Fitness with Friends: Momenta- Meditation Through Movement

VOICE: For more information and a full transcript of this video, check out fun4thedisabled.com. When joining us for this video, you need to take some precautions as your health and safety are the most important. To avoid any injury or harm, you need to check your health with your doctor before exercising. By performing any fitness exercises without supervision like with this video, you’re performing them at your own risk. See a fitness professional to give you advice on your exercise form. Strategy for Access Foundation NFP and Momenta will not be responsible or liable for any injury or harm you sustain as a result of this video. 

ROBBY: Hello, I’m Robby. Today I’m here with Gina and Ladonna. We’re with Momenta Dance Company. We wanna invite you into a relaxing afternoon, evening, whatever it is, in working through with Meditation Through Movement, using adaptive Humphrey technique. 

LADONNA: Gina will use imagery to guide us through movement. So as we dance, really let yourself think about moving through water, or exploding a volcano and what it feels like to be a butterfly in the wind. That kind of imagery enhances our dancing and also works with us as we adapt movements to fit our own unique bodies. People with disabilities are experts at adaptation. We can dance with just our eyes or our fingers. Change a movement to suit the way your body likes to move and then have fun. 

GINA: Welcome, we’re going to explore the technique principles of Doris Humphrey. Doris Humphrey was a modern dance pioneer born in Momenta’s hometown of Oak Park, Illinois. In the breath rhythm principle, all movement is initiated by the breath. Let’s keep that in mind and let’s begin. Remember to do what feels right for your body. All right, our first breath image will be of the butterfly. So we’ll start small and we’ll grow into something bigger. Let’s just take a breath in, and feel the movement through your body as you exhale. Breathe in, lift up and exhale, fall into gravity. Inhale and exhale. All right, if we wanna move a little bigger, we’ll keep our hands down on our laps and we’ll think about the breath expanding us a little bit more. As you inhale, lift your body, maybe your shoulders and elbows rise and exhale, sink back down. Inhale, expand. Exhale, recover. Inhale, and exhale. Good, now we’ll really be thinking of that butterfly. This time, we’ll be expanding all the way through our arms as if your wings are unfurling. Take a breath in, and expand all the way out through the fingers and down. Breathe in, unfurl those wings and exhale. Inhale, and exhale. 

Good, let’s recover and just shake it out a little before we move on to the rainbow breath. So we’re gonna use the image of that arc we see in our rainbow, and as we inhale, we’ll lift up to the top of the arc and exhale, descend down. Inhale, and exhale. And inhale, and exhale. I already felt my head moving with that. So this time let’s go ahead and add our body. So as you go up to the top of the rainbow, you’re inhaling and as you exhale lean to the side. Inhale, and exhale. Inhale, lean to the side and drop down the rainbow. And let’s recover to the center. For our final rainbow breath, we’ll add the arms. Let’s all drop our arms to the right. And as you inhale, reach the arms up to the top and exhale, down. Inhale up, exhale down. Inhale up, exhale down. And recover to the center. Good, okay. Feeling that through your body? 

We’ll move on to our final breath rhythm principle, and this one will be the gentle volcano. So we’ll just begin with that image of the lava bubbling up and down through the center of a volcano. So start with your gaze down and as you inhale, think about that lava traveling up and as you exhale, it bubbles back down. Inhale, and exhale. Inhale, and exhale. All right, we’ll go on. So place your palms in front of your chest and this time as you inhale, lift those hands up and exhale, drop back down to gravity. And maybe even the heels of your hands will come away before they come back together. Inhale and lift up. Exhale, recover. Inhale, exhale. All right, let’s go one step further, and that lava will now come up through the top of the mountain. Inhale, separate your hands and gently flow down the sides of the mountain. Bring your palms back together, inhale, and lift and separate as you exhale, flowing down. One more time, breathe in, and breathe out. Great. All right, again, feel this in your body. 

Shake it out if you need to and we’ll move on to Humphrey’s next principle, successional flow. Successional flow is a way of moving naturally through the body. And we want to imagine the way the breath moves through the body. So we’re gonna start this time with our gaze down, gently towards your hands. Ladonna will turn to the side to give you another view. And this time as you inhale, think about the breath moving through the spine and up through the top of the head. And as you exhale, the chest leads forward with the chin and the head naturally flowing behind. Inhale, the breath moves up through the spine, and exhale, chest, chin, head. Breathe in, and exhale. And let’s recover to neutral. So this image can be built on and made a little bit bigger. And as I’m doing it, I’m feeling like maybe I might be rocked gently by the ocean waves. So if you’d like to use that image and do what feels best for your body, we’ll try it again. 

I’m gonna move a little bigger this time. So let’s soften our gaze and start with our head down, and really inhale and move up through the spine and out through the top of the head, and exhale and go down as you feel comfortable. Inhale, and exhale. Inhale, and exhale. And let’s recover. All right, so we’ll add the arms this time if you feel comfortable doing that. We’ll start down and take a big breath in and we’ll feel that movement traveling through our spines, and up through the shoulders, the elbows, the wrists and the fingers and down. Breathe in, moving successionally through the body, up through the tops of the fingers and down. Once more, breathe in, and breathe out. And recover. 

So we just explored successional movement traveling forward and back through the body. And now we’re gonna change that to a side movement. And this image makes me think of seaweed traveling side to side. So let’s begin again with our hands down and we’ll start small, with just the movement image in our head. Inhale, and exhale. Moving side to side, inhale, feel the breath travel up and exhale. Inhale, and exhale. And recover. All right, we’ll take it to the next step. Adding our body. Remember to do what feels right for you today. Take a breath in, and lean as far as you can and recover. To the other side. And keep the breath going as it travels through your body. Inhale, exhale, Inhale, exhale. All right, and again, we’ll add the arm. And take a breath in. As you exhale this time, let’s lean to the side and imagine the air going through the elbow, the wrists and the fingers, and recover. Inhale, exhale to the other side. Elbow, wrist, fingers. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale, and recover. 

LADONNA: Let’s take all that and make a dance. Gina will lead us through the phrases. 

GINA: All right, so for our first phrase, we are gonna begin with our breath, expanding out and in. Expand out and in. Moving on, we’ll sway slow, slow, and then a little quicker. One, two, three, four. Continue on by giving yourself a hug, lifting up, looking up, suspend before you float down and we’re gonna swing our arms to the right. Swing, swing, circle around. And swing, swing, circle around. Give yourself another hug. Lift it up, suspend and flow down. And swing, swing, circle around. Swing, swing, and circle. Now we’ll try that same phrase with some music. Feel free to do what feels right for your body. 

LADONNA: Before we dance to the music, if you’d like to practice a bit, just pause the video, go back, watch it again, and then join us. 

(gentle piano music) 

GINA: Feel free to add anything that feels good to your body. Speed it up. Give yourself a hug. Lift up. Swing to the right. Hug. Lift it up. Swing again to the right. And finish. Take a final breath in, and let it out.