There was something very groovy about last practicum that reminded me of improvisational jazz. I was really impressed by the level of attunment in everyone who participated...as that is what we're trying to develop here--attunment, body to body, nervous system to nervous system, in the moment, in real time.
The teachers and I took more time to discuss what we wanted to explore before the "bodies" came in. We took time to do some movement and get into our "moving voice" as well.
Once the bodies came in, the rest was jazz. Riffing on themes of shoulder stability and how that relates to pelvic floor access and how that relates to Skinner technique, and how that relates to Feldenkrais...swapping bodies, props, and machines, then seamlessly trading roles. However, this was no free-for-all. It was more like searching every nook and cranny for a full understanding and expression of an idea--getting inside a particular movement in a particular body and listening for that body's own unique declaration of why it does what it does; again body to body, nervous system to nervous system.
Working moment to moment, in real time, not only keeps you in a creative place, it gives you as a practitioner access to your client's "unrehearsed" movement patterns. Just getting your clients to move, and following the rhythms, themes, and progressions of what you see gives you a front row seat at their sub/unconscious thought patterns--usually (at least) 50% of the story behind a movement pattern. And, once you're "jamming" with the body as unconscious mind, you have true mind/body work going on, and THAT is powerful stuff--that's when/where transformation happens.
These musings inspired in part by Freud's Lost Chord: Discovering Jazz in the Resonant Psyche
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