Session Notes: Period I, Stretch 3/3, Video 1

Duration: approx. 15 minutes

DC Notation: [ N Of R S ] < Om , A U | J

Material: The Tower, The Magician, The Star

Preparation: Visualization Exercise*

Neta, Ofer, Raz, and Susanna act as practitioners; Omer as director; Adrian and Uri as witnesses; and Jaewon as videographer. All participants experienced the same preparation, and are encouraged to explore the approach foregrounded by or tuned through it. All practitioners hold stewardship of the same material, three random Tarot cards drawn from the Tarot of Marseille deck.

*Visualization Exercise: Another’s Face

1. Set Up: One person will lead the group through a guided meditation and movement research. The rest of this exercise description will prompt the leader, and provide an example of spoken instructions. Find a partner, one you are less familiar with. Sit facing one another. Close your eyes.

2. Somatic Alignment: Guide the participants through a body scan, charging the somatic body with the aid of visualization. Depending on the group, it may help to frame the duration of each scan. Perhaps by thoroughly guiding the practitioners through it, going body part by body part along its vector.
Listen to your body: your breath, posture, stress. Sense the contact between your body and the ground. Imagine absorbing water from the ground, filling up all the way to the head – an upwards scan. Listen to the sensation of fulness. Allow the quality of the liquid to change. Imagine your body depleting, the liquid absorbing through the floor, down to earth – downwards scan.

3. Visual Alignment: Guide the participants through the manifestation and animation of a visualized-image. Depending on the group, it may help to prompt specific detail to focus on.
Maintain closed eyes. Visualize your partner’s face, in great detail: size, shape, texture, color, etc. Place the visualized-face in front of you, the same distance as you are seated from your partner.
Allow your eyes to float open. Examine your partner’s face. Close your eyes. Continue constructing the visualized-face. Take several peeks: visualizing; examining; visualizing. One final peek. Now keep your eyes closed.
Dialogue with the visualized-face. Play between allowing and demanding it to move, express. Examine how the muscles move, the skin wrinkles, the light casts shadows. Listen to the feelings and reactions that arise in you as the face changes.

4. Synthesis: Guide the participants through movement research, maintaining focus on both somatic alignment and visual alignment, inviting sensations, emotions, and playing to emerge in their interaction. If the practitioners delay the leap-of-faith into movement, only cautiously shifting weight, invite them to explore wider range of movement and different levels of elevation. If they seem to have lost contact with the process of visualization, drifting off, remind them to gently return to it.

Awaken the body, allowing it to shift positions, lingering in and listening to each. Listen to the interrelation between the visualized-face and the moving body, how they stimulate one another.
While constructing and informing the dialogue between the visualized-face and the moving-body, allow both to unfold: the visualized-face morphing, transforming into other images; the moving-body articulating the in-between of positions and finding liberty.

5. Greeting the Space: Guide the participants into the space, into interacting with their environment and one-another, through softly opening the eyes. Some practitioners may opt to immediately open their eyes and keep them ajar, while others will be adamant on keeping their eyes closed; encourage them to experience both and all options.

Notice how the opening of the eyes may affect the experiences of the previous alignments, and their synthesis. Particularly: How does the visualized-face interact with the new space? If it wanes, how can we aid its adaptation, dilation, revitalization?

6. Find an ending.

First Frame: Upwards