This past Monday I brought some work to explore intimacy & trust in our backspace.  My focus on the head and tail was inspired by learning recently how innervation of the parasympathetic nervous system departs the spinal cord primarily from the brainstem and the sacrum, and not so much from the mid/main part of the spine.  That correlates with my own experience and perception of the head and sacrum being places where, if handled right by a nurturing partner, induce a sense of being cared for.  We had a super-small turnout, just me Liz Mike & Scott, but went ahead with my planned program anyway, the others suggested I might want to repeat it with a larger group in a few weeks, if we want.

1. egg-uterus exercise. I brought this directly from a egg-implants-in-uterus exercise Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen taught a few weeks ago.  When an embryo implants in the uterus it burrows into the wall of the uterus and then the uterine wall encloses over it.  Two dancers stand back-to-front, the person in front acts as embryo and backs into the the uterus dancer, while the uterus dancer offers support/resistance, and gradually enfolds the embryo dancer in their arms.
2. head into gut.  Active dancer leads with their head, mostly eyes closed, pressing into gut of a caretaker dancer.  Caretaker dancer allows head-leading dancer to initiate but offers resistance and safety.  Caretaker dancer can use hands on active dancer as well. 
3. tail into gut.  Same as above but active dancer leads with tail.
4. falling backward.  We started by practicing falling backwards, and trusting the (inanimate) safety of a stack of mats that would cushion our landing.  It is incredibly hard to fall flat backwards this way, without invoking a reflex to tuck your head (or fold your whole body to protect your head).  Once we were able to fall into the mats, we tried the same in a group but trusting people to catch us rather than mats.
5. backward-falling duets.  Working in duets, we tried to maintain that sense of trusting our partner to catch us when falling into the backspace.  One dancer is the active faller, the other dancer is the caretaker/catcher.  The faller begins with eyes open but eventually eyes closed to emphasize the act of trusting.
6. open dance.

Exercises #2 and #3 didn't seem to go quite where I wanted, I think all of us found ouselves distracted by the mechanics of the exercises and they didn't evoke the sentiment of surrender & caretaking that I had hoped for. Yet, when we got to the open dance I really did feel like I had been strongly affected by the sequence of what we had done before and was dancing differently than usual.  Surprised to discover that the invitation to go into the backspace had me going upside down a little more than usual.  The other three folks all gave feedback that more active movement leading into the sequence of exercises might help (I went straight into #1 at 7pm).  Scott, Mike, Liz you want to share any impressions?