Open Floor

What is Open Floor all about?

Open Floor is mindful movement and dance, resourcing us to be fully embodied, grounded, authentic and creative. It was developed about 12 years ago by former 5-Rhythms-teachers who felt that they wanted to have a little more process-focused work that provides people with deeper psychological insights and emotional intelligence. Could it be possible to use a dancefloor to explore and change patters of our lives while being wild, safe and expressive?

After 25 years in the yoga- and mindfulness-world I had started looking for a fresh approach that included clear and embodied emotional work and avoided spiritual bypassing. I was on a little mission to introduce mindfulness-meditation to the yoga-scene, and realised that sitting in meditation was tough for most students and felt a bit dry to them. I had visited 5-Rhythms and Ecstatic Dance classes since the early 2000s, but they did not offer the level of mindfulness and psycho-spiritual work I was after.

My first Open Floor workshop, led by two its founders (Kathy Altman and Lori Saltzman), was a revelation for me. The workshop in Byron Bay had about 75 participants, mainly hippies, and was about ‘Healthy Boundaries’. “Good topic”, I thought, “and good luck with this wild bunch!” Kathy and Lori did not need any luck. I had not seen such level of skilled leadership and teaching expertise in many years. The mixture of focused and playful, wild and mindful, safe and edgy inspired me to no end. No wonder I spent the following five years attending as many workshops and trainings as I could; and then immersed myself in 2.5 years of Open Floor’s teacher training program.

I now combine Open Floor Dance Explorations with mindfulness and yoga techniques, finding my own remix and approach. Open Floor has no rigid code teachers have to adhere to. There is an invitation for creative expansion and tailoring the gems of this approach to specific needs and audiences. My focus has been on teaching emotional intelligence skills and self-inquiry through that remix. I have opened my teaching style telling people exactly how to meditate, breathe or move to a more creative investigation. Another powerful element is the inevitable interaction on a dance floor that can be skilfully used to do emotional work. The dance floor can become a mirror of how you interact in daily life, and can be used to find more freedom and possibilities instead of being stuck in fixed patterns.

Here are some of the foundational ideas behind Open Floor practice:

• Move and Include: Everything is welcome on a dancefloor, you come as you are and with what is present for you that day. You then find creative ways of expressing this unique state you are in on the floor, and to remix it with other energies.
• Presence and Absence: This about our state of presence. Are we mindful? Or are we distracted or spaced out? Are there certain situations, feelings, or thoughts we have a tendency to escape from? How could we resource ourselves to stay present and responsive even to challenging situations?
• Fixed and Fluid: This is about freedom and creativity. Where are we stuck? Where limited by fixed beliefs or habit-patterns

These continua are explored in a safe and anchored way on four different levels:

1. Physical Embodiment: Physical embodiment refers to the process of becoming present, rooted, sensitive, and alive in the body.  It is a sense of being at home in one’s skin.
2. Emotional Embodiment: Emotional embodiment refers to the process of learning to become wise, resilient and creative in relation to our own and other’s emotions. It refers to our capacity to feel emotion and to remain present and creative in all four domains of relationship (alone, with a partner, in a group, and in relation to spirit).
3. Embodied Mind: An embodied mind is more than a functioning brain. When we speak of “mind” on the Open Floor it includes insight, thought, cognition, mindfulness, logic, body brain, brain functioning, imagination, intuition, dreams, visualization, and memory.
4. Embodied Soul: This refers to our capacity to explore, embody and integrate layers of the self, much deeper than personality, to include our connection to the largest sense of Self. We use our embodiment practice to uncover the secrets and mysteries of our individual lives, our dreams and destinies, our sense of meaning and purpose, to find the unique gifts we were born to bring to our communities, and to experience our full membership in the larger field, our surrounding environment.

To support this grounded way of investigating and learning, we use a physical anchor – a body part or region we bring awareness to – as a starting point that literally anchors you in your body throughout the class, and become the fulcrum around which the mindful exploration revolves. We then structure the class around what we refer to as Core Movement Resources, which are certain dynamics like towards & away, expand & contract, etc. that we use to look at our lives and its patterns.

I have to admit that it is a bit hard to describe. I’ve tried my best. Here are some links that might help you to gain a better understanding:

Open Floor International’s official website: https://openfloor.org/

An Open Floor Intro-Video (5 min): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-aH4UFV-U4