Feeling in a safe accepting relationship is essential for a person to begin exploring new ways of being guided by new aspects of the self that body poem illuminates.
A major part of feeling accepted as we are is having our unique language and metaphors shared without interpretation or presumptions.
One of the key ways we can do this as part of Body Poem is by reflecting back in exactly the same language what a person says about themselves. By using the exact words a person uses with our reflections fostering radical compassionate acceptance as aspects of identity are updated. Body Poem is a dance between going for a swim and feeling for the emotional, physical and sensual landscapes of the body and coming out of the water and updating versions of ourselves from these swims. As humans, we can often be swimming on our own without the necessary differentiation and perspectives to have the agency to change what we are swimming with in our lives. Sometimes, we need support out of the loneliness of swimming alone. There is nothing like coming out of the water onto the shore greeted with a warm compassionate towel. We can offer this to each other if we see loneliness. These conversations using clean language can create secure foundations for increasing receptivity and sensation awareness. These are best harvested with a person’s own metaphors. This is an antidote to another person’s interpretation or reframes which can evaluate experiences prematurely before they have been felt. We are working together with the assumption and understanding that each person has within them a natural self-organising intelligence and capacity to self regulate and when we allow all the different parts to communicate with each other with acceptance, transformational shifts can mobilise purely from accurate listening. Acceptance with kindness is sometimes the painful necessary stage before impulses for the natural order of things to change and for new patterns to emerge, which is different from directing new patterns from the outside.
Body Poem as a practice takes to the precipice of presence supporting confidence to leap into the unknown and be received and receive ourselves again.