FBKTIM: The Inner Sense of Movement

Overview

From Bodily Knowledge to Intuitive Movement (FBKTIM) is a seven-part live series with physical and yoga therapist Sherry Brourman, built chapter by chapter from her book of the same name. Each session unpacks one chapter, bridging physical therapy, yoga therapy, and pain science into a framework you can bring straight into your own practice, with research assistant Gina moderating.

This session covers Chapter 6: The Inner Sense of Movement. New to the series? Start with the free introductory session to see how it all connects, or see the full series and register here.

It is highly recommended that you have a copy of the book to accompany this series. You can purchase a copy of the book from Amazon or Singing Dragon, and you can learn more about the book on Sherry's website.

About Chapter 6: The Inner Sense of Movement

Where are the words? At the height of a movement experience that embodied everything I had been writing about, I searched for words to describe what I was doing and realized there were none. Chapter 6 takes the journey from outward to inward, where the bodily knowledge developed throughout this book can become an inner sense of movement.

Anatomy, movement patterns, breathing, ground reaction force, tensegrity, interoception, and whole-person awareness become ingredients of felt movement rather than instructions for how a posture should look and behave. Energetic Symmetry (ES), structural integrity with fluidity, offers transitional language for exploring these relationships within each unique personal movement system, without requiring ideal strength, flexibility, or neutral joint positions.

A 12-posture ES self-assessment offers an opportunity to first experience these principles in your own body. Each template posture explores directional energetics, plays of opposites, weight distribution, breath, sensation, and the amount of resistance and challenge that feels appropriate. Pose Applications and Planes of Movement use familiar elements within each template and the predominant planes in which they move to make other postures easier to recognize and understand.

As the feeling of personal structural integrity with fluidity becomes familiar, each practice can begin with a special kind of innocence. Current breathing patterns and stamina are the choreographers of this dance, inviting us to take in the movement experience as a meditation.

With practice, the need for external instruction and internal chatter becomes less and less. There is no particular way movement needs to look. As our bodies change and the science of movement continues to deepen, staying curious and engaged with emerging knowledge keeps the practice alive—allowing what we know, what we feel, and how we move to continue informing one another.

Learning Objectives

In this final chapter, we will:

1. Develop a feel for their personal anatomy and its directional energetics during movement when they choose to notice.
   
   
2. Use experience from previous chapters and personal movement history to explore current mood, sensation detection, self-talk, and response systems throughout the 12-posture assessment.
   
   
3. Practice the postures by simple feel, with less chatter, and explore the increasing role of inner awareness in guiding movement.
   
   
4. Recognize that as we and the field evolve, continued exploration, study, and practice remain part of an ongoing process of learning and self-healing.
   
   
5. Apply energetic symmetry within postures and throughout transitions, whether moving or still, in ways that contribute to structural integrity with fluidity without requiring visual symmetry, prescribed alignment, or a particular way movement needs to look.
   
   
6. Develop enough familiarity with postures and transitions that breathing patterns, stamina, sensation detection, and energetic feel can increasingly guide the practice rather than external cuing.
   
   
7. Recognize and respond to our own and our patient/client’s changing capacities and longings for challenge, including bodily, mental, social, and spiritual influences, through communication and collaboration.
   
   
8. Choose and vary internal resistance during breath and movement, moving as if through air, clouds, water, or honey, and consider the implications of those choices for today’s posture, sequence, or practice.
   
   
9. Recognize the role of intention in movement, yogic homeostasis, and salutogenesis while honoring the individual history, capacities, experience, and felt sense that make each movement expression unique.

Audience