Sensation Action Flow

I believe that i originally got this from Kirstie Simson and Sara Shelton Mann, when they were teaching Contact Improvisation together in the bay area in the mid 90s.

Starting from a sensation, act on this sensation. Action redirects attention and and creates new sensation, which leads to new action action. At first this may be piecemeal, with the action taking time to develop, but then the process of switching becomes more and more immediate. Acts may be linear (move part of body with sensation, articulate this part of the body, use this part of the body as an organizational point, amplify, reduce, or transform sensation), and they also may be non-linear (sensation in foot means twist spine, for example). Try to be unmediated by judgment or thought.

Sensation may be local or global, internal (proprioceptive, touch, sensation of thought or imagination) or external oriented (vision, sound, etc).

There is a constant movement towards more immediacy of response (no waiting for judgment or analysis), decisiveness of action (lack of hesitancy or restraint), and detachment from completion. The actor moves directly into action, but sensation can very immediately redirect action without the action needing to complete. New actions are not preceded by the blocking of the previous action. Instead the ongoing action is immediately redirected into the new action, without stopping first. This stopping is a sign of hyper-controlling thought. Instead of stopping what is going on, shifting intention redirects and reforms what is already happening.