A Brief Experience of Being In Movement®

BIM focuses on achieving a state of mindbody coordination for effectively
handling challenges. Here's a simple challenge that can serve as an example
of the process that BIM uses.

Imagine your co-worker from hell. The person who not only disagrees with
everything you say or do but is disgusted by your very existence. They put
dripping coffee cups down on your new printouts. They make sure you find out about important
meetings promptly after they've already happened. You've tried talking to
them, but it doesn't help. Their special project is to get in your way.

What do you feel as you think of this person? Most people would feel frustrated,
angry, hurt, and generally all tied up in knots.

What do you feel in your body? If you convert from using mind-based language
to using body-based language, you will describe your feelings very differently.
Most people would experience such things as tension in the back of the neck,
clenching in the belly, shallow breathing, or a twisting in the low back.

Negative emotions generally involve physical constriction and/or collapse
and a muscular twisting or imbalance. This physical state interferes with
free and effective movement. And it also interferes with clear and effective
thinking. By reversing the physical changes involved in imbalanced mind/body
states, the whole Self can be balanced, and performance can be improved.

Stand up, with your feet about six inches apart, and scan your body. Without
going into great detail about alignment and body function, here's a brief
exercise for entering a more effective mindbody state.

Squeeze your belly tight, then let your belly relax. Let it get softer and
softer.

Let your tongue and throat soften and open. Let your shoulders soften and
fall.

Let your breathing get soft and full, with your belly expanding gently as
you inhale.

With the soles of your feet, reach gently down into the earth, aiming for
the center of the earth. With the top of your head, reach gently up toward
the top of the sky. With your right side and your left side, reach gently
out toward the horizon way off to your left and your right. With your front
and your back, reach gently out toward the horizon way off in front of you
and in back of you.

Some people need much more body awareness work to achieve the state of symmetrical
radiance that this exercise points toward. However, if you were able to do
the exercise, you will be experiencing a balanced, expansive mindbody state-which
is just the opposite of the contracted and twisted state created by negative
responses to the challenge posed by your co-worker.

Now, go back to thinking about that co-worker from hell, but this time keeping
doing the body state of open radiance. What do you notice? Most people will
feel that by choosing to stay in the state of open wholeness they will be
calmer and more focused as they think about that co-worker. By staying open
and whole, you will be able to respond to your co-worker (or any other challenge)
in a much more alert, powerful, compassionate, and effective manner.

BIM includes many more exercises for achieving awareness, power and compassion,
but this brief experience should give you a feeling for the approach to self-knowledge
taken by this movement discipline.