The Art of Improvisation

When it comes to my own movement practice, be it yoga asana, climbing, dance, making things or going out for a run, the holy grail is improvisation. Ido Portal is a big advocate of this and it's his 'Three I's' that have inspired me here....I've added the first I...

Intention

What do you need from your practice right now?

Regardless of what you actually do, if your practice is an expression of what is alive in you now, that practice will help you stay present during your time on the mat. That experience can serve as a model for practicing presence all day long. It will also satisfy you and thus help give you the impetus to practice again tomorrow. If you force yourself to practice because you think you should, because you didn't yesterday, or for any other more external reason, even the most technically polished poses will not answer your inner need for ease and wholeness. 

Isolation

Break down the patterns that make up the shape you are working towards, or the area of practice strength/flexibility/ease of movement that you want to work on.

Isolating the basic movement patterns and practicing them with care is like taking a daily shower. These movements will always be useful and will keep your system open and mobile.

Integration

Start to combine those basic actions by creating simple sequences that helps you address your movement patterns or the components of the particular posture you are working towards.

Improvisation

Uneducated improvisation is disconcerting: beginner dancers attacking an irish jig, your housemates experimental cocktail you are still trying to forget...Good improvisation is usually (there can be exceptions) grounded in strict theory that becomes plient when mixed with a little creativity. You have to know the technique behind what you are trying to do, then depart from it.

Once you learn how the big patterned movements work together in your body and where your limitations are you can start to improvise with sequences. What this means to you depends on the movement qualities you have developed and what you are working on now. It’s a personal thing. Everyone moves differently.

Work on finding that connection with the parts of you that meet the ground. When well grounded we may be still but the slightest impulse can initiate movement and breathing can adjust appropriately. Any unhelpful tension will stiffen us, fix the breath and take away the potential for free movement away.
Keep yourself in motion, keep working—this practice won’t give up anything easily, but it will reward your work and your curiosity and your commitment.

Take inspiration and instruction from class, ofcourse, but balance that with some healthy questioning of what you are told. You have as much intuition, self-awareness and self-knowledge as the next person. Use it. Trust your self! You are looking for freedom, not someone else’s idea of how your body should move. 

Phrases

I've been thinking a lot about transitions in my own practice recently, like really really precise foot work when climbing and noticing the subtle shifts in weight when doing floor work, and how important awareness in those small linking movements improve the quality of the shapes with bigger demands on the body.

It's been a really nice theme for my classes this week too. To prepare for class I've been making little 'movement riddles' for my self. I'll start with a particular asana or pattern (I think of it as a phrase) and then break that phrase down to the most basic elements try it with pauses, linked with more fluid movement,  then reversed and maybe inverted...I end up holding acres of movement in my head, what I'm going to teach always starts like a broken jigsaw. In getting students to use these phrases to inquire about their own movement we learn together. I love that. 

 

Nancy Spero

Nancy Spero's art was sustained by her involvement in protest of the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement and, particularly, the women’s movement.
I find her prints endlessly inspiring and (for me) they are all about choice, about being deliberate.

If I had all the time in the world I would want to make my class plans look like her prints. I love the patterns, the fearless repeated movements, the pauses and the open space. She made pictures like music.