The Power of Presence

by Bridget Thompson
What makes you feel present?
Are you ever aware of not being present?

I had a dance teacher who as he watched me dance told me every time I ‘disappeared’. It was a complete mystery to me what he meant. I felt the same from one moment to the next. I was there, wasn’t I? Executing the steps, moving across that floor in that room – how could I disappear? He also told me that I was a beautiful dancer with fluid movement and gorgeous line – but he didn’t choose me to be in his performing company. He did ask me to help distribute flyers, drive him to the airport, bounce ideas around, collect props and fabric for costumes and deliver press releases.

Since then I’ve learned something about appearing and disappearing. When I saw him again a year ago, I drove him to the airport (our special ritual). He gave me a hug and said something like ‘It’s so good to have something to wrap my arms around – you’re still the same and yet feel much more substantial. I used to hug a fragile, elusive Bridget. I was always afraid that, ghost-like, you’d pass right through me, and I’d lose you.’
There are still occasions when I feel invisible. I speak and nobody responds, or I make some comment to contribute to the discussion and after a split second pause, somebody changes the subject. But I can tell when I am doing my old disappearing act. I find that when I need to, I can hide but still be present to myself.

When I am present I feel: substantial, strong, resilient, responsive, caring, open, ready, vibrant, active, in relationship, connected, heart-centered, immune to criticism, the Life shines through me.

When I disappear it’s sometimes subtle, other times not so subtle, but I feel: the need for your approval, defensive, faintly confused and vague. At worst I feel weak, hurt, breathless, small, withdrawn, pale, retreating way back inside my head, scared and vulnerable.

One of the most valuable tools for discovering presence has been my exploration of natural law. The primary natural law is one we all have to experience at the moment of birth. After approximately 9 months of perfect paradise, where we float in warm ocean, ever nourished and protected, the sound of love reverberating through our developing self, we emerge head first into a whole new world. We have no choice but to orient ourselves in gravity and very soon after that, the second natural law draws us to orient ourselves in space as we turn towards love and nourishment in the form of mother.

The environment outside the womb is utterly different and yet, if all goes well we continue to experience love.

As babies our work is exploring our relationship to gravity and space. Curiosity, playfulness, and sensory awareness lead us to experiment and persevere until one day we stand, walk and eventually, in a very non-linear way, we become more or less independent. Along the way for a variety of reasons we rely on others for support, to make us feel better, to show us, rescue us, heal us, to give our lives meaning, to make us feel loved. We begin to live outside the law and as a result, believe we are disconnected from ourselves, others and our world. This leads to stress, distress, tension, discord, disease – and disappearance.

Remembering, re-discovering and experiencing our weight on the earth, our weight supported through our bones, literally evokes the feeling of love, just as we felt it enfolded in our mother’s arms. We experience a kind of awakening, a re-emergence of self, a strengthening presence.

Awareness through Movement® gives you, time and again, the opportunity to experience yourself present and connected through movement explorations in the field of gravity, which increases your capacity for learning about yourself. Over and over again, as you sense the life-giving experience of your place in the world, your self emerges, whole and vibrant.

Enhance and enrich your explorations by paying attention to the following aspects of living in gravity:

* the law of least effort 
As you do any of the movements reduce the effort until it’s almost a thought or a product of your imagination. The less you do, the more you discover about your holding patterns and your habitual actions and behaviors. Doing less implies fewer distractions and noticing more, which leads to ease, grace and effective being.

* the law of attention
Whatever you pay attention to is energized and expands in your awareness. You can focus your attention on one thing, for example, the movement of your head, and you can have an open attention where you watch what arises moment by moment; you can also observe how your attention moves.

* the law of intention
observe that the intention to move in any given way is enough to engage your muscles for the movement. It’s almost as if the intention is the movement. Have the intention and observe the result. Effortlessness again.

* the law of non-judgment
We are very good at controlling, analyzing, defining, deciding and believing. All of these mental gymnastics limit our experience. I like to remind myself to have ‘no comment’. The result is that I notice so much more and am not pulled into one perspective. Related to my ‘no comment’ outlook is my favorite aphorism: ‘Notice everything, believe nothing.’

* the law of detachment
As I observe my movement, noticing everything without comment, I also find myself looking for security and familiarity. This indicates to me how attached I might be to certainty and a particular outcome. It is necessary for my evolution and transformation to let go of attachment to outcomes and revel in the unknown. Anything and everything then becomes possible.

These laws are not in any order of importance. Of necessity they have to be described in some kind of order but you can see how they are inter-related – which actually leads to another law – the law of inter-connection, inter-relatedness, inter-correlation and integration.

We have all thought about these ideas, written about them perhaps, certainly talked about them. But the magic is in experiencing them so that our whole being blossoms. It becomes clear in the experience that these natural laws are spiritual laws:

* the law of least effort:
Accept that this moment is as it should be. Struggling against this moment is struggling against the whole universe.

* the law of attention and intention:
Attention energizes (and whatever you withdraw your attention from withers, disintegrates and disappears). Intention transforms and intention without attachment leads to life-centered, present moment awareness.
* the law of non-judgment:
Ego thrives on approval, the need to control and the need for external power. When we live to our potential we are free of limitations, resist always trying to please others or to be well thought of. We live in a state of grace, silence, stillness and non-judgment.

* the law of detachment:
We learn to let go of anxiety about outcomes, relinquish the need for results and find ourselves in the field of all possibilities where we have an infinity of choices.

Clearly, as we experience clearer presence we also experience grace, ease, potential, freedom and choice. The presence we experience is the Presence of God.

Living in accordance with these natural laws is practicing the Presence, where simply rolling your head is an experience of timelessness and grace.

Every time we practice we learn more of what it is to be human. We also learn about our essential nature as an expression of Life.