Gurdjieff Movements

Gurdjieff Movements in Maine is a group of seekers who practice the Movements, a series of sacred dances, dynamic postures, gestures and other physical actions developed by George Gurdjieff, the spiritual teacher who in the early 20th century developed the Work, or Fourth Way, system of spiritual inquiry. The Work includes a broad variety of practices — meditation and contemplation exercises, reading and communal study, inner tasks and attention efforts in daily life — but the Movements are central to its understanding and transmission.

The Movements were developed out of Gurdjieff’s extensive travels in central Asia, India, Tibet and northern Africa, where for millennia a broad variety of sacred dances have enjoyed profound refinement in the Sufi, Buddhist and other traditions. These are employed as experiential engagement with universal truths as well as tools for individual development, self-observation and self-understanding.

For these sessions at the Portland New Church, we will practice several Movements, accompanied as always by live music which was composed by Gurdjieff and the Ukraine-born composer Thomas de Hartmann, his close companion. The Movements reveal infinite levels of subtlety and insight as one continues to practice them, however these sessions are designed to be accessible to all, and first-time practitioners are welcome.