Gateways to Personal Power, Animal Wisdom and Movement Rituals
Would you like to know more about PsychoMotion - The Gateways® method and the way it has developed in the last 19 years? Here is a text form the introduction for the book "Gateways to Personal Power, that will be published in 2009.
My Personal Story
Movement has always been my trusted language, an essential way to get in contact and communicate with myself and with the world around me. Movement is my medium to get in touch with my feelings and to express them in order to understand myself better and to experience life more intensely.
Who am I? It is evident that I exist, but where exactly do I exist?
The search for answers to these questions has been the hidden force, the passion and motivation for my explorations in my work as a dancer, choreographer, teacher and therapist during the last twenty-nine years.
What is the power of movement? How do movement and body language connect to emotions, identity, behaviour and life ? What moves people literally and figuratively? Is there a deeper meaning to the way we move? What does my body tell me about who I am, about my soul? What is the story of my soul? The body fascinates me. It is a mysterious landscape that can be visited in many different ways. My background has a lot to do with this fascination.
I was born in Tel–Aviv, Israel. My parents are immigrants from Iraq who came to Israel soon after the land’s establishment in order to escape from a tense political environment in their homeland. At our home in Israel, the Jewish–Iraqi culture set the tone in our daily life. The Israeli culture has been forming from a melting pot of many cultures and traditions brought by immigrants from all over the world who have found their home in the newborn country. When I was a child, religious holidays and important events in one’s personal life were celebrated with rituals, dance, songs and prayers. The beauty of these bodily and spiritual practices have made an enormous impression on me. I could connect intensely to the melodies that were sung with much devotion and emotional depth. I could feel the vibration of the drums and was internally following the movements of my dancing father who has always taken a prominent role in these events. Dancing and praying, singing and moving, it is this ritualistic structure of repetitive forms of expression that carry a message and connect us to the divine. These are physical and spiritual dimensions that are interwoven with one another with no conflict. Art and spirituality, ceremonies and psychological depth, heart intention shared by a group, have all been united in my experiences and in my body since my early days. I became a professional dancer and choreographer and have intuitively always followed the path which linked me back to my origins. Movement is the thread that binds these different elements to one experience. My experience.
Eighteen years ago an interesting process started to occur in my body. It is a process that continues to this day – at least, when I am receptive to it. As a new immigrant in The Netherlands, away from my familiar surroundings, I was feeling lonely, disorientated and insecure. Looking for firm ground under my feet, trying to connect with my new reality and find focus to clarify my direction, I spent many hours working in the dance studio. I did the only thing that was familiar and trusted: dancing.
Alone in the studio for many days and hours, I was inspired by that intimacy with myself, and I experienced my body in new way. It seemed to me that my body was moved internally by an autonomic power, as if by itself, without my conscious guidance. My body formed specific repetitive postures and movements that were accompanied with images of animals. These rhythmical movements were far from my natural personal style. After these spontaneous movement sessions I always felt stronger, more grounded and focused, calmer and more in balance. My body guided me towards finding a new balance. I was connected with powers of which I had not ever been aware of, powers I missed at that point and that were essential for me in succeeding and thriving in my new reality. Through specific movements and images my body spoke a language I could only feel and it strengthened me mentally and emotionally. This was a completely unconscious process where I was able to move, experience myself moving and observe myself moving all at the same time. And even more than that, as a choreographer, I was also able to mentally register and remember the sequences of movement and share them with others. With the curiosity of a child I have followed this magical process and allowed it to further unfold. I was following an invisible teacher, a friend who cared for me. My body learned to speak a new language, in a new reality, in a new land.
Six years later, as a way to deepen my experiences, learn and enhance my knowledge of body awareness and energy, I followed studies for holistic massage therapy. My encounter with the holistic vision made an enormous impression on me. I was touched on a deep level. I felt recognition, understanding and connection. I found my spiritual home. I became more aware of the connection of the body to the mind and to psychological and spiritual properties. I could better recognize the messages the spirit is giving in a language of touch, image and movement. My intuition could get closer to my cognitive part, and my heart could get closer to my feelings and actions. My perception of the reality of the body and of the interconnectedness of all things expanded. I could place my intimate experiences with movement as expressions of wisdom that emanated from the greater body of the soul. With more practice and further explorations I began to structure the exercises and place them in a broader context. During all these years I have been teaching and sharing my insights and findings with others in weekly classes and workshops. The result of my journey with hundreds of other people who experienced the exercises is a method that I call PsychoMotion–The Gateways®. This has been an organic, non-linear process where my students’ progression, reactions and insights have helped me in consolidating a working form that is clear, concrete and can be transmitted to others.
The Gateways Exercises
PsychoMotion–The Gateways Method® creates a conjunction between psychotherapy and contemporary healing methods, art and spirituality. The Method embodies two complementary elements:
- theoretical: the PsychoMotion philosophy and coaching principles
- practical : the Gateways Exercises.
The Exercises are defines movement compositions that are supported by imagination, breath, voice and touch. The Exercises can be done on the floor and on chairs, in a group or alone, with children or adults, with healthy people and with people who are facing challenging physical or mental conditions. In an individual coaching session the coach uses different therapeutic principles and has an interaction with the participant’s body through touch, movement and spoken word. The Method is inspired by animals as sources of information, power and wisdom, resulting in presenting states of enhanced awareness and facilitating perceptual change.
Each animal opens us to an inherent, different dimension of power. It helps us deepen our connection with primal power, the source of power and wisdom. As archetypes in motion the Gateways Exercises have a direct connection to both the conscious and unconscious aspects of the psyche. They touch the emotional, cognitive, spiritual and physical levels simultaneously, and by their holistic nature let us experience and become more aware of our visible and invisible power patterns. The Gateways Exercises create an inner climate for generating profound changes in one’s life and for developing an all-encompassing identity that leads to a Solid Self. What is a Solid Self and why is it important to move in its direction I will explain in the coming chapter.
Working with The Gateways has been a fascinating process for me, in which I have grown, developed and become receptive to my own personal power. I have learned to trust my own wisdom, my own body, my existence and life. Questions such as who am I, what does it mean being a human being, what and where is my place on earth get challenging but satisfying answers. This Method is an invitation for the seekers of personal power and autonomy to strengthen the link to the body and benefit from its gift of power. This book is a result of my exploration and study of movement, body awareness and energy and their relate to spiritual and psychological processes. The ideas and methodical work which are presented in this book are a result of my observations, insights and understandings of these subjects.
PsychoMotion practitioner, Deidre’s impressions
“ The Gateways are based on the movements and sometimes sounds of creatures from the natural world. These are intelligent and finely tuned paths developed by Or Bagim into the opening of new spaces and possibilities of action in the body – and mind. They lead into self realization and transformation.
For me the Gateways have been a great way to change, to keep changing, to change without words, to change privately, to dance my way to change. I was quite stiff and nervy when I joined Or Bagim’s classes and I still am but have also found in myself much more laughter and lightness and an expansiveness that surprises me.
I’m a visual artist and my medium is clay. This expansiveness, this sense of volume has become part of my sculptures. Before I worked with the Gateways I built my sculptures into empty space but gradually I became aware of the space within the sculpture so that now I gather space as I build into it. The importance of this is that it opened a whole new territory of exploration for me in the field of form.
But it’s not for transformation that I keep coming back to Bagim’s classes. It’s the Gateways themselves - the absolute freedom I feel in stepping out of myself and becoming a worm or a lion or a…. It’s an intense and serious experience and I enjoy it. I enjoy the communication with Bagim and the others in the group at this level. Usually in the class after being in a couple of Gateways we do some deep dance and I sometimes find that I am making a movement or sound that is absolutely new and this moment of illumination isexquisite and I know that the movement or sound has sprung through a Gateway but has become mine.
I had an affinity with the work of Samuel Beckett in my youth – the pathos and comedy of being alive – the intensity of it - in the face of naught. This is the feeling I’m reconnected to in Or Bagim’s classes. In the face of naught - of void - I feel intensely alive in this particular way of movement and sound that she has opened up for me.”
Deirdre McLoughlin, a visual artist and a PsychoMotion practitioner
