From my journal for May 18, 1996 I was at a Continuum workshop. It’s a movement practice developed by Emilie Conrad Da’oud
Emilie’s talk is quite fascinating. I don’t buy it all on a literal, scientific level, but as poetry, as suggestion, it creates a context in which new things can be experienced. She started by saying that we think we know what we are, what a human being is, but in fact we have no idea what we are, or even if we’re here. She described how we began as aquatic beings, and as we stabilize, choosing a narrow path thru many possibilities, we become rigid, and lose touch with the source place from which we can be nourished. Then we need to liquify our rigidities and dissolve our tightly held boundaries, in order to get back in touch with the source. She described people who grow up in a hostile environment, hunching her shoulders to show the rigid defensive pattern. Someone said after paying so much attention to the inner world she found it very hard to move. Emilie said that could be a result of making too sharp a distinction between inner and outer, e.g. that the inner world is full and rich and meaningful and the outer one is not important. This can make it hard to move. Emilie says “You must push through that wall. You must just rough it.”
There was a lot of talk about “self-referential.” This work is obviously self-referential, we look inside ourselves for what to do next, for the meaning of our experience. Emilie said that the beginning of all political systems is looking for some authority to tell you who you are and what your life means.
For a while after this workshop, Continuum was a very important part of my day. It helped me hold together psychologically, and improved my body’s flexibility. It’s possible that I stopped doing it during the Summer from Hell in 1996. Haven’t read far enough in 1996 to know.