A brief description of the Group, Its Origins, and Its Motives.

We are a group of people who share a love of the Movements and a wish to live more consciously and responsibly. We are from many different cultures and we come with differing perspectives, teachers, and lineages. Many of us work or teach in independent study groups near our homes. Many of us first met each other at Movements workshops that occurred in various settings around the world.

Despite the diversity of our backgrounds, we recognized that we share a wish to pursue our mutual interest in the Movements in a setting in which leadership was emergent and non-hierarchical, rather than predetermined and strictly associated with a dominant Teacher or traditional mode of group work.

Fortunately, we were blessed with the cooperation of instructors with extensive knowledge and substantial appreciation of the Movements who were willing and able to guide classes while respecting our progressive attitudes. Our first ten-day Movements Retreat was realized at Claymont Court, West Virginia, in the Spring of 1999. We have met annually since that time, usually alternating between North American and European locations.

The practical needs of the event and some elements of its content are managed by an organizing council of volunteers who are dedicated to working with the principles of conscious relationship. Our hope is to maintain a lively context in which Movements practice helps to foster and catalyze a process of personal evolution for the participants.  

Thus, the purpose of the ongoing project is to create conditions for group work that will:

• deepen our appreciation of the gift of the Movements as both an embodiment of the mystery and a way for us to approach the Mystery.

• deepen our practice of conscious relationship as an extension of and support for our work with the Movements and each other. 

• support practical, personal investigations into the nature of: attention, relaxation, effort, receptivity, mindfulness, and worship.

Through numerous and inevitable waves of challenge we have held our wish and stayed a course. We continue to work our way toward common ground, open hearts, and deeper Being. The most tangible results of our work has been the successful organization and completion of the series of annual retreats focused on Movements practice in an atmosphere of mutual respect among the participants and towards the Movements.

We welcome new participants who demonstrate substantial, practical familiarity with Movements practice. The content of our Movements classes can be very demanding and the pace of presentation can be very rapid. As such, we consider the ability of every participant to remain attentive for prolonged periods and to cooperate effectively with the entire class to be prerequisites for study in this group.  Seekers who are relatively new to Movements practice and those who are unable to practice in this manner are guided towards alternative work groups that may be more suitable for them.