Wholeness in Motion - Roots
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Wholeness in Motion began as an attempt to see if it was possible to teach movement based on new science about skill acquisition, efficient coordination and the Elastic Suspension System model of human structure. The new motor-learning paradigm is that our system is a coordinating system, it is NOT designed to function well by manipulating/positioning body parts. Any instruction like “lift your sternum”, “pull in your abs”, “move your hand” creates a crude coordination that essentially trains inefficiency into the body. Instead of instructing you how to move Wholeness in Motion facilitates you:
The most common paradigm for human structure is that humans are a postural or alignment system. The Elastic Suspension System paradigm for human structure as articulated by David Gorman takes into consideration a much more detailed understanding of anatomy and how it works to allow us to have our stature. It is as different a model from the postural model as a suspension bridge is from a columnar bridge. It demands a new pedagogy. Through Wholeness in Motion you experience this new approach. You experience:
I have over 40 years of movement training (dance/yoga-you name it, I did it) almost all of which used focusing on body parts as a primary means of training. I see why that approach made sense; a teacher sees a harmful habit or pattern in the person and wants to help.
The latest discoveries about human functioning raise new questions:
These were the real questions I had when I began this research. The answer is mostly a resounding YES.
I had a yoga teacher come back after a class ecstatic about how this fundamental change in her perspective and the consequent change in her language transformed her yoga experience for herself and her students.
Words can't adequately convey the distinction. I invite you to come and experience how this material contributes to the rich wealth of movement work that is out there.
Go to classes and join Wholeness in Twelve or other workshops in which Wholeness in Motion is foundational material.
- To develop your own experiential criteria to sense what works for your body and what doesn't.
The most common paradigm for human structure is that humans are a postural or alignment system. The Elastic Suspension System paradigm for human structure as articulated by David Gorman takes into consideration a much more detailed understanding of anatomy and how it works to allow us to have our stature. It is as different a model from the postural model as a suspension bridge is from a columnar bridge. It demands a new pedagogy. Through Wholeness in Motion you experience this new approach. You experience:
- An exploratory approach to stature and movement in which you learn principles for understanding your body, your balance, your volume, space, mobility, strength, dynamic range and miraculous design.
I have over 40 years of movement training (dance/yoga-you name it, I did it) almost all of which used focusing on body parts as a primary means of training. I see why that approach made sense; a teacher sees a harmful habit or pattern in the person and wants to help.
The latest discoveries about human functioning raise new questions:
- How can a person change an inefficient physical pattern without adjusting or directing body parts?
- How can a person do a particular core strength exercise and not hurt her back if we don't say "tone your abs"?
- Is it possible to teach from a different set of principles?
- Would there be an advantage to teaching in accordance with the way our system works?
These were the real questions I had when I began this research. The answer is mostly a resounding YES.
- Wholeness in Motion is a pedagogical approach you can incorporate into the movement forms you currently love to do.
I had a yoga teacher come back after a class ecstatic about how this fundamental change in her perspective and the consequent change in her language transformed her yoga experience for herself and her students.
Words can't adequately convey the distinction. I invite you to come and experience how this material contributes to the rich wealth of movement work that is out there.
Go to classes and join Wholeness in Twelve or other workshops in which Wholeness in Motion is foundational material.
Wholeness in Motion — The Nine Underpinnings & The Three Movement Flows
"It makes a wonderful difference whether we find in the body an ally or an adversary." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"To see a world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.” William Blake
1. Wholeness of Being — Your coordinating system
You are at all times one whole, perfectly coordinating being. Wholeness in Motion is designed to evoke the easiest, most whole and natural coordination of any given moment. In this way you discover what conditions allow for easy functioning and for strained functioning; giving you the information you need to make healthy choices for yourself.
"Our life is what our thoughts make it." James Christian
2. Your innate Navigation system • Your relational system
Your system continually perceives, interprets, evaluates, predicts and responds to the stimulus of every given waking moment. From this flood of stimuli arise important signals (sensations like pleasure/pain, likes/dislikes, excitation/calm) as part of your inbuilt navigational system, guiding your life actions and choices, keeping you safe, showing you how to thrive. Because many of us are often unaware of (or override) our own system's signals, Wholeness in Motion invites you to listen to, understand and follow this inherent inner guidance system; helping you literally become more in touch with yourself and your surroundings.
"As we impose our somewhat limited concepts on to ourselves, we gradually lose touch with ourselves, denying our natural urges and ignoring our feelings and generally trying to control things. As we cease to 'be' our bodies, but now 'have' our bodies, we lose touch with our ability to sense what is appropriate and of value to us.” David Gorman
"When training to live in our world of constant change, training to enjoy the ever changing relationship movement demands may be the most comprehensive training for basic intelligence." Peggy Hackney
3. Pre-sprung Elastic Suspension System
The pre-sprung elastic suspension system is a description of the way we are designed to be stable and mobile creatures. In Wholeness in Motion, movement instructions are intended to support this open, free, supported design of your system. This very new articulation of your fundamental design is a radical departure and great leap from alignment and postural models of the human body.
The pre-sprung elastic suspension system model shows that the "real resolution between the seemingly conflicting demands of stability and mobility is complete support at all times with no holding while simultaneously having total openness in your being and freedom in your actions." David Gorman
4. Elasticity, Voluminous, Organ Filled Torso
One of our most fundamental properties is elasticity. Wholeness in Motion helps you regain your lively elasticity. The freedom to allow the springy elasticity of your nature is a particular powerful foundation for experiencing your fully, spacious, voluminous torso without the stiffening side effect of many alignment-based approaches. Meeting your organs, fluids, glands, internal structures is the foundation for vitality and depth of embodiment. Breathing, physiological functions are free to flow without structural interference and postural tensions.
5. Balance and Support
The earth comes up underneath you to support you at all times. Learning to evenly distribute your contact on this ever-present support is the foundation for all movement; it is effortless balance. Exploring easy balance in relationship to strained balance gives you the experiential information you need to choose effortless balance in all aspects of your life.
"This function of supportedness or stability is primary in one sense, in that it needs to be present all the time in everything we do… support is a prerequisite and underlying foundation for all movement." David Gorman
"Each time you pick up a book from the table, you effortlessly overcome the combined gravitational exertion of an entire planet." Bryson
6. Freedom of Movement • Resilience
Wholeness of Motion provides simple movement frameworks from which you can find on-going possibilities to move freely and feel free to move and to bounce back from strain and constriction. Dynamic and shape changing movement practices expands your comfortable sensory, responsive, emotional range - the root of resilience.
"When movement is liberated from the constricting armor of stylized, pre-conceived gestures, an innate feedback process between movement and feeling is generated." Anna Halprin
7. Adapting Learning Being
On every level from neural pathways to muscle fiber length to genetic expression your system is continually adapting to how and what you are doing. You are always learning. Wholeness in Motion is designed to help you develop the Sensory Landmarks to recognize and choose healthy movement and to expand your expressive, emotional and spatial vocabulary and range.
"If we can learn to read our own responses to our own experience – a test we are writing unconsciously every day we spend on earth – we will receive the guidance we need to live more authentic lives.” Parker Palmer
8. Experiential, Exploratory Method: Body Mapping, Somatizations and Physicalizations
Wholeness in Motion is guided through an exploratory approach. Body Mapping,(from Alexander technique and the Conables) and Somatization (from Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen) are ways to meet your body from locating a joint and how it moves to the deepest layers of your extra-cellular fluid to the broadest systems like skin and the limbed heart. WIM has developed the physicalization approach. When you physicalize a concept, an idea, you feel it more clearly and movement can guide you to solutions, option, depths. Through experiential explorations you discover for yourself what is useful and good for YOU. You develop your own criteria for assessment, which gives you the foundation for confidence and independent learning and continued self discovery.
"So according to Socrates, the teacher assists the inquiring mind of the learner to give birth to knowledge, facilitating the process of discovery on the learners part."' Mortimer Adler
"Only when teachers realize that the principle cause of learning that occurs in a student is the activity of the student's own mind, do they assume the role of cooperative artist." Mortimer Adler
9. Perceptive Possibilities • Avenues of Information
Movement is a doorway to perceiving yourself and the world around you from different sensory pathways. As you perceive differently you also access different information channels opening up to new possibilities of experiencing and understanding yourself and your world.
"Attending to sensory communications from the world dissolves the boundary between self and the world." Harrod Buhner
"The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve but a reality to experience." Frank Herbert
Wholeness in Motion — The Three Movement Sequences
For more on the Sequences and recordings: LINK
The forms and content of Wholeness in Motion (WIM) are designed to be a comprehensive way to experience the innate capability of your system to BE well-being, to be perceptive, responsive, clear, strong, expressive and rooted in love and joy, to move with ease and intelligence, to be free to be yourself.
1. Ocean Sequence - Earth to Sky Flow
2. The Animal Sequence
3. Meta-patterns — Patterns of Joy
"It makes a wonderful difference whether we find in the body an ally or an adversary." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"To see a world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.” William Blake
1. Wholeness of Being — Your coordinating system
You are at all times one whole, perfectly coordinating being. Wholeness in Motion is designed to evoke the easiest, most whole and natural coordination of any given moment. In this way you discover what conditions allow for easy functioning and for strained functioning; giving you the information you need to make healthy choices for yourself.
"Our life is what our thoughts make it." James Christian
2. Your innate Navigation system • Your relational system
Your system continually perceives, interprets, evaluates, predicts and responds to the stimulus of every given waking moment. From this flood of stimuli arise important signals (sensations like pleasure/pain, likes/dislikes, excitation/calm) as part of your inbuilt navigational system, guiding your life actions and choices, keeping you safe, showing you how to thrive. Because many of us are often unaware of (or override) our own system's signals, Wholeness in Motion invites you to listen to, understand and follow this inherent inner guidance system; helping you literally become more in touch with yourself and your surroundings.
"As we impose our somewhat limited concepts on to ourselves, we gradually lose touch with ourselves, denying our natural urges and ignoring our feelings and generally trying to control things. As we cease to 'be' our bodies, but now 'have' our bodies, we lose touch with our ability to sense what is appropriate and of value to us.” David Gorman
"When training to live in our world of constant change, training to enjoy the ever changing relationship movement demands may be the most comprehensive training for basic intelligence." Peggy Hackney
3. Pre-sprung Elastic Suspension System
The pre-sprung elastic suspension system is a description of the way we are designed to be stable and mobile creatures. In Wholeness in Motion, movement instructions are intended to support this open, free, supported design of your system. This very new articulation of your fundamental design is a radical departure and great leap from alignment and postural models of the human body.
The pre-sprung elastic suspension system model shows that the "real resolution between the seemingly conflicting demands of stability and mobility is complete support at all times with no holding while simultaneously having total openness in your being and freedom in your actions." David Gorman
4. Elasticity, Voluminous, Organ Filled Torso
One of our most fundamental properties is elasticity. Wholeness in Motion helps you regain your lively elasticity. The freedom to allow the springy elasticity of your nature is a particular powerful foundation for experiencing your fully, spacious, voluminous torso without the stiffening side effect of many alignment-based approaches. Meeting your organs, fluids, glands, internal structures is the foundation for vitality and depth of embodiment. Breathing, physiological functions are free to flow without structural interference and postural tensions.
5. Balance and Support
The earth comes up underneath you to support you at all times. Learning to evenly distribute your contact on this ever-present support is the foundation for all movement; it is effortless balance. Exploring easy balance in relationship to strained balance gives you the experiential information you need to choose effortless balance in all aspects of your life.
"This function of supportedness or stability is primary in one sense, in that it needs to be present all the time in everything we do… support is a prerequisite and underlying foundation for all movement." David Gorman
"Each time you pick up a book from the table, you effortlessly overcome the combined gravitational exertion of an entire planet." Bryson
6. Freedom of Movement • Resilience
Wholeness of Motion provides simple movement frameworks from which you can find on-going possibilities to move freely and feel free to move and to bounce back from strain and constriction. Dynamic and shape changing movement practices expands your comfortable sensory, responsive, emotional range - the root of resilience.
"When movement is liberated from the constricting armor of stylized, pre-conceived gestures, an innate feedback process between movement and feeling is generated." Anna Halprin
7. Adapting Learning Being
On every level from neural pathways to muscle fiber length to genetic expression your system is continually adapting to how and what you are doing. You are always learning. Wholeness in Motion is designed to help you develop the Sensory Landmarks to recognize and choose healthy movement and to expand your expressive, emotional and spatial vocabulary and range.
"If we can learn to read our own responses to our own experience – a test we are writing unconsciously every day we spend on earth – we will receive the guidance we need to live more authentic lives.” Parker Palmer
8. Experiential, Exploratory Method: Body Mapping, Somatizations and Physicalizations
Wholeness in Motion is guided through an exploratory approach. Body Mapping,(from Alexander technique and the Conables) and Somatization (from Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen) are ways to meet your body from locating a joint and how it moves to the deepest layers of your extra-cellular fluid to the broadest systems like skin and the limbed heart. WIM has developed the physicalization approach. When you physicalize a concept, an idea, you feel it more clearly and movement can guide you to solutions, option, depths. Through experiential explorations you discover for yourself what is useful and good for YOU. You develop your own criteria for assessment, which gives you the foundation for confidence and independent learning and continued self discovery.
"So according to Socrates, the teacher assists the inquiring mind of the learner to give birth to knowledge, facilitating the process of discovery on the learners part."' Mortimer Adler
"Only when teachers realize that the principle cause of learning that occurs in a student is the activity of the student's own mind, do they assume the role of cooperative artist." Mortimer Adler
9. Perceptive Possibilities • Avenues of Information
Movement is a doorway to perceiving yourself and the world around you from different sensory pathways. As you perceive differently you also access different information channels opening up to new possibilities of experiencing and understanding yourself and your world.
"Attending to sensory communications from the world dissolves the boundary between self and the world." Harrod Buhner
"The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve but a reality to experience." Frank Herbert
Wholeness in Motion — The Three Movement Sequences
For more on the Sequences and recordings: LINK
The forms and content of Wholeness in Motion (WIM) are designed to be a comprehensive way to experience the innate capability of your system to BE well-being, to be perceptive, responsive, clear, strong, expressive and rooted in love and joy, to move with ease and intelligence, to be free to be yourself.
1. Ocean Sequence - Earth to Sky Flow
2. The Animal Sequence
3. Meta-patterns — Patterns of Joy