Interview
Download Spanish version here.
INTERVIEW IN THE SPANISH TRAGER NEWSLETTER
How did you meet the Trager Approach?
I got a session in 1983, just because I was curious. In the first five minutes of that session, as my neck and spine let go in way I had never allowed in a decade of professional dancing, I felt like I had come home to myself. And more than that, I realized in the next moment that I had just experienced what I was really supposed to be doing with this life…that dancing had only been a preparation for the real work my soul had in mind for me.
How would you define it? What is its essence for you?
It is such an adaptable approach, applicable in all sorts of situations, starting with how we take care of our bodies and minds, how we prepare ourselves for potent, authentic, vulnerable contact with others, how we invite our clients into a new relationship with themselves. It is useful for all us humans, since it is in our genetic structure to be curious and always learning. And it is useful as a way of working for the benefit of clients struggling to find functional ease, lightness in body and mind, and freedom from mental, emotional and/or physical pain. I find I can only be more specific in my definition when I have first met and connected with the person who is asking.
The essence lies in the willingness to experience ourselves as an agent of positive change in a sea of generous life energy. We make ourselves powerful by learning to let go of all the “doing” and allow our body wisdom to emerge in “feeling.”
What are its differences from other approaches?
Again, this question can only be answered in context. If I am answering in relation to the other approaches to Somatic Movement Therapy like Feldenkrais, Alexander, Continuum or Body Mind Centering, then I might say it involves more direct hand-to-body sharing of a new and more functional feeling. From the lived wisdom in my unconscious (body) mind directly to the client’s unconscious mind I offer a felt experience of a new quality of movement, and new quality of being. But I also acknowledge that all the other SMT modalities share essential similarities, particularly the awareness that the mind needs physical movement to build new neural connections, as well as the intention to teach the mind new patterns through the felt experience of movement.
What is Hook up for you?
Connection with the essence of myself, the wisdom and wonder of other humans, the matrix of all life energy…connections made by letting go of the heaviness of my personal history.
What has Trager brought to your personal and professional life?
Trager has been my primary professional identity for 35 years, having gradually taken over from my first profession as a modern dancer. By practicing many hours every day, either on my own each day or as I work with every client, and by discovering how to teach the work through an exploration of its principles, this work has changed me incrementally and completely. Everything about me is different than it was 35 years ago: my thinking, my beliefs, my body movement, my dancing, my singing, my breathing, and even my body tissue and structure. I have taught and practiced Trager enough now that I cannot do other that live what I teach.