#9 Sensuality, Kinesthetic Artwork & Integrated Movement — Cécile Raynor
Types Of Sensuality
There are different types of sensuality.
There is body parts sensuality. Like sliding the fingers on your skin or in somebody else skin. Focusing on a fragrance, colors.
And sensuality in terms of a whole person. A whole body that it includes everything through integrated movement of such fragrance and colors
Everything about a human being can be sensual.
Sensuality Is Different Than Sexuality
Very often people confuse sexual with sensual for example, even dancers and yoga practitioners.
Sexuality takes you to an extreme of sensuality.
And even if it´ s not sex, there are ways of going to the extreme of something and people do yoga that way. The sometimes they'll dance that way.
Sexuality belongs in the privacy of privacy, but sensuality can be on the stage.
Sensuality Is The Journey Not The Extreme
It can be in how you practice yoga. It can be how you come across, in your artwork in your teaching and everything.
That means that you don't go to an extreme of sensual, sensuality is not going to the extremes. It's savoring. Savoring would lead you there. It's about the journey.
So when people do, let's say yoga, they're like, compressing their head and and the breast is pushing forward and they're arching their back. This is not, first of all, it's not true yoga because it's missing the essential dimension of being home.
When you go to that extreme. You disconnect actually on some level and you have nowhere else to go. It's not the journey, it's not even in line with what yoga is about. In dancing, if there's a choreography and you're asked to do that, well, it might have a purpose in the story of the choreographing.
But if you're dancing with someone then you want to have some openness, there has to be some arena where they could be emerging, have a dialogue. And the answer is you do one step forward, and the other back. But that is not possible when people are really going to to the extreme because they've already locked the step.
Alexander Technique And BIA Process
The BIA process means body intelligence activation process.
When people know how to activate their body intelligence they can enjoy movement. It's a mix of fluidity and expansion.
Dancers might be fluid, but they kind of collapse at times, they confuse releasing with relaxing.
Relaxing is a state of availability that is more dynamic, it's more open, it's pregnant with possibilities. It´s spacious. Because collapse, it's also fixed.
When you collapse you tend to pull yourself out the next state. So pulling and collapsing are the two extremes.
But you can learn to keep it spacious and extended, even if you have to curl your body. You don't collapse into the curve. But you perform Integrated Movement.
That has a lot to do with joints and it´s articulation. You need space in your joints, most people have tight joints. So sometimes they may move in a way that you can tell how, fluid their energies or not.
Knowing How To Integrate Movement With Body Intelligence
In Alexander Technique you receive hands attention from a teacher and very often people get dependent on those hands. And they don't know how to do it for themselves. They don't have the tools and but that's the big process.
A way to empower people is that they know how to activate their body intelligence themselves. And it has a lot to do with how you handle your joints and how you connect with your skeletal structure more than your muscles for strength with integrated movement.
True Strength Vs Gripping
People think strength comes from tensing the muscle but that's gripping. And again, we end up in that place of there's no space left when you grasp. So when people think they have to do this because they think that's how they get strong.
But actually, if you do yoga or if you move or anything, you´ll find true strength if you can relax, release in expansion and into your support but keep the pose. Let's say you're doing a chair pose. You stay in the pose but you keep releasing through your feet.
You will trigger energy to flow as integrated movement. It's the natural loading and but at the same time your necessary muscle tension has to do something. It works with the other muscle to keep you in that position.
So it becomes strong in a flexible way because you're not gripping. Tension would develop strength when you stay in an activity while you keep releasing in a state of expansion.
Then your body organically will develop more strength but it's going to be flexible strength. That allows for movement.
Kinesthetic Movement And Sensuality
Kinesthetic movement, fluid movement, sensuality it's all coming together. It's all energy flowing and space. And yeah, being alive.
People think that sensuality is something that happens if you're with another partner, and there's sexual energy. They think that sensuality and sexuality are completely intertwined.
And yes, sensuality can be a way to sexuality. But sensuality is much wider, it's something that comes from the inside out. Rather than something external to get into that state.
Be Aware Of Your Body As A Whole To Connect With Sensuality
Become aware of your body as a whole, as opposed to just part of you.
Plug into the whole of you in the moment whether you´re in an essential activity, eating chocolate or flirting with another guy or woman or whatever. Anything you associate with sensuality.
Plug into your whole being plugged into all the dimension of the moment and be in the present moment. And and choose to let go of any grasping as grasping is the opposite of sensuality.
Let go of any grasping in your muscles. Think of softening your joints, you may not know what that means but you just need to have the thought "I chose to soften my armpits". "I choose to sense my joints", "I choose to really sink in to connect with Divine Mother under my feet by letting go of any existential stress", "I let energy flow right through my body". Those are the kind of thoughts that will connect you and will turn into a channel for your own sensuality.
Becoming One With Your Instrument In Kinesthetic Artwork
Whereas you´re a musician, a dancer, a speaker or a regular person using a phone to work you need to become one with your instrument so both can become a kinesthetic channel for the music, choreography or the task you´re performing.
So if you´re a musician becoming one is the only way you can be a good channel for the music. If you're controlling and holding there´ll be interference. So you somebody might be already a great musician, but then they would become even a better one.
Grasping can be harmful to the pattern of movement when creating your artwork and it´ s necessary to re-learn how to let go into expansion Kinesthetically.
Being a channel is not a positioning. It´s not fixed.
You want a big moment that changes in the next moment and the next moment.
The Paradigm Shift To The Ease Of Integrated Movement
In "The Wise Way To Yoga" Book is explained how people tend to resist ease. They resist effortlessness in the body because they feel like they´re not doing enough.
A lot of people, especially in the yoga world, in the dance world, people have realized that if we do it with this old paradigm, people get hurt with real injuries. A lot of yoga teachers end up in hip surgery, knee surgery, that kind of thing. But sometimes you get hurt because you're not using your body the way it was designed to be used and therefore, people have chronic tension.
They say it's the stress of life. Stress, enhance the tension that's already there, created by the misuse of the body, the misuse of the mind. Rushing and cutting corners and you know.
This Integrated Movement work is all about paying attention to the process without losing touch with the whole.
So sometimes dancers think like okay, or I'm going to be aware of the process, so they go like one vertebrae at a time into stretching, for example. There is nothing wrong to do that. If you really want to do that. But it's just if you do that repeatedly, you're not connected to your body intelligence. You're connected to your habitual body. Does it feel good or does it not feel good that you're connected to that? What feels good for your habit or body is not necessarily what feels good for your body intelligence. But what feels good for your body intelligence will always feel good for your habitual body and that´ s the experience of Integrated Movement.
This is the transformation that anybody who wants to become a channel for their art or work need to go through. Yoga, dancing, writing, drawing, painting, i´ts about life. It´s about living present and knowing you can only be mindful of the things you´re aware of.
Watch The Sensual Sessions #9 with Cécile Raynor Founder Of BIA
About Cécile
Cécile Raynor has been teaching for 30 years, published the Wise Way to Yoga as well as numerous articles, and she was featured several times both on TV and on an “Expanded Awareness” radio show. Her blog has been read by thousands of people in over 100 different countries. Her work is based on the Alexander Technique, the best-kept secret of Olympic athletes and famous performers. They swear by it because it allows them to perform at their best with optimal safety. Although it is now commonly used by everyone. She also created the Body Intelligence Activation Process™, a mind, body, heart and spirit work that affects her students in all aspects of their life as they experience increased wellbeing.
Cécile has been helping people with poor posture, chronic muscular tension and pain, joints issues and headaches reclaim their ease of movement, their natural good posture, and the joy and peace of mind brought by well-being. She has also been a mentor for many students interested in embodied and integrated personal growth.
Cécile can be reached through her websites:
https://offthematyogablog.com/blog
What´s Next?
Go To The Sensual Sessions: How Sensuality Can Free You From Self-Judgement
Learn More About: Bodymind Philosophy
Get On The VIP List: The Sensual Journey
