“They realized that while they were in states of heightened awareness, their bodies moved involuntarily in certain ways, and that those certain ways were indeed the cause of that unusual sensation of physical and mental plenitude.”    Carlos Castenadas

In my early pursuit of peak performance, I understood as an athlete, artist, performer that my body required special training.  I studied dance, mime, gymnastics, acrobatics, circus skills, clown, stage combat. I studied Yoga, Transcendental Meditation, Grotowski Technique, Meyerholdt’s Biomechanics, Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais, and all sorts of physical therapy. I developed physical skills such as sewing costumes, hanging lights, building sets, etc. Studied speech, singing, Aerobics, Pilates, you get the idea. I did a lot of studying to master my body, to prepare it to be the best possible vehicle for performance. Yet I did not have anyone to teach me that there is a supersensibility possible in the physical movement.  And that the movement of the body can alter your thoughts, feelings and desires. That motion activates images, and images activate motion.

The ramifications of this enmasse ignorance are great. Because our thoughts, feelings and desires drive the development of our neural pathways from the womb forward, we are largely unaware of how our physical life is sabotaging our growth, fracturing our will to apply new learnings, suffocating our heart with lingering sadnesses, paralyzing our brain with attention deficit.

I clearly am not the first to propose that our physical bodies are indeed our path to heightened awareness. Castenedas was not either. There is evidence in the Egyptian Mystery Schools of movement oriented training and before that.

If you are learning, attending seminars, workshops, reading, to transform yourself into who you envision, what are you doing differently with your breath, your hands, your eyes, your walk? Are you moving like earth, like water, like air, like light? You are made of these elements. You need them all to be human. Witness your movements and see if you use each element daily at some point? Do you avoid an element in your movement? Why?