Author Archives: Janice Stieber Rous

I want to focus today on form and formlessness and I am starting with a line from T.S. Eliot,

“Except for the point, the still point, there would be no dance, and there is only the dance.”

So in all our conversations about flow, I realize we have not spoken enough about anchoring. If you have nothing to anchor, then you have nothing to flow from. If you have no form, then the formlessness has no container. If you are so open, that you let everything come in, but you have no membrane to separate that which you want and that which you don’t want, you may be too vulnerable to all that is floating around in the ethers. So, although I am teaching about flow, I am equally teaching about anchoring. When we are doing our movement practice, I always start by having us anchor through our sit bones, find our resting place, knowing where our foundation is, grounding in that foundation, rooting in that foundation, and going back to that foundation, because only from what is held can we release. So when we talk about direction, Alexander’s direction, he never said “neck free, head forward and up, and just go up up up up up”.  He always said, “neck free, to release your head forward and up, to go into your legs, ground through your feet, to lengthen and widen your torso”. Neck free, head forward and up from the occiput, but that doesn’t mean you give up your rooting. So what I want to focus on is, what is this dynamic between grounding and releasing, pulling together and opening, to the organic flow that results from the movement that’s coming through the spine, the breath, the organs. Tai Chi is the perfect example. The form itself, your knees are bent, you are grounded through the soles of your feet, you are rooting down into the earth. That stability is what enables you to actually experience the subtlety of the movement. Without that—I mean to me it’s so brilliant because I think now more and more about old people and how we lose our legs. And you see elderly people in China who practice Tai Chi, dropping into their legs, all their movement is very low, the grounding is what guides the whole form. You don’t actually do anything unless you have that base. I am beginning to see now that the one challenge with all this language about “going with the flow” is that it doesn’t have a direction. You can’t just go with the flow if you don’t know where you’re going. You have to have a direction. Direction has a vector of intention. It’s not just moving moving moving with no destination. It doesn’t mean that we want to have a closed story of what the destination is going to look like, we want to be open to what is going to emerge. But if we create an intention and we create a destination, and we have someplace that we are moving towards; just creating that and then going back down to ground is going to create a loop, it’s going to create some kind of dynamic, and there is no dynamic if there isn’t something held. So when we do work with the voice, the body is the container for the vibration, the throat is the container for the vocal chords, the whole body then is your sounding board. So what we are doing is opening things up, but we necessarily have a closed system. There’s this dialectic between form and formless, holding and release, letting go from somewhere to somewhere, and setting an intention. The clearer your intention and the clearer your direction, the clearer your ground, the more energy you build up in that system. Just like breathing, it’s a bellows. We don’t just breathe breathe breathe. We breathe in and then we breathe out. The weight folds in on itself. It doesn’t just go out out out out. It goes out and then it comes back in. We are in a really interesting conversation here. The dynamic of the still point and the dance is what we are investigating here.

When I was 18 years old, I had three herniated disks in my neck that created so much pain I couldn’t turn my head more than one degree to the right and three degrees to the left.

At that time, the only help that doctors could suggest involved surgery and pain medication.

Through research, I was able to find a teacher of the Alexander Technique and began a course of study that continues to this day.

Throughout my training to become an Alexander teacher, I noticed that my breathing was compromised. I would yawn continually from the time I entered the classroom until I left, and I often felt tremendous exhaustion after simply doing three hours of training. Mostly, what I was feeling was the back and forth of release and holding of my breath.

Eleven years later, one of the other participants from my Alexander training recommended that I begin study with Carl Stough, founder of the Stough Institute of Breathing Coordination.

Carl was a master musician, vocalist, and choir director who vowed that by the end of ten weeks with him, students would find their breathing greatly improved—and they would begin to have a singing voice.

I was incredulous, doubtful, and actually cynical that breathing could improve the quality of my life. I surely never expected it could help the neck pain I still suffered. Alexander Technique had helped me 50 percent, but I would still have occasional bouts of neck muscle spasms and restriction of movement.

My work with Carl Stough began after my first session. I was testing him, doubtful that I would see any more improvement after eleven years as a teacher of the Alexander Technique.

Miraculously, after my first session of working with Carl on his table, with his very gentle manipulation of my tension patterns in my head, neck, and jaw, and focus on my exhalation, I had almost full rotation in my neck.

More important, all the pain was gone and has not returned from that day in 1992. Over the years, I’ve seen many of my students gain similar help from the simple act of breathing.

Finding Center Through Breath and Balance,  is an opportunity to delve deeply into your breath, your physical patterns, and your unique relationship to stability and balance. Although we are breathing all the time, most of us experience restriction and constriction in our breathing and in our musculature. This is a natural result of emotional and postural patterns we each accumulate over a lifetime.

Together, we’ll take this time in Buncrana, Ireland to slow down and explore what it really means to enjoy freer breathing. We’ll examine how our daily habits prevent us from experiencing the ease and joy that are available to us all the time. Through yoga, private sessions, and group workshops, we’ll help you develop a greater awareness of your body and breath. Through sounding, toning, and voice, we’ll create a playful environment in which you can experiment with practices to support your daily life. All of these practices will give you greater mobility, pleasure, and joy in movement and breath, and ultimately, more balance. What makes this retreat unique is that it willl provide you with a toolbox of practices you can take home with you into your everyday life.

As bodywork and voice practitioners, we will host you on a journey to not only reveal the physical story of your breath and body, but also the emotional stories stored in your musculature. This retreat is an adventure in to the unknown. Together, we will explore our inner landscapes with deep intention, clarity of purpose, and a lightness of curiosity. Each day affords us the opportunity for meeting ourselves in a new way. This retreat is a chance to do exactly that. We will learn what becomes possible when we free up the tensions that have kept us safe and controlled. We invite you to come join us and explore another aspect of yourself. And we invite you to our lovely group of Irish friends and colleagues in Buncrana who have welcomed us with incredible generosity.

We recommend that participants begin the retreat with a private session with either Claire or Janice. This will allow for a hands on investigation into your particular areas of restriction and tension and physical patterns. Learn more or register. Download the PDF. Call Janice at 646.734.5709 or email janice@bodydialogues.com to talk more.

Janice Stieber Rous is the founder of Body Dialogue, an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the body and mind. She combines yoga, breathing coordination, and Alexander Technique to help people reconnect with their natural breath and movement. Janice leads workshops and retreats across the globe and spends most of her time in New York City, Florida, and Israel.

Claire Hodge has more than 30 years experience as a voice teacher and brings the unique perspective of using toning to facilitate a new level of body awareness and breathing coordination. The powerful combination of Body Dialogue and voice help people gain more confidence, control, resonance and freedom in their everyday lives.