8C. Transform Content, Movement Only

• In pairs. One of you will be Watcher and the other, Doer. Watcher, assign a simple physical gesture to the Doer. For example, a clap of the hands, a touch to the forehead, or a turn of the body while lifting two hands. The gesture is an "empty" form with no emotional or attitudinal fill. Be sure the gesture has a beginning and an end. Then, step aside and prepare to watch

• Doer, with regular timing, continually repeat the shape of the gesture given to you exactly the way it was given to you. Begin with a few "empty" repetitions. Keep repeating it on a pulse. Become familiar with the movement so you don't have to think about it later. Then, connect your imagination and feelings to your actions. Fill the gesture.

• Now, each time you repeat the gesture, incrementally change your mind/body. One state inspires the next, so you're transforming the meaning of the action step by step. Between each step, empty out the meaning so a clear beginning and end to the action can be seen. The movement may slow down, or speed up, or the muscles around the bones may change tension in order to respond to your changing internal experience. The shape of your skeleton and the pulse of your action, however, should remain the same.

• Remember, one gesture leads you to the next. Don't think up your moves. Each repeat is a slight change, physically and psychically, in the direction that you're already heading. You're transforming the content of the action, nothing else.

• How do you know where you're heading? Signs and arrows point the way. While you're executing the action, be aware of the sensations you experience, both physically and psychically, in detail. Those sensory details are the signs and arrows that point in the direction of your next move.

• Each time you repeat the form, go one step farther than where you've just been. This doesn't have to mean bigger and louder. Let go of plans and follow the details of the experience. Go into the realm of non-understanding.

• Watcher, if you notice that your partner jumps a step—indicating that they're thinking ahead—or repeats the content, or vacillates back and forth between hard/soft, stop them. Put them back on track. Remind them to watch the details and follow those details, increment by increment. No mental work. A direct line, from awareness to action to awareness.

We begin each transformation exercise with an empty form. The word "empty" is another covenant. For us, it means: a movement form devoid of as much content as possible. No "I" is in the action. It is defined only by the body with no mind state informing its meaning. We say "empty" even though we know that nothing is empty. Emptiness is emptiness, emptiness is itself. Even an empty gesture is full of its own emptiness.

Students perform these transformational explorations with regular pulse. The pulse keeps the student transforming and doesn't give her time to drift into thought, or slide into repetition or trance. With this regular pulse, students must constantly track their experience: mental and physical sensations, shapes that pass though body and mind. They respond to each sensation as it occurs and from where it begins and ends.

Transformation is an evolutionary process. Each step on the way is like a fossil in an evolutionary chain from point A to point B. There's no missing link. It's a smooth flow. Unlike a shift, where some miracle brings the person from one state to another, a transformation leaves a trail of residue indicating how one action became the next. The change in shape, intention, energy, time, and facial expression can be traced back to the shift before. A transformation is essentially one tiny shift after another, but we look at it over a whole path to see the gradual change take place. Shifts leave no tracks. Nothing exist from A to B. There's no evidence of how one led to the next.

What are the cues that suggest the next action and how can they be detected? Here is an example:

I'm standing up. I clap my hands together. I notice a bounciness on the release of the clap. The next time I repeat the clap, I give more attention to the bounciness and I notice that along with the bounciness is a lightness of spirit. The next time I repeat the clap, I move more into the bounciness and the light spirit, and I notice a tension arising in both the inward and outward action of the clap, running up my arms into my neck and face. The next time I repeat the clap, I move more into the tension and notice that my facial and neck muscles are pulling back and my entire body is tightening. I feel my spirit contracting. The next time I repeat the clap I move more into the physical tension and tightness of that spirit and I notice my eyebrows lifting, my eyes bulging, my breath holding and an even tighter, and now, expansive quality to my spirit. The next time I repeat the clap, I move more into tightness and expansiveness and I notice that at the end of the clap my fingers are curving slightly, and along with that curving is a slight release of tension, and a subtle retreating of spirit. The next time I repeat the clap, I move more into that curve, the release of tension and the retreating and I notice my chest is collapsing and my shoulders are turning inward, my fingers are feeling light and formless and my spirit is softening ...

This process precludes any "happy, happier, happiest," or the "little girl, bride, old lady" tactics. There's no time or space for imaging or planning. No pre-thought, no identifications. Stereotyped images tug us away from present moment and our own body. They are externalized images which require thinking, analyzing. Thinking interrupts the lively ongoingness of the body. Analysis is not movement from within, and can't be the motivation of our action. We sense this difference.

Again, students walk backwards into direct experiencing, noticing and following the cues in their current mind/body, allowing their actions to take them into unpredictable and unnameable terrains.

Now we add variables.