Sift

Healing is a process of rediscovering what the body wants to share through somatic attunement and deep listening. By building relationship to bioenergetic currents, discoveries abound which demonstrate that life is a non-dual, complex, interconnected matrix of experience and therefore an ecological approach might suggest we remain curious and patient as we traverse the landscapes we inhabit.

Ecopoetics of the Psychosomatic

Sift stands for Somatic Intelligence for Trauma, and the practice is the culmination and articulation of my process as a dance artist and choreographer working in ecological and healing-centered pedagogy and praxis. It is a poetic approach to somatic potential and phenomena that fosters wellbeing and connection through improvisation. I teach weekly community Sifting classes in my home town as a catalyst for transformation and collective resilience. I also teach Sift in my online studio Body Poetry Space.

Here are the working principles that provide the soil for Sift:

  • The human body is a threshold, a place where the invisible becomes visible in some way. ~ John O’Donohue

  • Nothing exists outside of its relationship to everything else.

  • Consciousness is something we participate in.

  • We cannot be in control and relationship at the same time.

  • All creation manifests either through relationship or control.

  • Silence is not the absence of something, but the presence of everything. ~ Gordon Hempton

  • Stillness is to movement as silence is to sound.

  • Healing is all-inclusive, welcome the exiled parts.

  • The body is the subconscious, the mind is the culture.

  • Simplicity is ripe immensity.

As an enactment of care, I turn towards the landscape to give the tender and fragmented pieces of myself the emotional freedom to dance. I land, listen, flow, bond, morph and expand; re-membering my body from the systems and stories of control that have separated her from nature. I trust that whatever vital emerges in me is a gossamer cord weaving me intra the universal moving consciousness.

Sift Dance Map, 2022, Sumi Ink on Paper

“I have loved attending Morgan’s Sifting: Conscious Dance classes. I have been a Yoga and Dance student of Morgan’s for more than 10 years. I have always appreciated her intelligent, intentional, and caring approach to teaching. She always finds a thoughtful balance in her instruction where movement is simultaneously guided, fresh, improvisational, and liberating. I love her choice of music and her informed cues. I feel very present and focused, yet relaxed during class. A lovely sense of trust and acceptance is shared by the multi-age students.”

S.G.