The Body Unwinds
A Non-Directed Movement Intensive
A 22-class series with written handouts and practice support over email and/or Zoom. See below for complete details.
$75 USD
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About This COurse
The relationship of the body to the awakening process is a rich and multifaceted area of exploration. Almost everyone, at some point in their process, is going to deal with the work of “waking down” - of (re)entering the body with full consciousness and full/renewed access to the entire bandwidth of felt-sense experience.
One of the main things that can occur in the waking down process is a recalibration of the body’s physical systems. Put simply, the embodiment of presence changes the body over time. Many of these changes, while subtle, have profound and long-lasting effects on how we carry ourselves, relate to others, move through space, and “feel” in our own skin.
In our work, we refer to the recalibration of the physical body through presence as unwinding. At this point in our own process, we can’t find much of a distinction between physical, energetic, emotional or mental unwinding.
We are a unified, complex system - a web of interrelationships.
Each core wound, facet of conditioning, or area of resistance we touch has made a global imprint on our system. This is part of what makes the actual work of transformation so subtle and nuanced. When we meet a resistance, we are mostly not just dealing with a thought or mental image. If it’s something that recurs frequently, we’re often dealing with a complex - a chain of linked patterns that can be deeply energetic and physical (if this were not the case, our fixations and conditioned beliefs would not have the charge & strength that they do.).
Interestingly, whether our defensive structures appear primarily physical or psychological, we eventually get to the same place in working with them - “blunt force” techniques and “top down” fixes stop working (or they never worked to begin with). We touch a layer of our conditioning that is basically immune to self-regulation strategies carried out by the mind.
This moment/phase is actually an invitation into true awareness practice. No end-gaining. No manipulation. No mental goals. No attempts to strategically “fix” anything. No bias about what should be happening or not happening. No attempt to hold the body or mind in any kind of fixed position. It’s the body saying to the mind: “You are out of your depth here. We can heal this over time in a way that you can’t manufacture or understand, but you have to get out of the way and stop interfering and imposing your preconceptions and agendas.”
This is a major shift in our spiritual job description as it relates to the body. The new job description looks something like this:
Creating unstructured, unhurried, uninhibited and unpressured space for the involuntary unwinding of the body system.
Rather than “moving the body,” simply tracking and waiting for it to do whatever it wants to do.
Emphasizing the openness, curiosity and goalless qualities of presence-awareness.
Emphasizing waiting. The sense that nothing in particular needs to happen. No preference for stillness and none for movement.
Emphasizing that if something does happen, it is not suppressed or resisted. This includes lop-sided movements, positions that take the body out of so-called “alignment,” and repetitive movements that appear to have no purpose.
Emphasizing that if something does happen, it is not encouraged or embellished. This includes the mind turning an involuntary movement into a “more productive stretch,” moving because you are bored of the actual pattern coming through and want something new to happen, or keeping a movement going when it is trying to self-resolve back into stillness.
Emphasizing that what does happen may be subtle. You could spend an hour being aware, and all that wanted to happen was the neck wanted to turn back and forth a few degrees.
Emphasizing that being vividly aware and controlling our experience (including where our attention wants to go) are distinct. True awareness is not a control state, which is why we feel so connected, available and natural when we are in it (awareness is a homecoming).
And finally, emphasizing that our bodily experience - reflecting nature itself - is cyclical. As we practice, we become more and more intimate with the wave-like patterns inherent in the unwinding of the fascia and other bodily systems. Rather than seeing healing as some freeze-framed end point, we begin to relax into the wave patterns themselves. This is the dissolution of resistance. In this dissolution, the wave patterns are able to cohere and organize. This is the real meaning of “health” - an uninhibited responsiveness. An ability to feel. An unrestrained movement of emotion. A circulation of energy. The body of the child present in the form of the adult.
This course is an invitation to play in this territory intensively for a month within a supportive container that includes feedback from the teachers.
While the course includes a number of prompts and sequences and provides theoretical background on somatics, involuntary movement, the nervous system, fascial unwinding and other key concepts, the heart of this offering is the commitment to find some time most days to let the body unwind in awareness. If this resonates, please dive in.
Taught By
Megan Cowan & Chris McKenna
Format & Timing
This 23-session class was originally offered as a daily intensive in October 2020.
It contains over over 22 hours of audio/video material, handouts summarizing key instructions and inquiries, resources for further exploration, and extensive notes & frequently asked questions about the practice.
This course benefits from making some time “most days” to work with the material presented.
This style of somatic practice - while disarmingly simple and natural - is also asking us to attune to the subtle in ways that can feel unfamiliar and sometimes frustrating. It can therefore be helpful to create a concentrated space to “enter in” to the practice over the course of a few weeks.
PRACTICE SUPPORT
We offer you several forms of support as you progress through the material.
First, Megan & Chris offer optional 15-minute sessions over Zoom at different time slots each week to anyone enrolled in this course. Instructions for signing up for these will be included in the course orientation email you receive after registering.
Second, you can also communicate with us over email as you progress through the material, either with questions or simply with reports about your experience working with the material. We love to receive these and will usually try to respond to them within a few days.
“In my own experience and in that of working with pupils, the biggest challenge for everyone is to meet that moment of feeling and not react by trying to change things.
In fact, this is the biggest change it is possible to make — no change at all — since habitually we always meet that moment and try to change things. Though it sounds like a very simple choice to make, if you have not done it you cannot imagine just what a huge challenge it is to actually carry out in the face of the immediate and overwhelmingly ‘real’ feelings, thoughts and emotions of that existential moment. It takes every bit of courage and clarity to stick with this means whereby when your entire experience is screaming at you, “WRONG! WRONG! GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE AS FAST AS POSSIBLE!”
The fact that such all-encompassing changes take place almost immediately when we do manage to inhibit reacting shows how big a change it is to willingly accept what we feel is wrong and to freely live in the given ‘here and now’.”
