Deepening

The Deepening score starts with a similar frame as Authentic Movement (again, without the Jungian theory, but in the more open framework). The Mover has the same role: move (with eyes closed) for a space of time, doing whatever they want. The Deepener, witnesses the Mover but also interacts with the physically, using the idea of deepening what they sense of their partner’s process to shape their interaction. A typical sequence would be the following

Part 1 Witness: The Deepener, starts as in Authentic Movement … just witness partner. Part 2: Active witness – mimic: The Deepener continues witnessing but moves along with Mover, feeling their movement through space, copying their movement and adapting them to their own body to “try on the movement” as a way of observing their partner with their won body. In a way, this is just allowing the natural process of mimesis to flow more fully. While so engaged, if the Deepener feels that something is particularly interesting, they might just tune into the sensation of the movement and follow their own flow with it for a few seconds and then bring their gaze back to their partner.

Part 3: Active witness – Touch: The Deepener mostly drops the overt mimesis and moves into following their partner with a non-interfering touch, trying to feel the processes going on inside their partner. This can be quite literal in terms of feeling muscular action and reaction patterns, or it might be more intuitive. It is impossible to be totally non-interfering… in order to feel we need to deliver some small amount of probing force, and touch is likely to grab our partner’s attention. Still, the Deepener practices being non-triggering, tries to minimize excess force and resistance, and tries to be uninteresting and non-personality driven while tracking their partner.

Note on tracking vs probing

Tracking… following and sensing someone physically w/minimizing interference

Probing… Tracking plus interference meant to illicit response as a way to sense other.

The difference between tracking and Probing is not black and white, but a matter of how much interference is used in sensing. Tracking is inherently interference, as we can only sense other through interaction, though the interaction can be quite subtle. Probing starts with a base of tracking and explicitly interferes as a way to sense not just what is going on but how the partner responds.

Technical Note – sliding touch tends to be much more psychologically triggering than sticking touch. This might be pleasant or disturbing, but it generally affects the partner’s psyche much more immediately.

Part 4 Deepening: The Deepener feels processes going on inside the Mover and motivates their interaction via the question of how to deepen something that is already happening through a process of distillation and amplification.

What is a process? A process might be identified very mechanically/proprioceptively as some sort of repeating action/reaction pattern, some way of using the body and muscles. It might be something intuited and experienced as emotion sensation exploration, relationship exploration, etc. The notion is that we have many processes running simultaneously, so we want to deepen one.

What is it to deepen? To deepen a process means to make it more of what it already is, allow it to activate further, go further. It likely means distilling it, by helping the mover commit to it fully, let other things drop away. It could mean bigger, but more importantly, is making it more specific and particular. This can happen through coaxing it along, through providing opposition for it to act against (in Mindel’s term, taking over the Resistor so the Maker can come out more fully.). It might also mean providing an appropriate physical environment (landscape, body as furniture, sensation environment, etc). One might be simply a landscape for the other, one might be an archetypal force, one might be a character with whom the partner interacts. It could also be something personal about the daily selves of the Deepener and Mover, but I would hesitate to go there: 1)too easy, 2)misses other opportunities in the distraction with the daily self (the pleasant fog of the artificial construct of “what feels natural”), 3)can get more messy and hard to create container if it gets “real.”

How to Deepen? Don’t worry about it, just do it and try. Use your intuition. The above ideas are just suggestions. Most importantly, don’t evaluate, don’t judge! Use the question to guide action through first impulses. Rather than ask if it was right or not, just ask the question again…”what is going on, how do I deepen it?” Let go of the last moment and stay present. The judging mind is mostly incapable of doing this score, as it is too slow and fucks up a sense of personal investment in action, which has serious impacts on the felt experience of interaction. Relatedly, be immediate. Don’t try to figure out first what is best, just keep holding the question, follow first impulses, and allow each action to flow out of what is happening in the moment, rather than breaking the action and starting over again.

Trust your “self”. Everyone will come to different actions. Trust what comes out of your body. Offer that. Offer what comes out of your “self” and trust that something useful will come through the synergy.

Trust accidents. Your actions will have unexpected consequences and you will do somethings unintentionally. The processes that come out ARE what is now happening. Go with it! Deepen that, not what was happening a while ago!

Use your very complex intuition and personal sense of real investment in process. Also trust your “self”… trust that what you come up will be relevant or at least an interesting provocation of some specific transpersonal processes. Formulaic actions might come out, but invest in them and make it real.

Deepening can be done as a purely physical/motor action concentrating on dynamics of body-tone, coordination of reflex actions, response patterns. It can also go into a place of felt emotion, relation, imagery, sensation play, and the unnameable. Go with what you feel.

Trust the surreal! IT DOESN’T NEED TO MAKE SENSE… It just needs to feel like something.

Remember, the Mover does not have an explicit instruction to “go deeper”. They do whatever they want.

In the end, the point is not that this will take things objectively “deeper”… it is an interesting physical/psychological experiment which has the potential to generate interesting results.