop would speed up, I had to ask myself “why”. “Why you flying through this lady? What are you trying to avoid? Were my expectations too high? Was I putting too much pressure on myself to make it perfect? Yep. All of it.

It also felt very satisfying to move in whirling, circular motions.

If you could do one thing differently, what would it be?

I think I’d experiment more with my torso during the kneeling leg switch. I feel I could have opened that space up a bit.

What did you learn from this experience that you would apply to your own training/teaching?

To utilize breath and rely on slow exploration to inform creativity and authentic movement.

Anietie Ukpe-Wallace - Loop

1. What are the easy to remember ingredients of my loop? The easy to remember parts of my loop was the aspect of fluidity for me, there were lots of circling occurring in all three parts of the loop. Even though there was a fluidness to the movement, there was a pushing action into the floor in all three, some were subtle like in the first movement of the loop and others more apparent like in the other two movements.

2. Describe my process. I started playing with this loop about a month ago and started experiencing some changes in my body and energy. I wanted to move, but didn’t have the full energy that I wanted. I was feeling stiff as well since I hadn't been moving much and the circling felt calming for me and just the little bit of pressing my toes or hands into the ground felt grounding but also effort and strength that I was lacking, but my body was craving. I continued to play with the movement every now and again and as my energy level crept back up, this was still a nice loop to come back to to help me get back in my body and then was able to play with more tension or pushing into the ground. Beacuise of of the effect of the circling, I did not feel a need to speed up the movement as I really enjoyed the slowness and amount of time I could spend exploring but enjoyed playing with progressions and tensions. I felt that when I completed this flow that I recorded, I had space. No kid, no husband, no work obligations, so I felt free to take my time and flow and play.

3. What felt good? The unwinding that occurred when moving through this lopp felt really good. I overall like the simplicity of it and how complex it can become, so it is something that I would really love to teach.

4. I think the one thing that I would do differently is emphasizing the push aspect in the first part of the loop. I played around with it before and liked how pushing from the outside or inside of my hand made my movement different or caused a different trajectory into the second movement. I probably could have played more with what my feet and toes were doing as I just emphasized the push from my toes and feel like I could have explored that more.

5. What I learned is that even in moments where my mind and body may not be feeling up for moving, it is a great way to explore even simple movements and see where it takes me. It is definitely an encourager for me to still find movement even when I am not feeling up to it, it is surprising to see what will develop. In regards to teaching, simple is always better. I will be starting to teach pole foundations at my local pole studio and want to add floorwork to my choreo and it will be important to remember that I just need to lay a foundation and allow my students to explore what comes up for them rather than dictate what it should look like or feel like.

Tarana Karimova - Loop

Overview of my loop

Music – is main ingredient for me personally. To get into mood I listened to music, just sitting, rocking, with closed eyes. I picked the song “Be like water” on purpose, so it will help me to be more relaxed and fluid…

I picked this loop for its simplicity and easy to explain/understand for students, especially new ones. Starting this loop with sitting on the floor, so main connection is our pelvis to the floor. My arms are like water, they go over the floor or legs freely, and just like water my arms can go in any direction, and they go to the back.  Then my hands becoming connecting points to the floor and my torso also lowers to the floor and I am lying on the floor face down. Using my arms to push me up, switching my legs and going back to sitting position. When I decided to go in other direction, I added the “leg work”. My top leg is lifted before going down to the floor. Also, I used my pelvis more (tuck in) to bring both knees close to my chest before sitting up.

Using my pelvis to tuck in in order to bring my knees to my chest was a good challenge for me. For tuck starting from pelvis, not just from legs.

One thing I would do differently, is to slow down, that is my main challenge and BREATH!!!

What did I learn from this experience? Slow down, breath, relax, enjoy the movement and let your body lead you, don’t overthink it!

Liana Ventura Coutinho Amaral (aka Lilo) - Final Project

WRITTEN OVERVIEW OF THE FINAL PROJECT

1. PROJECT DESCRIPTION. HOW DID YOU CHOOSE THIS PROJECT? WHY DID YOU CHOOSE THIS METHOD?

This final project was created to be a floor work experience for yoga students who are learning to teach yoga. I wanted to offer them a movement experience where, by removing the boundaries of the mat as a support and a set sequence as a strict structure, they could expand and deepen their attention to themselves and also to the support of the floor in a different way from what they are used to doing and practicing. Since it's a very different structure from a regular yoga class I chose to use 4 very simple and familiar positions (standing, hands and feet to the floor like down dog, kneeling like in table top, half straddle sitting and, lying back on the floor. Besides these, I've added a short and smooth explanation to do back rolls from shoulder to shoulder to provide more options for transitions.

I started the class in a standing position, inviting people to walk around, recognizing the space around and noticing the points of contact to the floor. From the beginning I used the imagery that the floor was sensitive to pressure and every time a part of the body touches the ground it lights up. So students would light paint the floor as they walk, noticing that the harder they push into the ground the brighter the light spot on the floor becomes. From a standing position we would go down to our hands and feet on the floor, using the force of gravity to pull us down. We would keep exploring the points of contact to the floor, weight management as we shift and move, paying attention to the sensations on the body and also to how the way we connect to the ground affects the light painting. From there we would go to hands, knees and feet to the floor, exploring nuance, different ways we could dwell and move in this familiar position, using sensations and curiosity to find places of joy and pleasure. After that we would make our way in a half straddle seated position, noticing the different points of contact to the floor and how it changes as we move our torso, arms and hands, and head. Taking this moment also to stretch and pandiculate, still light painting with the hips and legs, as moving the air with the rest of the body. Here I would take a moment to gently and mindfully guide students to roll into the back body, finding themselves in something like a star position on the floor. So now we'd have our whole back body light painting the floor. We'd take this moment to wriggle and pandiculate more, noticing the points of contact and also finding different ways to explore those points that never touch the ground. Following this I'd guide them into side rolling to the other shoulder and learning to lift back up to a half straddle position in a smooth way. We'd explore this seated position as we did on the other side. After that we'd continue exploring rolling down and up, finding the most supportive ways we could use the floor to make smoother transitions. Lastly, I'd remind students of the 5 positions we've be playing with and ask them to choose 3 of them and, during a whole song, explore ways they could string these 3 positions into a loop in the most effortless and seamlessly way possible, reminding them to (1) keep it simple, (2) look for what feels more natural in their body, (3) go slow as possible, (4) keep the idea of establishing a conversation to the floor, and, lastly, (5) to breath as they move. By the end of the music we would go into a savasana, taking the last few minutes to rest, relax, surrender to the earth.

I chose this method because I wanted them to have something familiar to work with, thus, these 5 positions.I also wanted them to gradually notice the increase of the points of contact to the floor as we go down, enhanced by the imagery of the light painting the pressure sensitive floor. We could explore each of these positions for a whole song, so practitioners would have enough time to be present in it, feel the nuances of weight shifting as they explored different ways to experience it, as well as find ways they could make adjustments in their body position to find what would work and feel best for them. After exploring all the levels they would have built more familiarity with these positions as well as with the possible transitions that could create. When getting to our back body I chose to provide a brief explanation of a smooth way of entering and exiting the floor while rolling from shoulder to shoulder, offering them a new movement pattern to add into their own play, if they wanted. Lastly, the loop creation prompt could be a fun exploration of finding creative ways to string the positions together, as well as creating more opportunities for self expression and finding joy, pleasure through movement, perhaps even finding movement and transition nuggets they could use when creating a yoga class.

2. WHAT FELT GOOD (OR PROVIDED A HEALTHY CHALLENGE) IN CREATING THIS PROJECT?

To me, the most challenging aspect of teaching this class was learning to use words wisely in a way that could feel inspiring and inviting for the students to explore movement and the relationship with the floor in a meaningful, interesting, joyful and pleasant way. English is not my first language, so there's an added challenging aspect to this. However, I really enjoyed writing down the script, choosing words and questions that could work as invitations for the students to get curious and playful about their own experiences and explorations. I also loved putting the music playlist together and using it as a tool to provide good rhythm and pace to the class as well as setting the tone of the movement experience for them to explore and be carried on. 

 3. WHAT DO YOU THINK YOUR PROJECT OFFERS TO THE VIEWERS/PARTICIPANTS?

Every other month I have the opportunity to teach a class for students that are doing a Yoga Teacher Training with Authentic Movements School. So, instead of offering them a regular yoga class, I took this opportunity to explore a floor work class. For most of them this is a new experience and considering that in a typical yoga practice we are often bound to the spatial limitations of the mat, I wanted to offer students a different way to approach and experience movement. The benefits I see are multiple: first we get the chance to explore more freedom of movement by opening up to the space around us and all the possibilities to explore it through movement. By replacing a typical strict yoga sequence with a movement script that uses questions, invitations and suggestions rather than commands, can prompt practitioners to explore their own body language and self expression with more freedom and creativity. Also, when replacing the usual movement cues in yoga like "lift the left leg up", "step your right foot forward", by cues that encourage more self awareness and focus on sensations rather than shapes, practitioners get the chance to turn their attention to nuances in their own body and their relationship to the environment. By playing with slow motion movement practitioners can be more aware of where their body is in space and how it can move around with more control, fluidity and grace, having time to make conscious choices of where and how to move, as well as finding places for joy and pleasure in their own skin. Finally, these floor flow experiences can enhance their abilities with movement balance and control and expand their options and opportunities for movement both, in their own practice, as well as when teaching other students.

4. IF THERE'S ONE THING THAT YOU WOULD DO DIFFERENTLY, WHAT IS IT?
Since it was a class I taught for yoga students learning how to teach other students, maybe I could explore more the points of contact between yoga and floor work. This could be using more of the traditional yoga positions and sequence and adding elements of floor work to it. Or maybe using this as a movement class to explore creative ways to create different and unusual yoga sequences. Anyway, even though it was a completely different experience for most of the practitioners, the way the class went was pretty smooth and fun. The feedback I received after the class was mind blowing. They all were very open to this invitation and really enjoyed this movement experience.

5. WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM THIS EXPERIENCE THAT YOU WILL APPLY TO YOUR OWN TRAINING OR TEACHING?
One of the most important aspects of conducting a floor work class that has movement fluidity as a foundational part of it is using the word wisely. Words have power and verbs give life to action. Depending on which words you use, the way you say it, it can make a tremendous difference in those who are taking your words as prompts to move. I believe there's artistry in how we can use our voice to provide practitioners a meaningful movement experience that can have both guidance and freedom. Also related to the power of words and verbs, is the quality of way we put words out, knowing how to use them in terms of tempo and tone, learning to use pauses in between and allowing practitioners to fill in the gap with their own explorations. Lastly, a very challenging aspect and yet immensely important in a way that can encourage a state of flow is learning to use just enough words to help practitioners to move, avoiding things like "left" and "right" and finding smarter ways that could help them find themselves in space.

SENTENCE SUMMARY OF YOUR PROJECT

This is a 25' snippet of a full 60' floor work class taught to yoga students and future yoga teachers to be in the context of a Yoga Teacher Training. In this class I wanted to offer the practitioners a different movement experience that could expand their awareness in space, by removing the mat as a spatial limitation, and enhance their relationship to the floor, by bringing attention to the points of contact of their body to the ground. By using the imagery of a pressure sensitive floor that would light up with touch, we explored movement in 5 different positions and levels (standin, down dog, table top, half straddle seated, and lying on their back), finishing class with the exploration of a simple loop creation using 3 of the 5 positions we have been playing with. This snippet encompass the part of half straddle seated position movement exploration, the shoulder-back-shoulder roll play, the loop instructions and the loop play.

Juliane Marx - Final Project

2 B Process overview

1.     Describe your process. How did you choose your project? Why did you choose this method?
It took me a while! I thought about incorporating the silks when I first heard about the final project we should prepare, as silks training includes close to 0 % work with the floor. However, it took me five months to figure out how to combine silks and the floor in way that wouldn’t ask my students to think as much as they need to in a regular silks class. Apart from strength, silks require tons of brain work, as you don’t only need to think about what to do with your own body, but also with two tissues. And you better not fail, or you might fall. A situation that makes it quite hard to be within one’s own body, feel and breath.

2.     What felt good (or provided a healthy challenge) in creating this project?

As said before, the floor is usually not a part of an aerial silks class. And although I love low flow and freestyles, using silks instead of a pole is out of my comfort zone. The tissues remain somehow unpredictable and loosing focus often leads to being strangely wrapped up within the silks. For this project, I decided to use a knot which allows the participant to not focus so much about how to not fall of the silks while allowing to access both the tissue and the floor.

3.     What do you think your project offers to the viewer/ participant? (Tools for accessing a Flow State, more awareness of the floor, etc.)
My most dance-phobic participant described the experience as ‘meditative’. I introduced a way to play with the floor – something they didn’t consider to be an apparatus before – while softly pushing them out of their comfort zone. I tried to introduce not too many different tools and focused on conscious breathing and moving slowly to make them be present in their bodies, while introducing more and more contact points with the floor and one way to interact with them by pushing into the floor.

4.     If there is ONE thing that you would do differently, what is it?

I would love to go a step further and have them play with un-knotted silks in the very end.

5.     What did you learn from this experience that you will apply to your own training or teaching?
There is always a way to play & slowing down opens up tons of new possibilities. Even if the floor probably won’t be a regular part of my silks classes (it definitely is in my pole classes!), I encourage finding stillness and play within wraps that allow for it much more.

2 C Summary

How do I get my rather floor- and dance-phobic aerial silks students to PLAY? Aerial silks are pretty demanding for body both & mind, my goal was to make my students curious about an apparatus much more consistent than tissues: the floor.

Jane Stacie - Final Project

Written Overview

 1-3 Sentence Summary of My Project 

I taught a pole dance class applying the FFTT concepts to 8 pole students of widely varying levels, backgrounds and abilities. The goal was to get them out of their heads and into their bodies, while empowering them with tools to keep moving in the absence of set choreography or an instructor’s guidance. Ultimately I hoped for them to get a glimpse into their “pole flow state” to enjoy and luxuriate with the pole.  

1. For my final project, I taught and filmed a 1 hr class called “Pole Technique: Fluidity” (edited down to a 23 minute edit). My idea was to create an accessible class that incorporates and applies Marlo’s Floor Flow philosophy to pole dance, for every level of pole student. The main theme of this particular class was activating and strengthening our bases of support, with a focus on feet and hands/arms. I chose this project because I regularly teach classes for pole dancers, and was hoping to offer something in their curriculum that would supplement and expand their typical training program. In particular, I have noticed that pole students often have difficulty with “finding their flow”, getting creative, and continuing movement after the set combination or trick is completed. Alongside this issue, I’ve noticed it’s common for students to feel “stuck” in the absence of an instructor’s guidance and / or set choreography. I hoped the Floor Flow concepts would help my pole students get out of their heads and in tune with their bodies to have better, more enjoyable movement experiences.

2. I really enjoyed coming up with pole loop exercises. They were designed to focus attention on the details that are typically skipped over in a lot of skills-based pole classes; for example, what our feet are doing on the ground right before taking off into a spin. I was very challenged at first when trying to come up with how to make the class truly “all-levels”, because I didn’t want the beginners to feel completely overwhelmed or the advanced students bored. So, I took quite a bit of preparation time trying to think about how each loop could be progressed and the effort increased/decreased. I was also challenged on how to focus all the material we learned into one single hour (I failed at this)! I also struggled with planning in terms of timing - the class structure felt totally foreign to me; I wasn’t sure how long each exercise / game / loop would take, or how many questions there would be, since I’ve never taught a class like this before. So, that made planning the class quite challenging and I ended up having way more material than I was able to get through, and not enough time to flow at the end.

3. The two main goals of the class were to provide practical tools for students to a) become more fluid and less “stuck” or bumpy while dancing, and b) tap into the mental flow state during pole practice.

4. If I could change anything, I would have built in much more time to just flow and move at the end of class, rather than trying to fit in more “set” material (warmup, theory, exercises, loops, explanation, questions, flow).

5. What did I learn from this experience that I’ll apply going forward? Many things, but to keep it brief … while watching myself answer students’ questions, I realised I am not always answering what they are asking! Or, I am answering in a much more complicated way than needed. Their questions make my brain go in multiple directions, and I get excited about all the material that I want to share with them, so I tend to go on tangents and down rabbit holes. I need to be a bit more clear and direct, I think. I will also certainly change how I structure classes, and build in more room for questions, breathing, flow, rest, synthesising the material.

Jane Stacie - Loop

Written Overview

1. Loop Ingredients:

   A. Start lying face up on the floor. Roll onto 1 side of the body, then curl into a ball before expanding into a crescent / banana and back to a ball

   B. Sweep through a seated position to swing outside leg into a lunge

   C. Place hands onto the floor and transfer some weight into hands to lift feet off the ground

   D. Spiral upper body towards the ground to find the floor and lay face up once again.

   2. I tried to create a loop that allows the body to interact with the floor in quite different ways; in particular, I wanted to introduce different bases of support including the back-body, the hips, feet, and hands. I also wanted the loop to offer level changes, and the chance to add in a challenging skill; the main challenge in this loop is the transfer of weight into hands, allowing the hands to become the base of support so that as the loop progresses, less and less weight is born in the feet and eventually the hand-transfer could become a one-handed cartwheel. I also love starting a loop by lying down face up as a “home base” where you can rest or reorient yourself before continuing.

2. To get into the right headspace, I needed the right music and a song that I knew would be the right length and pace for this assignment. I needed my living room space to be cleared of inhibiting objects. I also needed to know my baby was sleeping so that I was less likely to be interrupted.

3. I really enjoyed the introduction; the assignment offered us a chance to open the loop by rocking or doing whatever movement would provide a gateway for the loop to flow. I stayed in the rocking probably longer than I initially intended to because it was feeling good. I also enjoyed the cartwheel progression - it was fun to feel the weightlessness moment and actually felt like less effort than keeping the feet close to the ground while transferring weight to the hands. I was very challenged in a few ways - my space felt too small, and I noticed my body wanting more room without worrying about hitting something. I have also been extremely challenged to find enough time and space to allow myself to really drop into movement due to the challenges of being a primary caregiver to an infant.

4. If there was something I would do differently, it would be trying to film at a time where I knew someone else was in charge of childcare, so part of my brain wasn’t distracted by trying to listen for sounds of a baby possibly waking up at the same time as thinking about the loop. The possibility of getting interrupted at any moment was definitely a flow blocker. I was also trying to keep the music low so as not to wake her, and normally louder music helps with my flow.

5. On reflection, I learned that it’s important not to rush into finding a flow state, but to really create the time and space to relax before attempting to flow or work on a loop. Relatedly, it’s very important to minimize distractions when trying to get into a flow and feel connected to our bodies.

Eva Macias Loop Overview

1.     What are the easy-to-remember ingredients of your loop? (this could be movement, actions, images)

a.     Bridge, thread, swing, dive

b.     Or… Bridge, X, Sit, Dive

2.     Describe your process. How did you choose the parts? How was your experience leading up to this? What did you need to get in the right state of body/mind/spirit to Flow?

a.     I revisited HW#3 and Class #6 to review fundamentals about loops because I tend to overthink things, the loop process included. I decided to approach it with a 4 movement/shape pattern. I first wrote notes about shapes I appreciate, movement I appreciate, and movement that is challenging with consideration of injuries I am working through and exercises from my physical therapist. I tried the shapes and movement patterns on their own and in various combinations in order to find what felt most fluid to me, but also what fit best in the space I am working in. Up to this point, before writing notes & loop ideas, I spent days/weeks trying to make sense of loops in my own practice but also trying not to force movement ideas, or call myself in when I am overthinking. I placed a lot of pressure on myself about making an “original” look with “original” movement vocabulary (although I know that is not what the program pushes for- it leaves the process open in training choices), or sometimes feeling like my loop may not be perceived as challenging enough. Taking notes, writing ideas, and allowing time/days between loop practices helped me to process loop building for myself. In the moment of filming, deep breathing and sending breath to places of tension, and finding patience with myself by intentionally “taking whatever time I need for the movement” helped me to get in the right state of body/mind/spirit for Flow. I recognized tension in the first part of the video even, where my farthest hand (r hand) was not touching the floor like my left hand was, which looked and felt like tension on the right side body compared to the left.

i.         Shapes I appreciate: bridge, x, seated v

ii.         Movement I appreciate: threading, reaching, extending, spinning, swiveling w/momentum

iii.         Movement that is challenging: legs swings & balance (while laying on the floor, or standing), movement initiated/led by the toes & feet extending into space, sequential movement through the spine

3.     What felt good or provided a healthy challenge in this loop video experience?

a.     Repetition at the pace I needed felt good and grounding. I adapted some movement to the limited space (i.e. bending legs in the thread transition to the belly, and sometimes in leg swings). Towards the end of the video, I sped up my movement just slightly which was a nice challenge. Given more space I would have added greater movement challenges with different levels, spatial orientations, extensions, and speed.

4.     If there is one thing that you would do differently, what is it?

a.     Work in a more open space with fewer obstructions. The obstructions also added a bit of anxiety and likely influenced my slow pace of movement and smaller shapes.

5.     What did you learn from this experience that you will apply in your own training or teaching?

a.     Making conscious decisions about movement doesn’t have to include overthinking the process. Overthinking may tap into anxieties or make the experience stressful. If I’m stressed or overthinking, movers I facilitate may feel that or internalize it in their process. I want to consider the ways that I facilitate my own movement experience and the words/approaches I use, and how to bring that in the teaching/facilitating space. Stand out moments in this loop experience that could translate to facilitating are: start with simple ideas, be clear about movement intentions and shapes, and encourage myself and movers to take the time needed through the movement.