We are all carrying wounds and scars from our past. We hold it as defensive tension that restricts perception, action and behaviour. This tension is embedded in neuromuscular tissue. Muscles and their nerves act on the basis of habit, through binary neuromuscular pathways that govern both action and perception. These pathways can be simple or complex, local or nonlocal, strong or weak. How strong they are depends upon how much they have been used before. They strengthen through use, and atrophy through disuse.
When your body is shocked, or more slowly driven, into chronic defensiveness, this defensiveness is sustained by powerful and rigid neuromuscular pathways. The neurological element of these pathways is locked in freeze mode. Your muscles are in chronic restriction or tension, limiting your movements and actions. While these pathways can be released in many simple ways, this release, can only be temporary. Your nervous system will soon return to its defensive (learned) default mode.
In order to become free from defensive neuromuscular residue you need to both dissolve defensive pathways, and replace them with new wholesome pathways. This takes time, and a recalibration of your whole body. Dissolving defensive residue requires repetition of soft, safe movements so that restricted muscles soften out of freeze mode. Establishing wholesome pathways requires repetition of movements that engages all available muscles together. Without these new pathways your body will return to its default defensive mode. Because your body acts as a unit the movements you use must engage all the motor, respiratory and structural muscles of your body.
Learning how to do this is the heart of this Immersion. It is open to anyone who can walk upstairs unaided. Using movement as a preparation for sustained stillness it will provide you with a solid foundation for both dissolving defensive residue and establishing stable Pathways of Wholeness. This will spill out from your mat and into daily life, especially if you maintain a regular daily practice. At the same time regular practice will prepare the whole of your body to do traditional yoga postures more safely, satisfyingly and effectively from your Pathways of Wholeness.
You will be given access to ten files. There will be five medium length practics sessions with about 75/80 minutes of movement, each with a different focus: softness, pleasure, soft core, wholeness, and mixed. There will be two longer practices, and two shorter ones (20', 40'). There is also one session that presents all of the movement techniques used.
If you use the recordings more days than not until January 15th you will be given a deep immersion in the wisdom of your body. In dissolving left over residue from unresolved past experience the intelligence of your body becomes more available, fluid and coherent. This will allow you to begin to refine and develop your own praxis in response to the changing needs, limitations and capabilities of your own body, without external guidance. Detailed Notes to guide you in your own self practice will be provided.