Let’s Experience: Finding Strength in Our Struggle with Illness

Choreographer, movement educator and multiple myeloma cancer survivor Larissa Velez-Jackson shares easy-going exercises used by performers to boost self love, restful presence and inner resilience at home.

Creative movement of the body helps us change our relationship to ourselves and our environment. But sometimes—whether due to illness, injury, age or other factors—movement feels not so accessible. What if we could practice rest, notice the present moment, and invite the body to move and dance? Multidisciplinary dance artist, movement and fitness educator, and multiple myeloma cancer survivor Larissa Velez-Jackson shares ways to find restful presence as a means to creative movement at home and offers a menu of take-aways for self care. Elements of the workshop may include breathwork, tapping, and micro-meditations with sound. Participants can take part standing, seated, lying down or a combination of these.

Beginning with a brief introduction to their personal story and daily self-care body practices, which have been paramount to their healing; Larissa will take workshop participants through playful and accessible embodiment exercises that involve breath, vocal sound, gentle movement, facial, neck and shoulder exercises, touch-based and writing to love and further know ourselves. As a sound healing practitioner and disability advocate, Larissa believes that illness brought them in much closer contact with their life’s purpose, and a very necessary pause from the fast-paced exploitative rhythm of modern life. With that in mind, the workshop will include moments of rest and reflective meditation with the accompaniment of sound, vibrational instruments played live to soothe our minds and bring connection to our resilient spirits. Here we practice how illness is a direct path to greater self-knowing, self-love and wellness.

Larissa Velez-Jackson (LVJ) is originally from Newark, New Jersey, lived in New York City for twenty years and now lives in Middletown, NY. Described by The New York Times as “an adroit physical comedian” who “seems to be questioning entrenched conventions of contemporary performance,” LVJ is a choreographer, movement educator and multi-platform artist who developed an improvisation performance practice called the Star Pû Method. As the artistic director of LVJ Performance Co., LVJ's performances involve movement, digital and vocal sound, storytelling and intergenerational community practice. They created a band Yackez with their spouse, Jon Velez-Jackson and recently launched the YouTube ASMR personality, Dr. Absurd Joy. LVJ is an ongoing cancer survivor and an advocate of the healing potential of combining art and body/mind practice.

https://www.larissa-velez-jackson.com/

@lareesa_lvj