What Being In Movement® is

Being In Movement® mindbody training is an educational process which uses body awareness instruction to help people increase comfort and improve performance in whatever areas of their lives are important to them. BIM uses practical movement experiments to help people learn how to examine the Body as the Self, and it focuses on helping people learn how to create a mindbody state of awareness, power and love as a foundation for effective action. BIM explores the underlying links between structural/functional efficiency, emotional/spiritual growth, and environmental/social justice.

Somatic Awareness - a key to overcome Traumatic Stress

BIM focuses on helping people overcome the body's distress response. When people feel threatened or challenged in any way, they typically contract their breathing, posture, movement, and attention. This can take a number of forms. It may take the form of hardening and bracing as a preparation for strength and effort. It may take the form of stiffening and constricting in shock. It may take the form of collapse and numbness. Or elements of these can combine. This body contraction can be seen in situations ranging from sports to job interviews to abuse and so on.
Contracting the body reduces ease and effectiveness. Acting in a state of contraction is like driving with the parking brakes on. People cannot function effectively, and this ineffectiveness reinforces their feelings that the challenges or threats they are facing are indeed difficult or overwhelming.
Beyond just physically interfering with performance, contraction leads to alienation and separation from oneself, one's body, the environment, and other people. This separation not only reduces the capacity for effective action, but it is also a deep spiritual wound.
Contrary to our normal distress response, action is much more efficient and effective when the mind/body is free and expansive.
BIM approaches the body as both an objective process governed by rules of physics and biology and a subjective process of lived coniousness governed by rules of awareness, emotion and energy flow.
By examining how breathing, posture, and movement simultaneously shape and are shaped by thoughts, feelings, and intentions, BIM teaches people to develop an integrated mindbody state of awareness, calmness, power, love and freedom and use that state as a foundation for effective action.
BIM teaches people to develop an integrated mindbody state.
Speaking structurally, this state is one in which the musculosceletal system is balanced and free of strain.
Speaking functionally, this state allows stable, mobile, gracefull and easy movement. Speaking in terms of intention/energy, this state involves staying anchored in one’s core while reaching out into the world with a symmetrical, radiant, expansive awareness and will.
Speaking inpsychological/spiritual terms, this state is an integrabtion of power and love and freedom.
There are five interconnected areas of application that BIM generally deals with:
RELAXATION focuses on stress reduction, both in quiet, meditative body work and in maintaining a state of calm alertness during pressure-filled situations.
TASK IMPROVEMENT includes such things as improvement in music or sports skills, ergonomic safety for computer use or other work, and reducing movement discomfort during pregnancy or daily life activities.
PERSONAL GROWTH involves learning to sense the body foundations of emotional and spiritual states and how to move toward more harmonious ways of living; it includes instruction in somatic self-regulation for people with conditions such as attention or anxiety problems.
TRAUMA WORK includes body training for survivors of physical or sexual abuse or survivors of other overwhelming life events. It also includes movement retraining and pain management for people who have experienced such things as surgery or accidents.
COMMUNICATION and CONFLICT RESOLUTION training focuses on creating a body state of assertiveness, compassion, non-violence and interpersonal sensitivity as a foundation for effective communication. It also includes exploration of the somatic foundations of ethical behavior, peacemaking, and ecological awareness.