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The Discipline of Authentic Movement is a contemporary mystical practice in which the body becomes a vessel knowing direct experience of the Divine. The discipline is grounded in the relationship between a mover and a witness and in both, centered in the development of embodied witness consciousness. Founder Janet Adler (1941- ), intentionally calls her work a discipline “because practice has unveiled an inherent order, creating a form with a theoretical ground, revealing a field of study.” 1

Through her studio work with students, Adler has studied the development of the inner witness as a way of understanding the development of consciousness. As the inner witness is externalized, embodied by a person who is called the outer witness, another person, called the mover, embodies the moving self. With attention toward the physical movement of the body, sensation, and emotion, both mover and witness track the emerging phenomena of inner experience.

It is each individual’s developing relationship with their own inner witness that guides and orients their practice. The unfolding relationship between a mover and a witness holds the development of individual consciousness, cultivating increasing discernment between merged, dialogic, and unitive states of consciousness.

The evolution of the discipline reflects the arc of development from empathic resonance toward compassionate presence, as the energy body becomes known and integrated. Both mover and witness open toward the grace of direct experience of that which is invisible.

In 2014, Adler founded an international post-graduate program for those who wish to teach the Discipline of Authentic Movement, called Circles of Four.

History
Although Authentic Movement has ancient roots within sacred dance, healing, and mysticism, the contemporary form was born through the hybridization of modern dance and Jungian psychology, articulated by Mary Starks Whitehouse (1911 - 1979) in the 1950’s. Whitehouse, who experienced her own Jungian analysis, was a dancer and dance educator who studied with modern dance pioneers Mary Wigman and Martha Graham. She used the phrase authentic movement in response to witnessing certain movement explorations by students, the quality of which she described as “inevitable, simple, and undiluted by pretense”. Whitehouse called this exploration movement-in-depth, and encouraged students to “not just dance around”, but wait in stillness until being moved by a more clear, true, or deep impulse.2

Janet Adler and Joan Chodorow, both students of Mary Whitehouse, carried the form of Authentic Movement forward, Chodorow into the fields of dance therapy and Jungian analysis, and Adler into the development of a discipline experienced as mystical practice. Both continue to refine practice and theory. 3 Many people now teach Authentic Movement from their own developing perspectives.

Adler’s investigations bring awareness to the development of the inner witness and the concept of witness consciousness itself, serving to map the embodiment of the individual body, the collective body, and the conscious body. Adler refers to her work as “the discipline of Authentic Movement”, thereby naming a distinct branch growing from the mother tree of Authentic Movement itself.

Practice: The Development of Witness Consciousness
In Adler’s teaching, the foundation, or as she calls it, the “architecture of the discipline” is based on the relationship between a mover and a witness, the ground form.

In the early years of practice, personal, egoic work is based within the individual body, work that deepens empathic resonance. An individual commits first as a mover, then a moving witness, and then a silent witness. As each role integrates enough, she embodies the next one. When she is ready, she chooses the responsibility of becoming a speaking witness, first with one mover, then with more.

As her practice matures, she participates in a collective body of movers and witnesses. Because of the unfolding awareness of the mover's inner witness, when it is time, her practice guides her toward experience of an integral witness, one who listens and responds by speaking consciously from multiple perspectives. In moments of grace, she is an empty mover-empty witness. As the work evolves, energetic phenomenon becomes intuitive knowing. Authentic compassion, compassion that cannot be willed, deepens her presence.

Being seen, seeing oneself, seeing another, movers and witnesses move closer to their true nature because of the development of witness consciousness. With increasing trust in themselves and in the discipline, through this mysterious developmental but non-linear process of enduring commitment, individuals can journey from the experience of duality to unity consciousness.

The theory and practice of the Discipline of Authentic Movement continue to evolve, held and nurtured within the work created by the devoted inquiry of students and teachers around the world.