Tamalpa Life /Art Process®

Webarchive Ana Monteiro: Level I - Personal Embodiment

“Movement is intrinsic to whom we are as human beings, and dance is movement made conscious. When explored and shaped with intention it is an individual and collective medium that expresses and transforms all the material of our lives.
In laughter or in tears, in the lightning upbeat or the enlightening downbeat, staying connected to breath, body, emotion and images and moving with whatever comes up gives us a way to enact and untangle the past, experience ourselves in the present and create new possibilities for the future.” ~ Daria Halprin – Co Founder of the Tamalpa Institute in California.

From the collarbones, I can feel the space between expanding with touch, it is just the beguinning, strong and flexible. Holding space that the ribcage is, for the misterious dance of heart and lungs, anchored by its many little feet on the back. Central bone reveberates ancient memories through the slim ribs that go around. Flexible protector, it escorts the upward, downward, contraction and expansion movements of the uncanny and mysterious dance of the breath and the rythm of the beats, always spiraling.

it has been said " keep your back straight!" and turns out the spine is everything but straight

pearls and curves

rolling down and up

from the tale to in between the ears

sustained by an ocean blue band, alligned to connect to hight above

Flowing like waves, rolling tale-root to the earth and a yellow spot to the sky

in between i stand, bend forward, slowly feeling each one of the precious pearls

I lay down and it feels like a massage from the earth

I jump to sense the little cushions making my falls softer, like a cat

When I allow myself to connect, my yellow golden circles

I feel supported.

PELVIS

SPINE

Drawing from the pelvis

Chapter 1 Identify

I wander through a labyrinth, almost heart shaped but not quite

a fat waning moon stands above on the left side, dark and deep

long overlooked memory

in the center the red spot calling my attention like a beacon

Hope

Chapter 2 Confront

I choose to enter an unknown path

as a dare to walk it in a different way

fear as memories from far away pasts haunt me

will I have the audacity to walk this sinuous path differenty this time around?

It´s now the time?

Many opportunities that were not ready to be fully incarnated

in bones, flesh and blood and integrated at the cellular level

Chapter 3 Release

I remember that to choose otherwise is not excluding anything or anyone that came before

Quite the opposite, it is offering honor for all that brought me right here to this moment

Precious gifts, each and everyone of them

I create a beautifull soothing loop to keep remembering, for it´s sooo easy for me to forget

I release the eternal postponing, I have permission now to go into this spiral labyrinth, eyes closed, guided by the radiant red light

Forgiveness: for-give-ness - for the future, I give away the past , not as final swoop

as a -ness: a state of being > a constant giving away the past for the future as a present, as the present

Chapter 4 Change

Moving deep into the spiral labyrinth

As I am moving in I think, "the point of a labyrinth is to get lost"

I smile

I relax

Sensing and feeling what it is been asked for in every moment

Play, Curiousness

While keep moving it all as it comes, savouring the path

I hear a voice whispering: the way out is in

My mind runs much faster than the soul, the soul has eternity after all

Whatever comes my way, I know now it hides a small pearl to help me trace the path

I dare to welcome intensity

Chapter 5 Grow

I move through the changing waves of energy

I dare to flow and find my own balance between what I choose and

what it´s not mine to take in

I am stretching space around me and there is resistance

Feels very unconfortable as I keep pushing the walls of this labyrithn

It´s flexible and it bounces back

Loosening the grips of control

I surrender, I don´t enjoy drama so much anymore I notice

I feel pressure, a compression at my core

Transformation is change that simply can´t go back to it´s prior state,

to the warm confort of a womb

a once safe cocoon that now became deadly!

It´s asphyxianting

I feel I can´t hold my breath anymore and so I allow myself to feel each inhale and exhale slowly

not sure if it wont be my last breath

bursting from the inside out

Pain and Joy

Grief and Celebration

LEGS & FEET

Uprooted and Rooting

Standing for

RIBCASE

Footprints of the Unknown

What new images and qualities connected with your legs and feet would you like to cultivate?

The connection between the upward energy that comes from the earth and the downward energy from solar plexus that propels movement forwards while grounding it in a dynamic bouncing in and out of balance.

What would you like to take a stand for and how would you like to take that stand?

I want to take a stand for life as a creative force of constant tranformation and movement through the inner footprints of awareness and intention expressed outwards through the relationships I weave with my body, space/time, people, objects, energies and the mysteries of the unknown.

Group Gallery

Organ Body

Power Animals

Score - value-action

Folkstone, UK

Arms & hands

Head

Before & After