Awakening the Body Through Creative Movement
Awakening from the slumber of winter is also a process of awakening the body. There are many ways to increase our vitality, which tends to include movement. This is a simple exercise teachers can use with their students to explore the feeling of opposites in the body as a means to provoke excitement and joy.
Sun Awakening
Talk with your students about the rising and setting of the sun. Remind them that the rise begins in the east and the sun sets in the west. Essentially, the process is a cycle between dark and light, night and day, quiet and boisterous, sleep and awake.
Ask your students to describe darkness. What does it look like, sound like, and feel like? Can they describe the dark in other words such as black, dim, or quiet. Go through this same exercise again by asking your students to describe light. What does it look like, sound like, and feel like? Can they describe light in other words such as shining and frolicking?
Next, invite your students to “bodystorm” ways they might move to represent darkness. For example, they might lie on the floor and slowly stretch and roll or they might move around the room twisting and turning like a shadowy beast. Repeat this bodystorming exercise by exploring light. You may notice that students move faster and include jumps, leaps, flicks, twirls, swoops, tip toes, and bounces.
Next, invite students to move between dark and light. This is an exploration of opposites. Call out dark and let them move for about thirty seconds followed by calling out light. Have the students move for another thirty seconds. Repeat this several times by changing the amount of time they spend moving in dark and light.
Now that the students have explored the opposites of dark and light, tell them they are going to move through the rising and setting of the sun. In other words, they are going to awaken from their slumber and play. They will begin in the stillness of the dark and slowly transition to dancing in the light. Have them think of the movement exploration like a circle. They will begin and end in the same place.
Guide your students as they move. For example, you can begin by telling them to lie still in the dark of the morning. It is quiet. Next, you might say that the world begins to wake up with the singing of birds. On the horizon is a light glow of the sun beginning to rise. You can instruct the students to begin to move in the early morning darkness. They move slowly and gingerly through space. Continue to give guided instructions of the early morning as the dark ebbs and the light shines. Build the story as the students increase their energy. Bring the entire movement exploration to a climax of full energy and light before the students retreat back into the dark and stillness.
Reflect on the activity. How did the students feel as they explored dark and light? What did they prefer? Can the students describe their experience of moving through the rising and setting of the sun? Did their energy shift? How so? You can also make connections to the energy we feel during darker months such as winter compared to lighter months such as summer. Humans tend to thrive on light, which is why we are not nocturnal in nature.
Music Recommendations: you can select a song from our playlist Earth Essence on Spotify.
Opposites Exploration
Having students experience opposites through movement is not only fun but gives them the opportunity to consider concepts through an embodied perspective. You can guide the students or invite them to go between the opposite concepts in their own time. This works well with music that reflects the words the students are exploring.
Here are examples of opposites student might enjoy responding to through movement (they do not have to be exact opposites but be conceptually different):
Sleepy | energized
Light | heavy
Frustration | pleasure
Clouds | rain drops
Roots | branches
At the end of the exploration, ask the students which “opposite” they preferred. For example, if they were instructed to move to sleepy and energized they can talk about what concept felt good in their bodies and why.
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Traci L. Scheepstra, Ph.D., is the CEO/Founder of Embodied Learnings. Read here to learn more about her work in education.