Gestalt and the Body

Photo by Andrew Eccles for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

In gestalt practice, awareness starts in the body. We meet sensations, feelings, and emotions not to fix or explain them, but to make contact with what is. By separating direct experience (inner sensation and outer perception) from the meanings we add, we gain simple, perhaps useful, information to help us become aware of more choices. Practice is grounded and practical: basic breath and continuum of awareness support noticing now. Expressing using breath, movement, sound, or words may support noticing moment to moment. The tone is patience, kindness, and turning toward what arises.

Man has no Body distinct from his Soul; for that called Body is a portion of a Soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.
~William Blake