Continuum. The Art of Self-Renewal
Sitting in a circle at the end of a class, someone shared that they experience Continuum as the opportunity for our mind to fall in love with our body. I liked this and I think it captures the essence of what Continuum makes available; an awaken to the pleasure of living within a body that has the ability to dance with the mind in an unlimited variation of responses, not trapped by predictability.
This predictability is essentially what happens when we are caught in the process of learning from our past experiences. It is our instinctual body reacting to invisible messages from the past, leaving us to re-experience our hurts, our wounds, and ensuring that we not make the same mistake again. We are left living an endless repetition, attempting to maybe, this time, understand and move beyond.
I have come to love our humanness. Living with an instinctual brain that only wants to survive, yet dances next to a creative neo-cortex that wishes to discover and describe, and with a body trying to keep up with all of the brain’s instructions. I am being a little tongue in cheek, but life can be like this.
Continuum creates a shift of balance, where the wisdom of the body is given as much credence as the mind. When I am speaking of ‘body’ Emilie Conrad, (the founder of Continuum) makes a powerful distinction.
“Commonly, when we speak of the ‘body’, we refer to a defined boundary that features a head, two arms and legs, and encompasses a very specific locale. This description is necessary to know that I am feeding my mouth and not yours, which is basic to survival.
In Continuum, we recognize that the body is mutable, multi-functional and containing a process that is not defined by boundaries. What Continuum calls a ‘body’ is movement — a dance of cells, molecules and interpenetrating wave motions. All of these movements stabilize in order to function in the environment of planet earth. Beyond conventional functioning exist domains of an unfathomable fluid mystery. We could say that all has been forgotten of this legacy except for our primordial pulsating, undulating environment of blood, organs, membranes and connective tissue.”
Already a new world is opening up, and one of the central teachings of Continuum is that all fluids of the body - the circulating blood, the tides of cerebrospinal fluid, the surge of the lymph system, the net of membranes, or the swirl of viscera and brain - function as fundamentally one stream of intelligence.
This echoes the precepts of cranial sacral therapy where maintaining changes in our own fluid mobility is essential for optimal health and self-renewal. All fluids, whether in the cell, the body, or the planet, function as a resonant intelligent whole and can never be separated.
In Continuum, we refer to this in its entirety as the fluid system and recognize its ancestral and essential role in healing, movement, and fundamental wisdom.
Where our body is resonating with the planet, we are connected and in harmony, and our thoughts begin to reflect this. We have the capacity to release from the tissues in our body the tensions that maintain our history.
Central to Continuum is breath, and perceiving how our breath moves within us.
All movement originates with breath. Fixations, compensatory patterns, family history, trauma and emotional stress are all maintained in the freedom or inhibition of breath. By engaging with variations in breathing, we are able to stimulate a wide spectrum of internal sensations, responses, and movements. Healing, growth, and all mobility, whether physical, emotional, or spiritual, are enhanced by the dexterity of breath.
The other elements we bring into the practice of Continuum are sound and movement. Sound is audible breath, penetrating the density of locked tissue. It eases mobility while releasing areas of stagnation and stress. Specific sound frequencies engage various systems of the body. By coupling sound with movement, we increase the agility of both. Sounding further connects us with each other and to the resonant whole, providing another source for communication.
Continuum’s movements are designed specifically to enhance the undulating spirals and circularity of the fluid system. A full range of non-patterned movement, from dynamic full-bodied expression to subtle micro-movements, stimulates neurological growth and vibrancy. Undulating wave motion permeates tissue, softens boundaries and amplifies sensation. Wave motion is the primary access to our bio-intelligence that is not bound by time, space or condition.
We use sensation as a guide for awakening the body’s mysteries and as the activating principle of the life force that feeds and nurtures the entire system, a Continuum that engenders Self-Renewal.
It is a practice that is taught in groups, where the group creating sound together creates a larger field of resonance.
Jane Okondo.