For almost 2 years I’ve been fully dedicated to the idea that we carry more wisdom within us than what we usually access, and that by connecting with our bodies it becomes available.
I’ve been lucky enough to have had jobs where I could use my creativity and one thing I learned was that it wasn’t always easy or joyful.
Between 2009 and 2012 I worked at Klim Consulting, a small consultancy in Portugal with big dreams and even bigger projects. One of my main roles was designing and implementing offsite events for our clients. They were a combination of storytelling with skills development and team bonding. We also taught creativity and innovation and worked with design thinking, so the creation of these events should have been smooth and structured. Only it wasn’t…
I found out that my process was often chaotic. Full of advances and returns. At some point, I would start feeling physical pain! It was especially hard when I was close to an idea… I would try over and over again to start making sense of it and would crash into a thick wall. Until the day when it somehow had connected the dots somewhere inside of me and it would all come out in a rush of words.
I’m still grateful that I had time to go through these phases and I’m happy with the outcome. However, it wasn’t efficient and it definitely didn’t feel like a smooth (or healthy) process!
Jumping to 2021
One of my last projects before becoming self-employed, and after having spent years practising embodiment and getting insights through my movement was feeling difficult again…
There I was going into the same stuck place I knew from before and with no more time to spend on this project. I had to summarize the learnings of conversations with an Olympic athlete so that someone else would create a game for an app. And I could feel that I knew it, but I couldn’t put it into words.
Until the day when I’m staring at an empty whiteboard and I notice my hand starting to draw. I remember thinking “I’m not sure what this is, but my hand seems to know! Let’s try!”. I knew this feeling of “being moved” from SPT and Authentic Movement practices so I just let it go on… To be honest, I never got to finish the summary because my hand “decided” to draw the 1st draft of the concept of the game and jump one step.
This was one of those touching moments when I was surprised by the ability of my body to express what is known in some part of me before it becomes thoughts and words.
2 things I believe in:
- That project took much more energy out of me because I wasn’t able to connect with that space of inner wisdom due to a lack of balance, alignment and capacity to deal with the external stressors (yes, this was the beginning of 2021, amidst one more lockdown…);
- Everyone has the ability to connect with that place of inner wisdom and some tools may support them when they’re stuck.
moving with ana 