Renee
Levi Interviews Dr. Natalie Rogers, On the Presence of Collective
Resonance in Group Process (continued)
RL: I’m imagining this dance between the individual
and the collective through this whole process. But for this study,
anyway, the collective is my focus. So would you say that the collective,
the sacred space, is built over the whole process? I’m struck
by the beginning, by the movement, by the music and the movement.
Is that really when it starts?
NR: For me, and for those of us in this culture. I think
it’s very different for each culture, probably. In our culture
it’s not typical that we use our bodies to take the first step,
which is to pay attention to the messages our bodies give us. We’re
just not very familiar with that. But indigenous cultures are. You
know, some Native Americans – they may know who their spirit
guides are or what the animals are saying. They tune in to a whole
body awareness that we’re not familiar with. So it’s reacquainting
ourselves with that process that others who are so-called ‘primitive’
but are actually more evolved in a lot of ways, already understand.
RL: So in a way it’s kind of like shaking things up
(chuckle). And it’s also that first piece you said is so critical
– the awareness piece. Would you say that the moving, the using
of our bodies, the allowing – is a vibrational thing, really?
NR: Yes! That is certainly part of it.
RL: …because bodies are moving in the space…
NR: Right.
RL: …that it’s really the awareness piece that
later allows the expression of it?
NR: Yes. It is. In this culture I almost always use movement
first even if people are in wheelchairs. You know, to use whatever
they can move, because we are a culture of sitting and thinking
and talking. We are so left brain oriented. So the movement does
a lot of things that helps us become aware of our feelings.
I know that my body picks up on a cellular level what’s happening
in the world. Tension builds up in me and in my colleagues as we
contemplate the possibility of this pre-emptive strike.
RL: Yes.
NR: And this tension happened to me before the Gulf War,
too. It’s as if my body begins to feel, "Oh my G-d, I’m
taking in this built-up tension." And I do not fear for myself,
but for the pain of possibly bombing innocent children and people.
RL: It would be interesting to have somebody study what
that means for disease rates immediately after events like this
because I believe tension manifests physically. That connection
– on the positive side – is one of the things this study
is trying to map. I’m particularly interested in the beginning.
You said eyes are closed while people are moving, and then I think
you said that you sense, right then, a shift to the collective?
NR: Yes. I believe I do.
RL: How does that feel to you? How do you know?
NR: This happens to me in the Authentic Movement class that
I am in as a participant. Authentic Movement is a very special practice,
in and of itself. What I sense is that when people are truly expressing
things they feel through their body, and it’s authentic, not
play-acting, there is an altered state of consciousness that becomes
riveting to the witness.
RL: Wow.
NR: You can tell. And I know when I’m in that state
myself – when I’m a participant – and suddenly my
body is telling me what to do, not my mind.
It’s a shift. And that shift is a – as you say, a felt
experience – of being in an altered state where I’m not
controlling my body or my sound. But somehow my body is doing it
first and then I’m trying to understand what I’m doing
later.
RL: Rather than the other way around.
NR: Rather than the other way around. It’s
a shift. I describe it as an altered state of consciousness that
I both experience as a participant and as a witness. Also it can
be described as a shift between left brain and right brain.
RL: Mm-hmm. When you’re witnessing this,
Natalie, what actually happens? What do you observe in the body
that tells you this is happening?
NR: Oh, I would love to. These are good questions.
I should ask the women that I know that do authentic movement, too,
because they’re good at describing it. How would I describe
it? (pause). Well, one thing to say
is that it’s beyond words (chuckle).
RL: Yeah! (laughter). And that’s valid,
you know?
NR: Mm-hmmm.
RL: You know? I don’t want to force you
because it’s…
NR: I’m trying to think what kind of words
would describe it…(pause)
RL: Let me ask you a different question. When
you are a participant, where in your body do you feel it most?
NR: It’s an all-over feeling. Well, you
know, people describe something similar in meditation when they
change from the alpha state to the theta, I believe. I know in meditation
when I’ve shifted into a different state of consciousness where
it’s peaceful. And for a few seconds or a few minutes the thought
process is gone and I’m just totally… Well, alignment
is a word that comes to me.
RL: Yes…
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Interview
with Dr. Natalie Rogers©, page 2 of 3
NR: I’m aligned with spirit. That would
be true in authentic movement too. I’m aligned with spirit.
I don’t know if it’s ‘higher’, but I’d
say my other consciousness or a different consciousness or a higher
consciousness. It’s not that all the things I experience are
beautiful – quite the contrary.
The most recent experience I had in my own authentic movement class
as a participant was experiencing myself as a growling, angry animal.
I just let myself be that. I was growling and on all fours and crawling
and getting really ferocious. I was aware at that time that I was
in an altered state of experiencing some huge amount of anger and
aggression. I didn’t know what I wanted but I allowed myself
to enact it. It’s not playacting, it’s not like putting
on a play, it’s like something’s coming from inside that
needs to be released and let out.
RL: Oh, I see. You think in that case it was
coming from inside, it wasn’t coming from outside.
NR: Well, if you define outside in terms of the
world. Then I sat down to write because in authentic movement class
we don’t talk after we do this, we write. What came out was
a deep angry feeling about greedy, greedy white men who want to
have it all. Have the oil, have this, have that, and they are power-mad.
"I want it all, I want it, I want. I want the oil, it’s
right there, I need it, I want it." It’s like being in
the middle of a little boy’s temper tantrum.
Also, through this movement I became aware of that part of me that
was them. So my consciousness shifted again into a knowing that
this is what my body was enacting, both anger at them and identifying
with them. And then I shifted again, and I asked myself, "Okay,
Natalie, how do you collude with them?"
How do I collude with the greedy white men? If I buy a new computer,
am I colluding with the corporate greed? Or is the Internet part
of how we fight back? So when I sat down to write, I was in my right
brain being very intuitive and fully expressing my anger at big
corporate control. And then I shifted to a different consciousness.
I started to take responsibility for my part of it. You know, "just
don’t blame everybody else."
RL: Mm-hmm. That was your mind coming in, right?
But prior to this you were really just in your body. So now you’re
analyzing and sort of directing your energy.
NR: Yes, exactly. I began asking myself some
further questions.
RL: So that’s the dance between right and
left, right?
NR: Yes, mm-hmm.
RL: That’s what is beautiful about it, it’s
whole. It’s whole.
NR: Mm-hmm.
RL: And when they were dancing - let’s just
go back to the Saybrook group. You said when you first described
it that you felt a collective resonance begin even though their
eyes were closed. So it’s clear they really weren’t seeing
one another. But you, as witness, were actually witnessing a move
into the collective?
NR: Yes. I’m not sure I could see it visually. I felt
it.
RL: Could you describe what that felt like? How
did you know they were together?
NR: Well they were each doing very individual
things…(pause). How would I describe it?
RL: Was it an energy?
NR: Well, energy is certainly one word for it.
But what kind of energy? What would I call it? It’s as though
people are feeling each other’s pain and sorrow and anger.
I think it would have been quite different if I were just witnessing
one person doing this, which I also do as a psychotherapist. But
it’s quite different when you’ve got the group energy.
Some people are using angular, strong, hard movements because they’re
angry or other people are hiding under a black scarf grieving. And
other people are trying to open their hearts to send out loving
energy. But there’s a collective awareness, an energetic awareness.
In our authentic movement class a group of five or six of us move
for forty-five minutes with our eyes closed. The facilitator, who
is an expert witness, often tells us (when we are finished moving
and are sharing our experience) such things as, "When one of
you was lying down with your hands over your eyes, somebody else
was doing that, too." Even though we can’t see each other,
we do things that are either similar or in response to each other
without even knowing it. That’s very interesting to authentic
movement practitioners.
RL: And the role of the witness is to connect
those, right? To observe and tell the group what actually was happening,
because otherwise you wouldn’t know, your eyes were closed.
NR: Yes, you wouldn’t know what others were
doing. However, that’s not the major function of the witness.
The major function is to make a safe space for each person to do
their own inner work through movement and also to respond to each
individual with feedback if they want it. But, a third thing, I
would say, is to talk about the collective.
RL: I see. The next question, Natalie, has to
do with shifts. You did talk a little bit about the shifts when
you were moving. I guess, I assume, that as you go from stage to
stage, to the art, to the journaling, to the talking, you perceive
shifts in the collective. A deepening, or…?
NR: Yes. Often. Both individually and collectively
because the same kinds of shifts happen when we’re doing visual,
as with the movement.
RL: Oh really?
NR: Oh yes, definitely. Let me give you a personal
example. I’d like to talk about my grief after my father died.
In my book, The Creative Connection, I have pictures of my
artwork during the year following his death. My paintings just started
out being black paintings and paintings of feelings of being overwhelmed,
such as a little tiny figure in a tidal wave. I did that again and
again and again, which released it and then it began to transform.
For people who are angry, I suggest they do ten paintings of being
angry. The images don’t have to be faces or people or things,
just color, line, abstract forms, if you want. But just do it again
and again and again in an afternoon and you will find the shift.
I feel the shift immediately when I do that. I begin to feel the
release. First of all there’s the awareness of what you’re
feeling, then the release, then more release, and then you begin
to get some insight into what you’re feeling, and then colors
begin to shift. Maybe there are lighter colors. Also, you may begin
to see what you can do to take responsibility for the feelings or
the situation. It’s both a shift between intellectual insight
and self-understanding and then releasing what’s there. The
images and the colors speak back to you and give a sense of self-awareness
and further depth.
It’s like peeling the layers of an onion or opening the lotus
blossom. Because you keep going further and further until you find
something more satisfying, something deeper - an inner truth.
(continued)
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