Next class is June 10th!

As we (re)learn the role of the whole body in cognition, emotions and will,

it is time to consider the role of our entire self in finding peace.

Classes are at 11 a.m. Eastern US Time

June 10th, 24th

July 8th, 22nd

August 5th, 19th

That’s 11 a.m. on the East Coast, 5 p.m. in Europe and 8 a.m. on the West Coast of the US.

September 9th, 23rd

October 7th, 2lst

November 4th

Mediation in Motion

Deepen your Practice

Meet with mediators for a class in gentle movement. Enjoy yourself. Improve your flexibility and ease--and not just of your physical body! Deepen your practice.

Starting with a chance to chat & get oriented, you’ll engage in a 50-minute Awareness Through Movement™ class which will then be capped by discussion.

Each lesson supports mediator skills and self-care in three important ways:

  • Practical uses: reading nonverbal cues, a more resonant voice, a quick self-calming you can do invisibly…

  • Insights from the deep connection between slow movement and mediation: supporting change without insisting on it, the brilliance of the pause, respect for your body’s or your parties’ organization…

  • Surfacing a wisp of the elusive obvious, hints of welcome ease even after a few lessons: spontaneously asking yourself if there could be an easier way, more intuitive timing, letting in what needs to participate

Because these ideas are generated by you, the mediators, in a rich discussion after the actual movement lesson, the class also benefits mediator community-building in a wonderful way.

Here’s a discussion about the class on babyrolling. Sorry for the grainy video—we wanted audio of everyone and just video of only Carie in order to strike a balance between participant privacy and letting you sample the post-lesson discussion. Again, as with the Moira audio above, the issues of curiosity and choices came up, and also a lovely discussion about ‘quiet and watchful fluidity.’

Sign up for a Mediation & Movement Class

The class is open to any mediation student, volunteer or practitioner.

Benefits

  • Increase flexibility and ease

  • Deepen core mediation skills

  • Improve attention to nonverbal cues (your own and your parties’ or co-mediator’s)

Wear loose, drapey, preferably not-black clothes, have enough room on the floor to lie on your back and extend your arms to the sides and try for good lighting. Zoom really works well for movement classes this way. (The ‘drapey’ part is because Carie uses the folds in your clothes to read your movements.) A few small towels or flat-ish pillows might also be useful to have on hand. The most important thing is your comfort.

Fill out the form below to receive the class zoom link and Zelle/Venmo/Paypal options for tuition—honor code sliding scale ($25 is suggested iff you are feeling flush).

Carie Fox (she/her)has been mediating and teaching mediation for 25 years. She also has over 800 hours of training in teaching body movement and is a certified Feldenkrais™teacher of Awareness Through Movement.™

Scroll down for more philosophizing…

And scroll even further down for relevant books!

 The core similarity between mediation and body awareness methods such as Feldenkrais is that they are facilitative rather than authoritative. Mediators don’t have a solution for the parties; they do have a role in helping the parties to find constructive ways to get their interests met. Awareness methods, likewise, aren’t about ‘fixing’ a person’s movement patterns towards some ideal, but rather helping the person to notice what’s easier and what’s not, what patterns of movement might be more comfortable and sustainable for that person, in a certain context. The student is helped to explore a wider repertoire of movement. It is up to the student what they choose and how they evolve.

Timing is another example of how mediation and body awareness overlap. Come to this class series and learn more about the timing of your movements. You will find that your increased skill in choosing an appropriate tempo and sequencing will seep into your mediation work as well—using the pause elegantly, being aware of the cascade from spark-of-intention to initiation to follow-through, and appreciating that slower isn’t just slower. Sometimes slowing down results in a different organization altogether. A different learning.

Force is another unifying theme across the two disciplines. In extended movements--in striving, in overreach—there is a decline from grace to fuzz, potentially ending in stuckness. In this class, you will more keenly notice the ‘tell’—from the ribs, the mouth, the left big toe?—that for now you have extended beyond your zone of grace, and why. Easing off and then coming back to that movement, then being able to engage slightly differently, is magic. When you notice the changes you like and the ones you don’t like, when you pare the motion down to its essentials, managing to maintain yourself in the zone of grace, you accomplish a lovely change at the physical level. Movement becomes easier. And this applies to mediation! You may find yourself being more in choice about when you interject and when you don’t. Notice, too, when your parties might be overextending their force, and find ways to help them let up a bit, for a moment. Notice whether some ease can sneak in.

Perhaps the most relevant body awareness theme, for mediators, is the idea of moving ‘with all of yourself.’ If you reach for a glass, you’ll notice how your hand and arm move. But what of your shoulder-blade, ribs, neck, lower back, hips? Feet? They can’t not be involved. But the necessary muscles can be… asleep, recalcitrant, stuck on yesterday’s movement or last year’s stumble. Worried, protective. Still in habits. So… look at your parties. How often have they declared they want to reach for the glass, or stay married, or take care of their business—but not everything in them is reaching in a harmonious way? You have helped them move from positions to interests but their interests might still be in discord or just dis-ability. Becoming more body-aware has an amazing ability to heighten a mediator’s understanding of how their parties may lack clarity of intention, and how to help them find it.

Have a link to share? Great!

Here’s an excerpt from the NIH article (emphasis Cari'e’s):

The definition of interoception has evolved over the years. About 150 years ago, the concept was established through the identification of a set of physiological parameters that defined an organism’s normal internal state[1]. In the mid-20th century, the idea evolved to reflect the more dynamic concept of homeostasis[2]. More recently, interoception has been commonly referred to as the process by which the nervous system senses and integrates information about the inner state of the body[3].

Several issues regarding the definition of interoception require careful re-evaluation and clarification. First, whereas the terms “sensing” and “integrating” seem to imply a one-way communication to the brain from other organs, the links between brain and body are often bidirectional and also include communications from the brain to the other organs and in turn, modulation of the internal body signals sent back to the brain. Therefore, a more comprehensive definition of interoception should encompass the complex interplay between the brain and other organs necessary to monitor and regulate internal states. Secondly, the anatomical boundary that distinguishes interoceptive and exteroceptive signals requires a nuanced conversation. Conventional wisdom points to skin as the obvious border, with interoception referring to the processing of signals generated from within the body below the skin. For example, neural activities in subcutaneous tissues, including muscles and connective tissues, that contribute to proprioception, are a form of interoception[4]. As the anatomical boundaries between interoception and some forms of exteroception become blurred, such as in the case of proprioception and somatosensation, a complementary approach would be to assess whether the signals and the body’s responses represent, rather than originate from, the internal or external world. Gustation and taste also encounter the dilemma of sensing both the internal and external worlds, but the nutrient sensing in the gastrointestinal system is clearly more indicative of an internal status than an external world representation. Another example is the vestibular system, which is located in the same sensory organ as the auditory system but typically represents the internal world of an organism’s balance, thus belonging to interoception rather than exteroception[5].

Given these considerations, we propose a revised description of interoception that may more accurately reflect, we would argue, the bidirectional signal processing between the brain and the internal organs to represent the internal state of an organism. We recognize that this revised description significantly expands the traditional scope of interoception and may be different from the one used in much of the current literature. In this revised description, interoception includes the processes by which an organism senses, interprets, integrates, and regulates signals from within itself. Here, the action of “sensing” denotes communication from physiological systems outside of the central nervous system (CNS) to the CNS, through the commonly called ascending pathways, whereas the action of “regulating” refers to the communication from the brain to other physiological systems via descending pathways. The CNS, especially the brain, is primarily responsible for interpreting and integrating these signals into a representation of the internal world. One key difference between this revised definition and some of the more traditional definition of interoception is the inclusion of the descending body regulation component. The other key point is that the systems involved in processing signals about the internal environment include not only the peripheral nervous system and the CNS but also components of the vascular, endocrine, and immune systems. In the following sections, we describe key concepts related to interoceptive processes and illustrate aspects of the proposed expanded framework, which we hope will foster future venues for interoception research.