The golden ‚grey zone‘ – how to direct attention

By Joerg Hassmann, April/May 2025

„I want to celebrate connections in my body: I don’t want to create all that by putting myself into the perfect alignment, executing the perfect undulation. I want to connect to what evolution and my personal hard work that I invested until I was two years old created, this masterpiece that my body is. I want to get out of the way to sense and live its wisdom. I want to see my body at play, seeing it in it’s freedom and delight to play around. Being in awe of what I observe … and sense. And somehow being right in it.“

In my personal movement practice I go through phases, where a very simple movement sequence inspires me. It feels good in my body and it sparks something in my mind.

Despite or because of its simplicity I find endless details, where I can direct my attention to. Every time when this happens I end up intrigued by the question: „How do my body and my mind work best together?“

How can I direct my attention, so that I don’t disturb my bodies integrity and wisdom … like when I observe my breath. It is impossible, or an art. When I bring my attention to my breath with the idea to ‚only notice how I am breathing in this moment‘ I already fail. My attention is changing my breath. Whenever I bring my full, focussed attention to something that I want to observe in the moving body or in the connection to my dance partner – it dies. As if too much attention suffocates the natural aliveness. That’s frustrating but very good to notice. It’s the starting point: Accepting that my attention changes what it is attending to. If I can accept this it becomes lighter, like a game. How can I observe my body with disturbing it the least possible? Can I observe it secretly? I consciously bring my main attention to something else and only now and then look with 10% of my awareness to my breath. Am I still disturbing or changing my current breathing? I slowly manage to love the grey zone, where I am not sure if I am disturbing it or not. As if this grey zone this kind of not knowing is the most accurate I can create. I like to call it the golden grey zone.

And of course I also love to play more actively, like wondering how long I can inhale without any felt effort, inviting very different kind of intensities of my breath to emerge, noticing the time window when the inhalation reflex likes to kick in…

My latest curiosity was to notice the swimming of my pelvis on top my legs. The small dance is a good starting or reference point, this standing with the least necessary muscular effort and witnessing the balancing reflexes at play. I got in touch with it in my longing for including more „falling“ into my teaching, wondering where it all starts and how it can non-dramatically grow. Further down the track is the question „how can we stay more often in a fragile, playful balancing mode when we share weight“ like in leaning or even when we carry weight, like in a pelvis lift supporting someone. How can the permission and ability to fall stay alive, when we tend to create stability and stop moving?

„Wondering where it all starts…“ Maybe the small-dance can be already enough. Observing how the body parts relate to gravity through sinking and rising … and through the sense of swimminess in all the joints that carry weight including the connections between the vertebrae. When I bring my attention to the cavities of my hip sockets and how they swim in the synovial fluid of the joint on to of the roundness of the end of my thighbones … then I notice that more movements are emerging in this area of my body.

I notice that something stiffens in my body and mind if I observe this too carefully. So I am experimenting with creating more movement, wishing my body to take over so that my mind can secretly observe what my body is coming up with. Something like that.

So, I might place my feet a bit wider, maybe shoulder-wide. Gently shifting weight, observing the pelvis swimming on the thighbones. Making a figure eight can be the staring point. What do I want? I want to connect to gravity. Letting it have influence on how my pelvis floats from one side to the other. Letting go of control how it should swim. Like observing waves in a bowl in slow-motion and seeing how they bounce off one side and being curious where they will go from there. But I need to allow it to swim. I need to wish it to swim. I can have moments of more active play to open the range of movement and to sense more. Welcoming the muscles to be ready to engage when necessary. Like slightly bending the knees alternatingly. Massaging the floor with my feet. Lifting the toes and roundening the soles of my feet so that they can pivot more easily and bring more movement into my hip-joints.

I want to celebrate connections: Between a foot and a knee, hipjoint, sacrum, spine, head, and a swinging arm. Building and softening tone. Undulations, wave like movements, that ripple upwards through my body. Softening while extending. I don’t want to create all that, putting myself into the perfect alignment, executing the perfect undulation. I want to connect to what evolution and my personal hard work that I invested until I was two years old created, this masterpiece that my body is. I want to get out of the way to sense and live its wisdom. I want to see my body at play, seeing it in it’s freedom and delight to play around. Being in awe of what I observe, and sense. And somehow being right in it.

Yes, I have an aim of a quality, a connectedness of my movements, a widening of the movement range where my body feels alive. But I want to trust that my body has the answers. The job of my mind is to be lovingly curious; to ask questions, where my body starts exploring; to propose good images that resonate with my body or to notices images that my body reveals.

This state of body-mind also supports me in the improvisational part of CI. I can learn to notice how I am affected by what’s happening around me, how it makes me resonate on a body level but also emotionally.

I can’t stay in this sensitive state forever when I dance – only sometimes this ability to notice very clearly what happens in all parts of my body and my heart stays alive. Blissful moments with a flavour of enlightenment.

I trust that something of what I woke up in my „warm up“ through paying lovingly attention to details will find its way into my fully dancing self.

Apart from however this practice of engaging in simple movement explorations informs my dancing: just doing it is already worthwhile enough. It calms, grounds and sparks me at the same time. It makes me feel present and alive and afterwards I feel better than before. Halelujah!

I want to leave it like this for now. Kind of. I want to quickly add questions and curiosities that are floating around in me after writing this text:

Starting at the end: How do I transition from the detailed attention in my warm up to my fully dancing self? The art of bending rules is part of my answer.
Sorry, that you didn’t get an answer how these swimming pelvis on legs experiments support more dancy pelvis lifts. Feel encouraged to research :)
I am aware that there are phases in life where just observing and celebrating how my body likes to move won’t be enough to grow. Sometimes I need to uncover unhealthy movement patterns and postures. Most of them usually feel just normal and good. A new, more efficient and healthier alignment might feel awkward at first. Hard to believe that it should be better for me. There is lots of knowledge and support out there for this kind of work.I believe that listening to the masterpiece I am, giving my body the chance to play and try, to sense more, to let it do its thing without being judged … all that is a great base for any kind of change. And I believe that training the mind to be curious, to lovingly observe, to ask questions without anticipating the answer will also support our journeys of growth and change.
I touched the questions how sensation-based dancing can feed also emotional engagement and through that more depth in the dance. I declare my wish to write about it.
I used the expression „directing attention“ a lot even though the phrase „bringing awareness to…“ is more where I am coming from. Somehow using the word attention felt right, but I am not sure why. Happy to hear your thoughts around it.
It seems to be very important in the embodiment world to overcome the body and mind seperation, somehow thinking them more together. And here I come treat them as two different players. I guess it is a big and complex discussion. But this is how I work and I love it. And I feel I am very much living in and through my body.