7 Options (part one)—Episode 4, April

Welcome to our fourth episode of Points of Contact. Each month, in conversation with Carolyn Stuart we dive into her experience, philosophy, and teachings of Contact Improvisation. Carolyn has spent decades to distilling seven options available at the point of contact. In this episode, we cover the first three of these seven options. These first three options are: 1. ENTER / LEAVE Touch to leave one point of contact in order to enter another (think walking!). Touch to enter into, to initiate a dance. Touch to leave your partner on their center when you need to leave a dance. Touch to relate to what is. Touch to rearrange your relationship to what is. 2. ASSESS SUPPORT   (ideally, this option is a constant that supports exploring all the other options) Gravity is our context. Support is inherent. Touch to be aware of, to feel your circumstance. Touch to assess the existing support. Touch to track the support as it is changing.   3. DO NOTHING Explore non-doing to experience and witness the complexity of being. Touch to simply receive and be received. Touch and do nothing.   7 options, by Carolyn Stuart CONTACT IMPROVISATION is relational medicine. It is freedom grounded in connection. It is a powerful balm and sublime fun when there’s awareness present and options available for immediate use. It is improvisation. You are the source, filter and framer of your experience. You are the initiator/responder, receiver/transmitter, master/student…… in charge of the ever changing nature of your experience. Commit to caring for yourself and all you are related to!  You are an intricate and unique part of a whole. If the whole is not healthy, the parts suffer. Own that you are the one and the all. Pay attention to the lively dynamic of continuously and simultaneously influencing and being influenced. Own your participation in and responsibility to the mutuality of interbeing. Become intimate with gravity. It is the lord of us all, dictating that we are relational. Track the perpetual unfolding of the one and only moment. Notice whether what is happening is beneficial. If it isn’t, explore what else is possible!   Use the options to explore ‘spectrums  of  possibility’ ~such as the range and degrees of effort, weight, speed, tone, surface, space, states, intent, emotion, response, allowing……… Practice, practice, practice…..   ever noticing, ever curious, ever responsive “What am I doing?  What is my partner doing?”Cultivate spacious attention for the WE of You and Me. Awareness of what is creates safety and defines what else is possible.  Track what is and notice if what is is beneficial?If it is not, then use the point/s of contact to change what YOU are contributing.You are half the equation, so changing your participation changes what is!  Aspire to a seamless, continuous awareness of what is co-evolving here, now. Commitment to a continuous connection is what unifies the diversity necessary to achieve and expand the capacity for mutual well-being.   When we’re aware of what is we don’t need to know where we’re going.What’s next is already becoming, according to our relating to what is.   Awareness + Curiosity = Exploration Connection + Options = Belonging + Freedom                                Participation is Divine!  pay attention / tell your truth / listen / ask what wants to happen to care for all those involved