Embodying Teshuva

Outline
I. Warm Up
Welcome people and invite them to take off shoes and warm up individually as they enter.


II. Introduction
1) Get people in a circle standing: 1) share names and do a movement with name (and everyone repeats name and movement); if time 2) go around circle where everyone does movement and name together, and then 3) go around circle with just movement.
2) (Still stand) What is teshuva, “return” or “repentence” to you? (brief discussion)
3) Introduce movement: teshuvah--not only returning to ourselves but returning to the people around us--that process is not isolated--it’s in context--relational.

5. Why Pray?

Brainstorm
Our goal for this final session of the semesters is to move from YHVH unknown to Eloheinu Melech ha Olam, which is regrounded in acknowledgment of the communal "our Gd," and then our best articulation as a community of what Gd is "King of the Universe." This semester we have been exploring the blessing formula Baruch Atah YHVH as a journey from the known, clear, directional Baruch Atah to the unclear, not-oriented, directionless YHVH. As we close out the semester we end with the way the blessing formula ends "Eloheinu Melech ha Olam," a re-grounding, re-orientation, a new "known," this time with the knowledge of having been together in the unknowing.


The blessing formula takes us on a journey: we each come in with our own assumptions, together we go through a process of being challenged, exploring new ground, having our original ideas dislodged. It is only then, coming out the other side, that we can articulate a shared experience and a shared vision. Our

4. Why Pray?

Brainstorm
After Nate's injury at the end of Movement Minyan last week we began our meeting with Ebn by discussing the role the habits play. In many ways, habits serve to protect us. When we reach out into the unknown and begin to let our habit patterns fall away it is easier for us to get injured. In the long run it may be better to undo a habit, but in the short term this has been a reminder to all of us to be careful and stay present as we let down our defenses.


In thinking about this week's session we became interested in playing with the same exercise we did last session in a new way. Perhaps it was a result of our instructions or perhaps it was simply our collective tendency, but last session we observed that to be "directed" for many of us means one thing: to follow or to mirror one another. Through our process in the Minyan we are excited to explore and unearth a range of interactions and postures between "rag doll" and moving totally on our own; between passively following or being totally independent. Ebn pointed out that this tendency mirrors the relationship that many of us have with the siddur: either we do our own thing apart from the set liturgy, or we allow the siddur to be in total control and we mirror what we see. What are new

3. Why Pray?

Brainstorm
After a long discussion around whether or not to continue our exploration of the choreography associated with "Baruch Atah YHVH," we decided that our initial session on choreogrpahy was a great starting place, but we were excited to take our inquiry in slightly different direction. Our goal became to work with the journey the blessing formula takes us through. This means delving into the move from directionality to no directionality, from groundedness to lack of groundedness, from movement where I am being held to movement where I am not being held, from the familiar to the unfamiliar. Our plan is spend the rest of the semester experiencing the arc of these words. Our first two sessions will be on this move from the familiar to the unfamiliar. Bring in the next part of the blessing formula "Eloheinu Melech haOlam," our third session will explore the move from the unfamiliar (YHVH) to the communal (Eloheinu). Finally, our fourth session will play with the entire phrase: familiar (Baruch Atah) to the unfamiliar (YHVH) to the communal (Eloheniu).

2. Why Pray?

Brainstorm
As we began to envision what this semester could look like, we talked about using previous forms, possibility of keva movement minyan. As our discussion continued we ended up moving away from this idea and towards a focus on our relationship to Gd and how that gets expressed through prayer. Adam brought up a Hasidic teaching that says that when a person prays, she should be so engrossed and passionate and intent that even the first letter, the bet of baruch, can hardly make it out of her mouth. We became interested in exploring the blessing formula "Baruch Atah YHVH" that we say so many times every day. As we began to delve into these words we started by writing the words of the blessing formula on the board, each in its own separate space. We thought about qualities of each of the words and the transitions between them. When we were done, we underlined physical qualities that we had put under each of the words so that we might more easily bring the language of movement into our brainstorm.

1. Why Pray?

Beginning Again
In thinking about opening the Movement Minyan this spring at Hebrew College, we knew there would be a mix of old and new faces, people both with and without basic awareness of and comfort with movement.  Like our very first session, the goal for this first session was to introduce bodily awareness to this diverse group of people by drawing upon our respective movement disciplines to create enough structured movement that everyone would feel safe participating and taking personal risks in this space, and eventually building up to improvised individual movement.  As we brainstormed, we paid particular attention to how to structure our movement practices, and articulate natural feeling transitions from paired stretching to improvised movement.  We also reflected on unexamined assumptions we'd made in previous sessions: in many of our paired movement exercises, is there a particular reason we don't we instruct people to switch partners?  What would be lost or gained in trying this?