Movement and emotions

I was thinking about how movement really helps move energy, especially emotions. If you break down the word emotion, you would get e-motion. In other words, energy-in-motion. I think I heard about that in my holistic health coaching program. When I was doing a lot of solo performance work, most of my ideas and concepts came from personal experiences and struggles within my life, present and past. I would put myself back into positions when I was feeling scared, angry or sad, which, in somatic psychology, is a way one heals from past trauma. There was a particular piece I did, where it was so intense, I cried a lot during my rehearsals. I even cried after performing it at a venue! I allowed myself to feel what was happening without any judgment. During the performance, at times, I would feel the currents and tingly feelings move throughout my body.

After showing this work, I got a lot of wonderful feedback from people. They connected to my piece on a personal level. At one of my showings, someone told me they cried while watching my piece. But there was no need to explain why. I didn't feel a need to explain why. It was movement, energy and emotion. Moving with and from the emotion is what I learned from Mexican, ritual butoh teacher/performer, Diego Pinon. I love his mission statement because it really resonates with me and my solo work experience:

“As human beings used the energy of nature to survive, they created the first primitive forms of movement. In the Butoh dance we relive the sense of these primitive forms as a way to rescue all the lost parts of the human being. Butoh questions our habitual actions, expectations, and judgments.

Butoh challenges us to awaken and explore all human qualities ranging from the subtle to the outrageous, both beautiful and ugly. Butoh seeks the emergence of the deeper self, to touch if only for a moment, the inexplicable matter of the human soul.

Through this process of transforming our daily life by transforming our dance, we can offer more creative energy to our community. “

It's amazing what we can access through movement. Do we really honor and feel the emotions that come up through dance in general? As a performer or observer, what awakens within us? What makes us come back for more? What scares us? Excites us?

There's so much to explore with this.