What I have noticed lately in myself is a strange stillness, an absence of movement.  Once I noticed it, I began to feel it everywhere.  At the computer, watching a movie, driving.  It didn’t felt still, it felt frozen.  I realized that certain activities take me into a state where even breathing is minimal, and the little postural shifts and breath related movement that Laban movement analysts identify as “shape flow” were not there.

Shape flow movements mean the body moving in relationship to the body itself. This could be amoebic movement or  mundane habitual actions, like shrugging, shivering, rubbing an injured shoulder, little shifts and adjustments in a chair or standing etc.  It includes breathing.  It is a kind of baseline of aliveness, of life.  Shape flow movements are also recuperative.  They renew the body at the cellular level and keep us “in the flow” of life and liveliness. When shape flow is absent, the body has begun to atrophy.  That is what I noticed.I was feeling a deadening, like cellular lockdown.  Is that something that happens with aging, I wondered.

So I have started flowing, little movements, bigger breaths salted in with the smaller.  Like a continual little improvisational dance with myself. Try it.  See what happens.