Giving body to History

Dear you,

I still have much interest in what's alive in you. How's your breathing, how does life breathe through you ?

How are you feeling these days ?

I'm arriving in this sharing space, perched on a wire that links two vivid steps of my path : filled with my recent visit to the Normandy beaches, still feeling the constant winds and the crash of several timelines that coexist there ; looking forwards to my upcoming training as a family and systemic constellations facilitator.

It makes me smile. Life and its jokes... Whatever is orchestrating our lives definitely is brilliant and has such a delicious sense of humour.

Did you know that I studied History at La Sorbonne university in Paris ? Those were both passionate and laborious years, that left an aftertaste of uselessness. Aside from the fact that it helped me aquire quite a valuable set of personnal skills and the knowledge of a certain version of our collective History, to me it belonged to the (quite furnished) "experiences for the experience" file.

Yet.

Twenty years later (I precisely submitted my master's thesis in 2005), here's my intuition, guiding me to reopen History's files, this time choosing another door : that of souls, energies and their dynamics, which can be read in the living's trajectories.

Twenty years ago, I was giving History narratives and analysis. Now, I'm involving in giving it body.

Today, I'm called to share the embodied connection with History that I'm currently developing.

My relationship to the layering of eras, of personal and collective spheres. How I navigate this ocean that fascinates, unsettles and nurtures me.

An intimate wandering, inspired by the patchwork of my sensations, experiences and learnings. Open to receiving echoes from your bodies. Hoping to reach a vibrating cord in you.

Find a comfortable seat, take deep breaths with me.

Connect to your physical body and allow the words to resonate in you...

From my solitude to yours, together.

Dance-offering, Juno Beach, 11/11/2024. Image: Julie Bongiovanni

ONE DAY THE CROSSROADS CAME TO LIFE

it was in April 2023.

I'd been living for 3 years in Normandy, land of my ancestors on my mother's side, after a forced return from Canada where I'd lived 5 years. I was settling there, doing my best to process this painful grief, and deeply shaken by what felt like a roots'surgery. When a dear friend and her son came from the other side of the Atlantic to visit me, at the beginning of their first trip together accross Europ. That's when I visited, for the first time, one of the Canadian military cemeteries and the Juno Beach Center, a museum dedicated to Canadian troops landing on Normandy shore on D-day.

Although I'd been to those beaches hundreds of times since I was born, never had I felt the vibrant connection with this past.

Although I'd been living for 3 years with the war's traces, the Canadian flags and the shadow of my grand-mother's stories, never had the crossroads come to life in me.

My mother is Norman, my father is German, my heart is Canadian.

Thanks to the presence of my heart-family, a bridge was built between these three identity imprints. They instantly sat at my inner table and, since then, they've been looking at eachother. From time to time, they pull one way or another, in calm or impetuosity. There lies a significant reserve of energy that, I know, is igniting a new phase in my personal quest. This source is driving a renewed need to connect to places, collected samples of my own history and that of others, while a growing attention to our global context is awakening in me.

Two years ago in this D-day area, a swirl took my body. It has developed into a vortex that regularly calls me in order to be fed as much as to feed me. A force field in which timelines cross. Where individual stories, collective History and the unrelenting dance of archetypes meet.

Archetypes,

their patterns,

their hold on our destinies,

while our steps breathe...

GIVING BODY TO THE PRESENCES OF THE PAST

has become an essential process and has consequently given rise to broader aspirations, at the convergence of devotion, creation and political commitment.

During my History studies, I wasn't as much interested in what happened, when and how, as much as how it did impact life.

What does an event or the absence thereof do to people's inner and outer trajectories ?

I have an insatiable curiosity for family stories, written correspondence, personal diaries. For contact with objects, the word of places, their personality. As much as for my friends view of what is currently shaking their parts of the world, over there... so far... so close to my humanity.

Trying to seize others' feeling is what connects me the best to life. Electric currents of energy then move through me, instantly take me to the heart of the big continuum we all walk on.

Along these explorations, the need to understand everything, to know everything, fades. Because little by little, appears

the Mystery,

elusive,

soothing.

Feet in this sand and in all other traces, it's a delightful actualisation of something fundamental that resonates in me and reaches far beyond me. All that remains is

my dance

my breath

feelings and sensations

shivers of my being when other souls pass by and also want to

dance

breathe

and sometimes

speak.

I ground all floating energies through the antenna that I am. It is my offering. My gratitude. And each time a reciprocal exchange that enables me to better know myself through otherness, whether easily trackable in my DNA or not. Little by little, I feel the rise of a deep knowing that was lying in dark corners of my being.

Something very ancient, aquatic and bony, lives within my contemporaneity. It speaks to me of the universality that pulses through each individual and allows me to get a glimpse of some of its threads.

History. Neither a chronology, nor entertainment.

Bodies, matter and laws.

Joys, pains and choices.

Nuances and interstices.

Uninterrupted love, surge of life...

AN UMBILICAL CORD CONNECTS US ALL

Through time and space.

Filled with blood.

Filled with nutrients.

Organic...

Are you breathing with me ?

Do you feel a crossroads awakening in you ?

I give body to History, past and present, to avoid sinking into apathy under the influence of the ambient anesthetic made of entertainment, hyperstimulation and constant invitation to body dislodgement.

Honoring the common that connects generations to generations, peoples to peoples. It gives me the courage to look at what frightens me and opens me to paradoxes. I discover that a seat awaits me around this blazing fire, and I learn to sit in it. Trembling, humble, lost, grateful. Acknowledged.

In the royal blue of the flames, dances a future that demands that the past be seen and felt, that the present be fully inhabited. And that from this presence, an open space unfolds, where rivers flow, where visions, hopes and possibilities wander,

revealing landscapes,

faces,

mine...

yours...

with breaths, body,

in presence, connection...

If you deepen your breath now, move your body, stretch...

coming back to your felt senses, with your imagination well available still,

can you feel that your existence in this world is the fruit of thousands of fertile encounters ?

that the space you're in is a result of the makings and contributions from millions of other people ?

that, like you, billions of other beings everywhere breathe, love, wake or sleep, cry, celebrate, defend or curse ?

And does your intuition send you the visual of a place, a piece of nature, a photo or an object that connects you to your past or that of Humanity, for which you feel a natural surge to move your physical body ? To joyfully laugh or shed heavy tears ? That you would like to talk about with others ? For which you would like to pray ?

Can you apply the same questions to an element of your present or that of Humanity ?

Can you apply the same questions to an element of your vision for the future ?

Each one of us is different. How does the antenna that you are join this big dance ?

Carried by the currents, we draw the continuation of History. May the embodied practice of remembrance be the breeding ground for an active, involved creation that resembles and unites us.