Gestare Art Collective

I am standing facing the mountains on the coast of BC mainland. I’m very aware that this pose is rooting me. My feet are very heavy, the weight of my body is pressing pressing pressing down into the earth. The swells of the waters before me are creating this beautiful sense of fluidity in my body, a combination of weight and fluid.

As I feel into the pose, sensing my sex and allowing that to become the phallus, stimulating, warming my entire genital area I begin to feel waves of fluid movement in my body. The warmth spreads and I notice how the arm position in this pose has created the sensation of me hugging myself.

So I move very gently undulating through my torso holding heavy on the ground hugging listening to the sounds of the ocean and the wind the waves breaking on the shore. A different sound, the droplets of water dropping down the slope behind me and falling into puddles at the foot of the bank. I am sheltered from the wind that blows up the Georgia Strait and hits this Seal Bay beach on this cold February day.

There’s a power in this pose, a power of oneness and wholeness, a confidence, a strength in me, even a comfort, and the wind has changed direction slightly and the breeze is now coming in to my sheltered place, softly I can see the branches move.

I am like a phallus myself, rooted in this place on this beach. I’m reminded of the great rooted single standing stones I met on my journey across the mountains of Snowdonia following the Druid’s pathway.

MA Pose 7 Androgyny from Medwyn McConachy on Vimeo.

Nane's Pose - Feb 23, 2016

This time, it’s very hard pose for me to embody this pose, or to even hold it at the start. I feel a lot of resistance and unknowing.

What is the stream that needs to come through?

Later, trying the pose again, I am standing in front of my small altar which holds many female icons and deities, and does not include male-based imagery. I hold this pose with a sense of purpose. My arms are crossed as if I mean it. I feel into this double experience of having both sexes present in my body. I sense power, strength, and assertiveness. I feel my own edges, and a sense of great purpose and strength. These are not necessarily male/masculine qualities - the female/feminine can hold these too. Yet such qualities have been appropriated by the male/masculine, and used to wield power-over others, in sometimes violent ways. Despite my own sense of direction in life, do I yield and bend a bit more then I really want to? Yielding and bending is a skill in itself. But can I hold my ground more, and say what I need and mean?

What does that even feel like?

I want to learn more about this—strength, power, and assertiveness. Perhaps the sacred androgyny holds all possibilities of sex/gender in co-creative wisdom qualities. We can assess what we have shut down due to previous fear or unknowing. We can hold the non-patriarchal power and assertiveness of the mother.

Barbara's Pose February 22, 2016 - 7 minutes

Dual sexual, non-binary pose. I have packed myself with a sock and I stand in this androgyny pose with my breasts held high.

This pose is tough to find a balance in, to figure out how to hold it steady. As the pose wears on I became keenly aware of the different leg muscles being called upon to work in each leg. Muscles I am not normally aware of. My legs are working really hard, clenching themselves in a staggered rhythm that I am not in control of. I find myself thinking about the transgender education I have been exposed to as part of my current teaching work and how complex it is. Historically inter-sexed people were acknowledged in their communities for having special powers and roles to carry out. In our Western medicalized world it was psychology that coined the word transgender and framed it as a pathology. Now transgender identified people are turning to this same medical world to obtain their dreams of sex changes. But not before having to submit to being interrogated and proving they truly are who they say they are. The inner and outer conflict they are forced to live with in this culture is great.

The three days of this pose came at a very busy time in my work and I was only able to do one pose because of my exhaustion at both ends of my work days. On the second day I came home with a newspaper to read about the latest politics affecting my university and sat down in the comfy chair next to my partner and proceeded to bury myself in it. My partner spontaneously said to me "you are such a man." And he was correct. I was displaying typical relationaly disconnected male behavior with no desire to get out of it. I was fully tapped emotionally and physically and this behavior was my choice in the moment. Recognizing I am off balance with dysfunctional male energies I give myself permission to not do the second 2 poses.

It is interesting to read about the balance present in this pose spoken of by Medwyn and Nané.

Megan's Pose, February 21 2016

My body is tired, heavy flowing energy downward with my cycle. I sit in my living room with arms crossed, bottom sinking into a padded foot stool. This pose is difficult for me to connect with.

How can I be anything masculine
when blood is pulling at my pelvis?
Feeling so Feminine
Pressure on my hips
My bones are locking.
How do I gain strength through this pain?

I think of my dad standing straight, strong, proud, his arms interlocked with muscles bulging while his heart soft and nurturing having to take on role as father and mother.

I remember....My body is limited by physicality yet my spirit is eternally androgynous.

Gestare Art Collective

MA-Pose 7

Androgyny

Medwyn's Pose February 21, 2016