by shams | Dec 19, 2024 | Uncategorized
Over the years I have been a diligent Awareness Through Movement (ATM) teacher. Oh my god! I’ve been taching ATM’s for more than a decade now! I got certified to teach group classes in 2010!!!
I taught in many odd places all over the city, taught small and big groups, and sometimes only one or two people if they were willing to try.
I experimented with a variety of formats. I shortened lessons, tied them into others, lengthened them when working with speciallized students. I went online during covid and began merging my different learning strategies together.
You can not teach a lesson unless you get it! I didn’t always get it. But I can’t explain how humbled I am by all the bodies that trusted the process and gave these odd classes of mine a try…now, I can say I get it.
I am indebted to everyone that every attended a class with me. Those that loved my style and learnt from me, those that hated it and got angry with me, the ones that corrected me, the ones that pushed me, the ones that laughed and sniggered, the ones that were in awe of the effect of the lessons.
I am an avid learner. And the more I worked with different people the more I learned about myself. ANd then, as clarity began to be more present in me, I began to see it in other people’s movements.
You teach what you need to learn, they say! ABSOLUTELY!
“If you know what you do, you can do what you want”
by shams | Dec 19, 2024 | Uncategorized
I woke up this morning aged 8 years old in our chalet in Ismailiya.
I woke up in the room I used to share with my then 4 year old brother .
I looked to my right and realized I was looking through the window of my room in Sahel. And that I am, in fact, 47 years old.
How can that be?
How many realities do we inhabit?
This morning I woke up in multiple realities. And I was grateful to have that access.
It felt clear and expansive, not wounded, and not overwhelming.
The experience brought me hope, repair, and integration.
The work of somatic education is slow for a reason.
It takes time for a reason.
And its foundation is in establishing the body as a base, over and over and over again, so that reality (realities) can interact with, and in the present.
Inhabiting the body is key.
I am often asked by clients:
how long “the work” will take
how far it will go
how effective I expect it to be as a cure
What if we replace these questions with the following:
If I told you now, that you will walk a path at the end of which you will meet yourself, will you walk it?
If I told you now, that it will take however long it needs to take, until it begins, will you start?
If I told you now, that the more we learn the more we sit in the unknown, will you believe me?
Inhabiting the body is being in the presence of that which continues to give.
Today is the first time I wake up aged 8 years old ( since I was actually 8 years old!) At least it’s the first time this happens while I am conscious of it. And for today, all that means is that I am remembering and holding me.
Today, I have the words, commands and abilities of a 47 year old woman. Today, I can access the wild and uninhibited skin of my 8 year old!
Here’s to finding our way home 
embodied-ly,
مروة الصاوي
Marwa al-Sawi
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