Continuum Movement: A Subtle Exploration of Your Body

Continuum Movement uses sensation, breath, sound, and movement for both subtle and dynamic explorations of your body. The goal is to help you become more sensitive to your inner world and explore your capacity to participate in your health and well being,

Life On Land is Emilie Conrad's description of her Continuum work.

The starting premise of this somatic practice, developed by Emilie Conrad-Da'oud, is that you are movement rather than movement being something that you do.

My experience in the two weekend workshops I took (one with Emilie; one with her student Susan Harper) is that the practice is about exploring all the ways your body can move. The focus is on the "micromovements"—movements so small that you feel them but they are almost imperceptible to anyone watching.

What's the value? More body awareness. Better and easier movement and balance. There's evidence, through work Emilie did with people with paralysis, that Continuum creates new neural pathways.

Key Elements of Continuum Movement

Breath

All movement begins with breath. The movement or inhibition of breath maintains fixations, patterns of compensation, family history, trauma, and emotional stress. Variations in breathing patterns create many different internal sensations, movements, and responses to enhance healing, mobility, and personal growth.

Sound

Sound is audible breath. You can engage each system of the body using a specific frequency of sound, releasing areas of stagnation and stress. Combining sound with movement magnifies the effects. 

Movement

Continuum has a full range of non-patterned movements designed to enhance the undulating spirals and circular motion of the body's fluid system. Movement may be dynamic and full-bodied or subtle micromovements. Undulating wave motion moves through the tissues of the body and opens up sensitivity. 

Sensation and Pleasure

In Continuum, you use sensation as a guide to awaken your body’s mysteries and your nurturing life force. You let go of "doing" and listen carefully to your internal environment.

Emilie Conrad-Da'oud

Emilie was a professional dancer from New York City who moved to Haiti in the late 1950s to study primitive dance. She became the choreographer and leader of a Haitian folklore dance company.

Melding with the indigenous culture, she began to question the essence of how our movements relate to our culture versus our biology. She began developing Continuum Movement in the early 1960s as a way to teach a new view of movement and continued its development until her death in 2014.

Her students carry on her work. Find more information at the Continuum website.