Authentic Movement

What is your relationship to your inner witness?

Joan Chodorow, Jungian Therapist, Dance Therapist, Teacher of on Authentic Movement, Speaks About the Process:

“The ground of the discipline of Authentic Movement is the relationship between the moving self and the witnessing self. The heart of the practice is about the longing, as well as the fear, to see ourselves clearly. We repeatedly discover that such an experience of clarity is deeply and inextricably related to the gift of being seen clearly by another and just as importantly, related to the gift of seeing another clearly.”

karah charette authentic movement

Taking responsibility over our projections.

Whatever you witness about another is only possible because a residue of that exists within yourself. We are only capable of experiencing and perceiving that which is already inside us. How might owning this allow for safer and more trusted communication and relating?

As a dancer, one of the first things I learned was to validate my movement based on how others viewed me. Authentic Movement has allowed me to explore what movement means to me. How it feels regardless of how it looks. This has allowed for a profound reorientation in how I move through the world, not just in the studio.

Authentic Movement is not about value based judgement.

You do not have to be a dancer.

It is not about releasing something.

It is about witnessing, understanding, and being with all of your many parts.

It is about expanding capacity, curiosity, and compassion for all forms of expression within you.

It is about your experience.

I honor the origins of this work, founded in the 1950s by Mary Starks Whitehouse, a California dance therapist and Jungian analyst who initially called it "Movement-in-depth". Rooted in Carl Jung's concept of active imagination and drawing from dance movement therapy, the practice developed further with her students, Janet Adler and Joan Chodorow, who refined it into the mover-and-witness format. The practice emphasizes spontaneous, inner-directed movement to access the unconscious, with the witness providing a safe, non-judgmental presence. 

I am currently in a mentorship program with master teacher Mary Lou Seereiter to study and offer this work, as well as to study and teach Body-Mind Centering®.