The light in the studio is low and the door to the fire escape is wide. I’m watching someone – they’ve been standing, quietly facing the door for quite some time. Their body, like an ocean, is swooning and rolling just under the skin. Breath moving body from the inside out. I move to stand nearby and we sway together in this slow-moving night air. Behind me and to my left, a third person joins. I don’t see them but I know who it is, they are unmistakable, full of gravity and lighting. We three standing in this loose triangle at the edge of the studio.

Three bodies grown in different soils at different times in history. Each of us are made up of similar parts yet different in composition and expression. If we look at the way our spines have been shaped we can easily see the parts are similar but the ways that they move together as a whole is entirely original. Take, for example, the way as babies we tilted our head towards our caregivers, who tilted their heads in their own peculiar ways. The food made in the homes we grew up in, in the cultures we were born to. The fall from the bed, the love of climbing trees, or playing basketball, or reading books or studying snails. The nature of the people who surrounded us, who shaded us or who allowed us certain kinds of light.[i] We are ecosystems. We would have to draw on multiple ways of perceiving to take in the shape of this spine and the body it moves within as we stand here listening and breathing together tonight within the gravity that holds us to this plant. There are at least 8 billion ways to listen.

Once born, moving and breathing in gravity are among our first experiences. We all share similar anatomies for moving and breathing. We all develop movement relationships between the diaphragms of our bodies, our spines, our gravity response systems, our expressive systems etc. These functional anatomies cannot be separated out from our psychology, our spirituality, our sexuality, our relationships, environments and so on.
What if we considered breathing as a relationship? What is the relationship between your movement and your breath? How do they influence, inhibit and support each other? Is breathing a thing to be manipulated according to some imposed ideal of how our breath should be moving?
There is no right way to breathe but there are principles that can support us in developing adaptive, responsive breathing that can move as freely as possible through our bodies according to the constraints, opportunities and necessities of the moment.
I invite you into the studio and into my shared research practice with Claire Turner Reid to explore some principles for moving and breathing with ease, curiosity and pleasure.

MOVING AND BREATHING
A workshop with Claire Turner Reid and Lesley Greco

• Date: SATURDAY May 27, 2023
• Time: 1pm – 4:30pm
• Location: Guelph Youth Dance Studios 42 Quebec St, Guelph, ON N1H 2T4
• studio is on the 3rd floor with elevator access available
• Cost: before May 19: $125, after May 19: $160
• *if funds are limited, please reach out to us and we will work something out

Register here!

Through information sharing, guided improvisations, individual hands-on attention, movement scores and motifs we will inhabit our breathing-bodies in motion and stillness.

We will look at some functional anatomies of breathing, the diaphragms, the curves & ranges of motion of the spine – all through the lenses of Claire’s application of the Axis Syllabus and Lesley’s Osteopathy inMotion practice.

This workshop is based on Lesley and Claire’s many-years-long dialogue of shared interests in moving, listening, learning and adapting. We look forward to sharing with you!

Claire Turner Reid: Claire is a movement artist and educator in Dance, Axis Syllabus, and Chinese Internal Arts. She uses movement and healing practices to deepen awareness, honour the integrity of the body, and enrich inter-relational possibilities. Claire is a Certified Teacher with the Axis Syllabus International Research Meshwork, faculty at the Ontario College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, has a Diploma of Acupuncture from OCTCM Toronto, and is a member of Spiritwind Internal Arts where she trains & teaches Qigong, Taijiquan, Baguazhang, and Kung fu. Claire loves engaging with various communities and is inspired to continue sharing, learning, and transforming through movement. www.claireturnerreid.com

Lesley Greco: As an osteopathic practitioner and interdisciplinary artist, Lesley has a special interest in bridging osteopathy and movement principles in both her clinical and studio practices. Lesley has been a manual practitioner (RMT, CST) since 1996 and completed five years of academic and clinical training at the Canadian College of Osteopathy in 2019. She successfully defended her research dissertation An Osteopathic Concept and Practice of Listening in 2021. Lesley is currently part of an intensive teacher training in Fides Krucker’s Emotionally Integrated Voice method (EIV) where she is investigating relationships between voice, breath, movement and osteopathy. Rooted in practice-research, her work is devoted to learning, sharing and creating through listening based, cooperative, body-informed processes. 

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[i] Analogy shared by Rollin Becker D.O. in his book Life in Motion (R. E. Brooks, 1997)

Gravity is a Mystery.
For all our wild intelligence and all of our brightest scientific minds, it remains so. Alongside the contributions of Galileo, of Einstein, of Newton, the perspectives of scientific revolution, gravity exists to some of us as a god. Eros. The god of Love, of attraction, the god of desire. Through gravity all things with mass are attracted one to the other. The centre of earth’s mass is drawn to the centre of the sun’s mass. The Eros between them holds us in this spiralling galaxy.

I love that gravity remains a mystery to our human minds and that the invitation of Eros, gravity, its forces and counter-forces, are what we play with as we move about our days. One thing we know is that we must negotiate gravity in our lives on earth. All of our growth and development happen in relation to gravity. The spiralling forms of the vessels, bones, and muscles of our extremities, the vorticial shapes of our organs that sense gravity – are all forged by the dialogue between gravity and the fluid we are formed of and within.

The child in utero develops in a spherical fluid filled envelope. The baby’s form, is itself primarily liquid which gradually becomes more and more condensed. Upon being born, under the directional forces of the earth and the developmental processes of growth, body gradually becomes denser and the internal suspensory processes grow more able to support our uprightness in gravity. These rough and delicate negotiations toward standing become possible in large part through the tiny organs of our inner ears.

In physiological terms, our ears have two distinct sensory functions. The cochlea, as the ear of hearing, equips us to listen to our aural soundscapes. The ear of hearing translates vibrational information from our environment into the spiralling fluid filled cochlea of the internal ear facilitating the metabolism of sound.[iii]

Detecting gravity, being upright, moving, having an experience of ourselves in relation to others is rooted in another structure within the inner vesicle of the ear. The ear of the body or the vestibular organ, facilitates listening for our internal body states.[i][ii] Here, three curving fluid filled semi-circular canals intersect at right angles appearing to have been formed from spiralling movement. This vestibular mechanism or the ear of the body receives information regarding our position in space, our movements, our uprightness as well as the motion of those we are in contact with. The vestibular organ or vestibular mechanism functions via the spiralling motion of its fluid as it passes through these canals to detect horizontal, vertical, and back and forth body motion.[iv] This helps us distinguish velocity and change of direction, working with gravity to identify where we are in space and in establishing the postural tone reflected in the quality of our movement. The vestibular organ helps us listen in on the ongoing dialogue between gravity, the counter-gravity contact forces of the ground and the internal suspensory/tensile forces supporting our bodies in upright standing.

Looking through a neurobiological lens, our vestibular organ or ear of the body receives very specific information. That information is coordinated in our vestibular system – a wider neurobiological network conducting information from; the inner ear, vision, proprioceptive, kinesthetic and touch receptors. Our vestibular system functions to relate the information coming from outside; what we see, hear, smell, taste, touch – with information arising from our internal body; heartbeat, proprioception, sensations of digestion etc. The vestibular system feeds information directly to the cerebellum which helps us to determine whether or not our intended action matches our actual action. It is a foundation for our physical intelligence, contributing to our sense of self and helping to distinguish ourselves from others and our environment.

When people come to see me, more often than not, one of the first thing we address is their relationship with gravity. When someone has a habit of holding themselves up through tension there is limited present moment information available. Moment to moment sensory information is vital if we want to safely navigate our environment, receive pleasure, have choice and agility in movement and expression. Sensing gravity helps people begin find the grounded lightness and vitality they have come to my studio looking for. Typically, in current western culture, most of us must learn to listen for and feel the sensations of gravity in our bodies and to practice resting in gravity regardless of what is happening around us. Gravity can anchor us and offer a sense of home base.  In other words, to rest in the eye of the storm rather than being blown around.

To love gravity as our constant and loyal companion is a practice.

One of the most interesting things about osteopathic practice is noticing the common themes and concerns that arise between people who live very different lives from one another. Learning to have a more cooperative relationship with our body in gravity is a big one! This listening practice series is designed in response to what I am learning about your body, needs and curiosities.

It is an invitation to attune to ourselves, each other and our shared world, listening and responding in ways that are co-creative rather than dominating. A practice that invites the organization and coherence of our systems to arise, flow and interact in spontaneous, responsive and adaptive ways. In other words, to access our improvisational intelligence and not be limited to expressing our survival responses only.

In these sessions we will look briefly at some of the current neurobiological research that underlies the practice and invite a quality of internal and inter-relational dialogue wherein we partner with body and Nature, not dictate to it.

Looking forward to listening with you!

LOVING GRAVITY: a listening practice [v]

when: march 16,  23, 30
time: 10-11am

cost: series of three: $60 + hst,
drop-in: $25 + hst

REGISTER HERE

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[i] French otolaryngologist, inventor and doctor of medicine Alfred A. Tomatis coined the term ear of the body to refer to the vestibular mechanism.

[ii] Tomatis & Keeping, 2005

[iii][iii] Schwenk, 1996

[iv] Schwenk, 1996

[v] Loving gravity is a phrase often used by my voice mentor Fides Krucker. Krucker’s philosophy and method deeply informs this practice. https://www.fideskrucker.com/
https://www.amazon.ca/Reclaiming-Calliope-Freeing-through-Undomesticated/dp/1623177065