You are probably reading this article on your computer screen while sitting in a chair, or perhaps on your iPad or mobile phone. But nonetheless, you are sedentary right now. So am I, as I type this for you. This wonderful thing called technology that allows me to reach so many of you at once has also (unfortunately) affected our mobility, our movement. How do you commute to work? Do you sit at your desk most days? Do you have groceries or clothes delivered to your home instead of going to the market?

Let me give you a brief overview of the workshop below.

Have you ever tried to stroke a baby's palm? It tries to close its fingers and grasp. That's called the grasp reflex. It's not something he's been taught to do. It's an uncontrolled movement. As they grow, the movements become more controlled and deliberate as they develop an awareness of their own bodies. It is said that reflexes in infants are an important sign of nervous system development and function.

One of the first things we do in this workshop is to simply walk, run or jump, paying attention to what is actually happening to our bodies as we make these movements that we have been making since infancy. By decoding these movements and trying to understand other simple movements, we move towards what is called body intelligence. This brings us to the need to think of our body as a unit held together by our brain and spinal cord. If I move my hand sideways, what happens to the rest of my body? Does the weight shift? Does my spine still have the same shape or has it changed to facilitate the movement of my hand?

Second, did you notice that the word emotion contains the word movement? The word emotion has its roots in the Latin word 'emovere' which means to set in motion, move out, remove or agitate. Studies have shown that emotions and attitudes are influenced by changing the proprioceptive input of muscles and joints by adopting or mimicking a particular facial expression, posture, head movement or certain expressive whole body movements. Clinically, this means that motor behaviour, or let us just call it movement, can be used as a simple, readily available, side-effect free, and inexpensive intervention for emotion regulation, i.e., reducing inappropriate fear, anger, sadness, and other negative emotions, or increasing happiness, pride, and other positive feelings. In this section, we take a closer look at the relationship between our emotions and our bodies. And how, by manipulating our bodies (i.e. conscious body movements), we can change our emotions.

The third and final section is about expressing yourself through your body. In this section we will look at our body history and body memories and see.

This is only a faint outline of the workshop. It is a physical workshop. You will move and think and move some more and think some more and have a lot of fun doing it, because the notion of "play" is also one of the aspects covered in this workshop.