I’m sitting in the lounge at London Heathrow waiting for my flight back to Hong Kong with a feeling of aliveness, connection and possibility after nearly three weeks of training and practicing in Portugal.
I spent six days in the countryside training to become a certified teacher of Michaela Boehm’s ‘Intimacy & Attraction Workshop® with Michaela and Steve James. Then spent some time in Lisbon; working, eating, drawing, sculpting, making new friendships and practicing with Movement Lisboa.
In more ways than one, this time has guided me back to the body, to my beautiful body, and reminded me how nourishing, enlightening and essential it is to be in motion and connection with other physical bodies.
The words intimacy and attraction tend to conjure thoughts of sex and superficial dating, however, the practices we’ve learnt in this training, help prepare us to connect in a deeply human, respectful, truthful, and vulnerable way with the person opposite us. Practical, non-dogmatic, profound and practical techniques that invite presence, connection through the heart, and explore our ability to cultivate richness and aliveness between two people, no matter what gender or sexual preference.
Most of us long for true intimacy and deeper connection.
Loneliness is rife.
These embodied relational practices help us find and connect with our people, deepen intimacy and connection with those that we are in relationship with, and do it with containment, safety and integrity. I’m excited to integrate this work into new program offerings.
Spending these last days in a sunlight-filled room in the middle of a Portuguese valley with a group of 30 people all dedicated to living and leading fully embodied, to connecting through the heart, to cultivating healthy, thriving relationships was deeply nourishing. Sweating in the midday sun (clothes on I should add!) as we practiced connecting with each other in these new ways, and learning how to teach and guide these experiences for others, has given me a renewed embodied aliveness.
Back in Lisbon, practicing with Movement Lisboa, engaging the body in ways that feel so natural yet so abandoned in adult life. Twisting, bending, extending, compressing, being upside down, rolling, responding, absorbing. Learning touch with another person as communication, support, discovery, and play. ‘Hiking’ over each other like mountain explorers, dripping with sweat as we learn how to let go or stay strong as we climb over and around our partner’s body like baby monkeys. An absolute joy.
"Unless we value our feet as much as our frontal lobes, we’ll end up as disembodied talking heads with no rhythm, no root.” — Gabrielle Roth
In his recent documentary, Leviathan, Alexander Beiner points to the detrimental shift that we’ve made from embodiment to abstraction and the impact this is having on societal norms, social trust, health and well-being, our relationships, civic and working life. He explores how we might make our way back towards greater embodiment in our collective and individual lives and how this is key to our healing and future humanity.
I’ve left Portugal with a deeper conviction and ambition in anchoring my life and work around these three core threads - embodiment, connection and human growth.
We need each other. We need each other to co-regulate, to attune, to soothe, to play, to laugh, to listen (with gestures, movements, touch and smells, and not just words), to create, to make sense, to explore. We need each other’s sweaty bodies.