Chamblay 2023, a memorable event with Danis Bois

Every year, at the end of August, around 250 people gathers in Chamblay in an Eastern corner of France, in order to meditate together, under the caring guidance of Danis Bois. It is a moment of warm conviviality and sharing that is opened to anyone, who is interested in developing a closer relationship to themselves in order to become more present to themselves, to others around them and to the world. 

For many practitioners in the Arts and Practices of the Sensible (fasciatherapists, somatic-psychoeducators, and perceptual educators), it is a yearly opportunity to refresh, catch up with new scientific discoveries and the evolution of protocols, as well as sharing with other practitioners. This workshop is also a one-off yearly opportunity to meet Danis Bois for those interested in this work either because they are patients or learners of the various methodologies elaborated by Danis Bois over the years. 

This year had a particularly international flavour with many participants from far and wide – Belgium, Switzerland, Greece, Portugal, Canada, Brazil, Germany and the Reunion Islands.

In this workshop, Danis Bois wished to :

• emphasize his vision of the three fundamentnal pillars of meditation : to have a good level of self-esteem, to be benevolent towards oneself through auto-compassion and to be free of any form of anxiety, which are at the basis of the POEBRA, the 8-week Program he elaborated to Optimize Self-esteem, Benevolence and Anxiety Management. 
• teach a particular relational touch protocols designed to stimulate inner bodily perception through interoceptive awareness, as a way to awaken the inner movement.

In the mornings Danis Bois led guided meditations and developed the fundamental notions he wished to share, and there was also time for questions and testimonials.  Many subjects were touched upon such as (not exhaustive, and listed here in no particular order), what is required to meditate, the differences between empathy, benevolence and compassion, human warmth, interoceptive awareness, how the brain spends its time keeping us alive, psychotonus, spirituality, humility, love, the soul and the notion of an ‘accomplished’ meditation as becoming in our daily life what we have experienced in the meditation ‘By being closer the beauty within us, we become it’

In the warmth of the afternoons, the practitioners exchanged touch under the precise guidance of Danis Bois, in order to develop the perceptive awareness essential to Full-Presence Meditation. The objective was to stimulate the unifying psychotonus that integrates all the anatomical elements of the body to become a substance in motion and to make a distinction between this and the simple movement of the tissues. His guidance spoke to newcomers and experienced practitioners alike, so that learning could happen for all. 

Here are some extracts of the guided meditations:

• Wednesday 23 August 2023, on the theme of interoceptive awareness

Simply making a distinction between your inner states stimulates interoceptive awareness. As anxiety doesn’t exist without a biological reaction. Emotion doesn’t exist without a biological reaction, by which I mean a reaction of the body’s tissues. Feelings do not exist without biological reactions. Moods do not exist without biological reactions.

…

Homeostatic balance brings about a real sense of biological serenity. 

The absence of emotion is an emotion

As there is an emotion in the background, and that is where the nectar of life lies, the holy grail of life. This peace, this love, this human warmth. This human warmths that keeps us alive. It is the hearth of life, it is the flame of life.

And at the same time, you feel a soft hardly perceptible energy moving through you, and its passing through is a caress in your matter.  This caress of this movement within your body gives you the feeling of being profoundly alive.

Danis Bois

• Chamblay Tuesday 22 August 2023: On continuity as a potential for the infinite

In this continuity, in this permanence, there is the opportunity to perceive by comparison with this continuous stillness, to perceive what is animated. 

In other words, being motionless is like a gaze that enables you to perceive what is in motion inside you, and outside you.

Let this motion pass through your motionlessness, without it diluting this immobility. 

Both keep their identities.

Immobility and motion intertwine as the river joining the ocean.

Both combine

And this results in the movement encountering resistance with the immobility.

It is a resistance in motion or a movement that encounters a resistance

And it is this resistance that creates the soul, the ‘sensible’, the taste of self, the taste of love, and that brings this love that is total to become yours

… 

The feeling of bliss is only possible if there is gliding, even a gentle friction between motion and immobility, and that both keep their identity. They have to be in an embrace… that is what the soul is. 

The soul is no more no less than universal love becoming yours…

Danis Bois

By Hélène Pennel.