From the archive
12 Aug 2026
Each live session of the course begins the same way: two or three minutes of physical practice before a single concept or slide. Curtis Ogden, who teaches it, puts the order first for a reason. He has spent years watching people nod through two hours of systems theory and go home unchanged, diagram in hand, week unaltered. Beginning in the body is his answer to that. "We're not here just to talk about energy, but to experience it."
What fills those minutes is small on purpose. One exercise is an eyebrow lift held for a breath, which Ogden calls the smallest intervention he knows. Another is slow breathing with the attention resting below the navel. Both are optional: skip one on a bad day, join the next when you are ready. Nobody performs. The body is simply given a seat in the room before the talking starts.
The rationale is practical rather than mystical. A felt flow and a described one are not the same thing, and a course built on description alone tends to produce competent diagrams and unmoved people. Where Ogden learned this - and why a map drawn on a whiteboard is not the movement it pictures - is left to the course page, which is short and worth the click.
Two doors, both free. Lift your eyebrows into mild, friendly surprise and hold it for a breath or two - your mood shifts a notch, and often the next person's too, because faces are contagious. Or rest your attention three finger-widths below the navel: in through the nose, belly out, out through the mouth, longer on the way out. A few rounds, in a queue or before a hard call.
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