Photo by Jennifer Moloney

What is Consciousness?

My current understanding is that consciousness is a process of realization.  This process includes silent level movements of physical being and perceptual capacities, and is expressed personally as thought, word, image and belief; and socio-culturally as artistic movements, belief systems, political movements, spiritual and religious practices, and scientific pursuits.

Consciousness processes exist on many silent, not symbolic levels of being, and all consciousness in humans involves the movement of feeling.

What is unconscious is always at play with consciousness, and as humans we have the creative potential to explore and discover the endless dance between consciousness and the unconscious.  The more I explore this dance in my physical body, feelings, thoughts, and beliefs, the more I feel connected to a greater sense of living.  The more I explore the dance between consciousness and the unconscious with others through their physical bodies, feelings, thoughts, and beliefs, the more we each discover more self-understanding.

Self-understanding as personal development through explorations of consciously embodied movement, offers support for social development in three ways:

• How I relate with others in my life;
• How individuals I work with relate with others in their lives; and
• How I and the people I work with experience our communities growing and changing.  

We begin to feel ourselves as moving with each other.  We begin to feel our common rhythms and our unique syncopations.  And, we begin to sense creative possibilities for new or other ways of moving our bodies, thoughts, beliefs, and assumptions about life together on this planet.