Movement educator Elisabeth Osgood-Campbell reveals the value of Continuum in navigating life’s most intense and personal experiences and shares her vision for weaving somatic practices into public education. (4 min.)

Continuum & The Creativity of Health interview with Elisabeth Osgood-Campbell (video transcript):

For me, in its essence, Continuum practice is about reorganizing or reorienting to an understanding of myself as a biological organism, rather than as a specifically human being. And that has opened up these possibilities for me, that didn’t exist before.

Continuum was profoundly resourcing for me during my pregnancies. I used specifically in my second pregnancy lots of explorations while I was pregnant. During the birth itself, magically, amazingly enough, my second son was born with his water sack intact, which is quite rare. In particular, I used the lunar breath, quite a bit during labor, which for me was aerating and dispersing to the point where I could move beyond what I thought were the edges of my limitations to tolerate discomfort, pain, and to surrender to this expanding that needed to happen in my body on a very literal level.

“There was also a surrender mentally, or in terms of my consciousness, of trusting whatever this flow was going to be after giving birth.”

There was also a surrender mentally, or in terms of my consciousness, of trusting whatever this flow was going to be after giving birth. I had the very clear sense deep in my abdomen of all the connective tissue around my uterus reorganizing after all that expansion, and it can feel very disorienting. Of course, once the child is born then our bodies have to figure out how to find a new normal. And this practice was really supportive of that process in my system.

So, a primary passion of mine is to find ways to integrate Continuum practice into educational contexts, especially for younger children, because I believe that in the trajectory of development the earlier we can offer resource and positive intervention the longer term the gains, the benefits are. Just like we are learning so much about how the human brain is plastic and can throughout the lifespan create new, not only new neurons in certain parts of the brain, but new pathways and connections. Movement and mindful movement – which is what Continuum is to me, a mindfulness practice – mitigate some of the effects of chronic stress from living in impoverished and violent neighborhoods, for example.

Continuum, at its essence for me, also is a learning practice. It is creative inquiry. And so, in my mind and in my body, it feels natural to have it explored in learning communities. I know I’m a bit of a dreamer but I do hope that the work that I do over the next 10 and 20 years can help somehow build a bridge between the world of somatic movement and creative arts and public education, particularly in elementary schools. So stay tuned.