Truth
The highest aim of this process is Truth. To see, hear, and speak the truth. The movements and video feedback expose the truth of how we are showing up in the world. The way we feel and the unconscious stories that present themselves show us the reality of how we are currently relating to life. To not only live our life day-to-day telling the truth, but to see beyond the ordinary and connect to a deeper Truth.
Groupwork
Cinesomatics benefits from multiple participants. Each person brings a unique set of mythologies that plays a role in the group-mythology, offering a set of reference points of functionality or dysfunction for other participants. Certain people resonate with some and not others; feedback from one can go in, while another’s doesn’t land. One participant can have a breakthrough that leads the entire group forward, helping those who weren’t ready to do it themselves quite yet.
Archetypes
These symbolic expressions of consciousness are found through all cultures, beyond language and time. We use words to describe and point to them, but they are not the archetypes themselves. We work to move past our modern stereotypes and embody functional archetypes that serve each client specifically.
Stories
These are the specific, individual interpretations and distortions of our experience, often used as justification for our suffering. We work to stop all stories; to instead tell the truth and just report the details.
Holographic
The foundational maxim “as above, so below”—in modern parlance “how you do one thing is how you do anything”—shows evidence in the way we manage our energy. How we move in the body is a representation of how we move through life. The way we express archetypes in the body is how we do the actual thing. This fundamental truth allows us to change the way we relate to life and the results we get, simply by changing the way we feel and move in our bodies.
Mythologies
These are the overarching “patterns of consciousness expressing itself” through a person’s life. These are the fundamental “stories” that unconsciously run us as we move through the world “asleep”. They run individuals, families, cultures—and even races, businesses, and nations. We help participants become aware of these patterns that pass unwittingly through culture, family, genetics, and even karmic history—and facilitate their eventual penetration, dissolution, and integration.
Non-Dual
Clients are invited to move beyond concepts of duality and oneness, should and shouldn’t, good experiences and bad ones, the right way or wrong way of doing something, etc. which keep us stuck in cycles of guilt & punishment, shame & embarrassment, anger & resentment, victimhood & suffering.
Ego
We work with exposing the ego and understanding its proper relationship to self. It is in direct competition with feeling and spirit, as a survival mechanism of our persona—yet, also the vehicle for our growth. We invite participants to drop the ego and move from core.
Empowerment
Participants are asked to begin to take responsibility and accountability for every choice they’ve made and their consequences. To own all of the light and shadow; to own the gods and demons; to own the gifts and curses—to become free from the need to justify and defend. Complaining, whining, victimhood, and gossip are not tolerated—when these behaviors show up, compassionate, yet direct, feedback is given as participants are asked to stop.
Embodiment
Cinesomatic therapy is experiential and feeling-based—meaning that participants are actively involved in the process themselves, in their body. It is a participatory, not passive, learning process. The apex of wisdom is to have a direct symbolic experience and to embody it physically in one’s body—rather than filling one’s head with information and concepts. “Being” it, rather than thinking or “doing” it.
Polarity
The Yin/Yang, Feminine/Masculine dynamic presents itself in both concept and literal physicality. We can see the physical body operating energetically via this polarity expressed through the individual. Sides of the body each represent a particular polarity. Through the movement, our relationship between the masculine and feminine reveals itself. It’s through this movement we seek to bring both harmony and functionality into body and mind without drama, judgment, or distortion.
Reverse-Wiring
When it is discovered that a client expresses, behaves, or moves one way—while believing they are doing the opposite—we see that as a reversal. The client goes through life doing what they think is the “right way”, yet all their results show the opposite-intended effect. For many participants, this answers the question “why is it that the more I do the right thing, the worse things get?” and brings peace to decades of confusion and resentment.
Shadow
While this work is supportive and empathetic, it can also be sublimely confronting. Working with suppressed feelings, unconscious mythologies, and egoic-defenses—the client often arises face-to-face with their shadow. This shadow material, by definition, is the part of ourselves we don’t want to look at. Not everyone is ready to go there, and great discernment is employed at all stages. For those ready to face their darkness (and their light), Cinesomatics guides participants into proper relationship with their shadow—revealing the riches it contains for each of us.
Non-Fixing
This work attests that there is inherently nothing wrong with us, we are not broken, and we have everything we need. There is nothing to fix; oftentimes, it’s our very compulsion to fix or improve ourselves that causes our greatest suffering. Even if that could be true, to many of us, it doesn’t appear that way—and we have years of “stories” to prove it. While valid, it becomes a reason to validate our suffering. Cinesomatics illuminates why things in our lives don’t work, and helps to penetrate the layers of lies, distortions, and stories that inhibit our natural grace, ease, and beauty. There is nothing to add, fix, or acquire—but a letting go and stopping that moves us forward.
Self-Awareness
Further down the road from “mindfulness” lies a place of objective awareness of self, beyond ego, distortion, judgment, and meaning. An awareness both inwards and outwards because “there is nobody else out there”. It is akin to the video recording: it simply observes without any filtering of the ego. Cinesomatics is a catalyst for any current mindfulness or meditation practice.
Silence
Everything we need is found in the silence, stillness, and stopping. Participants are asked to “stop” more than anything else. It is an “emptying of the cup” rather than filling. You are not given dozens of techniques and strategies to avoid having to actually face your shadow. This is Final Tier work, where we drop the crutches and training wheels. We face the silence and face ourselves, and learn to shift our relationship with it and see the Truth in it… which is not what we think it is.
Somatic Representations
In psychology, we have “internal representations” that describe how we internalize experiences and concepts symbolically in our minds. In Cinesomatics we also have “Somatic Representations” (SRs), which are how we translate those symbols into expressions of the body (think “charades”). Contrary to word-based concepts—which can be retained and parroted without experience or proficiency—these “SRs” must be actualized through the physical body. These ‘kinesthetic images’ represent symbolically—through the feeling, posture, and movement of the body—how we perceive and live various concepts.
Somatic Resourcefulness
The timeliness of beginning a movement, the range and scale, the rate and speed, the feeling behind the motion, the variety or creativity, the impact or effect on the space, length of sustaining the movement, and quality—are all factors in one’s “somatic resourcefulness” of a particular archetype. If this is low, we will be severely limited in how we actualize it in life. Participants who have shown poor somatic resourcefulness in a particular archetype, tend to struggle with that same thing in their lives. By improving somatic resourcefulness, their ability to be practically-resourceful in life via ideas, flexibility, strategies, tools, etc. increases.
Unmasking
We are taught by our culture how we should appear in the world in order to fit in and function in society. These roles serve a useful purpose—yet become the masks and personas that censor and hide who we really are. Barriers, masks, and personas act as protection mechanisms to “keep us safe” from rejection, harm, and judgment—while simultaneously preventing genuine acceptance and intimacy. These masks are not unreal, thus unlovable. This work invites us to drop all of these constructs and expose all of who we really are without fear or shame. Only then can we accept ourselves, the shadow and the light. This is true freedom.
Grace
What does your life stand for? Suffering, scarcity, and fear? Love, beauty, and joy? We choose to stand for abundance, joy, generosity, graciousness, fun, humor, love, friendship, support, and general good-will for all. It does not mean we reject their opposites—our suffering has taught us and served a purpose. Yet, arriving at this work, most of us no longer need suffering to define our lives. Making our lives about grace is not an idealistic dream, but an orientation—a compass. In this work, we consider “grace” to be a quality in both movement and principle, that embodies gracefulness, joyousness, playfulness, generousness, compassion, and beauty.
