October 30 - November 3, 2008, I participated in the workshop "Welcoming the Dark" in New York City, led by Emilie Conrad the innovator and creator of Continuum Movement. My friend Sabine Mead and I trekked to NYC for fun and learning. I credit Sabine with helping me to discover the transformative powers of Continuum.

The following is a portion of my journal notes from the workshop. More distilling and honing of these ideas will come!

Speed, trauma, limiting beliefs, resistance, compression (of any kind), contraction, fear - what we using IAM like to call Drama - locks you in linear time and a specific location. Drama limits flexibility, creativity and possibility.

How does this happen? Imagine a place in your body where you hold tension. Maybe your neck, shoulders or back? How does this tension effect your ability to move your head, arms or maybe twist and turn your back? If you've ever had a neck or back injury, you'll know what I'm talking about: you fantasize about a time when you were free from the muscle contraction and could move freely!

To relieve muscle tension, people may use massage, heat, yoga, acupuncture, chiropractic manipulations, breath work or other gentle interventions to bring relaxation and movement back to these tight places.

Emilie Conrad posits that any organism needs space to heal and maintain health. She says space is needed to:

• self regulate
• self sustain
• adapt
• move
• let information flow
• vary
• increase capacity.

Thus, the relationship between structure and space within that structure is important. Emilie was talking about structures of the body in her workshop; I was thinking about personal, organizational and societal structures as well as I listened to Emilie talk.

Structures can include our office, our home, our garden/yard, our beliefs, our behavior, our physical movement. The more linear our structures, the more predictable our behavior and the results we achieve. Hmmm, this can be useful and it can be suffocating! The more rigid our structures the more inflexible and rigid our mobility becomes - whether movement, thoughts, interactions, communications or the like.

Structures that no longer serve us, that weigh us down, that create contraction in our experience can include:

• a limiting belief
• a home that doesn't have space for your computer and office things
• resistance to a new idea
• identity (I am a mom with no time to work or a dad needing to work 70 hours/week to make ends meet)
• policies and procedures that limit our helping a customer

=> Compression is caused by excessive locality, focus, linear movement, speed. Many of the things that allow us to personally function well and that make our organizations great can also cause suffocation, constriction, stagnation, and rigidity - the dark side of efficiency and productivity.

Without making anyone bad or wrong, it's important to know that these efficient, linear ways of operating are often habitual and unconscious - an expression of our context: history, culture, physical environment and energy. And this context is predominantly influenced by white male, forward, linear moving mindsets. "What!," you might say? Just take a look at any gym - at how people are moving: up and down, back to front, repetitive, watching TV, mindless movement.

Too often our interactions occur through degrees of resistance (common Drama is our common ground). Structures are created with a few points of tension (a support beam is removed and the structure falls). Movement is linear and rigid (like the bodies moving in a gym).

Non-linear structures, movement, thought and activity thus becomes critical to creating new contexts that allow for greater space and all the benefits that come with that space.

Circling and spiraling becomes critical to piercing through resistance/compression/contraction - learning from the gifts that Drama has to offer.

The following are some terms I learned from the workshop that I think are useful in using the best of both linear and non-linear perspectives:

• Tensegrity: (Dictionary.com) the property of skeleton structures that employ continuous tension members and discontinuous compression members in such a way that each member operates with the maximum efficiency and economy. (Karen) The ability of any structure to broadly share the weight or burden of form and to adapt that form based on changing functional and contextual need.
• Equilibrium: (Dictionary.com) a state of rest or balance due to the equal action of opposing forces; equal balance between any powers, influences. (Karen) Equilibrium is needed for all kinds of flow: information, nourishment, energy, communication. I've never liked the word balance - I love the idea of equilibrium! Masculine and feminine, light and dark, up and down are never in opposition but in a dance of informing relationship with each other.
• Superfluid: (Dictionary.com) a fluid that exhibits frictionless flow. (Karen) The ability to move around or through resistance with ease. The ability to open to situations where diverse people are deeply and passionately engaged in a process which focuses their attention and energies toward a shared vision and mutually beneficial goals - where greater health and capacity is part of the result and not overwhelm and burnout - because resistance is not encountered.
• 360 Capacity: the ability to move, see, and sense possibilities and energy beyond that which is right in front of you or most obvious.

What's needed is a deconstruction of structures that no longer serve - to free up breathing room and space for the "fluids of the body" and energy of our souls to move in new and different ways. What's needed is self-reference or self-orientation or self-authority - heightened sensation that comes from slowing down rather than the numbness that comes from constant acceleration. What's needed is a connection of the self to the living processes of the earth. What's needed is contexts and environments that enliven and empower rather than numb.

Superfluidity, space, breathing room - increases our connection to bicosmic intelligence (fields of information beyond our immediate sensing and knowing).

When we deconstruct form that no longer serves, we create space and allow movement where we can spread out and receive nourishment and connect with life giving and information energies outside of ourselves. We become open systems participating in the generative process of creation - global and dynamic.

What's needed is a shift in thinking from structures that confine, define and protect to structures that connect, support and evolve - not structures that keep us separate and safe but structures that connect us all back to the original creative energies that allow us to respond, become bigger and serve the needs of all not just some.

We want structures that allow people to be more receptive, versatile, alive - and capacity in people not to be defending but engaging - sensing, receiving and allowing. Context and relevance thus become really important - so our flexing and reshaping moves us in directions we desire and intend.

Health - defined by our ability to respond and vary with in the context of an identity (shared vision and purpose) that meets a need in the world.

First, create meaning both personally and collectively so people can fully engage from their unique location and perspective. Fear is an early adaptive pattern and must come to the surface. We must have something larger to trust - we must be able to trust cycles of birth, living and death. We must welcome the lessons of fear and move quickly into feelings of well being (no wallowing needed).

We also need guidelines - not about control, force, fear or scarcity but about unification of consciousness, love, abundance, creative energies.

Any extreme rigid form is an opportunity to ask questions we've never asked before - to use radical curiosity to see beyond the 'reality of what is' to what the mind can imagine as possible -- to become like water finding the path from mountain to ocean - changing the most solid structures as it goes. Matter and structure are always negotiable territories.

What we're looking for is the fluid, infinite, formless essence of our being - where information, choices, nutrients, and possibility flows freely. This place is not time bound! Our flow thus interacts with the form part of our being as easily as inhaling and exhaling.

When we feel stuck - ask the questions we never have asked before. Find the fluid, the essential part of our being that can flow beyond 'current reality'. More information and possibility is always available in non-linear space and time. An 'event' ripples/connects in ways we could never "predict" - we are bigger and better than what we can only predict. In this bigger time/space, coherence is clear, integrity is clear.

"Stuck" becomes a portal we can use to open to new worlds of information and possibility.

Varied movement:

• experimental behavior
• new beliefs
• non-linear physical movement

takes us beyond "known" form and fears that are entrenched in early imprinting and coping strategies.

A self aware, engaged, self regulated person is needed to move beyond stasis.

Nothing short of the dissolution of form (death of an idea, matter, etc) will take us consciously beyond 'what is.' If I'm not XYZ, than who am I? What can we know and trust beyond form/structure to pull is through these mini-deaths?

When a reaction is triggered in us - we go unconscious. We need to find our meaning and motivation AND sensory feeling to stay present with the moment - to find our way through the reaction back to our original creative energies (our Essential Best).

The mind asks the question, the body answers, otherwise there is a conflict of interest!

Set the container for work variation so within the container people can own their time, limit outside voices and influences and hold their own authority.

When we slow down, and limit the Drama - we have more access to our Essential Best. Drama and compression is dense - contracted. When connected to Essence - Drama doesn't make so much difference! The key is to get out of Drama and focus on Essence which is universal.