Standing Awareness can help us find, express and release traumas captured inside our bodies
In this video, Standing Awareness practitioner Alan uses one of Marvin Solit's tensegrity models (held together via tension and compression) to demonstrate how trauma can get 'locked inside' one's body, disturbing the harmonious balance which is the body's natural state. The work described on standing-awareness.com can make us aware of these often-suppressed sore or sensitive or 'trigger point' areas in the body, and by letting them express themselves, and paying attention to them, they can begin to unwind and release, eventually restoring the body to a healthier, more harmonious state.
Why it's different, and why we need it
Non-directed body movement (NDBM), also referred to as Standing Awareness, is an approach to well-being and restoration at many levels. Repair of traumas, whether 'physical' or 'psychological' is enhanced by permitting our innate powers of recovery to operate. In non-directed body movement, we explore the ways we impede, often unknowingly, full recovery, and we discover how to facilitate healing, maintain health and increase awareness.
Most physical activity is directed body movement. A non-directed body movement session can start by standing erectly. As we feel a resistance to this directed posture, we begin to let go and experience how we stand without direction. The resulting movements are spontaneous and unpredictable, akin to the positions and patterns assumed during sleep. A typical response may be a twisting of the hips or shoulders, a drooping of the head, a sensation of pain from an old and presumably healed injury. These feelings are not suppressed but encouraged, and lead to further non-directed movement.
This approach allows us to experience the residuals of injuries and traumas that have not had the opportunity to heal completely. Injury and trauma are not merely related to the past - they continue to happen. A significant part of the long term restoration process is learning to unwind as a lifestyle. As non-directed movement skills are developed in dealing with present events, responses to new injuries become more complete and adaptive.