There is a character in "Startrek Deep Space Nine", named Oto. He's a shape shifter and a beautiful metaphor for our lives. As a Startrek officer, Oto has to maintain himself in human form. He can only stay in human form for a given period of time, about three days, then, he returns to his bucket and allows himself to become liquid again.

We are not so different from Oto. Seventy percent of our bodies are water, give or take 10% depending on our age. We developed in water and it is the movement of water that has shaped us and continues to. Our health, our ability to move with ease, all of the information exchanges that take place in our body (from cellular communication to digestion to hormonal interactions) happens in water. Water is life; nothing can live without water. There are organisms that can live without air, but nothing lives without water. You could say that aging occurs as a result of a loss of fluid interaction.

When we're born we are in a state very similar to Oto in his bucket; we are fluid movement. Gradually our eyes come into focus; we start to reach outside of ourselves. The desire to look around and the registering of sounds gives motivation to raise our heads, sit up, and eventually we learn to reach out, grasp things, and walk. We shift from a fluid movement context to the process of imprinting functional movement. This shift is important and necessary for survival as it enables us to get from A to B, to fetch wood, and carry water. Like Oto, who functions in our human world, we spend most of our time in this functional movement state, and like Oto, it is also necessary for us to go back into our liquid state, allowing our tissues to hydrate and revitalize. Continuum™ Movement includes aspects of meditation as well as physical fitness and encourages a shift of consciousness, which frees the body from being experienced as a bound form.

The industrial age looked at the body in a linear way, as a machine with movable parts. Hence came machines to do the work that people had previously done. Using this reductionist linear way of thinking, we then created machines for 'working out' that exercise the body in a linear way, attempting to make strong healthy bodies. Linear repetitive movement creates mass and density, which we see illustrated in body builders. Remember that we are made up of mostly water. Water and hydration are necessary for life. Mass and density are the antithesis of the adaptable fluid context which facilitates healing and cell rejuvenation. Continuum™ Movement offers a way of working out which encourages fluid movement and helps the connective tissues to become more fluent and find their natural shape and adaptability.

It is water that shapes us. If you look at an anatomy book you will see that there is not a straight line anywhere in the body. Every bone, muscle, and blood vessel, is curved, created by the movement of water. In his book Sensitive Chaos, Theodore Schwenk shows an illustration of the shape water takes as it moves through an L shaped pipe. A few pages later he shows the shape of the muscle structure as it pours over the shoulder in an L shape. The swirling shapes of the muscles as they cascade over the shoulder, are the same as the water when it spirals through the L shaped pipe. In Continuum™ Movement we play with these twisting, spiraling, arching shapes becoming the movement of water. To learn about something is to join our consciousness with it.

Continuum™ Movement uses a variety of breaths and sounds to create a complexity of vibrational textures and circumstances in which the cells have an opportinuity to hydrate, reorganize, and reform. This is the context for cells to demonstrate their innate ability to adapt and function healthily. We're part of an evolutionary process that has been going on for thirteen billion years. We are not separate from it, we carry the imprint of that process in our cells and fluids.

Our bodies are constantly being recreated as old cells die and new ones are made. If that is true, you may ask, then why do we still feel the same aches and pains? Cells are created in the same context in which they died. If we want something different to happen we need to create a new context, a fluid biological context in which the body intelligence can come forward.

In our day to day fast paced lives we are constantly imposing functional, linear repetitive movement onto our bodies and then, we go and do more linear repetitive movement as a workout. Going back to fluid non-linear movement can help balance and encourage healthy flexibility. In order to shift context from linear to non-linear, it is helpful to learn how to dialogue with all the parts of ourselves.

The most recent part of our evolutionary process is the neo-cortex, the part of our brain that allows us to think logically and make meaning. Let's look at the brain for a moment. It has three layers, one on top of the other; each layer being added as we evolved. The top or outer layer is the neo-cortex, which allows us to make meaning and think logically. The middle layer is the limbic brain and where we feel emotions. On the bottom is the reptilian brain, the first brain, and the one we share with our animal relations. The reptilian brain is where our survival instinct lives, and is the part that keeps our heart beating without having to think about it. Each one of these parts has its own way of communicating; its own language. The language of the neo-cortex is words and the communication of ideas. The limbic brain speaks with emotions: joy, anger, and love. The reptilian brain speaks in felt sensation: hot, prickly, soft. If we want to bring all of these parts into dialogue, we need to learn their languages.

When all of these parts are in dialogue, I call that wholeness dialogue. Developing a vocabulary for felt sensation and bringing our awareness to the sensations going on inside of us is a way to begin this wholeness dialogue.

I find most people, when asked what they are feeling, will reply with an answer that tells me how they are feeling emotionally like, 'happy or anxious'. If I ask them what happy or anxious feels like in their body, the sensation of happy or anxious, they are more often than not at a loss for words and have difficulty relating to that part of themselves that is physical sensation.

To enter the realm of 'felt sensation' we must slow down. Felt sensation can be very subtle; the slower we become, the more information we can take in. Felt sensations take us into a biological context which is a fluid, adaptable context, where there is a dance of intelligent life unfolding. Joining our attention with the life going on inside of us allows our body's intelligence to communicate more openly. A feeling of spaciousness and a felt sense of fluidity often accompany this opening. In this way, we learn to engage with the body's ability to self regulate and self heal.

In Continuum™ Movement we create a context in which we can explore with passionate interest, fluid resonance. We experience in felt sensation, the textures and vibrations from a large variety of breaths and sounds. We observe how our bodies respond to these resonances by opening our attention to the felt sensation of intrinsic movement.

Continuum™ Movement encourages creativity, vitality, healthy bones and resilient muscles, as well as adaptability, flexible strength and increased circulation in a non-repetitive interesting way. This work also facilitates labor and delivery in childbirth and combines beautifully with many healing modalities. Practitioners of Pilates, Rolfing, Cranial Sacral, Trager, Feldenkrais, and Yoga, are now integrating Continuum™ Movement into these fields.

Breathing Space Movement Studio offers a variety of Continuum™ Movement classes. For information call 416 532-1221. Kim Brodey is a liscenced Continuum™ Movement teacher leading Continuum™ Movement workshops in Europe and North America and is on faculty at the Pheonix Rising Yoga and Movement Therapy School. In Toronto she teaches at the Breathing Space Movement Studio and can be contacted at 416 690-8470 or through Breathing Space Movement Studio.