During the same year, in 2001, I also organized a one-week-course. It was going to set the basis of a biodynamic movement therapeutic process.
When still a student at the Centre in Montpellier, deformations of the body linked to different pathological structures particularly appealed to me, e.g the masochist type (sunken), the schizoid type (retracted), the psychopath type (all in the shoulders and thorax) and the rigid type (dry and straight as a ramrod). Each type showed, in a distinctive way, a place where the movement of life was stopped and encapsulated in the body. The nape for the schizoid type was distinct because of fear (hence, too much control); shoulders and thorax in the case of the psychopath because of the repressed vital impulse (as if held by a harness); the abdominal region and buttocks in the case of the anal type (masochist) who is holding back the stinking family stories ; the rigid type, fiercely locked in his spine by a harsh and sterile strictness. Even more striking was my work at Aix Psychiatric hospital. There I saw to what extent psychosis could deform bodies, keeping them prisoners of a suffering we usually call “madness”.
By asking questions, I started looking for the “missing link” that was responsible for stopping or hindering the natural development of life (for introverting it in a kind of “anti movement”) and trying to defuse the pathology at its source.
Knowing that the movement of life goes hand in hand with the development of a healthy mind in a healthy body by putting a whole elaborate construction system in place, the idea was precisely to offer readjustment work and healing through movement. Thus I became a sort of body mechanic readjusting, repairing, reconnecting the different phases of the movement of ontogenesis that structures the body (foetal, birth, evolution of the species, primitive and accompanied movements). This process naturally lead to dance. The final stage of the integration of this construction which allows, when successfully completed, a maximum flowering of our potentialities. Each incorrect integration during any of the stages creates a flaw limiting the good functioning of our “vehicle”, even more so as it gets older. To some extent, I act as a surgeon, or even as a film director : if one or the other sequence of the basic movement is wrong, I “cut” and suggest a “link shot” of the correct movement instead, like a graft that will or won’t take. We do it and do it again until it works, as in physiotherapy.