Hi,
I'm Amy and welcome to Underbelly,
The Art of Slowing Down.
This is a much slower,
Spacious,
All-encompassing,
All-inclusive way of being with your body and essence as it travels through this human experience.
All guidance is improvised and draws from the present moment.
So feel free to find an honest starting point of your choice.
Laying down on the couch,
Walking through the grass,
Petting your cat,
Standing and shaking your body.
Whatever allows you to arrive here,
Now.
Noticing your body in this moment and the shape or shapes that it's taking.
Noticing the way you hold your shoulders,
Your jaw.
Perhaps the way your eyes are moving or looking or watching.
And seeing how your breath comes to you,
How it comes and goes,
How much you let in and how much you let out.
Towing yourself down with this breath so that you can slow enough in order to notice its very intimate pace.
So that you can feel its edges,
Its gaps.
Perhaps its static or its spaciousness.
To even notice how our bodies all day and all night are continuously expanding and contracting.
And take just a simple moment to notice that fact.
Opening the range and the aperture of your breath so that it may reach parts of the body that don't adequately get breath,
That don't adequately get oxygen.
And to really fill these pockets,
These corners with air,
With food.
And just noticing how you feel when you're able to take such long,
Conscious breaths.
Allowing these breaths to be a passageway for you to travel down and in and through different parts of your body.
Even if you'd like to bring movement.
Not because you have to move,
But because you can feel you move.
To slow down your movements.
To feel every intricacy of your physicality.
The way these muscles and bones and ligaments cooperate.
That it is a miracle that they cooperate in such a way.
Feel the feedback of this incredible conscious machine of reception.
This body has been shaped and consistently evolved for billions of years to know,
To intuit,
To sense.
Tightening your senses.
Allowing your eyes to return to that of a two year old's eyes.
Curious.
Receiving.
Listening with the eyes instead of forcing or looking for.
But allowing your eyes to trace whatever you see slowly.
So that you begin to even feel what you see.
So that you begin to feel this environment that you're in.
To just notice yourself in this space.
Smell this space.
Maybe it doesn't smell like anything in particular.
But smell for the sake of smelling anyway.
Even if there's no association.
Taste what's in.
Even if there isn't food currently being chewed.
Feel your saliva.
This incredible verbal muscle of the tongue to be able to curve and shape sound waves into words.
For the mouth to even rest when nothing needs to be said.
To let your bottom jaw drop heavy.
To give it its mass.
To allow every exhalation to have a little more mass.
Really giving it its weight.
Opening up your sense of hearing.
My voice.
The music.
Noticing how notes and melodies and sound waves come toward you.
Noticing how your body receives sound and music.
The ways that it may feel inspired.
Or broken open.
More contemplative.
It may want to move in response.
Not move because it has to or it's told to.
But moving because it's in conversation.
It picks up.
And gives back.
Translating waves of sound into embodiment.
Really listening to how the body wants you to move.
Separate from choreography,
Methodology,
Or the ways that you've been taught.
To allow the spine to move as a response.
To allow your flesh and your blood to move as a response to what you hear.
That there is no right way to move.
That what comes naturally to you is 100% acceptable,
Valid,
And enough.
Sometimes I move because I feel.
Sometimes I move because I want to explore.
I want to explore the ways I can move outside of the ways I'm conditioned.
Inviting an abstractness.
One linearity.
Even inviting all forms of discomfort perhaps in trying something different.
Noticing if a critical voice shows up and makes fun of you.
And noticing a voice right alongside it that you're okay.
Allowing anything that shows up in our thought space to move together.
To not have to get rid of any one part or fix or find the solution for in this moment.
But just notice.
Notice what's here already.
Notice what's been here for a long time.
And how can we come to some of these old,
Worn out thoughts?
These old,
Worn out criticisms and fears?
How can we show love by just acknowledging that the voices are here?
And how can we practice a boundary so that we don't drown in them and repress ourselves?
Approaching discomfort or critical thought with this sense of,
Thank you,
I see you.
I know you've had to be there up until now.
Thank you for protecting me.
And I'm going to keep moving.
In the ways that feel honest.
In ways that liberate me.
And to keep following your awareness as it shifts and changes,
Perhaps jumps from memory into the feeling of your hand,
Into just noticing the tone of the music,
Feeling your foot on the floor,
Becoming still,
Moving again.
So again,
Breaking up linearity and coming into the deep listening.
These deep impulses.
And we're so often told what to do so much of the time and how to do it that we leave no room for our only internal compass,
Which is the intuition,
Which is solely ours.
Represents our agency,
Our sovereignty,
Our autonomy.
Breathing without needing to push so hard forward.
Resting back.
Even if you reach a space that feels blank or boring or restless,
Or this feeling that you've run out of things to do,
You've come to the right place.
What if you stayed to just stretch out that space to stay a little longer than you normally would,
To notice what's on your heart at this time.
What's tugging at your foot.
What makes your fists clench,
Your throat tighten,
Your belly ache.
What is tender inside you right now?
Giving yourself permission to let it show you permission for you to tend to it.
And at any point,
Allowing the hands to become animated towards tactile touch of your own body,
Your own skin,
Your own softness and flesh and muscle and bone.
To just honestly feel body.
Allowing the hands to be curious.
To even move to parts of the body that need more attention,
More care.
Parts of us that hurt or ache or are sore and tender or injured,
Experiencing disease.
To hold yourself here.
There is no rush.
Just a gentle,
I'm right here.
I'm not going anywhere.
I'm with you.
I'm right here.
I'm not leaving.
I've got you.
Breathe into this revolution.
And spend a while in these depths,
In your slowness,
In the subtlety.
Realizing what comes and what goes,
Staying honest.
Continuing until you find a natural conclusion.
So I leave you in this space to come home to you.
