That is the essence of authentic movement. The language is completely different, but the ingredients are the same as those of Nonviolent Communication. At Walk Your Talk, we enjoy experimenting with ways to get individuals and teams moving. Colleague Gwen Declerck led us in an authentic movement workshop.
In essence, authentic movement is simple. One half of a group of people dances with their eyes closed and in silence. The other half sits at the edge, writing feverishly. Each witness studies a dancer. They record every movement of ‘their’ dancer, every change in facial expression, no matter how subtle. Authentic movement was developed as a form of therapy by the American Mary Starks Whitehouse, a student of psychiatrist Carl Jung. The therapy helps people struggling with burnout, depression, or anxiety, or those dealing with a crisis.
Whitehouse developed authentic movement in the 1950s. She was convinced that body awareness is an important part of, or perhaps even the foundation for, awareness and personal development. She believed that our emotions are intertwined with all muscles, organs, and chemical processes in our bodies. It is no coincidence that the word ’emotion’ comes from the Latin verb ’emovere’, which can be translated as: to move out or set in motion. Emotions stir us; they set us in motion. They are the warning lights on our dashboard indicating it is best to pull over and look under the hood.
In authentic movement, participants are invited to move to the rhythm of what is alive within them. You explore your emotions through dance, by following your own spontaneous impulses for movement. After a while, you forget that you are in a room with other dancers and that you are being watched. You dance your own dance and your imagination awakens. Sometimes you see images, dreams, or patterns. Sometimes you don’t succeed in switching off your mind while dancing, and you can dance with that frustration too. Sometimes it feels pleasant, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes you wildly release your whole body, sometimes you remain still and your breath is the only thing moving. Nothing is mandatory.
Crucial to authentic movement is the concept of the good enough mother. The witness of your dance takes on the role of the ‘good enough mother’: they observe your movements without judgment or interpretation. It is watching in the way a mother watches her child at play: kindly and curiously. The good enough mother only intervenes if there is danger, for example, if two dancers are about to collide. For the dancer, too, authentic movement is an exercise in non-judgment: allowing yourself to let your movements be unpolished or unfinished, perhaps even a bit awkward or aimless. Not immediately searching for an interpretation or meaning. Not feeling watched and judged. You can practice this wonder and curiosity without judgment. The more often you step onto ‘the dance floor’, the better you become at it.
At Walk Your Talk, we work with the model of Nonviolent Communication developed by Marshall Rosenberg. At first glance, our field of work is completely different from that of authentic movement, because we are so often engaged with language and words. Through Nonviolent Communication, we teach people which words are best removed from your vocabulary and which sentences are least likely to trigger a fight, flight, or freeze response in others. Yet, the two methods have much in common. The idea of expressing what lives inside you in an open way, for example. The idea of not judging yourself or others, too. Discovering new methods is a great source of inspiration for Walk Your Talk. Food for our minds, ingredients for our growth as coaches.
