There was a question in the class the other week about how I know if it’s really how my body wants to move or if it’s a learned behaviour. How to find “me”, my authentic expression in ropes?
I think it’s a one-million-dollar question. How free are we anyway?
Habits live in the body
I think, first of all, we need to let go of the judgment (upon ourselves about how authentic this or that movement is) and embrace the fact that there is a lot of conditioning and contractions that our bodies collect as we “move through life”. Probably in every discipline, you will find this somatic imprint on the practitioners. You can recognise people who do a lot of Contact Improvisation by their movements. But then, how free or improvised is it? These are moves learned in the class.
Yes, there is definitely a lot of conditioning, including adopting the teacher's way of sitting in seiza or moving in ropes, and a general culture in the local rope scene.
On a deeper level as well: practising Hanna Somatics, I'm becoming aware of my habitual movements (I’m intending to lift the hand, but the neck wants to “help”: generous but completely unnecessary!) If you really dive in, we are full of these compensatory or "parasitic” movements, as called by Moshe Feldenkrais.
“…movement is the personality made visible.” – Mary Starks Whitehouse
Finding stillness before movement
I think what is important is to seek, to come in contact with some sort of desire, the impulse. And for that, we need to get still first. “Only from stillness can we come into movement” is in my notes from Anna Noctulles’ workshop at the bottoming conference in Milan last month. I find it very true. We often rush to feel, to perform, to react… We rush to fill the space and what follows is often an immature, habitual - learned - reaction // decision // movement.
We must dare to take our time and allow for emptiness. Let the loud crowd of first reactions run through and leave the stage... Stay still some more. That would be the first practice that helps us to come into a movement that is ours.
I try to take time to empty myself before going into the ropes. I turn inward... I soften up the outer shell. Relax my face, my eyes, my jaw. It doesn’t take long, but this moment of tuning in with myself has always been helpful in meeting my partner on a deeper level.
Moving what you are feeling
What follows is some sort of inquiry into the present moment where we move in response to body-felt sensations, emotions, memories and images. Our practice is to let the body lead and allow movement to surface from the deeper level, not from habit, aesthetic choice, or performance:
We don’t decide how to move.
We wait until movement arises from within.
It might feel awkward. It is always awkward to step out of the routine. Over time, I believe, we can learn to trust our bodys’ intelligence and move with greater honesty, to stay in more stable contact with inner impulses and differentiate impulse from a habit.
Enhance vs. restrict?
Where is the rope, you ask me? In this inquiry (or shall we call it play) rope brings in a complexity, of course, as it brings additional impulses from the outside. At the same time, it can offer an additional portal to our deeper self, deeper - honest - impulses, when we allow ourselves to move in response to the rope impact.
When waiting to be moved, rope becomes a medium that slows us down, intensifies sensations, reveals habits and narratives, and asks for deeper honesty. By creating a restraint, it makes movement deliberate. Rope can provide pressure, friction, direction, containment. With rope, the body has something to “lean against” in perception - metaphorically and also quite literally.
I truly feel that one of the greatest lessons the rope can offer is to learn to receive the movement, not invent it.
One more thing I would like to add is that this kind of movement is not an intention to make your partner do something, to respond in any particular way, to direct or instruct them how we want to be tied…
It speaks from the inside, to express ourselves, not to achieve an outcome.
As a conclusion,
Coming back to the original question, how do we know that the movement is truly ours? Maybe we don’t know that or not completely. Maybe the authenticity is not about the absence of conditioning, but the awareness of it. And maybe all that matters is our willingness to listen deeper, to pause long enough, to follow what feels or might feel true to us in the moment, to increase the chance for a genuine dialog to happen…