A Poetic Gaze: The Art of Being and Presence

Hello, dear readers.

Here, surrounded by new explorations, practices, and heartfelt words that embellish my inner garden, I begin with poetry.

Poetry is a path that describes the soul; a vast universe condensed into subtle, crude, or even absurd words to hold the human feeling.

It does not seek: it finds.

It finds those who wish to be found, those who can only be heard. It is a whisper of existence, a bridge to transcend the written world; a silent cry that pursues freedom, that rides on love, that feels pain, fury at injustice, and also weeps for roses and their beautiful color.

In my search for a more sensitive, natural, and poetic gaze, I discover new beauty every day. For me, it has become a ritual practice: inhabiting a feeling and being present more fully in everyday life. We live in times when the world cries out for compassion, connection, and unity; yet that same cry sometimes overwhelms us. It hides us in silence, in the absence of words, in voices that go unheard, in the ghostly acts of daily routines. I feel both sadness and joy in realizing that we are moving toward change. That change is unstable, without a fixed course, like all true change: not linear, but spiral, moving between light and shadow, between highs and lows.

Sometimes a dark, opulent shadow appears, full of injustice, conditioning us and clouding our perception. But if we look closely, we realize it is an illusion, a narrative we do not have to follow. Beneath the earth, slowly but surely, the bright light of genuine change emerges, the change we are all going through, present and omnipotent.

We have the right and the free will to choose who we want to be. To connect with and nurture the currents of goodness. To inhabit beauty and generosity. To practice gratitude toward those who love us, who teach us, who accompany us, and also toward those who, through challenge, show us the way to our inner transformation.

Tender love is key: compassion, loving dialogue, and acceptance of polarity. Allowing both forces to coexist is a dance that nature shows us every day, where thousands of universes coexist in chaotic harmony, respecting their own paths.

I have lived through intense weeks that have made me feel deeply alive. I have allowed myself to be everything and more than one thing: to feel the profound loss of identities that shaped me and, at the same time, the euphoria of standing at the cusp of what I truly desire for my life. This permission, this tolerance toward my own versions, the ones I used not to give space has enriched me and softened my gaze, filling it with humility, beauty, and compassion.

Now I feel a great affinity for everything new that comes into my life, especially the people I meet. There is a wonderful, almost divine and pristine filter. I see with new eyes, I accept, I embrace without judgment and with greater understanding. And this moves me deeply because I know it comes from my acceptance of my entire spectrum: the intense, the beloved, the desolate, the bitter, the hyperactive, the creative, the sad, the happy. They all live within me.

I transform this new inner language into practices with the Alma en Movimiento group, where we explore, transmute, soften, and enhance our authenticity. A space to disidentify from that fixed version of who we think we are and simply allow ourselves to be and to exist.

In our recent gatherings here on the island of São Miguel, my work has focused on guiding us into a state of presence: a gentle uncentering of judgment, a space where we can inhabit the body without expectation or fixed form, releasing and recalibrating. Until now, we have explored how to listen to ourselves, how to feel without correcting, how to simply allow the body to exist in its own time and rhythm.

For our next session, I will begin incorporating elements of Butoh, a contemporary Japanese dance that is inspiring me greatly. We will explore techniques that invite us to inhabit the body deeply, transforming our movement through inner imagery and states lived from within.

We will play with the impulse to accelerate and the intensity of the pause, allowing the body to respond without filters. Then we will immerse ourselves in the full presence of slowness, where each gesture becomes conscious, charged with meaning and life.

It will be a class to awaken sensitivity, inhabit the moment, and feel the beauty of movement that arises from within, a space to reconnect with the authenticity of our bodies and with the poetry that lives in each gesture.

I invite you to the gaze, to being, and to poetic feeling.

A hug, and see you soon.