Part 2B: Main Project
1. Describe your process. How did you choose your project? Why did you choose this method?
I’ve worked as a mental health clinician for many years, predominantly with young people aged between 12 and 30, the majority of whom experience complex trauma. I’ve prioritised the study and practice of a wide range of somatic interventions – I’ve always turned to immersive movement practices to tend my own persisting terrors and melancholia, too, and found great solace in the potentials of my own skin. I feel so strongly that exploratory, inhabited movement is a profound element of our humanity, and we very much deserve to find even a little reprieve within the bounds of our own fleshy form.
I thought I may be able to blend a bit of early-stage therapy – the resourcing phase – with floor flow. I also challenged myself to make it as youth-friendly as possible, bearing fully in mind that it may be a stretch (pun intended) to even entice the young folk to arrive, let alone move. I intended to keep things as simple as possible.
The process I ended up choosing is a bit of a blend of different somatic and mindfulness interventions, with a strengths-based orientation. I use many components of this when I’m either inviting curiosity or support clients to resource, and the consistent feedback is positive.
Hopefully even a little of it translates to the screen – I am painfully, powerfully confronted by the filming process, and I find that regardless of intention and effort, the result does not represent the goal in any way I’d find satisfying. What I present is probably more of a gist of the practice as it would be shared in-person – in practising, I involved my wife and my best friend, and on another date, a couple of new-to-movement mates – everyone reported that it was accessible, and that it was easy enough to follow.
My wife gave me the (gently phrased) feedback that the video version is a bit different than the experience I offered her and our buddies.
2. What felt good ( or provided a healthy challenge) in creating this project?
I really wanted to keep things simple and imperfect – I nailed the imperfect component by creating my incredibly awkward video!
I felt as though I may not be offering enough, but after the trials with my friends and immersing in it a few times, I found that I even had to pare things back to increase the accessibility. Keeping it simple and accepting the inadequacies were definitely the healthy challenges.
I should mention, too, that I had begun this project well before the April due date, but I revised it, refilmed it, rubbished it, and revived it so many times that it has taken this long to be able to swallow my stress enough to actually post it. That in itself seems a relevant triumph…
3. What do you think your project offers the viewer/participant? (Tools for accessing a Flow state, more awareness of the floor, etc. )
I think I whittle myself down to holding relatively humble intentions – a little more (whole)self-awareness, a little more engagement with one’s immediate surrounds. Ideally, with ongoing classes in a similar vein, I’d hope to encourage a stronger sense of the floor’s potentials as an apparatus, but in initial stages, I think keeping the goals minimal make them a bit more accessible for the intended participants!
4. If there is ONE thing that you would do differently, what is it?
My final product is marginally better than the hours and hours of takes over many months it took to get here – I wish I had been able to sit a little more honestly in the discomfort and offered it sooner. The pursuit of perfection ended up escalating stress in a time where I had minimal capacity…
I wasn’t sure if this prompt was in reference to the process (as I’ve answered), or the offering itself. If the latter, I would have potentially pared it back even further to just three options for the shape-creation. As I was doing the many variations, I remembered the multiple moments you encouraged us not to! The anxiety just accelerated me into it every time…
5. What did you learn from this experience that you will apply to your own training or teaching?
I think the element of simplicity is one I’ve overlooked in previous teaching – I want to offer everything, prove some point that I can fit in a while bunch of exploratory options – but I’m so aware of the vast potentials available in containment. I don’t know if the video represents this lesson very well, but in my own practice and teaching, this has been making a strong and recurrent appearance!
Sentence Summary:
I created a very gentle, very slow, very introductory curiosity-and-joy practice, primarily to appeal to the 12-30 year-old client population with whom I work as a mental health clinician/psychotherapist. I’m profoundly uncomfortable and unskilled with filming, so what I offer is a deeply imperfect gesture at the practice I developed and shared with friends and family in the preparatory period. If you’re feeling like some slow and exploratory movement in the interests of a joy and a little more self-awareness, f