Reflections on the movement loop
FFTT final project – Nicole Poller
Movement goal and prompts:
For the loop exploration I set myself the goal to work on my proprioception of my body on the floor relative to the space I am moving in. As a tool for that I prompted myself to keep my eyes closed and move in a pretty limited space of around 1,60x2,50.
Reflections and perceptions:
I chose the prompts that I was working with because I found the idea to read the floor in very detail by sensing it intensively very interesting. As my movement space is an old wooden floor with some bumps, scratches, knotholes, slightly structured and the spaces in between the wooden tiles are sensible, I was thinking to use the structure and particularities of the floor as a roadmap and wanted to find out, if this works to guide me. I limited the space to move in to avoid getting overwhelmed sensually .On top of that, I was thinking to increase my physical sensing ability by keeping my eyes closed.
The video of the loop is a 4 minute cut of an all in all 15 minutes movement session. I cut out the last 4 minutes of movement.
I think for the completeness of the reflection it makes sense to also include the time I was moving which is not visible in the video.
When I started moving with my eyes closed I focused a lot on my contact points with the floor, especially my hands as they were without clothing. With the prompts in mind I started feeling the structure of the floor in a much more intense way than usually and observed myself trying to use my hands to memorize the structure. Also my feet felt more sensitive to the ground, even though I was wearing socks. Still it felt that I am sensing the floor deeply and especially when I was doing sliding motions I also tried to memorize the sensations.
In the beginning of the looping I sometimes opened my eyes briefly to see where I am and check if I am where I was thinking I was. To my surprise it was pretty accurate. Knowing this I moved more confidently keeping my eyes closed. I was kind of prepared to bump into my pole or the bed which were close to my movement space but this did not happen.
Having experienced the movement and sensation of the floor I started to feel more easeful in my movement, which allowed me, to go deeper into the motion and switch my attention on how I was moving. My attention switched to how my hips could move with more ease and how it felt moving in the rhythm of my breath.
The more I moved with my breath supporting me, the more natural the movement felt for me and also my way of sensing the floor intensified even more.
All these things combined (movement feeling natural, intense sensing of the floor, being able to move in the dedicated space confidently) was leading to a feeling of joy and deep connection to the floor. I felt way more supported by the floor than I usually do or better to say the feeling of support was very present during the loop session.
Conclusion:
To sum up the reflection I would say, this exercise definitely was a very intense experience of proprioception and the feeling afterwards can be described and grounded and self-perceptive. It was especially interesting to use the structure of the floor as a roadmap for my proprioceptive perception and I was very surprised how fast my body memorized these structures that were leading me. It reminded me of a memory of walking through a snow storm where I could not see my environment and only used my feet along the edge of a path to find my way.