Expanding Our EM Partnerships
One of the most exciting developments this year has been the expansion of our EM partnerships.
Karen and Jane
We, Karen Roeper and Jane Flint, have been collaborating with one another for close to thirty years. Together we created the Eyes of the Beholder workshops and offered them for a decade between 1994 and 2004. Those workshops combined Essential Motion with video feedback, which at the time was new and sometimes challenging for people.
Since the advent of the smart phone, which introduced instant photos, video, Skype and Facetime as everyday aspects of life, most of us have become much more comfortable with seeing digital renditions of ourselves. Over the past couple of years we’ve expanded what we learned from Eyes of the Beholder by making use of the video features on peoples’ smart phones as they develop their own Essential Motion practices during live workshops.
This year, we piloted our first EM Virtual Leadership Workshops, featuring live video and audio conferencing. Not only could our pilot group of eight be in conversation and movement with one another during our monthly meetings, in spite of geographic distance, we were each able to do one-on one work with Karen between meetings. Beyond seeing ourselves in movement, video/audio conferencing allowed us to:
- witness ourselves as one of the group in the same we witness others in group
- maintain connection with each other and the group in spite of distance
- share our current Essential Motion work and discoveries with one another from our own spaces and with frequency and regularity.
We’ll be using the fabulous feedback we got from the original pilot group to expand on the virtual experience and grow the group. Anyone participating in this year’s Summer EM Intensive will be eligible to join this fall’s Virtual Leadership Group.
Essential Motion in the Rosen Journal
Since Karen first developed Essential Motion, her training as a Rosen practitioner and teacher have informed her work. By bringing together the creativity and self-expression of her dance background with Rosen Method’s process for identifying unconscious patterns of muscular holding, feeling, and behavior, she has continued to evolve and share her practice of embodied awareness.
To witness and better understand the development and application of Essential Motion, read Essential Motion: An Improvisational Movement Approach to Embodied Awareness and Its Relationship to Rosen Method Bodywork in the latest Rosen Method International Journal.
Our international partnerships
For more than two decades, EM practitioners in Sweden and Finland have been integral parts of the Essential Motion community.
This past year, 2016, was no different, with Karen offering workshops in Göteborg and Stjärnsund, Sweden and appearing as keynote speaker at the Home in the Body seminar in Tampere, Finland.
This year, Karen will again be offering workshops in Sweden September/October and will be working with current Finnish practitioners to develop a new EM Leadership Training in Finland.
Our big hope is to bring our international EM partners to the US in July 2018 for a Summer Intensive/Festival. Stay tuned!