Time Travel with Your Moving Body as Antenna by Eline Kieft

Eline Kieft, 2025 by Andy Murray.

In movement practice, orientation, perception and direction are important concepts. In other words, where are we, how do we know and where are we going?

In other words: where are we, how do we know, and where are we going? As a Qi Gong teacher, trained by Lee Holden, I often answer the first two with simplicity: we are here, and we know that through our senses. The third, where we’re going, is future-oriented and depends on our intention. It’s about directing our energy toward a chosen direction, just like you would plan a holiday destination by deciding where you want to go and finding out how to get there.

But as a dance teacher and shamanic facilitator, another dimension becomes available. Movement doesn’t only help me locate myself in the present moment; it begins to dissolve the edges of time. The act of dancing can open portals, not just metaphorically, but viscerally. My senses awaken to the presence of other times, other layers, other stories that are somehow still alive in the fabric of space.

When I dance, I feel my Body Positioning System (BPS) switching on, not unlike GPS, but more relational and fluid. I become aware of where I am in relation to this object, that person, this memory, that patch of sunlight on the floor. My body positions itself in flow, drawing on more than just visual cues.

Through movement, I become aware of my position in relation to time, memory, energy, place and possibility. These positions reveal themselves in many ways – sometimes through structured exercises or invitations, sometimes through a spontaneous (or recurring) thought or internal image, sometimes through a chance encounter or a sudden shift in attention.

To use GPS it needs to know where you are (present) and where you are going (future) so it can project a route and directions.* The BPS has a wider scope. It also acknowledges the past, where you’ve come from, not just geographically, but emotionally, culturally and even ancestrally. It orients you within a layered map of experience, and it even allows a kind of time travel.

I once wrote and performed a poem called Layers, during a movement retreat with Sandra Reeve at Coventry University in March 2016. Here is a fragment, about moving in an ancient ruined chapel:

My hand moves centuries
layers fall away to that time when
this was a brand new building
proud and whole and solid
then disappeared, covered
and uncovered, brought to light again
when the bombs fell.

The retreat invited us to explore movement not only in the studio but also in parks, city squares, pavements and ruins. We were asked to move with awareness of angle, line, point, transition, position and proportion, and to notice what each space might afford us, not in terms of action, but of experience. I still love Reeve’s term ‘affordance’, which has become a subtle key in all my movements: what does this place allow, invite, awaken in me? What is available here that may not be available elsewhere? What does it help me see and sense?

This way of working cultivates receptivity rather than effort. It nurtures a subtle sense that where you are and how you move in response, is always specific, always situated. No experience looks or feels the same from a different angle, a different pace, a different point in time, a different pair of eyes.

And we didn’t only attune to presence. We were invited to feel into absence as well: what is not here, who is not here, what parts of ourselves may be missing or not yet available in this moment?

That week, I found myself marvelling at the complexity of dynamics within the urban environment. The textures of the city revealed themselves in waves: rushing bodies, sudden quiet, the rhythm of architecture, birdsong, building activity and trucks collecting waste. People hurried past with coffee or lunch bags, while pigeons scattered and cars idled. Times of relative stillness were punctuated by herds of students moving between classes. Light shifted across stone and glass.

All these different human, structural, animal and mechanical ‘dimensions’ wove together into a kind of symphony, shaping the ebb and flow of the cityscape.

I began to sense layers within layers: movement and stillness, sound and silence, surface and depth. Even amidst the noisy busyness, there were slow spaces, pockets of pause where something quieter could be felt. Towards the end of the week, this awareness deepened.

My body opened to the spaces between those layers, the gaps, the interplay of stillness and movement, presence and absence, history and memory. I noticed the presence of people and the traces of those long gone. My skin felt porous, receptive, able to attune to all of it. Moving, I became an antenna, a living, sensing membrane that connects, receives and transmits.

This way, movement becomes a practice of meetings: boundaries and openings, inner wisdom and outer encounters. It is, in the end, a continual becoming, a lemniscate or infinity sign that helps us to become more intimate with the dynamic territory of being human, spirit in body, in place, now, always.

inside-outside / concrete-abstract / seen-unseen / past-present-future / you-me-us-everything… connected… always…

If you’d like to come dance with me in person… Birmingham UK, 25-27 July, details below. I would love to dive into movement together!

references

• *) a thought-seed from Ya’Acov Darling Khan, co-founder of Movement Medicine.
• Kieft, E. 2014. Dance as a moving spirituality: A case study of Movement Medicine. Dance, Movement & Spiritualities,1, 21-41.
• Kieft, E. 2021. Calibrating the Body. Embodied Research Strategies for Attuning to Subtle Information. In Julia Wright (ed.), Subtle Agroecologies: Farming with the Hidden Half of Nature, Taylor and Francis, Ch. 17. pp. 191-201.
• For Sandra Reeve’s work, please visit her website: Move into Life.
• This version is a re-write of my earlier blog post: Orienting Your Body in Space and Time.

Invitation

Bio

Her book Dancing in the Muddy Temple blends theory and practice in service of land, body, and spirit. Now leading Wild Soul Centre for Embodied Consciousness, she offers coaching and courses to support deep transformation and inner strength through movement and the body. You can also find her on LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram and Substack.