Movement Magic

Many of us have been most­ly seden­tary since child­hood. If we begin to prac­tice yoga, walk, run, swim, or bicy­cle for fit­ness, we often lack aware­ness req­ui­site to mov­ing well. A skilled train­er can guide us in learn­ing to move with effec­tive­ness and ease. Thou­sands of diverse people—young and old, elite ath­lete and severe­ly limited—have done this through Move­ment Magic.
Res­i­dent Fel­low David Schrom instructs Swim­ming Mag­ic client (pho­to by Kate Robertson).

In Move­ment Mag­ic we pro­vide a disciplined—yet relaxed and informal—context for learn­ing. Par­tic­i­pants ben­e­fit from an eco­log­i­cal approach in which instruc­tors inte­grate prin­ci­ples of physics, phys­i­ol­o­gy, and psy­chol­o­gy to induce relax­ation, and to increase kines­thet­ic and emo­tion­al aware­ness. In group class­es and in one-on-one instruc­tion, stu­dents progress along unique, indi­vid­u­al­ly-tai­lored paths, where next steps are easy exten­sions of skills already mastered.

We offer Move­ment Mag­ic to assist peo­ple in becom­ing more adaptive—healthier in the largest sense. Although Mag­ic instruc­tors present myr­i­ad ideas per­ti­nent to bio-mechan­i­cal tech­nique, and stu­dents con­sis­tent­ly devel­op greater pro­fi­cien­cy, most Move­ment Mag­ic par­tic­i­pants come to view mas­tery of tech­nique as an inevitable con­se­quence, rather than as a pri­ma­ry objec­tive. This shift in atti­tude is born of real­iza­tion that in learn­ing to move, as in any expe­ri­ence, we may find par­tial answers to ques­tions like: “Who am I?”“To what pur­pos­es do I live?” and “How do I know these things?”

Res­i­dent Fel­low Hilary Hug adjusts a yoga student.

More accu­rate per­cep­tions of how we are, why we are this way, and how else we might be are both a ben­e­fit of, and a pre­req­ui­site to many kinds of suc­cess­ful adap­ta­tion. With such meta-learn­ing we may chal­lenge and over­throw habits of a life­time to pro­duce deep and last­ing change. Many Move­ment Mag­ic par­tic­i­pants report dra­mat­ic pos­i­tive shifts in atti­tude, greater sat­is­fac­tion at work and play, and bet­ter rela­tion­ships with peo­ple in all spheres of their lives.

Like many Mag­ic activ­i­ties, Move­ment Mag­ic is sus­tained by vol­un­tary gift. Cur­rent instruc­tion is fund­ed by those who have learned before. Par­tic­i­pants are invit­ed to con­tribute so that oth­ers may ben­e­fit as they have.