Centering
The somatic skill of centering is a helpful practice for life. Although often used together, it is distinct from the practice of grounding. When we center, we play with gathering awareness into our core, seeking the center of our experience.
Through centering, we reconnect with our power, pulling ourselves together and inwards again, which helps with containment and self-coherence.
There are many ways to practice and explore the benefits of centering experientially. To turn centering from a word or a concept into a felt-sensed bodily sensation, it helps to use movement and the arts.
My Invitation to you: Experiment with the somatic practice of centering through the following EXA process.
Materials and Supplies:
3 pieces of paper. To make this exercise feel more accessible, I suggest using small pieces of paper. They can be post-it sized
a round object for tracing a circle, such as the lid of a jar, that can fit inside the paper. You can also just draw the circles free-hand if you prefer, but sometimes having a more “perfect” circle helps with sensing the higher dimensional qualities of the circle format
Mark making supplies, like pens, colored pencils, paints, etc
Part 1: Set an Intention related to Centering
Before beginning this exploration today, find some sentences that connect you into why you want to play with centering.
I intend to find the center of…
I want to center into…
I wish to be centered in…
I mean to be encircled by…
I am the center of…
I choose to circle around…
Part 2: Short Movement Exploration
Take a look at your total available movement space today (such as the room, piece of land, or corner of a space you are going to be moving in).
Find and Anchor the center
Decide where the center of your space is, and place an object there, such as a stone, a book, or a piece of clothing. This object serves to represent the center point of your space.
Explore Being in Center
Begin your movement exploration by standing in the same place as that center point anchor object, feeling your centricity and looking out around you at the space. Allow some stillness and settling in there.
Now start to slowly explore movements that extend you forward, to the sides, or behind the center point, while your feet stay in the center, like a flower that is bending in the wind, but stays rooted in one spot.
Expand and Pivot around Center
Gradually allow yourself to make still-connected forays away from the center, stepping away with one foot, with your limbs, always keeping one part of your body connected to the center point. Your movement may now be more like a compass used to draw a circle in geometry class, with one point of your body always still connected to the center while the rest of you moves outward and explores options for moving around.
Leave Center
Allow yourself to drift from the center point, exploring movements that take you away from it. Come and go from the center point as you like. Go to the extreme limits of your space, and look back towards the center point, relating to it with your movements. Orbit the center, radiate from it, come back to it, respond to it.
Return to Center
Come back to your center anchor, and allow the movement to dissolve into stillness as you once again are in Center. Take a moment to notice any sensations that have appeared in your body awareness. Any tingling, throbbing, or twitching? Warmth or coolness? Sense of inner movement, pulsing, contraction, tension? A sense of space? Something else?
Anything noteworthy in the main organ centers of your body - head, chest, belly, undercarriage?
Throughout all of this, just explore and notice what you sense. There is no purpose other than discovery of what, if anything, these movements and orientations in space stimulate for you.
Part 3: Circle Pieces
Go to your art materials now, and trace or draw three circles.
Fill each of them. Starting in the center of each circle, place some marks, colors, shapes, lines, or symbols that come to you naturally now after having done the movement.
These circles can capture the sensations you noticed, be idly scribbled, decorated or doodled, or carefully colored in. Whatever comes out of you now through art materials is just what it is supposed to be.
Part 4: Circling Words into -Ing Poem*
For each circle piece you made, write down three to seven gerund, or -ing words. These can be made up words.
Take a few of those -Ing words and weave them into a short poem or passage of writing.
Part 5: Reflect on your Centering Explorations
Remembering your movements and looking at your circles, you may want to journal quickly in relation to how this process may have “answered to” the implicit question you posed at the start when you set your centering question.
How might these pieces reflect, relate or respond to the intention I set, to [centering intention you started with]…
Thank you!
*Special thank you to psychologist and educator Elizabeth Warson for the technique of shifting from visuals, into gerunds, into poems!
