Today, I am delighted to birth my new consultation practice. CreativEmbodiment is the on-going practice of inhabiting our bodies with artful awareness.  It is the child of over twenty years of active inquiry about how to live in and through my body rather than at a distance from it. Whether you long to befriend your physicality, develop trainings that engage your students and clients more actively, or enjoy clearer, more versatile communication skills at work, I am here to help you invoke body-based resources for your personal and professional development. I invite you to embark on this journey with me, and would be honored to be your guide.

 

In my work as a consultant, I cherish the body as a primary medium for learning, creativity, and growth. But, believe me, this has not always been the case! Those who know me well know that I am a chronic learner, a seeker, a full-time student of life. Through my explorations of human development across the lifespan, I have discovered this hard-earned reverence for the “matter” of us.

 

I grew up in a family steeped in mainstream Western culture, which taught that the mind is separate from the body, and that the intellect can prevail over the “less important” (i.e., inferior) material aspects of ourselves. “Don’t listen to the hunger pangs and they’ll go away. You shouldn’t interrupt your studying to eat.” Or… “Don’t swing your hips when you walk. You’re asking for the wrong kind of attention.”

 

And so, I learned to ignore or override my quiet kinesthetic knowing about what is good and natural and healthy for me. Curtailing my passion for movement/dance as a peripheral hobby instead of a central pursuit, I cultivated my intellect and strengthened my will to be disciplined, responsible. I “achieved” academically and otherwise, and felt uplifted, almost away from my physicality, by the external positive feedback I received.

 

But there were other reasons to downplay the importance of my bodily states, as well. Impossible standards of beauty bred disdain in me, for my own female form, at a young age. Also, there were accidents, injuries, recurring insults, sexual abuse. Physical and emotional traumas that reside in our flesh and bones can seem too painful to bear. As a result, my consciousness, my awareness of “me,” hovered a few feet above my body during much of my childhood and young adulthood. Dissociation offers a form of relief.

 

But then, as I graduated with honors from Stanford University, my body called out through the fog of my disenchanted intellect. As I awoke one day, a small voice in my belly urged, “Get up! It’s time to dance and ride horses again.” Though it seemed nonsensical to this accomplished academic, I chose to heed the advice. Slowly, at the pace of ice melting from the first rays of the late winter sun, I began to move, to hike, to dance, to rock climb, to bike ride, to sense the pain and, eventually, the pleasure in my tissues. Little by little, my consciousness, my awareness of “me,” began to seep back into my physical form.

 

A few years later, I discovered the healing power of the creative arts. As I danced, drew, wrote and improvised about various stories held in different parts of my body, my attention dwelled more tenderly, more regularly in previously uninhabited parts of myself. Over the next decade, by interweaving the movement-based expressive arts work of Tamalpa Institute with the long-term, somatic practices of Continuum movement and Vipassana meditation, I began to experience my body as a creative, regenerative process that unfolds, moment by moment, breath by breath.

 

With daily practice, my consciousness continues coming home to my body; my flesh is alive with awareness. This vitality yields rich resources that help transform limiting thoughts and behaviors in my private and public lives. I give thanks for this process of innovation/evolution.

 

Now I sit comfortably on a chair, sensing the length of my spine from my tailbone to the place where my head rests on top of my neck. I feel the contact that my buttocks make with the seat underneath me, and that my feet make with the floor. Breath  expands and then softens the area through my pectoral muscles, around my heart. My visual field is wide, and my mind is alert.

 

From this posture, this somatic state, I am ready to guide others into the countless resources contained within. Let us begin.