In VMT we work with images which may emerge as part of the breath, voice or movement work. Sometimes the client or student sees or feels the images, imagination fired by the intake of inspiration, and may share in words, sound or movement that which appears. Sometimes the soma presents the image to the practitioner, unconsciously to the person in experience. There are many ways of responding to images which appear and as practitioners we have many routes with which we can explore these images.

In a movement and sound experience, one student found herself with her body bringing to her consciousness feelings which had been previously suppressed. Her shoulders were hunched, her jaw jutting forward, chest extended, arms close by her side with hands lifted away from the body and facing outwards. I had observed for a while before asking gently in the group how she was doing. She said she felt as if she were teetering on the edge of a precipice, facing the void. Indeed, somatically she did seem to be right on the precipice, she looked as if she might topple forward any moment as if there was no safe ground beneath them. Her respiration was held, her face scored with fear, caught in a moment from the past which had imprinted itself upon her body and psyche. Asked if she knew what was occurring within her, she said she felt her mother’s abandonment and the fear of the child who felt she might fall into the chasm and die.

The fear was very real. Tears streamed down her face as she spoke of there being never being anyone there to catch her if she fell. The image I had first seen when observing her was her perched, terrified, and in the view through my eyes, at the edge of the nest, in fear of falling, of not being supported. I worked with the image her soma unconsciously presented to uncover that which was there but not available to her consciousness at that moment. I encouraged her to gently take in breath, not to change the respiration pattern she was in but to encourage her, ever so gently, to allow a little more into the frozen system.

Once breath started to enter the body, I suggested a small movement of the hands and lower arms so that they floated away from and back to the body in a continuous flowing movement. Once there was flow in her body, I encouraged the amplification of the movement of the lower arms and hands so that it began to move into the upper arms. Breath was flowing more freely, no longer stuck in stasis. I encouraged amplification of the movement into the face, which was no longer fixed in a rigid mask of terror. I encouraged the head to move slowly from side to side, getting a wider perspective, the mouth to gently open and shut. I encouraged her to feel the support of the breeze beneath her arms, to feel the buoyancy of the air, to feel that she was safe in the environment in which she found herself and, if she felt like it to feel that she might be able to lift off. By amplifying the bird image, taking the aspects of the configuration of her soma into movement, breathing air into it then change began to occur. I suggested that as her wings began to move through the air that she may want to make sounds as though she were a bird. She began to sing in bird sound, expressing cries of fear, terror, and loneliness as her arms flapped and flew. Not ready to leave the nest, her movements became wider, more confident as her calls echoed around the room.

Checking in, I asked how she felt. She said she no longer felt the terror of the unsupported landscape, she could look down now without fear of falling knowing that she could fly or glide down; she had what she needed to support her, she would not die in the fall.

I encouraged amplification of the bird sounds, to sing all the songs her bird wanted to sing in that moment: songs of loneliness, abandonment, loss and then hope as her sounds ranged out and spread across the room. When the song quietened, she looked up, flushed, exhilarated, changed, and said she felt much better but sad for the lonely little girl she had been. I asked if she would like to meet some friends. Yes, she would. The group members were in a large circle, as they had been when the whole group had been in process, witnessing her work. I invited members of the group who would be willing to participate to remain standing and those not wanting to participate to sit.

Leaving the perch, she made her first foray out to two women nearby and flapping her wings, sang to them. They gently responded, also making bird movements. She left and returned to them several times, exploring departures and returns before beginning to fly around the room, her voice emerging freely as her voice and movement carried her. She crested into communion as she alighted upon various group members and sang to them, to which they responded in sound and movement then, when she was ready, she would leave them for pastures new to go and meet the next friends in other parts of the room. She engaged deeply with the other birds, as they did with her. I noted that birds often fly together with friends and wondered aloud if she would like to fly with friends. She would! In bird song and dance, she invited two friends to travel and sing with her and they flew around the room, high and low, shrieking, warbling, swerving, laughing and singing in joyous free bird song. Eventually she issued the invitation for everyone who wanted to join her to do so and the whole group joined, swooping and navigating around each other.

Once the bird singing and flying was over, we came back to words to reflect. She noted that she had been in such terror but that the bird image had given her freedom to transmute that terror. By finding the bird, she found her power. I remarked that although I had given her the image of the bird it had been present in the stance in which she had become stuck and in the words that she had used to describe her feelings: on a ledge about to fall with no-one to catch her, falling to certain death all alone. By amplifying the image that she presented, viewing her stance through an imaginistic perspective and utilising the power therein she was able to access and embody the power and potency of the shadow of that which was keeping her stuck, and become unstuck. One of the wonderful things about birds is that they always know their coordinates, they always know where they are in space, and so by enabling her to access the primal power of the internal bird she was able to fly free and not remain stuck in fear. Her body was able to find a new relationship with an old image and fly.

© Christine Isherwood 2021